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      Jon Ronson and Adam Curtis on the culture wars: ‘How has this happened? Where is the escape hatch?’

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      As Ronson’s BBC podcast Things Fell Apart begins, the documentary-makers and old friends discuss conspiracy theories, the problem of ‘activist journalists’ and what happened to Ceaușescu’s socksby Fiona SturgesJon Ronson and Adam Curtis became friends in the late 1990s, having bonded over their shared interests in power, society and the stories we tell about ourselves. Curtis, 66, is a Bafta-winning documentary film-maker whose credits include The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear and HyperNormalisation. His most recent six-part series, Can’t Get You Out of My Head, draws on the history of psychology and politics to show how we got to where we are today. Ronson, 54, is a US-based Welsh writer and journalist whose books include 2015’s So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, about social media brutality and the history of public shaming. In recent years, Ronson has turned to podcasting, investigating the porn industry in The Butterfly Effect and its follow-up The Last Days of August.Sign up to our Inside Saturday newsletter for an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the making of the magazine’s biggest features, as well as a curated list of our weekly highlights.His forthcoming BBC podcast, Things Fell Apart, is about the roots of the culture wars and the ways the present is echoed in the past. Over eight episodes, he talks to individuals caught up in ideological conflicts, conspiracy theories and moral panics. These include Alice Moore, the wife of a fundamentalist minister and unexpected culture war instigator who campaigned to remove textbooks containing liberal material from schools, and Kelly Michaels, a daycare worker and victim of the “satanic panic” who was wrongfully imprisoned in 1988 by a New Jersey court for child abuse (the verdict was overturned in 1993).We are on: Curtis is talking from his office in London while Ronson is at home in New York. By way of preparation before their chat, Curtis has binged on Ronson’s new series. No sooner are cameras switched on than the reminiscences begin.Jon Ronson Do you remember that time we went to an auction of [the late Romanian dictator Nicolae] Ceaușescu’s belongings?Adam Curtis Yes, now that was exciting.JR It was. We went on a minibreak to Romania together.AC I bought Ceaușescu’s cap, and a pair of socks.JR I also got a pair of socks. There was some very heavy bidding from a mysterious gentleman who got all the ornaments. The prices were getting pretty high so I stuck with the socks. I don’t even know where they are now. I bet you know where your stuff is.AC I do, actually.JR We have had many conversations over the years and generally I find I’m asking you questions because I’m trying to get ideas. I always think of you as a fantastic source of insights into the future. In the early days of social media, you were the very first person to say to me: “Don’t think of this as a utopia. There are some problems here.” There are two or three people in my life where, when they talk, I really want to listen to what they have to say, and you are one of those.AC That is completely not true. What actually happens is that I bollock on about theories which you completely ignore and then you go off on your stories. Anyway, I’m trying to remember when we actually met.JR I think the first time I met you was when I made the [1997] documentary Tottenham Ayatollah and you came to the screening.AC And your wife Elaine invited me to meet you in a cafe off Tottenham Court Road. She said: “Can you come and talk to him? Then you could take some of the pressure off me by talking about his film.”JR She probably said: “I can’t take it any more. He won’t stop agonising.”AC But when we met you didn’t agonise at all. I think what we recognised in each other – and it’s been the professional bond between us – is that we’re both interested in what happens outside those normal areas that most political journalists examine that involve politics and power. We want to look at things like psychology and how a conspiracy theory plays out and how feelings work through society.JR I’m really surprised at how frequently the things that we tell stories about overlap. But the way we go about it is so different. I think your brain works better thinking about theories and my brain works better thinking about stories.AC I think you and I are creatures of our time. I got interested in this idea that power now works not through traditional forms but through the idea of individualism; it says you should be allowed to do what you want to do, but we will serve you to get that. You and I both know what it’s like to be an obsessive individualist, but we’ve become intrigued by how that plays out in a society in which you’ve got lots of people wanting to be individuals. I’ve always had this theory that self-expression is the conformity of our age. The most radical thing you can do is something extraordinary like walking naked around the world, and not tell anyone that you’ve done it. You can’t post anything online. When you say that to people, they can’t conceive of it.JR I really like that idea.AC The other thing that we both do when we’re interviewing people is not follow a list of questions. You go into a situation where you have