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This Brutal Triple-Murder Case Helped Establish Your Right to Remain Silent

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Theodore Wong's body was the first to be discovered. When no one answered the door for several days, one of his students crawled in through the window and found the doctor sprawled on the first floor entryway. A trail of blood led from the door down to the basement. Wong, it appeared, had been shot and struck with a blunt object, and when the police were summoned, they discovered the corpses of two other men, both of whom had been shot to death.

It was 1919, and DC cops struggled to make sense of the grisly scene. Chinese nationals just didn't get murdered in Washington, DC, and that kind of violence was especially hard to fathom in the city’s diplomatic quarter.



The slain men had worked for the Chinese Educational Mission, where they were in charge of a few hundred students studying in the United States on government-sponsored scholarships. But once they zeroed in on a suspect—a young Chinese student named Ziang Sung Wan—police traveled north to his Manhattan, New York, digs, searched it without a warrant, and pressured him to return to DC with them. There, they held Wan incommunicado in a hotel room for a week in hopes of extracting a confession.

In his new book, The Third Degree: The Triple Murder That Shook Washington and Changed American Criminal Justice, Scott Seligman breaks down the true crime saga that shocked the nation and helped shape police interactions in the legal system and American popular culture. Among other things, the seminal 1966 Supreme Court case, Miranda v. Arizona, establishing your "right to remain silent" directly cited and built upon the protections established in the 1924 Supreme Court decision, Ziang Sung Wan v. United States. That ruling overturned Wan’s conviction for murder, citing the shady circumstances of his involuntary confession.

VICE spoke with the author by phone to find out how the admissibility of confessions in criminal trials has changed over the years, and why decades of precedent haven't stopped cops from railroading suspects.

VICE: We talked previously about your book on Chinese-American gangs wars in New York. How did you make your way down to this story in DC?
Scott Seligman: I found my way to The Third Degree while Tong Wars was in production. On the lookout for a new topic, I turned to my favouite source for good ideas: old newspapers. One of the first I stumbled on was the lead story in a 1919 edition DC newspaper that claimed that "the internationally famous triple Chinese murder mystery which has been agitating two continents" had been cracked. It got my interest. And as I realized that it was a case that revolved around mistreatment of suspects between arrest and trial as well as bias against immigrants and minorities in law enforcement, I realized that it was a story with important implications even for today.

What kind of pressures were the largely white police force under to solve this case?
Washington had never seen a triple murder in the diplomatic corps and the pressure came from all directions—local government, federal government, and the Chinese embassy. The newspapers were all over the crime, reporting daily on developments, and filling in the blanks when they lacked facts. It was seen in all quarters as a major test for the DC police.

Inspector Clifford L. Grant and Detective Sergeants Edward J. Kelly and Guy E. Burlingame were credited with solving the crime and even profiled in the Washington Times as heroes. That obviously didn't age well, huh?
On the one hand, they saw their principal suspect convicted, something that gladdens the heart of any detective. But they also saw the verdict overturned, and they saw themselves criticized for how they had handled him and how they had elicited his confession. I don’t think any of them believed they had done wrong, which must have made things difficult when he was freed. Grant lived long enough to see the Supreme Court throw out the verdict, but not long enough to see Wan freed. Burlingame was later hauled up on corruption charges that were dismissed, but that resulted in his retirement. Kelly, too, was investigated for bungling a murder investigation, but he went on to become chief of police.

What about the legacy of Raymond J. Pullman, the police chief at the time?
Pullman had a reputation for rectitude. He was a former newspaperman who had not grown up in the police force. He was gentlemanly during Wan’s interrogations and left most of the nastier tactics to his detectives, but he wasn’t above a racial epithet or two. He, too, took a public victory lap when Wan confessed. He died before Wan was retried.

Judge Ashley Gould oversaw the original criminal trial. How much of the police and prosecutorial misconduct in this story sits on his shoulders?
Gould was a former US attorney who had been appointed to the bench by Theodore Roosevelt and had already sat for two decades when the Wan case came before him. Wan was charged with first degree murder and was facing death by hanging in 1919. The US Attorney's office was keen to convict him, but apart from circumstantial evidence that he had been seen at the murder venue on the day of the killings, their case rested mostly on Wan’s confession, which he recanted at trial. They were concerned that Judge Gould would throw it out, but that did not happen. In fact, his refusal to exclude the confession was the principal basis for the appeal of Wan’s guilty verdict.

Some pretty boldfaced names got involved in getting Wan’s sentence overturned, which surprised me.
President Warren G. Harding was approached to commute Wan’s sentence and threw the petitioners out of his office. [But] William Howard Taft presided over the Supreme Court when it considered Wan’s case, and it was he who designated Louis Brandeis to write the opinion. Oliver Wendell Holmes was also on the court at the time. All three supported the decision. John W. Davis ran for president even while he was a member of Wan’s defense team, and J. Edgar Hoover, who lived down the block from the crime scene, was enlisted to track down witnesses when Wan was retried.

On its own, ZIANG SUNG WAN v. UNITED STATES is a case that is little known outside of legal circles. Is that just because its scope is relatively narrow?
In a nutshell, the Supreme Court, in throwing out Wan’s conviction, ruled that the Fifth Amendment permitted only voluntary confessions to be admitted as evidence in federal courts.

Well just how routine was abusing suspects to obtain confessions before this case and the Miranda one that followed?
Not too long ago, many people felt that "sweating" a confession out of someone was acceptable. Police departments across America sometimes used techniques we would consider torture today. The Wan case made it clear that confessions were not admissible in federal court unless they were voluntary, but that left two important unresolved issues. First, because Wan had been tried in the District of Columbia, the new standard applied only to cases before federal courts.

The privileges promised the accused in the Bill of Rights had not yet been determined to apply to the states and localities. This convoluted process, known as the "incorporation doctrine," actually took decades. And second, the new standard lacked clarity. For all his eloquence, Brandeis hadn’t provided a satisfactory definition of "voluntariness" or instructions as to what had to be done to ensure it.

Right, so even after the favourable ruling for the defense in the 1920s, it took decades for Miranda to become law—for the "right to remain silent." Did that settle it, in your view?
Overly aggressive police departments still try to find ways to skirt its provisions, and there are persistent reports of suspects being tricked, coerced or brutalized, most often minorities. But all laws get violated from time to time. It’s the role of the courts to ensure that justice is done, but the courts are only as good as the judges appointed to them.

The craziest part of this story might be that Ziang Sung Wan, whatever he did, left a dystopian criminal justice system in one country just to be caught up in one abroad, right?
Wan returned to China in about 1930, married, and had a family. But the family lost its money during the Japanese occupation. He got a job working for the Shanghai municipal government, but in 1949, when the Communists took over, he lost that, and was accused of being a counterrevolutionary. He spent the rest of his life in jail. He died in 1968, at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.

So what was the lasting impact of Wan’s case beyond the precedent it helped set in jurisprudence?
It remained a cause celebre even after it was decided. It was often brought up as a negative example, and the fact that Wan was not actually physically abused actually made it a stronger one than many others. Most people would agree that beating a suspect won’t necessarily yield a true confession, but the Wan case made the point that there were far more subtle means of coercion than physical abuse—and that they were equally suspect.

Learn more about Seligman's book, out this month from Potomac Books, here.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.


The Neighbourhood Where Google Plans to Kill the Private Car

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The DNA for suburbia was created by the Brooklyn real estate developer William Levitt. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, he built two communities named Levittown: one in Long Island, New York, and the other in Pennsylvania. Though it’s hard to imagine now, these towns were seen as technological marvels. Never before had people lived in mass-produced single-family homes on curvilinear streets. “It was a strange new world,” the New York Times later wrote. This world was completely reliant on the private car and fossil fuels. When gas prices spiked in 1979 because of OPEC’s oil embargo, truckers in Pennsylvania’s Levittown rioted and injured 44 policemen.

But the private car isn’t as dominant as it used to be. Rapid advances in self-driving technology, declining costs for lithium-ion batteries, and wide-scale adoption of apps that let you share cars instead of owning could mean “we are approaching the end of the automobile era,” according to former General Motors vice-chairman Bob Lutz. Since last fall, Google has been attempting to create the DNA for what comes next.

That was when Sidewalk Labs, a subsidiary of Google’s parent company Alphabet, won a competition to develop a neighbourhood called Quayside on Toronto’s waterfront. In a series of public consultations now underway on the project, citizens have heard Sidewalk Labs describe a dense and walkable community covered with data sensors and traversed by electric robot taxis.

Sidewalk claims that it’ll be “the first place in the world where conventional vehicles will be a thing of the past.” The company’s chief policy officer Rit Aggarwala likened it to a 21st Century Levittown. “When [William] Levitt figured out how to mass-produce suburban housing in the late 1940s, he took over the world,” he told me recently in a café on New York’s Upper East Side. Quayside’s aim is “to show the world what’s possible and export those ideas.”

If Google can hasten the demise of the private car, it would accelerate a shift in corporate power already underway at the top of our economy. Since the advent of car-dependant suburbs like Levittown, the world’s most valuable companies have been oil producers like Exxon, Shell, BP, and Chevron. Today the list is dominated by Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook. Google’s parent Alphabet alone is worth $763 billion. “The numbers are staggering,” Gerd Leonhard, a Switzerland-based futurist, speaker and author, recently told me. “Tech is basically much bigger and more powerful than oil has ever been.” Google’s vast financial power comes from ruling the digital realm. Quayside gives it a bridge into our physical world.

For now, the 12-acre building site consists mainly of a muddy parking lot with a 1943 Victory Soya Mills silo in the middle. When I visited in April I saw seagulls eating garbage beside the murky water of Lake Ontario. “It’s like the beginning of a crime movie where they pull the body out of the water,” my friend observed.

