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      Rudy Giuliani doesn’t need a monster costume to scare children | Sam Wolfson

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      Rudy Giuliani doesn’t need a monster costume to scare childrenSam WolfsonTrump’s lawyer was revealed to be a contestant on The Masked Singer – and when Robin Thicke storms off in protest, you know you’ve got problems It’s like something from a Guillermo del Toro film: a grotesque fantasy creature disrobes, only to reveal an even more horrifying monster underneath. But that’s what viewers will see when the US version of The Masked Singer, Fox’s incognito singing competition, returns at the end of this month.Rudy Giuliani’s surprise reveal on Masked Singer led to judges walking offRead moreThe show, in which a panel of judges and the audience try to guess the identity of celebrity vocalists dressed in furry theme-park costumes, is taped in advance of airing. But Deadline reports that at the first episode’s climax, when the eliminated singer reveals their true identity, it was Rudy Giuliani whose head popped out of the costume. Judges Ken Jeong and Robin Thicke walked off the set in protest. Quite a good reflection of how bad a guy you have to be when rape-culture chanteur Thicke, the singer of Blurred Lines, decides you’re beyond the pale.The disbarred attorney and former mayor of New York, who played one of the largest roles in trying to end 250 years of American democracy, is now under investigation for bribing foreign powers to investigate his political opponent, lying about election fraud, and trying to actively overturn votes, in some cases by seizing voting machines or ignoring electoral counts. It would be fair to say that the only reason the results of a democratic presidential election were not overturned is because Giuliani’s attempts were thwarted.So what better place for this cuddly henchman to hide from law enforcement than on a cosplay singing show. No footage has yet been released of what outfit Giuliani was wearing, although he doesn’t need a monster costume to scare children. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine how the producers came up with something more grotesque than his own smirking face, seen recently on the Borat sequel making creepy sex eyes at an actor he believed was a young journalist as he thrust his hand down his trousers.The Masked Singer began in Korea, but has been exported round the world and become one of the most successful non-scripted series in the US of the last decade. Stars from every era, including Gladys Knight, T-Pain, Jojo and Jewel, have found career rejuvenation after appearing on the show as furrier versions of themselves.But the masks have also been a way on sneaking controversial figures who may not normally be accepted on primetime TV. Logan Paul, who uploaded footage of a suicide victim to his YouTube channel, was eliminated in season five, and in season three a cuddly pink bear that rapped Sir Mix-a-Lot’s Baby Got Back was revealed to be former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Palin later commented that her appearance was “a walking middle finger to the haters out there”.Reality TV provides a fantastic and powerful form of reputation-washing, in which all participants are celebrated “for being able to laugh at themselves”, as if that was a greater attribute than not being a fascist.There is a reason Giuliani, Palin, Sean Spicer (Dancing with the Stars), Anthony Scaramucci and Omarosa Manigault Newman (Celebrity Big Brother) have attempted to use entertainment, rather than politics, to revive their reputations, and it’s not just because they enjoying turning network television into a moral-less Hunger Games universe where propagandists with blood on their hands shimmy in sparkles in between adverts for pharmaceuticals and Tostitos. Shows like The Masked Singer encourage viewers to think of politicians’ personalities as somehow separate from their political positions.We’ll have to wait until next month to find out what Giuliani wore. Until then, we’re left to imagine what stench uncontrolled flatulence might create in a costume that producers have previously warmed can get dangerously hot.TopicsRudy GiulianiTelevisionUS politicsTrump administrationUS televisioncommentReuse this content More

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      The secret history of Sesame Street: ‘It was utopian – it’s part of who we all are’

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      In 1970, David Attie was sent to photograph the birth of the kids’ landmark TV show as part of a cold war propaganda drive by the US government. But these newly found images are just one part of the programme’s radical historyby Steve Rose“I’m still pinching myself that my dad, my own flesh and blood, had Ernie on one hand and Bert on the other,” Eli Attie says. “It is like he got to sit at Abbey Road studios and watch the Beatles record I Want to Hold Your Hand.” Attie’s father was the photographer David Attie who, in 1970, visited the set of Sesame Street in New York City during its first season. His images lay forgotten in a wardrobe for the next 50 years, until Eli recently discovered them. They are a glimpse behind the curtain of a cultural phenomenon