Desus and Mero love to throw shots at everyone—in fact, they make a living on it. But some of their targets take it harder than others—including, as we learned this week, DJ Akademiks.
Feeling attacked, the Complex host went on Twitch a few nights ago to shade the Bodega Boys. It didn't end well for him—when they saw the live stream, Desus and Mero roasted him immediately. But that was just the beginning.
On Thursday's episode of VICELAND's Desus & Mero, the hosts fired back once again after Ak returned to Twitch to deliver an emotional speech. To say the least, Desus and Mero didn't hold back.
You can watch last night’s Desus & Mero for free online now, and be sure to catch new episodes weeknights at 11 PM on VICELAND.
Last year was the first time that I spent Christmas alone.
I had just recently moved across the country to start a new job in Toronto and I just couldn’t, in a financial sense, make a trip home to Alberta. So, there I was in the big city, the Big Smoke, where I knew practically no one during the few days a year that Western society trains you to think if you’re not with your family you’re a failure.
It. Did. Not. Go. Well.
My friend Drew is a saint for listening to these rants.
I, like everyone else in modern day media, decided that I would turn my misery into content. So, I scoped out all the places in Toronto that were having an “orphan's Christmas” and went out bar-hopping.
I was so lonely I started live tweeting what I was doing which got promptly out of hand. It all started at my apartment I was subletting with a bottle of wine while playing Rumors on repeat. I made my way to a nice bar, alone, made friends with a bartender, spilled a massive drink, paid up and walked out with my tail between my legs. From there the night just got worse and I ended up at a terrible sports club hosting Christmas Eve karaoke. I did two shots of Jameson, promptly vomited, and sang “Home for a Rest,” a song about missing home by a band from Western Canada because my subconscious isn’t that subtle. After the song, I told the audience to “fuck off” and walked out on my bill.
I was a bad person that night, don’t be a bad person.
[See above for my version of a Christmas song]
So yeah, don’t follow my lead—instead follow these tips I crowdsourced from people in the VICE office who are more well-adjusted than I am.
Tip one: Don’t live tweet your desperation.
Tip two: For the love of god stock up on your favourite food, liquor, and, if you blaze, weed. You will learn very quickly that if you are lazy and wait till a major holiday to get your groceries you will be shit out of luck. As my editor told me recently, “I walked up and down a major street looking for someone to feed me and no one would.” Don’t be my editor. Don’t be sad.
Secondly, most liquor stores won’t be open and you’ll most likely to have to trek across town for your elixir and your dealer—forget about him for the time being—he has a family that loves him. If you don’t stock up on food find the nearest Americanized Asian chain restaurant near you. It’s a cliche but, honestly, if anything is open on Christmas it will be them—hopefully they sell booze.
On the flip side of being isolated over the holidays, you’re also left the fuck alone. That means nobody is there to judge you. Do whatever your heart tells you to do. Eat 20 packs of chips, have take out every night, eat buffalo wings in your bed as you binge watch King of the Hill.
Fuck it, you’re free.
Tip three: Podcasts. As one co-worker told me ”why be alone with your thoughts when you can be alone with someone else's?”
Tip four: Get yourself a new video game or something to binge watch. This will allow you to forget about being alone on the holidays and instead be involved in the much happier world of Mordor or, like, Far Cry or something.
If you’re more high-falutin than most you can catch up on some reading. Finish that book you haven’t yet started but telling everyone you’re reading. Or, if you’re so inclined, read some long form journalism. May I suggest My Family’s Slave published in the Atlantic, the most read story of the year—read it A) because it’s very good and B) so you can tell people you did.
Tip five: If you’re one of those people that needs to be busy, get yourself a project for the holidays. You’re going to have a little bit of isolation and time here as all your friends are enjoying their loved ones so use it to be productive. Make a birdhouse, learn the banjo, write that fan-fic—whatever floats your boat.
Tip six: Some bars will be open that night but for the love of god don’t go bar-hopping. Few things are more depressing than Christmas bar people, however, if you must go out, take a look at what will be open—odds are if a bar is open that night they’ll be advertising that shit—and pick one that you think suits you.
Tip seven: Did you know that most movie theatres are open on Christmas? Yeah, I didn’t either until I was told—let us all have a moment of silence for the selfless people who are working at Cineplex over the holidays. Getting out of the house is good for most of us, so go check out a film that you’ve wanted to see.
Tip eight: I dunno, edit some Wikipedia pages or something. The page on the 1974 Philadelphia Flyers is really missing some key details about Dave Schultz and the write up for your hometown still doesn’t have you listed as a notable person… maybe it’s time to change that.
Tip nine: Call your family. Yeah, uh… this one should have come earlier, eh?
Tip (6)9: Swipe right on everyone on Tinder. Tell everyone you’re a doctor or that you’re double jointed. Is that a turn on for some people? Maybe! But you won’t know until you try.
Tip ten: Let the depression swallow you. Look, you’re not going to win this battle, you might as well gaze directly into the void and let the darkness swallow you.
Everything you need to know about the world this morning, curated by VICE.
US News
ICE Wants Detained Migrant Families Split Up by Border Agents Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) approved a plan to separate children from their parents when individuals are found illegally crossing the border, according to anonymous officials. Current policy keeps families together in detention while they await legal decisions. The White House is reportedly keen on the separation policy, but Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen has yet to sanction it.—The New York Times
Government Funding Bill Keeps Lights On Congress passed a short-term spending bill Thursday to avoid a looming federal government shutdown. The stopgap bill moved the deadline to hash out government funding from midnight Friday to January 19, and injected some life into the sagging Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP). The House also approved a bill sanctioning $81 billion in disaster aid spending, covering hurricane and wildfire recovery work.—CNN
Scale of Senate Misconduct Settlements Revealed Around $1.5 million in government money has been used to settle misconduct claims in the Senate over the past two decades. Data released Thursday by the Senate Rules and Appropriation Committees revealed at least $600,000 was paid to settle claims involving lawmakers, while $853,000 was spent on claims involving other offices peripheral to or inside the body. Senator Tim Kaine said it was “the first step toward a more transparent reporting system for harassment in Congress.”—Politico
International News
More Than 120 Countries Condemn US in UN Vote A resolution urging the US to reverse its decision to recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital was endorsed by 128 countries at the UN General Assembly. Only nine countries voted against it. US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said: “We will remember it when we are called upon to once again make the world’s largest contribution to the United Nations.”—Reuters
Separatists Win Narrow Majority in Catalan Election Pro-independence parties have won 70 seats in Catalonia, giving them a reduced majority in the regional parliament compared to the 72 seats won in 2015 but power nonetheless. Separatist leader Carles Puigdemont, in exile in Belgium, said Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy had “received a slap in the face from Catalonia.” The Citizens party will lead the pro-Madrid cause after winning 37 seats.—AP
China Decides Not to Act on US Fentanyl Indictments Chinese authorities declined to arrest two men indicted by the US Department of Justice for allegedly shipping fentanyl to the US, claiming a lack of clear evidence. “China does not have solid evidence to show that they have violated Chinese law,” said Yu Haibin, a director at China’s National Narcotics Control Commission.—VICE News
Australian Cops Seize $800 Million in Meth Police arrested eight men after discovering 1.2 tons of methamphetamine during a raid on a dock—the country’s biggest-ever bust of the drug. Law enforcement put the street value at $800 million. “We are very pleased that 12 million hits of methamphetamine will be off the streets,” said Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton.—BBC News
Everything Else
Crystal Castles’ Ethan Kath Probed for Alleged Sex Crimes Toronto cops revealed their sex crimes unit is investigating the musician. An anonymous source said the case involved claims made by “several” women. Back in October, Crystal Castles’ former frontwoman Alice Glass said Kath had sexually assaulted her.—The Daily Beast
Sportscaster Dick Enberg Dies At 82 Tributes poured in for the beloved broadcaster after he died of an apparent heart attack at home. Keith Olbermann called it “a terrible loss,” while sportscaster John Ireland said Enberg would join fellow greats on the “Mount Rushmore of LA Sports Announcers.”—AP
Travis Scott and Quavo Drop New Album The Houston rapper and Migos member have released their joint LP Huncho Jack, Jack Huncho. Quavo’s bandmates Offset and Takeoff both feature on the album, and legendary illustrator Ralph Steadman made the cover art.—Noisey
Elderly Couple Claims 60 Pounds of Weed Was for 'Christmas Presents' Police in Nebraska arrested an 80-year-old man and an 83-year-old woman after they were allegedly found with 60 pounds of marijuana in their pickup truck. They reportedly told officers they intended to gift the bags of weed—perhaps worth $336,000—as "Christmas presents."—VICE
Lil Wayne Drops Two New Tracks The rapper released more songs from his forthcoming mixtape Dedication 6. One track, “Blackin Out,” uses the instrumental from JAY-Z’s “The Story Of OJ,” while the other is based on 21 Savage’s “Bank Account.”—Noisey
Make sure to check out the latest episode of VICE's daily podcast. Today we examine the issue of sexual harassment within the food industry.
The trial of Gayle Newland was an astonishing and miserable saga, seemingly torn from the script of some fantastical legal drama. The case resulted in Newland, now 27, being sent to prison for six years and six months, on three counts of sexual assault and one of fraud. Manchester Crown Court found that the victim, re-named Chloe to protect her anonymity, had consented to sex with a man called Kye Fortune on multiple occasions. However, "he" was actually her friend, Newland, who had summoned Kye into existence via social media, elaborate storytelling and a bizarre disguise including a bright pink strap-on dildo.
Despite its sad specificity, Newland and her victim's story isn’t unique. Other young women or assigned-female-at-birth people to have been sentenced after similar crimes include 19-year-old Gemma Barker in 2012; 18-year-old Justine McNally and 25-year-old Christine Wilson in 2013; and 25-year-old Kyran Lee and 23-year-old Jennifer Staines in 2016. All of their victims hadn’t consented to having sex with a woman or a trans man, and all six are on the sex offenders' register for life because of it.
Before more people are prosecuted, we need questions answered about gender fraud and the Newland case. The retrial, held in June, confirmed Newland’s fate (although her sentence was slightly shortened), but it seemed to throw up as many questions as it answered: lying to get someone into bed is not a crime, so why is gender the deal-breaker? And if the legal difference between sex and sexual assault hinges on gender – something the forthcoming review of the Gender Recognition Act will make easier to change – legally, how can this law remain enforceable? Not just now, but in the future? And what does society get from "gender fraud" being illegal?
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The story starts in 2003, when Gail Newland (there was a typo in a court report and it caught on, which is why she has always been referred to as Gayle), from Willaston, Cheshire, was 13. "For a variety of reasons," she’d later tell the court, she took hundreds of pictures from an American-Filipino man’s Myspace profile to create a Myspace account for Kye Fortune, a man she had made up. Soon, she would give Kye a Blogspot page, Facebook profile and even a YouTube account, where Kye would share videos of his street-dancing, or clips of himself playing Katy Perry songs on the piano. Kye4Tune is also credited as the writer of a song performed by a Filipino-British singer. Online, as Kye, Newland could talk to other girls in a way she couldn’t as a girl.
By 2012, Newland was studying for a Marketing and Creative Writing degree at Chester University. Newland claimed she met Chloe at a student-run club night called Gender Blender. According to her testimony, the pair discussed their sexuality-related struggles, and for the first time ever, Newland opened up about her alter ego, telling Chloe how she used Kye to talk to girls.
Soon, says Newland, Chloe added Kye on Facebook and they began chatting online, using Kye as a foil for their relationship. Falling in love, they met up and engaged in consensual sexual role-play, with Newland acting in the role of Kye. The logic was: if one of them played at male, the relationship was passably heterosexual and therefore acceptable. It was only when Newland told Chloe she was planning on coming out as a lesbian to her own parents that Chloe got cross at Newland. Court evidence includes CCTV footage of Newland and Chloe arguing in the street.
Chloe, meanwhile, gave a very different version of events. She met Kye first, as he’d requested her as a friend on Facebook. Chloe fell in love with him online, so hard that the pair got engaged before they’d even met IRL. Newland, meanwhile, was introduced online to Chloe via Kye, and met Chloe in a library, becoming her best friend and comforting her when Kye stood her up. Eventually, under the stipulation that Chloe was blindfolded at all times in his presence, Kye agreed to meet Chloe. The pair spent over a hundred hours in each other’s company over a period of two years, and every time they became intimate Chloe would agree to have her hands tied behind her back.
Kye had the same birthday, university course, taste in music and films, type of dog (with the same name, Gypsy) and voice as Newland. But Chloe only discovered Kye and Newland were the same person during a sexual encounter with Kye, years into their relationship, when he requested she "lick it", referring to the dildo. Chloe told the court that something "didn’t feel right" about the testicles she was touching. As her barrister would go on to say: "She removed her scarf and blindfold, and to her horror discovered that she was not in bed with Kye – she was in bed with the woman she knew as her friend, Gayle Newland, who was wearing a bizarre costume, which included the prosthetic penis strapped to her waist."
