Responding to the president’s acts and statements of the past 48 hours
photography
Sometimes we just want to try something different
We like to keep our skills relatively sharp, you know? So, every once in a while we try something different. We had one of those days recently. This is the result.
As always, click on the thumbnail to view the entire slideshow.
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An illustrative example of why people take pictures
There are five humans crammed into this tiny little house of ours. Schedules, interests, and preferred activities vary wildly. Rarely do we get the chance to do anything together. Most days, we even eat at different times.
So, I thought it might be fun if I bought us all identical pairs of shoes, so we could share some commonality and take pictures. Payless Shoes gave us a great deal on the price—one week before they declared bankruptcy. We then ordered colored shoelaces in everyone’s favorite color courtesy the surprisingly fast service from Feetunique in the UK. Everything arrived in a matter of days, just as the temperatures turned cold again. We had to let our originally scheduled shoot day pass.
Skip down about a week or so when it finally warmed up and we headed out to a tree stump in the park to take pictures. The only problem was that Big Gabe wasn’t able to go with us. We had to go back and shoot his pictures in a slightly different location a couple of weeks later. Yes, I’ve been sitting on these pictures for more than a month.
Eventually getting all the pictures taken and making room in between doctors visits and such, a fair grouping of the pictures are now done. We obviously played with some at great length. After all, we want these to be fun memories more than anything. I absolutely do not believe that all family portraits should be perfectly arranged and predictable. Different is not only good, but attractive.
These pictures also are illustrative of why people take photographs in the first place. They create a record, they capture memories, and maybe they even tell a rather strange and bizarre story. I’ll have to write more on that a little later.
For now, enjoy the new pictures of the human side of our family. As always click on any of the images below to open the full slide show. And if you’re needing some pictures of your own, don’t be afraid to contact us. I promise we won’t drop everyone down a special effects hole. Probably.
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The horror was real, the bravery astonishing
[dropcap]Few still remember that day, for witnesses to the tragic invasion of Peeps™ are not many. Some have died since then. Others moved away and never speak of it. But it was real. We have the pictures to prove it.[/dropcap]
It was a bright, sunny day in April. Easter was on the horizon so stores had dangerously stocked careless numbers of the treacherous marshmallow offenders. For years, experts had warned that the creatures had been massing for an attack. Their legions were great. From season to season, they grew. No one ever threw them out. No one was able to dispose of them. They just sat there in dark cupboards and back stock rooms, waiting. Then, on this April morning, they decided their time had come.
Children were in school and most people were working so they didn’t hear the clutter as the Peeps pushed their boxes off of shelves and onto the floor. Deftly, their years of training coming into play, they removed the cellophane covering, painfully separated themselves, and left their boxes, searching for victims.
Numbering in the millions, the Peeps might have been successful had they not underestimated the temper and aggression of the humans they encountered. No one had warned them about the sharp, ferocious teeth nor the dangers of being crushed by these giant beings. The Peeps swarmed but found themselves no match for the creatures they encountered.
The scenes were gruesome. The fatalities were many, numbering more than those at Bowling Green. Thanks to the determination of a few patriots, the terror attack was thwarted. The remaining Peeps ran for the cover of their packaging.
Beware, though. Defeated once, they have not given up. The Peeps still grow in number. Our national security depends on you. If you see Peeps, trash Peeps. That is our only hope for survival.
Click on any of the images below to open the full gallery.
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The sound that dominated church music in the 20th century is no more
The Short Version
With the recent death of Ben Speer, the style of southern gospel music popularized by James Vaughn and the Stamps-Baxter singing schools in the earliest part of the 20th century fades into the mist. The old quartets are gone. In their place is a smoother, slicker sound that is more like popular country music than anything that has its roots in a church. This was a sound that influenced people such as Bob Wills and Elvis Presley, among others. The genre has suffered before, but this time there likely is no resurrection.