questions in your head but suddenly they’ll say something which is either funny or unexpected and you just learn to go with it. It’s like suddenly a little piglet swerves off from the herd, and you go with it up and over the hill.JR One positive thing that has been said about what I do is that there’s a sincerity to it. I never go into something with an idea of how it will turn out.AC We’re talking about sincerity? Don’t go there, Jon! You’ll be writing poems next.JR [Laughs] Well it’s really to do with trying to figure out what I think from my research without being told what to think by other people. I think people appreciate the fact that I’ve worked hard to come to the thoughts I’ve come to.AC Yes, I agree with that.JR I guess what we have in common is we’re not ideologues. We don’t go into a situation with a set of agendas. We’re more willing to be a twig in the river of the story and just go where it takes us. By doing that we’re forced to keep an open mind. I don’t even have a list of questions in my head when I’m interviewing somebody. I’m literally a tightrope walker with no safety net, and I have, on many occasions, plummeted to my death like in Squid Game.AC I think that open-mindedness is clear in your podcast. And it’s absolutely the right time to examine the roots of what we’re calling the culture wars, which is such a difficult and sensitive area. So much journalism, when it goes back into the past to see why something happened, always interviews the people who are defined as the actors, the people who consciously set out to [create conflict]. What I’m increasingly intrigued by is the people who were acted upon by that thing or idea. Because the way ideas or concepts play out in society are never the way that the people who started them think. What you’ve done in these programmes is follow individuals who are acted upon by these forces, because it shows you the real dimensions of what these things called culture wars are.JR Well, I realised that I would watch people become overconsumed by these cultural conflicts, to the extent that it was impacting their mental health and tearing families apart. But every show that’s about the culture ends up a part of the culture wars, and I didn’t want to do that. So I thought the way to do it was by focusing on a moment and a human story and tell that story in as unexpected a way as possible. In the end we found eight stories about the complexity of human life and they all happen to be origin stories. These are the pebbles being thrown in the pond and creating these ripples.AC Yes, these people have got caught up in the great tides of history that have come sweeping over them. It feels real. If you follow people who are acted upon, you start to understand, in a much more sympathetic way, why people do things that you might not like or approve of. You see how someone is led to something, with no idea of the consequences. In the first two episodes, you talk about how the evangelical movement up until the early 1970s had been completely detached from any involvement in the moral, political or social questions of American society. And what you trace is how two people got sucked into a particular issue, which then acted like a fuse to reawaken the evangelical movement.JR For decades the Christian right were silent: they consumed their own media, they went to their own churches and they listened to their own radio shows, and they were totally unengaged with what was happening. But then a few things happened that finally galvanised them into becoming soldiers in a culture war, and one was a new diversity of thought in school textbooks. In the series I talk to Alice Moore, who is in her 80s now and was one of the earliest cultural warriors for the evangelical right. She was a church minister’s wife in West Virginia who discovered there was going to be a new sex education lesson taught in schools, and she wasn’t having that. So she got on to the school board, and then the new curriculum arrived in 1974 that was full of all these multicultural voices, and things got so heated over just one semester that school buses were shot at – in fact, shots were fired from both sides – and a school was bombed. And I discovered while talking to Alice that one of the reasons for the intensity of the anger was a misinterpretation of a poem [that appeared in one of the new school textbooks].AC By Roger McGough!JR Yes. It was a poem [1967’s At Lunchtime: A Story of Love] that featured a spontaneous orgy that takes place on a bus, because the passengers thought the world was about to end at lunchtime in a nuclear war. So Alice was reading out this poem to me and I was thinking: “I don’t think this is in favour of spontaneous orgies on buses. I think this poet is agreeing with you, to an extent.” So then I went off to talk to Roger about it.AC And then you went back to Alice, and she was quite grumpy about it, which was funny. But I think this is a beautiful example of what we were talking about. As I was listening to that episode I was thinking: “Hang on, this isn’t quite as bad as she thinks it is.” And then, Jon’s brain is thinking the same thing, but without judgment.JR I like to steer clear of conflict as much as I can.AC Which is good and also rare. Most people would pursue her with their agenda. Right now, everyone is judged as either being good or bad. It’s good versus evil – that’s where journalism has got to now. But yours doesn’t do that.JR I’m interested in