Gayle Newland's mugshot
The CCTV footage of the pair’s argument was presented by the prosecution as evidence that Newland’s lies had been rumbled. A text Chloe sent to Newland the evening of the argument read, "Are you for real? You should be locked up for what you’ve done to me. You raped my life, my heart and soul. No amount of counselling will make up for this. You are pure evil, Gayle. You are sick. I only have one question: why me? If I had not ripped off the mask I would not have known the evil truth."
Newland sent Chloe several emails that evening, including one with the subject line: "Explanation As Best I Can Right Now", detailing how "I had to make up lies to cover up the initial lie. It turned from a seed into a tree. I felt guilty every day, but I knew you needed me."
The "lie" Newland referred to could be the lie to Chloe that she was Kye, or it could be the lie she’d told her family and friends about being in a closeted same-sex relationship. Either way, Newland then attempted suicide, throwing herself from a canal bridge and breaking her leg. Emergency services were called to the location by passersby, and when instructed by paramedics to collect Newland’s clothing to prevent hypothermia the police officer present noted that Newland was wearing both a woollen hat and a swimming costume. Newland later told the officer: "I have done something I shouldn’t and now my friend can’t forgive me."
Chloe would then report to police what the Crown Prosecution Service refers to as "gender fraud", and in the first trial told the jury: "People get raped by males and it sounds sick, but I think I'd prefer it. I just think of all the stuff I let her do to me, like foreplay, and it makes me feel sick."
By September of 2015, after a short trial, Newland was found guilty of three counts of sexual assault by penetration, and sentenced to eight years for each count, to be served concurrently in prison. Newland’s counsel, Nigel Power QC, lodged an appeal, and by October of 2016, on the basis that Judge Roger Dutton’s summing up had not been properly fair or balanced, three Royal Court of Appeal judges overturned the "unsafe" conviction.
The summing up is unavailable, but Judge Dutton’s sympathies are evident in his sentencing remarks, in which he states the victim "was successfully deceived into believing this was full sexual intercourse with a man and nothing less". Not only did this imply that lesbian sex is somehow lesser than heterosexual sex, the harsh sentencing suggested lesbian sex – via a dildo – is somehow more harmful than other non-consenting acts committed against children. One previous convict sentenced by Judge Dutton had been given a four-year and eight-month sentence for raping four 13-year-olds, while another – a former teacher who’d abused 24 boys in the 1970s – received a sentence of just six years and nine months.
The Court of Appeals granted Newland bail under certain conditions and she returned to work. But this June, after a short re-trial, Newland was found guilty again, on three counts of sexual assault and one count of fraud. During her bail period, Newland had defrauded her social media agency employers of £9,000. She duped the company into believing that a series of paid-for blog posts had been written by ten people, when, in fact, much like how she’d created Kye, all ten of these people were made up online entities, with her pocketing their payment.
The case flays contemporary identity politics in two. There’s a feminist obligation to believe a woman when she says she has been assaulted, but there’s also an inkling from those within the LGBT community that, even in present-day Britain, the closet can make even the best of people do some weird things.
Newland will be in prison until her early-thirties, and is set to remain on the sex offenders' register for life. She is also forever condemned to using the internet in a way that can be easily traced. Everything’s in place so that she may never fool another woman into thinking she’s a man. But how did she get here, and what comes next?
Kye might not be real, but the crimes Newland committed depended on his existence. So why did she feel the need to create him? "It's hard to explain, especially with my upbringing being quite secluded," Newland told the first trial. "You don't get educated about being gay. You don't speak to gay people. It's seen as quite a negative thing."
She expanded on this in the second trial: "All my best friends were boys at primary school, then I went to an all-girls school and was out of my comfort zone. I knew I was attracted to girls, but didn’t realise what it meant. I didn’t know any gay people. You’d use the world lesbian for name-calling."
LGBT rights charity Stonewall offered no comment for this piece, but its data, which goes back as far as 2012, show that "lesbian" and "gay" have long been used as playground pejoratives. When Newland first created Kye, Section 28 was in its last year of effect. The clause, as it was otherwise known, was introduced by Margaret Thatcher’s government in 1988, and outlawed any council-funded establishments – mainly schools – from "promoting homosexuality". Newland attended private school, but there is nothing to suggest its values departed wildly from Section 28's.
Culturally, in 2003, lesbians were conspicuous by their rarity. The UK had Sam Fox, Sandi Toksvig, Hoxton-finned winner of Fame Academy Alex Parks, and Anna Nolan, the ex-nun who’d come second in Big Brother. Ellen DeGeneres was a strong import from the US as the voice of Dory in Finding Nemo, and a pre-transition Chaz Bono had just published The End of Innocence, which detailed coming out as a lesbian. Experimental sapphism provided short narrative arcs for Sex and the City, but The L Word’s first series wouldn’t premiere until 2004, and while Samantha Ronson’s music was on the Mean Girls soundtrack, that celesbian-defining relationship with Lindsay Lohan was half a decade away.
Fame Academy's Alex Parks, one of the few lesbians in the public eye in the early-2000s.
"The shadow of Section 28 hung long into this century," explains Kath Browne, a professor of Human Geography at the University of Brighton. "The fear has taken years to undo, and now, even using the term lesbian is problematic for some people. There’s still an underpinning of heterosexism – that heterosexuality is the best – and it just pervades very quietly but very strongly throughout our culture."
Under those circumstances, is it so bizarre that a young lesbian might not want to be a lesbian? Is it that bizarre that pretending to be a man – at least online – could be an easy fix?
It might be odd, though, that Newland maintained Kye’s profile. As the years wore on, did she not find a community to feel comfortably queer within? Gender Blender, the club night where Newland claimed to have met Chloe, is a weekly student event at various outposts of Rosie’s, a national chain of university town clubs. Gender Blender Chester – presumably missing some potential clientele due to its proximity to the bigger queer scenes of Liverpool and Manchester – is advertised on its social media pages as a "gay" night, rather than an LGBT night, with most of its promotional material featuring men or male drag queens.
As Professor Browne puts it: "The presumption is that because gay men are OK then lesbians are OK as well, but that needs to be looked at."
Alongside factors pushing Newland away from a full embrace of her lesbianism, or not providing her space to explore her sexuality, the internet provided a massive pull factor: the anonymity and pre-cameraphone era unaccountability of the internet back then meant she could exist as someone attracted to women, but detached from the maligned status of "lesbian". Plenty of young people create an alternative persona online, says psychotherapist Dr Aaron Balick, author of The Psychodynamics of Social Networking. "Your identity is not settled throughout life, but you have identity exploration occurring in the pre-teens and teenage years, so you might have a lot more experimentation going on."
But most of us wouldn’t be able to keep up with the duality of it all, says Dr Balick: "Integrated selves are better selves. If you can express yourself in one way through one medium and another way through another medium, and a third way through a third medium, then you’re always at a disadvantage because you can’t draw on the skills from other mediums."
Though Newland managed to fool at least three other women into thinking Kye was real, at least online, for a short period of time, Kye wouldn’t survive in the real world for long.
After Newland’s conviction, Judge Stockdale reviewed a psychological assessment of Newland’s various mental health conditions. Alongside the gender dysphoria she had been receiving medical treatment for since her first trial, she was found to be struggling with eating disorders, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder and depression. Though the NHS defines gender dysphoria as when "a person experiences discomfort or distress because there’s a mismatch between their biological sex and gender identity", Newland has – throughout both trials – identified as female. Newland only ever wished to deploy her male persona for portions of her life, rather than its majority.
However, Newland didn’t only have the hubris to take Kye from the internet into the real world, she had the moxie to simultaneously be friends with Chloe, as Newland. Some might wonder how Chloe, knowing Newland so well, could fall into the webs of lies she had spun.
However, the jury believed – beyond all reasonable doubt – that Chloe had every reason to believe Newland was Kye. Three major factors come into play here.
Firstly, there was the disguise. The woollen hat was to hide Newland’s hair. The swimming costume was to bind her chest flat. Kye, though, explained to Chloe they were to cover scars and regulate his heartbeat. Later, when asked to explain the outfit to the police officer who discovered her near the canal, Newland said she used to go swimming after visiting her partner.
Secondly, Newland restricted Chloe from finding out the truth. Not only did Newland make up scars and medical equipment to help Kye seem so self-conscious of his body that Chloe would agree to not look at him or touch him, but Chloe also agreed to have her hands tied behind her back.
As reported by The Guardian’s Simon Hattenstone, Mr Power questioned the victim: why would she allow herself to be restrained like this? She replied: "Because he didn’t trust me not to touch him or take my blindfold off."
"Were you content to have your hands tied behind your back?" Power responded.
"I was, unfortunately. If this is the way we have to do it for a couple of months, so you trust me, then fine."
"How often did he tie your hands behind your back?"
"Every time."
Why would Chloe agree to such irrational-seeming demands from Kye? Sex educator Alix Fox wonders: "There’s a chance that she might have assumed that a partner insisting upon kink-style practices such as getting her to wear a blindfold and restraining her hands – even from their very first sexual encounter together – was not as remarkable or unusual as some might consider that to be.
"S&M has become increasingly normalised in mainstream culture in recent years, the obvious example being the enormous popularity of 50 Shades of Grey [the first instalment of the series was released in 2011]. Unfortunately, while these books did start a constructive process of conversation and exciting sexual discovery for many, their depiction of a kinky relationship is in lots of ways unrepresentative and unsafe, and has led to numerous people – perhaps Chloe included? – having a skewed and potentially dangerous idea of how fetish-tinged scenarios should proceed, and how common it is for lovers to press for such things straight off the bat.
"Of course, Kye didn’t tell Chloe that he wanted her to wear an eye mask and restraints because that turned him on – he gave her far more complicated reasons… but the kink zeitgeist could have contributed to Chloe not questioning this as much as we might expect her to, whilst a misunderstanding of how things like submission, dominance and power play should be properly negotiated with regards to boundaries and consent might have affected her ostensible willingness to be tied up in order to 'gain Kye’s trust', when in fact both partners should already trust each other implicitly before partaking in bondage."
Another detail Chloe was forced to relive in her testimony was her previous relationship with an abusive man, and what Judge Stockdale called a "difficult upbringing". There is never reason to place the blame on a survivor of violence for being repeatedly hurt by multiple assailants, but Chloe’s past trauma may have had an impact on her willingness to believe Kye. Ms Fox says: "If somebody has only ever had traumatic or abusive relationships they may not have a reliable internal model of what a healthy relationship looks like, or a solid basis of comparison that might help them recognise when a lover is behaving in strange or unacceptable ways."
No domestic violence charities contacted were able to provide a comment for this article, but a basic tenet of their difficult and important work is that someone guilty of domestic abuse will deny their unreasonable behaviour is anything but reasonable. While there is nothing to suggest that Newland was violent to her victim outside of the sexual assaults, the rules Kye imposed on Chloe certainly line up with legal definitions of coercive control, made a criminal offence in 2015: "Any incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive or threatening behaviour, violence or abuse between those aged 16 or over who are or have been intimate partners or family members, regardless of gender or sexuality. This can encompass, but is not limited to, the following types of abuse: psychological, physical, sexual, financial and emotional."
That Newland was using Kye to make these unreasonable demands only renders this coercive control more coercive and more controlling, and thus harder for Chloe to detect as problematic.
With all this going on, it’s not impossible to understand why Chloe fell for Kye. She would later tell the court: "I know it sounds pathetic, but I was just so happy at the time because I was in love with this person and we’d built this beautiful relationship that wasn’t on anything like that – it was just based on, you know, our minds and all the other things that we had in common, so I just felt grateful that I’d finally got a proper relationship."
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When the dildo was presented to the jury in the second trial’s evidence, Power asked that it be brought in discreetly – which was tricky to do, as Hattenstone reported: "You can almost smell the rubber. It is large and thick, with testicles that don’t move." During questioning in the dildo’s presence, Chloe broke down, "humiliated and angry", telling the lawyer: "You think it’s hilarious, don’t you? It’s my life, but you think it’s a joke."
The defence also brought up the victim’s previous sexual history of ten male sexual partners prior to her relationship with Kye. The argument went: there’s no way Chloe didn’t realise it was a dildo – such an unrealistic-looking one – 15 times over. But, the prosecution’s argument isn’t far off – Chloe didn’t realise it was a dildo, and that’s 15 times a woman was penetrated with something she didn’t consent to be penetrated with. And that, explains Penny Childs, associate professor of law at Plymouth University, is why Newland is in jail.
"This is a case where, in addition to deceit about who she was and therefore about whether it was heterosexual or lesbian sex, it could be argued that there was deception about the nature of the act, as a prosthetic penis is physically different in nature from that which the complainant thought was being used."
There is no official "gender fraud" law in the UK. Lying to someone about your gender (your identity) is not illegal, neither is lying about your sex (your biology, as per the NHS definitions), whether you’re trying to get into a toilet or get someone into bed. What has come to be known as "gender fraud", however, is when there are contraventions of either Section 74 or section 76 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003. It is not known which section of the Sexual Offences Act Newland’s charges applied to, but Section 74 outlines consent being dependent on a sexual partner agreeing by choice, with "the freedom and capacity to make that choice". Section 76 outlines consenting to a specific act. As Ms Childs explains, Newland could have been in contravention of Section 76 because the sex was "a completely different act from the one that [the victim] thought it was". As for Section 74, if Chloe was blindfolded, and lied to over and over, was she really free to consent to what was being put inside her?