waiting to happen. Here are not only Bert and Ernie but Kermit, Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch with his original orange fur (he was green by season two). And here are the people who brought these characters to life, chiefly Jim Henson and Frank Oz, the Lennon and McCartney of Muppetdom. What also stands out in Attie’s images are the children visiting the set. As in the show itself, they are clearly so beguiled by the puppets, they completely ignore the humans controlling them.Eli himself was one of those visitors, although he has no memory of it. “I was in diapers, and as the story goes, I was loud and not to be quieted down, and was yanked off the set,” he says. His parents and older brother Oliver at least made it into the photos. Oliver was even in an episode of the show, in the background in Hooper’s Store, Eli explains, with just a hint of jealousy.Fifty-two years and more than 4,500 episodes later, Sesame Street remains the premier address in children’s entertainment. It is still watched by hundreds of millions around the world, and broadcast in more than 140 countries. One attempt to statistically measure the show’s impact on American society failed because nobody could find a large enough sample group who hadn’t watched it. Sesame Street’s place in US culture was bizarrely underlined last month when Big Bird announced on Twitter: “I got the Covid-19 vaccine today! My wing is feeling a little sore, but it’ll give my body an extra protective boost that keeps me and others healthy.” He was promoting the rollout of vaccinations to five- to 11-year-olds, but Big Bird’s tweet, combined with Sesame Street’s recent introduction of a new Korean American muppet, has prompted a conservative backlash. Texas senator Ted Cruz responded: “Government propaganda … for your 5 year old!” Cruz later doubled down, tweeting a cartoon of the Sesame Street characters sitting around the Thanksgiving dinner table, with a dead, cooked Big Bird in place of a turkey.Others piled in. The influential Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) expressly banned Big Bird and other Sesame Street characters from its next conference, and CPAC organiser Matt Schlapp called for PBS, which broadcasts the show (although new episodes now air on HBO Max), to be defunded. “They just won’t stop in their push for woke politics,” he complained. Arizona state senator Wendy Rogers went even further, declaring: “Big Bird is a communist.”Beyond the optics of beating up on universally beloved children’s characters, in the context of David Attie’s images, these takes could hardly be more wrong. Attie had been commissioned to photograph Sesame Street by Amerika, a Russian-language magazine funded by the US state department and distributed in the Soviet Union. Essentially, it was a cold war propaganda project. Soviet officials would regularly return copies of Amerika to the US embassy unsold, saying their citizens were not interested. In truth, the magazine was so sought after, it became a black-market commodity, explains Eli Attie. “One embassy official said to me they had traded two copies of Amerika for these impossible-to-find ballet tickets in Moscow at the time,” he says. So Sesame Street was used as government propaganda, just not in the way Cruz and Rogers might imagine.You could say that Sesame Street had a political mission from the outset, as the new documentary, Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street (to which Attie’s book is a companion piece), lays out. One of the show’s co-founders, the broadcaster Joan Ganz Cooney, was involved “intellectually and spiritually” with the civil rights movement. The other, psychologist Lloyd Morrisett, was concerned about a widening education gap in the 1960s US, which was leaving behind socioeconomically deprived children, particularly African Americans. These children were often spending long hours at home watching television while their parents were busy working. Instead of jingles for beer commercials, Cooney and Morrisett reasoned, why not use television to teach them literacy and numeracy?With an $8m federal grant, the newly formed Children’s Television Workshop spent two years researching how to make content that would not only be educational but entertaining. That’s where The Muppet Workshop came in (even if the hippy-ish Henson was initially distrusted by his more academic colleagues). Not to mention the songs, the anarchic comedy sketches, the surreal animations, and the improvised child-with-muppet segments. The whole thing was an experiment. Nothing like it had been done before and there was no guarantee it would be a success, but everyone seemed to be on the same page.As Cooney puts it in the documentary: “We weren’t so worried about reaching middle-class children but we really, really wanted to reach inner-city kids badly. It was hardly worth doing if it didn’t reach them.” This explains why the show was set on an ordinary New York street – a radical move for children’s TV, a familiar place for the target audience. Equally radically, the show was multicultural and inclusive from the start, with white, Black and Latino actors alongside non-human characters of all colours. Even the title sequence and the guests reflected the US’s diversity (the first