Watch Dave Chappelle’s Saturday Night Live Monologue: “We’ve Elected an Internet Troll as Our President”

in Comedy, Current Affairs, Life | November 13th, 2016

Dave Chap­pelle host­ed SNL last night and gave us the com­ic relief we need­ed. And also a few heart­felt thoughts about what a Trump pres­i­den­cy means for our imper­iled nation. The most poignant part comes at the very end:

You know, before I go, I do want to say one thing, and this is not a joke. But I think it’s impor­tant that I say this, ’cause they’re march­ing up the street right now as we speak.

A few weeks ago I went to the White House for a par­ty. It was the first time I’ve been there in many years and it was very excit­ing. And BET spon­sored the par­ty, so every­one there was black. And it was beau­ti­ful. I walked through the gates — you know, I’m from Wash­ing­ton, so I saw the bus stop, or the cor­ner where the bus stop used to be, where I used to catch the bus to school and dream about nights like tonight.

It was a real­ly, real­ly beau­ti­ful night. At the end of the night every­one went into the West Wing of the White House and it was a huge par­ty. And every­body in there was black — except for Bradley Coop­er, for some rea­son.

And on the walls were pic­tures of all the pres­i­dents, of the past. Now, I’m not sure if this is true, but to my knowl­edge the first black per­son that was offi­cial­ly invit­ed to the White House was Fred­er­ick Dou­glass. They stopped him at the gates. Abra­ham Lin­coln had to walk out him­self and escort Fred­er­ick Dou­glass into the White House, and it didn’t hap­pen again, as far as I know, until Roo­sevelt was pres­i­dent. Roo­sevelt was pres­i­dent, he had a black guy over and got so much flack from the media that he lit­er­al­ly said, “I will nev­er have a n—-r in this house again.”

I thought about that, and I looked at that black room, and saw all those black faces, and Bradley, and I saw how hap­py every­body was. These peo­ple who had been his­tor­i­cal­ly dis­en­fran­chised. It made me feel hope­ful and it made me feel proud to be an Amer­i­can and it made me very hap­py about the prospects of our coun­try.

So, in that spir­it, I’m wish­ing Don­ald Trump luck. And I’m going to give him a chance, and we, the his­tor­i­cal­ly dis­en­fran­chised, demand that he give us one too. Thank you very much.

You also should­n’t miss Kate McK­in­non’s two-for-one trib­ute to Hillary Clin­ton and Leonard Cohen. What a tal­ent she is.

And for any edu­cat­ed white lib­er­al, this skit will sure­ly hit home:

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Chris Rock Reads James Baldwin’s Still Time­ly Let­ter on Race in Amer­i­ca: “We Can Make What Amer­i­ca Must Become”

Pres­i­dent Obama’s 2016 Stand-Up Com­e­dy Rou­tine

William S. Bur­roughs on Sat­ur­day Night Live, 1981

Alec Bald­win Does a Per­fect Don­ald Trump: Watch SNL’s Spoof of the Trump-Clin­ton Debate

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Patti Smith Reads from Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis, the Love Letter He Wrote From Prison (1897)

in Current Affairs, Literature | November 7th, 2016

Just last month, the U.K. announced the so-called “Tur­ing Law,” a pol­i­cy U.K.’s jus­tice min­is­ter Sam Gyimah describes as par­don­ing “peo­ple con­vict­ed of his­tor­i­cal sex­u­al offens­es who would be inno­cent of any crime today.” The law is named for Alan Tur­ing, the bril­liant gay com­put­er sci­en­tist whose work on A.I. gave the arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence test its name.

Tur­ing was also instru­men­tal in break­ing the Nazi Enig­ma code, and the Min­istry of Justice’s press release iden­ti­fies Tur­ing only as an “Enig­ma code­break­er,” sug­gest­ing that his patri­ot­ic duty may have made him some­thing of an offi­cial mar­tyr; Tur­ing was one thou­sands of men unjust­ly con­vict­ed over many decades. But “does par­don­ing those men unlucky enough to get caught,” asks Jonathan Coop­er, “actu­al­ly address the trau­ma to which the British state sub­ject­ed LGBT peo­ple?”

I couldn’t pos­si­bly say. But the “unlucky ones” who were arrest­ed, con­vict­ed, and impris­oned for crimes of “gross inde­cen­cy” have left often poignant records of their mis­treat­ment, and of the psy­cho­log­i­cal toll it took on them. Tur­ing wrote a very pained let­ter to a friend, Nor­man Rut­ledge, after his con­vic­tion (hear Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch read it here).

