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​Three days after a statement announced the CBC was​ "saddened" to cut ties with prized Q host Jian Ghomeshi—a notice in which the CBC also wished him well—another of its popular radio shows, As It Happens,  interviewed a woman who said Ghomeshi had violently assaulted her.

The woman was one of nine to come forward in the span of a few days. She said Ghomeshi punched her in the head until her ears rang. Even now, years later, if his voice or his name come on the radio—CBC Radio, the platform on which she said this—she has to change the station. Shortly thereafter, another woman told her story on The Current.

By extending its most powerful platforms to victims who'd previously been voiceless, the CBC's message was that it, too, was stunned and enraged. But this newfound forthrightness, however admirable in function, is also just damage control. The CBC offered to let Ghomeshi leave quietly, after all, even once they'd viewed the graphic footage that led to his dismissal. And despite years of water cooler warnings loud enough for The University of Western Ontario's ​journalism school to hear, CBC continued to employ a man who used his stature and workplace as ateliers of perversion.

​In a statement, Hubert T. Lacroix, the president and CEO of CBC/Radio-Canada, said he was "shocked" by the allegations of abuse against Ghomeshi, and that he "empathize[d] with those who have felt powerless to speak out, or who have tried to speak out and felt ignored." One wonders if this empathy applies to his employees.

In ​the National Post,a former Q employee described being groped by Ghomeshi at work. She says when she informed her boss, he asked her what she could do to remedy the situation. "[The executive producer's] comment to me was 'He's never going to change, you're a malleable person, let's talk about how you can make this a less toxic work environment for you... No one was going to talk to Jian, he was too big."

Eventually she took a leave of absence, before leaving the company. Arif Noorani, the boss to whom she allegedly complained (he denies this), voluntarily took his own leave of absence after the Post story ran. He has since returned to work, but is no longer affiliated with Q.

Ghomeshi claimed, in a now infamous ​Facebo​ok​ note, that no formal complaints had ever been made against him. Formally documented or not, his habit of acting inappropriately both in and outside of professional settings was well known. TheQemployee who took a leave of absence approached her boss about him in 2010. That was the year I arrived to Toronto for journalism school, and had a (non-academic) mentor who'd known Ghomeshi since the 90s advise me not to apply for an internship there. A lack of formal complaints does not mean the lack of a problem. In this case, a lack of formal complaints also feels suspicious.

One current CBC employee, who, like the rest of this story's sources, spoke to me on the condition of anonymity, said that she was alerted early on about Ghomeshi. "I was immediately warned not to go out with him socially," she said. "Other women will whisper, 'be careful around him' and 'don't let him get too close at the Christmas party.'"

It seems unreasonable to think management and human resources could all be so oblivious. When rumblings of Ghomeshi's exit hit Twitter, the reaction among media-types was not "I wonder what happened" but "I wonder what finally did it." It is also naïve to think Ghomeshi was the CBC's lone creep. And it is dangerous to believe his comeuppance will end a culture in which sexual harassment is so shrugged off it feels permissible.

I spoke with several past and present CBC employees about their experiences with sexual harassment in the workplace. All of these women asked not to be named, and all—except where I've noted—are referring to men other than Ghomeshi.

From a former employee:

"I had one senior manager who did many inappropriate things to me—from coming up behind me and stroking my hair to commenting on my clothing three or four times a week. It got so bad that if he commented on something I was wearing (from earrings to boots to dresses), I would add whatever it was to my mental list of Things Not To Wear To Work. If I told him that he was making me uncomfortable, he would act all hurt, and then he'd just use a different angle—call me by a name that was not my own for a month, or make a big deal in a group of people if I didn't say good morning to him, or discount a point I was trying to make in a meeting by calling me 'a sensitive soul.'

I told my co-workers about the harassment. Some of them were witness to this manager's very personal focus on me, and they would often jump in to pull the spotlight off me and onto themselves. I had other co-workers advise me to 'dress more professionally' if I wanted to alleviate that stress in my life, because he came 'from a certain generation' and couldn't change. Finally I went to HR about it and was told I didn't have enough evidence to start a file.

The [HR] woman who heard my complaint took no notes; she advised me to gather more data—to save emails that had harassing undertones and to make a journal of incidents. I started to do this initially but just felt like it was never going to go anywhere. I gave up."

Another:

"I was going to the bathroom and [my co-worker] was walking toward me. We stopped to chat—I remember thinking, 'I just want to pee.' While we were talking, he looked both ways down the hall. And then he leaned in and kissed me. I was really embarrassed. It felt really out of place. I was mid-sentence—it wasn't like he was greeting me with a kiss.

I really struggled with it. It made me feel uncomfortable. It was just a kiss, but I didn't want it. Part of the reason I didn't report it was because he was so well liked. I already had the reputation of someone who pushed back. I didn't want to rock the boat. You don't rock the boat when you're on contract."

An additional woman who currently works at the CBC told me she was sexually harassed regularly by a former boss and chose not to report it:

"I respect him, and I want to keep the relationship good. What option do I have? I'm so junior, I can't say 'don't talk to me like that.' There's this sense that for female journalists, looks are part of the skill set. So there's this investment that men at the CBC have in that skill set, and in advising women on how to play up their looks. There's this weird perception of ownership, that [an employee's appearance] is the CBC's property."
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​One more former CBC employee told me that she always felt "supported and protected" at work, but that she did encounter discomfort when working alongside Ghomeshi, as an intern at Q."If I saw him waiting for the elevator, I would walk to the other elevator," she says. "The few times I did have to take the elevator with him I felt very uncomfortable." Once, when she tried to bring Ghomeshi his mail, he repeatedly told her to come back later. After returning several times, she suggested he email her when he was ready to receive the mail. "No," he said. "I want you to keep coming back."

She pointed out that with turnover so high at management-level, it can be difficult to pinpoint who needs to be held accountable. "It's really hard to find out who is responsible and who is protecting someone like Jian Ghomeshi," she says. "Jobs are collapsing and management is changing. Even Heather Conway hasn't been there that long."

CBC's senior manager of public affairs, Chris Ball, told me that any employee who comes forward with an HR issue can attempt to lodge a formal complaint. He also noted that if "serious concerns arise" from a conversation between HR and the employee, the CBC can launch a formal complaint even if the employee does not request it. (Serious concerns include things like workplace harassment, violence and theft.)

But to reach the stage where a complaint would become formal, one has to complete a series of requisites, and have each step pushed forward by management. The CBC suggests that employees try telling the person with whom they're struggling that their behaviour is a problem. If that doesn't solve it, the CBC suggests talking to their immediate supervisor or union representative, who will then notify the human resources manager. The employee must prepare a written complaint that outlines the situation and identifies their alleged harasser. The HR representative then decides whether the complaint merits investigation.

"If someone has been sexually assaulted, they should not be communicating with the person that complaint is about," says Heeney. "For women in the workplace, it is not an easy process to bring forward a formal complaint. Even if it's kept confidential, people will become aware that the complaint has been made."

The mechanisms for redress in CBC's anti-discrimination and harassment policy state that action will be taken "after the conclusion of a thorough internal investigation." This means someone beyond the complainant must decide that the case is worthy of investigating, and then determine whether reprimand is in order. The measures of discipline and reprisal include a range of responses, from education and training to an apology, to job transfers or termination. To get to that point is rare, however well known the problem or perpetrator may be.

In ​Maclean's, for example, former Q producer Paul Malcolm is quoted as saying he'd heard rumours of Ghomeshi's "punching," but that he didn't believe them. Another formerQemployee, Roberto Veri, said that he didn't know whether to believe it when a colleague told him Ghomeshi had tried to choke a Canadian actress. Veri also did not mention it when he saw Ghomeshi grind his pelvis into a female colleague at work. And yet, no "formal" complaints against Jian Ghomeshi. (side note: If you are a man seeking moral elevation by admitting that you "knew about Jian" for years, wondering doe-eyed if that makes you complicit, the answer is​ y​es.)

It takes a village of chary, duplicitous colleagues to raise a tyranny. The CBC needs to address the whole hamlet, not just its lecherous leader.

@carlylewis

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According to a West Virginia law known as the "Women's Right to Know Act," the state's department of health is required to publish an extensive booklet on abortion, and doctors are required to give the booklet (or its ​online equivalent) to the pregnant women they treat.

The booklet is not only full of unnecessary and manipulative photographs of fetus fingers, it also contains outright false information that has absolutely no basis in accepted medical science. For instance, page 15 of West Virginia's state-mandated information booklet says: 

"Many women suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Syndrome following abortion. PTSD is a psychological dysfunction resulting from a traumatic experience."

Symptoms listed include guilt, depression, suicidal thoughts, flashbacks, nightmares, and more. All are indeed symptoms of PTSD—the only problem is that no connection exists whatsoever between abortion and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

According to the American Psychological Association, "There is no credible evidence that a single elective abortion of an unwanted pregnancy in and of itself causes mental health problems for adult women." 

The APA made the ​announcement in 2008 after evaluating every single empirical study on the connections between abortion and mental health that was published in peer-reviewed medical journals from 1989 onward.

West Virginia is hardly alone among US states that mandate health professionals lie to pregnant women. The Louisiana Department of Health ​site on abortion risks conflates abortion with increased breast cancer risk, despite the fact that everyone from the ​US National Cancer Institute to the ​American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have announced multiple times that studies show ​no existing link between breast cancer and a woman's abortion history.

"This misinformation is out there, be it about breast cancer, mental health, or fetal health. And it just keeps coming back like a whack-a-mole, even thought it's been discredited so many times," Elizabeth Nash, Senior State Issues Associate at the ​Guttmacher Institute, told VICE. "It makes it easier to adopt more abortion policy restrictions just because people have heard this stuff."

But if this bunk science has been discredited time and time again, how does it worm its way into state policy?

According to a new ​investigation by RH Reality Check, announced Thursday, a network of "False Witnesses" has spent years building an industry around propagating false research and bunk science.

Similar to the ​climate change denial movement, the 14 "False Witnesses" investigated by RH Reality Check not only run pseudo-medical front groups, they are also regularly paid big bucks by the US government to testify at court hearings and legislative sessions.

"They are in the business of manufacturing doubt," said RH Reality Check's Vice President of Investigations and Research Sharona Coutts in a teleconference with reporters (as well as her co-author Sofia Resnick) Thursday. "What we found is that collectively, since 2010, these 14 individuals have earned nearly $658,000 from their so-called 'expert testimony' for attorneys general. And in many cases, the testimony was thrown out by judges. But they continue to benefit from the False Witnesses industry."

And that industry—professionally testifying at trials and legislative hearings—creates a record of seemingly legitimate discourse about abortion that makes it appear as if the medical community can't agree on the subject. In fact, every major medical association has said repeatedly that abortion is one of the safest medical procedures a person can have.

"You'll have someone show up in the legislature and tell lies, and then the courts will turn to these transcripts of legislative hearings as facts," Coutts told VICE. "That's how we see these findings make their way up the legislative chain."

Basically, as long as an anti-abortion crazy has some kind of medical credentials, the government will pay them to provide "balanced" testimony. And that testimony, no matter how discredited by the majority of the medical field, ends up influencing state legislation.

Boom! That's how you get laws that say teenage girls seeking abortion have to be cross-examined by a ​fetus lawyer, and laws that force doctors to lie to their pregnant patients and tell them abortion puts them at greater risk of breast cancer and causes PTSD.

"So you can have an entire body of well-crafted research, and one person's opinion on the other side saying they disagree—and therefore you've created a controversy that's supposed to be dealt with by the courts," Nash told VICE.

VICE examined ​contracts between the State of Wisconsin and four anti-abortion activists called in as medical experts in the 2013-2014 trial Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin v. JB Van Hollen. The "experts," Vincent Rue, James Anderson, Geoffrey Keyes, and John Thorp, were paid a cumulative amount of $141,612 for their testimony based on false and discredited science.