Sidewalk plans to test technology at the site this summer. If Toronto approves its building plan later this year—talks are already well behind schedule, however—construction may begin in 2020. The first inhabitants could move in two years after. They’ll share the neighbourhood with a network of robots linked by sensors. Pallet-shaped robots will make deliveries in utility tunnels. Self-driving “taxibots” powered by renewable energy will move people through the street. Sidewalk wants to make autonomous transportation so cheap and easy that “in general [people] will not opt for a private automobile,” Aggarwala explained.

It’s less impressive when you consider that Quayside’s area will only be the size of several city blocks. But Sidewalk sees the project as a testing site for ideas and technology that can be exported all over the world. “[We] can go to London, Tokyo, New York, Indianapolis or whatever and say, ‘This works in Toronto,’” Aggarwala predicted.

Big oil producers are increasingly inclined to take claims like that seriously. Shell recently projected that the adoption of self-driving technology in major cities could help cause half of all car sales to go electric by 2030. “It really amounts to a rewiring of the global economy,” I heard Shell executive Mark Gainsborough explain during a lunchtime speech at this year’s BNEF Future of Energy Summit in Manhattan. “Here I am as an oil and gas guy, but you know I have to say there is a big change coming in the energy system,” he said.

This transition is about more than just solar panels and electric cars. It’s about the resource at the center of our society. In car-reliant suburbs like Levittown, the most valuable resource is obviously oil. But in places such as Quayside, where self-driving cars must use artificial intelligence to navigate city streets, it’s data. “Data are to this century what oil was to the last one: a driver of growth and change,” the Economist argues. “Many a battle will be fought over who should own, and benefit from, data.”

As the economic value of data increases, tech companies are racing to lock down new supplies of it. “A good example of the industry jockeying for position is in self-driving cars,” wrote Dan Ciuriak, a senior fellow with the Waterloo-based Centre for International Governance Innovation. Google, Amazon, Tesla, BMW, and Uber are just a few of the companies competing. A single self-driving car may generate 100 gigabytes of data per second—which is equivalent to what Twitter’s 270 million users produce in an entire day. “[Whoever] captures the data will be positioned to become the next superstar firm of the ‘mobility services’ industry,” Ciuriak wrote. With Quayside, Google has the chance to rollout self-driving cars faster than its rivals. “Lots of players are fighting for this market,” Ciuriak told me in an email.

I asked Aggarwala to describe the business model for Quayside. “I don’t think we know yet,” he said. “We don’t expect every aspect of this project to be profitable.” Before working for Sidewalk, Aggarwala created a sustainability plan for New York, which helped cause a 15 percent drop in the city’s carbon emissions. The ethos he brings to Quayside is that positive social change—in the form, say, of electrified vehicles that help fight climate change—can also be profitable: “You’re not trying to push the boulder up the hill, you’ve got capitalism at your back,” he explained.

But some people in Toronto resent that their city will be used to test out ideas whose ultimate goal is making Google wealthier and more powerful. “Sidewalk’s development plan is an R&D lab, not a real community,” John Lorinc wrote on the publication Spacing Toronto. It could allow capitalism to encroach deeper into our lives. Many aspects of public life in Quayside will be tracked by data sensors. Even the park benches have them. “Let’s not sugarcoat what’s being proposed, which is the commodification of living in and moving through urban space,” Lorinc wrote.

Aggarwala doesn’t deny that Quayside’s citizens will be closely monitored. But he argues that anyone living in a city already is. “Most municipal government is about data,” he said. Cities track who uses the subway, where traffic becomes congested, how much garbage is collected. “There is such a level of suspicion of data,” he said. “The fear runs rampant and we lose sight of the upside.” Yet there’s an important distinction between what governments already do and what Google is proposing. Cities ideally collect data on their citizens to improve the public realm. But data collected by Sidewalk Labs becomes profit for a corporation. “This would become where you trip over the line,” said Bianca Wylie, head of the Open Data Institute Toronto. “It’s basically like they’re building a parallel government structure.”

Many of us may someday be living inside that structure. And what brings us there could be Quayside’s self-driving cars. “Power and control over autonomous-vehicle technology is already concentrated in the hands of a small few,” wrote Anna Wiener last November in the New York Times, “If a company like Uber or Alphabet controls the dominant transportation infrastructure you need not live in an intentional community like Quayside to feel as though your city is becoming a company town.”

It’s difficult to know how to feel about all this. “There are so many people when I talk to them that don’t have words to put on their concerns,” Wylie told me. To get some perspective I decided to rent a car one day in April and drive to Levittown, Pennsylvania. On the radio Mark Zuckerberg was testifying to Congress about the Cambridge Analytica scandal. “I don’t think the average person likely reads that whole document,” he said about Facebook’s user agreement.

Arriving into Levittown I decided to stop at the Golden Dawn Diner. My table had a view of the “five points” intersection that truckers blockaded in June 1979 when skyrocketing gas prices revealed how precarious their suburban existence was. As I ate a giant slice of apple pie I tried to imagine the scene: 2,000 rioters lighting vans on fire, smashing the post office and throwing rocks at responders. One trucker drove his truck into a pack of policemen.

At a nearby table two elderly women prepared to leave the diner. “Got everything?” one asked. “Everything except my mind,” her friend jokingly replied. They would have been about my age when Levittown was built. They couldn’t have guessed at the time that our society was signing up for decades of car-dependant sprawl and a climate crisis so serious it threatens human existence. I realized in that moment that we would be wise to take Google’s utopian claims about Quayside seriously. We need to know what we’re agreeing to before it’s too late to choose another option.

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'Drunk or Stoned' Stewardess: 'If Your Seatbelt Isn't Tight, You Fucked Up'

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When it comes to air travel today, even if you manage to avoid a jet engine explosion, mass-vomit inducing turbulence, or flaming carry-on bags on a flight, you still have to endure hours trapped above the ground with a whole bunch of strangers. Sometimes you get lucky with the in-flight entertainment or meme-tastic safety videos, and other times you run the risk of getting into a massive, all-out brawl. Or, as some passengers on a United flight learned recently, sometimes you get stuck with a flight attendant who appears to be having a little too much fun on the job.

According to Erika Gorman, her trip from Denver to Williston, North Dakota, got real sloppy, real fast on Thursday thanks to a flight attendant who allegedly showed up to work "drunk or high." In a set of since-deleted tweets, Gorman uploaded photos of the stewardess slumped over in her seat and arguing with a passenger, berating the poor guy a few inches from his face—just part of what made Gorman's flight "terrifying."

"Drunk or stoned stewardess endangered everyone's lives," Gorman tweeted, according to ABC 7. "I had to go to the cockpit and call the pilot and tell them they had an out of control attendant."

Despite the fact that she was apparently hammered, the stewardess managed to get ahold of the plane's microphone to deliver her own version of the safety routine—something that passengers should really pay close attention to.

"If your seatbelt isn't tight, you fucked up," she said, according to Gorman.

Gorman said the cops were waiting for the flight attendant when the plane touched down in North Dakota, but she wasn't arrested, NBC affiliate KPRC reports. Trans States Airlines, the carrier operating Thursday's flight, told KPRC she's being "held out of service" while it investigates exactly what went down. Meanwhile, United apologized for what it called a "concerning incident," and went ahead and reimbursed everyone onboard.

The entire episode seems entirely plausible considering the airline is currently famous for violently dragging a guy off his flight, ending a puppy's life by cramming it into an overhead bin, and accidentally killing a giant rabbit. Maybe it's time we humans gave up flying altogether, since getting on a flight these days could either mean getting stuck with a drunk stewardess or having to suffer through a live concert at 35,000 feet.

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Related: Spirit Airlines Chaos

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

This Person Just Received Ontario's First Non-Binary Birth Certificate

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Nearly a year after Joshua M. Ferguson applied for their non-binary birth certificate, Ontario has granted their request. Ferguson now has the first non-binary birth certificate in the Canadian province.

Following Ferguson’s application and a subsequent human rights claim, policy in Ontario has now also changed to allow for options other than male and female on birth certificates: a non-binary identifier (“X”), as well as the option of not displaying sex identification.

“I feel relieved because I know the policy will save lives on a macro level—this is bigger than just me,” Ferguson told VICE. “It’s significant for me to finally have my correct birth certificate after 35 years of life, but, for me, it’s more significant that I know it will save lives.”

Ferguson explained how having proper ID can contribute to decreasing social isolation, anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation for trans people.

“This matters: We deserve to be treated with respect and to be valued by society,” Ferguson said.

They described birth certificates as a “foundational document for our ID in society.” This policy change, Ferguson said, will provide people who may not even have a driver’s license yet with the potential to have their proper identity on a “vital form of ID for personhood.”

With Ontario's current options for birth certificates—male, female, non-binary, as well as the option of displaying no sex identification—the province became the first jurisdiction in the world to implement such policy.

Ferguson’s challenges with having their proper identifier as non-binary on their IDs is yet from over, though. They are currently seeking to have their driver’s licence and health card corrected in British Columbia, where they live. The applications to do so were rejected and have become the subject of a human rights claim.

Though ID is an important step forward for visibility of non-binary people, Ferguson has some advice for those wondering how members of society can be more inclusive: Start with respecting people as human beings.

“If we start with the basic respect and value for each other as human beings, then I think people who may not agree or may not understand may actually want to understand more,” Ferguson said. This policy change in Ontario, they said, is a stride forward in “making it clear that we exist.”

Ferguson’s memoir is forthcoming in 2019. They are also a filmmaker and are working on a documentary about their life as a non-binary person, including their fight for legal recognition.

“I think it will be a new story for many people, and I think people will want to know and understand,” Ferguson said. “It starts with my story, which I think is a very human story—a story of survival and of resilience.”