season featured James Earl Jones, BB King, Mahalia Jackson and Jackie Robinson). As the long-running writer and director Jon Stone said of the show’s inclusive approach: “We’ve never beaten that horse to death by talking about it; we simply show it.”Sesame Street has taught kids about all manner of life topics. Not only racism (most recently with the introduction of two new African American characters, post-Black Lives Matter) but also poverty, addiction, autism, HIV and Aids, public health (Covid was not Big Bird’s first jab, he also got a measles vaccination in 1972), and gentrification (in 1994, the street was under threat of demolition from a loud-mouthed property tycoon named “Ronald Grump”, played by Joe Pesci). Sesame Street has even tackled the concept of death: when Will Lee, who played storekeeper Mr Hooper, died in 1982, the show featured a wrenching segment in which neighbours, clearly tearfully, explain to Big Bird that Mr Hooper is dead and is never coming back.It wasn’t just “inner-city kids” Sesame Street was popular with. While his father was working, Eli Attie’s artist mother would also put him and his brother in front of the TV to watch it so she could paint. “There was a block of hours that it was on public broadcasting stations in the New York region. So she just thought: ‘Hallelujah. I can place them here, they’re entertained,’” he says. “We were learning to count, we were learning to spell and we were learning a kind of comedy: we both became fans of Monty Python and standup comedy and I’m sure this was the gateway.” Attie went on to become a TV writer and producer, working on shows such as The West Wing, House and Billions.Sesame Street’s inclusive, humane, progressive agenda has always had its enemies. Mississippi broadcasters refused to air the first season back in 1969 on account of the show’s desegregated setting (they backed down after a few weeks). In the past decade, the conservative chorus of disapproval has been getting louder. Before Cruz and co, the show and PBS have been targeted by the likes of Mitt Romney, Fox News, and, inevitably, Donald Trump.“Sesame has never been a political show; it has been a very socially relevant show,” says Trevor Crafts, producer of the Street Gang documentary. Although the political climate today has echoes of the 1960s, when Sesame Street was created, he feels. “It was a very similar time. There was a lot of social unrest, and here we are again. It just shows that you need something like Sesame Street to sort of increase the volume of good in the world. And also to know that through creativity, you can make change. Positive change can occur if you’re willing to see a problem and try to fix it and do it creatively.”Where some might see a political agenda, many more would simply see a model for the kind of society the US would like to be. “I think it showed everybody: ‘This is who we should be in our hearts,’” Eli Attie says. “It was utopian. It was optimistic, it was challenging and smart. And it didn’t talk down to children.” As well as a family album, his father’s photos capture that spirit of playful idealism. “I see now that’s part of who I am,” he says. “And it’s part of who we all are.” TopicsChildren’s TVUS televisionTelevisionPhotographyThe MuppetsArt and design booksfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Chris Cuomo fired by CNN for helping brother Andrew fight sexual misconduct charges

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      Chris Cuomo fired by CNN for helping brother Andrew fight sexual misconduct chargesPrimetime anchor was suspended on TuesdayNetwork says ‘additional information’ has come to light CNN has fired the primetime anchor Chris Cuomo for trying to help his brother, the former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, fight accusations of sexual misconduct which resulted in his resignation.How Chris and Andrew Cuomo’s on-air comedy routines compromised CNNRead moreAnnouncing the firing on Saturday, CNN said “additional information” had come to light. “Chris Cuomo was suspended earlier this week,” a statement said, “pending further evaluation of new information that came to light about his involvement with his brother’s defense.“We retained a respected law firm to conduct the review and have terminated him effective immediately. While in the process of that review additional information has come to light. Despite the termination, we will investigate as appropriate.”In a statement reported by the New York Times, Cuomo, 51, said: “This is not how I want my time at CNN to end but I have already told you why and how I helped my brother.