The total income level that RH Reality Check found (nearly $658,000 to various abortion foes since 2010) is likely just a fraction of what the US government actually paid to anti-abortion "experts," since only some states complied with the investigators' records requests. Nine states released financial records showing they paid anti-abortion trial witnesses: Alabama, Alaska, North Dakota, Texas, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Idaho, New Jersey, and Indiana.

But RH Reality Check's investigators requested records for every state in the US. Most have yet to respond; others responded vaguely, saying that records did not technically match the exact language in the request.

Coutts and Resnick found court records that showed some of the "False Witnesses" had testified in states, like Mississippi, that did not respond to records requests. That means there's potentially a lot more money being spent on these guys than what has already been proven.

As more state records come in, said Coutts, they will be added to the RH Reality Check database.

Rue is best ​known as the marriage counselor that invented the phantom ailment "Post-Abortion Syndrome," and ​referred to abortion in cases of rape as "capital punishment of the fetus" in his 1990 testimony in Pennsylvania's landmark Planned Parenthood v. Casey trial.

According to records that RH Reality Check obtained, Rue has been paid tens of thousands of dollars in testimony and consulting fees by the states of Alabama, Alaska, North Dakota, Texas, and Wisconsin.

If it seems weird that the US government is paying anti-abortion activists to tell lies in court, it's even stranger that Rue was essentially hired as a sort of talent agent—tasked with curating a whole group of anti-abortion dudes to testify in Wisconsin.

As Rue's Wisconsin state ​contract put it: 

"Dr. Rue will assist the Department in the development of case strategy, procurement of expert witnesses and be a liaison between the Office and the experts, as well as assist in discovery and trial preparation."

But not everyone thinks hiring extremist wingnuts to testify at trials and help influence legislation is a good idea.

In September, Texas District Court judge Lee Yeakel ​expressed outrage at Rue's hiring in that state, saying that Rue had exerted total control over the testimony of the cadre of hired anti-abortion witnesses he brought along with him—and that the state of Texas covered it up.

"Vincent Rue, Ph.D, a non-physician consultant for the State, had considerable editorial and discretionary control over the contents of the experts' report and declarations," wrote Yeakel. "The court finds that, although the experts each testified that they personally held the opinions presented to the court, the level of input exerted by Rue undermines the appearance of objectivity and reliability of the experts' opinions. Further, the court is dismayed by the considerable efforts the State took to obscure Rue's level of involvement with the experts' contributions."

Alabama District judge Myron Thompson jumped into the ring in late October, ​slamming the state for hiring Rue and two of his cadre of anti-abortion "witnesses," Thorp and Anderson.

"Either [Anderson] has extremely impaired judgment; he lied to the court as to his familiarity with Rue; or he is so biased against abortion that he would endorse any opinion that supports increased regulation on abortion providers," wrote Thompson. "Any of these explanations severely undermines Anderson's credibility as an expert witness."

Still, the false testimony of these "expert" witnesses have had a direct influence on legislation. Guttmacher research on state ​counseling and waiting periods for abortion found that out of 24 US states that require pregnant women be told about the potential risks of abortion, many include false information that has been discredited multiple times by the country's major medical associations based on years of peer-reviewed research studies. In other words, these states force doctors and other medical professionals to lie to patients even when they know they are giving them inaccurate medical information.

States that mandate doctors lie to patients and say there's a link between breast cancer and abortion: 
​Alaska
​Louisiana
​Kansas
​Mississippi
​Oklahoma
​Texas

States that mandate doctors lie to patients and say there's a link between future fertility and abortion:
​Arizona
​Kansas
​South Dakota
​Texas
​West Virginia

States that mandate doctors lie to patients and say that abortion causes negative emotional effects like PTSD and "Post-Abortion Syndrome":
​Kansas
​Louisiana
​Michigan
​Nebraska
​North Carolina
​South Dakota
​Texas
​Utah
​West Virginia

States that mandate doctors tell patients that personhood begins at conception (when a sperm fertilizes an egg):
​Indiana
​Kansas
​Missouri
​North Dakota
​South Dakota

Follow Mary Emily O'Hara on Twitter.

​VICE is rerunning the best TV Party episodes for your viewing pleasure. Watch them all here.

TV Party was a public access cable show that ran from 1978 to 1982 in New York City and featured everyone from Debbie Harry to David Byrne to Iggy Pop to Basquiat. In this episode, Blondie stops by the TV Party stage for a visit.

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Dr. Tuppy Owens with a giant gold cock. Image courtesy of Owens herself. 

This post originally appeared in VICE UK

When it comes to sex campaigners, you won't find many more hardworking than ​Dr. ​Tuppy Owens. Since her debut book, Sexual Harmony, was published in 1969, the sex therapist and publisher has been at the forefront of sexual liberation in the UK for the best part of five decades.

Owens was the first person to publish a visual aid for putting on a condom in her best selling annual The Sex Maniac's Diary and, alongside the National AIDS Manual, became a key player in the fight for AIDS awareness in the UK with her slogan: "On me, not in me." Since the 60s she's advocated the rights of sex workers and, in 1996, helped to set up the Sexual Freedom Coalition to protest against government repression tactics, including the ordering of police raids at swinger and fetish clubs.

Owens has also campaigned for the sexual liberation of people with disabilities. She set up the  ​Sexual Health and Disability Alliance (SHADA), disability dating and matchmaking charity the Outsider Trust, and, most recently, the ​TLC-Trust website, which provides disabled men and women access to vetted sex workers. She also founded the Sexual Freedom Awards—which celebrate their 20th anniversary this evening—and publishes her latest book, Supporting Disabled People in their Sexual Lives, next week. We had a chat with her the day after her 70th birthday. 

VICE: You studied zoology at Exeter University. How did you go from that to producing sex books?
​Dr. Tuppy Owens: I was a wedding photographer at that time, working for my dad as a Saturday job. I had a boyfriend whose father was a printer. He took me into the printing machine shop one day and there was this porn coming up—it was dreadful. I thought: 'I could do better than that,' so I produced a book called Sexual Harmony exactly at the time that the Ann Summers shops started up and I started to make quite a lot of money (my book was much more rampant than The Joy of Sex) and I decided to do it for a living. I left zoology and plundered into sex publishing.

Did you produce all the words and the images yourself for Sexual Harmony?
​I got some help with the writing but the photography was mine. For the front cover I got this really nice couple into the studio with a bed—he's on top of her and she's actually got her back on the floor and her bottom on the bed because he's fucking her so hard that she's fallen off the bed and they're both laughing. That was unheard of, really, that people were having sex and laughing and having fun. It was all very stiff before that. And it just sold. I'm not sure it was the best instructions for having sex, though, because I was quite young at the time.

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You were in your mid-twenties. Was there a backlash?
​I was pretty much hated. It was the beginning of feminism and they thought sex was disgusting. They didn't like me at all.

Blimey. After Sexual Harmony you then went on to produce the Sex Maniac's Diary, from 1972 to 1995. That was a huge success.
​I did that for 25 years. It was a big bestseller—they had it by the till in newsagents. It sold partly as a joke and partly by people who wanted to consult it. It was like a Yachtsman's Diary but about sex. A lot of people thought it was funny but actually it was also very useful. I did my research properly. If I mentioned a club in Euston it was because I'd gone and checked it out. It had sex position of the month, condom of the week, a thesaurus with the phrase "my wife and I would like to make it with you" in 12 languages, including Chinese. It was a lot of work but being a scientist helped. I approached it in a research-led way. 

Your big passion today is raising awareness of the sexual needs of people with disabilities. What is the message you want to get across to people?
​That people with disabilities, just like anyone else, ​feel randy. They want to have sexual touch. They just feel like other people don't quite accept it. In actual fact, when I've done radio, I've found that people are far more accepting of disabled people paying for sex than they are of them having a relationship, which is a bit weird. But they approve of relationships and disapprove of sex work in other demographics. People with disabilities are accepted in society but not when it comes to them being a sexual person. It's awful.

This year marks the 35th anniversary of the Outsiders Trust—a matchmaking club for people with disabilities which you set up. How did you come up with the idea for that?
​Doing a yearly book that's a success means you have a bit of spare time and I had a friend who lost his sight. When his girlfriend left him, I supported him to meet new women. At the same time another colleague had referred a man in a wheelchair to me who wanted to start a sex life and I helped him. It was really good fun and I actually felt useful so I thought ,'Why don't we start a club?' We thought it probably wouldn't work, but we had a party and 150 people came from all over the country. They did half a page in The Guardian on it and we were off.

People with disabilities, just like everyone else, feel randy.

Then, at the turn of the century, you set up the TLC Trust, a website where disabled men and women can access sexual services. How did you develop that?
​Years before, I'd watched a disabled man who used sex workers become incapable of starting a relationship. But then I ran something called Prostitution Pride and met lots of workers who saw disabled clients. I realized that they were actually doing a huge service because they could teach them what their bodies were capable of and also teach them how to please a partner. They were instrumental in making them more likely to find someone. I thought it was important to find people who are going to be reliable with disabled people and put them all on a website, so that's what happened.

With either Outsiders or TLC, have you ever had any support from the government?
​No, nothing, and I'm really desperate to find some funding now because, at the age of 70, I have to think about not being able to work 15 hours a day, every day. I'd like to slow down a bit, perhaps. Or have a holiday.

Tell me about your book Supporting Disabled People in their Sexual Lives. It's a kind of self help book for sex workers and people with disabilities, right?
​It's for health professionals and parents of, as well as, disabled people—how they can support them in their sexual lives, find a sex worker, gain sexual confidence. It's about being positive and enjoying it, because it's great fun and you get the reward of a great big grin on their faces when they've had some sexual fun for the first time in their lives.

Tonight, the Sexual Freedom Awards celebrates its 20th anniversary. What are they all about?
​I set it up because I thought sex work was never rewarded. It was originally called the Erotic Awards, and was for writers and photographers. Now it's more for pioneers—focusing on the professionals who offer sexual services—and their allies. Strippers and sex workers are currently being demonized, with strip clubs being closed down, but their great work with disabled, disfigured and other marginalized people is rarely recognized. Winners are presented with a golden flying penis trophy.

Finally, in your 70 years, what moment stands out the most?
​At one of our fundraising events there was a room called "Anything Goes." I took a look at about 3AM and there were three couples on the bed and three wheelchairs parked beside it. That said a lot to me, that we'd got this acceptance of disabled people, because it wasn't a disability event—it was just a fundraiser. It was so beautiful, a vision of success. 

Buy tickets for tonight's event ​here.

Follow Gareth May on ​T​witter.

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Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

​ In 2004, a woman named Andrea Constand filed a lawsuit against Bill Cosby alleging that he had drugged and sexually assaulted her.

According to her  ​account, she visited Cosby at his home in January 2004. He offered her three blue pills, which he said were herbal medication. After ingesting them, she claims, she began to feel weak. Cosby directed her to a sofa, where she fell into a state of semiconsciousness. As she lay there, Cosby "touched her breasts, rubbed his penis against her hand, and digitally penetrated her." She eventually lost consciousness and woke up at 4 AM, with her clothing disheveled and her vagina raw.

Horrifyingly, her account wasn't unique: 13 other women, ten of whom chose to remain anonymous, were scheduled to testify that he had sexually assaulted them as well. But then Cosby and Constand went on to settle out of court, and the plaintiff agreed to not discuss the allegations any further. The majority of the witnesses remained anonymous in the aftermath of the settlement, but some spoke to reporters—in 2006, three women  ​spoke to Philadelphia Magazine. They all alleged that Bill Cosby had drugged them and either sexually assaulted them or attempted to.

Despite all of this this, Cosby emerged more or less unscathed and continued to enjoy a successful career as America's Favorite Dad. Thirteen women were willing to testify in a court of law that Cosby had attacked them, and America responded by rapidly and completely forgetting all about it.