Around six­ty years ear­li­er, an even more well-known con­vict, one of the first to be con­vict­ed of “gross inde­cen­cy” laws, Oscar Wilde, left an even more pro­found expres­sion of his emo­tion­al tur­moil. Called De Pro­fundis (from the depths) and addressed to his lover Lord Alfred Dou­glas, the hun­dred-page doc­u­ment, with its lengthy digres­sions and rumi­na­tions, can­not sole­ly be read as a let­ter, although it con­tains a wealth of ten­der and angry expres­sions for Dou­glas.

De Pro­fundis, writes Colm Tóibín, “can­not be read for its accu­rate account of their rela­tion­ship, nor tak­en at its word.” This is in part because Wilde had no oth­er choice but to write a let­ter, or write noth­ing at all. The suc­ces­sion of pris­ons in which he was held between 1895 and 1897 allowed no writ­ing of plays, nov­els, or essays.

Over the last four months of Wilde’s incar­cer­a­tion, he and the gov­er­nor of Read­ing prison came up with a scheme. Since “reg­u­la­tions did not spec­i­fy how long a let­ter should be,” Wilde would be giv­en pen and ink each day and be allowed com­pose cor­re­spon­dence as long as he liked. The let­ter would then be his per­son­al prop­er­ty when he left. Despite its lit­er­ary den­si­ty, the let­ter remains, writes Tóibín, “one of the great­est love let­ters ever writ­ten.”

Read­ing prison has just been opened to the pub­lic for the first time this year. Since July, artists, writ­ers, and per­form­ers have gath­ered with audi­ences inside the prison to cel­e­brate and com­mune with the spir­it of Wilde. Among the events have been read­ings of De Pro­fundis by Tóibín, who read the let­ter in its entire­ly last month, as did Pat­ti Smith.

At the top of the post, you can see an excerpt of Smith’s read­ing. “The edit­ed ver­sion of De Pro­fundis” from which she reads “was the first one to be pub­lished in 1905, in a lim­it­ed edi­tion of 200, five years after Wilde’s death.” In-between clips of her read­ing, there are inter­views with a Read­ing prison care­tak­er and oth­ers, and voice-over nar­ra­tion telling us Wilde’s trag­ic sto­ry of impris­on­ment, as well as the gen­er­al out­lines of those who left no record of their per­se­cu­tion.

Once released, Wilde went right back to writ­ing lit­er­a­ture, begin­ning with the long, vio­lent poem, “The Bal­lad of Read­ing Gaol.” The video up top comes from The Guardian.

via Vin­tage Anchor

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Oscar Wilde Recite a Sec­tion of The Bal­lad of Read­ing Gaol (1897)

Oscar Wilde Offers Prac­ti­cal Advice on the Writ­ing Life in a New­ly-Dis­cov­ered Let­ter from 1890

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads a Let­ter Alan Tur­ing Wrote in “Dis­tress” Before His Con­vic­tion For “Gross Inde­cen­cy”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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When Vladimir Nabokov Taught Ruth Bader Ginsburg, His Most Famous Student, To Care Deeply About Writing

in Current Affairs, Literature, Politics | November 4th, 2016

There are a few ways to get a glimpse of Vladimir Nabokov as a teacher, a role he occu­pied for almost twen­ty years at Welles­ley and Cor­nell. We can take the “good read­er” quiz he gave to his stu­dents. We can lis­ten to his inter­views on life and lit­er­a­ture, though they won’t give us any sense of spon­tane­ity. The Russ­ian-émi­gré writer insist­ed on care­ful­ly script­ed ques­tions and answers “to ensure a dig­ni­fied beat of the mandarin’s fan.”

We can see also see Nabokov, as played by Christo­pher Plum­mer, teach his sec­ond favorite nov­el, Kafka’s The Meta­mor­pho­sis, at a Cor­nell lec­ture above. Plum­mer, who intro­duces him­self in the role, tells us, “this urbane, world­ly Russ­ian aris­to­crat spent a large part of his pro­duc­tive life in Itha­ca, New York.” And the char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, if not a like­ness, is a con­vinc­ing dra­mat­ic inter­pre­ta­tion of a very urbane, and wit­ty, Pro­fes­sor, not a man who “speak[s] like a child,” as the real Nabokov once wrote of him­self in 1973.