Scholars Say​ if You Hate the Kardashians, You Probably Hate Yourself

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For most of us, Keeping Up With the Kardashians provides a welcome dose of escapism, a chance to turn off our brains and lay aside the existential burdens of modern life. Unless you’re an academic, that is. While the rest of us have been mindlessly double-tapping to plump Kylie’s lips, scholars around the world have been grappling with the profound meanings of the Kardashian phenomenon, using the family to probe into our society’s deepest pathologies.

In 2015, Dr. Meredith Jones, Reader at Brunel University London, organized the Kimposium, the world’s first academic conference devoted entirely to, as Jones put it, “arguably the USA’s new ‘royal’ family.” Presentations covered a variety of topics, from fourth-wave feminism and body politics to race and neoliberalism, and touched on every element of the Kardashian empire, from Caitlyn’s transition to Kim’s vulva. Activists, artists and culture writers presented alongside traditional scholars since, as anyone who spends any time consuming any form of media will quickly notice, the Kardashians attract mass curiosity.

“I wanted to organize [the Kimposium] because they’re such an important cultural object,” Jones told me in a recent phone interview. “The Kardashians, if you think about them from cultural or sociological terms, they’re in many ways really definitive of contemporary life.”

Most Kimposium presenters viewed the Kardashians as the culminating point of a variety of larger cultural trends. They are the perfect mirror into our collective psyche—whether you like what you see there or not. “I don’t want to disparage them because I think that they do just express the values that our cultures tend to have,” Jones said.

This even-handed tone rang through many of the conference’s presentations, with scholars serving up shade where it was due while avoiding falling into the lazy critic’s trap of surface-level distaste. As Jones suggested, to call out the Kardashians for something like their emphasis on “consumption and consumerism” is hypocritical unless we acknowledge that these qualities are born from our broader culture. It’s hard to know how much of the dismissiveness and ire directed at the Kardashians traces back to discomfort about perceived cultural deterioration, but the academic consensus seems to be that haters are probably avoiding some uncomfortable self-reflection.

In her presentation titled Kardashian Komplicity: Beauty Work in Postfeminist Neoliberal Times, Dr. Giuliana Monteverde, Lecturer at the University of Ulster, proposed that the Kardashian image “should be both defended and critiqued”—defended against sexist dismissals based on their exaggerated beauty and sexuality, but critiqued for the ways their brand perpetuates “a post-feminist neoliberal rationality.” As Dr. Simidele Dosekun, Lecturer in Media and Culture Studies at the University of Sussex, explained in her Kimposium presentation, post-feminism is “a very celebratory cultural sensibility that positions women as empowered, but constructs this empowerment in delimited and problematic ways,” taking it for granted that women are free from the patriarchy even as they still perform rigid, traditional scripts of appearance and behaviour. In Monteverde’s opinion, the Kardashians should be held accountable for cashing in on an archaic version of gender but defended against the misogyny of many of their critics.

Monteverde referenced a 2013 book by Dr. Amanda Scheiner McClain, Keeping Up the Kardashian Brand: Celebrity, Materialism, and Sexuality. “I was interested in the Kardashians because they are ubiquitous, because of their breadth and depth of media use and their obvious success, and that made them a great text to study,” McClain, who is an Associate Professor of Communications at Philadelphia’s Holy Family University, told me. “People either love or hate the Kardashians, but everyone is interested.”

While Monteverde argued that the Kardashians perpetuate caricatured and damaging ideas about gender, Jones had a more optimistic take. “It’s really an all-woman family, the men play a very small part,” their weaknesses providing much of the show’s comic relief, she said. “But then all of that powerful women, women as businesswomen, women as in control of their own sexuality stuff, all of that is still wrapped up in this incredible drive for bodily perfection and for bodily adornment,” which is “at least equally important as the fact that these women are in charge of their own financial destinies, their own sexual destinies, etc.”


Dr. Elizabeth Wissinger, Professor of Fashion Studies at the Graduate Center of CUNY, elaborated on how the Kardashian brand of beauty relates to our current social landscape. “I think they fit well with the Trump American version of what’s considered good femininity,” Wissinger told me. “It’s this idea of pliant femininity that is polished and presented in this uniform way.”

“They give an illusion of feminine empowerment, but their empowerment is firmly within the boundaries of beauty culture, feminine culture, fashion culture,” Wissinger added. “It’s like empowerment™. It’s a brand.”

Academic coverage on the Kardashians has been sparse, but Jones said she has seen a rise since the Kimposium. Most recent studies in media mention the Kardashians, but whole books have also been devoted to them, from the theoretical, like McClain’s, to the practical, like The Kim Kardashian Principle: why shameless sells (and how to do it right). Award-winning poet Sam Riviere even published a poetry collection called Kim Kardashian’s Marriage, a philosophical tour of the modern culturescape organized into sections titled with the steps of Kim’s makeup routine (Primer, Contour, etc.) . Undergraduate and graduate dissertations have been devoted to the Kardashians, and several more are in progress around the world.

Jones herself is writing a book that will explore how the Kardashians are perceived as role models, using interviews with British women aged 18-25. “There’s all of these incredibly burdensome expectations on women in the public eye, and there’s actually no way that they can win, no way to get it right because no matter what you do, for women in the public eye, someone will attack you,” Jones said. Musing about the parallels between Kris Jenner and Donald Trump, she added, “A woman in the public eye can do exactly what a man does, and he’ll be congratulated, and she’ll be told she’s fat.”

Three years before the 2016 election, McClain also picked up on the overlaps between Kris Jenner and Donald Trump. What at the time was an offhand observation now reads like an eerie prophecy. “Political views aside, the rise of the Kardashians and Trump is similar. They both started out rich and low-level celebrities; they both used reality TV to raise their national profile; they both use social media’s direct connection to fans and the ability to construct and convey perceived authenticity to build a brand; both rode cultural trends of narcissism and materialism to high levels of celebrity,” McClain said. Jones agreed: “If anything, more recent political events have just made more concrete my ideas about the Kardashians. All the stuff about appearance and superficiality and a real glorification of wealth for its own sake. I could be describing Donald Trump.”

The Kardashian phenomenon also reflects the economic realities of our times, Wissinger explained. In a paper she co-wrote with Dr. Brooke Erin Duffy of Cornell University, “Mythologies of Creative Work in the Social Media Age: Fun, Free, and ‘Just Being Me’”, she studied the gig economy and Instafame. The paper analyzed “the rhetoric espoused by the people in that cycle of making money from being cool,” like YouTube stars and Instagram influencers who get paid to market products. The entire economy rides on the principle that for few to find success, many need to buy into the promise of it, Wissinger said. Despite the many barriers in place that only let a tiny minority reach the highest tiers of fame, “it’s part of the way the system works that everybody needs to think that they can be a YouTube star in order to keep going back and watching, and liking, and contributing content to the platform that continuously needs new content.”

The Kardashians are the most extreme example of this type of specific, contemporary success, driving this “economy of cool” by insinuating that you can like, follow and tweet your way to the top.

Whether the Kardashian dynasty holds for decades or abruptly fades out of the spotlight, as long as the media continues to chronicle each new outfit, baby and makeup line for hungry fans, academics will keep slaving away to decipher the meaning behind it all. As Jones put it, “they’re kind of the goddesses of our moment, and we can’t get away from that.”

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Only Pathetic Losers Would Want Donald Trump at Their Funeral

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John McCain is battling an aggressive form of brain cancer, and according to recent reports from the New York Times and NBC News, the senator has a dying wish: He doesn't want Donald Trump to attend his funeral. (McCain is fine with Vice President Mike Pence showing up.) Barack Obama, his 2008 presidential opponent, is supposed to deliver a eulogy, along with George W. Bush, whose presidential campaign famously smeared McCain in an ugly 2000 primary.

The Arizona Republican obviously is willing to set aside most political rivalries, but has made an exception for Trump, and who would blame him? In 2015, Trump said of the senator, “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured." (McCain, a former Navy pilot, spent five-and-a-half years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, while Trump successfully dodged the draft.) Throughout the reality TV star's presidential run and his time in the Oval Office, he's made a habit of insulting McCain, calling the senator "very foul mouthed," berating him on Twitter for casting the deciding vote against Affordable Care Act repeal, and calling him "sadly weak" on immigration. In September, Axios reported that "President Trump has taken to physically mocking...John McCain (imitating the thumbs-down of his historic health-care vote)."

The president's repeat attacks on McCain provide enough explanation for why the senator wouldn't want the president to attend his funeral, but let's be real: Would you want Donald Trump to attend your funeral? I certainly wouldn't.

What would a Trump eulogy for John McCain even look like? He would likely struggle with staying on script, and would have a difficult time conjuring up kind words. There's a chance he'd derail the ceremony, berate the dead for not bending his knee to him, or just prattle on about himself for way too long. Would the president be able to put on a convincing frown, or would he pose for pictures with his signature with grin and thumbs-up? Trump is a master at saying the exact thing he shouldn't say—that's a trait that may have helped him get elected, but isn't ideal for a eulogizer.

Trump supporters, have been quick to attack McCain. "John McCain doesn't want President Trump to attend his funeral. Imagine that. Leaving the world the same way you came into it.... being a crybaby," one MAGA supporter tweeted. "Imagine being such a miserable, bitter, pathetic old man that your dying wish is that the president is not at your funeral," another Trump supporter opined. "John McCain is a very arrogant and bitter man," another rider on the Trump Train observed. "Too bad his legacy will be that of pettiness," yet another Trump fan remarked.

"When I die someday, most people won’t care," alt-right firebrand Laura Loomer mused. "And when I think about how #JohnMcCain said he didn’t want @realDonaldTrump attending his funeral, my first thought was, 'man, I hope someone as important as Trump comes to my funeral someday so other ppl feel inclined to attend mine.'"