“So let me now say as disappointing as this is, I could not be more proud of the team at Cuomo Prime Time and the work we did … I owe them all and will miss that group of special people who did really important work.”The CNN anchor tested a policy of not covering his brother in early 2020 when, during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic and with New York hard-hit, the two regularly spoke and joked on air.The scandal which engulfed Andrew Cuomo spread to his younger brother, who acknowledged offering advice when the governor faced the harassment charges that he denied but that ultimately led to his resignation in August.Chris Cuomo was then suspended on Tuesday, after the release of documentation collected during an investigation of Andrew Cuomo by the New York state attorney general, Letitia James.The information released by James showed how Chris Cuomo pressed sources for information on his brother’s accusers, reported to the governor’s staff and was active in helping shape responses to the charges.That information prompted loud calls for CNN to fire Cuomo.Marissa Hoechstetter, a victims’ rights advocate, tweeted: “As a survivor who has trusted CNN with my story, it is deeply disturbing that Chris Cuomo remains employed. “His unethical behavior – plus that of anyone giving him any info in the first place – should be disqualifying for a journalist. If they keep him on, they can’t be trusted.”Charlotte Bennett, an alleged victim of sexual misconduct by Andrew Cuomo, said: “Just like his older brother, Chris Cuomo used his time, network and resources to help smear victims, dig up opposition research, and belittle our credible allegations.“Anything short of firing Chris Cuomo reflects a network lacking both morals and backbone. Does CNN stand by journalistic integrity, or will it simply excuse his actions because Chris Cuomo drives ratings?”On Saturday, CNN took action.TopicsCNNAndrew CuomoUS politicsNew YorkUS televisionTelevision industrynewsReuse this content More

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      Meghan uses Ellen DeGeneres interview to call for paid family leave in US

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      Meghan uses Ellen DeGeneres interview to call for paid family leave in USDuchess of Sussex renews call to ‘put families above politics’ as Congress considers Biden bill The Duchess of Sussex has renewed her call for the US to implement paid family leave, in an interview with the chatshow host Ellen DeGeneres.Appearing on NBC’s The Ellen DeGeneres Show on Thursday afternoon, Meghan stressed the importance of paid leave, which is included in Joe Biden’s Build Back Better bill but is opposed by Republicans and at least one key Democratic senator.“I think that people truly forget, or don’t even know, that in this country, it’s one of the only six countries in the entire world and the only wealthy nation in the entire world that does not mandate and have a federal paid leave programme,” Meghan said.“Everybody knows, especially if you have had a child and even if you haven’t, you know how hard it is and how critical it is in those first few weeks, if not months, to be together as a family.“And the fact that we don’t offer that here is something that now, as a mom of two, I will do everything that I can to make sure that we can implement that for people.”Meghan wrote an open letter to the top congressional Democrats Chuck Schumer, the majority leader of the Senate, and Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, in October, advocating for legislation mandating paid leave.“This isn’t about right or left, it’s about right or wrong. This is about putting families above politics,” Meghan wrote of her new cause.Can Harry and Meghan succeed in reintroducing royalty into US politics?Read moreMeghan’s appearance on the TV show had been kept secret until Wednesday, when DeGeneres posted a trailer for the interview on Twitter.The pair also discussed how Meghan and her husband, Britain’s Prince Harry, had secretly visited a Halloween party in 2016, just before their relationship was made public.And Meghan revealed that Harry, whom she sometimes refers to as “H”, is enjoying California.“The lifestyle, the weather’s pretty great. We’re just happy,” Meghan, who was born in Los Angeles, said.Meghan and Harry’s interview with Oprah Winfrey earlier this year created headlines around the world.In that interview, Meghan said she had experienced racism from a member of the royal family, and said she had experienced suicidal thoughts as a result of the environment created by the British tabloid media, and the institution of the monarchy.The conversation with DeGeneres on Thursday stayed mostly light, however, with the Duchess and the chatshow host discussing their plans for the Thanksgiving celebration next week. Meghan planned to cook for the event, she said.This is the final season of DeGeneres’s long-running show, which was plunged into crisis last year, after allegations of behind-the-scenes sexual harassment and racist behavior on the show.BuzzFeed News reported that it had spoken with 36 former employees, many of whom corroborated incidents of sexual misconduct, harassment and assault. The outlet reported that allegations included sexual misconduct between executives and lower-level employees, including requests for sex.DeGeneres apologised and said she had “not been able to stay on top of everything and relied on others to do their jobs as they knew I’d want them done”.The show may have appeared an odd platform for the Duchess to choose, but she, Harry and DeGeneres have been friends for some years and DeGeneres has previously defended the couple against unforgiving media scrutiny.Meghan and Harry broke away from the British royal family early last year and later moved to LA.DeGeneres has previously described them as “the cutest couple, so down to earth” and said: “I see them get attacked and it’s not fair.”
