MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell on Wednesday called President Donald Trump "effective" at "communication" about his controversial use of the drug hydroxychloroquine to prevent COVID-19.
Mitchell's remarks came after presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden slammed Trump's promotion of hydroxychloroquine.
"Come on, man, what is he doing?" Biden exclaimed during an interview on Tuesday. "What in God's name is he doing?"
On Wednesday, Mitchell asked Biden campaign spokesperson Kate Bedingfield about Trump's hydroxychloroquine fascination.
"What about the decision by the president to take this drug?" Mitchell asked. "And the other advice that he's giving. A lot of people are going to listen to that."
"But he is being effective, isn't he," the MSNBC host added, "in terms of the way he's communicating his point of view?"
"I don't think so," Bedingfield replied. "If you have the president of the United States suggesting that people should take a dangerous, unproven, untested drug, that is not successful communication."
The Biden staffer said that Trump's tactics are "a political distraction" to divert attention away from "how we got in this crisis."
"People don't have to settle for this kind of leadership," she continued. "They don't have to settle for a president who has so badly mismanaged this crisis that we now have 36 million Americans applying for unemployment."
“Our bishop always told us, even as they wheeled him into the operating room, he proclaimed that God is still a healer. … I don’t know how, but I have to say: God will get the glory from this.”
Like some other congregations struck by the pandemic, the Virginia church was asking questions about the problem of suffering: why a good and powerful God, who is a “healer,” allows the pandemic’s suffering and death to take place.
These are questions that fiction has explored for years, including, perhaps most famously in recent years, William Paul Young’s evangelical bestseller The Shack. In 2017, the novel was made into a Hollywood blockbuster that grossed over US$96 million globally, starring Octavia Spencer and Sam Worthington.
My current research examines how contemporary American novels — both popular evangelical and more literary fiction — treat the theological problems of suffering and evil. In a new research paper, I suggest that the massive popularity of The Shack was due to its inadvertent polytheism. Many gods, it turns out, solve the problem of evil in a way the Christian one God cannot.
‘The Shack’ trailer.
Confronting God
In The Shack , protagonist Mack (Sam Worthington), gets the chance to question God. He wants to know why God allowed his daughter Missy to be sexually abused and murdered.
After a mysterious invitation, Mack travels to the site of the murder years before. The dilapidated shack in the snowy mountains magically turns into a beautiful summer cabin by a lake. There, Mack meets the members of the Trinity, the three divine persons in one God worshipped by Christians.
Mack spends a weekend with the Trinity, cooking, hiking and gardening as they take turns trying to “justify the ways of God to men,” to use the words of English poet John Milton.
But the divine beings strangely proliferate. Mack meets a Hispanic woman in a cave named Sophia (Greek for wisdom), played by Alice Braga.
When the time comes for God to lead Mack to his daughter’s body, the Father appears as an Indigenous man (Oneida actor Graham Greene from Six Nations of the Grand River).
What is going on with this strange proliferation of divine beings, as they take turns deflecting and diverting Mack’s questions about the problem of evil?
Back to polytheism
The answer is that Young has inadvertently rediscovered the ancient Israelite polytheism of 3,000 years ago, for the simple reason that justifying the gods’ ways to humans is an easier task than justifying God’s ways to humans.
El, the Canaanite creator deity, bronze statue with gold leaf from 1400-1200 BC.
(Wikimedia Commons/Oriental Institute Museum, University of Chicago)
Over the past few decades, critical scholars of the Bible have come to realize that the ancient Israelites worshipped a pantheon of gods.
If this comes as a surprise to most readers of the Bible, this is understandable: The Bible was written by religious elites who, over the centuries, textually condensed the pantheon of gods into the single God of the Abrahamic religions.
A historical shift to monotheism can be traced through biblical texts: for example, what’s known as the second commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me,” from the biblical book of Exodus clearly presupposes the existence of multiple gods.
Baal, with right arm raised. Bronze figurine from 1400-1200 BC.
(Wikimedia Commons/Louvre Museum)
There was Baal, the storm god. They were joined by Yahweh — a name which which came to be understood in Judaism as the sacred name of God, “too holy to be uttered aloud.”
Over time Yahweh absorbed Baal’s attributes and rose to the top of the pantheon, displacing El and acquiring El’s spouse as his own.
The Biblical record, as well as archaeological and other textual evidence, suggests that as the centuries went on, the other gods were demoted to angels, or denied existence altogether, until Yahweh reigned alone.
Scholars continue to debate the historical development of this process, but it appears likely that the pantheon still existed during the time of the Israelite monarchy, even until the Babylonian exile in 586 BC.
Divine niches filled
So when the divine beings proliferate in The Shack, it is for a logical reason and a historical reason.
The historical reason is that when the other gods disappeared, they sometimes left niches that would eventually be filled with other divine beings, such as angels — or eventually the members of the Christian Trinity.