This year, with Cosby poised to star in a new show on NBC, the allegations resurfaced —albeit rather slowly. Although two of his alleged victims spoke to Newsweek in February, there wasn't serious, sustained focus on the story until Hannibal Buress ​called him a rapist in a stand-up routine that went viral. Even after that, Cosby joined Twitter, and, rather myopically, asked users to "meme" him. ​They did: soon, grinning images of Bill Cosby emblazoned with text like "AMERICA'S FAV DAD BY DAY, SERIAL RAPIST BY NIGHT" and "I HAVE BEEN ACCUSED OF RAPE BY 13 WOMEN IN THE PAST 8 YEARS!" were splashed across the Internet. Finally, it seems, Bill Cosby's despicable history is catching up with him.

Barbara Bowman is one of Cosby's alleged victims. In 2004, she went public with her account; she, too, says that Cosby drugged and raped her. The alleged attacks took place when she was 19 and an aspiring actress. In an  ​in-depth interview with the Daily Mail, she recently described the nature of their relationship and his alleged abuse. According to Bowman, Bill Cosby acted as her mentor and promised her that he would help her become a successful actress. One night in particular, she says, Cosby invited her to dinner at his apartment. Although she only had a single glass of wine, her next recollection is waking up slumped over a toilet bowl, wearing only underwear and a man's white t-shirt, while Cosby held her hair back. Bowman says that the drug-facilitated assaults continued over the course of their working relationship: "I know for sure he forced himself multiple times upon me," she told the Mail.

Bowman spoke to People ​in 2006 and Newsweek ​this year, but no one really gave a shit until now. Now that the world is paying attention at last, she hopes that sharing her story will empower other victims to come forward and to stop feeling ashamed.

Although the story has gained a great deal of traction, Bill Cosby continues to remain silent. Over the weekend, he was asked about the allegations directly  ​on NPR. He responded by saying nothing and shaking his head repeatedly. On Sunday, his lawyer released a ​statement to the AP calling the allegations "discredited" and insisting that "Mr. Cosby does not intend to dignify these allegations with any comment." The same day, another victim ​came forward and claimed that Cosby had raped her twice when she was 19.

I spoke to Barbara about her experience with Cosby, her advocacy for victims of sexual assault, and how she overcame her shame.

VICE: You've been talking about this since 2006. And several other women have come forward as well, but none of it seemed to stick until now. What has it been like to watch your story slowly, slowly pick up traction?
​ Barbara Bowman: It's been very, very frustrating because it's the typical roadblock of what a victim goes through, especially when you're dealing with someone like Bill Cosby with all the power and the money and the fame. It's so unbelievable. It was even more unbelievable then than it is today.

What happened when you first tried to come forward?
​ Back then, I was a little kid. I was 18 years old. I was from Denver, Colorado, and I had an agent who believed I had some promise. She was friends with Bill Cosby, and he came to town, and she introduced me. He was supposed to groom me and mentor me, and they were going to bring me to New York and launch my acting career. I was subsidized by Cosby and my agent. I was living in New York City in a very, very isolated, very controlled environment, and the only thing I was allowed to do was go to acting classes and come home or go with Bill Cosby. I was terrified of her and I was terrified of him, and I felt like a captive.

When I finally got the courage up [to come forward about the assault]—I was so broken down and confused and scared—my agent didn't do anything. I was terrified for her to think that anything was going on because I knew she wouldn't believe me. And she didn't believe me.

Everybody loved Dr. Huxtable. He was America's favorite dad, everybody wanted him to be their dad. I wanted him to be my dad. [My allegations] just went away. I was laughed out of the attorney's office, and my agent didn't believe me. I felt completely crushed. I felt alone. I thought, "Nobody is ever, ever going to believe me." So I just regrouped and put it behind me, and I filed it away.

Do you think the fear of facing professional fallout also played into their refusal to believe you?
​ Yes. I think that happens a lot. I think that happens with the media, too, which is why it's taken so long for this to catch on with the mainstream media. They're scared, too. They have relationships with these people. One hand washes the other, and if they make an enemy of a celebrity, then they've cut a tie. They've burned a bridge.

It's hard to take a stand against one of the most powerful men in Hollywood.
​ He needs weak, powerless, controllable women who won't fight back or who can't fight back. By introducing drugs into the mixture and doping up women, he puts you into a position where you can't do anything. You do not have any control. I've had some victims reach out to me since the Daily Mail article came out, random women who are also victims of Bill Cosby who are not documented, who found me and reached out to me and gave me their story who will not talk. I'm working on them, but they will not talk. Some of them escaped by crawling out of the door and crawling into the street and somehow getting home, barely conscious.

So, why did you decide to speak publicly about what happened to you?
​ In 2004 or 2005, the other victim came forward and filed a lawsuit. That's when I said, "I will not sit in silence any more. I'm going to support this woman." Because they were dragging her through the mud. They didn't believe her story. I said, "Well, I believe her. Because it happened to me, almost to a tee."

It comes and it goes, it comes and it goes. It's very frustrating. Now, it's picked up momentum and the masses are listening. People are listening. Finally, they're listening.

But because our culture is so primed to blame women, there are still some people who react by saying, "Well, she accepted all of his help and then went to his apartment alone. What was she expecting?"
​ It's victim-blaming. There are so many dynamics to being a victim. It is a very scary place to be. It is a very difficult thing for a woman to admit to. In many cases, the people doing the violating are trusted individuals. It is from people who gain our trust. We let them into our personal life because they tell us we can trust them. It's our teachers, it's our family members, it's our pastors at our churches. It's Bill Cosby. And he had the ability to hide very, very well behind his tight circle of protectors.

The point you made in your op-ed, that no one really paid attention to your story until a man brought it up, really resonated with me. There are so many instances of this. It's almost literally quantifiable: how many women, versus one man, does it take to make people believe the abuse is real?
​ My goal and my motivation has always been to raise public awareness. To encourage the other victims who did not come out. In my case, there were 13 of us scheduled to testify in a court of law. I was willing, ready, and able. I put my name out there. Three of us did. Ten of us did not. Those Jane Does, to this day, are still too afraid to come out.

I joined an advocacy organization called  ​PAVE. We're a national educational service organization that talks to victims of all ages. Through action and education, we empower these women to give them voices. To let them know: "You need to tell your story. Don't go to bed at night keeping this a secret. It doesn't help you, and it doesn't help them." If we cannot and do not have the courage to speak out and tell other people what's going on, these things won't change. And the perpetrators will keep on raping and keep on drugging and keep on taking advantage of women and keep us silent.

By the way, it's not just women. There are men out there suffering, too, and they don't get talked about enough.

There's an extra stigma to that, too.
​ Absolutely. It's almost like our culture expects women to endure it. We're women, that's the way it's supposed to be. [There's this idea that] it doesn't happen to men—men do it to women; men don't do it to men, and women don't do it to men. That's not true. Moving forward, I want to focus on this.

I am not a victim anymore. I am a victim's advocate. It's one of the most powerful lessons I'm going to teach my 12-year-old daughter. She's the most amazing, wisest young lady that I know. She sees what her mom's doing. She sees her mom reaching out and helping and refusing to stay in that place of victimhood.

What do you think of Cosby's new NBC show?
​ I'm really disappointed to see that they are ignoring what's going on and his dark past and that they're willing to put him back on TV as a father figure. He'll be sending the same messages that he crumbles by his actions—giving sound, wonderful, honest, loving, wise fatherly advice to his daughters and granddaughters. He's not the messenger that I want to hear that coming from.

With the rise of social media, it's harder to control the narrative and harder to convince people that the public image of oneself is necessarily true. Another reason this story got so big, for instance, was his idiotic decision to invite people to meme him.
​ Social media can be your best friend or your biggest enemy. I'm grateful that we have it now. Now, if we had had social media back then, I don't know that this would have been what it is. Because people weren't talking then. It was a different era.

The statute of limitations, in my opinion, should be abolished. That is one of the legislative platforms that I'm going to take on through working with PAVE. That is to get rid of the statute of limitations for sexual crimes. Because it is not cut and dry. It is not easy for a woman to come to grips with [being sexually assaulted], especially when you're dealing with the circumstances I was dealing with. Especially when it's not a stranger.

It takes so long to find your voice. I didn't have that voice; for 17 years I didn't have it. When I started to talk publicly in 2004 and 2005 and decided that I wasn't going to be a Jane Doe, even then, I was so scared. I just kind of peeked out of my dark hole and told a little bit, and then I crawled back in. And then I told a little more and tested the waters, and then I tested the waters more. I started to slowly feel comfortable with myself to come forward. Some women never find that voice.

I'm hoping that I'm reaching victims, I'm reaching survivors, I'm reaching people. I hope that people will hear and listen and see and pay attention to everything and this will save someone's life.

It sounds like you're already reaching a lot of people.
​ I am, and I'm grateful. I'm so sorry it took so long. I can't say why. I think it was just a perfect storm of things falling into place. I think moving out of the era of darkness and into—you know, the social media certainly helps, it opens the doors of communication in so many ways. There were a lot of different stepping stones along the way to get us to this point. I'm just glad to be here. I'm glad that people are listening. I'm happy to go on air. Anytime anyone wants to talk to me, I am wide open to do so because this is a message that has to get out there.

What other things will you be doing with PAVE?
​ I'm going to be doing some public speaking and doing some touring around the country, speaking to students and other interested groups. But, mainly, I'd like to focus on upcoming, aspiring models and actresses and target some of the different casting directors, put on seminars, we're going to create some literature to put out there.

How do you feel now that you're speaking openly and using your experiences to help others?
​ When [the allegations] started coming out, I was uttering things I'd never uttered before. It was so embarrassing. I felt dirty just saying it. That's the shame that I lived with that nobody needs to live with, and I hope that we can shatter the silence by being open and having open dialogue about it.

Follow Callie on ​Twitter.

Last Thursday, middle school st​udents in Winter Haven, Florida, were terrified by an active shooter drill that neither they nor their parents were informed about beforehand.

Jewett Middle Academy was put on lockdown early in the morning after an announcement from the principal, who knew it was a drill, as did the school resource officer—but they were the only ones.

At one point during the exercise, cops—with guns out, one of them reportedly an AR-15 rifle—stormed a classroom. This was dubbed "standard procedure" by authorities, but it wasn't to kids, one of whom texted her parents, "I thought he was going to shoot me."

Winter Haven Police Chief Charlie Bird said the realism produced by surprise is essential to the process. It is how police test their reaction time in a real crisis. But other places train SWAT teams without conscripting scared kids into the process. Officers need to practice for a worst-case scenario, but why, exactly, do 12-year-olds? Their job is to survive, and to hopefully be rescued by some noble badge-wearer. Bird also swore that, "It really is to protect the children and at no point in time would we endanger any of the children." 

Not endanger them, just pull guns on them and perhaps psychologically scar them. Protecting the children from the (thankfully rare) threat of a school shooting should not involve overhyping the risks, and certainly not by brandishing guns—including a loaded handgun—around them. Not to mention that accidents happen, even with police. Whatever happened to the old gun safety rule of don't point your gun at (or near) anything you don't intend to shoot?

In response to the angry backl​ash, the next active shooter drill at Jewett Middle Academy will involve uniformed, unarmed police instead. Pretty much anyone could have told them that was a better idea.

On to the rest of this week's bad cops:

-Turns out Ferguson, Missouri, police office Darren Wilson—who faces a potential grand jury indictment for killing unarmed black teenager Michael Brown this summer—might have another blot on his record. On Friday, 30-year-old Mike Arman uploaded footage from 2013 which purports to sho​w Wilson threatening Arman because the man was filming the cop. The Guardian found police reports that suggest the incident shown took place October 28 of last year and was a dispute over Arman leaving "derelict vehicles" on his property. A charge of resisting arrest was also added to Arman's rap sheet after the confrontation with Wilson. At one point in the video, Wilson says, "I am going to lock your ass up if you don't stop" filming. This doesn't give us any clearer of a picture of what exactly happened between Wilson and 18-year-old Brown in August, but it doesn't reflect well on Wilson as a cop either. There should be no tolerance for cops who prevent civilians from filming them. 