What of his stu­dents? What can they tell us about Nabokov as a teacher? One of his most famous, Thomas Pyn­chon, won’t say much. But per­haps his best known pupil, Ruth Bad­er Gins­burg, has paid him trib­ute many times, telling The Scribes Jour­nal of Legal Writ­ing in 2011, “I attribute my car­ing about writ­ing” to Nabokov, who “was a man in love with the sound of words. He taught me the impor­tance of choos­ing the right word and pre­sent­ing it in the right word order.”

Gins­burg, who stud­ied under Nabokov as an under­grad­u­ate in the ear­ly fifties, still sings his prais­es over six­ty years lat­er. “He was mag­net­i­cal­ly engag­ing,” she told The Cul­ture Trip this week. “He stood alone, not com­pa­ra­ble to any oth­er lec­tur­er.” And last month, the Supreme Court Jus­tice wrote a New York Times Op-Ed titled “Ruth Bad­er Ginsburg’s Advice for Liv­ing.” Sec­ond on the list, “teach­ers who influ­enced or encour­aged me in my grow­ing-up years.” Her first exam­ple, Nabokov, who “changed the way I read and the way I write.”

If Nabokov so pro­found­ly influ­enced Ginsburg’s read­ing and writ­ing, and made such a dra­mat­ic impres­sion on her as a pro­fes­sor, would we find any traces of that influ­ence in her jurispru­dence? Per­haps. As Jen­nifer Wil­son notes in the Los Ange­les Review of Books, Nabokov pro­nounced him­self “res­olute­ly ‘anti-seg­re­ga­tion­ist.’” This was among the “few issues he spoke out against strong­ly and unambiguously—Marxism, fas­cism, anti-Semi­tism, and racism.”

You may or may not see some influ­ence of Nabokov—of his repug­nance for legal­ized dis­crim­i­na­tion or of his metic­u­lous wording—in Ginsburg’s pas­sion­ate dis­sent to the 2013 gut­ting of the Vot­ing Rights Act, for exam­ple. There, Gins­burg called vot­er sup­pres­sion “the most con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly invid­i­ous form of dis­crim­i­na­tion” and wrote “giv­en a record replete with exam­ples of denial or abridge­ment of a para­mount fed­er­al right, the Court should have left the mat­ter where it belongs: in Con­gress’ baili­wick.” With­in their con­straints of legal writ­ing, I’d argue Ginsburg’s best sen­tences con­tain the cut­ting pre­ci­sion and wit of Nabokov’s scathing, deeply con­sid­ered obser­va­tions.

via The Cul­ture Trip/Vin­tage Anchor

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take Vladimir Nabokov’s Quiz to See If You’re a Good Reader–The Same One He Gave to His Stu­dents

Vladimir Nabokov Names the Great­est (and Most Over­rat­ed) Nov­els of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

Vladimir Nabokov Talks About Life, Lit­er­a­ture & Love in a Metic­u­lous­ly Pre­pared Inter­view, 1969

Vladimir Nabokov (Chan­nelled by Christo­pher Plum­mer) Teach­es Kaf­ka at Cor­nell

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

 

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Sal Khan & the Muppets’ Grover Explain the Electoral College

in Current Affairs, K-12, Politics | November 4th, 2016

Grover, the more intel­lec­tu­al­ly-aspi­rant of Sesame Street’s two blue mon­sters, is a self-appoint­ed expert on anato­my (“the head is cov­ered with this long stringy stuff”), hygiene, and Span­ish, but the work­ings of the Unit­ed States Elec­toral Col­lege elud­ed him, until Salman Khan, founder of the Khan Acad­e­my wan­dered into the frame.

The pairing’s not as odd as you might think. The Khan Academy’s mis­sion is in many ways quite sim­i­lar to that of Sesame Street—free edu­ca­tion for the peo­ple, dis­trib­uted on a glob­al scale. Both are non-prof­it. The Khan Acad­e­my uses white­board screen­cast­ing where Sesame Street uses Mup­pets, but the goal is the same.

The ener­getic and high­ly dis­tractible Grover would be a chal­leng­ing pupil in any set­ting. Khan, whose teacher-stu­dent inter­ac­tions are rarely so face-to-face, han­dles him like a pro, wise­ly par­ing down a stan­dard issue Khan Acad­e­my les­son on the Elec­toral Col­lege to an eas­i­ly digestible three-and-a-half min­utes.