everybody as a human being and I’m quite startled by the myriad examples of the media being a part of the culture wars. It seems to happen everywhere, this mistelling of a story so it fits into a particular ideology a little more clearly. It happens on all sides. I get very disheartened when CNN lies to me or is biased or omits certain aspects of the truth to tell a certain version of the story. During the Trump years I really felt that with CNN. I felt like I was in QAnon and my Q was Anderson Cooper.AC I would read the New York Times all about the close friendship between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. And I know enough Russian journalists who I trust to know that it’s just complete rubbish. So hysteria happened on both sides. I mean if you go back over reports even from my own organisation, the BBC, about how Trump was actually an agent of Putin, it’s extraordinary. It’s a conspiracy theory. That’s as much of a panic as anything else you get on the right.JR I also think a lot of journalists are, like: “Oh my God. All this time I’ve just been a liberal but look at these things that are happening: Trump’s election, George Floyd.” So they think it’s not enough to be a liberal journalist, they have to be an activist journalist. And I think it’s completely understandable and, in some cases, it’s a great thing. But then in other cases, it’s really troublesome because journalism now has pre-existing ideologies.AC And then journalism lifts off from Planet Real and goes off into the realms of histrionic personality disorder. I actually think histrionic personality disorder describes most of the progressive classes in western societies, in that they’ve given up on their progressivism and retreated into a histrionic attitude to the world.JR I do think these stories tell us an awful lot about the way we live our lives today. In the satanic panic episode, which is about moral panics in the 1980s, you think it’s going to be about the parallels today with QAnon. But it becomes clear that there are also parallels with the panics on the left today, and that we all have these cognitive biases. I tell this story in which daycare workers are being accused of satanic activity, which clearly never happened, and where people actually went to jail. Suddenly it wasn’t just the Christian right worried about satanic cults at the end of your street, but mainstream America. When the flame is burning hot, we can all act in irrational, brutal or inhuman ways, and you see it across the spectrum.AC The series did make me think: how has this happened? Not just the culture wars but their ferocity. And where is the escape hatch? Because I think all sides now feel that there’s something not quite right. If you examine the years since Trump and Brexit, there has been this enormous hysteria in newspapers and on television about it. But actually the politicians have done nothing to change society. It’s almost been like a frozen world. So, I think the real answer to why this is happening is because politics has failed. It’s become this dead area, this desert surrounded by thinktanks, and someone’s got to get in there and regenerate it. The new politics is waiting to come. And I think it will happen.Jon Ronson’s Things Fell Apart continues Tuesday, 9am Radio 4 and BBC Sounds. It will be available in the US and Canada exclusively on BBC Podcasts Premium on Apple Podcasts. Adam Curtis’s Can’t Get You Out of My Head is on BBC iPlayer.TopicsJon RonsonAdam CurtisPodcastsPodcastingUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Four Hours at the Capitol review – a chilling look at the day the far right ‘fought like hell’

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      TV reviewTelevisionFour Hours at the Capitol review – a chilling look at the day the far right ‘fought like hell’With Trump’s words ringing in their ears, a violent mob descended on the US Capitol on 6 January. This powerful film details what happened – and their horrifying lack of remorse Lucy Mangan@LucyManganWed 20 Oct 2021 17.30 EDTNick Alvear started believing in Trump “because 800,000 kids in America go missing every year – held captive, tortured and killed … enslaved sexually … I’m part of the first wave bringing awareness of this.”It is perhaps the greatest of Four Hours at the Capitol’s many strengths that it gives space to those who were most eager for battle. They call themselves insurrectionists, while others in the BBC Two documentary that details the unfolding of the 6 January assault on the meeting place of the US Congress refer to them as domestic terrorists.Jamie Roberts’ film (he also directed The Rise of the Murdoch Dynasty) lays out the timeline of that extraordinary day in exhaustive but never exhausting detail. Phone footage shot by Eddie Block, a member of the far-right group Proud Boys, shows them beginning to gather at 10.35am. By 12.06pm they have heard enough of Trump’s Stop the Steal speech to have started marching towards Capitol Hill. Viewers are reminded of the barely veiled exhortations to action that were ringing in their ears: “You’ll never take back our country with weakness … If you don’t fight like hell you won’t have a country any more.”The film hears from many of those on the other side of the fight, including some of the 40 or 50 officers who did their best to hold back the 1,500-strong mob as they came up the steps and broke into the building, and from members of Congress (Republican and Democrat) and