      In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is at 800-273-8255 and online chat is also available. You can also text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis text line counselor. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org
      TopicsMeghan, the Duchess of SussexUS politicsEllen DeGeneresUS televisionnewsReuse this content More

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      Liz Cheney condemns ‘false flag’ Capitol attack claim seen in Tucker Carlson film

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      US Capitol attackLiz Cheney condemns ‘false flag’ Capitol attack claim seen in Tucker Carlson film
      6 January panel member: ‘It’s un-American to spread those lies’
      In Trumpland, election was stolen and racism was long ago
      Martin Pengelly in New York@MartinPengellySun 7 Nov 2021 13.43 ESTLast modified on Sun 7 Nov 2021 13.46 ESTIn an apparent swipe at the Fox News host Tucker Carlson, the anti-Trump Republican Liz Cheney said on Sunday it was “dangerous” and “un-American” to suggest the deadly assault on the US Capitol on 6 January was a “false flag” attack.Virginia victory gives some Republicans glimpse of future without TrumpRead moreConspiracy theorists say “false flag” attacks are staged by the government to achieve its own ends. A documentary produced by Carlson for the Fox Nation streaming service, Patriot Purge, contains such a suggestion about the Capitol attack.Five people died around the events of 6 January, when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overturn his election defeat by Joe Biden.Trump was impeached for inciting the attack but escaped conviction when sufficient Republican senators stayed loyal.Cheney, who has condemned Carlson’s series before, spoke to Fox News Sunday. The host, Chris Wallace, asked if there was “any truth” to claims 6 January was “a false flag operation, a case of liberals in the deep state setting up conservatives and Trump supporters”.Cheney replied: “None at all. It’s the same thing that you hear people saying 9/11 is an inside job. It’s un-American to be spreading those kinds of lies, and they are lies.”Cheney, who voted to impeach Trump, is one of two Republican members of the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack. The other, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, will retire from the House next year.But the Wyoming congresswoman, a stringent conservative whose father is the former vice-president Dick Cheney, has shown no sign of yielding despite losing her leadership position in Washington and attracting a primary challenger back home.Cheney appeared on Sunday with the South Carolina congressman Jim Clyburn, the Democratic chief whip, with whom (and Wallace) she was this weekend honoured for being willing to work across the aisle.“We have an obligation that goes beyond partisanship,” Cheney said, “Democrats and Republicans together, to make sure that we understand every single piece of the facts about what happened [on 6 January] and to make sure that people who did it are held accountable.“And to call it a false flag operation to spread those kinds of lies is really dangerous.”TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsRepublicansFox NewsUS televisionDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘Republicans are defunding the police’: Fox News anchor stumps congressman

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      The Fox News anchor Chris Wallace made headlines of his own on Sunday, by pointing out to a senior Republican that he and the rest of his party recently voted against $350bn in funding for law enforcement.“Can’t you make the argument that it’s you and the Republicans who are defunding the police?” Wallace asked Jim Banks, the head of the House Republican study committee.The congressman was the author of a Fox News column in which he said Democrats were responsible for spikes in violent crime.“There is overwhelming evidence,” Banks wrote, “connecting the rise in murders to the violent riots last summer” – a reference to protests over the murder of George Floyd which sometimes produced looting and violence – “and the defund the police movement. Both of which were supported, financially and rhetorically, by the Democratic party and the Biden administration.”Joe Biden does not support any attempt to “defund the police”, a slogan adopted by some on the left but which remains controversial and which the president has said Republicans have used to “beat the living hell” out of Democrats.On Fox News Sunday, Banks repeatedly attacked the so-called “Squad” of young progressive women in the House and said Democrats “stigmatised” law enforcement and helped criminals.“Let me push back on that a little bit,” Wallace said. “Because [this week] the president said that the central part in his anti-crime package is the $350bn in the American Rescue Plan, the Covid relief plan that was passed.”Covid relief passed through Congress in March, under rules that meant it did not require Republican votes. It did not get a single one.Asked if that meant it was “you and the Republicans who are defunding the police”, Banks dodged the question.Wallace said: “No, no, sir, respectfully – wait, sir, respectfully … I’m asking you, there’s $350bn in this package the president says can be used for policing …“Congressman Banks, let me finish and I promise I will give you a chance to answer. The president is saying cities and states can use this money to hire more police officers, invest in new technologies and develop summer job training and recreation