-A 37-year-old mentally ill woman died in Cleveland police custody on Thursday after struggling against officers who were trying to take her in for a ​psychiatric evaluation. Tanesha Anderson's death came after police were called because she was allegedly disturbing the peace. The cause of death is still unknown, but this is still disturbing, not just because police reportedly did nothing to treat the unconscious Anderson while they waited 20 minutes for an ambulance.

-On Halloween, in Vancouver, Washington, an unidentified man called 9-1-1 after he saw a guy who was wanted for shooting his neighbor earlier in the day. Unfortunately, cops who arrived on the scene got confused and shot the caller in the leg, assuming him to be their suspect. The poor man had to then call 9-1-1 again to report that he had been shot. The three officers involved are all on​ administrative leave.

-Last year, the number of police officers who died in the line of duty was the lowest it's been in a century. That's good! In 2014, the number of individuals shot by police currently sits​ at around 460. That's the most it has been in two decades. That's bad—it also leads to questions about whether officer safety is being prioritized too much. The former number is nice, but whether the latter is some kind of twisted trade-off should be the bigger question. And the greatest concern should be whether officer safety is being prioritized too much.

-Darrien Hunt was fatally shot by Saratoga Springs, Utah, police on September 10. New detail​s reveal that one of the officers involved was wearing a body camera that he had not turned on. Officer Nicholas Judson, according to Police Chief Andrew Burton, was also a rookie who had only been on the job a month or so before the fatal shooting of 22-year-old Hunt, who had been holding a blunt samurai sword of the type used in cosplay on the day he was killed. There have been protests over the shooting, especially since surveillance video was released showing that Hunt was indeed running away from poli​ce on the day in question—presumably, the revelation that the cop had his camera turned off won't do anything to quell the controversy. And this comes back to a simple, basic concern about cameras: Are they worth the money they're spent on if they can be switched off by officers at any time?

-According to a Novembe​r 12 report from CBS Miami, on August 27, four plainclothes Miami Dade police officers arrested three men over misdemeanor marijuana possession. Two were released with a promise to appear later. The third man, Tannie Burke, was taken into custody, driven around, and then released by the side of a dark road a mile from home. Worse than this special treatment was the fact that Burke has been legally blind from birth. He can get himself around in the daytime, but darkness is tricky. The 21-year-old says he told the officers he couldn't see but to no avail. He also says they took his phone and refused to take him all the way home. Burke believes that he was mistreated because his stepfather filmed his arrest and insulted officers. Burke has filed a complaint, and Miami Dade internal affairs is looking into it. At least the marijuana charges against him have been dismissed.

-A refreshing/terrifying reminder that Americans actually have it pretty good: Cops in Brazil have killed 11,000 people in the past ha​lf decade.

-Our Good Cops of the Week were carto​onishly archaic in their heroics. On Friday, Suffolk County, Wisconsin police officers Stephen Lukas, Kit Gabrielsen and Martin Gill rescued Buddy the golden retriever after he got his head stuck in a cat house. It's a pleasant surprise that cops will respond to such an old-timey request as a pet in peril. There was probably nothing else to do except try to find someone smoking weed, so this one is a definite win in terms of prioritizing.

Follow Lucy Steigerwald on ​Twit​ter.

Foxcatcher, the new movie from Capote and Moneyball director Bennett Miller, tells the backstory of a brutal, mysterious, and headline-grabbing 1996 murder. The film opens with the recruitment of Olympic gold-medal wrestler and impressionable hulk Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum) by John E. du Pont (Steve Carell) in 1984. The reclusive and narcissistic trust-fund kid wants Schultz to lead his vanity project, a private wrestling club hosted on and named after his Foxcatcher Farm estate. The relationship evolves from patronage to manipulation, drawing in Mark's brother, the tactically brilliant Olympic wrestler Dave (Mark Ruffalo). Over the course of the film, du Pont's peculiar and malevolent behavior stretches everyone involved into states of emotional tension, culminating in an eight-year flash-forward to the infamous moment when du Pont fatally shoots Dave Schultz. A gripping and character-driven narrative, the film's a showcase for the established skills of Bennet and Ruffalo. It's also a defining moment for the careers of Carell and Tatum.

But there is even more to the story of John E. du Pont and the fateful murder, as well as  the mental illness that metastasized in him during the 1990s.

Born in 1938, John Eleuth ère du Pont was (as his character makes so painfully clear in the film) an heir of the du Pont family. Minor French Huguenot nobility, the du Ponts immigrated to America circa 1800 and went on to establish a gunpowder business that evolved into a chemicals company with a cutting-edge research and development department—they created nylon, teflon, lucite, and other synthetic polymers. At one point, they essentially ruled the state of Delaware, employing as much as 10 percent of the population. 

As one of America's wealthiest families, conspiracy theorists often claim the du Ponts are in the Illuminati. They're also the subject of tales of corruption and nepotistic wheeling and dealing. Most recently, one member of the family, Robert H. Richards, ​escaped a prison sentence after admitting to sexually abusing his own children, leading to accusations that the family essentially bought his way to freedom. And his was only a recent case. Enough du Ponts have been implicated in crimes and walked away with light sentences that the New York Daily News, during coverage of the Schultz murder, ran the headline: "There's been lots of nuts in this family tree. Generations of inbreeding, scandals, cults, and vicious feuds." It points to a longstanding belief that the wealth of the du Pont's led to grotesque narcissism—a big part of the narrative undergirding the film.

But John E. du Pont wasn't some direct heir sitting alongside a cabal of wealthy, tight-knit, and protective relatives. He was one of more than 3,000 descendants (just over 200 of whom carry the du Pont surname) with a claim on a $12 billion fortune. Most of these relatives don't even know one another, save as some faceless entity eating a slice of the family pie. By all accounts, John E. du Pont didn't have many ties to the rest of the family. H e wasn't even that close to his older siblings, most of whom left home while he was still young. "Some members of the family did come to his rescue during the trial," recounts du Pont's lawyer, Thomas Bergstrom. "There was one sister who was fairly sympathetic." But that solidarity fell apart pretty quickly. "It all just denigrated into a civil case over custody of money," namely John E.'s $200 million slice of the family pie, says Bergstrom.

Much more of du Pont's social instability seems to have stemmed from a childhood of mollycoddling and isolation that the film captures in the few pitiable memories Carell's du Pont leaks out from time to time. After his father, William du Pont III, left in a nasty 1941 divorce, young John E. lived isolated with his haughty mother, Jean Liseter Austin (Vanessa Redgrave). Tom Huddleston  writes in his somewhat schlocky Wresting with Madness: John E. DuPont and the Foxcatcher Farm Murder that his mother left him in the care of an estate worker named Mr. Cherry, but "[she] had also made sure he was fully aware of his place on the food chain, and that place was at the very top. Mr. Cherry was one of their servants, and John could never truly respect him." He was warned never to let in outsiders, but learned that "with servants, there was nothing to fear—their allegiance and loyalty was bought and paid for." His mother also instilled in him her belief in excellence, in proving one's worth beyond inheriting a name by proving one's skill at something proper.

While the film focusses on du Pont buying his way into exciting worlds and manufacturing his own symbols of success to impress his dismissive mother, previously John E. had apparently tried his damnedest to be good at something. His old high school and college coaches talk about his discipline and ambition to become a world-class swimmer or pentathlon athlete, but say that the boy just lacked talent. And as a doctoral student, he managed to discover two species of birds, detailed in reports he co-authored on expeditions to the Philippines and South Pacific in the early 1970s. (Some claim he just bought his way onto these teams and expeditions, but there's just not much evidence of this, save perhaps the fact that he won both the "Most Likely to Succeed" and "Laziest" superlatives in high school.) But for whatever reason, academia didn't stick. In the 1980s, he turned back to sports, hoping to excel as a patron and coach instead, opening his Foxcatcher Farms wrestling team with the ambition of filling out the US Olympic rosters and pouring funds into USA Wrestling and Villanova University's wrestling programs.

[body_image width='2000' height='1333' path='images/content-images/2014/11/17/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/11/17/' filename='the-mental-illness-behind-the-foxcatcher-murder-425-body-image-1416239467.jpg' id='4436']
​ John E. du Pont at age 28, displaying some of his 5,000-specimen stuffed-bird collection, at home. Photo by Paul Schutzer/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

The fact that Villanova and USA Wrestling eventually distanced themselves from du Pont are used as examples of his shady, narcissistic dealings—trying to claim more power than a patron ought to. But at the same time, he was also making an honest name as a collector of silverware, tin toys, Staffordshire china, seashells, and  stamps. He owned the word's rarest stamp, and his bird collection was so immense he had to open a museum to house it all. His collections went on tour anonymously. He would attend their exhibitions in secret, apparently just content to see people appreciating what he'd built.

All the raised eyebrows surrounding his sports-patron career may have as much to do with his poor social skills, intense sense of isolation, and deteriorating mental state than as with the impulse to buy importance. In 1991, du Pont told the Philadelphia Inquirer that he'd paid for 100 students to go to college and that he'd received Father's Day cards from them—the whole effort seemed like more of a bid for human connection than for control.

Around the same time, du Point was already exhibiting signs of mental illness. In 1983, du Pont married a young woman, but the marriage broke up in a $5 million divorce case when he allegedly tried to stab and strangle her, throw her out of a moving car, and toss her into a fireplace in what in retrospect may have been fits of paranoia. During the Team Foxcatcher years, Jack Cuvo, a wrestler on the estate, recalls that he started talking to walls, believing he could see animals emerging from them. He'd have the wrestlers go into the walls to chase them out. 

"John was putting razor wire in the walls of his house," adds Bergstrom. "He had armed guards all over the place." He rode around the estate on a tank, dynamited fox dens, shot geese he believed were casting spells on him, removed all treadmills and bikes because he thought they were sending him back in time, and drove multiple Lincoln Continentals into a pond to block hidden passageways he believed were down there. By 1995, a year before the murder, he'd developed a phobia of the color black, believing it was a sign of his impending death. He kicked three African American wrestlers off the farm in 1996 for that reason. That year, he also  pointed a gun at wrestler Dan Chaid and cursed him off the property. 

Bergstrom believes that security consultant "Pat Goodale was feeding his paranoia. Goodale agreed to put up barbed wire and dig tunnels and stock firearms" in accordance with du Pont's paranoia. But there's evidence that alcohol and maybe cocaine abuse was involved as well. Either way, by the time of the murder in 1996, when Bergstrom met du Pont, he says, "for lack of better words, he was completely nuts."

The film paints the murder as a reflection of du Pont's anger with Schultz, whose charisma and strength of character challenged du Pont's authority. Many articles share this opinion, that the culminating murder was the result of a soured friendship—retribution for Schultz's impudent and ungrateful decision to leave Foxcatcher for a coaching job at Stanford. The narrative is supported by Schultz's old high school wrestling coach, who claims the relationship with du Pont was straining months before the murder and by the fact that, after firing the first of three shots at Schultz, du Pont screamed, "You got a problem with me?" Some believe there was a sexual component at play as well—wrestler Andre Metzger filed a suit against du Point, alleging he was kicked off the team for rejecting Coach du Pont's advances. Many other wrestling coaches share this belief.

Bergstrom, however, saw Dave as du Pont's defender, the last wrestler standing, who tried to help him through his emotional troubles and mediate between him and the world. To the end, du Pont seemed to be begging Schultz to stay, sending him a Christmas bonus after learning that he'd leave even when Schultz didn't expect one to arrive. "He didn't kill Schultz because he didn't like him or because he was going to leave him," explains Bergstrom. "He thought he was a Russian agent for God's sake." That is to say, the psychosis developing in du Pont led him to the paranoid delusion that Schultz was a sleeper agent bent on killing him and that the murder was an act of self-defense, a position du Pont maintained well into the future.