The logical reason is that it’s much easier to explain the problem of evil when there are many different divine agents, who sometimes work at cross-purposes.
Divine conflict doesn’t occur in The Shack, but the multiple divine beings work to deflect questions and divert Mack’s attention.
Papa, the Father, explains free will and the Holy Spirit talks of Adam and Eve’s “original sin” in the Garden of Eden, a state of “fallenness” believed to be borne by all their descendents. The Son emphasizes the importance of a relationship with God, and Wisdom describes human ignorance. But Mack never really gets a good answer about why innocent people suffer.
The Shack instead stumbled accidentally upon a startling solution: recovering the ancient Israelite polytheism out of which Young’s Christian tradition grew.
It’s inadvertent because the characters don’t present themselves as polytheistic beings but rather as different faces of one God. “We are not three gods,” is the Father’s official position.
But, as I suggest in my new article, The Shack’s popularity may be due in part to the pantheon that Mack (re)discovers. Perhaps we should abandon the Father’s pretence and embrace polytheism as a theologically easier answer to the problems of evil and suffering.
Michel Piccoli, one of the most original and versatile French actors of the last half century, has died aged 94, his family said Monday.
He died “in the arms of his wife Ludivine and his children Inord and Missia after a stroke”, the family told AFP.
Piccoli starred in a string of classics that redefined world cinema, from Luis Buñuel’s “Belle de Jour” and “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” to a typically memorable turn opposite Brigitte Bardot in Jean-Luc Godard’s “Le Mépris” ("Contempt") in 1963.
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A masterful performer with a wickedly malicious edge, he managed to carve out a hugely prolific career as both an art house icon and a kind of French Cary Grant.
Like Grant and other Hollywood all-rounders Jimmy Stewart and Gary Cooper, Piccoli was able to adapt himself to virtually any kind of material without altering his essential everyman screen persona.
With his bald forehead, vast eyebrows and sly grin, he hopped easily from seducer to cop to gangster to pope (2011's "Habemus Papam" by Nanni Moretti), with a predilection in the 1970s and 1980s for ambiguous and cynical roles.
Actor and activist
Yet despite his omnipresence, with Buñuel alone casting him in six of his films, Piccoli never won a French Oscar – the César – despite being nominated four times including for Louis Malle’s “Milou in May” and Jacques Rivette’s “La Belle Noiseuse” in 1991.
He did, however, win best actor at the Cannes film festival in 1980 for playing a tortured Italian judge in Marco Bellocchio’s “A Leap in the Dark” and the following year shared best actor at Berlin for “Une étrange affaire”.
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Piccoli was a life-long left-winger who counted the philosophers Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre among his friends, but that did not stop him raging against repression in the old Eastern Bloc and supporting the Polish trade union, Solidarity.
One of his best known films outside France was Marco Ferreri’s 1973 “La Grande Bouffe” (Blow-Out), in which a group of male friends shut themselves up in a house with prostitutes and try to eat themselves to death.
“I do not put on an act... I slip away behind my characters. To be an actor, you have to be flexible,” Piccoli said.
"Fox & Friends" is applauding a New Jersey gym owner and the crowd that's come to support his decision to re-open against state COVID-19 orders. New Jersey has the second-highest coronavirus death toll in the country, with more that 10,000 people succumbing to the virus.
All morning co-host Pete Hegseth has been reporting live from outside the gym in Bellmawr, where a crowd has grown to see the owner's act of civil disobedience that could lead to more coronavirus infections.
The crowd is filled with people protesting the shutdown order who have also turned the pandemic into politics. Some are holding signs, with at least one reading, "Stay Poor, Vote Democrat." Very few are wearing masks, no one is practicing social distancing. They are chanting, "USA! USA!" Studies show the louder someone's voice, the more coronavirus particles can travel and spread.
There are about 50 to 100 people standing close together outside the gym.
"We'll see what the governor does, trying to shut down a small business who's trying to make a living," Hegseth tells his co-hosts, who are broadcasting from their homes. He adds that the protestors are "yelling, 'Open New Jersey now,' and that's what you hear from the signs."
"Ultimately they feel like, 'Hey, we've flattened the curve, we've done our part, and now it's time to let people be responsible individuals.'"
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"You guys have been a voice for millions," Hegseth tells the gym owner. They claim they do not meet the definition of catering to the "public" because they have "members." They say they're standing up for the 14th Amendment.
Hegseth tells them, "people are resonating with you and your message."
As of just after 8 AM the police had not yet shut the gym down.
Donald Trump continued his Twitter flurry on Saturday afternoon with an attack on MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell -- also getting in a jab at fellow MSNBC host Joe Scarborough -- over an interview O'Donnell did with former Vice President Joe Biden.