Loomer's logic reveals a sad truth about how she thinks of herself, but more to the point, it misunderstands funerals. Memorial services aren't parties—the goal isn't to get the biggest names possible to attend. The ideal memorial service aims to celebrate the life of the recently deceased. McCain's legacy will be debated for years, with liberals deriding him for supporting a number of loathsome Republican priorities while cultivating an unearned reputation as a "maverick." More centrists types might hold up moments when he bucked his party in the name of common decency and tradition—there was his vote against ACA repeal, or the moment in the 2008 campaign when he corrected a supporter who called Obama an "Arab," for which he got booed by his own crowd. Either way, he's done more than most Republicans to challenge Trump in public. What could Trump possibly say about such a person?

The White House appears to have an iota of awareness that the president might be a less-than-ideal funeral attendee. Last month, he skipped Barbara Bush's funeral, which the White House said was "to avoid disruptions due to added security, and out of respect for the Bush Family and friends attending the service."

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

The Bluths Are Back in a New Trailer for 'Arrested Development' Season Five

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Now, the story of a TV show's long-awaited revival that turned out to be a complete mess, and the upcoming season that has no choice but to try and make up for it. On Monday, Netflix debuted the first trailer for the upcoming fifth season of Arrested Development—and it looks like the show is really trying to recapture what made it so great in the first place.

Monday's trailer promises a "new new beginning" that will bring the Bluths "finally back together," meaning that, yes, Netflix actually managed to get everybody in the same room this time around. The minute-and-a-half long clip is stuffed with callbacks to earlier seasons, from Tobias blue-ing himself to George Michael filming a sequel to that famous lightsaber video, as if to prove to us all that this new season will truly be a return to form.

Along with the trailer, Netflix apparently celebrated the new season by taking the Bluth family stair car for a spin through New York City, which seems like a place you're likely to get a few hop-ons.

Season five was rumoured to be a "murder mystery" centered around the disappearance and/or death of Lucille Austero, but the new trailer doesn't give us much in the way of that. Instead, it focuses on Lindsay's fledgling political campaign, Buster's new Terminator hand, and whatever happened to Maebe's hair. The Bluths are also apparently giving themselves an award for family of the year, because of course.

It's hard to tell from the trailer if Hurwitz and Netflix will actually be able to recapture the magic of those first few seasons again, but we won't have to wait long to find out. The new season is set to drop on Netflix on May 29. Until then, you can rewatch the new "remixed" version of season four... or, you know, maybe just skip it.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

‘Black Panther’s’ Florence Kasumba Is Way More Badass Than You Thought

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Florence Kasumba never needed a flurry of scripted lines to prove that she was a badass—she only needed one:

“Move or you will be moved.”

Most of us would have tried to repeat that one-liner facing a superstar like Scarlett (Black Widow), only to falter over the all-intimidating juggernaut of a Captain America: Civil War flick. But Florence entered in with her statuesque stance, evened stare and towering frame that felt like a cocktail of intimidation, power and beauty; she owned that shit.

The Ugandan-born German actress who played Ayo, the Dora Milaje based security chief in Civil War/Black Panther, didn’t enter the picture with a household name in the west. She instead had 20 years worth of acting experience carried on from Germany, several years of dancing experience, and a good amount of fighting experience doing fight-like things in Shaolin Temples and the like.

I always wondered if her superhuman strength was an act—a demand of some script—but after having had the chance to speak with her in promotion of the eventual Black Panther digital (tomorrow) and Blu-ray releases (May 15), I saw the truth; Florence Kasumba is the real deal, and like her Dora Milaje based character Ayo, she can certifiably whoop my damn ass.

VICE: Before anyone knew about a Dora Milaje, you really set the tone of it all with that “move or you will be moved” scene. When the reactions began to come in, what were your thoughts?
Florence Kasumba: (laughs) I didn't really understand it in the beginning to be honest because I hadn't watched the film when that scene debuted. The movie itself came out in June and I had only watched Civil War in the summer. So people would react with, "oh, are you the woman from the movie?" and I'd be like, um yeah! People would just keep saying at the briefing, "move, or you will be moved," to me and I remembered saying it at some point but I only understood the hype once I saw the final cut.

All the think pieces out there and the fan base in general already expressed how great it was to see Black Panther . Now that you’ve had to time to process it, what was it like for you?
I was overwhelmed. There was just so much to take in because I had never seen the movie before the premiere. A lot of times when you’re on a project, you’re given a private screening so you can prepare yourself for when you do PR. But with a lot of us, we were left in the dark as of the end of January, so we were all just trying to understand what we just witnessed. It was a beautiful feeling. Of course, I was relieved because I was able to finally see the film, and I’m still so happy when I talk about it. I’ll of course be getting the Blu-ray because there’s still so many things that I really want to see in detail!

Image courtesy of Disney.

Take me back to when you read this script, and find out about a black king being protected almost entirely by women. It seemed crazy on paper, but how did you take that in?
I understood it right away actually. At the end of the day, I don’t believe in a difference in being protected by women. I understood that it was something that people weren’t used to, but if you had a certain experience, you would have seen it differently. When you have a specific background, like say you’re from China for instance, where a lot of bodyguards are female, it feels like a natural concept. Why? Because when you have a woman somewhere for any reason, they’ll get underestimated and will appear as non-threatening for some reason. People will forget that this one woman might actually be really strong and that she’ll be able to defend the person she’s protecting in every way. So I understood the concept completely and it was very clear to me that every woman needed to be able to work as a unit. Every actress in this film brought with them some background in self-defense. We had some from wrestling, boxing and different martial arts that allowed us to be strong together.

I think I asked because in terms of North American cinema, that look isn’t too common. Especially in relation to black women.
Oh, I completely acknowledge that it was very special because I understand that on top of having women that can fight, we also are women without hair. When you see 16 of us, all these black women with forms of athleticism and the ability to fight and no hair to top it off, that’s something that’s going to look different to a lot of people. For me, as someone with an African background, having a woman with a shaved head is nothing special. In South Africa for instance, I get out of a plane and I’ll see people that look like me everywhere. It all depends on the kind of imagery you’re accustomed to seeing. If it feels foreign, the image may also feel intimidating, beautiful or both. Our reactions under those circumstances are all different.

It was both, not just for you, but for every woman involved.
When you understand how we trained, that makes sense. We started training for a long while before we even started filming the action scenes. Everyone had to bring something to the table because you’re not going to be able to be physically lacking beforehand, and then train just to become the Dora Milaje. That’s not how it works. Before this film I trained at home, and I have always tried to train every day when I got the chance. When I wasn’t doing that, I was doing cardio or something physical. So a lot of it felt natural for me.

So this was natural from you, not just from the view of a look, but also the physicality portion?
I did come from a dance background and I did that for years. At some point, while I still loved dancing, I got introduced to martial arts and really got into kung fu. It’s, of course, a physically demanding activity, but I found a commonality with it because it had the same elegance. In my free time, I’ve always continued to do martial arts because it’s what always made me happy. I mean whenever I’m in Berlin, that’s where I’d train in the Shaolin Temples. When I’m filming somewhere else, I wouldn’t dare go into a different dojo where I could possibly hurt myself because the job just wouldn’t allow it. Before Ayo, I was still doing this.

Image courtesy of Disney.

I really didn't know all of that as far as the martial arts background. So when did you begin to apply that to film?
Well no one ever knew that I was interested in action. It took me a while to even get around to writing down that I was into tai chi for example. When you put down your skills, you have to be able to prove that you can do that beyond all doubt. So although I trained on a high level, there’s still a big difference between a real martial artist and someone coming from the stunt world. These people do this on a daily basis. I’m an actress for sure, and I’ve been doing that for 20 years, but in unison with other skills. With Black Panther, I was just lucky enough that when we went through bootcamp, they figured out that I could actually take on the stunt work. When we’re there, we basically have nothing to protect our bodies and our costumes are skin tight, so therefore you really need to know what you’re doing.

I remember when I first saw you, there was an air to you that made me understand that you were a soldier. The poster, the attitude, you couldn’t fake that. It often made me wonder what you had to put yourself within to maintain that energy through both films.
I honestly didn’t have to do a lot! If you ask someone what the daily routine is of the Dora Milaje or the daily routine of your basic bodyguard...these people train and it shows. You wake up in the morning and you train to be mentally and physically ready to defend whoever you’re working for. This is what I do. This is what I’ve done. In my case, I do did it because I found a fun out of it and it made me happy. It’s not about self-defense for me, it’s simply because I love the act of movement and anything that fosters movement. Training and then coming to America and doing bootcamp never felt new to me because that’s what I did here anyway.

The main difficulty came in the weapon, because the Dora Milaje work with spears. When I’m home I work with a sword and it’s a weapon that I know well because it’s so much shorter. I had to get used to working with a long weapon, but we took the time to do that. We did basic drills and in light, I know that if you want to do martial arts, there are a lot of movements that you’d think was boring, but if you absorb those basic drills, you can walk on a set and whatever they change things up, you’ll still be able to function. This happens way before filming, and it becomes ingrained.

I’ll readily admit that the film made me cry because I never saw a positive black image like it before. I imagine you felt the same way?
Oh yes, and like I said, I was overwhelmed to see this beautiful world with these beautiful people all in one. That’s something I definitely was not used to. Also the fact that we weren’t portrayed as victims and we were strong characters while being in a modern setting. That’s an image that’s very important. I wish I would have been able as a child to see a film like that because when I grew up in Germany, if I wanted to see someone that looked like me I’d watch The Cosby Show or The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Now, it’s so much easier for young people to go to a film like Black Panther and say, I want to become this or that because these characters are strong and not criminals. That’s just my mindset. Obviously there will be more movies like this and that’s great. That’s the change.