A Little Background
I realize that the majority of people who are our regular readers won’t have a clue what I’m talking about. Certainly, most of those in my immediate circle have never heard of southern gospel music at all and even among those who do, few would recognize the difference in styles between the mid-20th century and now. Southern gospel music is important, however, not merely from a religious perspective within the Christian community, but from an educational perspective as well. Let me explain why.
Way back in the mid-1800s, when any kind of formal education was limited largely to the wealthy and formal music education even more difficult to afford, along came this guy B.F White and his good buddy E. J. King. White had developed a four-tone scale, commonly known as the fa-sol-la scale, that used shapes to indicate the notes. It looked something like this:
The style was modified over the years to eventually account for a full 8-tone scale, but the purpose remained the same: to make it easier to teach music to people who couldn’t read. Singing schools teaching the shaped-note system occurred all over the country, most frequently in the one-room churches that also doubled as the community schools. Music schools were often held on Saturdays so that the hymns could be sung in church on Sunday.
The system spread steadily throughout the 19th century, especially throughout the South. Then, in 1920, James Vaughn revolutionized the whole music school paradigm by forming a quartet with three of his brothers that would travel, perform, and teach. This provided for each of the four parts to break out and be taught separately, making the schools more efficient.
Vaughn’s quartet was so successful that it started a movement. Vaughn himself founded 16 other quartets and sent them out singing and teaching. Quartets started popping up everywhere. Some were specific to singing schools, but others began to focus on performance, singing at tent revivals. When Virgil Stamps founded what would become the Stamps-Baxter Music Company in 1924, the singing school movement spread even faster as the paper-backed song books were cheaper for churches and individuals to afford. The song books were so popular that I’m willing to be there are still rural churches scattered across the South that has them sitting in their pews.
As the nation sank into the Great Depression, more people turned to churches as a source of comfort and the singing schools as a primary source of entertainment. There were a lot of notable people who were involved, including Alfred Brumley, Thomas A. Dorsey, Bob Wills, and Mosie Lister. Anyone familiar with the heritage of southern gospel music has sung the songs these people wrote.
In the middle of all this, in 1939, G.T. Speers, more commonly known just as “Dad,” formed a quartet with his wife Lena, and his sister and brother and law. Dad Speers worked for Vaughn’s company at the time and later took a position as a singing teacher for the Stamps-Baxter company. As his own sons, Ben and Brock, grew older, they eventually replaced Dad’s sister and brother-in-law. Their daughters, Rosa Nell and Mary Tom would sing with the group at different intervals as well. The Speers Family represented, in almost every way possible, the core and spirit of southern gospel music. Here’s a sample from a 1950s performance with Mom, Dad, Ben, and Brock.
Then This Happened
After World War II, southern gospel music, with its rich harmonies and a call-and-repeat music style that made each part stand out, took off and became a commercial success. Singing “conventions,” featuring multiple quartets, became as popular as the tent revivals that dominated the Eastern portion of the United States, especially the South. The quartets were typically accompanied by an accomplished pianist whose stylings were as unique as any sonata and frequently as complicated as any jazz riff. The sound was wholly unique from anything else being recorded at the time.
Groups started becoming celebrities. Names such as the Blackwood Brothers, The Statesmen, The Cathedrals, The LaFeveres, The Happy Goodman Family, The Chuck Wagon Gang, The Flordia Boys and The Kingsmen were well known and frequently drew large crowds. Southern gospel music became a competitive recording genre in which music labels such as RCA were all too happy to invest. However, that post-war burst was to be short lived.
In 1954, a plane carrying The Blackwood Brothers Quartet crashed, killing two of its members. Almost overnight, the quartets and many other musicians abandoned flying and took to using tour buses. While the buses seemed safer, there was an emotional price to be paid for spending hours on end traveling from one engagement to another. Disputes flared as differences in musical taste and the limits of personal space along with time away from families took its toll. As was common for the time, many quartet members also smoked heavily, creating health problems for several.