Referring to his previous reality show, the president wrote, "Really sad, but even 'sadder', watch flunky @Lawrence CRY when I whipped his mind & he was FORCED to apologize to me over Apprentice fees. Even Psycho Cold Case Joe Scarborough (bad ratings) beat him up, on air, unmercifully. Find tapes & play (5 years back?)."
The president did not explain his beef with O'Donnell over Apprentice fees or what he meant by "whipped his mind."
The investigation into the murder of a Mexican journalist who worked for AFP as a freelancer was blighted by "negligence... and delays," Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said on Friday.
Javier Valdez, who was also the founder of the Riodoce weekly newspaper and worked for the La Jornada daily, was shot dead three years ago in Culiacan.
"The negligence of the authorities and the delays in the process make you worry that once again those responsible for the crime will have impunity," said the France-based RSF in a statement.
"Although there has been some progress, justice is being served drop by drop."
On February 27, Heriberto Picos Barraza was sentenced to 14 and a half years in prison after confessing to his role in the murder, but RSF said Valdez's family were denied their "legitimate right" to question him.
According to prosecutors, Picos Barrazza drove the car for Juan Francisco Picos Berrueta and Luis Idelfonso Sanchez, who shot Valdez dead before fleeing.
In the trial it was revealed that the trio had links to notorious Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman, who is serving life behind bars in the United States.
RSF hit out at the delay in bringing Picos Berrueta, known as "el Quillo," to trial. He is currently being held in pre-trial detention.
"The progress in the search for justice is not what we, as family, would want," said Valdez's wife Griselda Triana.
"They got rid of him because someone didn't like what he wrote. It was that easy," she added.
Valdez, 50, who freelanced for AFP for a decade, was known for writing articles critical of powerful criminal gangs such as the notorious Sinaloa drug cartel led by Guzman.
One of his final pieces was about the internal struggles within the Sinaloa cartel following Guzman's capture in January 2016, before the drug lord was extradited to the US.
RSF regularly ranks Mexico alongside war-torn Syria and Afghanistan as the world's most dangerous countries for news media. Violence linked to drug trafficking and political corruption is rampant, and many murders go unpunished.
"Over one-quarter of the most viewed YouTube videos on COVID-19 contained misleading information, reaching millions of viewers worldwide," wrote Heidi Oi-Yee Li and Adrian Bailey of the University of Ottawa, David Huynh of Carleton University and the University of Ottawa and James Chan of Ottawa Hospital in an article published in "BMJ Global Health." "As the current COVID-19 pandemic worsens, public health agencies must better use YouTube to deliver timely and accurate information and to minimise the spread of misinformation."
The scientists performed a YouTube search for "coronavirus" and "COVID-19" and analyzed the top 75 videos from each search. They excluded videos that they felt did not meet their scholarly criteria — including "duplicates, non-English, non-audio and non-visual, exceeding 1 hour in duration, live and unrelated to COVID-19" — and analyzed the factual accuracy of the 69 remaining videos, which had received a total of 257,804,146 views.
They found that although "government and professional videos contained only factual information," they were not as influential as some of their less informative counterparts, as "they only accounted for 11% of videos and 10% of views."
The authors broke down which videos were most likely to contain misinformation.
"Of the 19 non-factual videos, six were from entertainment news (32%), five were from network news (26%), five were from internet news (26%) and three were from consumer videos (13%)," the authors wrote. "Within each video category, there was a greater proportion of non-factual videos in internet news (63%), entertainment news (60%), consumer videos (33%) and network news (20%), compared with 0% for professional and government videos."
The researchers also urged professionals and government agencies to improve their YouTube presence: "YouTube is a powerful, untapped educational tool that should be better mobilised by health professionals to control information and influence public behaviour," they wrote. "Given that professionals and government organisations provide the highest quality content, these groups should find strategies to increase the viewership and the impact of their videos on YouTube."
The authors acknowledged "limitations" in their study, including that it was a cross-sectional study conducted during a specific period of time, the fact that many videos had to be left out and other studies may use different criteria for exclusion, their decision to only use English-language videos, their lack of "a validated tool to evaluate COVID-19 related content" and the fact that "YouTube videos present on other internet sites were not captured."
There have been a number of popular videos promoting misinformation about the pandemic, with the "Plandemic" video being among them. Salon's Nicole Karlis wrote of "Plandemic" earlier this week that "editing-wise, the video is seductive: it posits quite convincingly — at least, within the un-fact checked realm of the documentary — that the coronavirus is part of a vast, coordinated plot, and that scientists are lying about it."
"At the individual level, they can be dangerous," Miller explained. "Say, for example, with regard to ones about COVID-19: If individuals who believe conspiracy theories around the virus choose not to get a vaccination when one ultimately is available, that's both dangerous for them and for surrounding communities. If a greater percentage of people don't get vaccinated, obviously that's a problem for the whole community."