others who found themselves trapped inside. The latter include Leah Han, a staffer in Nancy Pelosi’s office, who recounts how she and her colleagues relocated from the room that bore Pelosi’s name to an anonymous office down the hall and hid under the desks as the noise of invasion got louder, hoping that they would not be killed or raped before help arrived.The accounts of those trapped and of the officers hopelessly outnumbered outside are as harrowing as you might expect – whether they are recollected with stoicism (“For hours we were sitting there, the president not saying a word,” says Republican representative for Illinois Adam Kinzinger. “To me that was beyond the pale”) or fury (most of the officers). Foremost among the second group is Mike Fanone, who was grabbed by the mob as he and others battled for hours to keep protesters out of the tunnel that would have let them flood the building. He was Tasered and beaten before being passed back to safety. He suffered a traumatic brain injury and a heart attack. “That I and a shit-ton of my fellow officers almost lost their lives pisses me the fuck off,” he says.The documentary passed lightly – too lightly, maybe – over the lack of preparation by Capitol and Metropolitan Police Department officials on the day, given the known combustibility of the situation and the hesitant response from the National Guard and others to pleas for reinforcement. However, overall there was a much-needed sense of the true human impact of what happened. From the outside, ruined by Hollywood spectacle as we all have been, perhaps it didn’t look that bad. Once we were taken inside – shown the mentality and mechanics of the crowd, and given the proper scale by which to judge – it was that bad, and worse.Most chilling of all was the lack of remorse among the rioters interviewed, coupled with their unassailed – and one must presume, at this point, unassailable – devotion to the man they believe commanded them to storm the Capitol. There was also a generous portion of denial and doublethink from people like Couy Griffin, part of the Cowboys for Trump group, who insists he was standing among thousands of “peaceful patriots” and thinks that “you’re really stretching it to say it was supporters of Trump that did it … just because they have a Trump hat or a Trump T-shirt on”.Three protesters outside the Capitol died from medical emergencies, 140 police officers were injured, one died and – since January – there have been four deaths by suicide among those who were on duty that day. The rage still visibly emanates from Fanone. “I still haven’t made sense of it,” he says, eyes blazing. “And it certainly doesn’t help when the elected leader won’t even acknowledge it occurred.”The underlying collective testimony furnished by Four Hours at the Capitol is that the age of Trump has not yet ended – and the true day of reckoning in the United States is still to come.TopicsTelevisionTV reviewUS politicsreviewsReuse this content More

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      Australian journalist Jonathan Swan wins Emmy for his viral interview with Donald Trump

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      Emmys 2021Australian journalist Jonathan Swan wins Emmy for his viral interview with Donald Trump The Axios political reporter, whose facial expressions launched a meme, grilled the US president on his response to Covid and fact-checked his misleading statements Amanda MeadeWed 29 Sep 2021 00.57 EDTLast modified on Wed 29 Sep 2021 01.36 EDTAustralian journalist Jonathan Swan has won an Emmy award for his widely acclaimed interview with Donald Trump in which he bluntly fact-checked the president’s misleading statements.In August last year the national political correspondent at the Axios news site grabbed international headlines when he doggedly but politely questioned the US president about his response to the Covid-19 pandemic.“I’m deeply honoured to have won this award, and grateful for the gifted, generous team who helped make the interview a great piece of journalism,” Swan told Guardian Australia after winning the Emmy award for outstanding edited interview.Who is Jonathan Swan, the reporter who grilled Trump? And what do kangaroos have to do with it?Read moreSwan’s myriad facial expressions during the Axios on HBO interview also attracted the attention of social media, launching a popular meme.The #NewsEmmys Award for Outstanding Edited Interview goes to “President Donald J. Trump: An interview,” @HBO @axios. pic.twitter.com/E5uMmHhKvp— News & Documentary Emmys (@newsemmys) September 29, 2021
      The 36-year-old had Trump shuffling through his papers as he put him on the spot about the death toll in the US.“Well, right here, United States is lowest in numerous categories,” Trump said. “We’re lower than the world.”Swan: “Lower than the world? Oh, you’re doing death as a proportion of cases. I’m talking about death as a proportion of population.”00:59Another part of the interview which was startling was Trump’s claim that he had “done more” to improve the lives of black people in the US than the late civil rights leader John Lewis.Ben Smith wrote in the New York Times that it was “perhaps the best interview of Mr Trump’s term”.Congratulations to @jonathanvswan and #AxiosOnHBO on an #Emmy win!!!!So proud to make this show with @perripeltz and the team @axios @HBODocs @DCTVny We’re back on the air 6pm Sunday night! Tune in! @HBO https://t.co/0sQCMAEjGR— Matt O’Neill (@MattODocs) September 29, 2021