As television became increasingly popular, southern gospel music took its place there as well. Prior to the dominance of network daytime television and news, many local stations produced their own programs featuring quartets both local and national groups. In 1964, Lea Beasley of The Flordia Boys produced the first nationally syndicated southern gospel program, “Gospel Singing Jubilee,” anchored by the Florida Boys, but featuring every major southern gospel group in the country.
With the 60s, the influence of more contemporary Christian music, fueled by the success of musicals such as Godspell, and Jesus Christ, Superstar, as well as the popular compositions of Ralph Carmichael, began to increasingly dominate among younger audiences. The popularity of southern gospel music waned as churches struggled to hold the attention of teenagers and young adults.
Audience numbers and record sales declined through the early part of the 70s. Then, in 1973, at the National Quartet Convention in Nashville, TN, James “Big Chief” Wetherington, the bass singer for The Statesmen since 1953, died suddenly backstage of a heart attack as the group was about to go on. Hearts sank as the death of one of the most recognizable figures in southern gospel music was announced on national television.
One can argue that from that point forward, southern gospel music was seen more as a novelty act. When Elvis Presley added J.D. Sumner and the Jordanaires as his backup group, few people knew of the long-standing connection Presley had with southern gospel music. Instead, they saw the secularization of a gospel group. When the Oak Ridge Boys released a secular album in 1977 and scored a hit with Ya’ll Come Back Saloon, the public perception of southern gospel music plummeted even more.
While southern gospel music never went away, it became more of a niche genre with a small and aging audience.
Bill Gaither To The Rescue
In 1991, The Gaither Vocal Band was recording in a Nashville studio and invited several well-known gospel singers and groups to join them for a specific song. After the song was recorded, the singers, many of whom had not seen each other in several years, stayed and reminisced and sang around the piano. This gave Bill Gaither an idea to create a program that would bring together the remaining living southern gospel legends as well as current groups, including soloists and duets that had started dominating the genre in the 1980s.
The resulting Homecoming series of videos and recordings were a boon for both Gaither and the southern gospel music industry. Suddenly, people were interested in old-time southern gospel music again with its individual voices blended together in syncopated counterpoint and improvisational piano stylings that were a blend of ragtime and jazz. Just as much, people were interested in the aging legends that Gaither brought together. Seeing Ben Speer, Jake Hess, Vestal Goodman, and J.D. Sumner all singing together was a reminder of just how powerful the blending of those voices could be. When The Statemen’s Rozie Rosell joined Jake Hess, Hovie Lister, and George Younce one last time for Oh What A Savior, there was hardly a dry eye left in the house.
One of my favorite moments was when the Homecoming choir was singing Heavens Jubilee with Rosa Nell Speer on the piano. Homecoming pianist Anthony Burger tried bumping Rosa Nell off the piano bench. It didn’t work. Here’s what happened.
The little fun moments like that made this revival of old-time southern gospel music feel personal, feel special. Millions of people bought the tapes and recordings, bringing the genre of southern gospel music back into the limelight once again. The number of groups began to grow and even though the new sound was different, it is difficult to deny that the Homecoming events prevented southern gospel music from being relegated to a moment in history.
Nothing lasts forever, though, and when one centers a series of events around personalities who are already well past their prime one has to expect that there is going to be a point where those who started the series are no long there, and after more than twenty-five years that is what has happened. Consider all the wonderful musicians who appeared on the Homecoming series that are no longer with us. I’m not sure this is a complete list, but here’s what I could find. The year each one died is in parenthesis.