That’s why, though Chloe said the intimacy – the foreplay – the pair shared made her feel sick, it was the acts of penetration which saw Newland convicted. Though a dildo doesn’t carry the same risks as a living, breathing, ejaculating penis, in that it is far less likely to transmit STIs and entirely unable to impregnate a woman, if a specific sex act – this time, dildo-in-vagina rather than penis-in-vagina – isn’t what both parties have consented to, then it’s sexual assault.
That’s before we get to the psychological impact on Chloe, who told the jury that after discovering Newland playing at Kye she "went off the rails", self-harming, feeling "dirty" and ashamed. She told the court: "My youth, personality and vitality have been taken" by the deceit.
But what of the youth, personality and vitality of others who might be affected by the precedent this conviction sets? Ms Childs wonders: "Given a prosthetic penis is enough to suggest there was no consent to the nature of the act, would that also apply to the surgically reconstructed or surgically constructed penis?
"Presumably it doesn’t matter whether you’re cis or trans, the ruling in Newland for using a prosthetic penis is going to be the same if you don’t tell someone that that’s what you’re doing. But with a surgically constructed penis, with someone who has gone through gender affirmation surgery, then is there a possibility that the court would say that that’s not actually the same thing as a cis male penis, and therefore you have to disclose that you have had it surgically constructed?"
And this is why, although Newland identifies as a cis woman, her case concerns the trans community and their allies. Dr James Barrett, lead clinician at the Gender Identity Clinic at London’s Tavistock and Portman Trust, was a defence-instructed expert on Newland’s second trial. He tells VICE that lying about gender or sex doesn’t seem as bad as other lies people say to get someone in bed. He cites marital status, criminal record and STI status as some examples: "What strikes me as slightly odd is that the sentence in this case suggests that some man (for that is what the plaintiff believed the defendant to be) being not quite as male as he was suggesting is somehow vastly, years in prison, worse than [other] dishonesty.
"By extension, would it be equally terrible if a trans person failed to disclose to any sexual partner that they were previously living in another gender role? It is unclear, I guess, but looked at one way it would suggest that every patient from this clinic, no matter how long ago they had every aspect of treatment, including surgery, would have to disclose this to everybody in every circumstance to avoid being liable to this sort of conviction."
In terms of privacy, and a trans person’s right to live in the gender identity they feel is most appropriate for them, it’s a minefield. As the review of the Gender Recognition Act approaches, with cross-party motivation to make the process of getting a Gender Recognition Certificate easier, perhaps a consideration should be: what happens if the certificate is obtained ahead of gender-confirmation surgery?
When does a clitoris engorged by trans men’s injections of testosterone become a penis? When does the tube of flesh surgically constructed for some trans men’s affirmation of their manhood become a penis that is legally capable of consenting sex without the necessity for disclosure of its creation?
On Facebook, there is a Support Gayle Newland group. The gist of the speculation within the group is that Chloe was a self-loathing lesbian (or at least bisexual) who willingly had consensual role-play sex with Newland as Kye, but went to the police crying rape when she discovered that Newland was about to rumble their cover by coming out to her family. This is in spite of Chloe saying in court: "There’s no way in hell I would let Gayle sleep with me with a strap-on. There’s no way. I’m a heterosexual lady, I’m not a lesbian."
Donna Roberts, who founded the group, is a British academic living in Finland. She tells VICE: "I’m not personally connected to GN, I just felt outraged about the trial and felt I needed to open some kind of forum where people could correspond about it."
Not only is Roberts surprised by the length of the sentence, but "appalled" by press coverage of the story, and wonders if Judge Stockdale fully considered Newland's Asperger’s Syndrome – which Power claimed she struggles with – when considering her "lack of remorse" for the crimes she was sentenced to.
Harriet Wistrich, a human rights lawyer and member of Justice for Women, didn’t know about Newland’s Asperger's, but is concerned with the context of her lesbianism being overlooked, and a failure from her legal team to convince the jury of the closet lesbians must build to withstand society’s prevailing winds. Wistrich tells VICE that, following the initial trial, Newland’s then-girlfriend reached out to her for legal assistance. "When I represent victims of rape, I am highly critical of how disbelieved they are. So for me to consider supporting somebody who’s been alleged to have committed sexual assault, it’s really complicated and difficult.
"I would only do it in circumstances in which I thought there were specifically serious issues about how the defendant was treated."
Wistrich spoke with Newland several times on the phone and, with her permission, compiled evidence to support the appeal: "We did a study to show how lesbians and gays are still very bullied and alienated in all sorts of circumstances outside of one or two metropolis areas…unfortunately. I think she split up with the girlfriend who contacted us and the family decided they didn’t want me or Justice for Women involved, and we were cut out of it."
Ms Wistrich could have brought to the trial, she says, an awareness of how oppressive the closet can be for young women in 2017: "If you’ve got a couple of men who don’t understand lesbian sexuality defending you, and they’re trying to see the run of particular events without understanding the context, you’re starting on the back foot, aren’t you?"
Power responded that: "We considered what she said carefully, but this was obviously not admissible at a criminal trial. The rules of evidence just do not allow for this type of opinion."
The judge gave Newland a slightly shorter sentence at the retrial, because he took into account her psychological issues.
Reading from the victim’s impact statement, Judge Stockdale remarked: "It was only when your control of her was absolute that you put your deceit to the ultimate test."
The offences displayed, he said, "An extraordinary degree of cunning and a chilling desire on your part to manipulate and control the lives of others... It is difficult to conceive of a deceit so degrading or a deceit so damaging to the victim on its discovery.
"This was a deceit of such subtlety and cunning in its planning, and was a deceit from your point of view so successful in its execution that an outsider to this case might find the facts difficult to comprehend. In this case, the truth – the whole truth – is as surprising as it is profoundly disturbing."
Upon hearing her sentence, Newland sobbed and dropped to the floor of the dock, shouting out "No!"
§ § §
Newland isn’t the first young person to be sentenced for this sort of crime. But what is the sentence for "gender fraud"?
Barker was sent to prison for 30 months after pretending to be three boys in order to sleep with two girls. Justine McNally was sentenced to three years in prison for six counts of sexual assault by penetration after using a sex toy on a woman while pretending to be "Scott". Christine Wilson was given 240 hours of community service after sleeping with two underage girls who were convinced she was a boy. In 2016, 25-year-old trans man Kyran Lee was given a two-year suspended sentence for obtaining "sex by deception". His gender-confirmation surgery was pending, and he had used a fake penis to have sex with a woman without disclosing his trans status. Jennifer Staines, posing as Jason Spiller to sleep with three 13 to 17-year-old girls, was jailed for 39 months. The judge commented: "I can't determine whether it was for love, love and sex, or just sex."
With a current sexual assault attrition rate seeing only 15 percent of rapes reported, and only 12 percent of those reported resulting in a trial which leads to a conviction, it could be argued that it is unfair to see cases where the victim had actually consented to some form of penetration reaching court. In each case, bar that of Staines, the victims were old enough to consent to sex, but had consented to penis-in-vagina intercourse, not dildo-in-vagina sex. And while it’s not a zero sum game – Newland won’t take up a prison bed more deserving of a male assailant – cases like this, and the publicity surrounding them, support the notion that some women in the judicial system aren’t worth believing.
The case boils down to one thing: we tell a lot of lies to get people into bed with us, from statements about our sexual expertise to our fertility or financial situation. So why is sex – that is, the biological stuff – still the one thing that people may not lie about?
Gender or sex is decreasingly important to both those increasingly feeling comfortable identifying as non-binary or trans, and those increasingly open to sleeping with partners from across the spectrum of gender. Yet sex is still so tethered in law. And when the legal definition of sexual assault includes kisses – which it does and should, as people have been reminded post-Weinstein – then where does this put the brief encounter in a dark nightclub with a woman boyish enough to pass as male? Does this mean women outstepping their gender roles, flexing the narrow definitions of how girlhood is done, are in trouble? Does this mean trans men deserve punishment if they pass too convincingly?
The imminent advances to the Gender Recognition Act will be welcomed by many who want a seamless recognition of who they feel themselves to be. And the long-promised reform of sex and relationships education will hopefully see curricula updated to acknowledge the internet’s impact on sex. But the legal system needs to adapt to the not-so-new ways that the internet is used to groom young and vulnerable people. It also needs to do more protect all victims of sexual coercion – modern slavery and human trafficking are on the rise in Britain, and the NSPCC reports that 40 percent of teen girls have been pressured into sex.
And the focus on these cases of supposed "gender fraud", which are putting ostensibly vulnerable young women and trans men into jail, shows that some thinking around these complex matters has short-circuited. Did onlookers find this story interesting because it's about sexual exploitation being brought to justice, or because Newland's punishment for her hubris at playing male confirms their misogyny and homophobia?
Even in 2017, when same-sex marriage is legal and LGBT people have more representation than ever in important fields, the closet can make its inhabitants contort in all sorts of ways. And if love can be found between minds online, we need to ask ourselves: at what point does the body – male, female or whatever – truly begin to matter?
The marriage of horror and Christmas isn’t as weird or counterintuitive as it may seem at first glance. We grow up with the promise of a man magically invading all of our homes, and we hope we’re well-behaved enough all year to get presents from him, rather than the uneasy feeling that comes with the thought he might be sneaking in to punish us with lumps of coal.
Enter the thriving Christmas horror film industry.
Binging on winter-themed gore flicks is probably the most metal way to deal with a stressful time of year—though it’s hard to separate the so-bad-it’s-good from the actually-just-bad. There are many low-budget, straight-to-video cheese fests, though those can be their own kind of fun. Then there’s the genuinely good, prestige output of holiday horror, like the genre-defining Canadian classic Black Christmas, widely regarded as the first slasher film and a major influence on Halloween. But in either case, these aren’t movies that get the same kind of mainstream push as modern classics like Scrooged or Jingle All the Way (or Die Hard and Lethal Weapon).
Kier-La Janisse has attempted to compile a list of these films, along with essays and mini reviews of the tradition as a whole, in a new book.
We may think of Krampus and a murderous Santa Claus as new ideas, but they’re part of a much longer tradition. The obvious historical example is Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, in which miserly old Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by three ghosts in the night and terrorized into changing his greedy ways.
“Dickens was actually tapping into a tradition that already existed when he wrote A Christmas Carol,” says Janisse. “It goes back hundreds of years before that.” She adds that “many of the British Christmas horror films have nothing to do with Christmas. In the UK, Christmas is the time that's associated with horror stories and ghost stories, not Halloween.”
Of course, we have plenty of other reasons to want to subvert the sickly sweet veneer of Christmas time. For a lot of people, Christmas is a time of anxiety and hardship, whether for financial of familial reasons. Maybe you can’t afford presents for your kids. Maybe you’re pissed about the elaborate dinner no one’s helping you with. Maybe you’re nervously waiting for that one uncle to finish his third glass of eggnog and start complaining about football players kneeling during the national anthem.
“We know, just from going through Christmas, that most times people are grouchy and complaining, so I think it's very easy for people to understand that nihilistic approach to Christmas and the subversion of a lot of those more positive traditions,” says Janisse.
Horror is particularly good at subverting norms. That’s virtually it’s raison d’être. We watch the world as we know it burn to the ground in horror films. Parents become monsters, nuclear families become incestuous bloodbaths, the institutions meant to protect us prey on us. everything and everyone we trust lets us down.
That’s been a problem for the industry at times, says Janisse. “The Santa slasher has been the most popular Christmas horror subgenre. Because of Silent Night, Deadly Night , certain films had protests around them.” Sometimes Christians don’t love having their traditions messed with. Silent Night, Deadly Night was a standout, as its killer was a man traumatized by his parents’ murder on Christmas Eve, and that was followed by an abusive upbringing in a Catholic orphanage. As an adult, he dons a Santa suit and goes on a killing spree. Janisse also points to the more recent protests against 2010’s Sint, in which St. Nicholas is a Bishop who kidnaps and murders children at the full moon.
Slasher Santa as manifestation of PTSD in Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984).
“Obviously horror fans like it. But normal people don't like the idea of Santa Claus being evil,” says Janisse.
“That created the reemergence of Krampus as an important figure in Christmas horror. Five years ago, most people didn't know who Krampus was, and now everybody knows,” says Janisse. “People wanted to have that Christmas villain without having to deal with Christians thinking that there's a war on Christmas.”
In 2015’s Krampus, the titular monster is somewhat like Santa, but only his coal-giving punisher side. Krampus, a mythical goat demon, terrorizes a family when they lose their Christmas spirit. (It’s a decidedly pro-Christmas film, in its own way, if you’re trying to slip under the righteous Christian radar.)
Krampus (2015).
So what else should you watch this Christmas?
“Everything starts with Black Christmas,” says Janisse. “A lot of people just consider it the best Christmas horror film.”
Aside from being an influential and genre-changing film (and possibly the first filmed version of the urban legend in which the killer is calling from inside the house), Black Christmas is just a solid little slasher pic. In it, a deranged killer holes up in the attic of a sorority house during a Christmas party and proceeds to torment and kill the sisters therein over the holidays.