So any favourite scenes you can’t wait to watch again?
Oh absolutely! My colleague Winston Duke with that scene where he's like, “I’m kidding. We’re vegetarians,” that's my favourite (laughs). He is so funny and strong and so spontaneous absolutely perfect timing. I love that scene!

Follow Noel Ransome on Twitter.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.


This Vancouver Real Estate Crime Novel Was Supposed to Be Fiction

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If you’ve been following Vancouver news lately you know one of the biggest stories going is how real estate, drugs, and money laundering have intertwined themselves in what is now being dubbed The Vancouver Model. It is in the midst of this massive reveal that author and comedian Charles Demers’ latest novel Property Values is particularly topical: the story of a group of friends who stage a drive-by shooting at their childhood home so they can afford to stay there—only to find themselves in the center of a gang war. As a fourth generation local with a long history of grassroots activism, Demers' foray into the crime-comedy genre is a hilariously personal confrontation with the out-of-control economic realities of Vancouver—the only city he wants to call home.

VICE caught up with Demers to ask him about researching the Vancouver area’s one-of-a-kind mashup of crime and housing issues.

VICE: It’s been a big week for real estate in Vancouver. We had an unusual protest on the west side in Trimble Park, an affluent neighborhood opposing the latest property taxes.
Charlie Demers: Paul Robeson, the left-wing American artist and activist once said something to the effect that the ruling class “are decent people who love their families... but they will kill you over their property.” That’s the thing—people who have literally done nothing have seen their houses quadrupled in value. They haven’t improved the property, and most buyers would rip the houses down and build a new one anyway. They cling to this totally fictitious money that they believe they have earned as though they were spit-shining apples and selling them from their cart. It’s totally bananas.

And all this is happening on unceded territory—land that was never actually surrendered by First Nations.
This little part of BC was majority Indigenous until the late 1800s but locals will say without irony “the people who are from here can’t afford to stay here.”

Did you have an idea of how prescient Property Values would be?
I started writing the book, and it was pretty clear to me that “this book needs to come out sooner rather than later.” It’s just so much a reflection of the moment that we’re in. But when things change, either catastrophically or in a more managed way, I think there will still be a value in the text, capturing the way it was, the big gold rush years. I knew that I wanted to write something that was funny that combined crime and commentary on housing in Vancouver. It was the same way that you couldn’t make Justified and have it set in Harlan County without talking about coal. Real estate is just what we make here. I mean, we don’t, we don’t do sweet fuck all, but that’s our main export—there’s Maine Lobsters, Okanagan Peaches and Vancouver makes real estate. It’s the main economy here. We are more and more becoming a resource town, with all the terror that becoming a resource town involves. Because the resource is the space.

How did the book start?
I had what I thought was a funny idea: A group of friends that start a fake gang that gets themselves in the middle of a real gang war. Then it became about what I could set up plausibly for that story to actually unfold. It became a group of guys who want to stay where they lived who end up shooting up their house to lower its value.

You’re a fourth generation Vancouverite, right?
It’s coming close to 100 years that the first members of my family got here, which is pretty nuts. Even though my family hasn’t stayed in one place in the lower mainland there is this weird continuity. When she was at her very first daycare, every day my daughter and I would walk home through the grounds of the elementary school my grandfather went to, which is just a foreign experience for most Vancouver people. It just intensifies what you feel for the place. On the days you hate it, you hate it so much more, you just feel imprisoned by all the things that suck about it. The days you love it there is this overwhelming affection.

One of my favorite aspects of Property Values is the way that gangs are portrayed. Did you have to do a lot of research for this or is this something you were already versed in?
I didn’t want any of the criminals in the story to be based on real people, but it was very important to me that they be plausible, realistic characters in organizations that reflected the very idiosyncratic crime culture in Vancouver. So I did do a fair amount of research. Where I grew up, as a kid in Burnaby, there was a lot of gang stuff going on, but I was absolutely terrified of it. One night in grade eight, at a party, a bunch of guys from this local gang showed up outside, so I went to the other side of the room, I was that kind of kid. But somebody goes, ‘Hey, one of these guys wants to talk to you.’ I thought I was dead. Turned out it was just a kid from my karate class who wanted to say hello. But one of the things that got me writing this book was the sense that you get, whether it’s reading historical stuff about Vancouver gangs by Aaron Chapman or contemporary reporting by Kim Bolan, that any group of tough friends can turn into a gang, because of the easy money to be made in Vancouver. So I wanted to take it one step further: what about a group of friends who aren’t remotely tough?

I also really appreciated how much visibility you gave to the suburbs, and the people who populate them, which often gets overlooked when discussing Vancouver.
People in Vancouver don’t really think of themselves as part of BC, and so the suburbs are a weird in-between space. We never did the megacity thing, where the suburbs are officially amalgamated into the city, and yet Metro Vancouver, the greater Vancouver area, is what we think of when we talk about the city. Vancouver has two million people in it, but Vancouver proper is only a quarter of that. Most people aren’t in the actual city.

It was really important to me to get the three major groups that populate Vancouver—East Asians, South Asians, and Western Europeans—and to have those guys interacting in a way that didn’t presume that the white one had any greater claim to space than any of them. Growing up, I was in a similar group of high school kids. I was part of that first generation of post-official multiculturalism, where everyone you know has parents from different places and was racially different from you. The natural state of affairs in Vancouver was to be with people who look different from you, and from each other, and come with a different background. I’ve never lived in a neighborhood that wasn’t diverse. I’m not trying to pat myself on the back, it’s just been my experience.

The protagonist Scott goes through a lot of personal changes throughout the book. It feels kinda rare to see millennials evolve this way in narrative fiction.
I think it would have been really easy, with a premise like this book has, to fall into the trap of doing this book as a too-broad, farcical slapstick. I didn’t want it to be a comedy sketch—and even though it’s genre, it’s crime fiction, I have too much respect for crime fiction as a category not to treat it as literature. So I didn't want cardboard cut-outs, I wanted real people, and the whole reason we want to follow a character is because their challenges change them. It’s an old cliché in creative writing, but the most compelling contradiction in a story can be that between what the character wants, and what she or he actually needs. Scott and his friends are blocked from adulthood, from maturity, by being economically excluded from the things that make you a grown-up. So I wanted to see what it would look like if they learned about sacrifice, responsibility, forgiveness—all these mature, adult concepts—by another route.

Property Values also addresses the challenge of living in a changing city for better or worse.
Well, this place is my home. It’s me, to an extent that can sometimes be very terrifying. I think one of the big lies that we tell ourselves in this age of hyper-individualism is that it doesn’t matter where you go, you’re you. That is such a naive idea. We are of the place we’re from. You can’t pretend that just pulling yourself out and putting yourself somewhere different is not a profound change. The fact that people have to leave this city often gets relayed as a “thems the breaks” thing, but it’s actually traumatic. Everyone in Vancouver is afraid, that even if they don’t leave, someone else in their lives is going to. I live in this co-op so my family is OK. No one is going to evict us and we’re never going to get priced out of this place. But that doesn’t mean that all the people I love are safe. My cousin just left for Kamloops—right after I wrote the opening scene of the book, where this guy has to do exactly that. It’s a mindfuck on a level I don’t think we can acknowledge the profundity of.

The Mountain from 'Game of Thrones' Is Officially the World's Strongest Man

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When he's not busy decapitating horses, chopping people in half, or crushing skulls with his bare hands as "The Mountain" on Game of Thrones, Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson spends his time training for the World's Strongest Man competition, pushing his body to perform feats of physical strength that are just as impressive as what he does on screen—only significantly less grotesque and actually legal. On Sunday, years of hard work finally paid off when—after lifting, lugging, and hauling absurdly heavy shit all over the place for a day—the strongest man in Westeros was finally crowned the strongest man on Earth.

Björnsson beat out 29 other competitors in an array of batshit crazy events from the "giant log lift" to something called the "pillars of Hercules." At one point, the 29-year-old was forced to deadlift an entire Jeep; a few hours later, he tugged a double-decker bus down the road with a harness fixed to his behemoth, 400-pound frame.

Björnsson has been gunning to win World's Strongest Man since he first got involved with extreme weightlifting contests back in 2009. He's spent the years since winning Europe's Strongest Man, lifting more deadweight than anyone in history, and breaking a 1,000-year-old Icelandic record that has something to do with a very, very large log. But on Sunday, he finally won a new title, along with being arguably the most terrifying character on HBO's flagship series.

"It’s my passion and my dream to become the world’s strongest man,” he told the New York Times in 2016. "I would like to win the World’s Strongest Man competition, as you would win best writer in the world. Is that a title that exists?"

If you want to watch Björnsson win a competition without having to literally rip anyone's head off, you can tune into CBS when the competition airs June 10. Until then, please enjoy some of the Mountain's best moments below:

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Melania Basically Just Told Us to Not Act Like Her Husband Online

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Melania Trump unveiled her new anti-bullying initiative on Monday. Puzzlingly titled "BE BEST," the project aims to encourage "children to BE BEST in their individual paths, while also teaching them the importance of social, emotional, and physical health," according to the White House website. "BE BEST will concentrate on three main pillars: well-being, social media use, and opioid abuse."

It kicked off with a guide for parents titled "Talking with Kids About Being Online," which honestly contains some pretty good advice once you look past the part where it mostly seems to be a repackaging of a 2014 guide produced by Barack Obama's Federal Trade Commission. But there is perhaps some... tension between Melania's strong stance on proper online behavior and the behavior of the most online member of her household, Donald Trump.

