Jennifer Lawrence

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    Can you ignore your family’s politics? Jennifer Lawrence and Sydney Sweeney disagree

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    Can you ignore your family’s politics? Jennifer Lawrence and Sydney Sweeney disagreeArwa MahdawiThe Euphoria actor wants to keep things apolitical – but treating politics as abstract has always been a privilege Jennifer Lawrence says she “can’t fuck with people who aren’t political”. In a cover interview with Vogue, the actor revealed that she no longer has any patience for people who are passive about politics because things are now “too dire … Politics are killing people.”Politics have been killing people for a very long time, of course. Military spending decisions kill people. Austerity, and a lack of social welfare spending, kills people. Climate crisis and gun control policies, or a lack thereof, kill people. Treating politics as something abstract, something that doesn’t significantly impact your day-to-day life, has always been a privilege.I’m not here to scold Lawrence for not being woke straight out of the womb, though (this isn’t Twitter). She grew up in a conservative household in Kentucky and, as many people do, adopted her parents’ politics. Since then, however, she has evolved and been very frank about how and why she gradually moved away from Republican policies. Travelling for work expanded her worldview, Lawrence has said, and made her realize that wherever she went, wealth never seemed to trickle down but was always concentrated at the top. She wasn’t exactly radicalized but she became firmly liberal and now, she tells Vogue, she has nightmares about Tucker Carlson.Lawrence’s views may have evolved but her family’s don’t seem to have, which has caused a painful rift. The 2016 election fractured her relationship with some relatives, including her dad, she told Vogue. The reversal of Roe v Wade dealt it another blow. “I don’t want to disparage my family, but I know that a lot of people are in a similar position with their families. How could you raise a daughter from birth and believe that she doesn’t deserve equality? How?” Brett Kavanaugh, dad to two daughters, might be able to tell her.Lawrence isn’t the only celebrity whose family’s political leanings are making life hard for them. The Euphoria star Sydney Sweeney recently caught flak because her mother threw a hoedown-themed 60th birthday that looked a little Trumpy. Photos of party guests wearing Maga-style red baseball caps with the phrase “Make Sixty Great Again”, and one unidentified guest wearing a “Blue Lives Matter” T-shirt (a pro-police backlash to Black Lives Matter), went viral.Twitter detectives went to work and found a picture on Sweeney’s brother’s Instagram account of a baby with a Maga hat on outside the White House. Rumours started swirling that Sweeney’s family were Trump-loving Republicans and a lot of fans got very upset and started questioning the actor’s politics. Sweeney, it should be noted, has never said much about her political leanings but her roles in shows like Euphoria – and the fact that her breakout role was in The Handmaid’s Tale – seem to have led a lot of her young, progressive fans to assume she’s liberal.“You guys this is wild,” Sweeney tweeted in response to the furore. “An innocent celebration for my moms milestone 60th birthday has turned into an absurd political statement, which was not the intention. Please stop making assumptions.”The anger directed towards Sweeney did feel a little over the top. After all, nobody chooses their family. However, her response to the outrage also felt disingenuous. When you wear a Blue Lives Matter shirt, you’re not making a fashion statement, you’re making a political statement. As a lot of commentators pointed out, Sweeney ignoring the political nature of some of the photos and accusing people of politicizing an innocent event felt a lot like gaslighting.‘I was absolutely terrified of Olivia’: Sydney Sweeney on her White Lotus characterRead moreAgain, nobody chooses their family. But when you’re an adult, you choose how you react to your family’s politics. Lawrence told Vogue that she has she has tried to “forgive my dad and my family and try to understand: it’s different. The information they are getting is different. Their life is different.” Still, she admitted, she can’t pretend their politics don’t matter. “I’ve tried to get over it and I really can’t. I can’t.”Sweeney, meanwhile, seems to have chosen to act as if politics don’t really matter, that civility is more important than civil rights. And she’s not alone in this approach. After Trump won the presidency in 2016, a lot of outlets published advice on how to survive Thanksgiving with a politically divided family. Much of that advice was along the lines of “agree to disagree!” Vogue even suggested a game where anyone who brought up politics was fined $20.You can acknowledge the fact that your parents supporting radically different ideas to you about a woman’s right to choose, for example, is not the same as them supporting a different sports team. You don’t have to disown your parents for their views, but if you don’t confront them in some way, then you are complicit.Maybe Lawrence should take young Sweeney aside at the next Hollywood award show and talk to her a bit about how it’s no longer possible to be passive about politics.TopicsFilmJennifer LawrenceTelevisionUS televisionUS politicscommentReuse this content More