Margot Kidder in Black Christmas.
“Some are darker than others. I think a film like Christmas Evil is a much more nihilistic film,” says Janisse. In the 1980 film, another man in a Santa suit goes on a killing spree, this time he’s a fed up toy maker, losing his mind on the assembly line. “Horror transgresses boundaries all the time, and it subverts expectations. It's a mockery of what is normal. A lot of Christmas horror, like Christmas Evil, will be statements that are anti-commercialist.”
There are other options too, if you’re willing to dig a little to find some even more obscure holiday viewing.
3615 code Père Noël, released in the US as Game Over, sounds like a great choice. “It came out a year before Home Alone, and it's basically the movie that Home Alone ripped off,” says Janisse. “It's a little kid who's in a house, and there's an evil mall Santa that's trying to get into the house. The kid is communicating with him through Minitel, basically a primitive form of internet that they had in France 10 years before the internet was widely used in North America. In the movie there's one in the mall. This evil mall Santa gets on it and pretends to be Santa, and this kid tells him where he lives, and then it's just the kid defending himself with booby traps.”
Janisse also recommends Elves—“if you want just a real what the hell kind of Christmas movie. I think it's only ever been released on VHS.” In the 1989 movie, a group of Neo-Nazis works to realize Hitler’s secret agenda to create a master race that actually involves reproducing with Santa’s elves (so, yeah, what the hell?). “There's actually a screening of it, if people are in LA, on the 16th of December at the American Cinematheque.”
Caption: Tales From the Crypt offers EC Comics-inspired Christmas frights.
“I really like A Christmas Horror Story, a Canadian film that came out a couple years ago, that's a bit of a portemanteau film,” she adds. “And speaking of portemanteau films, Tales From the Crypt, the 1972 film, has a segment in it with Joan Collins, which is very famous.”
There’s plenty of holiday-themed carnage to choose from, if that’s your jam. Don’t let the sappy positive vibes fool you, there’s no bad time for the sick and twisted.
I always like a challenge, especially this time of year as I’m all hopped up on Christmas miracles and philanthropy. So when my sexually awkward and wonderful friend told me she’d never had an orgasm in her 28 years (“Even by herself?!” I hear you cry— even by herself) I decided to put all my anxious holiday energy into helping out a friend in need. Hattie tells me she has never even tried to touch herself and when she told me this I was speechless. What does she do when she can’t sleep?!
As many as one in three women have trouble reaching orgasm when having sex, and it’s suspected that 80 percent of women fake it. But for my friend Hattie—who wishes to remain anonymous so as not to uproot the sexual prowess of her previous partners—faking has been the only ever ending to her sexual exploits since she started having sex ten years ago.
“I’m a wonderful actress,” she says when prompted to show me Harry Met Sally-esque at the table. “Faking depends on the person, with my boyfriend it was more of a show... I think I thought I loved him more than he loved me so it was my way of giving him something.” Hattie confesses that screeching, thrashing and wailing into a mythical climax was her way of ensuring her man didn't stray, but this meant her own sexual development was never realised. Hattie’s amateur dramatics could be responsible for supporting the unfounded sexual mastery of a tiny portion of the males of Vancouver, she could even be responsible for the Tinder date you just went on when a guy asked if you’d come after two brief thrusts and a clumsy tap tap to your clitoris.
Hattie is the first female friend who I’ve met who didn’t spend her formative years with some kind of sexual curiosity; whether that was discovering the well placed jets in swimming pools or partaking in weird sexual play with friends. She’s the only friend I know age 28 who swears she doesn’t touch herself and actually truly doesn’t. “I’m not comfortable with it,” she says. “I’m extremely sexually repressed.”
Hattie tells me she wants to try but doesn’t know where to start. “I obviously would like to, but might need some help,” she says. So we give ourselves a week to rid Hattie of all her pent up sexual repression and get her that happy ending that she so deserves. The orgasm doesn’t even need to be the goal here, just some general fun loving with herself. It is perfectly common for some women to not be able to fully climax, and I’m aware that there are psychological aspects to consider that are better suited to a year of therapy rather than my vague sexpertise; but just by addressing the physical I think we could get somewhere, even if it’s not the big finish. You know what they say—shoot for the moon and even if you miss you’ll be amongst the stars. Well same here I guess, but instead of stars it will be the possibility of saying the word “moist” without having a panic attack.
So what’s our tactic for the sexnaissance? Well first I want her to start feeling more sexually comfortable, certainly enough to stop faking orgasms left right and centre but also comfortable enough to find out how her body works and what she likes. I can’t do this for her however, and as much as friendly cunnilingus would probably be a quick fix here I’m not sure how comfortable I would be having the weight of 28 years of unobtained orgasms on my mere shoulders… Talk about apron strings. Instead I talk to Hattie about going to the only place I can think of that will reassure her that this quest is perfectly normal. Somewhere that will undoubtedly be an invaluable aid for her ultimate goal—a sex shop.
Day 1
So Hattie and I venture to Womyns’ Ware, a sex positive, women-centred sex shop in Vancouver. Initially Hattie hates it all. There’s too much sex everywhere and even finding a place to lean without accidentally touching something phallic is impossible. Lesley, the owner of the store, and Hattie start to have a chat and I take myself away at this point. I think it only fair that Hattie has the experience of a genuine customer and having your pushy friend smiling at each baby step you make towards sexual freedom probably doesn't scream normal. So I have a walk around.
The store is like an erotically-charged adult candy shop. The brightly coloured toys and aesthetically impressive beads and dicks and vibrators are undeniably attractive—and I find myself kind of wanting everything in a Pokémon “catch em all” kind of way. Who knew sex toys could be so visually appealing?
There are rows of dicks; big ones, small ones, ones with curves, ones with veins, and most unpleasant of all, ones with detailed balls complete with hair. Feeling one I noticed it was quite sticky. “Those are the lifelike ones” said Anne, the co owner. “They’re made to feel like skin.” I couldn't help but grimace at the little bits of fluff clinging to this skin-like plastic. Most of these faux skin toys have a plastic pair of balls to accompany them. “Some people like the ones with balls.” Why? A pair of loose skin simulating plastic balls certainly wasn't for me but just looking at this menagerie of dicks was enough to show me just how diverse everyone’s needs and desires are. I want Hattie to take a nine-inch multicolour monster penis home but I know sadly this isn't my decision, and for the girl who’s currently choking on the other side of the room trying to say "lube" it might be the rainbow, cock shaped, nail in the coffin.
Hattie and her new fairy sexmother Lesley are looking for two toys for Hattie to take home. They focus on the middle section of the room which contains the multi-purpose toys designed to target the clitoris and the g-spot—Lesley thinks this would be a good place for Hattie to start as she’s not sure what she likes yet. Apparently these multi-use toys are quite popular for a variety of different women as they cater for the basic and more middle of the road requirements. Yet even this section includes a plethora of different colours and sizes. They’re all so ergonomically satisfying to look at, and I’m pleased to see in this section there’s not a faux skin hairy ball in sight. It seems Hattie has made her decision on what she would like to take home; a small lighter-sized vibrator and a multi-purpose toy thats pink and non threatening; Lesley approves. Sadly she was less willing to let Hattie try the giant self thrusting dildo that I suggested—too much too soon perhaps.
It’s (se)Xmas eve and Hattie and I sit down for one final discussion before she takes herself away to try her new presents. I get the chance to ask her what she expects her first orgasm might feel like. “Underwhelming,” she suggests. “In three words?” I ask. “Good not great,” she replies. Perhaps, but I feel even the progress she’s made today has make the whole experience worthwhile. “I feel slightly sexually liberated,” she says, “or it’s going that way, it’s made me feel better.” So with $400 worth of sex toys on her person I send her on her merry way. It feels like I’m a parent finally letting go of my child on their bicycle for the first time without training wheels.
Day 2
I wake up to a text the next morning that just says “Didn’t happen.” It feels like waking up on Christmas morning having been stood up by Santa and I can even feel the disappointment oozing out of the text despite the lack of emoji. I start to feel a little guilty. The pressure I’d put on Hattie can’t have been sexually liberating. In fact it’s playing into the stigma that female pleasure exists for and from other people. This is her experience so I have to stop trying to be so heavily involved. I tell her that it’s perfectly normal and apologize, I must remember that this is her experience and not mine.
We speak on the phone later that day and Hattie tells me she had tried the small vibrator. In fact she had slaved away for an hour and nothing had happened. “Nothing exciting happened, it was fine,” she said. “Felt good but I’ve felt like that before.” Eesh. “Fine” and “good.” This is hardly the earth shattering sexual initiation I had predicted for her. “I think I need to become more dexterous with the toy,” she added “I didn't really know what I was doing.”
“I wasn’t concentrating a lot,” was her response when I asked her what she was thinking about. The idea of Hattie using this baby vibrator and flitting in and out of thinking about food or what she was going to do on the weekend is hardly the image of total sex confident self pleasure. After an hour even the most well-versed self pleasurer would get a little bored. “I also think I just need to get a little more comfortable using them.” OK, so all she needed was practice and some saucy thoughts to get her in the mood. Hattie is a fan of erotic fiction, always has been; so tonight I suggest she gives that a whirl before she tries the other toy. As we end the phone call Hattie says “orgasm” without taking the usual inhale to prepare herself and I can’t help but feel a little proud.
Days 3 and 4
Hattie seems in higher spirits the next time we speak. She doesn't quite have the dilated pupils and look of sheer hedonism of someone who’s just experience their first ever climax, but she seems a little freer. “I’ve used the big one the last two nights and it’s very intense.” By “big one” she means the small pink multi purpose toy that Lesley suggested as option two. This one is more powerful than the small vibrator that essentially feels like someone’s lightly humming into your crotch. “It’s definitely something I haven't felt before and feels like it’s going somewhere.”
No climax has happened yet but I’m apprehensive to bring that up again so as not to spook Hattie back into her shell of sexual discomfort. “I think I just need to figure myself out a little bit,” she says, and I encourage her to take her time. “I haven't put anything inside yet, I think I might do that tonight.” This may be the most comfortable I’ve ever heard her sound, she’s talking about putting things inside herself and she’s not cringing nor sweating profusely—what progress!
Being a fan of erotica I choose to give Hattie advice from my sexually curious 15-year-old self who would read erotic fan fiction alone in her room several nights a week. I direct her to a website where you can find links to all sorts of genres of erotica including, and surprisingly most intriguing for Hattie, supernatural and “non-human” erotic stories. “Oh, I get really into that kind of shit,” she says when I send her the link. Three days ago Hattie was frightened of the word “penis” and now she’s comfortably talking to me about sexy aliens, erotically charged vampires and even “sex angels.” I’m amazed. Perhaps there is something about supernatural erotica that’s unearthly enough to make her detach from the current pressures she lives with everyday. It’s almost as if the sexed up non-humans were a form of escape from the tight ropes of sexual constriction that she has yet to shake off after ten years of being sexually active. Who knows.
Day 5
I’m sitting opposite Hattie having made a triangle with my index fingers and thumbs. Without any free hands I use my nose to point at the imaginary sweet spots in attempt to give her some more guidance. “I know where everything is,” Hattie says after I reluctantly repeat the word “clitoral hood” at least four times, “it just hasn't happened yet.” Hattie had another long session last night, and I’m extremely impressed by her vigilance. Sadly though it was day five and still no cigar. “When do you decide you’ve had enough?” I ask her. “When the battery runs out” she replies. That must be a good hour, I’m impressed!
“It was good,” she says, “the best so far.” I’m still waiting patiently for words like “earth shattering” or “showstopping” and this lacklustre sexnaissance so far has been, just as Hattie predicted, somewhat underwhelming. But still, she’s talking comfortably about it and I have to remind myself that this at least is something. This girl last week would probably not even have touched herself if she was cramping so this is undeniable progress. Hattie was making slow and steady headway towards her goal and last night she took a couple of extra steps with the help of the sex angels. The sex angels. Having done a little sleuthing myself last night, I can conclude that in no way would a sex angel do anything near to warming my loins but that just shows how delightfully different we all are.
Well it turns out sex angels are an actual thing. The web is bursting with erotica describing winged creatures and their vibrant sexual activities. There’s probably nothing unsexier than reading erotica out of context and there’s only so many times I can read about an angel’s “throbbing member” or “angel juice” before I have to take myself away and try and burn it from my memory. That night I think of Hattie probably beginning another sesh and I hope tonight will be the night. Part of me knows she’s ready, so I cross my fingers and pray, to the sex angels of course.
Day 6
I receive a text in the morning with six emojis.
It’s a fairly cryptic selection but I don’t struggle to decipher it. She’s only gone and bloody done it. With such an eclectic grouping of emojis though I am left unsure of the general narrative, mainly because theres no angel emoji in sight.