[body_image width='1668' height='2450' path='images/content-images/2014/11/17/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/11/17/' filename='the-mental-illness-behind-the-foxcatcher-murder-425-body-image-1416239492.jpg' id='4437'] Du Pont in August, 1967. AP Photo

Du Pont's madness pops up all throughout the trial records, asserted by both the prosecution and defense. Relatives said that he'd started to claim he was the modern American Dalai Lama and would only answer to that title. Security personnel said he acted with an uncharacteristic spontaneity, making the murder seem like an unplanned, paranoid climax. 

At his first hearing, he was deemed unfit to stand for trial and had to wait for months to get his head straightened out. He rarely spoke to Bergstrom and never testified himself. In the end, he was charged with third-degree murder, a ruling mitigated by the conviction that something was seriously wrong with du Pont. We'll never really know the full extent of what was wrong, though, because du Pont died in 2010, quietly living out life as a clerk in the prison chapel, dreaming of a return to Foxcatcher. But tellingly, he was buried in a red wrestling singlet with his awards. He left  20 percent of his estate to his own Eurasian Pacific Wildlife Foundation and 80 percent to a Bulgarian wrestler and his family. This enraged du Pont heirs who had a claim on the cash.

Viewed from 1984 to 1988, du Pont looks like he does in the film: A deeply disturbed man bent on control as a means of massaging his own ego, who fails to comprehend humanity and real social interaction. H owever, in the context of du Pont's whole life, who he was and his motives for murder may have been even richer and much more complex than what is seen on screen. Yes, his story is about failed bids for control, mommy issues, and the corrosive power of wealth. But beyond that, the real man's story involves that vast gulf between the desire and ability to connect with people that bedevils some people suffering from mental illness. "Everybody knew [that something was wrong]," says Bergstrom. "And nobody did anything about it. Nobody tried to get him help."

Follow Mark Hay on Tw​itter.

In this episode of Rule Britannia, VICE meets "Saky's Finest"—a gang of young reoffenders based on the Saxton Road estate in Abingdon, Oxfordshire. Locked into a cycle of reoffending and going to jail, some of these guys have spent so much of their childhood in Young Offenders' Institutes that they'd rather be back inside than in the real world.

20-year-old Coopz is looking at a serious stretch in adult jail after being recently bailed in connection with the attempted robbery of a local shop. Ross and Nathan, who at 27 are considered the "olders" of the group, both try to stop him from going down the same paths they did.

We also meet Pitts, arguably the most institutionalized member of the gang, who has only seen the outside world for a matter of weeks in the last six years. Now out, he just wants to have fun, get pissed and fight—as well as settling an old score with Reggie, the local store owner, for something that happened 12 years ago.

​

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All photos by  Liezl Estipona

In the Hidden Language, Nat Towsen interviews an insider of a particular subculture in order to examine the terms and phrases created by that subculture to serve its own needs. This is language innate to an insider and incomprehensible, if not invisible, to an outsider.

Matt Besser takes a deep breath and pauses for a long time before answering my question. As a co-founder of the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, which recently released their long-awaited Upright Citizens Brigade Comedy Improvisation Manual, he's spent much of the last decade "codifying the language of improv," and he's not about to misspeak.

The art of improv has come a long way from its roots in warm-up exercises for actors and parlor games for drunk socialites. Over the past few decades, a new style known as "Long Form" has emerged, which sheds the trappings of the old "Short Form" and allows for a far more diverse and inventive performance. (This not to be confused with "a longform," which you'll see defined separately in the glossary below.)

Besser was a student of the legendary improv guru Del Close, who experimented with the long form, never had a fixed curriculum, and rarely wrote anything down. "The biggest thing we've known since Chicago," he explains, "was [that] there are certain terms that different teachers and schools use [to mean different] things. That's why learning improv was more difficult than it needed to be."

Besser took the time to speak to me about the difficulties posed by solidifying the vocabulary of an emerging art form and elucidated a few important terms in the greatest possible brevity.

GLOSSARY OF TERMS 
Brackets denote paraphrasing by the author. Italics denote a quotation from the Upright Citizens Brigade Comedy Improvisation Manual. All other text is directly quoted from Besser.

Short Form: n. [A form of improvisation reliant on] "games" with predetermined rules, i.e. Whose Line Is It Anyway?

Long Form: n. [A form of improvisation in which] the game of the scene is not predetermined. ​There are two different kinds of long form: premise and organic 

Premise Improv: n. [A style of long form in which] we get a suggestion, then we do an opening to generate ideas. An idea is equal to a premise, [with] which I can just jump out onstage after the opening and, in one line, tell my partner who we are, where we are, what we're doing. And I also present an unusual thing, if our opening was successful. You're not yes-anding at all. You skipped that whole process. You [don't] need to build a who/what/where [because you] said it all in your first line.

Organic Improv: n. [A style of long form in which] you get a word and you start yes-anding. You build a base reality. Somehow, an unusual [detail] will usually rear its head. Once you see the unusual thing, you'll go "if, then," and you have a game.

Longform: n. A performance of long-form improvisation... any structure that incorporates two or more scenes into one performance derived from a single suggestion.

Suggestion: n. Any piece of information provided by the audience to inspire improvisation.

Opening: n. Group process used to generate information from the suggestion before launching scenes.

Initiation: n. The first line of an improv scene.

Yes And: v. [Agreeing on] how we're building the scene right now. You're not literally saying "yes." You're more saying yes to what the improviser is putting forward to you... If someone said "I'm gonna jump off the roof of the building," you wouldn't say, "Yes, and I will call the police." No, you don't want them to jump off the building. So the improviser wants you to say, "No, don't jump off the building!" That's the "agreement" he wants from you.

Agreement: n. Agreeing with the intent of the [other] improviser, not the intent of [their] character.

Denial: n. [Antonym of] agreement. 

Status: n. [The relative power or rank of a character in a scene.] The way you react to a stimulus is tempered by your status in reaction to the status of others and the environment.

Pulling the Rug Out: n. A subset of denial, [in which an improviser] denies the base reality for a laugh.

Base Reality: n. [In an improv scene, the answers to the questions:] Who are we? Where are we? What are we doing? 
​ Etymology: We called it a "base reality" to get across that we're grounded. This is the ground level of the house, a sturdy foundation that we can build a house on.

The Game: n. The funny thing, the one unusual detail. If you look at any sketch show—SNL, Kids in the Hall, Monty Python—you can boil down every sketch to one unusual thing.

If, Then: abbrev. If this is true, what else is true?

Premise: n. The starting point of the game. 

Half-Idea: n. [A partially formed concept presented by an improviser, essentially saying,] "I'm not sure that I can explain why this part of the monologue or opening is funny. But I know that it is, and we all laughed, there's something about it. So let's start in that area and yes and a little bit, and I bet we'll discover very quickly what's funny about it."

Harold: n. The first long-form structure that Del Close came up with, [consisting of three rounds of three scenes with the same three sets of scene partners, as well as two all-cast "group scenes" in between rounds]. 

The third round of scenes are given the opportunity to connect with each other: Does what is essentially funny about this character/scene fit and play into what's essentially funny about this other character/scene? Don't force the connections, they will organically be there. It almost never perfectly happens. But that's why we pursue the perfect Harold.

Group Mind: n. Getting an ensemble on the same page. 

Listen: v. Not just to hear the words coming out of [a scene partner's] mouth, but to hear the intent and the comedy that they show, and to help them build on that comedy together. 

Playing at the Top of Your Intelligence: v. To be committed to playing it as real as possible. [To] commit to grounding your character in reality as best as possible. To the best of your intelligence, to be as real in that character as you can possibly be.

THE TAKEAWAY

Anyone taking a intro-level improv class will tell you that they've started to view their entire life through the parameters of an improv scene. Pay attention and you'll notice that good conversationalists frequently yes and, while bad conversationalists deny. People who pull the rug out are only interested in themselves, and probably not worth talking to. Focus on game, and you'll start to see games everywhere: sketch comedy, TV commercials, sci-fi movies, even in conversations. And once you start thinking about status, you won't be able to stop evaluating your status in ever interaction. Sorry.

FURTHER READING 

For a far more thorough explanation of these terms and many others, read the  ​Upright Citizens Brigade Comedy Improvisation Manual. To see these techniques in action attend a show at the ​Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre (or listen to Besser's podcast, ​Improv4Humans). To go even further, take a class.

Follow Nat Towsen on ​Twitter.

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Gaming parents, I feel your pain. It's pissing down outside and your kid's toying with some LEGO, or scribbling over an important final demand with permanent marker, or realizing a magnificent crayon landscape on your recently painted hallway wall. 

Point is: They're occupied, safe, content, and mostly quiet. You figure you've got 30 minutes, maybe, for some PlayStation. But however engrossed they are in their chosen mischief, you know that as soon as you fire up the engine of your hard-earned GTA V Grotti Cheetah, junior is going to drop what they're doing and sit on the sofa beside you.

"Dad..."

"Yes, son?"

"What is this game about? That's a cool car. Is it a grown-up game? Can I play it?"

"No, son. This is daddy's game. You can play... Wait, what can you play?"

This is a problem. If you're a Nintendo-loyal sort, chances are you've a range of games suitable for all ages. As it happens, Son Number One and I enjoy a few laps of Mario Kart 8 from time to time, and he's partial to some Nintendo Land, too. But let's face it—there aren't too many Wii U owners out there, and the range of quality software available for the market-leading PlayStation 4 is dominated by mature-audiences-only affairs. 

Browse Metacritic's highest-rated PS4 reviews of the last 90 days and many involve copious amounts of bloody murder: Diablo III: Ultimate Evil Edition, Metro Redux, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. Sure, the latter's based on The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but it features a distinct dearth of cuddly Hobbits, focusing instead on the decapitation of ugly orcs.

You're right: There is always Minecraft. But the boy's got his LEGO already—I know, because bricks find their way to precisely where my feet will fall with unfaltering frequency. In terms of something that's actually bearable for a grown adult, but also legitimately family friendly, the options are hardly abundant. But then, there's the Old Faithful of Sony Family Games—a caring, sharing sort of title that's been absent from the new-gen ranks this past year. It's probably about time, then, that Sackboy put in an appearance.

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Sackboy: "Still the star of the show."

LittleBigPlanet 3, as its title eloquently conveys, is the third main home release in the Sackboy-starring series that's also sprung its share of side-affair distractions: a couple of portable versions for the PSP and Vita, the PS3-exclusive LittleBigPlanet Karting, and the Move tech-compatible Sackboy's Prehistoric Moves. Just out to coincide with LBP3 is Run Sackboy! Run!, an iOS endless runner. There's quite the franchise forming for the Media Molecule-created character, extending to (via a swift survey of Amazon) toys and t-shirts, backpacks and espresso mug sets. It's a very British success story supported by one of the biggest tech companies in the world.

But Media Molecule, the Sony-owned Guildford studio that birthed LittleBigPlanet with the inspired 2008 original, isn't on development duties for LBP3. That honor went the way of Sumo Digital, an indie team based in Sheffield whose previous credits include the excellent home port of OutRun 2 for the first Xbox, Doctor Who: The Adventure Games for the BBC and, most recently, the 360 version of Microsoft-exclusive racer Forza Horizon 2. They've limited LBP experience, having worked on LittleBigPlanet 2's Cross-Controller Pack in 2012, but taking on a main game in the series, for its new-gen debut, is one hell of a leap into the unknown.

Yet, after just ten minutes with LBP3, it's clear that Sumo has retained all of the charm that characterized previous iterations. And, quite brilliantly, they've actually improved upon the base experience by tweaking historically floaty controls and giving the game's Sackboy hero a new set of contraptions to aid his (or her—as always with LBP, your avatar is effectively a doll to be dressed however you see fit, with whatever new costume elements you find within the game) progression through a litany of inventive levels packed full of physics puzzles.