- Albertina Walker (2010)
- Andraé Crouch (2015)
- Anthony Burger (2006)
- Ben Speer (2017)
- Bob Cain (2000)
- Brock Speer (1992–1999)
- Buck Rambo (1991–2016)
- Cliff Barrows (2016)
- Danny Gaither (2001)
- Doris Akers (1995)
- Dottie Rambo (2008)
- Earl Weatherford (1992)
- Eldridge Fox (2002)
- Eva Mae LeFevre (2009)
- George Beverly Shea (2013)
- George Younce (2005)
- Glen Payne (1999)
- Hovie Lister (2001)
- Howard Goodman (2002)
- J. D. Sumner (1998)
- Jack Toney (2004)
- Jake Hess (2004)
- James Blackwood (2002)
- Jessy Dixon (2011)
- Johnny Cook (2000)
- Labreeska Hemphill (2015)
- Mary Tom Speer Reid (2014)
- Rex Nelon (2000)
- Roger Bennett (2007)
- Rosie Rozell (1995)
- Stephen Hill (2012)
- Vestal Goodman (2003)
Some of those deaths hit the community especially hard. Anthony Burger died unexpectedly while on a Homecoming cruise in 2006. Dottie Rambo passed from injuries sustained in a bus accident in 2008. Both were dominant and joyful personalities that lit whatever room they were in. As each southern gospel legend died, a bit of that old-time music passed with them.
According to Pollstar, the Homecoming tour sold more tickets in 2014 than major rock acts such as Elton John and Fleetwood Mac. However, by 2015, the number of legends able to participate in the tour had reduced so severely that, once again, audiences began to diminish. The light began to go out.
Why Do I Even Care
I know that, for our regular readers, this whole article has to seem strange and out of place coming from someone who speaks against the hypocrisy of religion in general and questions the singularity of any deity on a regular basis. So, what gives? Why do I find this particular matter one worthy of several hours of fact checking and date confirmation?
Because, for the first 25 years of my life, southern gospel music was home. The Statesmen, Blackwood Brothers, and Cathedrals were the bulk of records my parents owned. We watched the Gospel Singing Jubilee while getting ready for church on Sunday morning. I learned to play piano in that improvisational style. When I could coax our family around the piano in the evenings, these were the songs we sang. Southern gospel music was a part of our daily life.
Equally important, these were the people we knew. Doy Ott, a former baritone for The Statesmen, was an optometrist in Bartlesville, Oklahoma when not out singing with the quartet. We would drop by, say hi, and listen to his stories about the antics between Jake Hess and Hovie Lister. When I was 14, J. D. Sumner, who was a towering 6′ 5″, claimed I was too short to reach the piano and stacked hymnals on the piano bench before I sat down to play. I met Hovie Lister for the first time when I was 19 and we remained friends until his death in 2001. These and many other relationships we had were personal. In one way or another, each one was influential in how I grew up.
In a metaphorical sense, Ben Speer’s death locks the door on that part of my life. Those who were the most influential, whose instructions and advice I heeded the most, are all gone. While we have recordings and videos to remind us of their incredible talent, we can no longer experience those personalities, listen to the stories, or get bumped from the piano bench as we once did. No matter how wonderfully mastered the recording is, there is no matching the chill that came from being in the same room as Rosie Rozell’s soaring tenor or feeling the floor vibrate when J. D. took his bass extra low.
No one sings that old-time style of southern gospel music anymore, either. Voices that dominate today’s southern gospel scene are more polished, refined, and frequently carefully honed through years of practice and education. One won’t find anyone who first learned to read shaped notes among today’s artists. Today’s southern gospel music is more about who gets the solo on the verses, not the give and take counterpoint of each voice.
I spent no small amount of time yesterday listening to the top 20 southern gospel songs as listed by the Southern Gospel Times. The experience was interesting. I’ve not listened to contemporary southern gospel for many of the same reasons I don’t listen to contemporary country music: the sound holds practically no relationship to the original. That doesn’t mean the sound was bad, mind you. In fact, the vocal abilities of most the artists I heard were quite impressive. Yet, the sound is more heavily produced, micro-managed in a studio to the point that the necessary sense of emotion and conviction that is pertinent to southern gospel music is lost.
A good example would be 2nd Generation’s cover of the Hemphill’s I Came On Business For the King, which is currently number seven on this week’s chart. The trio has a nice sound and great harmony. The song itself has an appealing melody that sticks in one’s ear long after it’s been heard. I can understand why the cover jumped so high its first week on the chart. However, when I turn around and compare that to the original recording by the Hemphills circa 1977, with 13-year-old Candy Hemphill taking the lead on the song Joel Hemphill wrote, the emotion evoked is still amazingly stronger than the new cover.