“How do you feel?” I ask her. “Probably the same,” she replies. “I guess happy now I know I can do it.” She’s so blasé! Where are all the erogenous superlatives?! I was hoping for a Jilly Cooper style paragraph from her about the intricate internal details of her experience but she’s reluctant to give it. For Jilly Cooper, literary orgasms always involve something “shuddering” “rippling” or “undulating” and it always sounds so wholesome and uncomfortably mumsy. Hattie’s account was much more simplified. “It felt good” she says, “it felt new—honestly it’s hard to describe it.” Clearly all the erotic fiction she’s been consuming hasn’t inspired her to be any more graphic but I think I would also find it hard to put into words. “It makes sense now because I know what everything is leading up to” she continues “now I just wanna get good at it.” So with her first climax under her belt Hattie has made a new resolution for 2018—get good at orgasms.
So what’s the conclusion? If you try hard enough at something you’ll always achieve it? This certainly is a lesson in perseverance. Hattie spent an hour a night for six days trying to have an orgasm and she succeeded. That’s six hours of self-improvement and self love and she’s honestly a different woman because of it. But even if she hadn’t succeeded she tells me she would have been grateful anyway. “This whole thing opened up a dialogue about my own pleasure that I wasn't comfortable talking about before and now I am comfortable—I wish I had had this moment earlier on,” she tells me as we virtually high five over the phone.
The goal of sex should be to feel good, not necessarily climax because for some people that still isn't possible and I’m super stoked for Hattie that she’s finally starting to figure out what makes her feel good. Hattie is now quite comfortable spending an evening in just with herself, her pink vibrating buddy and the sex angels, and this is quite the departure for the girl who previously described her sexual experience as “mundane.” If walking around Vancouver you see a 28-year-old woman with the weight of an entire life of sexual repression lifted from her shoulders then give her a wave.
The question,“Woher kommst du?” (“Where are you from” in German) is one I remember answering constantly, with the most visible reaction being people’s dissatisfaction with my answer. My mom is white, my dad is black and I was born in Oldenburg, Germany. I grew up there constantly feeling like I was on display in public places, hyper-aware of the stares on me as I walked.
When I was six years old I was playing on a jungle gym in Kindergarten (where I was the only non-white person) when a group of three or four white boys, who were maybe two grades above me started spitting into my hair. I told the teacher what happened but she didn’t want to make the effort of going through each grade and finding out who the boys were so the situation was never really addressed. I remember desperately wanting to look like the other girls and have their hair. Around the same time as the spitting incident a classmate told me that if I took good shower and scrubbed really hard my skin would become clean after. This led to a conversation between the teacher and my classmates parents, but the incident was never visited again. I know my mom was really upset about what the girl said to me, but in spite of all of this I was a happy and confident child.
Image courtesy of author.
When I later moved to Wiesbaden, I was again the only black person but I was surrounded by other people of colour. People from Nepal, Afghanistan, Morocco, Turkey, Italy, Iran and Kosovo, with white children being the minority. I started getting bullied mostly because of the fact that my literacy skills were some of the most advanced in my class. I began putting errors into my work, just so I would be bullied less for being smart. It was in Wiesbaden where I had the most open confrontations with my blackness. I used to have after-school tutoring and I remember being called mop-head and pulling chewing gum and spitballs out of my hair. I knew I was different but I didn’t consider myseIf black. The references of blackness I had I could not relate to. I was not an immigrant, one of my native tongues is German and I came from a higher socio-economic status than the other children around me. I also didn’t quite look like my dad, who is black, and that was a great point of relief for me. It was comforting to know that I had this white side in me. My childhood ended when I left Oldenburg. Or maybe not ended, but I know my childhood shifted when I moved to Wiesbaden.
It was a few years ago when I found the picture of me and the little girl who is in blackface, which was taken while I was still living in Oldenburg. This was an incident I had not remembered until I saw that picture again. When I was about four we had a Kindergarten party and I wanted to dress up as something. My mom had read The Star Talers to me and I really liked the pictures in the book, so I dressed up as the lead character. My mom made me a tulle cape and an all white dress covered with stars. I remember that day being special because I wore my hair open and I never wore my hair open. My mom was always afraid I would get lice. I don’t remember much about this time because I was very young, but I remember not feeling good when I saw the girl in blackface.
This picture validated all my questions and feelings about racism and it gave me the context I needed to talk about the overt experiences of racism in European countries. Whenever I had tried to raise conversations on race amongst my friends they would always say I was looking at things wrong or it wasn’t really that way. Two years ago I moved to Holland, where I was able to see the Zwarte Piet tradition right in front of my face.
Every year in the weeks leading up to Christmas, from early November till the end of the festive season, hundreds of Zwarte Piets (Black Pete) line the streets of Holland, Aruba, Curacao, Belgium and Luxembourg to celebrate the legend of Sinterklaas (Saint Nicholas) and continue a European tradition that is over 400 years old. According to folklore Zwarte Piet first began as an enslaved devil, scorched in fire and it was around the 19th century that he emerged as black man wearing clothes associated with the Moors. I now go to school in Holland, and in my university the whole tradition of Zwarte Piet became a topic of conversation during one of my classes. You have mostly white Dutch and white Belgian students defending the “tradition,” saying racism wasn’t a valid argument because children are told that Zwarte Piet is black only because he came through a chimney. But then if it’s just soot why is he wearing an afro? Why does he have creole earrings? And why are they over lining their mouths with red lipstick to make them look bigger?
As a black person born in Europe, the use of tradition as a veil to cover blatant acts of racism is an experience I know intimately well. The first time I saw a Zwarte Piet parade was last year and it was the most disgusting thing I have ever seen. In the parade the Zwarte Piets are the ones who look silly, act funny and have no kind of agency. One of the Zwarte Piet’s came up to me, trying to make me laugh and I just pushed him away. It was a whole parade of just blackface.
I found it ironic that I rediscovered this picture five years ago, a month before Christmas, and I found it funny because it was during the same time that I had started analyzing race and broadening my understanding of race relations.
When I look at the phenomenon of Zwarte Piet I see Dutch colonial roots. And in the whole context of Holland, I see a fear of losing the power to control a narrative created through colonialism. The problem with anti-black racism in Europe is that it was never officially institutionalized with overtly racist practices like South Africa's apartheid system and The Jim Crow and segregationist laws in the US.
The irony I also sense in this childhood picture is that even though I never felt unsafe in Kindergarten that picture shows me that in white spaces, there is always a threat against black people. I also study at one of the international programs at The Hague which is a place where I am meant to feel safe. The fact that fellow students could so vehemently protect this tradition and want to vehemently wear blackface shows me that I am also not safe there and that a threat is always present.
I was incarcerated from 1993 to 2015 for a first-time, nonviolent LSD offense. That’s 21 Kris Kringle days behind bars. Since my release, I’ve really enjoyed Christmas—buying gifts for my loved ones and eating my fill. Around the holidays, a whole new world has opened to me these last three years. But during my time in the Federal Bureau of Prisons, I was lucky to get a bag of candy or whatever money or books my family could send. Of course, the prison officials I knew would try to offer some holiday cheer. Sadly, it just seemed to reinforce the bleak existence I was forced to live in. With no family, no fancy dinner and desserts, and definitely no eggnog, Christmas inside just reminded me of everything I was missing on the outside.
Being in prison, out-of-sight and out-of-mind, convicts usually don’t get what they want. Living in a fishbowl—with limited opportunities, restricted access, and a scarcity of resources—life can be unbearable. But even the guys I know doing life are still alive. They haven’t totally given up on living and they definitely haven’t given up on Christmas. I talked to a few of my homeboys to find out what they want for Christmas this year. From the typical "freedom" and "be with my family" requests to criminal justice reform and a cure for male pattern baldness, here’s what they had to say.
Christian Fannon Reg. #43268-061 Serving five years for forging drug prescriptions at FCI Beckley in West Virginia
If I could have anything in the world for Christmas, it would be my freedom. An opportunity to spend that very special day with my loved ones. Being incarcerated and away for so many years, I started to realize how important these special days are. Especially when I took it all for granted in the past, out there running the streets and all of that shit. As I got older, my time started to become a lot harder. That was because I was no longer oblivious to the irreversible damage I have to done to my life, as well as to those who love me. They are, in turn, affected by my absence, especially during this special time of year. When I grew older and became more understanding and actually able to comprehend these things, I started to feel it inside my heart a lot more. Whereas before, I was just blind to the truth of the matter.
From the inside, I look at Christmas from a different point of view. I don't want presents or money, none of that. I just wish I could spend the day with my family, mostly my parents, who are getting much older. I am watching them age through the pictures they send me. I would be perfectly content and truly happy just to be able to sit down and have a decent conversation with my mom or dad, without having to call collect on a 15 minute call limit and hear the 60 second warning as the phone is about to hang up. People should understand and realize what Christmas is really about and cherish it. It isn't about spending money, it isn't about buying the newest iPhone or gift cards. It’s about making a special memory that will be there much longer than a phone. Something I can’t do from here.
Walter Johnson Reg. #47510-053 Serving Life for Three Strikes Law at FCI Otisville in New York
I would like to see the political climate of this country become more considerate, so they could attend to some pressing issues around the future stability and preservation of our planet. The climate of our country is continuously moving in a never-ceasing circle of doom. We are not gaining any victories, because there is more concern about [big money in politics] than there is for human life. You have politicians exploiting their position through cronyism, and they've become worse than any street gang that I’ve ever known of. Whatever happened to life, liberty, and love for country?
The planet is falling apart and giving us major warnings, and people are forgetting the fact that it doesn't matter what party you vote for. When the world no longer continues to function, life on Earth will be an impossibility for humanity. There are so many things that can be done if those who are supposed to be the deciding counselors would just step up and commit a selfless act. No one will be remembered for their money, cars, property, and vanity. The people whose names [go down in history] are those who understood other people and became a voice of reason and redeeming spirit. Is world peace too much to ask?
Jeremy Fontanez Reg. #56997-066 Serving Life for Murder/Robbery at USP Big Sandy in Kentucky
All the girls I dated used to love running their fingers through my curls. My hair was so thick and curly, when it grew out, it looked like I had a mushroom sprouting from my head. This will be my 40th Christmas—my 15th behind bars—and as I look back, I realize I’ve spent almost half of my life in prison. No women to run their fingers through my curls, and now, no hair. In 2002, at 26, my hair was full and thick. But in prison, it's not always easy to maintain thick hair like mine, so I trimmed it to a fade. As I watched all my thick curls fall to the floor under the barber's clippers, it never occurred to me that this moment would be the last I saw of my curls.
My thinning wasn't the typical receding of the hairline. My hair thinned in a unique way. The patch just beyond my forehead began to resemble an island. The thinning area making a recognizable circle where the island was just noticeably separated from the rest of the bush. Within my first four years of prison, it was clear that my beautiful fluffy hair abandoned me. I accepted the inevitable. I shaved my head into a baldy. Today, my hair maintenance consists of weekly shavings to hide the several bald spots that have revealed themselves. It’s a tedious routine. That’s why, aside from the obvious desire for freedom, I want my hair for Christmas. It’s a damn pain in the ass to have to shave it every week.
Robert Lustyik Reg. #91912-054 Serving 15 years for Bribery at FCI Danbury in Connecticut
It would be very easy for me to give a standard answer here and make it all about me and my family, but that’s not what being on the other side of the wall has taught me. It seems that every day of my incarceration, I hear of another story which depicts a man figuratively being knocked down from behind and driven to his knees. Left on the brink of demise, all in the name of justice. I listen to the tales of families being ripped apart, marriages being destroyed, and children growing up with absentee fathers so that a system can continue to be fed. A system which is in complete contradiction to its original purpose of being. Rehabilitation was never found in any stocking hanging by a fireplace on Christmas morning.
It simply does not exist. It’s a myth, like Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and all the other holiday stories from my childhood. What we have here in America is a justice system where investigating agents and prosecutors are rewarded with bonuses—called incentive awards—for successfully completing their jobs: a legalized form of bribery. So what then do I want for Christmas? Other than the obvious—freedom—I want to wake up on Christmas morning and turn on the television and see that prison reform has been passed. I want to hear my fellow inmates as they cheer and congratulate each other, while they gleefully discuss what these new changes mean to them. That’s not asking too much, now is it?
2017 began beautifully, with a couple of pranksters in LA changing the Hollywood sign to say "HOLLYWEED."
Now that this god-awful year is finally coming to a close, I have some more good news for you, making this the second piece of good news of the year: There's a strain of weed named after Monica Lewinsky, the most underappreciated woman in America.
God bless, and have a great holiday season, folks.
His decision wasn't prompted by the counsel of his advisors, or some ingenious political revelation—he signed the bill into law to prove the losers and haters of American cable news wrong.
"I was going to wait for a formal signing some time in early January, but then I watched the news this morning and they were all saying, 'Will he keep his promise, will he sign it by Christmas?'" Trump said during the signing. "And I called downstairs and said, 'Get it ready, we have to sign it now.'"
Though the president sometimes denies it, Trump is obsessed with cable news, and TV has helped fuel his fits of rage. On Friday, it seemed to affect more than that.
The spending cuts that could be triggered by the bill could be waived by Congress, but that would require Democrats to cooperate with Republicans. Addressing it will likely be a priority for legislators as soon as they come back to DC after the holiday break.