At its root, LBP3 is just that: a puzzle-platformer in the classic Mario mould, where traversal from left-to-right, overcoming obstacles, generally results in the completion of any given stage. But there's much more to it than that: since day one, the LBP games have allowed players to create and share their own levels, built using in-game tools. This is why the series carries the motto, "Play, Create, Share," and it's something Sumo has assured is as present as ever for LBP3.

"We build the story mode of the game with all the same tools we give you to use at home," says the game's lead designer Jonathan Christian, or JC to his colleagues. "We quickly find out that if they offer us possibilities and get the creative juices flowing, we know that the community at large will dig them. That's the acid test: If they excite us, they'll excite the community."

Prior to the launch of LBP3, earlier entries in the series have generated some nine million user-created levels, all of which will be open to those picking up LBP3 as their first game of its kind. Among those are some seriously inventive designs, and Sumo actually turned to the user base for LBP when they started work on their own addition to the franchise. "We hired ten of the top community creators, so we got some really good guys in," says JC. "They were great at building levels—but also great for coming up with new tools. They always had ideas."
​

The E3 2014 announcement trailer for LittleBigPlanet 3

New to LBP3 are Portal-style teleportation panels that maintain Sackboy's momentum as he falls into them, a blow-and-suck wind gun called the Pumpinator (which does sound a lot like a sex toy) and a Hook Hat that allows our diminutive hero to ride rails through certain sections, a little like a cuter version of Booker DeWitt in BioShock Infinite. Which is all great, but the biggest change compared to what's come before this third game is the introduction of three new characters, whose abilities have allowed Sumo to get even more creative with their level design. 

Toggle is two characters in one, who can change form to be small and light, all the way up to fat and heavy; Oddsock is a four-legged dog-like sock puppet thing, used for speed and agility; and Swoop is a bird who can, you guessed it, fly. Each can be experienced solo, or four of you can get together for simultaneous co-op play.

"Sackboy is still the star of the show," says JC. "In the story mode, you'll play as him more than anyone else, and we've taken great care to tighten his controls up. He plays better than ever, I think. But the new characters are cool, as they're all focused around gameplay—they're not additions just for the sake of it. It's all about what players can get out of it, and, as a creator, what these new characters can do for me. So when you create a level as Oddsock, that's a complete paradigm shift, compared to a Sackboy level."

"Visually, each character is very distinct," he continues. "Immediately, the game looks different, while maintaining the LBP charm—that handcrafted feel. It's a new take on it. And it's always about gameplay, everything we do. And if something feels good, however bad it might look to begin with, you know that when you dress that up with great visuals you're going to have something."

LBP3 definitely has something—and that's the all-important all-ages appeal, which comes without sacrificing any enjoyment from an adult perspective. Like its forerunners, this is a game that can be played with your kid next to you, as you discuss ways to best get through seemingly locked gates, and how to reach what appears to be an impossible pathway. It's genuinely funny, and consistently charming, with voice work from the returning Stephen Fry and his one-time partner in comedy Hugh Laurie. It's also frequently testing, without ever abandoning common sense. "We never drown you in technical terms," says JC. "It should always feel like a playful thing, like a tangible thing. Keep it simple, logical and tactile, and then you know your tool's a good one."

Personally, I don't have all that time right now for the game's creation tools (although I'm happy they're there, in case I do). What matters to me is that Sumo has continued in the manner of Media Molecule by shaping an experience that maintains Son Number One's assertion that, actually dad, Sackboy is way cooler than Mario. And nobody ever said that about Knack.

LittleBigPlanet 3 is released for PlayStation 4 (and PS3) on the 28th of November (in the UK—other regions vary).

Follow Mike Diver on ​Twitter. 

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A Vanity Fair shoot for a debutants' ball. Image via Wikimedia Commons

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

The staff of Tatler's UK office have had a BBC2 camera crew following them around, fly-on-the-wall-style, for six months. If you're not familiar with Tatler, the magazine has ​previously been described by VICE as "utterly insane," "Facebook for the elites," and "the NME for people whose horses studied at the Sorbonne." It also has a teenage iteration that puts on ​parties like this and occasionally ​gets in trouble for telling posh schoolgirls to flirt with their friends' dads.

Inside Tatler, the BBC's show, is a window into a world most of us will never know or experience. But it's also a world that's changing. Aristocratic fortunes are declining. Wealthy people come from all walks of life now. The fortunes of the glossy magazine industry are poised precariously. But even so, Tatler remains the bible for the blow-dried otherworld of Chelsea townhouse living. It's still—even if its readership isn't what it once was—catering to a devoted audience so specific, it's basically a zine.

I watched an advance preview of the show to see what its main messages are.

POSH PEOPLE ARE NUTS
Deeply, profoundly mad. And not in that deeply overrated "British Eccentric" Uncle Monty way, either. There are so many different flavors of insanity on show in the series that you might want to hire a NOS gun to complement the journey. Editor Kate Reardon, a former society gal who gamely gets involved in whatever the month's Big Topic is—whether it's debating whether or not whippets really are the new pugs or genuinely goosebump-ing over a paper doll of Kate Middleton—is deeply committed to the Tatler universe, even if it doesn't make much sense to anyone outside it. In parts, Inside Tatler genuinely feels like a benign acid trip.

BEING POSH IS EVEN POSHER THAN YOU THINK IT IS
Sorry, but if you're the son of a doctor or even "a bit foreign" you're not really part of the gang. Introducing Tatler's permanently bemused commissioning editor ​Matthew Bell who, by the layperson, might be mistaken for the poshest man alive; a kind of smart-shirted, scruffy-haired real doll operated by Richard Curtis. But in the show, Bell explains that his parents are professionals and that he's "half foreign," so, in fact, he isn't really posh at all. Yes, that's right: Even having a loaded family, going to boarding school, dressing up as a man from a Gainsborough painting for a fancy dress party, and working for Tatler doesn't guarantee you a place on the upper-class guest list.

THERE IS, APPARENTLY, A CLASSY WAY TO DO UPSKIRT SHOTS
The trick is employing debutants' delight ​Hugo Burnand—Tatler's official snapper, mellifluous of voice and lustrous of hair. Nobody else in the world could bellow: "Oh yes, come on, LOVE IT, skirt blowing up, Marilyn Monroe moment" to a woman at a society event without immediately being wrestled to the ground by armed police. Burnand took ​the official Royal Wedding pictures and has been described by the Daily Mail as "Charles and Camilla's favourite society photographer." Born in Cannes, Burnand says, "as one person put it, I've been gazing at stars ever since," and Jesus Christ, you have never seen a man enjoy his job—even if much of it involves being mobbed by sour, Krug-breathed posh ladies desperate to have their picture taken at whatever envelope opening event they've made themselves up for that night—like he does.

PEARS MUST BE EATEN WITH SPOONS
Bite? What, with your teeth? No, you prole; that's not what teeth are for! Better dispense with those kinds of thoughts if you ever hope of getting a job at Tatler. All staff are given a copy of Debrett's Etiquette and Modern Manners. This indispensable guide includes instructions on how to properly air-kiss (no saliva), eat a pear (with a spoon) and "do" caviar (from the fatty pad in between the thumb and forefinger on your left hand, alright?). How embarrassing to think, you've been eating caviar so gauchely all these years.

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Christopher Biggins. Image via  Wikimedia Commons

CHRISTOPHER BIGGINS IS A LEGIT VIP GUEST AND JILLY COOPER IS STILL A LEGEND
Polo has to be one of the most curious stalwarts of upper-class culture. But horses aside, the real action is to be found backstage at the Cartier Cup, sponsored by the French jeweler (which, as we learn from some careful wording in the show, is "popular with foreigners"). You cannot begin to fathom the panic the events team must have been in, freaking out that the VIP tent was going to be empty, when they decided to stick Biggins on the guest list. At the same event is the UK's favorite jodhpur-ripping smut-peddler, Jilly Cooper, who is still alive enough to tell us that there's "too much posh-bashing" flying around at the moment.

TATLER MIGHT BE THE MOST PUNK OFFICE IN BRITAIN
Cooper is right, of course. Being posh is wildly unpopular these days. How counterculture is it, then, to go into the office each day and dedicate your every waking work hour to celebrating Sloane Rangers? They even had an office miniature dachshund called Alan, for fuck's sake, until the poor sod​ was accidentally decapitated in the revolving door of Vogue House. With Tatler's relatively small circulation (just over ​160,000 per month), you could almost liken it to the punk zines of the 70s; something made for an esoteric readership with absurdly specific reference points that are relevant only to them. Things like the ​"Tatler list" are so relentlessly, progressively niche, that in a way you have to admire their zeal.

PRIVATE SCHOOL KIDS ARE DROWNING IN HORMONES
In the show, the girls who attend the Tatler Teen Ball at the Hurlingham Club—all gangly limbs, bad posture, and massive hair—quivered with excitement at being introduced to a BOY. Yes: a real-life manchild with acne and, almost certainly, a mobile forcefield of Lynx Java. I know this feeling all too well, which is rooted in a world of itchy grey kilts and endless double-Latin with only the window cleaner to gawp at. See, I went to a similarly silly all-girls school in the heart of Sloane Ranger territory and, in posh-girl prison, boys are the most exciting thing you can imagine. They are an indecipherable, near-invisible promise most of the time, which is why Inside Tatler is full of footage of teenage girls really really going for it with boys they've just met and why one teenage boy – and probable future cabinet minister – says: "Yah, I got lucky" at a ball.

With Tatler's relatively small circulation, you could almost liken it to the punk zines of the 70s – made for an esoteric readership with absurdly specific reference points relevant only to them

NO, POSH PEOPLE REALLY ARE FUCKING NUTS
Tatler's is a world of dukes in moth-eaten jumpers who live in graffiti-covered crumbling castles. It's Chelsea-bound women in skintight J-Brand leather trousers who defy age and own singing stuffed antler heads. It's people gesturing around their country piles, saying, "We were here in 1163," with (genuinely) no idea of how that might sound. It's side-saddle riding competitions that have women yelling: "Yaaahhhh! WOOOOOO! YAAAAAAH!" and bellowing to one another about needing A BLOODY MASSIVE DRINK afterwards.

Tatler caters to a world so alien, yet so familiar. We all have our ideas about what "posh" means, but, by watching this documentary, you get an insight into just how deep the rabbit warren of these horse-y, rah-ing, champagne-soaked truths go.

YOU ONLY NEED ONE THING TO GATECRASH A PARTY
A champagne glass. Keep it in your pocket and whip it out once you're outside the venue, and people will assume you were already a guest. That is, apparently, it.

RUSSIANS ARE THE NEXT GENERATION OF UPPER-CLASS BRITISH LUNATICS
The whole three-part show is geared towards the idea that poshness is having to adapt and change. Mags like Tatler can't survive much longer if the upper-class is just landed gentry. Which is why part three of Inside Tatler looks at Russian Tatler. Society-spotting over here may still be absurd, but we need to keep an eye on the Russians because they're even more excessive and status-obsessed. Posh Brits may be a dying breed – for better or worse – but Eastern aristocracy is coming for the crown.

The first episode of Posh People: Inside Tatler airs on BBC2, Monday November 24th.

Follow Helen Nianias on ​Twitter.

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Image by ​Sam Taylor

This post originally appeared in VICE UK

"Nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger! Paki, paki, paki, paki, paki!" The slurs ricocheted off Roy "Chubby" Brown's tongue. "Who said I'm not allowed to say those words?"

I remember someone at school asking me if brown people can blush. The answer is yes. The audience laughed, cheering Chubby's taboo-exploding verbal dexterity while I glowed terracotta-red, radiating hot embarrassment across the aisles and rows.

