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      Can Healthy Conflict Exist in an Unhealthy Society?

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      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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      Borat targets Trump, Ye and antisemitism at Kennedy Center Honors

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      Borat targets Trump, Ye and antisemitism at Kennedy Center HonorsSacha Baron Cohen skit receives mixed response at ceremony for lifetime achievements in the arts The British actor Sacha Baron Cohen reprised his character Borat and stole the show at America’s prestigious Kennedy Center Honors on Sunday night, targeting the former president Donald Trump, the rapper Kanye West, now known as Ye, and antisemitism.President Joe Biden smiled broadly and his wife, Jill, was in fits of laughter as Cohen told risque jokes in the comical accent of Kazakh television journalist Borat Sagdiyev.“I know the president of US and A is here,” Borat said to an audience including politicians and celebrities during a segment celebrating the Irish rock group U2. “Where are you, Mr Trump?”As the audience howled, Borat went on: “You don’t look so good. Where has your glorious big belly gone? And your pretty orange skin has become pale.” He then asked if the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, and the nerve agent novichok were responsible.Borat, the star of two hit satirical films, added: ‘But I see you have a new wife. Wawawoooah! She is very erotic. I must look away before I get a Bono.”The comedian, who is Jewish, then turned his attention to antisemitism in the wake of Trump having dined at his Mar-a-Lago home with the Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and Ye, who subsequently praised Adolf Hitler and was banned from Twitter for posting an image of a swastika.Borat said: “Before I proceed, I will say I am very upset about the antisemitism in US and A. It not fair. Kazakhstan is No 1 Jew-crushing nation. Stop stealing our hobby. Stop the steal! Stop the steal!” Some guests burst into laughter while others sat in uncomfortable silence.He continued: “Your Kanye, he tried to move to Kazakhstan and even changed his name to Kazakhstanye West. But we said: no, he too antisemitic, even for us.”Borat proceeded to sing a short parody of U2’s song With or Without You with the lyrics changed to “With or without Jews”. He broke off and asked: “What’s the problem? They loved this at Mar-a-Lago. They chose Without Jews.”The Bidens appeared to enjoy Baron Cohen’s routine but it also came as a shock in typically staid and buttoned up Washington. Asked by the Guardian what she thought of it, Biden’s sister Valerie Biden Owens said diplomatically: “I think I like U2”, while Roy Blunt, a Republican senator for Missouri, said: “Not much”.Glenn Youngkin, the governor of Virginia, said: “I was surprised to see him,” and sped away without elaborating.Along with U2, the actor George Clooney, the singer-songwriter Amy Grant, the singer Gladys Knight and the composer Tania León were celebrated at the 45th Kennedy Center Honors, the most prestigious honours for lifetime achievements in the arts. There was also an appearance from Sesame Street’s Big Bird.One audience member from the political world also received a standing ovation. Paul Pelosi, the husband of the House of Representatives speaker, Nancy Pelosi, used the weekend’s honors-related events to make his first public appearance since being attacked in October in their San Francisco home.The Pelosis sat next to the vice-president, Kamala Harris, and her husband, Doug Emhoff, in a balcony. Paul Pelosi wore a black hat and a glove on his left hand.The show highlighted the five artists’ work, and represented a return to pre-coronavirus norms. There was no requirement for testing to attend and few guests wore masks. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to the president, was among the guests.Clooney, a double Oscar winner, was also praised for his engagement in political causes and spoke to reporters after attending a White House reception.Asked how he thought Biden’s presidency was going, Clooney replied: “Beautifully. I love him. He’s a kind man with great intentions and he has some incredible legislation which kind of gets overlooked and they’re not very good at bragging about right now. He’s done a really good job and I’m very proud to be a supporter.”A follow-up question about whether Clooney, 61, would consider a career in politics prompted his wife, the barrister Amal Clooney, to smile and shake her head. The actor said in agreement: “Listen, we have a really nice life.”In a celebration at the state department on Saturday, Clooney told guests: “I’ve been lucky enough to meet millions of people, every country, literally 125 countries, and they all, without exception, agree and they’ll come up to me and say specifically that, ‘You sucked as Batman’. It’s unified. We could solve world problems if we just all could agree on more than just that I suck as Batman.”At Sunday’s main event at the Kennedy Center, Julia Roberts, who has co-starred in several films with Clooney, wore a floor-length gown with framed images of him on it and called him a “Renaissance man”. The actors Don Cheadle, Matt Damon and Richard Kind also paid tribute, with Damon recalling how Clooney once stole the then-President Bill Clinton’s stationery and wrote notes to fellow actors on it.But the one who moved Clooney to tears was his 88-year-old father, Nick, a journalist and TV anchorman. He recalled that he was hosting a TV show in 1968 when Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis. His family came into the green room. “Seven-year-old George had a large paper bag in his hand. I asked him what in the world was in the bag.“Well, he went to the coffee table, he turned the bag upside down. Out poured all of his toy guns landing with a clack. He said: ‘Pop, I don’t want these any more. None of them. Never.’ Well, I tore up my speech. Nothing I would’ve written would have been nearly as eloquent as what George had just done and said.”Nick Clooney said he was often asked what he wanted people to know about his son. “Well, here it is: George’s best and most important work is still ahead of him.”Knight, who has won seven Grammy awards, is famous for hit songs including I Heard It Through the Grapevine and Midnight Train to Georgia as the lead singer of The Pips, which became Gladys Knight and The Pips in 1962. Singers including Garth Brooks and Patti LaBelle performed some of Knight’s songs.Grant rose to prominence as a contemporary Christian music singer who later crossed over to pop stardom, winning six Grammys. The singers Sheryl Crow, Brandi Carlile, CeCe Winans and BeBe Winans were among the artists who honored her.Cuban-born León is a conductor as well as a composer, whose orchestral piece Stride won the 2021 Pulitzer prize in Music. The jazz pianist Jason Moran, the singer Alicia Hall Moran and the cellist Sterling Elliott played one of her creations, Oh Yemanja.The final tribute of the evening was to U2, which, with members Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr, has won 22 Grammys. Eddie Vedder performed Elevation and One, while the Ukrainian singer Jamala joined Carlile and others to perform Walk On. The actor Sean Penn described U2 as “four scrappy Dublin punks” who were also “great musical poets of the ages”.Other guests at the event included the transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, the senators Amy Klobuchar, Patrick Leahy, Joe Manchin and Mitt Romney, and representatives James Clyburn and Steny Hoyer, the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, and the British ambassador, Dame Karen Pierce.Deborah Rutter, the president of the Kennedy Center, said: “This is probably the largest number of the administration and of Congress that we’ve ever had so that feels really great. People are ready to be back together fully and they want to see a good show.”TopicsBoratSacha Baron CohenDonald TrumpKanye WestAntisemitismU2George ClooneynewsReuse this content More