It's been a long, bloody battle but congrats to all the real Americans! The war on Christmas has finally been won. As the little girl says in this pro-Trump ad, "Thank you President Trump for letting us say 'Merry Christmas' again." (Sure, Obama technically said "Merry Christmas" during his presidency, but since he's a secret Muslim it doesn't count, right?)
The war on Christmas began long ago, as Daniel Denvir recently detailed in a Politico article on the history of America's longest-running culture war. "Last Christmas most people had a hard time finding Christmas cards that indicated in any way that Christmas commemorated Someone's Birth" was how a 1921 article package in noted anti-Semite Henry Ford's newsweekly (titled The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem) put it. In 1959, the far-right John Birch Society wrote that an "assault on Christmas" was being carried out by "UN fanatics... What they now want to put over on the American people is simply this: Department stores throughout the country are to utilize UN symbols and emblems as Christmas decorations.”
But things really kicked off in 2004, when The O'Reilly Factor aired a segment titled “Christmas Under Siege,” where the Fox News host (who has since been disgraced and fired) grumbled about the New York mayor unveiling a "holiday tree" and Macy's greeters opting to say "Happy Holidays" in lieu of "Merry Christmas."
Naturally, Donald Trump, the king of the culture wars, has been a long-time advocate of Christmas in this Holiday battle. In 2015, he promised supporters, "If I become president, we're going to be saying Merry Christmas at every store." While his delinquent children may not be so keen on celebrating the birth of Jesus—Ivanka, a Jewish convert, celebrated Hanukkah once again this year, and son Eric tweeted, "Happy Holidays from TrumpWinery.com"—the president has nevertheless made good on his promise to make Christmas merry again.
Which poses the question: What's the next pointless culture war?
Make Christmas One Day Again
As I've written previously, "What's up with this 12 days of Christmas nonsense? Sounds awfully Jewish to me."
Think about the holidays that are multiple days long: Hanukkah. Kwanzaa. Passover. Ramadan. None of those words sound particularly American to me! Which is why the notion that Christmas should be 12 days long is absolutely absurd. This year, I invite my fellow Great Americans to flip the bird to the PC snowflake liberal agenda to Jew-ify Christmas by making it 12 days long.
Make “Take A Knee, My Ass (I Won’t Take A Knee)” the New National Anthem
Now that the war on Christmas is over, we finally have time focus on what really matters—whether athletes choose to protest police brutality (or the troops????) by kneeling for the national anthem. But the national anthem as it is now, with its boring-ass "o say can you see" shit, does not properly respect America's freedom, guns, and patriotism. Which is why we need to start a divisive national debate about changing our national anthem to the protest song of the year, “Take A Knee, My Ass (I Won’t Take A Knee).”
Nationalize Guns
We all know that socialism is bad and capitalism is good, but even the most passionate lover of the free market must admit that some things should be public, like roads and schools and parks, and definitely not healthcare. If we want to stay true to the second defendment, we should probably nationalize guns, too, because how else will we be safe? Disagree? Please, yell at me!
The New Star Wars Wars
Some conservatives reportedly do not like the new Star Wars movie because Luke Skywalker is not a Christian anymore and most of the film is the characters asking Noam Chomsky to explain his views. Should America ban all Star Wars movies? Or should children be forced to watch them? Let's debate this on CNN.
Abolish Public Restrooms
We've all heard about the anti-trans bathroom bills that various state legislatures have tried to pass. But think about this—if we can't all agree on who gets to go where, then no one gets to go at all. That's only fair. Also, do you really want the government to decide where you can go to the bathroom? No.
The War on New Years
Think about how bad 2016 was. Think about how much worse 2017 was. 2018? No thanks, and you can't make me.
When it comes to Christmas movies, everyone’s got their favorite classics: It’s a Wonderful Life, A Charlie Brown Christmas, Miracle on 34th Street, A Christmas Story, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman. Then you’ve got your non-traditional Christmas films—the ones that are too cynical, violent, bizarre, or morally bankrupt to be lumped in with the others. I'm talking Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, Bad Santa, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Home Alone. They’re still classics, just in a different way.
Why do people celebrate these subversive holiday films and not others? Action films will always have people up in arms (no pun intended) about whether they even qualify as Christmas movies, but why do we remember Die Hard and Lethal Weapon but not Reindeer Games or The Ice Harvest? Why do we love Bad Santa but not other movies featuring holiday misanthropes, like Fred Claus or Jack Frost? Why Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas but not Adam Sandler’s animated Eight Crazy Nights? What is it about Home Alone that elevates it above other suburban warfare flicks such as Christmas with the Kranks, Deck the Halls, or Surviving Christmas?
Part of it has to do with production value. It’s hard to top the iconic image of John McClane leaping off the roof of Nakatomi Plaza as it explodes, or when Jack Skellington discovers Christmas Town for the first time, or Edward Scissorhands's giant topiaries sliced in the shapes of monsters and dinosaurs. Lesser films may lack the vision, ability, or budget to make their holiday stories as memorable, but on a deeper level, our favorite alternative Christmas movies always circle back to arrive at a meaningful holiday theme., never getting so lost in action, horror, sex, or depravity that they forget the real message behind the plot. It’s because these films are unconventional that their meaning's able to really hit home—because we never see it coming.
Take Die Hard, which many consider to be the greatest action movie all time, Christmas or otherwise. The plot pits a New York City cop against terrorists in Los Angeles looking to steal millions of dollars of bearer bonds. Then there’s the subplot, in which an old-fashioned husband is trying to figure out his marriage after his wife relocates across the country for her steadily rising career—a situation that McClane's limo driver Argyle instantly sums up: “In other words, you thought she wasn’t gonna make it out here and she’d come crawling on back to you, so why bother to pack, right?”
Die Hard also possesses the geopolitical subtext of an all-American “cowboy” going head-to-head with two of its former enemies: Eastern Europe, represented by Hans Gruber’s team of German guerillas, and Japan, represented by the Nakatomi Corporation, which has symbolically taken away his wife. McClane wasn’t literally fighting the Japanese in Die Hard, but the film was released amidst the Reagan-era conservatism of the late 1980s, which saw a prevalence of Japanese culture everywhere in the United States amidst a diminishing American labor force. McClane decimating both the German terrorists and Nakatomi Plaza itself was a hail to past times of former glory, when America was number one: “Yippee Ki-Yay, motherfucker.”
Strip that all away, though, and Die Hard's overall message speaks to the importance of being with loved ones during the holidays, no matter the obstacles. That’s the same theme behind Lethal Weapon, in which Sergeant Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) becomes reckless and suicidal after the death of his wife in a car accident two years prior. He ends up partnered with his ideological opposite: Sergeant Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover), who’s more concerned with having to face another birthday and his upcoming retirement.
Riggs and Murtaugh are an odd couple—one’s an unhinged loner, the other's a settled family man; one’s white, the other's black; one’s somewhere in his 30s, the other’s too old for this shit. But their differences are the reason they work well together, as Riggs uses dangerous means to find answers and only slows down when he realizes that it’s not just him at risk, but his partner as well.
Throughout Lethal Weapon, no one can tell if the erratic Riggs is just acting crazy so he can retire early on “psycho pension,” or if he's legitimately snapped. The answer turns out to be neither nor: he’s just a man who lost someone he was completely devoted to, which Murtaugh is only able to understand after being tortured by bad guys who threaten his family. When Riggs tells Murtaugh at the end of the film that he’s not crazy and Murtaugh says he knows, it’s the first time that anyone has acknowledged Riggs’ profound loss and grief. Murtaugh then invites Riggs inside for Christmas dinner as part of his family.
Die Hard and Lethal Weapon certainly outstrip other Christmas-set action films such as Reindeer Games, which stars Ben Affleck as an ex-convict who steals a dead man’s girlfriend and is forced to help her brother knock over a casino. But it’s not impossible to do a holiday heist story well—just look at Bad Santa, where Willie (Billy Bob Thornton) and Marcus (Tony Cox) pose as Santa and an elf in order to crack department store safes on Christmas Eve.
For half the film, Willie’s cursing at kids and exploiting eight-year old Thurman by moving into his house to use the family car. He can’t even properly focus on preparing for the burglary because he’s too busy drinking, pissing his pants, and having sex. But his being an (albeit unwilling) father figure to Thurman allows him to revisit his own upbringing at the hands of an abusive alcoholic, as well as the desire to be different from his own dad.
Thurman wants a plush elephant for Christmas, and by the end of Bad Santa, Willie's just trying to find the exact one that will make the kid happy. His journey is from being the guy who tells an eight-year old to “Wish in one hand and shit in the other one, see which one fills up first,” to asking his business partner if he really needs to steal so much stuff on top of all the money from the heist: “Look at all that shit. Do you really need all that shit? For chrissakes, it’s Christmas.” Never since A Charlie Brown Christmas has a movie so effectively challenged the commercialization of the season.
A less successful dark comedy is Eight Crazy Nights, which spends more time fixated on toilet humor than creating a story we care about. It’s unclear if Adam Sandler tried to make a film that introduces his usual fratboy audience to his Jewish heritage, or if he wanted to make a film for people who appreciate the meaning of Hanukkah but who would likely be turned off by so many poop jokes. Either way, neither group of viewers are satisfied.
On the other hand, The Nightmare Before Christmas, which is also animated, has musical numbers, and ends with the main character returning to town to fess up for having caused a disaster and to help a kindly old man. While Adam Sandler tries to blend all his cultures together, Tim Burton wisely keeps things separate with an unorthodox but meaningful message: don’t force your quasi-religious beliefs on your neighbors if they don’t want it. Let people celebrate their own holidays their own ways.
Speaking of neighbors, observe the warring households of suburbia in films such as Christmas with the Kranks, Surviving Christmas, and Deck the Halls. They freeze their front lawns to drive away carolers, hit one another with shovels, and shoot at each other’s homes with rocket launchers. These are maneuvers taken from the playbook of the granddaddy of slapstick suburban holiday movies, Home Alone—the success of which everyone seems to think comes solely from the booby-trap sequence in which Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) lobs blowtorches, BB guns, hot irons, and paint cans at “wet bandits” Harry (Joe Pesci) and Marv (Daniel Stern) during its climatic showdown.
But we forget that a good chunk of Home Alone’s appeal centers around the novelty of getting to do whatever you want when your parents and siblings are out of the house—which soon wears off for Kevin, who sees what a life without his loved ones would look like in the form of “Old Man Marley,” an elderly neighbor who lives by himself after becoming estranged from his family. The moral of the film, ultimately, is to never take the people in your life for granted.
When non-traditional holiday films fail, they do so because they’ve doubled down on what they perceive to be the selling points—action, toilet humor, being a lousy neighbor—while completely skipping the themes that are meant to represent the holidays. When done poorly, these movies are at best unmemorable and at worst, a disaster. But when they’re done well? Yippee ki-yay: welcome to the party, pal.
Movies! I saw a lot of them this year. Some I loved—we'll get to those next week—and others I felt absolutely nothing about. Some, though, I truly despised. Here's an incomplete and highly subjective rundown of all the movies I saw this year that didn't cut the mustard, or anything else, for that matter.
A quick note before we begin: I still haven't seen some of the worst-of-the-worst. We're talking The Emoji Movie, The Greatest Showman, Geostorm, Cook Off!, Justice League, Daddy's Home 2, A Dog's Purpose—and many more. I wish I could've seen every bad movie this year—no, really!—but if I had, this list would be so long that I'd probably just be linking to the Wikipedia entry for every film released in 2017. But: even if I had seen every film released this year, I think these would've stood out.
A Cure for Wellness
Blech. I could barely make it through this one—not even the allure of Dane DeHaan (who landed in a much better movie later in the year, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, which some of you didn't like and I don't really care if you did, so there) and quasi-weirdo Hollywood auteur-ish guy Gore Verbinski could drag this one out of the morass. Also, the color palette! It drove me crazy!
Beauty and the Beast
My favorite thing about Bill Condon's atrocious and thoroughly unnecessary money-grab remake of the Disney classic was that, after the movie, my friends and I sat down with a few bottles of wine and watched the original cartoon. It holds up! My second-favorite thing was the "Be Our Guest" scene, which was psychedelic and enjoyable in the moment. The rest of this movie was absolute dog-shit.
Song to Song
I had to pee so bad during this goddamn movie. So bad! And it just went on and on anyway, like someone who wishes to live their life—wait for it—song to song. Terrence Malick's bellybutton-obsessed music industry jeremiad was packed with ridiculous and self-indulgent bullshit, as well as one (and only one) amazing scene involving Val Kilmer and a bucket of what may or may not be uranium. That scene was 90 seconds long. The film was, like, five hours long. Some say that underestimating Malick at this point in his career is a fatal mistake, and possibly suggests you don't care much about film as an art form. A rebuttal, if you'll allow me: Fuck you.
ChiPs
Points for originality, I guess? I can't believe I'm saying that about a remake of a beyond-stale TV cop action-drama, but Dax Shepard's surprisingly inert swing-and-miss seemed to be reaching for something thematically unique, even if every part of the execution was as enjoyable to watch as, well, an actual execution. Watching ChiPs is like watching someone throw their back out while taking a shit: you appreciate the effort, and you feel sorry for everyone involved, but it's still embarrassing.