The take­away?

The Unit­ed States is an indi­rect democ­ra­cy.

Each state awards its elec­toral votes to the can­di­date who wins the pop­u­lar vote in that state.

The num­ber of elec­toral votes in any giv­en state is equal to its num­ber of con­gress­peo­ple plus its two Sen­a­tors.

There are a total of 538 elec­toral votes. In order to win the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, a can­di­date must win at least 270 of those votes.

Sim­ple enough, but this mea­sured expla­na­tion does not com­pute with Grover.

So Khan employs an edu­ca­tion­al Nin­ja tech­nique. “How can I explain it in a way that you might under­stand?” he asks.

It turns out Grover is some­thing of a visu­al learn­er, who’s not at all shy about the work­ings of his own per­son­al brain. He’s prob­a­bly not ready for 8th grade alge­bra, but the Khan Acad­e­my sub­sti­tu­tion method pro­vides a water­shed moment, when Khan replaces elec­toral votes with chick­ens.

(If your frag­ile grasp of the Elec­toral Col­lege process would be mud­dled by the intro­duc­tion of chick­ens, stop watch­ing at the two minute mark. As the pro­lif­er­at­ing com­ments on the Khan Academy’s fifth Amer­i­can Civics les­son prove, some­times the sim­ple approach cre­ates more ques­tions than it answers.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Cours­es 

Mor­gan Free­man Teach­es Kids to Read in Vin­tage Elec­tric Com­pa­ny Footage from 1971

Elec­tion 2012: Your Free Tick­et to a Pop­u­lar Stan­ford Course

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Father Writes a Great Letter About Censorship When Son Brings Home Permission Slip to Read Ray Bradbury’s Censored Book, Fahrenheit 451

in Current Affairs, Education, Literature, Politics | November 1st, 2016

book permission slip.jpg Ironic permission slip request https://twitter.com/i/moments/790703810427494400

How does cen­sor­ship come about in advanced, osten­si­bly demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­eties? In some cas­es, through insti­tu­tions col­lud­ing in ways that go unno­ticed by the gen­er­al pub­lic. As Noam Chom­sky has argued for decades, state agen­cies often col­lude with the press to spread cer­tain nar­ra­tives and sup­press oth­ers. And as we see dur­ing Banned Books Week, leg­is­la­tures, courts, and edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions often col­lude with pub­lish­ers, teach­ers, and par­ents to sup­press lit­er­a­ture they view as threat­en­ing. One such case remains par­tic­u­lar­ly iron­ic giv­en the book in ques­tion: Ray Bradbury’s Fahren­heit 451, the sto­ry of a dystopi­an soci­ety in which all books are banned, and fire depart­ments burn con­tra­band copies.

Between the years 1967 and 1979, Bal­lan­tine pub­lished an expur­gat­ed ver­sion of the nov­el for use in high schools, remov­ing con­tent deemed objec­tion­able. Brad­bury was com­plete­ly unaware. For six of those years, the bowd­ler­ized ver­sion was the only one sold by the pub­lish­er. We can remem­ber this case when we read the response of writer Daniel Radosh to a per­mis­sion slip his son Milo brought home from his 8th grade teacher for a book club read­ing of Fahren­heit 451. Writ­ten in Milo’s own hand, the ini­tial note, at the top, informs Mr. Radosh that the nov­el “was chal­lenged because of it’s [sic] theme of the ille­gal­i­ty and cen­sor­ship of books. One book peo­ple got most angry about was the burn­ing of the bible. Sec­ond­ly, there is a large amount of curs­ing and pro­fan­i­ty in the book.”

After this con­fes­sion, Milo’s note asks for a parental sig­na­ture in a post­script. Address­ing the let­ter’s true writer, Milo’s teacher, Daniel Radosh respond­ed thus, in the typed note attached to his son’s let­ter.

I love this let­ter! What a won­der­ful way to intro­duce stu­dents to the theme of Fahren­heit 451 that books are so dan­ger­ous that the insti­tu­tions of soci­ety – schools and par­ents – might be will­ing to team up against chil­dren to pre­vent them from read­ing one.

It’s easy enough to read the book and say, ‘This is crazy. It could nev­er real­ly hap­pen,’ but pre­tend­ing to present stu­dents at the start with what seems like a total­ly rea­son­able ‘first step’ is a real­ly immer­sive way to teach them how insid­i­ous cen­sor­ship can be.