Southern gospel music now revolves more around individual voices. Quartets of any kind are rare. I had to jump down the chart to number 24 before finding a song by the Tribute Quartet. Their sound was, again, quite good, but so polished and carefully produced that it was missing any connection that might have said, “This is more than just another song.”
I’m not sure words sufficiently communicate what I’m feeling. Let’s see if we can do this another way. Consider first this video posted recently of the Tribute Quartet singing an old southern gospel standard, This Old House. The song, which features the bass, is deceptively difficult because of the tempo at which it’s sung.
Now, listen to an older version featuring George Younce and Glen Payne with The Cathedrals. Mark Trammell is singing lead which dates this video somewhere in the 1980s. Personal side note, Mark’s daddy, Charlie, and my daddy were friends for several years. I first met Mark at their home in North Little Rock when he was 15. He had an amazing voice even then. Anyway, consider the difference in how George treats the song.
See the difference? Please tell me you do. Same song, but totally different levels of emotion and cohesiveness. Notice how George brings the group into a circle so they can actually hear each other, creating a better blend. Few modern groups understand that dynamic, but George grew up in a day when all four members of a quartet had to sing around a single microphone. That unified sound came people working together, not from a mixing board in the back of the auditorium.
Yes. I will admit that there is a lot of “old man reminiscing” going on here. As every generation grows older, there is the challenge of adjusting to the newer sounds of music that is constantly progressing and adopting new technologies and capabilities. We miss the older sounds because they were comfortable for our ears. We know those sounds better and can relax. We don’t know newer music so it takes more effort to listen and we don’t always come away feeling that the effort was well placed.
Let me also reiterate that there is nothing wrong with contemporary southern gospel music. The genre is still valid and isn’t likely to go anywhere anytime soon. While the audiences for individual groups tend to not be as large as the Homecoming gatherings once were, they are still significant enough to warrant attention and consideration.
But that old-time southern gospel sound? Those songs with intricate harmonies and the pianists with fingers that flew across piano keys are all but gone. Not only are the people who sang them gone, but to a significant degree, the people who listened to them and enjoyed them are gone as well. Without a definable audience, any music genre is going to fade away.
Remembering What Was
What southern gospel music lost with the passing of Ben Speer was the last loud, dominant voice for that old-time, singing school-based, shaped note style of music. He was instrumental in keeping the Stamps-Baxter singing schools going and in reminding the world of that unique sound of which he and his family were so very much a part. I suppose that Bill Gaither might continue to include some of those old songs in whatever occasional Homecoming events he might have, but Bill’s relationship to that old-time style isn’t the same as Ben’s was. Bill has always been more progressive and supportive of integrating new sounds with old music. Ben, on the other hand, was always there to say, “Yeah, that’s nice, but let me remind you how it was meant to sound.”
With Ben Speer’s death, we lose that direct historical connection, that champion of the Stamps-Baxter songbook. No, Ben isn’t the last of that era, but he was the last dominant figure to make sure the sound wasn’t lost or corrupted, that the old-time way of teaching music wasn’t forgotten, and to show us how beautiful it could sound when done correctly. During Ben’s funeral service, Bill Gaither referred to him as the “harmony marshal.” That’s Ben’s commitment to that old-time sound, one committed to intricate and constantly moving harmonies with melodies that lept from high voices to low voices with no warning. Ben understood what it took to put it all together.
We don’t get that sound in the same way anymore. Now, it’s all handled in the control booth. If someone’s pitch is a little off, it’s auto-tuned. If the tempo starts to lag it’s simply pushed a little digitally. All the human fallibilities are removed and along with it so is the sense of human spirit and emotion with which we once identified.