      Swan is a former Sydney Morning Herald journalist who moved to the US in 2014, and is the son of ABC health editor Dr Norman Swan.So proud of my son @jonathanvswan winning an Emmy just now. Fabulous work. I love you.— Norman Swan (@normanswan) September 29, 2021
      Father and son have been covering the coronavirus for almost two years, albeit from different perspectives and on different sides of the world.Norman and health reporter Tegan Taylor host the hugely popular Coronacast podcast on ABC.Jonathan achieved early success in Australia, winning the prestigious Wallace Brown young achiever award for journalism in 2014 after a string of scoops about the questionable use of taxpayer funds by politicians, which led to an overhaul of the rules governing parliamentary entitlements and expenses. The judges commended his “dogged determination”.All the best reactions of @jonathanvswan as he listened to @realDonaldTrump’s responses. Which is your favorite? @axios #ItIsWhatItIs pic.twitter.com/TWL5bOvESX— Joel Lawson (@JoelLawsonDC) August 4, 2020
      The 42nd Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards were announced by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in New York on Tuesday night US time.TopicsEmmys 2021Australian mediaTrump administrationUS politicsAustralian Broadcasting CorporationHBOTelevision industrynewsReuse this content More

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      9/11: Inside the President’s War Room review – astonishing and petrifying

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      TV reviewTelevision9/11: Inside the President’s War Room review – astonishing and petrifying This remarkable documentary shows exactly how 9/11 unfolded for George W Bush, from the multiple prayer breaks to the anti-anthrax pills – and the vow to ‘kick ass’ before he knew whose ass to kickJack SealeTue 31 Aug 2021 17.00 EDTLast modified on Tue 31 Aug 2021 17.26 EDTThere is a particular kind of political documentary that tries to put us “in the room”, to tell us how historic decisions were made and how the fallible humans who made them felt. But on 11 September 2001, when planes hijacked by al-Qaida terrorists destroyed the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center and took the lives of nearly 3,000 Americans, the chaos was such that there was no single “room”. President George W Bush and his advisers, afraid for their own safety and constantly searching for information, were on the move all day and had to conduct their business in airbase bunkers, the back room of a school and aboard the president’s jet, Air Force One.Nevertheless, 9/11: Inside the President’s War Room (BBC One) gives the sensation of being in the room in a way that few documentaries ever have. That day has often been described as a disaster movie no screenwriter would dare imagine. Here, it is a horrifyingly tragic but also propulsive story, with twin narratives following the president’s movements and the developing carnage on the ground, minute by minute.The film’s archive footage has plenty of Adam Curtis moments, such as Bush killing a fly on the Oval Office desk, seconds before giving the gravest speech of his life, to underline that every moment of 11 September had something odd or terrifying in it. But as every relevant government official shares their recollections on camera, the vivid pictures are outstripped by personal anecdotes. We hear from the situation room captain, who recalls having to brace herself against the president’s desk as Air Force One made a steep emergency takeoff – “I went partially weightless. I was petrified” – and the deputy communications director, who got flustered when Bush’s doctor handed out anti-anthrax pills and took his whole week’s ration in one hit.Chiefly, though, this is an insight into the mind of the star interviewee: George W Bush. At first, we see his notorious folksy simplicity, apparent in his eerily counterintuitive decision to ignore, for several long minutes, the news about the second tower being hit, for fear of being impolite to a class of Florida seven-year-olds having a presidential visit. Bush also called for those around him to stop and pray, more than once, while still in the eye of a storm of unknown lethality and proportion. “Prayer can be very comforting,” he says here.Such reactions could be read as bizarre in the face of doom, or natural responses to a situation where what could immediately be achieved was unclear. One interviewee says that, while analyses of Churchill or Roosevelt in wartime look at actions that took weeks to complete, Bush on 9/11 is a study of a leader being forced to make epic choices on the hop.This is where Inside the President’s War Room is most revealing. We hear how anger became the strongest of Bush’s conflicting emotions: fear and sorrow and a determination to safeguard US citizens had to make room for the desire to, in Bush’s words, “kick their ass”, before it was known whose ass or how. By that evening, the president had publicly formulated the “Bush doctrine”, which said harbouring terrorists was to be treated as the equivalent of perpetrating terror. A new American pathology, the “war on terror”, was born in haste.The consequences of this are clear from the fact that this documentary, marking 20 years since 9/11, airs just as the ensuing military intervention in Afghanistan concludes. The thought of that war and, moreover, the US and its allies’ 2003 attack on Iraq, hangs over the whole piece, making the simplest emotional moments complex. The politician expressing the helpless horror of seeing the twin towers fall on TV is Karl Rove. The bowed head, overcome by the emotion of remembering the dilemma over whether or not to shoot down United Flight 93, belongs to Dick Cheney.Are those moments still affecting, knowing that those men went on to wreak horrors of their own? Yes, but to its credit, Inside the President’s War Room makes sure that context is explicit. Being in the room doesn’t stop us looking beyond.TopicsTelevisionTV reviewUS politicsSeptember 11 2001George BushreviewsReuse this content More