So instead of annotating the BE BEST guide for myself, I decided to have the president do it instead. Let's see if Melania's better half agrees with her advice:

"Communicating online is a way of life, yet it comes with certain risks. Some people online have bad intentions. They might be bullies."

"Tweens need to feel 'independent' but not alone as they start exploring on their own... They still need guidance to help them understand which sources are trustworthy."

"However, they need to learn how to exercise judgment about being safe online and act in accordance with their family ethic."

"I don't think Ivanka would do that, although she does have a very nice figure. I've said if Ivanka weren't my daughter, perhaps I'd be dating her."
–Donald Trump on The View, 2006.

"Even the most tech-savvy kids need to understand that... information or images they share can be seen far and wide... once something is posted online, it’s nearly impossible to take it back."

"Remind them that real people with real feelings are behind profiles, screen names, and avatars."

"Some pitfalls that come with online socializing are sharing too much information, or posting pictures, videos, or words that can damage a reputation or hurt someone’s feelings."

"Women, you have to treat them like shit."
Donald Trump to New York Magazine, 1992.

"Post only what [you’re] comfortable with others seeing."

"Cyberbullying is bullying or harassment that happens online… It might involve rumors or images posted on someone’s profile or circulated for others to see."

"Don’t react to the bully."

"Block or delete the bully."

"Sexting: Don't Do It"

"Encourage manners."

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

The Japanese Shark Hunters Catching the Ocean's Fiercest Predators

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Off the coast of Okinawa, Japan, fishermen see hordes of their catch snapped up by sharks, which prowl the waters near their boats and tear into their hauls. In an effort to cut down on the problem, the fishermen launched an extensive extermination program—heading out into the open ocean with bait, hooks, and spears to catch and kill dozens of sharks.

On this episode of VICE INTL, we met up with a group of fishermen on Ishigaki island in 2016 to find out why sharks are such an issue for them, how the program got started, and what it takes to catch a shark firsthand.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

A Young Artist's Photos of Human Sexuality and Desire

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"The camera becomes a play object between me, my lovers and my friends," says 23-year-old photographic artist Ellie English.

Ellie's work – explicit scenes depicting pure intimacy, intertwined with mundane and ordinary images of everyday existence; never staged, totally organic – provides some insight into one of the most guarded aspects of our society: sexual norms and values. By documenting herself drifting between lovers, Ellie attempts to scrutinise the connotations that we attach to sex and the value that individuals place on intimate encounters.

I met Ellie in the basement of the north London erotica bookshop where she works to sit down for a chat about her work.

VICE: Your photos range from intimacy to everyday existence to the benign. What does that mixture reflect?
Ellie English: The predominant themes that run throughout my work are non-monogamy, a personal relationship with BDSM and general sexuality that is outside society's dictated norms. For me, it’s incredibly important and powerful to talk about those things in the context of the everyday. It’s important to talk about it with the realisation that the people who live in this way are incredibly normal people. They have very normal lives. By including that very familiar, everyday stuff, I want to attach those up and down emotional journeys that we all go on during our relationships. You see these incredibly intimate moments, but there are also the moments of just being on your own, inside your own head. Reflecting.

What value do you think humans place on intimate encounters?
I think it completely differs for everyone. For me, the first thing that comes into my head is one-night stands. Some people see them as meaningless, right? For a lot of people they may well be, and I’ve definitely had meaningless one-night stands, too. But I've also had casual passing sexual encounters with someone, only once, and there was a bond; we really connected in some way. I’ve had some beautiful interactions with people that have been very short-lived – but they’re still really valuable to me.

What are the main things you’ve learned about human sexuality through shooting this work?
Well, I can only speak about that in terms of myself and the people I have surrounded myself with. I learned to let go of any shame, embrace sexuality, and that there is nothing damaging there. When I was younger I definitely thought: 'What the fuck's wrong with me?' having a desire to be dominated, to be hurt in some way, or to hurt others. Or feeling like you’re in a relationship with someone who you love very much, yet you’re finding other people attractive too. I was thinking: 'Is that really wrong?' I eventually learned to separate myself out from cultural norms of how we should have relationships. I found what’s OK for me.

Has this work changed your pre-conceived notions of human relationships?
I'm not sure if "changed" is the word to use, but it has made me think about relationships in so much more depth. In one of my first projects I did a series of self-portraits which were all about BDSM practices. At that time, I felt the work was incredibly important because it was very real, true and unspoken about. Now, even though I still think that truth is really important, and it still forms part of my work, I've started looking from a psychoanalytical perspective – considering where our sexuality comes from. It stems from childhood experiences and our relationship with our parents. I think it’s important to look into that to understand the way we have relationships as we become adults.

So, over the last year, I've been photographing my father, and more recently recording conversations with him. We've been discussing my childhood experiences, my relationship with him and how I think that's had an impact on the kind of relationships I have now. It's made me so interested in my own psychology and my own sexuality. It is incredible, right? That, as individual humans, we’re all moulded in a very particular way.

Why do you think humans have evolved to often shield their deepest desires?
There's still a lot of shame and embarrassment surrounding sex. I don’t know the history of why our cultures have put that in place. It’s interesting, though, because as humans we are incredibly sexual animals. You can speak one-on-one to people that you are close with and they’ll speak about their fantasies and desires, but when it comes to wider society there is often a shame attached to that.

Do you think society is changing in that respect?
Things are changing a hell of a lot in regard to the rights of trans people and the LGBT communities, for instance. But I still think that for anyone whose sexual interests and practices lay outside the very straight and narrow monogamy or vanilla sex ideals, there is this dictated social norm that they can’t relate to. People have access to the information now, though; if they’re interested they can educate themselves.

@oldspeak1

See more of Ellie's photos below, and even more of her (NSFW) work on her website.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

We Ranked the Absolute Worst Self Help Advice in the World

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In books and online, in magazines and the mouths of wellbeing practitioners, there is a big mess of bullshit masquerading as self-help advice. "Keep a mood diary", "don't go to sleep on an argument", "never complain and never explain" – much of the self-help industry is built on cliches like these, which, really, are utterly meaningless.

In this episode of the VICE UK podcast Yeah, But It's Not as Simple as That, host Sam Wolfson and VICE's Emma Garland, Sirin Kale and Zing Tsjeng discuss the least helpful pieces of self-help advice they have ever received. Then, once the four have settled on the absolute worst of the bunch, Sam has to try to apply it to his own life to see if it makes any difference whatsoever.

Please subscribe to the series on the Apple Podcasts app, or wherever else you get your podcasts.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Here's Every Argument You’re Ever Going to Have with Your Partner

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Arguing with your partner can be fun – a point scoring game where you can assassinate their joy based on who last bought toilet roll. But sometimes they're nasty: one of you accidentally fell onto someone else's penis, for instance, or the other spent their overdraft dregs on coke and now needs you to transfer them a tenner so they can get to work at 9AM. There are many things couples can argue about! Those are just two completely random examples!

But they are necessary to the structure and health of your relationship. Without arguments, you’d be one of those weird couples holding hands at 65, those grandparents who fully make out in front of you. The sort of couple who go home early because "Tom isn't feeling good", who form protective forcefields around one another in festival crowds, who buy or wear rose gold Michael Kors and post anniversary statuses captioned "another year with this one!"

No: true romance is rowing until you feel so guilty you buy them a £3 coffee and provide self-deprecating oral sex for as long as required. To commemorate this cornerstone of modern romance, here are all the arguments you will ever have with your partner.

That argument where your lazy partner won't fill up the bedtime water bottle

After some spooning sex, you peel your partner's emptied genitals off your thigh. "I need water," you croak. They groan and roll over. But you got the water the last two nights. You kick aside their sapped carcass and fall asleep as far away from them as possible. The basis of succeeding in relationships is to remember each time you did something caring and tally it up so you can cash it in at any moment. Breaches of this contract are unacceptable.

That argument where you embarrass your partner in front of their friends

You absentmindedly tell their mates about that time you found a picture of their cat's arsehole on their iPhone. The trust never really recovers.

That argument where your partner forces you to get on with their shit mates

A partner’s university friends live for blocking you out of conversations by bringing up halls. Halls were so fun. Boy, did we drink in halls. Remember when Matty took a pinger at that techno night and asked everyone in Basement if he looked like Ed Miliband? That time Sarah's nip fell out when you were all hungover watching It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia? Ah, halls! Halls! Halls! Halls!

You’re hanging in there, until your partner tells you to get off your phone. Sorry, but Oscar has been explaining how far away his new office in bet365's internal communications department is from the toilets for, like, 20 minutes. The fact I'm conscious is testament enough of my undying love for you.

The "can you please stop trying to make anal sex happen" argument

Seriously, it feels like shitting out a Sky remote.

The "I shouldn't have to ask" argument

"Don't worry about birthday presents," you say. "Let's save up and go to Budapest for a long weekend! Or just buy me a drink next time we go out!"

Of course, this low-key, easy-breezy attitude changes immediately on the morning of the birthday: Not even a fucking pancake? Look at me eating the crummy dregs of the Fruit and Fibre box. Not even some daffodils on the way back from Co-op?

That argument when you try to be chill but your bottled-up craziness all comes out at once

No, honestly, go watch Arsenal with the boys. I wanted to watch Saturday Night Takeaway minus Ant on my own anyway. Cannot wait to put that fluffy Tesco dressing gown on, cup my boob and flick through other people's "boy done good" Instagram stories.

Passive-aggression out the way, when – to them – it seems like the argument is done and over with, you manage to hold all the wide-eyed hysteria back until the following afternoon, when they come back from the shop with semi-skimmed milk: "YOU KNOW I LIKE SKIMMED. DO YOU NOT LOVE ME?"

When you’re sober and they come home pissed

The smell of fermented Peronis dripping off their tongue as they try to lunge in for a kiss. Absolutely rotten.