programs for young people. Respectfully, I’ve heard your point about the last year, but you and every other Republican voted against this $350bn.”Turning a blind eye to Wallace’s question, Banks said: “If we turn a blind eye to law and order, and a blind eye to riots that occurred in cities last summer, and we take police officers off the street, we’re inevitably going to see crime rise.”Wallace asked if Banks could support any gun control legislation. Banks said that if Biden was “serious about reducing violent crime in America”, he should “admonish the radical voices in the Democrat [sic] party that have stigmatised police officers and law enforcement”.Despite working for Republicans’ favoured broadcaster, Wallace is happy to hold their feet to the fire, as grillings of Donald Trump and Kevin McCarthy have shown.He has also attracted criticism, for example for failing to control Trump during a chaotic presidential debate last year which one network rival called “a hot mess, inside a dumpster fire, inside a train wreck”.Last year, Wallace told the Guardian: “I do what I do and I’m sitting there during the week trying to come up with the best guests and the best show I possibly can and I’m not sitting there thinking about how do we fit in some media commentary.“We’re not there to try to one-up the president or any politician.” More

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      'We're all part of the story': behind Will Smith's 14th amendment docuseries

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      Chances are it is the most influential amendment to the US constitution that you aren’t familiar with. Given its impact, it is astonishing how little the 14th amendment is discussed in public life. Americans can’t rattle it off like the first and second amendments – but its words have fundamentally shaped the modern definition of US citizenship and the principles of equality and freedom entitled to those within the country’s borders.Sitting at the crux of these key ideals, the 14th amendment is cited in more litigation than any other, including some of the US supreme court’s most well-known cases: Plessy v Ferguson, Brown v Board of Education, Loving v Virginia, Roe v Wade, Bush v Gore, Obergefell v Hodges. And because these noble notions are embedded in the 14th, it has the remarkable ability to generate both boundless hope (for the promises of that more perfect union aspired to in the constitution’s preamble) and crushing misery (for the failures to achieve such promises).The new six-part Netflix docuseries Amend: The Fight for America is a deep dive into the 14th amendment. Ratified in 1868, it gave citizenship to all those born or naturalized in the country and promised due process and equal protection for all people. Amend threads the amendment through the fabric of American history, from its origins before the American civil war to the bigoted violence of the Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras, through the tumultuous years of the civil rights and women’s liberation movements, right until today’s feverish debates over same-sex marriage and immigration. The show is a journey into America’s fraught relationship with its marginalized peoples, who have fought to fully be a part of the country.It’s heady stuff for sure, but portrayed with an eye toward educating and entertaining, employing a blend of performance, music and animation, in addition to the requisite experts and archival images. Acclaimed actors breathe life into speeches and writings of key historical figures: Mahershala Ali as Frederick Douglass, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Andrew Johnson, Diane Lane as Earl Warren, Samira Wiley as Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Laverne Cox as James Baldwin, Pedro Pascal as Abraham Lincoln, and Randall Park as Robert F Kennedy, among many others.Amend is infotainment expertly done, with the host Will Smith’s affable yet engaged approach gently guiding viewers through moments joyful and difficult. Smith executive-produced the series with the Emmy-winning writer Larry Wilmore, who exhibited his skill at finding humor in dark moments as the “senior black correspondent” on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. “People just don’t know what the 14th amendment is,” Wilmore said to the Guardian. “The first, second and fifth are hogging up most of the oxygen. And yet the 14th has been the most resilient and durable. It’s doing a lot of heavy lifting, but a lot of light has not been shown on it.”Amend helps viewers appreciate the 14th amendment’s unwavering relevance by delving first into its origins. After the Emancipation Proclamation, some 4 million enslaved people were free – but they weren’t citizens, even after fighting to preserve the union during the civil war. The 14th amendment changed that, circumscribing citizenship and providing a roadmap for formerly enslaved people to fully actualize their economic, political and familial lives. It is the first appearance of the word equal in the constitution. “In a lot of ways, our country wasn’t founded in 1776,” said K Sabeel Rahman, a Brooklyn Law School professor. “It was founded by [Ohio representative] John Bingham and Congress passing the 14th amendment because that’s the modern constitution.”The system of labor, wealth and politics by which white southerners had defined themselves was crumbling – but they wouldn’t let it go easily. While citizens and terror groups like the Ku Klux Klan waged violence on black Americans, a popular, persuasive new medium helped propagate the mythologies of the lost