The Discovery
This one hurts, a little: Charlie McDowell's previous feature, The One I Love, was a surprisingly gripping and whip-smart sci-fi film dressed up in mumblecore clothing, and I anticipated seeing what he could do with the intriguing conceit behind this film. (In one sentence: What if we were able to find out what happens when we die?) Unfortunately, The Discovery was marred by languid pacing, a flimsy script, and a total absence of chemistry between the film's leads, Jason Segel and Rooney Mara. Oh well.
Alien: Covenant
This year saw the release of a tight, thrilling, and thoroughly campy slasher flick masquerading as a sci-fi film that drew from one of the most iconic alien-based franchises in film history. That film was called Life, and I saw it by accident when Power Rangers was sold out. I never got to see Power Rangers, but I did get to see Alien: Covenant, on purpose. I hated it.
Baywatch
I ate nachos while watching this, I think. That was good, at least. The only funny thing about Baywatchwas this article about Baywatch. I'd rather read it a thousand times over than think about this movie on its own ever again.
Dean
Another one that was hard to make it through. I interviewed Demetri Martin around the time this movie was released, and it was a great interview. He's a really nice guy with some interesting perspectives on things and has lived a fascinating life—you should read it. Unfortunately, this movie felt so dated in its tone and approach that I was tempted to call my parents midway through and start yelling at them about the Iraq War.
The Book of Henry
You know what? This movie was so bad that I think I loved it, actually. Never mind.
The Beguiled
Some nice lighting. I like when stuff gets bloody. Otherwise, the worst movie of Sofia Coppola's career (and I liked The Bling Ring). I don't even see how this is up for debate.
The Hitman's Bodyguard
I interviewed Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson around this one, too. They were great to talk to. Ryan Reynolds spilled the beans on how this movie got a last-minute rewrite when they were both cast—pivoting from "hard drama" to "buddy comedy." It showed. It also doesn't even matter how I felt about this one, because it was the number one movie in America for a while (did you even realize that?) and it'll probably get six sequels. Hollywood, folks—ain't it a trip?
mother!
Maybe the worst film of the decade. I don't like casting matters of taste as a you-versus-me thing, typically—everyone should like what they like. But if you enjoyed watching this excruciating, messy, self-indulgent paean to the dubious notion of the necessity of destruction for the sake of male creativity, you're a monster. (I'm a monster, too, but only because I saw it twice. Long story.)
Blade Runner 2049
Spoiler alert: This one's appearing on our "Best Films" list, too. People liked it a lot! I did not. The cinematography was incredible, and who knows, maybe I'll buy it on Blu-Ray just for that. But nearly everything else about Denis Villeneuve's latest (a rare miss for him, amidst a sterling track record) was a joyless slog. Some franchises don't need to be revived.
Like a lot of folks this holiday season, Terry Miller has been receiving a barrage of packages at his doorstep all month long. The only problem? He hasn't ordered a thing.
According to NBC affiliate WDIV 4, an untold number of Amazon boxes keep coming to Miller's house in Chesterfield Township, Michigan. Each is addressed to him with his name (spelled correctly), cell number, and home address on the label. But he doesn't want anything to do with what's inside.
"We started receiving boxes from Amazon, and I've made several calls and I can't seem to get them to stop," Miller told WDIV 4.
He's been getting the rogue packages for about four to five weeks, and they won't stop streaming in. When he hit up Amazon to see what the hell was going on, he said the company told him to just keep everything he got—there weren't any errant charges on his account, so why send it all back? Ideally, he'd be raking in some primo shit, like a vape or some funky socks. But apparently all he gets is a bunch of junk.
"I opened [a box] up to see what was in it, and it was just accessories for cellphones," Miller said. "I got an antenna for a computer and a clothing bag."
Since Amazon didn't seem too concerned about the rogue gifter sending Miller a bunch of phone cases and Samsung cleaning cloths, he reached out to the police for some help. There was no telling what might show up on his stoop next, and no one wants to wind up like those online shoppers who somehow received 65 pounds of weed with their order. But even the cops couldn't figure out what was going on.
"They opened up the packages and stuff to make sure it wasn't anything illegal in there," Miller told WDIV 4. "[The cop] says, 'You're in the clear if anything should come up with this.'"
Faced with an ever-growing mound of shit he has no use for whatsoever, Miller has been giving away as much as he can and trashing the rest. Some folks might be psyched to have a secret Santa out there, delivering surprises to them out of nowhere. Miller, however, is over it.
"Quit sending them," he told WDIV 4. "I don't want the stuff."
Josie Keefe and Phyllis Ma, the mad food scientists behind the photo project LAZY MOM, have made some choice aspic tableaus for VICE the past few holidays. This time, we asked them to do a special series dedicated to various seasonal classics re-imagined. Below you'll find Hot Pocket piles, hot dog mangers, and oozing gingerbread houses to inspire your own dated pot luck.
All photographs by LAZY MOM. You can follow their work here.
Donald Trump is probably the hottest president we've ever had. The camera loves him, all 328 pounds (just a guess) of raw power and sensuality, and those very blessed press photographers has been capturing his every move—except for when he's on the golf course, because he's touchy about that. Here are the sexiest, most iconic pictures of that fine piece of ass we call POTUS from the year of our lord 2017:
1. The Signature!
Photo by Pete Marovich via Pool/Getty Images
Look at that confident signature of a president who definitely has full control of his mental faculties. Look at Mike Flynn, fearless maker of phone calls, beaming on from the background. Simpler times.
2. The Wall!
Photo by RONEN ZVULUN/AFP/Getty Images
One hundred and eight years ago, during the 2016 election, Donald Trump tweeted out an anti-Hillary meme, a picture of his rival with a star of David that read "Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!" This was widely criticized for its anti-Semitic undertones. Since then Trump hasn't done or said anything that would be offensive to Jews or empowering to anti-Semites. Here he is respecting the Jewish faith in Israel.
3. The Orb!
Photo by Bandar Algaloud/Saudi Royal Council/Handout/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Look how comfortable Trump is. Would Obama touch an orb like that? No. He would fear its power. America needs a chief executive who can control the blackest of magic.
4. People's Sexiest Man Alive 2018 Meets the Holiest Man Alive!
Photo by EVAN VUCCI/AFP/Getty Images
Haha, he's all, "Fuck you, pope." Tight.
5. The Country's Foremost Orator!
Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images
What a face. Presidential? Yes. Imperial? Absolutely. The sort of thing that is etched into mountains and put onto money? Do you even have to ask?
6. The Hand-Holder
Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
Finally a president who is not afraid to hold Teresa May's hand because, ummm, he's allegedly afraid of falling down? Yes, I also support this.
7. The Truck! Vrooom!
Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images
Trucks are alpha. Trump is alpha. Trump in the truck is alpha-squared.
8. Those Gorgeous Locks!
Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images
Donald Trump's definitely real hair enjoying the wind. Majestic, like a dog at full gallop.
9. How It Feels to Just Keep Winning!
Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
A president who just keeps winning inhaling the air of victory. Doesn't look like a big toddler baby at all. No sir!
10. The Sun Is No Match for the Eyes of the Hottest Man Alive
Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images
Scientific studies show you're a cuck if you didn't look directly at the eclipse. Trump looking directly at the sun is just more evidence he's the most alpha president ever.
11. Holding Hands with the Only Man Who Truly Understands Him.
Photo by MANAN VATSYAYANA/AFP/Getty Images
Being president ain't easy, but it's really about the friends you make along the way. While Duterte's drug war continues in the Philippines, the president bonded with his buddy over how much they both hated Obama. Here they are enjoying some diplomacy.
12. Trump, Like You, Is Not Happy When He Thinks About 2017!
Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images
Haha, so relatable! Facepalm! (Am I doing this right?)
13. Another Picture of Donald Trump That Is Also You Thinking About 2017!
Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Same.
14. Just Fucking Kill Me!
Photo by OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP/Getty Images
I'll never be as alpha as Trump wearing his big boy hat. Sad!
15. See You in 2018, Haters!
Photo by OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP/Getty Images
Just take that baseball bat, Mr. President, and put me out of my misery.
There's a humble corner store bodega in East New York, Brooklyn, that is offering a lot more than Arizona Iced Tea, Jamaican beef patties, and loosie cigarettes. D&D Deli and Grocery, located near the intersection of Linwood Street and Belmont Avenue, hosts La Relambia FM 94.1—a Dominican radio station that boasts one of the most impressive libraries of Latin music in New York City. For eight years, this institution has served Brooklyn's Latinx population, providing a gateway back to their homeland through the Dominican sounds of tipíco and bachata.
La Relambia began as a passion project of Geovanny Valdez, who goes by the name DJ Jova and works as the station's program director. Valdez was born in La Vega, Dominican Republic, and at the age of 14 started working in radio as a DJ. When Valdez was 18, he moved to the United States where he continued to moonlight as a DJ while he worked full time at a Brooklyn warehouse.
Valdez got La Relambia off the ground in 2009. The online radio station was originally called DJ Jova Radio. Valdez ultimately landed on the name La Relambia, which is a Dominican term for an attention seeking fool, because it perfectly described his style on mic. He's since taken on the slogan “DJ Jova the DJ Mas Relambio.” This embrace of uniquely Dominican humor helps La Relambia's audience feel like the station is offering more than just music. Instead, listening to it makes you feel like you are sitting around a table playing dominoes with your closest friends as merengue plays in the background.
Since its inception, the underground station’s fan base has grown enough to bring it to FM radio with a ten-mile broadcast range. I met with Valdez and one of his station's DJs, DJ Duende Jackson of the “El Cocotazo Radio Show,” to talk about the community they serve, their overall mission, and the future of La Relambia FM 94.1.
VICE: How did La Relambia FM start? Geovanny Valdez: I was working in a warehouse while I was producing my show on the internet. I started the radio station because of [my love for] music and communication. Eventually, I fel ready to start working on the project as a director and programmer. The funds I got working in the warehouse helped me buy the equipment for the station little by little. But it’s still not finished.
The space in the bodega was rented to me by my uncle, who liked the project and offered me that small and humble place to make our radio booth. Since then, I have been half president of the Solangie Deli Corporation and the director of La Relambia.
How many people do you reach? We have thousands of radio listeners which are difficult to give a number with accuracy. And on the web, we receive more than 40,000 visits per day. Tell me about your advertisers. Most of them are local Latino businesses, such as Toribio Restaurant, La 810 Car Service, Auto Fresh Car, Chimi Monumental, La 510 Car Service, La Finquita, EGM II Metal Manufacturing, Quisqueya Car Service, El Mercadito, Crazzy Willy's Home Furniture Center, Uceta Production. These are businesses that are mostly owned by people of our community.
DJ Duende Jackson, how did you find out about the radio station? DJ Duende:
We are all DJs, and we work in clubs. When I was in the Dominican Republic, I would work at resorts until I got my own show on a local station there. From there, I came to the United States and connected with one of the directors in charge of this stations. Now I’m working here while I perform sets in clubs in the city.
How do you prepare for the shows? We usually make schedules and plan out what were are going to do for each program by the hour. But it's a very loose type of planning. We do more improv than anything. It helps it flow better.
How would you describe the personality of “El Cocotazo Radio Show”? We are all jokesters. We play and tell jokes and work well together, but if we ever disrespect each other than we lose that partnership and friendship that makes this show work. It's like a brotherhood—like you're hanging out with the bros.
When did you meet your crew? I meet DJ Alex Viva when he tried to steal my girl. [ Laughs] Nah, I’m just kidding. We’ve known each other for years. I needed guys that I vibe with and could confide in. You know if anything were to happen, we would be there for each other. It would have to be something really big to ever break us up.
What's the best part of the radio station for you? The best part of this is to be able to speak to a mass audience. I love to talk, interact, and take calls. The music is what is important too and to see how the audience is reacting to the songs that we play on air is what makes my day. It's a job that we love.
What was the best on-air call that you’ve had? Someone called in and said that this show was the highlight of his day.
Who are some new artists that you’ve introduced? We have introduced artists like salsa singer Luis Galves, Latin urbano artists like KLE. We work closely with this collection of more than 50 DJ and artists from all over Latin America called CoroVIP. Duende is a featured DJ in the group.
How do you choose the music for the show? We live in the United States and that means there are so many nationalities that we try to cater too. We love music, so we try to cater to the cultural music of the majority of these countries. If someone doesn't know the music of one country, we try to introduce that music to the other Latinos who wouldn't have heard it. That’s our job as DJs. We introduce new artists and new music too.
How do you continue to grow an audience even though Brooklyn is becoming more gentrified? We cater to majorities of Latinos and that's how we keep our base interested. Instead of listening to the most popular songs of Latin music, you're hearing music that you wouldn’t have listened too otherwise. Like we play Mexican music, Ecuadorian music, Colombian music... These are the nationalities that don't get represented a lot on mainstream Latin music radio stations. There will always be Latinos in Brooklyn. We aren’t worried.
This article was published in collaboration with the Marshall Project.
Streams of inmates flowed from the yard toward the squat, gray, one-story cell blocks of the State Correctional Institution at Smithfield, Pennsylvania. It was 3:15, “yard-in” time, and the men were hot and restless.