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      TV tonight: what President George W Bush really did on 9/11

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      TV tonightTelevision & radioTV tonight: what President George W Bush really did on 9/11 In a new documentary, the former US president and his team recall the 12 hours after the September 2001 terror attacks. Plus: Daisy Haggard returns in Back to Life. Here’s what to watch this eveningAmmar Kalia, Phil Harrison, Jack Seale, Ali Catterall and Paul HowlettTue 31 Aug 2021 01.20 EDT9/11: Inside the President’s War Room8.30pm, BBC OneWhere Monday night’s Surviving 9/11 told the story of some of the civilians who found themselves in the midst of the September 2001 terrorist attacks, this documentary analyses 12 hours in the US presidency as the news and its aftermath unfolded. Former president George W Bush recalls hearing of the attacks at a primary school, while members of his team revisit their unpreparedness for an attack like that, as the press records their reactions. Ammar KaliaSaving Lives at Sea8pm, BBC TwoMore heroics from the volunteers of the RNLI, the charity that became a political football earlier this summer for rescuing refugees in trouble at sea. Tonight, they plunge into a rip current to save a mother and son and help a man who has fallen off a cliff. Phil HarrisonThe Secret Life of the Zoo8pm, Channel 4This week at Chester Zoo, the keepers are trying to create a romantic atmosphere to encourage a pair of Kenyan antelopes to mate. Meanwhile, there’s potential danger in store as keepers try to get blood samples from the crocodiles, and George, a Malagasy giant rat, undergoes major surgery. AKLong Lost Family9pm, ITVIt’s never too late to reconnect with family. Tonight’s searcher is Roy, 86, who lost touch with his daughter nearly 60 years ago, when his ex-wife moved without warning. All this happened in New York, so his hopeful quest for a reunion is now a transatlantic task. Jack SealeBritannia 9pm,Sky AtlanticIt’s gone from bad to worse for Queen Antedia after being sold into slavery, as the brilliantly mad druids’n’drugs drama continues. Her new home is a hovel and her owners are the pits. But there is an escape route on the cards … Meanwhile, an unwitting Cait meets the man who blinded her father. Ali CatterallBack to Life10.35pm, BBC OneDaisy Haggard’s ingenious comedy-drama about ex-convict Miri Matteson’s return to her small-town home after an 18-year sentence begins its second season. We pick up six weeks on from Miri’s release as she tries to fend for herself, although she is still avoiding her mum and best friend Mandy. AKFilm choiceGran Torino (Clint Eastwood, 2008), 10pm, ITV4Recent widower and embittered Korean war vet Walt Kowalski only cares about his car, a pristine Gran Torino. He reserves his meanest snarls for the Hmong family next door, until violent local hoods cause him to befriend and defend them. It’s a wry, elegiac drama, with Eastwood magnificent as the old curmudgeon. Paul HowlettLive sportParalympics 2020 9am, Channel 4. Coverage of the swimming finals.Cricket: Saint Lucia Kings v Trinbago Knight Riders 2.40pm, BT Sport 1. T20 match from Warner Park Sporting Complex.Baseball: Tampa Bay Rays v Boston Red Sox 12midnight, BT Sport ESPN. American League match from Tropicana Field.TopicsTelevision & radioTV tonightDocumentaryFactual TVTelevisionUS politicsTV comedyDramaReuse this content More

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      Is Caitlyn Jenner serious – or is her bid for California governor a grubby PR stunt? | Arwa Mahdawi

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      OpinionCaitlyn JennerIs Caitlyn Jenner serious – or is her bid for California governor a grubby PR stunt?Arwa MahdawiThe reality star’s run seems completely depressing – especially as she’s aligned with a party that wants to erode LGBTQ rights Sat 24 Jul 2021 09.00 EDTLast modified on Sat 24 Jul 2021 09.13 EDTWhat in the world is Caitlyn Jenner up to?Looks like Caitlyn Jenner needs to drum up some cash quick. When it comes to her finances, the reality TV star is no longer Keeping Up With the Kardashians – she’s trailing miserably behind her famously flush extended family. According to her tax filings the 71-year-old’s annual income has dropped from $2.5m in 2015, when she had her own reality TV show, to $555,000 in 2018 and 2019. Barely enough to pay the pool boy!We got the bill for having a baby – $37,000. Welcome to life in America | Arwa MahdawiRead moreJenner’s tax returns wouldn’t normally be in the public domain; however, she was obliged to release them because she’s running for office. In late April Jenner, a Republican, announced that she would be challenging