Below, I am embedding the video from Ben Speer’s funeral service (April 11). Unless one is really a huge fan, you’re not likely to want to sit through the entire thing. While the stories and eulogies are entertaining enough on their own, the length at which they go on becomes a bit tiresome for anyone not close to the family. There are a couple of moments, though, to which you’ll want to jump forward.
The first comes at 48:10 when a local choir takes the stage. These are not professional singers. These are volunteers who have a connection with the Stamps-Baxter singing schools of which Ben was so very much a part. They sing four songs. This is southern gospel music in the raw, the sound that came from rural churches all across America for the better part of the 20th century. There is no measured volume, no careful blending of voices. This is an open-up-and-let-it-fly style of singing. During the summer, which church windows would be open, you could hear the sounds all over town and the echoes out into the country. What you want to hear, though, is about the 55-minute mark with the choir sings a verse in the fa-sol-la style taught in the singing school. Don’t be surprised if it takes a moment for your ears to adjust. To the uninitiated, it can sound as though they’re singing in some strange language. It’s not. At the 58-minute mark, they move into a song by “Dad” Speers that was one of Ben’s favorites and was well-known for singing, He Is Mine and I Am His. Again, the sound is unpolished, but the emotion is evident throughout the auditorium.
Then, following a couple of eulogies and other songs, at 1:32:50 Bill Gaither finally takes the pulpit and after some brief remembrances, leads the Homecoming choir in some of Ben’s best-known songs. I’ll be honest, this part was rough for me. I looked across the faces and there were so few that I recognized. I saw Lea Beasley of the Florida Boys there and Reba Rambo-McGuire as well as a handful of others, but all the other familiar faces and voices with which I grew up were absent. They’re all gone. As the choir sang songs I’ve heard Ben Speers and his family sing my entire life, there was no getting rid of the lump in my throat. Oh The Glory Did Roll comes at 1:47:34 and gives one a more polished, professional version of the Stamps-Baxter style of singing. It really is quite impressive. Then, at 1:51:30, they start in on Never Grow Old and when they get to the second verse, they bring up a video of Ben merged with a video of Dad Speer, singing the song along with them. The emotion couldn’t have been any higher.
Be sure, southern gospel music will continue. There will be singers and groups that will stand out and they will find contemporary ways to speak to a contemporary audience. But it will be different. That old-time southern gospel sound, the part that was rooted in the Sacred Harp and burgeoned from the Stamps-Baxter singing schools, is gone. What’s left are memories. Recordings. Videos. We’ll hold on to those memories with fondness even though our life takes us so very, very far away from that community. I’ll always appreciate what this sound and this music means to me and a part of me will miss it.
With fondness, we say goodbye and rest in peace.
Fashion retail is failing because we prefer to dress like bums
The Short Version
With thousands of major brand name stores closing this year, fashion labels and department stores alike are struggling to find a way adapt to a fundamental shift in how people dress. Comfort dominates over style. Dress codes once forged in steel have been shattered. Rare are the occasions when we feel the need to “dress up.” Our preference is for wearing what once would have been referred to as gym clothes. All around the world, we have become a society of slobs.
Defining The Situation
My youngest son’s prom was last night. He came out of his room dressed in a black tux with white shirt and a tie that I had to tie for him. He was even wearing hard soled shoes for the first time in well over a year. He was handsome. He looked good. I took pictures to send to his mother.
Within ten minutes of arriving back home, however, he was back in his typical uniform of shorts and a t-shirt so old the white cotton has yellowed. This is how he prefers to dress. This is how his friends prefer to dress. They see little reason to dress up, especially if they’re spending most their day in a classroom.
On one hand, it would be easy to say that my son’s choice of clothing style is typical of a generation, and to some extent it is. However, his generation is merely taking to the extreme a trend that has been growing since before I was a teenager. We can talk about millennials and Gen-X and Boomers all we want, but the truth is we’ve been building to this level of casualness since the Great Depression of the 1930s, nearly a century ago. Society’s standards for clothing are not based on the trends of a single fashion season but upon multiple generations desiring to be more comfortable, less rigid, and freer.