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      Ticketmaster’s Taylor Swift chaos triggers US Senate antitrust hearing

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      Ticketmaster’s Taylor Swift chaos triggers US Senate antitrust hearingSeveral politicians voice concerns about dominance of ticket sales company after botched release for singer’s tour A US Senate antitrust panel will go ahead with a hearing on the lack of competition in the country’s ticketing industry after Ticketmaster’s problems last week managing the sale of Taylor Swift tickets.Tickemaster’s parent company, Live Nation, has blamed presale problems for Swift’s Eras tour – the pop superstar’s first US tour in five years – on “unprecedented demand” and an effort to keep out bots run by ticket scalpers.After registered fans struggled with glitches for hours to get tickets in the presale, and tickets quickly began appearing for resale for as much as US$22,700 (£19,100, A$33,500), Ticketmaster cancelled sales to the general public. It later claimed the demand for Swift tickets “could have filled 900 stadiums”.Swifties know: the Ticketmaster fiasco shows America has a monopoly problem | Arwa MahdawiRead moreSwift has said it was “excruciating” for her to watch fans struggling to secure tickets and that she had been assured Ticketmaster could handle the demand.The chaos attracted the attention of US politicians, many of whom have voiced concerns about how dominant Ticketmaster has become after it merged with the entertainment company Live Nation in 2010.Tennessee’s attorney general, Jonathan Skrmetti, has said he will launch a consumer protection investigation into the company after his office was bombarded with complaints from Swift fans.The congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has also criticised the merger. “Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, its merger with Live Nation should never have been approved, and they need to be reined in,” she tweeted. “Break them up.”On Tuesday the senator Amy Klobuchar, who will chair the panel, and the senator Mike Lee, the top Republican on the committee, announced the Senate hearing would go ahead. They have yet to provide a date or a list of witnesses.“The high fees, site disruptions and cancellations that customers experienced shows how Ticketmaster’s dominant market position means the company does not face any pressure to continually innovate and improve,” Klobuchar said. “We will hold a hearing on how consolidation in the live entertainment and ticketing industry harms customers and artists alike.”Ticketmaster denied any anti-competitive practices and said it remained under a consent decree with the Department of Justice after the 2010 merger, adding there was no “evidence of systemic violations of the consent decree”.“Ticketmaster has a significant share of the primary ticketing services market because of the large gap that exists between the quality of the Ticketmaster system and the next best primary ticketing system,” the company said.Klobuchar was one of three lawmakers who argued in a letter on Monday that Ticketmaster and Live Nation should be broken up by the Department of Justice if any misconduct was found in an ongoing investigation.The department has proven in recent years to be much more willing to file antitrust lawsuits against giant companies – including the ongoing December 2020 lawsuit against Google – and to fight mergers. Reuters contributed to this reportTopicsTaylor SwiftUS SenatePop and rockMusic industryUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      A Magical Tale: Not Trekking in the Himalayas

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      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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      Bernie Sanders to publish book outlining vision for ‘political revolution’

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      Bernie Sanders to publish book outlining vision for ‘political revolution’It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism, out next year, will argue the world needs to ‘recognise that economic rights are human rights’ Former presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders is to publish a book outlining “a vision of what would be possible if the political revolution took place”.It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism will be published by Penguin Random House in February 2023.The book, said the publisher, will look at what happens if “we would finally recognise that economic rights are human rights, and work to create a society that provides them”.Publishing director Thomas Penn said It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism was a “scorching denunciation of a system that is manifestly failing the vast majority of people along with the planet itself”.“But there is, he says, another way: if we are prepared to call out uber-capitalism for what it is, together we can bring about transformational change,” Penn added. “Humane, clear-eyed and – yes – angry, this is a vital book for our times and for our future. We are thrilled to be publishing it.”It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism has editorial contributions from John Nichols, an award-winning progressive author and journalist who works as a national affairs correspondent for the Nation magazine.‘They haven’t tried’: Bernie Sanders on Democrats’ economic messagingRead moreSanders is currently serving his third term in the US senate after 16 years in the House of Representatives and is the longest serving independent member of Congress in American history. He is the chairman of the budget committee where he helped write the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan.In an interview with the Guardian before the mid-term elections earlier this month, Sanders was keen to highlight the financial difficulties people were facing.“People are hurting,” he said. “You got 60% of our people living paycheck to paycheck, and for many workers, they are falling further behind as a result of inflation. Oil company profits are soaring, food company profits are soaring, drug company profits are soaring. Corporate profits are at an all-time high.”Sanders has often been critical of the Democratic party, saying in the interview that they “haven’t tried” to communicate to voters the threat of corporate profiteering to the cost of living.Sanders has run for the Democratic party presidential nomination twice, in 2016 and 2020, garnering huge support and raising large amounts of money, but both times ultimately failing to secure the nomination.TopicsBooksBernie SandersUS politicsPublishingPolitics booksnewsReuse this content More

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      Michelle Obama admits to hating her appearance in new book