cause – and it is partly why many aren’t familiar with the 14th amendment: “The former Confederacy got the final cut on the movie of civil war,” as Smith puts it, with films like Gone With the Wind and The Birth of a Nation shaping the dominant historical narrative.The gauzy fantasy of the noble civil war, coupled with supreme court–sanctioned segregation, ensured the scourge of open racism endured for another century after the 14th amendment’s passage. The 1954 Brown v Board of Education decision ruled that “separate but equal” violated the 14th’s equal-protection clause, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 banished Jim Crow segregation. But the calls to enforce the 14th can be heard just as loudly today as in the 60s and 70s: Amend’s third episode draws a tight parallel between the non-violent activism of the civil rights movement and last year’s Black Lives Matter protests, both eschewing moderate calls for patience in favor of Martin Luther King’s “fierce urgency of now”.“We have a set of ideals in this country, and we continue to fail to live up to them,” the activist Brittany Packnett Cunningham said to the Guardian. “Every single time the police shoot another unarmed black or brown or indigenous person, every single time an LGBTQ+ person is fired from their job or left houseless, every time immigrants are stripped of the rights that should belong to them, we are experiencing the gap between what is written and what is true. And the more we grapple with these challenging conversations, the more real we can get not just about the scale of the problem we have to fix but how exactly we can go about handling it.”The amendment is a lodestar for all claiming the constitutional right to be treated fairly. Women, with the help of then attorney Ruth Bader Ginsburg, convinced the court in the 1970s that the 14th’s equal protection clause should apply to gender in the same way it is applied to race, both being immutable characteristics that don’t affect one’s ability.But women’s equality depends on control over their own bodies and the choice of when and whether to have children. In 1965, the right to privacy was established, founded on the 14th amendment’s due process clause, and this new concept was applied to Roe v Wade in 1973, which legalized abortion by determining that the decision to end a pregnancy belongs to the woman, not the state. “It’s an unfolding process,” said Jeannie Suk Gersen, a Harvard law professor, of the 14th amendment extending to the right to abortion. “It may not seem obvious as a path, but that is the process of constitutional law.”Indeed, the 14th touches Americans’ most intimate moments. Its passage finally allowed formerly enslaved people to legally marry, and later it was applied to protect the right of interracial couples to marry in 1967 and the right of consenting adults to engage in intimate sexual conduct in 2003. Amend devotes one powerful episode to the story of Jim Obergefell, the plaintiff in the 2015 supreme court case that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide and proved that marriage equality too was at the heart of the 14th. (Obergefell admits he had no idea what the 14th amendment was before his case.)More than 150 years after the passage of the 14th, many groups are still actively struggling to realize its promises. Immigrants have long devoted backbreaking labor to this country, only to see intolerant policies, racism and violence trample their dreams. The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the only major federal legislation to explicitly stop immigration for a specific nationality, was the result of the supreme court putting fear and misguided claims of national security above the constitution’s expressly provided protections. Dehumanizing and criminalizing immigrant groups to deny their 14th amendment rights has been part of America’s playbook ever since. “We’ve just survived four years of a president who’s been openly racist and has targeted particular immigrant communities based on their race,” said Alina Das, the co-director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at NYU’s law school. “Equality under the law is something that the immigrant-rights community is still striving for in many ways.”After all, says Cunningham, “the biggest misconception [about the 14th] is that once it’s written on paper, the work is done. The truth, of course, is very different, and I think that Amend really pushes people to see past the veneer of American exceptionalism.” The show sadly but clearly illustrates how ignorance and hate have long fomented misunderstanding, anger, violence and inequality in America and how potently fear and intolerance have prevailed.But it is also just as clear who has the power to make the 14th amendment’s promise of an equal society a reality: not the courts, but we the people, ordinary folks taking to the streets, sacrificing our time, privacy, and sometimes safety, and doing the courageous, often unglamorous hard work of making sure its words have meaning for all of us. “We’re all part of the story of the 14th amendment, and it’s a continuing story,” Das notes. “And the documentary does a wonderful job of inviting people to be part of the living history of the amendment.” As Smith says at the conclusion of the series: “We have to choose to bring 14 to life.”“We’re giving an uplifting message here, not a dour or bleak one, said Wilmore. “There’s a lot of tough material here, but at the end of the day, we’re saying that this is what allowed the promise to happen – this document is the pathway for the promise.” More