There was no shade on the yard. It’s designed that way: any protection from the sun would provide not only comfort, but also concealment.
Soon, an officer flung the gate open and we jostled our way through, becoming bottle-necked at the entrance to the blocks.
“Anyone know what’s for chow?” an inmate asked.
“Stuffed-cabbage casserole, I think,” someone replied.
“Not again. Why don’t they take that trash off the menu...”
The heavy steel and glass vestibule door slammed shut as the last inmates entered the block.
“I wonder if they’ve handed out the mail yet,” my neighbor said as he hastened to his cell.
It's a question routinely on everyone’s mind. Will there be news from the courts, granting a chance for freedom? Will there be words from old friends who have just obtained our contact information? Will there be a “Dear John” letter?
I frequently receive letters, books and magazines. Oftentimes, inmates ask me, rather than the officers, if the mail has been passed out yet, because they figure I would know. Then I always make a beeline to my cell and peek inside to see if there are envelopes on the concrete floor.
I’ve always looked forward to the mail rounds—or at least I did until that Wednesday afternoon.
I went back to my cell as usual and discovered a few letters and a magazine scattered about. I read them, then flicked on my television to see what Olivia was up to on SVU.
But an hour later, an officer appeared at my door. He was a rookie—a rotund, clean-shaven young man whose discomfort was unmistakable; he looked as though every task in here, in prison, pained him. I felt like patting him on the shoulder and telling him that everything would be O.K.
In his hand I noticed a priority mail envelope. He thrust it my way as if it had a bad odor, and asked, “Do you want your mail?”
Hadn’t I already received my mail? Why was this package delivered after all the others?
The officer read the confusion on my face and said, “There was a mix-up and your mail went to the other side of the block.”
I looked at the envelope in his pudgy, outstretched hand and could see “B19” scrawled on it. I lived in A6: this piece of my mail had been delivered to the wrong cell.
Procedure requires officers to read the mail’s label and make sure that it matches the identification card plastered above each cell, before placing it inside. Obviously, this rookie had not followed that rule.
I snatched the envelope from him and he shuffled away.
The return address was somewhere in New Orleans—I didn’t know anyone who lived there. The package was thick, and it was obvious that whoever had it last hastily jammed the contents back inside.
When I opened it, I found a journal called The Tenth. The previous month, there had been a review of that publication in Out Magazine, and I had mentioned it to a friend, who must have sent me a copy.
The Tenth is a journal that centers on the experiences of black queer men in the U.S. I receive many books and magazines about that subject, because, living in a single cell, I don’t have to worry about a nosy cellmate. Thanks to this officer’s mistake, though, my mail, which effectively outed me, had been sent to and perused by another inmate.
In free society, I’m out and active in my community. I don’t worry about mail mix-ups, and if this had happened out there, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it.
But this is not the free world. Prison is not safe for anyone, especially queer people. In here, I disclose only on a need-to-know basis.
And I didn’t feel that whoever lived in B19 needed to know about my sexuality.
That was no longer my choice. My autonomy to define myself had once again been stripped from me. It was a rookie’s mistake, but I alone would have to face the consequences.
As expected, word got out—I couldn’t put that genie back in the bottle.
Since then, I’ve had to negotiate my prison time differently. I have learned to become aware of every move and word around me, because I cannot allow any room for misunderstanding.
I can no longer blend into or weave through crowds of inmates as we wait in line to go somewhere. I must stand in back, making sure not to accidentally bump into someone and give them the “wrong impression.”
At the chow hall, the lines snake outside the building. I wait behind, two or three feet from the nearest man. In prison, being queer often means being late.
Inmates fear being deemed gay by association, so they avoid me now. Any conversation they have with people like us must be public and quick. And still, they have to explain why it was necessary.
“I had to holler at him about some legal work,” they say, or, “I was seeing if he wanted to buy these ice cream tickets from me.”
The greatest loss has been simple companionship. Other inmates don’t approach queer ones for friendship. Any newcomer will be quickly informed: “He’s a joint,” slang for gay.
I have since moved to another block, the administration’s remedy for the rookie’s mistake. Did they think the news would be confined to the one unit I lived on? There are no secrets in prison.
My biggest fear remains the mail. At 3:15, I hasten to the block and head straight to the bubble, the officer’s station, and ask whether it has arrived. This has become my routine; I don't want another mix-up. I used to joyously anticipate this time of day, because it made things less lonely. Now, it’s a stressful, painful reminder of the ignorance and hatred that surrounds me at all hours.
Stephen Wilson, 43, is incarcerated at the State Correctional Institution—Smithfield in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, where he is serving a maximum sentence of 16 years for charges stemming from a sexual assault.
Susan Sarandon is about to get a large tax cut for her role in saving the US from a Hillary Clinton presidency; so is Colin Kaepernick. That’s 2017 in a nutshell: The country is beginning to experience the fruits of a misguided hatred of Clinton that helped make Donald Trump president.
I’ve no doubt Sarandon and Kaepernick will put that money to good use in their personal lives. For decades, Sarandon has donated and worked for worthy causes. She's traveled to Nicaragua to help feed needy infants and their mothers, given to charities designed to help end world hunger, and supported civil liberty groups. Kaepernick rightly deserved all the accolades he’s received this year, including the comparisons to Muhammad Ali, a trailblazer willing to sacrifice the prime of a professional athletic career to promote a higher cause. And he’s donated a significant amount of money, and time, to causes he holds dear.
I single Kaepernick and Sarandon out not because they are bad people, but because even conscientious Americans like them made a grave mistake when they allowed their distaste for Clinton and an imperfect Democratic Party to blind them to the threat of Trump. As the country continues to grapple with the consequences of his presidency, we should remember that we are here in part because some underestimated the threat he posed.
In June 2016, Sarandon (who supported Bernie Sanders in the primary before endorsing Jill Stein) said on the Young Turks that “in a way” Clinton was more dangerous than Trump. “They’re both talking to Henry Kissinger, apparently,” she said. “She did not learn from Iraq, and she is an interventionist, and she has done horrible things, and very callously. I don’t know if she is overcompensating or what her trip is. That scares me. I think we’ll be in Iran in two seconds.”
Well, Clinton lost—and many observers are worried that the US is inching closer to war with Iran.
Kaepernick has used his voice to raise incredibly important issues even while being ridiculed and jeopardizing his professional football career. But he bought into a false narrative in September 2016 when he claimed there was little difference between Clinton and Trump, saying it was embarrassing to see the US have two “proven liars” as the presidential nominees. “You have to pick the lesser of two evils. But in the end, it’s still evil,” he said.
He couldn’t even stick to that and didn’t vote in the end, claiming that either Trump or Clinton would just be “another face that’s going to be the face of that system of oppression. And to me, it didn’t really matter who went in there, the system still remains intact that oppresses people of color.”
This is not a screed against either Sarandon or Kaepernick, each of whom deserves respect for choosing to use their privileged positions in service of those not nearly as fortunate. Individual voting decisions are always complex, and a few quotes can never fully capture any voter’s motivations.
Neither is this an attempt to absolve Clinton of her flaws and faults. She was one of the least popular presidential nominees in American history because of choices she made. She should have anticipated the potential ramifications of setting up a private server for her emails while secretary of State. She could have mustered the courage or had the foresight to vote against the Iraq war. She and her husband could have decided against making high-dollar Wall Street speeches and other dubious choices that haunted her during the campaign. She used the term “super predator,” popularized by an Ivy League criminologist who wrongly anticipated a surge in violent crime among young men, particularly young men of color, to argue in favor of her husband’s 1994 crime bill. As secretary of State, she argued in favor of a robust military role in parts of the Middle East, policies that are still playing out in ugly ways in places such as Yemen and Libya and Syria.
It is also true that her high level of unpopularity was partially built upon conspiracies, the sins of her husband, and double standards. She had been in the sights of America's right wing for decades and was accused of murder and being involved in a supposed secret child sex scheme. She was criticized for staying with her husband after his well-publicized affairs, but surely would have been criticized had she left him. She took the lion’s share of criticism about policies—like the Iraq War and crime bill—that had widespread bipartisan support. The crime bill, for instance, was backed by most of the Congressional Black Caucus and many black activists concerned by drug-fueled gang wars in their communities. Bernie Sanders voted for it too.
There were honest critiques of Clinton. But there was also a caricature of her as a liar and a fraud that ultimately helped Trump.
And despite the claims that Clinton did not do enough for vulnerable and people of color, after college she did not head to Wall Street when she could have—she went to the Children’s Defense Fund instead. And she went undercover to expose racial discrimination in Alabama. And she was an important figure in the formation of a program that still provides health insurance for millions of poor children. And she, like so many other talented women, often sacrificed her own ambitions to help further her husband’s. When she was a senator she was praised by colleagues from both parties for her ability to get things done. She was not in favor of going into Libya because she wanted another war; she believed it would help prevent what some believed was a pending massacre. No, she is not from the anti-war wing of the Democratic Party, but neither is she an amoral warmonger. If she seemed likely to continue Obama’s interventionist policies and continue to use drones—well, Sanders said he would use drones to fight terrorism as well.
There were honest critiques of Clinton. But there was also a caricature of her as a liar and a fraud that ultimately helped Trump—who didn’t have her record of public service or her experience. The narrative that both candidates were equally tainted by scandal was pushed by many disillusioned leftists and helped along by a media that gave a disproportionate amount of coverage to Clinton’s emails. Voters looking for an excuse to cast a ballot for Trump or stay home in disgust were given one by the anti-Clinton brigade.
There were many other reasons why Clinton lost by a razor-thing margin, including James Comey’s last-minute decision to announce a re-opening of the email investigation and her campaign’s own poor decision not to aggressively campaign in the upper Midwest.
But when a unique threat like Trump arises, we must be able to recognize it and respond accordingly. And that’s where Sarandon and Kaepernick, among others, failed.
Sarandon and Kaepernick likely have real empathy for 800,000 or so DACA recipients whose future is uncertain. They may cry for the record number of civilian casualties that have resulted from the way Trump has prosecuted long-simmering wars in the Middle East. They probably hate that the Justice Department has rolled back the police oversight policies from the Obama administration. I’m sure they are terrified by how emboldened white supremacists are in the Trump era. But the decision made by voters like them in November—to prioritize their disdain for Clinton over everything else—helped pave the way for all of that, and more.
It wasn’t just 63 million mostly white voters who put Trump in office; he was helped by Americans who deluded themselves into thinking there would be no material difference between a Trump and Clinton presidency.
Had Clinton been president this year instead of Trump, DACA recipients and their supporters would not have to wonder whether they would face deportation come March and could be pushing for actual immigration reform. Had Clinton been president, 2017 would have been spent debating how best to improve and expand the Affordable Care Act rather than by a desperate attempt to save it. Democrats would have had a fifth vote on the Supreme Court to shore up women’s rights and voting rights. If there was a tax reform bill, it would have been better constructed to help the poor and middle class. Kaepernick and Sarandon were wrong: There was a big difference between Clinton and Trump, and we’ve been seeing it all year.
The good news is that the tide has begun to change. The young black voters who were lukewarm to Clinton and those who opposed her for a variety of reasons are energized and have made their presence felt already in elections. We’ve seen it happen in Virginia and New Jersey and even Alabama, which is sending a Democrat to the Senate for the first time in a quarter of a century. For that, Democrats can thank the black vote, in particular black women. If they don’t take those votes for granted, they could retake one or both chambers of Congress in 2018.
It was one thing to imagine a Trump presidency in the abstract; seeing the real thing in action has moved people like nothing else.
For all the talk about whether Trump won because of an ill-defined economic angst among the white working class, greed among the richest Americans, or racism, there has not been enough about why Americans who should have—and in some cases did—oppose Trump didn’t set aside their differences and vote for the alternative.
Politics is sometimes about voting not for the lesser of two evils but the best option you have—while simultaneously working to improve those options. I hope we have learned those lessons after 2017. If not, we will remain susceptible to a repeat of the disaster of 2016.
After a 51-year-old man in Stuart, Florida, ordered a meal at a local seafood restaurant, which came with clams he deemed "extremely so small," he did what any normal person would do—he called the police.
According to TCPalm, Nelson Agosto was dismayed by the size of the clams in the meal he ordered from Crabby’s Seafood Shack. He first complained to the restaurant, which brought him another order of the allegedly minuscule clams free of charge, but that, apparently, was not enough for the Florida man.
“I called for an officer because I was just speaking to a dispatcher and I was [calling about] my Crabby's seafood. I ordered something, and it was extremely so small," Agosto told the 911 dispatcher, according to audio posted by K5 News, before the 911 dispatcher interrupted him with a request to call back on the "non-emergency line" and provided him with the number.
"OK, but I want somebody to come," Agosto pleaded.
"Sir, I need you to call that number," the dispatcher told him. "This is 911 for emergencies."
He called back shortly after, telling the dispatcher he tried the non-emergency line, but "couldn't get through."
Not too long after the call, Agosto was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of misusing 911. "He was complaining that the clams he was eating were so small he didn't want to pay for them," Sergeant Brian Bossio, the local police spokesman, told K5 News. "It was an arrest, but the officer did not take the guy to jail."