I’m sure that when the book club is over and the stu­dents realise the true intent of this let­ter they’ll be shocked at how many of them accept­ed it as an actu­al per­mis­sion slip.

In addi­tion, Milo’s con­cern that allow­ing me to add to this note will make him stand out as a trou­ble­mak­er real­ly brings home why most of the char­ac­ters find it eas­i­er to accept the world they live in rather than chal­lenge it.

I assured him that his teacher would have his back.

Radosh’s insin­u­a­tion that the let­ter his son was induced to write is not an “actu­al per­mis­sion slip” under­scores his claim that the exer­cise is real­ly a means of con­trol­ling chil­dren by means of col­lu­sion, even though, he jests, such a thing must be part of the les­son itself. Should he be allowed to read the nov­el, the sign­ing and deliv­ery of the per­mis­sion slip, Radosh dev­as­tat­ing­ly sug­gests, com­pletes Milo’s humil­i­a­tion, bring­ing home to him “why most of the char­ac­ters” in the book remain pas­sive, and “find it eas­i­er to accept the world they live in rather than chal­lenge it.”

In short, Radosh’s response, for all its pithy irony, digs deeply into the mech­a­nisms that sup­press speech deemed so “dan­ger­ous that the insti­tu­tions of society—schools and parents—might be will­ing to team up against chil­dren to pre­vent them” from read­ing it.

See Metro UK for a com­plete tran­scrip­tion of both let­ters.

via Vin­tage Anchor

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Ray Bradbury’s Clas­sic Sci-Fi Sto­ry Fahren­heit 451 as a Radio Dra­ma

The Cov­er of George Orwell’s 1984 Becomes Less Cen­sored with Wear and Tear

Frank Zap­pa Debates Cen­sor­ship on CNN’s Cross­fire (1986)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Prof. Brian Cox Has a Maddening Conversation with a Climate Science-Denying Politician

in Current Affairs, Environment, Science | August 22nd, 2016

Accord­ing to NASA’s God­dard Insti­tute for Space Stud­ies, July 2016 was the warmest month ever record­ed. 2016 will like­ly be the warmest year on record. And the decades ahead will only get worse, much worse.

And yet, notes physi­cist Lawrence Krauss in The New York­er this week­end, we have the GOP’s Franken­stein try­ing to dem­a­gogue his way into the pres­i­den­cy by call­ing cli­mate sci­ence into ques­tion. Krauss writes:

In May, for instance, while speak­ing to an audi­ence of West Vir­ginia coal min­ers, Trump com­plained that reg­u­la­tions designed to pro­tect the ozone lay­er had com­pro­mised the qual­i­ty of his hair spray. Those reg­u­la­tions, he con­tin­ued, were mis­guid­ed, because hair spray is used main­ly indoors, and so can have no effect on the atmos­phere out­side.…

Often, Trump is sim­ply wrong about sci­ence, even though he should know bet­ter. Just as he was a per­sis­tent “birther” even after the evi­dence con­vinc­ing­ly showed that Pres­i­dent Oba­ma was born in the Unit­ed States, Trump now con­tin­ues to prop­a­gate the notion that vac­cines cause autism in spite of con­vinc­ing and wide­ly cit­ed evi­dence to the con­trary… In oth­er cas­es, Trump treats sci­en­tif­ic facts the way he treats oth­er facts—he ignores or dis­torts them when­ev­er it’s con­ve­nient. He has denied that cli­mate change is real, call­ing it pseu­do­science and advanc­ing a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry that “the con­cept of glob­al warm­ing was cre­at­ed by and for the Chi­nese in order to make U.S. man­u­fac­tur­ing non­com­pet­i­tive.”

And way across the pond, we have anoth­er politi­cian, Aus­tralian Sen­a­tor Mal­colm Roberts, mak­ing his own kind of laugh­able claims. In a recent tele­vi­sion broad­cast, Roberts asks physi­cist Bri­an Cox for empir­i­cal proof that cli­mate change exists. Cox offers evi­dence gath­ered by NASA, to which Roberts responds, NASA’s “data has been cor­rupt­ed and manip­u­lat­ed.” Not good enough. If you reg­u­lar­ly read our site, you know that this is not the first time that NASA has been accused of manip­u­lat­ing data. Con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists have long accused NASA and Stan­ley Kubrick of fak­ing the moon land­ing in 1969. Roberts bris­tles at being asso­ci­at­ed with these loons. But frankly it’s an apt com­par­i­son. And if any­one should be both­ered by the com­par­i­son, it’s the moon land­ing con­spir­acists. How­ev­er strange their the­o­ries might be, no one doubts that they’re heart­felt, gen­uine, and seem­ing­ly free from the hint of polit­i­cal and finan­cial influ­ence.