I bought a ticket to see Chubbs for a few reasons that I can't quite prioritize. One of them was the comedian Andrew Lawrence. He recently took to Facebook ​to express his discontent with the overrepresentation of "ethnic" comedians, liberal comedians, and "women-posing-as-comedians" on the BBC. Everything he said was wrong (if only the BBC was left-wing), but he did make me think about the ideologies behind my favorite stand-ups. 

I watch a lot of comedians, but they're usually politically correct, metropolitan elitists like Stewart Lee or Josie Long. I was being parochial. I needed to seek out their antithesis, to ride the dialectic express all the way to racistville. The answer? Taking a train to Epsom to see the UK's most popular and controversial right-wing comedian: Roy "Chubby" Brown.

This is the kind of thing you can expect to see at Roy "Chubby" Brown gig

After quite an uncomfortable warm-up act—a 45-year-old woman in fishnet tights doing the splits and singing "Sex on Fire"—Chubbs arrived on stage to "Gangnam Style," while all those familiar with his catchphrase chanted: "You fat bastard! You fat bastard!" 

He looked quite sweet in his trademark outfit: technicolor jacket and trousers, flying cap with raised goggles, bright white socks, brown loafers, and a glowing fake tan. Like a steampunk children's entertainer. Coming on to Psy's big hit seemed like a strange capitulation to a culture he usually derides, but then he reached the microphone: "Turn that slitty-eyed shite off, you fucking cunt!" 

The music stopped and the laughter began.

He went straight into a routine about Ebola (which he called, perhaps on purpose, "Eboli"). "We've got AIDS from West Africa; we've got malaria from West Africa; we've got pneumonia from West Africa and now we've got Eboli. Apparently the Africans got it because they were eating bats. No wonder them niggers have got big lips!"

The one gasp in the audience was offset by lots of laughter. "I know what I'm saying's controversial, but if the time comes when we can't poke fun at each other, then it's a fucking sad time," he added, in what must be the worst defense of free speech ever half-assed into existence.

So why did I really buy a ticket to watch this fat, old white supremacist? Aren't I now guilty of colluding with him? Yes. But there are other considerations. Firstly, Chubby can be situated in an important comic tradition that I'm not really familiar with. We can trace his act through working men's club comedians (Bernard Manning, Les Dawson) to early 20th century performers like Max Miller (whose technicolor suit Chubby's is a nod to), all the way to the Victorian music hall, which was the era's dominant institution of popular entertainment. 

This continuum was England's only idea of stand-up until the 80s, when comedians like Alexei Sayle and Ben Elton provided a radical rupture: "Alternative Comedy." Cultural historians like Andy Medhurst think Chubby is the most significant remnant of that former trend: a boisterous and offensive comedy, typically for a working class audience. This makes Chubby interesting for someone interested in comedy. Putting him in context doesn't excuse his jokes, but helps us understand their source.

Secondly, Chubby is politically relevant because his act can be read as a rally against some key components of globalisation and postmodernism, whose societies are increasingly fractured and atomised. For Stewart Lee, observations that an audience can relate to are treated with scorn (or are highly esoteric), but Chubby sketches a diagram of communal Englishness, full of Wetherspoon's, ASDA and copies of The Sun. He's been playing to over 150,000 people a year for three decades, but you'll never see him on the BBC; in this sense, he is genuinely subversive. It's said he articulates his audience's political disenchantment, with ​Chubbs himself pointing out that his loyal fans are "rough people from rough houses on rough estates" who know that "[he] was just like them, except [he] struck lucky and found a way out." (Chubby—real name Royston Vasey—grew up on a council estate in the bleak industrial town of Grangetown, Yorkshire.)

Thirdly, I thought it would be funny to watch an old racist man make old racist jokes in my presence. And that's probably the honest reason: a mix of curious voyeurism and ironic masochism.

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Screen shot ​via

But Chubby operates on a level of irony, too. His worst jokes rely on playing two imaginary worlds off against each other: the MailOnline world of swan-murdering Muslims and the equally fantastical world of a culturally united, rule-abiding, pre-immigration England. But he knows the tabloids are full of fiction. By exploiting their universe of exaggerated narratives, he taunts his audience with a romantic projection of what England was. 

One of the lowest moments from the gig: "Did you read in the papers about those Muslims burning poppies on Remembrance Day? Sick cunts. The guy who does my gardening's a Muslim, and he observed the two-minute silence. After I whacked him with a fucking shovel!" 

It's not even a joke, just an image: a scene of slave-plantation-style brutalism. It's basically an incitement to racial violence. And it got a round of applause.

Chubby's measured reflections on Islam 

After about half an hour in, I began to worry. He'd covered "niggers," "chinks," and "fucking Muslims," but not us Indians. When was it coming? Maybe he liked us after all? Was he leaving us out because we're hardworking and contribute so much to British cultural life, with doctors and cuisine and Sanjeev Bhaskar? 

Then: "There's an old man who lives alone next door, and we were a bit worried because we hadn't see him since Christmas. The postman came round and said there was a fucking awful smell coming from his letterbox. So I called the police. They knocked down his door and our worst fears were confirmed. He'd gone away: Pakis had moved in!" 

There was cheering and applauding. Big bald men were convulsing with laughter, their eyes glistening in the lights.

As both a Paki and somebody's neighbor, I should have found that one unpalatable. The guy to my left—who'd been honking with laughter throughout like some kind of racist goose—glanced to gauge my reaction. I don't remember what it was. Lord knows there's been times when I've walked into the kitchen while my mum's been cooking and confused the aroma of garam masala and garlic for the putrefying stench of an old man's corpse. But I still couldn't relate, nor did I feel offended.

Once the transgressive thrill of hearing "Paki" and "nigger" had dulled, even his fans started to appear fidgety and bored.

His fans seemed like they'd be normal people after they were done sitting through his shower of comical bigotry. But I still couldn't build up the courage to ask them why they were there. There was an irreducible separation between us—determined by race, obviously, but also class. Yes, I'm an ethnic minority, but I also went to private school (cf: hard-working Indians) and a good university and have a nice job. My race and class put me outside Chubby and his fans' remit, but while the former subjugates me, the latter privileges me: hence my nervous laughter and fluctuating levels of offense.

The show dragged on for an hour and a half, littered with self-deprecating jokes about his weight, his son being gay, his daughter getting pregnant, his wife "once having long legs and bit tits" and now having "big legs and long tits." But once the transgressive thrill of hearing "Paki" and "nigger" had dulled, even his fans started to appear fidgety and bored.

Towards the end a girl got up from the front row and went to the toilet. "I'll be seeing you later, split-arse," said Chubby, cheekily, and everyone laughed. After an odd rendition of "The Entertainer" on the piano (no jokes, just a recital), he started a serious bit about his diagnosis of throat cancer ten years ago: "We all know someone who's been affected by cancer..." But the crowd interrupted him, jeering and laughing. The split-arse had come back to her seat! When Chubby realized they weren't laughing at his cancer but encouraging him to sling more insults at the woman, he did so. But there was a brief moment—and I saw it on his quivering, bulbous face—when he was really confused. They're not laughing at your cancer, are they, Chubbs? he must have thought. In that moment of vulnerability, you could feel the tragedy of his charade.

"Britain's Rudest Comedian"

Royston Vasey started making offensive jokes 30 years ago because his manager told him he'd sell more tickets if he ditched his clean act. His controversial views didn't come from any burning grievances, but were a fashion, a way to distinguish himself, like his multi-coloured costume. There's sometimes a faltering confidence—which you see in the Channel 4 documentary on him, Britain's Rudest Comedian—that belies the intensity of his racism. It's as if he feels his political jokes have got out of hand, that he's no longer a comedian but a mass therapist for the disillusioned. A telling moment from the documentary: "I've been doing this material for 34 years. It's too late to stop now."

Given that I'm a culturally confused mess paying to have my dignity affronted by a 69-year-old man, and the man in question is a tragicomic figure unable to appreciate the seriousness of his ideas, the only unknown quantity left is Chubby's audience. It'd probably be neat and journalistic of me to draw some parallel with UKIP voters—in fact, one bit where Chubbs downed a pint of ale while the crowd cheered was pure Farage—but it feels inappropriate. To extrapolate any generalizations about the "ordinary working people" of England from Chubby's audience would require a condescending leap of logic.

At the same time, denying the importance (and even existence) of a violently disengaged section of white, working-class England who find catharsis in Chubby's words would be self-defeating—the kind of denial that's gutting the Labour party's voting base and marooning all political parties in general. These people exist and they don't self-identify as racist. So you're left with an insoluble situation: a society lacerated by divisions in class and culture that remain unarticulated, creating a silence that makes them run deeper. For all his flaws (racism, misogyny, homophobia, etc, etc, etc.), at least Roy "Chubby" Brown makes society's contradictions painfully and exaggeratedly visible. Several times a week. In sold-out theaters across the country. To a darkened mass of big, tough men who laugh so hard they sound like they're crying.

I quickly darted out while they were giving Chubby a standing ovation. I went to my fucking Paki parents' house that night. We ate a fucking smelly curry. 

Photos by the author

Thanks to reality TV and the public's insatiable appetite for watching people who are just barely famous embarrass themselves in public, D-list celebrities have become a staple of American culture. They're lucky enough to be able to sell nearly anything they do—straight-to-TV movies, product endorsements, sex tapes—to the adoring, or at least morbidly curious, masses. But what about their animal counterparts? Has anyone been keeping tabs on Tank, the rhino with the domineering stage presence in the Blue Cross/Blue Shield commercials? 

In September, a local news station in South Carolina ran a  piece on Hollywild Animal Park, a family-run nonprofit that houses aging and retired celebrity nonhuman animals. The park is currently under investigation by the US Department of Agriculture, which cited it for 15 violations back in February. According to the Greenville News, visiting inspectors found "rotten carcasses, animals held in unsafe enclosures, a repeated lack of veterinary care, and other violations."

The Capuchin monkey who starred in The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking wearing a chain belt

The park's executive director and owner David Meeks told the paper, "We probably had the most deficiencies we've ever had." After that wake-up call, these caretakers of the stars managed to clean up their act; they had no violations from April until June. During their most recent inspection in July, however, they received four citations for accessorizing a capuchin monkey with a chain belt.

"Animal Parks are a work in progress. Hollywild continues to grow and develop better habitats for the animals and better educational opportunities for the public," Meeks declares on the  Holly​wild website. The park boasts a collection of "over 500 animals from around the world," a large community to monitor and maintain to be sure—but how much "development" does it take to avoid having animal corpses stinking in the sun? 

Recently I paid a little visit to the star-studded park to see how they treating the celebs on the animal world, and if they had improved their level of care.

The parking lot was a cleared acre of red clay, an inauspicious start to a star-studded tour. I paid $12 and looked for the distinguished members of the marginally famous community, all clearly marked by Hollywild plaques that mimic the star tiles on Hollywood's Walk of Fame.

Past an empty zebra enclosure, two camels hung out in front of a mural depicting Native American life on the prairie. An electric fence prevented the stars from getting too close to the common people. "Wow no plaque. Must not have done anything too cool," a passing tourist remarked. She was right.

The park encourages a high level of human-animal interaction. Twenty-five-cent vending machines filled with corn kernels were everywhere. This is the stuff people were feeding to the park's bears, gorillas, tigers, and seemingly endless supply of goats. This didn't make for charming scenes when I was there: I saw a kid who must have been around seven screaming, "Eat up stupid!" as he flung a handful of edible shrapnel at an eager-looking deer he called "Rudolph."

"Someone should get that kid outta here," a woman said aloud to no one. She then asked me to turn the vending machine lever for her on account of her "bum hand."

No one really knew which animals they were feeding, either. Some enclosures were mislabeled and some had no plaque at all. A gorilla was referred to as a Hamadryas baboon and a Siberian tiger was napping in what was apparently supposed to be a lion's den.