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      Michelle Obama admits to hating her appearance in new bookIn The Light We Carry, the follow-up to her bestseller Becoming, the former first lady reveals her ‘fearful mind’ and experience of depression during the pandemic Michelle Obama “hates” how she looks, “all the time and no matter what”, she has revealed in her new book.The Light We Carry, the former First Lady’s second memoir, builds on her 2018 title Becoming, and aims to be a “toolkit to live boldly”. In the new book, which was extracted in the Guardian’s Saturday magazine, Obama discusses ways to overcome one’s “fearful mind”, which she likens to “a life partner you didn’t choose”.“I’ve lived with my fearful mind for 58 years now,” she writes. “She makes me uneasy. She likes to see me weak.”This part of her mind is constantly having negative thoughts about her appearance, Obama writes. There are “plenty of mornings” when she turns on the bathroom light, takes one look at herself in the mirror, and “desperately want[s] to flip it off again”.‘Is everyone doing this perfectly but me?’ Michelle Obama on the guilt and anxiety of being a mother – and her golden parenting rulesRead moreHer appearance, and her height in particular (she is 5’11”) is something Obama has always been insecure about, she explains in the book. Always “bringing up the rear” at school “created a small wound in me, the tiniest kernel of self-loathing that would keep me from embracing my strengths”.Obama also admits to experiencing a “low-grade form” of depression during the coronavirus pandemic. “I kept with the work I’d been doing – speaking at virtual voter registration drives, supporting good causes, acknowledging people’s pain – but privately I was finding it harder to access my own hope or to feel like I could make an actual difference,” she writes. When she was approached by the Democrats to speak at the party’s national convention in 2020, she put off responding – although she eventually agreed, calling Donald Trump the “wrong president” in her speech.Any time she thought about the offer to speak at the convention, she felt “stalled out”, she has now disclosed in The Light We Carry. She describes being “caught up in frustration and grief for what, as a country, we’d already lost”.“I felt a blanket of despondency settling over me, my mind sliding toward a dull place,” she writes. “I was less able to muster optimism or think reasonably about the future. Worse, I felt myself skirting the edges of cynicism – tempted to conclude that I was helpless, to give in to some notion that when it came to the epic problems and massive worries of the day, nothing could be done.”Five things about Michelle Obama revealed in her new bookRead moreIn The Light We Carry, Obama also reflects on the 2016 presidential election. “Whether or not the 2016 election was a direct rebuke” of her husband, who became the US’s first Black president, “it did hurt. It still hurts”, she writes. “It shook me profoundly to hear the man who’d replaced my husband as president openly and unapologetically using ethnic slurs, making selfishness and hate somehow acceptable, refusing to condemn white supremacists or to support people demonstrating for racial justice”, she adds. “It felt like something more, something much uglier, than a simple political defeat.”Later in the book, she describes watching the “devastating” 2021 attack on the Capitol, which was “perhaps the most frightening thing [she had] ever witnessed”.Since its publication, her first book Becoming has been translated into 50 languages and more than 17m copies have been sold worldwide. The Light We Carry is expected to similarly top bestseller charts. In 2020, she was named the most admired woman in America, according to Gallup’s poll, for the third year running.TopicsBooksMichelle ObamaAutobiography and memoirUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Christopher Ogden obituary