In the mean­time, in a new video from NASA, you can see the Arc­tic ice lev­els retreat­ing to one of the low­est lev­els in record­ed his­to­ry. Call the video “cor­rupt­ed” and “manip­u­lat­ed” at your own per­il.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Glob­al Warm­ing: A Free Course from UChica­go Explains Cli­mate Change

Michio Kaku & Noam Chom­sky School Moon Land­ing and 9/11 Con­spir­a­cy The­o­rists

Carl Sagan Presents His “Baloney Detec­tion Kit”: 8 Tools for Skep­ti­cal Think­ing

Richard Feyn­man Cre­ates a Sim­ple Method for Telling Sci­ence From Pseu­do­science (1966)

Sal­ly Ride Warns Against Glob­al Warm­ing; Won­ders If Tech­nol­o­gy Can Save Us From Our­selves

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Get a Free Pocket Edition of the U.S. Constitution (Now #2 on the Amazon Bestseller List)

in Books, Current Affairs | August 2nd, 2016

we the people

Going into the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion, who would have thought that the speech we’d all remem­ber this week would belong to Khazir Khan, the father of a Mus­lim-Amer­i­can sol­dier who died fight­ing for the Unit­ed States in Iraq? Khan’s rebuke of Don­ald Trump’s divi­sive pres­i­den­tial cam­paign was sting­ing, and it came capped with these lines:

Don­ald Trump, you are ask­ing Amer­i­cans to trust you with our future. Let me ask you: Have you even read the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion? I will glad­ly lend you my copy. In this doc­u­ment, look for the words “lib­er­ty” and “equal pro­tec­tion of law.”

Have you ever been to Arling­ton Ceme­tery? Go look at the graves of the brave patri­ots who died defend­ing Amer­i­ca — you will see all faiths, gen­ders, and eth­nic­i­ties.

You have sac­ri­ficed noth­ing and no one.

This pri­vate cit­i­zen suc­ceed­ed in doing what Hillary Clin­ton, Bill Clin­ton, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, Joe Biden and maybe even Michael Bloomberg could not. In his own mod­est, under­stat­ed way, he put Trump on the defen­sive. And when Trump lashed out, you could final­ly hear the whis­pers: Have you no sense of decen­cy, Don­ald, at long last?

Khizr Khan may be to Don­ald Trump what Joseph Welch was to Joe McCarthy. That would be one pos­i­tive out­come of Khan’s speech. The oth­er is that sales of the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion (as Elec­tric Lit­er­a­ture not­ed) have gone through the roof. The U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion is cur­rent­ly #2 on Ama­zon’s list of best­selling books, right behind the new Har­ry Pot­ter book. Fath­om that.

You, too, can buy a pock­et edi­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion. But why not get it for free? Through Novem­ber 8, the ACLU is run­ning a pro­mo­tion which will let you snag a free pock­et-sized Constitution–one that can fit in your back­pack, glove com­part­ment, or back pock­et. It mea­sures 3/12” x 5.5” and fea­tures “the full text of the Con­sti­tu­tion, the Amend­ments, includ­ing the Bill of Rights, as well as a Know Your Rights series: What to do if you’re stopped by the police.”

Head to this page, and use the coupon code POCKETRIGHTS.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

R Crumb, the Father of Under­ground Comix, Takes Down Don­ald Trump in a NSFW 1989 Car­toon

J.K. Rowl­ing Defends Don­ald Trump’s Right to Be “Offen­sive and Big­ot­ed”

Noam Chom­sky on Whether the Rise of Trump Resem­bles the Rise of Fas­cism in 1930s Ger­many

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Watch “Traffic Stop,” an Emmy-Nominated, Animated Film About a Traffic Stop Gone Horribly Wrong

in Animation, Current Affairs, Law, Life | August 1st, 2016

As the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment has come to occu­py a greater swath of America’s atten­tion span, a con­ver­sa­tion has arisen around the pit­falls of ally­ship, a term that lends itself to dis­cus­sions of gen­der and dis­abil­i­ty, as well as race.