Unfortunately, in our desire to run away from the corporate dress code and gender-based stereotypes, we have gone to such an extreme where the greater majority no longer care about trends or passing fads, or standards, or social expectations. We care more about our own comfort, creating our own “style,” being “unique,” and not selling out to a label. In the process, we have become a society that is full of slobs. We’re not just casual. Our global fashion style has evolved to a point to where wrinkled and slouchy is acceptable and we have decided to be okay with that.
A Slow Progression
One of the challenging aspects of my life now is that I struggle to get in 30 minutes of physical exercise or reasonably aerobic activity during the day. My doctor insists that I must, but our house is small, space is limited, and the effects of unpredictable weather provide too many convenient obstacles. Still, I have to take responsibility for my health (Kat insists) and that led to me going to the mall this week to do that stereotypical old person thing: walk. I have become that person. We’re not there to shop, just walk.
I took the 18-year-old with me for safety. I still don’t have these new meds balanced out just yet and sudden blood sugar drops are a problem. Sure enough, by the time we made a couple of rounds, I needed to sit and chug some juice. This gave us a chance to people watch, which is typically an interesting enough activity all on its own. What we observed was interesting.
The number of women wearing some form of Spandex®-infused leggings was roughly 70 percent. Most were black, but there were a couple of middle-aged women whose thighs were far from toned wearing leggings of bright colors and designs that made it impossible to not notice that their thighs were large and not toned. Easily 90 percent of men were in jeans or some other casual pant, loose fitting, a little too long. The day’s cool and wet weather had most everyone in a jacket, the range running from Nanook of the North-styled parkas to plain hoodies. Under those jackets were primarily t-shirts, which isn’t too surprising. None of the shirt tails were tucked, though, and men especially tended to not tie their shoe laces, leaving them dangling or tucked in the top of their sneakers. The general appearance, overall, was best termed as slouchy.
Sure, there were exceptions. We saw a couple of young women wearing very nice dresses, fully coiffed and made up, pushing babies in strollers as they headed toward Von Maur with fierce determination. People of certain ethnicities and religious practice were dressed according to their cultures’ traditions. One young woman, who might have been coming from or going to a job interview, was dressed what we traditionally refer to as “professional” but was having some difficulty walking in block heels that were about a size too large for her.
Those were the very obvious exceptions, however. More typical was the teenage girl who wandered into Pac-Sun wearing well-worn flannel pajama pants and a frayed hoodie. The pajamas were long enough to nearly hide her worn sneakers and the hoodie was large enough to obliterate most her features. She shuffled as she walked and her phone never left her ear.
How did we get here? Blaming generations is easy, but incorrect. We’ve been building up to this for a very long time.
Prior to the stock market crash of 1929, what one wore defined their place in society and the vast majority of people were anxious to look better off than they were. Think of what we refer to as the “roaring” twenties and one conjures images of girls in flapper dresses and men in sharp pinstripe suits. While the every-day reality was something a little less formal, there remained a sense that how one dressed reflected their character and morality.
The Great Depression changed all that, however, and by the time we came out of World War II we had begun softening our attitudes toward how we dressed, especially in non-work settings. Denim moved away from being strictly the uniform of labor and became an after-school favorite of teens and college students. Slacks became a regular part of women’s fashion and men came home and traded their suits for khaki slacks and open-collared short-sleeve shirts. As quaint as that may sound to us now, it was a fundamental shift in philosophy as casual wear became a fundamental part of the fashion industry.