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      in Elections

      Texas City Settles Mayor’s Race by Pulling Ping-Pong Balls From a Top Hat

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTexas City Settles Mayor’s Race by Pulling Ping-Pong Balls From a Top HatThe random drawing came after a December runoff ended with 1,010 votes each for the two candidates running for mayor of Dickinson, a Houston suburb.Mike Foreman, the mayor of Friendswood, Texas, and Julie Masters, the mayor of Dickinson, Texas, settling a tie vote for mayor in Dickinson with a random drawing.Credit…Stuart Villanueva/The Galveston County Daily News, via Associated PressJan. 10, 2021, 6:00 a.m. ETThere were no lawsuits, no cries of election fraud and certainly no angry mobs storming the seat of government. Instead, a tie between two candidates running for mayor of a Houston suburb was settled after their names were drawn from a top hat.“It was as fair as you can make it,” said Jennifer Lawrence, who lost the random drawing on Thursday night. “I feel like this is how it was supposed to go. It’s disappointing, but it is what it is.”The winner, Sean Skipworth, said that while he was certainly pleased that he had won, he had his reservations about handing democracy over to fate — in this case, two Ping-Pong balls, each one signed in black pen by one of the candidates, that were placed inside the hat.“It was really exciting, but it’s a horrible way to resolve an election,” he said. “It’s always better to have people decide elections, not random chance.”The drawing in Dickinson, a city of about 21,000, roughly 30 miles southeast of Houston, was allowed under a Texas election law that permits ties to be resolved by the “casting of lots,” or a game of chance, said Elizabeth Alvarez, a Texas election lawyer. It could be darts, a coin toss or a roll of the dice, she said.It doesn’t happen often, she said, given the improbability of an exact tie, but it has happened before. In 2012, a tie between two candidates running for City Council in Wolfforth, Texas, was decided with the flip of a 1974 Eisenhower silver dollar.“It sounds dumb,” Ms. Alvarez said, but the preference for quickly settling a tie is rooted in Texas’ deep-seated aversion to big government, which in this case would mean holding another election.“We think, ‘You know, if it’s a tie, they ought to settle it among themselves, if they want,’” Ms. Alvarez said. “Why cost the city a bunch of money if we can flip a coin and shake hands?”In Dickinson, the ceremony was held inside City Hall.It came after a runoff election in December between Ms. Lawrence, a mechanical engineer, and Mr. Skipworth, a former City Council member and a professor of government at the College of the Mainland in Texas City, Texas, ended with exactly 1,010 votes for each. A recount certified the unlikely outcome on Tuesday.Together, the two candidates received 2,020 votes, which Mr. Skipworth said seemed like “evidence of higher intelligence in the universe.”About 100 people were in attendance at the drawing. The top hat was placed on a table that had been draped in a sparkly gold sheet. Dickinson’s current mayor, Julie Masters, presided.“Welcome, everybody, to this historic event in our community,” Ms. Masters said, before lifting the top hat for all to see, according to a video posted on the city’s Facebook page.“I just want to show everybody — the hat is empty,” Ms. Masters said, as someone cracked a joke about a rabbit.After Ms. Lawrence and Mr. Skipworth placed their signed Ping-Pong balls in the hat, Ms. Masters lifted the hat and rattled them around.The honor of plucking the names fell to Mike Foreman, the mayor of Friendswood, Texas, who said Ms. Masters, his friend, had asked him to serve as an “unbiased ball-picker.”“I got one!” Mr. Foreman declared, holding the ball up high, before Ms. Masters read the name aloud: “Sean Skipworth!”As camera shutters clicked, Mr. Skipworth fell into the arms of his wife, Melissa, and son Christopher, 8, and then hugged Ms. Lawrence. He takes office on Tuesday.The graciousness shown by the candidates, both of whom accepted the outcome, wasn’t lost on anyone at the ceremony, which happened one day after a violent mob, egged on by President Trump’s refusal to accept his election loss, rampaged through the Capitol and disrupted Congress as it was certifying Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.“It was palpable,” Mr. Foreman said. “You realize, ‘Hey, there’s all this stuff going on nationally, but here they are — friendly, gracious, there’s no us against them. It was all of our residents and citizens coming together. It was a cool, friendly atmosphere, and I was proud of that.”Ms. Lawrence, who was running for office for the first time, said the loss was a heavy blow but also a relief after a tough, 10-month campaign. She said she had had a feeling that she was going to lose the drawing.“I had respect for Sean, and I knew if I was going to lose, I was going to lose with grace,” she said. “This is about our community. This is not about me winning or him winning. It’s about how we get something done for our citizens.”Mr. Skipworth said he was moved by Ms. Lawrence’s hard work and civility.“Given what happened, it is refreshing for people to see this in everyday America,” he said. “At the end of the day, we came and hugged it out and shook hands, and that was it. And that’s how it should be.”Still, Mr. Skipworth said he wanted to amend the City Charter to ensure that if a future election ends in a tie, it prompts another election, not a random drawing. He said he planned to turn his strange victory into an object lesson for his students on the importance of voting.“Every vote counts,” he said, “and I’m living proof of that — literally.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      in US Politics

      Jennifer Lawrence: I voted for John McCain rather than Barack Obama

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      The actor Jennifer Lawrence used to vote Republican, she has revealed. Speaking on the Absolutely Not podcast, Lawrence told host Heather McMahan she “grew up Republican. My first time voting, I voted for John McCain. I was a little Republican.”Lawrence said she remained grateful for her upbringing as it enabled her to “see the fiscal benefits of some of the Republican policies” while also noting that her and the party’s views on social issues “weren’t in line”.“When Donald Trump got elected, that just changed everything,” said Lawrence. “This is an impeached president who’s broken many laws and refused to condemn white supremacy and it feels there’s been a line drawn in the sand.”Despite not voting for him the first time around, Lawrence said she reflected fondly on the years when Barack Obama was in power, saying: “You would go days without thinking about the president.”Speaking before Trump’s election in 2016, Lawrence said she couldn’t “imagine supporting a party that doesn’t support women’s basic rights. It’s 2015 and gay people can get married and we think that we’ve come so far, so, yay! But have we? I don’t want to stay quiet about that stuff.”She also expressed the view that “if Donald Trump is president of the United States, it will be the end of the world. And he’s also the best thing to happen to the Democrats ever.”Earlier this month, Lawrence endorsed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in November’s election saying: “Voting is the foundation of our democracy and our freedom. And I would consider this upcoming election the most consequential of our lifetime.“Donald Trump has and will continue to put himself before the safety and well-being of America. He does not represent my values as an American, and most importantly as a human being.”For the past three years, Lawrence has also served on the board of RepresentUs, which she described as “an incredible non-partisan movement and anti-corruption organisation working to unrig America’s broken political system, and put power back in the hands of the American people.” More