That argument when you’re both pissed

It's physically impossible to drink with a partner past 1AM without arguing at least once. One of their gun fingers knocks your rum and coke onto the floor / they hold eye contact with someone you cannot immediately identify / you wait for them outside the toilet cubicle and, because they have been more than two minutes, become furiously convinced they have left you.

You end the night sitting with your shoes off on a muddy pavement, pretending to text people you shagged once. If there is a guy involved, he will punch walls and kick abandoned McDonald’s paper bags around. When they approach, you storm off and lurk behind a large bottle bin – but you never go too far: you’re too drunk to be alone, plus you’re not paying for an Uber home by yourself.

The whole saga comes to an end when a huge guy shaped like a slice of toast, wearing a tight bright Lyle and Scott polo shirt, asks: "Is this man bothering you?" and, not wanting your boyfriend to die, you go, "Ha ha, no he's fine, he's just a twat.

That argument where you spend too much time together and you become irrationally upset

Your partner's presence becomes a dull persistent chafing, like when it's hot outside and your sweat makes the top of your thighs stick together and rub pink. You descend into madness: secretly getting a thrill when they stub their toe, becoming so enraged by every little thing they do that, all of a sudden, you inexplicably have the urge to slowly knock your head against the wall until the skin breaks, maybe just to take your mind off how awful they are?

Small problems become tooth-grindingly unbearable, until you break: "Why do you never fully shut the underwear draw?" "Why I am always the one to change the cat's water?" "Why do you always get the apple-flavoured washing up liquid when you know it smells artificial????"

These kind of arguments are incredibly cathartic, but unfortunately – as you can surmise from the pettiness of the examples I've just given – also always make you look mental.

That argument about whose shit flat you’re going to stay at

Don’t make me go there again. To the bathroom with the permanently un-flushed loo, the one with day-old piss maturing at the bottom of the bowl. Where the shower is so weak it feels like someone's dribbling lukewarm tea onto your back; where there’s no shower gel, just mangled bits of hand soap which almost definitely have specs of faeces in them. You can do one if you think I’m going to fall asleep to the sound of flatmate Becky shouting, "YOU GOT ME CHARGER?" from the kitchen. "But we always go to yours!" they cry, "Sometimes I feel like I’m the only thing keeping this relationship together."

False – the semi-regular sex and possibility of halved rent sometime in the near future is what's keeping this relationship together.

That argument because of your partner's shit taste

I am never, ever (ever) going to read those articles you send me about micro-dosing hallucinogenics. Stop sending them to me while I'm at work, and get yourself a job while you're at it.

That argument when one of you chews like "schwuck-schmck-uk-uk"

Are you motor-boating that bowl of Cheerios or eating it? The way your teeth scrape across the spoon prevents me from concentrating on my morning Facebook scroll, and for that reason: this relationship is over.

@annielord8

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.


Toronto Does One Thing Better than NYC: Weed

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For better or worse, Toronto is often described as a poor man's New York. We have some stuff, they just have more, and better stuff.

As a cannabis reporter, I wanted to know if that applied to weed, so I decided to get a better sense of New York’s weed scene on a recent trip there. In a nutshell, my impression is it’s a bit basic, when compared to both Toronto and my hometown of Vancouver (the home of the world-renowned BC Bud and one of the largest 420 celebrations in the world). It’s especially surprising when you consider that New Yorkers apparently consume more cannabis than any other city in the world.

I'm not one to pass up on an opportunity to troll one of the greatest cities in the world, so here is a list of everything wrong with New York weed.

Dearth of dispensaries

For a regular pot consumer, dispensaries are life changing. And, even though weed is not yet legal in Canada, we have a lot of them here—hundreds in between Ontario and BC alone, plus plenty online who do mail delivery. In Toronto, it seems there’s a dispensary on every other street corner. The one I currently use sells weed to anyone aged 19 and older and gives out neighbourhood discounts. Having a dispensary just makes things a lot more convenient—you get a decent selection of weed; it’s always stocked; you can go in whenever you want; you don’t have to arrange a pick-up location or time; you don’t have to make small talk; I could go on. But New York doesn’t have any—at least none that are recreational. Yeah, I get that it’s not legal there, but it’s not legal here either and there’s still a massive underground market. “So, people have to use dealers?” I asked my friend who lives in Williamsburg, a note of incredulity in my tone. Sorry, but using a street dealer for weed in 2018 if you live in a major city seems kind of primitive.

Expensive

Several people I spoke to use delivery services that essentially act as an Uber for weed. While it sounds pretty decent, I had a bit of sticker shock when I found out the prices people were paying. One friend said the first eighth costs $60 and $40 for every eighth after that. Another, who grew up with me in Vancouver and moved to New York a few years ago, said she pays $50-$65 for an eighth. For comparison, an eighth costs about $25 in Canada—and that’s Canadian dollars. So basically you’re paying triple the price in New York. That’s pretty much on par with the cost for a gram of cocaine in Toronto. With the amount I blaze, I would probably have to start growing my own plants to avoid paying those prices.

Limited strains/quality

“In New York, people are not knowledgeable,” said Shanelly Peña, who along with her sister Roshelly, runs Higher Dining, a weed pop-up dinner business out of the Bronx. “There’s still just three strains unless you know a good dealer.” The sisters currently have dealers who sell them product from Colorado and Los Angeles; they say they’re trying to increase their customers’ awareness around different strains and their effects. At their dinners, for which they charge around $150 per person for a delicious five-course cannabis-infused meal, they encourage people to blaze. Ditto at their weed yoga sessions. I chatted to their supplier, a woman in her 20s who goes by the name Queen C (“c” as in “cannabis”), about the variety in New York and how it’s changed over the years. Before, she said, “you settled for what you got. This is New York, it’s not California.” Basically everyone smoked one strain—sour diesel, she said. She also noted that many people in the game were “suss.” However, she told me things are evolving, with Colorado and California going rec. Now there are edibles, concentrates, oils, pens, as long as you have a decent connect. I smoked a joint with Queen C after our interview, and while I did get high, I was still functional enough to go have dinner with my mom right after. When I was smoking BC Bud as a teenager, I would get so stoned that I wouldn’t be able to even order McDonald’s. I had to quit for several years because I would get too high and paranoid and basically go non-verbal. So there is something to be said for weed that isn’t too strong.

Roshelly and Shanelly Peña run Higher Dining, a pop-up weed dinner company, where they serve cannabis-infused dishes like the ones seen below. Photo by author
Photos via Higher Dining on Instagram

Strict af medical program

New York’s medical weed program is strict. In other to qualify for a medical weed card, you need to have a “serious condition” like cancer, HIV, parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, severe or chronic pain, Huntington’s disease, certain spinal cord injuries, inflammatory bowel disease, or seizures. Note that anxiety and insomnia—two of the most common conditions treated with weed—aren’t on the list. Even if you qualify though, the medical program has banned flower meaning you can’t smoke weed. The only forms of weed that are allowed are capsules, liquids, and oils. Edibles are also not allowed. You’re also not allowed to grow your own weed. In Canada, the medical weed program is federal, and you are allowed to grow your own weed or designate a grower. You can also consume edibles, though you would have to make your own. You can definitely purchase flower. Patients should be given access to different forms of weed, especially edibles because they’re often a healthier way to consume cannabis. Plus, there is something about banning bud that gives New York’s medical program a gross corporate pharma vibe imo. Currently, there are only three medical dispensaries open in Manhattan, a borough that has 1.6 million people.

Racist arrests

While this is by no means a problem specific to New York, racist weed arrests have persisted; 86 percent of people busted for the 17,500 pot possession arrests in 2017 were black or Latino. The number of arrests for possessions is down from previous years, but 17,500 is still a shit load of people, especially when you consider how stupid weed prohibition is in the first place. This is a problem in Canada too, though on a lesser scale.

Anyway, New York still obviously has a lot going for it, so it can probably stand to get knocked down a peg.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Ford Campaign Admits Actors Were Playing Conservative Supporters at Rally

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For some time now the conspiracies focusing on paid protesters and supporters have been a favourite of the right-wing twitterati.

However, in the topsy-turvy world that is anything involving Ford Nation, it seems that it’s actually the right who are hiring protesters—well, at least once. As first reported by the Toronto Star, the Ford campaign admitted a Conservative candidate hired actors to play Ford supporters at a Toronto rally for Monday’s debate. The campaign placed blame on the candidate for the move.

“We were very confused by this situation because we are getting record numbers of supporters to every event across Ontario. This was done by a local candidate and it won’t be continuing,” Ford’s spokeswoman Melissa Lantsman told The Star in an email. (VICE has also reached out for comment. We will update this story when the Ford campaign responds.)

The Star reported that the spokesmen said Toronto Centre Conservative candidate Meredith Cartwright was the one who paid actors to play Ford supporters. Doug Ford responded with incredulity when asked by reporters about the actors in a scrum, saying, “we don’t need that.”

The Star states that they were provided with an email sent out by CastmeBG, a local casting company, that sought “20 people to play real people at a Ford nation rally (Doug Ford).” The email went on to say they would need to wear Ford t-shirts and have to be at the rally from 2 to 8 PM. For their troubles, the actors would get $75.

The two top stories on Ford Nation Live at noon on Tuesday. Photo via screenshot.

This isn’t the only thing in the current news cycle that shows the Ford campaign’s blurry lines. Ford Nation Live produces news television-style hits with a decidedly Ford-favoured bent. In a statement, provided to Global News, the Ontario Liberals said they have asked Elections Ontario to review the use of this style of media as they believe the videos are “not just misleading Ontarians, it may be running afoul of election laws” by it not being openly identified as being created by the Tories.