California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, in a special recall election. The last time California held a gubernatorial recall election, by the way, was in 2003. That famously resulted in the actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, replacing Democrat Gray Davis. Will we see history repeat itself? Will Jenner, a political ingenue, oust Newsom? It’s highly unlikely. As Republic strategist and Lincoln Project co-founder Mike Madrid noted to the LA Times, Jenner’s bid is “more Gary Coleman than Arnold Schwarzenegger”; the late Coleman being a former child star who ran as a joke in 2003. Madrid added that Jenner’s campaign appears to lack any obvious strategy or rationale.I’ve got to disagree with Madrid on that last bit. Jenner’s strategy seems very obvious: shoehorn herself in the headlines by whatever means possible, and turn that attention into money. It’s ripped straight out of Donald Trump’s political playbook. Jenner’s brazenness is also classically Trumpian; when she launched her campaign her website had just two components: “Shop” and “Donate”. She’s also hired a film crew to follow her around on the campaign trail. Jenner has said she doesn’t have a deal “for any television show or documentary” right now – but she’s clearly angling for one.To be fair, Jenner’s campaign isn’t completely devoid of policy proposals. She doesn’t want trans women to participate in women’s sports; she doesn’t want tax increases; and she doesn’t want homeless people anywhere near her. Don’t think she’s completely heartless, though, she’s thought long and hard about that last point and come up with some innovative solutions for homelessness. Namely, move the unhoused people living in Venice Beach to somewhere where she never needs to see them. “We can find some open land; this is where you pitch your tent,” she explained in an interview. A very generous offer.While Jenner may not have much political experience, she has proved herself adept at multitasking. She’s managed to balance running for governor of California with an appearance on Big Brother in Australia. Her trip down under, which comes just a couple of months before the election, hasn’t gone down very well with locals. The pandemic has led to Australia implementing tight border restrictions, leaving thousands of its citizens stranded abroad. Seeing Jenner waltz right in is something of a kick in the teeth to Australians desperate to go home and see their families. Particularly since Jenner isn’t exactly being a model visitor. She was recently caught chucking a cigarette butt off her hotel balcony in Sydney.After sullying the streets of Sydney, Jenner plans to jet back to California for a statewide campaign bus tour. The whole exhausting charade is a depressing reflection of the way in which reality TV has merged with politics. It’s also sad to see Jenner, who is probably the most high-profile trans woman in the world, align herself with a party that wants to roll back LGBT rights. Particularly as a lot of Republicans don’t even bother hiding their disdain for Jenner: she was bombarded with transphobic abuse at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas.Jenner’s political aspirations are also a reminder that being from a marginalised group doesn’t automatically make you a progressive. Rather, it often makes you a useful pawn for conservatives who want to pink-wash their bigotry. While it’s very clear that Jenner’s campaign is a joke, nothing about it is funny.Female athletes still battle sexist dress codesThe Norwegian women’s beach handball team have been fined for competing in bikini bottoms that weren’t skimpy enough for the International Handball Federation’s (IHF) liking. The team, by the way, have been complaining to the IHF about being forced to compete in a very revealing uniform since at least 2006. Meanwhile, Paralympian Olivia Breen was told her shorts were “too short and inappropriate” by an official while competing at the recent English Championships. You really can’t win as a woman.New York Times shocked by women wearing crop tops in summerSpeaking of the policing of women’s clothes … the Times ran a bizarre article (written by a guy called Guy) about summer fashion. “Bralettes, itty-bitty bandeaus and crocheted bikinis are everywhere,” it gasps. It pairs the handwringing with lots of candid shots of scantily clad New Yorkers going about their business in a massive heatwave. The whole thing is creepy and weird.UK politicians to examine lack of support for menopausal womenAlmost one million women in the UK have left jobs as a result of menopausal symptoms, the Guardian reports. Now, a parliamentary inquiry will look into the economic impact of menopause discrimination, as well as how practices addressing workplace discrimination relating to menopause can be implemented.Argentina introduced a new gender-neutral ID cardIt now includes an “X” option in the gender field alongside “male” and “female”. Argentina is the first country in Latin America to officially recognize nonbinary people.Activision Blizzard’s ‘frat boy’ problemCalifornia regulators have filed a lawsuit against the video game company, which is behind popular titles like Call of Duty, for alleged gender-based discrimination stemming from a “frat boy” workplace culture. As Kotaku note, the case “against Activision Blizzard is proving what many women already knew – misogyny in the industry doesn’t come down to just a few bad apples at a few companies. It’s deeply ingrained in the culture at the heart of how the games business has operated for decades.”The week in penis-archyI’m sure I don’t need to inform you of this week’s big billionaire news: Jeff Bezos touched the tip of space with the most phallic object that ever existed. While I can’t deny the rocket was large, his intergalactic joyride was somewhat underwhelming. Still, Bezos came back to Earth with some good ideas about how to make the world even more dystopian. He now wants to pollute space.TopicsCaitlyn JennerOpinionCaliforniaUS politicsRepublicanscommentReuse this content More