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      Christopher Ogden obituary My friend Chris Ogden, who has died aged 77 after a fall, was one of the most distinguished American journalists of his generation. He reported frontline politics for more than two decades from London, Moscow and Washington DC, and became an acclaimed biographer. He had all of the most important attributes for success in journalism: he was whip-smart, his prose was as elegant as his manners, and he had a charm that could open doors anywhere in the world.We met in 1985 under a palm tree outside the presidential palace in Cairo, where the then British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, was engaged in talks. Ogden had recently been appointed the London bureau chief of Time magazine, a post he held for the next four years and which would lead in 1990 to the publication of his authoritative biography, curated for an American readership, Maggie: An Intimate Portrait of a Woman in Power. The access he managed to secure as a foreign journalist to informative sources across Westminster and Whitehall was a considerable tribute to his professionalism.Chris was born in Providence, Rhode Island, the son of Michael J Ogden, the longtime editor-in-chief of the Providence Journal, and his wife, Agnes. He went to Portsmouth Abbey school, RI, and after graduating from Yale with a history degree in 1966 served as an army intelligence officer during the Vietnam war. He joined the international news agency UPI (United Press International) as a London correspondent in 1970, moving to report on the cold war from Moscow two years later.His long career at Time began in 1974. He reported for a year from Los Angeles, then spent five years in Washington, covering the White House and the state department, and travelling widely with successive secretaries of state. He returned to DC after four years as bureau chief in Chicago from 1981 and his posting to London, and resumed writing astute columns and commentary on US and international affairs.Ogden’s celebrated biography of Pamela Churchill Harriman, the British-born former wife of Randolph Churchill who was US ambassador to France from 1993 until her death in 1997, was published in 1994. The book was made into a TV film in 1998. Legacy, a biography of father and son publishers and philanthropists, Moses and Walter Annenberg, which followed in 1999, was the book of which Ogden was most proud.He was also a gifted photographer and his 1974 image of Alexander Solzhenitsyn for a Time magazine cover hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC.His first marriage to Deedy (Diana) May in 1967 ended in divorce in 2000. Later that year he met Linda Fuselier, a public relations executive, and they married in 2010. For the last four years they had been living on Kauai, a small island in the Hawaiian archipelago.Chris is survived by Linda, by his children, Michael and Margaret, from his first marriage, and by his grandson, Jack.TopicsTime magazineOther livesMagazinesBiography booksUS politicsobituariesReuse this content More

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      Survivor winner Nick Wilson secures seat in Kentucky legislature

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      Survivor winner Nick Wilson secures seat in Kentucky legislatureRepublican, who ran unopposed, will represent home town in state house of representatives Not every Republican television personality who ran for political office during Tuesday’s US elections lost.The winner of the TV competition Survivor: David v Goliath in 2018, Nick Wilson, secured a seat as a Republican in Kentucky’s state house of representatives. Wilson’s path to victory wasn’t particularly fraught, as he ran unopposed for a seat that was left empty when the prior officeholder, Regina Huff, retired.Some viewers may remember Wilson competed on Survivor: David v Goliath, which pitted contestants regarded as underdogs with those labeled overachievers. He emerged at the top of a field that included the creator of the HBO show The White Lotus, Mike White.US midterm elections 2022: focus on Nevada after Democrat Mark Kelly wins key Senate seat – liveRead moreWilson appeared again on Survivor in the show’s Winners of War season in 2020, but he finished seventh.He will represent Laurel county – which has a population of more than 60,000 people – and his home town, Williamsburg, in Kentucky’s legislative house beginning on 1 January.Wilson graduated from the University of Kentucky and worked as a public defender after obtaining a law degree from the University of Alabama. He has spoken about how he lost his mother to drug addiction while in law school, and he said his role as a public defender let him help those struggling with the nationwide opioid epidemic.“That is an issue I will always hold close to my heart,” Wilson told the Louisville Courier-Journal in Kentucky after declaring his candidacy. “These mountains [in Kentucky] have been hard hit by it.”Wilson on Tuesday afternoon issued a statement describing himself as “thankful to so many for the support”.“I’m excited to serve and hope to represent the community well,” said the statement, accompanied by photos of him and his wife, Grisel Vilchez, casting their ballots.Wilson fared better than another Republican television personality, the talkshow host Dr Mehmet Oz, who lost a Pennsylvania US Senate seat to his Democratic rival, John Fetterman. The Democrats will retain control of the Senate if they win either the unresolved race in Nevada, which had not been called as of Saturday afternoon, or the 6 December runoff in Georgia.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022US politicsKentuckyTelevisionRepublicansnewsReuse this content More