Follow Mack Lamoureux on Twitter

Watch Bill Nye Debunk the Flat Earth Conspiracy Theory

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In an interview back in February 2017, NBA star Kyrie Irving said he believes the Earth is flat. During Monday night's episode of Desus & Mero , the VICELAND hosts asked their illustrious guest Bill Nye to do us all a solid and explain to Irving that the Earth is, in fact, round.

You can watch the latest episode of DESUS & MERO for free, online, right now. New episodes Monday to Thursday at 11PM on VICELAND.COM.

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This article original appeared on VICE US.

Even That Monkey Selfie Fiasco Is Getting Turned into a Movie

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Back in 2011, a crested macaque named Naruto started playing with the camera wildlife photographer David Slater brought to the Indonesian rainforest and—voilà—the legendary monkey selfie was born. Slater later decided to publish the amazing photos—but they attracted a lawsuit from PETA, which argued that the monkey actually held the copyright to the image that he took.

Now, just weeks after Slater finally won the case that dragged on in court for three years, Condé Nast Entertainment bought the rights to his life story—meaning that the monkey selfie will join Colorado's "Killdozer" and that never-ending game of adult tag in getting its own movie.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Condé Nast's film and TV department is still looking for writers to pen the script, so there's not much info on exactly what we can expect from the project. Presumably, it'll be part-Planet Earth and part-12 Angry Men—only instead of following the harrowing saga of a murder trial, it'll just be a bunch of lawyers yelling about whether monkeys can hold a copyright.

Alternately, whoever directs this thing might appreciate the absurdity of a monkey "suing" a man in court, and go for more of a Best in Show vibe, taking a mockumentary-style look at the band of lawyers willing to subject themselves to a three-year legal battle so an animal could claim ownership of a selfie. Who knows—maybe this thing isn't going to really be about the legal saga at all, instead painting a tender, heartwarming portrait of Naruto, played flawlessly by Andy Serkis.

If anything, we know how the whole thing will end. About two weeks ago, the 9th Circuit ruled in Slater's favor, amusingly calling PETA's lawsuit against him "frivolous" and essentially ruling that federal courts lack the authority to hear cases from an animal's point of view.

"We conclude that this monkey—and all animals, since they are not human—lacks statutory standing under the Copyright Act," Judge Carlos Bea wrote in the opinion.

Hopefully, the monkey selfie movie will take full advantage of the gripping, heated arguments that flew around the courtroom, like PETA's allegation that Naruto "suffered concrete and particularized economic harms" by not getting credit for his photos, an ill that could only "be redressed by a judgment declaring Naruto as the author and owner of the Monkey Selfies." Condé Nast could also decide to dig into Slater's life outside the legal drama, examining the fact that the battle left him so broke he didn't make enough money to pay income tax.

Still, if Slater's getting paid for his life story, shouldn't Naruto get a cut too? I don't know about you, but I smell another lawsuit.

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Follow Drew Schwartz on Twitter.

Related: Chimp Shows Off Arm

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

'SNL' Cold Opens Are Unfunny, Elitist Pieces of Liberal Propaganda

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On a good night, with the right host, Saturday Night Live can still bring the heat in an unexpected way. Forty-three years in, the corny-wigs-and-voices format is creaky, the sketches are unpolished compared to the generations of innovative sketch shows that have come and gone since SNL launched, and a bad host means the show is borderline unwatchable. But in the past couple weeks, the John Mulaney and Donald Glover episodes have shown what Actually Good SNL can be.("Switcheroo," "Lobster Dinner," and "Lando's Summit" all made me laugh real laughs.) Caring about SNL in 2018 is a weird hobby to have—the bad bits are still punishingly bad, there are a dozen or more prestige-y shows that are more interesting—but you can make worse entertainment choices.

All of this is preamble to say to SNL, I come as a friend: Your cold opens are terrible, cringeworthy pieces of self-satisfied liberal propaganda that are sometimes so bad they seem like parodies of themselves.

Even if you avoid SNL you probably hear about these cold opens, which are consistently politically themed—though themed may be too strong a word because they are mostly just recaps of the political news of the week performed by A-list celebrities. Thanks to star power, these sketches inevitably draw headlines, and last weekend's affair (featuring Ben Stiller as Michael Cohen, Scarlet Johansson as Ivanka Trump, and Jimmy Fallon as Jared Kushner) was no exception. And honestly, if you're a fan of Very Famous People Appearing Together on Screen (a very successful genre, if the Avengers franchise is any indication), you'll get your money's worth. Look, Robert de Niro and Stiller are doing a Robert Mueller–themed reprise of a scene from Meet the Parents! Look, they got the real Stormy Daniels to play herself and deliver wooden #Resistance-worthy lines to Alec Baldwin's Donald Trump!

But beyond that novelty, the jokes are tired references to current events that never build on one another. Instead, they are limply tossed out as obvious applause lines to an anti-Trump crowd. Here's how the last cold open ended, with a phone call between Trump and Daniels:

TRUMP: Just tell me, what do you need for all this to go away?
STORMY: A resignation.
TRUMP: Yeah right. Being president is like doing porn; once you do it it's hard to do anything else. Besides, my poll numbers are finally up. And speaking of polls being up... [sticks out his tongue in what I guess is meant to be a sexual manner] Oh come on, we'll always have Shark Week. I solved North and South Korea, why can't I solve us?
STORMY: Sorry Donald, it's too late for that. I know you don't believe in climate change, but a storm's a-coming baby. [Applause]
TRUMP: I've never been so scared and so horny at the same time.

These stale lines aren't helped along by the performances. Stormy Daniels gets a pass because she's a bit of stunt casting anyway, but Baldwin's Trump impression also stands out as awful. He keeps his mouth open for reasons I don't understand, squints, and talks in a deep voice. That's it. The real Trump and Rob Schneider are correct: It doesn't work. (Anthony Atamanuik does a much better impression on The President Show.)

Schneider, believe it or not, had another trenchant critique of these sketches, which is that they skew too heavy-handedly to the left. "The fun of 'Saturday Night Live' was always you never knew which way they leaned politically," he told the New York Daily News last month. "You kind of assumed they would lean more left and liberal, but now the cat's out of the bag they are completely against Trump, which I think makes it less interesting because you know the direction the piece is going."

It's not surprising or even all that notable that SNL would go hard after Trump—the show has parodied every president, some more aggressively than others, since the 70s. But the show has shifted to the point where its politics are indistinguishable from the Democratic Party's. After the 2016 election, the show gave Hillary Clinton a worshipful send-off, with Kate McKinnon's Hillary singing a topical version of "Hallelujah" before telling the camera, "I'm not giving up, and neither should you." It was a powerful moment if you were a Clinton fan, but as Schneider said, the cat was out of the bag.

If SNL wanted to make some jokes about the Democrats, there's plenty of material, from conspiracy-spreading Resistance Twitter accounts to shitty email fundraising to the tension between mainstream centrist Democrats and angry socialist youngsters. If it wanted to wade into edgier waters, it could make some jokes about free speech on campus. SNL actually has done some recent tweaking of the left—"Girl at a Bar" stands out for its evisceration of male feminists—but most of its political material winds up in the cold opens, and the cold opens are nothing but anti-Trump vitriol all the time.

Not that there's anything wrong with vitriol, but this isn't even intelligent vitriol. During the Iran-Contra scandal, Phil Hartman helmed a brilliant sketch where he played Ronald Reagan as a president who was only pretending to be a senile fool while actually masterminding every aspect of his administration's shady dealings, flipping everyone's perception of Reagan as a cheerful bumbler. Today's SNL doesn't have anyone of Hartman's caliber, sure, but it also doesn't even bother to take that simple second step. Everyone thinks that Trump is a narcissistic moron, so the joke is... Trump is actually a narcissistic moron! Hilarious!



One problem with that anti-Trump worldview is that it's predictable. But as hamfisted and obvious as it is, it also veers into casual cruelty at times—last weekend's cold open included jokes about Melania Trump wanting her husband to go to prison (a repetition of a popular proof-free Resistance narrative) and Vice President Mike Pence trying to have phone sex with men. Not that I particularly think that SNL was being "unfair" to Pence, whose homophobia is pretty well established, but portraying him as a closet case is a lazy cheap shot that doesn't line up with reality. Pence might be an ignorant science denier who is out of the loop even on things that happen in the administration. But unlike many homophobes, he hasn't been accused of hiding his own attraction for men—why make such a generic joke about such a specific figure?

I have to include a bit where I cut SNL some slack, so here: It's really hard to create new sketches every week, and they have upped the difficulty level by trying to write an up-to-the-minute recap of weekly news events. But they don't actually have to do this. There's no shortage of center-left comedic commentary on the news, from Full Frontal with Samantha Bee to The Daily Show to The President Show to Our Cartoon President to Pod Save America to nearly every late-night talk show.

At best, the cold opens just echo the same beats and jokes as all those other programs (every good liberal recycles material). At worst, these sketches just coddle the audience by reflecting all of their assumptions and prejudices back at them: Yes, Trump is dumb, his administration is full of venal lackeys, Jeff Sessions is creepy, Cohen is a crook, all of your obvious, knee-jerk impulses and prejudices are correct. It's not just playing to the crowd, it's spoon-feeding the audience their own spit-up. It's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip come to life. It's exactly the kind of smug, smarmy bullshit that makes conservatives angry enough at the Hollywood elite to vote Trump just to stick it to them.

Seen from the right light, it's not just an unfunny lead-in to what can otherwise be a fine show. It's a toxic example of limousine liberalism, millionaires putting on a self-congratulatory show with jokes cribbed from the New York Times editorial page—come to think of it, it's exactly the kind of un-self-aware institution that a really good comedy show could grind down to size.

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Follow Harry Cheadle on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

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