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      Philly DA: Breaking the Law review – a deeply thrilling, hopeful show to devour

      by

      Such is the tenor of our times that the first thing I did before embarking on the docuseries Philly DA: Breaking the Law (BBC Four) was research its subject, Larry Krasner. Because there has to be a catch, right? An eight-hour film about a civil rights defence lawyer winning a landslide victory to become the first progressive district attorney in a notoriously conservative, corrupt city just doesn’t scan. A chronicle of him fighting ceaselessly for genuine change from within? No. Not in 2021. I’ve been here before. I want to be forearmed against the big reveal. So I searched. For the charges of fraud, revelations of – oh, I don’t know – historical sexual assault. That’s normally it, isn’t it? Maybe child abuse, to match the high – remember, it was not just a simple victory, but a landslide! – with the low. I put nothing past 2021, nothing at all.But his record, as far as any awfulness is concerned, is like the Bellman’s map – a complete and perfect blank. Hard as it is to believe, Philly DA is a film about a good, not perfect man surrounding himself with good, not perfect people and trying to make a difference in a far from perfect world.The film’s makers, Yoni Brook, Ted Passon and Nicole Salazar, follow Krasner from 2017, when he was elected to the position – the election field was opened up by the arrest and indictment of the then DA on 23 counts of bribery (he resigned and pleaded guilty to one of them) – until halfway through 2020. The additional challenges of Covid are not covered by the film, and it ends with the protests about the murder of George Floyd inserted presumably last minute, slightly awkwardly but understandably, under the credits. Almost certainly, they started from a pro-Krasner position and, human nature being what it is, more than two years embedded with him and his team had its effects. There is a warmth running throughout and, of course, their access remains entirely in Krasner’s gift and could have presumably been withdrawn at any time no matter how publicly his commitment to transparency had been proclaimed.Nevertheless, Philly DA does not stray into hagiography. It is made clear Krasner is neither alone nor the Messiah, but was elected as part of a growing nationwide movement of people with progressive, reformist beliefs moving into prosecutorial positions they have tended to avoid (or been prevented from entering by the non-progressives already there). His inexperienced team’s missteps – notably losing control of the media narrative when they purge the office of the previous administration’s employees in what becomes known as “the Snow Day Massacre” – are on display. The problems caused by his unwillingness to smile, to gladhand just a little, to play retail politics and lubricate grinding wheels of the system where he can are noted. In episode six, for example, during a particularly antagonistic period between the old and new guard and between public concerns and the DA office’s attitude to the establishment of safe injection sites for drug users, his ally Councilwoman Maria Quinon-Sanchez threatens to withdraw her support if he cannot find it in himself to give just a little (he does).The trio of film-makers marshal a lot of material consistently well. Each instalment looks primarily at one subject, while continuing to tie it into the wider drive to change the policy of mass incarceration and break the harmful habits of career lifetimes among the remaining old guard. It fills in the city’s history while examining the result. It also looks at the effects of cash bail (which effectively criminalises people for being poor), the need for radical overhaul of a stunningly abstruse and uncompassionate juvenile system, the discovery of “damaged goods” files (secret records of police officers deemed too untrustworthy to testify in their own cases – wiped from employees’ computers but unearthed in hard copy in the archives).There’s also the need for probation reform, the pressures of standing against the death penalty and the growing frustration among the activists who helped Krasner get elected and for whom, perhaps, no pace of change was ever going to be fast enough.Transcending the directorial workmanship and production values, however, is the simple sight of unfashionable – which is to say good, ideologically informed but practically executed – work being done on behalf of the disfranchised, the powerless, the underserved. It is deeply thrilling to watch. An unfamiliar feeling stirs, and rises higher with each episode. The feeling is hope. “I don’t want to run for anything else,” says Krasner. “This is just an opportunity to do things that are really just about getting it right.” And remember, I checked ahead – you can enjoy it. Please do. More