Matthew Rozsa is a staff writer for Salon. He holds an MA in History from Rutgers University-Newark and is ABD in his PhD program in History at Lehigh University. His work has appeared in Mic, Quartz and MSNBC.
A reboot of classic gangster movie "Scarface" scripted by the Coen brothers and set in Los Angeles is moving forward with a new director at Universal Pictures, a source familiar with the deal told AFP Thursday.
The film will be directed by Oscar nominee Luca Guadagnino ("Call Me By Your Name") and will be the third big-screen take on the blood-soaked immigrant underworld story.
The original 1932 movie directed by Howard Hawks -- itself based on a novel partly inspired by Al Capone's life -- depicted Italian mafia in Chicago.
The action was transplanted to Miami in Brian De Palma's 1983 hit movie, starring Al Pacino as ruthless Cuban refugee Tony Montana, who builds a criminal empire based on cocaine.
The new film will reimagine "the core immigrant story" told in both the 1932 and 1983 films.
In adapting the story once again, Joel and Ethan Coen ("Fargo") follow in the footsteps of Oliver Stone, who won plaudits for his flashy and ultra-violent screenplay for the second version -- which included Pacino's immortal line "Say hello to my little friend."
The multiple Oscar-winning Coen brothers wrote the latest version of the script based on previous drafts for the long-gestating project.
Italian filmmaker Guadagnino is also reportedly working on a "Call Me By Your Name" sequel, and a "Lord of the Flies" adaptation.
No release date or cast have yet been announced for the new "Scarface." All production in Hollywood is currently shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Fox News host Shannon Bream got more than she bargained for after a national security lawyer destroyed the conservative cable network’s made-up scandal they are calling “Obamagate.”
Fox News and President Donald Trump are hawking this fake scandal-du-jour in an attempt to deflect from the 81,796 and growing coronavirus deaths, but if you ask them to define what Obamagate is, or what crime President Barack Obama committed, they can’t. President Trump was asked to Monday afternoon and was unable to explain it, except to tell a reporter, “You know what the crime is, the crime is very obvious to everybody.”
Monday night Bream hosted attorney Bradley P. Moss, who represents intelligence community clients, including whistleblowers, and is deputy executive director of the James Madison Project.
It did not go well for Fox News.
“I’m sitting here trying to figure out what exactly constitutional deprivation there was? What is the crime that people think Barack Obama and Joe Biden are going to be prosecuted under?” Moss posited.
“To be clear, and this is using the words of President Trump and his lawyers over the last three years, any sitting president can get any classified information they want. According to Donald Trump they can launch any investigation they want, they can tell the FBI only to pursue particular individuals, This is not me saying it, this is Donald Trump saying it for three years.”
“This was their argument during the Mueller probe. This was their argument during the impeachment investigation, that the President has this kind of authority,” Moss continued.
“So what did we find out? That Barack Obama was aware about intelligence intercepts on the Russian Ambassador when he was talking with General Flynn? That there had just been an attack on our election a couple months earlier, that we were still dealing with the fallout of Russian election interference in 2016? There was concern about a counterintelligence problem with Michael Flynn and they had a discussion?"
“I’m shocked,” Moss said, sarcastically. “I can’t believe they had that conversation.”
“What is the crime?” he added, destroying the entire fake Obamagate scandal in just four words.
Bream appeared a bit stunned by Moss’s analysis.
She quickly ended the segment.
“Well, uh, we’re going to have to leave it there,” Bream concluded.
Trump has repeatedly belittled and lectured female journalists, a trend many on Twitter noted following his meltdown.
"One thing media could do to significantly improve Trump coverage would be ONLY to send women reporters to cover him. Preferably women of color," journalist Paul Rosenberg suggested.
Here's some of what people where saying about how women bring out Trump's insecurities:
Members of the media working at the White House were advised this week to wear masks after multiple staffers tested positive for the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Dartmouth Professor Brendan Nyhan suggested that Fox News hosts broadcasting from their home studios are hypocrites if they are also urging viewers to go back to work.
"I wonder what you make of Fox News stars who are out there encouraging people resume their normal lives, get back to work while broadcasting from their homes, staying at home?" host Brian Stelter asked Nyhan on CNN's Reliable Sources program on Sunday.
"I think you should watch what people do and not what they say," Nyhan advised. "There are a lot of people sitting in their houses on webcams telling everyone they should go back out and resume their lives."
"That's cheap talk from elites who aren't frontline workers," he continued, "who aren't in essential roles that put them at risk. And I think it's really being tossed out casually, in an irresponsible manner."
"People are dying," Nyhan added. "In the thousands. We're already over the totals for the Vietnam war. So this is just different from the kind of conspiracy content that Fox was running prior to this pandemic. The stakes are higher in a direct way for everybody."