A safari ride was included with admission, so I assumed my place in line and waited for my turn. A couple park-goers forked over $6 for a plastic shopping bag filled with old hamburger buns and stale slices of Wonderbread that would be used to feed the exotic animals we were about to encounter.

Our ride finally pulled up—a rusted school bus with a cracked windshield—and we got in. The safari guide opened two fences and we made our way into the daring landscape: a cow pasture, where domesticated creatures of the wild approached to beg for dumpster bread.

We soon left those beggars and approached a shanty that supposedly houses Tank, the one-great rhinoceros heir to Blue Cross/Blue Shield fame, but he was nowhere to be seen.

As we made our way back to the gates, an emu managed to slip right past our guide and out through the gate. "Eh, animals escape sometimes," he said.

So, obviously, Hollywild is not a great place for either animal performers or the tourists who want to burn a few hours contemplating the cruel, arbitrary nature of fame and life itself. I don't know if having the chimpanzee from the Banker's Trust commercials begging me for freeze-dried handouts is a violation of any law or regulation; all I can tell you is that it doesn't feel good to watch.

Follow Meg Mankins on ​Twitter.

​ Following unarmed teenager Michael Brown's death in Ferguson, Missouri, this summer, general mayhem quickly took hold. Minor looting, clashes with police, and the use of non-lethal weapons like tear gas, flash bang grenades, and bean bag rounds ruled the day. On the protesters' side, there was an air of decentralized chaos—which makes sense considering they were reacting to a fluid situation in which very little was known for certain.

But having had months to prepare for what will almost surely be the disappointing announcement—expected any day now—that officer Darren Wilson will not be indicted by a grand jury for killing Brown, the response on the part of protesters has again been something of a muddle.

"You have caught on very quickly to the foolishness in Ferguson," the Reverend Henry Logan, a Ferguson-based pastor, wrote me last week. "Everyone wants to lead, but not too many are taking instructions. Currently there are many [activist] groups doing their thing, but not one centralized voice."

Still, Deray McKesson, who runs an online newsletter keeping Ferguson citizens and protesters alike abreast of the situation, has emerged as a leading voice. McKesson, who  subscribes to what has become the conventional wisdom that Wilson won't be indicted, has used his online footprint to direct protesters toward resources on his website, NoIndic​tment.org. Like Antonio French, the St. Louis alderman who has been vocally supportive of Heal STL, a community action group for which Logan works, McKesson promotes nonviolent means of civil dissent.

"Nonviolent direct action is a necessary, vital, and wholly American tool in forcing meaningful,permanent, transformative action from our leaders and fellow citizens," McKesson wrote in an ope​n letter last month.

As for the loosely organized nature of the protest movement as a whole, McKesson had this to say:

"The strength of this movement is that every participant is able to lead," he wrote me in an email. "The decision-making structures are decentralized, the sense of purpose and solidarity is shared."

More concerning than any lack of sophisticated organization on the part of protesters, however, may be the cover-your-ass language of Missouri Governor Jay Nixon, who declared a ​state of emergency on Monday, giving armed authorities an undetermined amount of leeway to make their own decisions. In announcing the state of emergency, the governor's office named the St. Louis County Police Department as the top agency on the streets of Ferguson proper—with various responsibilities being doled out to St. Louis Metro, the Highway Patrol, and, possibly, the Ferguson Police Department. Not only did Nixon dodge a question about who is ultimately responsible should the protests turn into a cops-versus-citizens shitshow, he couldn't even formulate sentences when asked what, if any, agency had final say over a police response to protests.

Nixon's response, according to the Guardian's Jon Swaine, ​was as follows:

"It, uh, clearly ... I mean, I, uh... [pause] I feel good about the—we worked hard to establish a unified command, to outline responsibilities, and now with the additional assets, provided my order today, of the Missouri National Guard, uh, you know, we have... we've worked through a number of operational issues that, uh, the folks have."

Got that?

The question of who is in charge will be pretty important if things go badly and peaceful protesters and members of the media are again seen becoming targets for police. But Nixon's comments didn't clarify the chain of command, leaving no one person or agency answerable for the potential chaos.

This is more important for the agencies involved than for outside observers. Like the people of Ferguson, who have been the subject of endless news stories, the police bound to be on the streets in the very near future are from the greater community. When the media pulls out, they will remain. If the two sides are ever to reach a sustainable peace, someone—perhaps even Nixon himself—should probably step up and take the blame for clashes.

"I think it is essential that there is one decision-maker, especially given the astonishing number of police being trained along with the National Guard,"  McKesson said. "Leadership means being able to own the impact of decisions. We have not seen this type of leader in St. Louis politics."

One of the only decent moves by the authorities in the immediate aftermath of Brown's death was Nixon's appointment of Captain Ron Johnson of the Missouri State Highway Patrol as head of police operations. Johnson, who is from the area, briefly re​ined in the protesters, at one point leading them in a march on a particularly jubilant night. 

Johnson's appointment in August was seen as a step in the right direction by some, at least. But a week and two days after Brown's death, on a warm Sunday night, police under Joh​nson's direction once again resorted to non-lethal weaponry to disperse crowds. Chief Jon Belmar of the St. Louis County Police Department, in ​explaining such methods, has said the police volleys of tear gas and rubber bullets many protesters were incensed about flew through the air because of "unfortunate criminal activity that span out of the protests."

The protesters currently wishing for a peaceful demonstration on the streets after the grand jury announcement will likely face an environment like the one on that steamy Sunday night in August, when the peacemakers left after midnight, leaving behind a smaller, more vocal, and significantly angrier crowd that seemed intent on confrontation. Again and again, the police asked the remaining protesters to leave, something many screamed was an affront to their constitutional rights. Police have claimed all along that the tear gas canisters screaming through the air that night were used as a last, peacekeeping resort.

If that happens again, the only question will be who the public holds accountable for yet more images of violence in Ferguson—the protesters, or the police?

Follow Justin Glawe on ​Twitter.

[body_image width='640' height='427' path='images/content-images/2014/11/18/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/11/18/' filename='we-really-need-to-talk-about-grief-body-image-1416306596.jpg' id='4612']Pia Interlandi is a a fashion designer who creates decomposing burial shrouds and uses them to promote interaction with dead bodies. Photo by Devika Bilimoria

You'd think losing your mother would be the worst part of losing your mother. But for Annie Broadbent, whose mother succumbed to cancer in 2011, one of the hardest parts of the loss was watching her friends and family become paralyzed by the fear of saying or doing the wrong thing, leaving them unable to support her during the most difficult time of her life.

Because we don't talk about the frightening but ubiquitous experiences of grief and death, we often confront death for the first time only when it finally, inevitably hunts us down. For Broadbent and her support network, her mother's death hit hard. She had been working part time for a music festival and setting up a charity to help new graduates fund creative start-ups, but closed the business following her loss. "I knew there was no way I would be able to go back to it afterwards," she said over email. "In fact, when Mum died, I knew there was no way I could go back to anywhere or anything – everything from that point on had to be new."

"New" for Broadbent meant throwing herself headlong into the UK's burgeoning death acceptance culture, working as a volunteer at a hospice and visiting terminal patients at home in their final months. She is also involved with a child bereavement group and speaks and writes regularly about death at events like the ​Death Cafe, a growing speaking series aimed at destigmatizing death by talking about it. "At Death Cafes people drink tea, eat cake and discuss death," the organizers' slogan goes. "Our aim is to increase awareness of death to help people make the most of their (finite) lives."

For a while, death and the grieving process took over Broadbent's life: "I became entirely identified by my grief and all things death and dying. It was the only way I knew how to make sense of my world," she said. She's training to be a psychotherapist, and has written a book, We Need to Talk About Grief, which came out last month. It's essentially a manual for how to deal with people close to you when death strikes you or them. The writing is unpretentious, the premise simple: "The more we talk about death and grief, and the more people share their experiences of what does and doesn't work for them, the less awkward we will all feel about the whole death thing."

[body_image width='496' height='653' path='images/content-images/2014/11/17/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/11/17/' filename='we-really-need-to-talk-about-grief-body-image-1416237522.jpg' id='4435']

Annie Broadbent. Image courtesy of the author

Widespread cultural death denial means not only do we talk about "the whole death thing," but that we don't want to deal with the grief that death can cause either. Our fear of death, Broadbent argues in her book, extends to a fear of those dealing with death, resulting in an inability to talk to the bereaved. They are too close to mortality, and it scares us. But if we don't confront loss in the first place, we can't help others confront it, ​so we all stay silent, feeling​ terrible. The book is a guide, then, not only for those dealing with a loss, but for those around them.

The book's epigraph quotes Geoffrey Gorer's Death, Grief and Mourning: "At present, death and mourning are treated with much the same prudery as sexual impulses were a century ago." This statement is accurate for now, but things are changing. 

There's a rising tide in popular culture of death acceptance and awareness. ​Caitlin Dou​ghty is the proprietor of death acceptance collective ​Order of the Good Death and something of a celebrity mortician. She recently released Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, a memoir about her work and musings about a life led with an awareness of death. 

The  ​Death Cafe movement of which Broadbent has been a part is growing, putting has around 1,300 events across Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia since it began in 2011. ​Death Salon is another growing series with a similar mandate and emphasis on academic and artist speakers presenting about death.

"At present, death and mourning are treated with much the same prudery as sexual impulses were a century ago."

Just as the internet has united sufferers of mental illness and victims of sexual assault across the globe through hashtags, personal essays and niche research, the bereaved have increasingly found support online. Message boards and support groups allow the grief-stricken to connect with others in mourning, those seeking more specific comforts can visit sites like YoungWidow.org or smaller Facebook communities like ​Daughters Grieving Loss of Mother. 

Opening a space for grief dialogue online makes the internet a wonderful place to explore how grief and death acceptance interact, too. English doctor Kate Granger runs ​a popular blog about her experience with an aggressive terminal cancer, writing with humor and humility about the process of dying. She also encouraged her almost 30,000 Twitter followers to pick a hashtag with which to live-tweet her last moments. Suggestions included #deathbedlive, #onedieseveryminute, and #finalcountdown. She went with the first. 

Morbidity is having a moment. And why shouldn't it? "I just couldn't get my head round the fact that the only certainty we have in life was something that almost everyone avoids," says Broadbent, who added she was as death-averse as anyone else before her mother died. "I was terrified of death and the dying. When I became bereaved I instantly found myself somewhat alienated. I was suddenly someone people couldn't relate to. And I don't believe this is because people hadn't experienced it—I don't think that's necessary to be able to support someone. It's because there hadn't been any space for death and grief in our lives before then—it was still the 'let's not go there' topic of conversation. And suddenly it couldn't be the 'let's not go there' because it was everywhere, for me." Thus, the book.

We Need to Talk About Grief is honest and earnest, a combination that can be jarring about a topic rarely discussed in public, let alone in print. It's a guide to grief for those on the outside looking in, each chapter featuring a different person's story of loss ("John's partner," "Anna's son," "Adam's best friends"), starting with her own. All of the bereaved share their stories and answer the same questions—what can you say and avoid saying? What helped and what didn't?—providing a moving picture of the ways that grief is universal yet deeply personal, something we all experience differently. Reading the blunders of the non-bereaved, I felt a pang of recognition: the time I said "that sucks" in response to someone's grandmother dying. Not calling a friend I knew was having a hard time processing her friend's death, because it "didn't feel like my place."

The book draws the non-bereaved into the death acceptance movement in a gentle, encouraging way. This idea is exciting to Broadbent, who hopes more people will see themselves as part of a death-aware society. "It's amazing. Death acceptance is like the new zeitgeist of people talking about happiness and potential, the [modern version of] corporates sending their employees off to do mindfulness courses. Who'd have thought? I know there is an enormous amount of work to do, but I'm so excited about the way humanity is evolving."

Follow Monica Heisey on ​Twitter.