Sim­ply put, the self-pro­claimed allies are mem­bers of a more priv­i­leged major­i­ty, eager to lend sup­port through word and deed.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, their enthu­si­asm often turns them into micro­phone hogs in what activist Princess Har­mo­ny Rodriguez has referred to as “ally the­ater.”

A num­ber of would-be allies con­fuse humil­i­ty with the seek­ing of brown­ie points. If they real­ly got it, those at the cen­ter of the move­ment say, they would not expect mem­bers of the minor­i­ty to rearrange their to-do lists to bring them up to speed on what it’s like to be a per­son of col­or (or a trans­gen­dered per­son or a dis­abled per­son).

Would-be allies are there­fore advised to step out of the spot­light, stuff a sock in it, and edu­cate them­selves, by work­ing to find exist­ing essays and nar­ra­tives, authored by those with whom they would be in sol­i­dar­i­ty.

Human nature ensures that tem­pers will flare and hurt feel­ings will be aired. The hor­ri­fy­ing social ill that gave rise to the movement—the shoot­ing of unarmed black men by those charged with pro­tect­ing the whole of the public—is elbowed off­stage, so that a phe­nom­e­non such as ally­ship can be the num­ber one top­ic of debate on col­lege cam­pus­es, web­sites, and social media.

“Traf­fic Stop,” above, pro­vides a rare moment of racial accord, stem­ming from yet anoth­er ghast­ly tale of police bru­tal­i­ty.

The short ani­ma­tion was born of a con­ver­sa­tion record­ed by Alex Lan­dau and Pat­sy Hath­away in a Sto­ryCorps booth, a mas­sive oral his­to­ry project designed to attract a wide diver­si­ty of par­tic­i­pants.

Lan­dau is African-Amer­i­can.

His adop­tive moth­er, Hath­away, is white.

Those who would clas­si­fy adopt­ing a child of anoth­er race as “ally­ship” must con­cede that, if so, it is cer­tain­ly of no casu­al stripe.

The events of Jan­u­ary 15, 2009, when Den­ver police stopped the 19-year-old Lan­dau and a white friend for mak­ing an ille­gal left turn, caused Hath­away to rethink the col­or­blind world­view she had espoused while rais­ing her son.

“I thought that love would con­quer all and skin col­or real­ly did­n’t mat­ter,” Hath­away tells Lan­dau. “I had to learn the real­ly hard way when they almost killed you.”

Had the attack hap­pened a few years lat­er, Landau’s friend might have man­aged to doc­u­ment the pro­ceed­ings with a cell phone, despite the hand­cuffs that were placed on him after a bag of mar­i­jua­na was found in his pock­et.

Instead, this ani­ma­tion, and the gris­ly graph­ic pho­to that fol­lows of Landau’s face pri­or to receiv­ing 45 stitch­es, will have to suf­fice. His rec­ol­lec­tion of the laugh­ter and racial epi­thets direct­ed his way as he lay bleed­ing on the ground are stom­ach-churn­ers, too.

Like his moth­er, Landau’s child­hood per­cep­tion of an all-inclu­sive, benev­o­lent world was shat­tered. They mourned it togeth­er when they were reunit­ed in the emer­gency room on the night of the ill-fat­ed traf­fic stop.

Look and lis­ten.

Then, if you are ready to wade into thornier ter­ri­to­ry, read the hun­dreds of com­ments view­ers have post­ed on youtube.

Ulti­mate­ly, the City of Den­ver award­ed Lan­dau a $795,000 set­tle­ment, while the Den­ver Police Depart­ment, cit­ing a lack of evi­dence, cleared all three offi­cers of mis­con­duct. Fol­low up arti­cles from 2011 and 2013 are avail­able here and here.

Traf­fic Stop was ani­mat­ed by  Gina Kamentsky & Julie Zam­marchi (read an inter­view with them here). It was recent­ly nom­i­nat­ed for an Emmy award last week.

via West­word

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read Online Key Doc­u­ments from the Fer­gu­son Grand Jury: Wit­ness Tes­ti­mo­ny, Foren­sic Evi­dence & More

‘Tired of Giv­ing In’: The Arrest Report, Mug Shot and Fin­ger­prints of Rosa Parks (Decem­ber 1, 1955)

Pep­per Spray­ing Peace­ful Pro­tes­tors Con­tin­ues; This Time at UC Davis

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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