Once society got a taste for casual style, we decided we really liked it and slowly moved toward integrating more casual looks into our daily wardrobes. By the time we got to the 1970s, we had the horrible experience of the leisure suit, leather fringe, and the shift toward athletic footwear for things other than athletics. The “track suit” became a thing and President Jimmy Carter even wore jeans and a denim jacket in the oval office. Ronald Reagan tried pulling the nation back with forced formality at the White House, but it was too late. Casual Friday became a workplace
Casual Friday became a workplace norm in the mid-80s and by the time Bill Clinton took office in 1992 the world was well on its way toward khaki hell, fueled by the casual attitudes of the burgeoning high-tech industry. Office dress codes that once required ties and jackets of men and dresses for women were the exception rather than the rule by the time the world nervously celebrated Y2K. Denim was always pre-washed and often “distressed” and ripped in strategic places. Flip-flops replaced sneakers to the point that some people didn’t think twice about wearing them for official visits to the White House.
Underwear became a part of our fashion sense, partly thanks to Madonna and partly the influence of Calvin Klein. “Street style” and “urban” became regular parts of our fashion lexicon. Questions of what, exactly, defined “office appropriate” became a regular struggle for HR managers who no longer had a clear road map to follow. We rebelled against any kind of forced style structure and increasingly insisted upon autonomy in deciding what we wear.
At the same time, we also became more self-aware regarding our health and our bodies. Videos on the Internet allowed us to see “behind the scenes” of how the “beautiful people” kept in shape. Fitness went mainstream and yoga, especially, not only became the dominant form of wellness but also infused itself into our fashion sense. Yoga pants and sports bras went from being something one wore to the gym to a regular part of our wardrobes no matter where we were.
In 2014, Vanessa Friedman, of The New York Times asked what to call this “gym-to-street sector that has suddenly become the hottest thing to cover two legs?” Nike CEO Mike Parker declared, “Leggings are the new denim.” Beyoncé’s line for Topshop targeted “women who go to yoga or the health club, as well as those who just want to look as if they do,” according to WWD. The term “athleisure” came to define those clothes that have an athletic appearance but are not really meant for one to actually sweat in. Alexander Wang, chief among the athleisure designers, made a killing.
In the short years since our style decisions have completely disintegrated. If athleisure is okay, then a couple of steps below that must be okay as well. Ragged, ill-fitting, wrinkled, old, and frayed have become such a standard part of our wardrobe that we even see those elements incorporated on fashion’s runways.
The problem is that fashion relies on trends, which change and lead us to keep buying new clothes. Athleisure is not a trend and as we dissolve into a new level of slovenliness we care less and less about purchasing anything new.
Fashion On The Ropes
A part of me cried this week when Ralph Lauren announced that they are closing their flagship store on New York’s 5th Avenue. Not only has that store been the base for all things Ralph Lauren, in recent years it’s been the home for the designer’s fashion shows, spectacles that transformed the entire store into a giant runway. Lauren is not alone, though. Fashion retailers are fleeing their 5th Avenue shops like rats flee a sinking ship and that sinking metaphor is more appropriate than any of us care to admit. Consider the number of store closing already announced this year:
- Payless
Stores closing in 2017: 1,000 - RadioShack
Stores closing in 2017: 552 - The Limited
Stores closing in 2017: 250 - Family Christian
Stores closing in 2017: 240 - Wet Seal
Stores closing in 2017: 171 - Bebe
Stores closing in 2017: 170 - Crocs
Stores closing in 2017: 160 - J.C.Penney
Stores closing in 2017: 138 - BCBG
Stores closing in 2017: 120 - American Apparel
Stores closing in 2017: 110 - Kmart
Stores closing in 2017: 108 - hh Gregg
Stores closing in 2017: 88 - Staples
Stores closing in 2017: 70 - CVS
Stores closing in 2017: 70 - Abercrombie & Fitch
Stores closing in 2017: 60 - Macys
Stores closing in 2017: 68 - Sears
Stores closing in 2017: 42 - Guess
Stores closing in 2017: 60 - Green Mountain
Stores closing in 2017: 30
I know, not all of those have anything to do with fashion or style, but what affects one retail sector ultimately affects them all. How we dress or don’t dress, the degree to which we shop or don’t shop, has a ripple effect across all of retail, even reaching all the way out to seemingly extreme disconnects such as Family Christian stores. Guess what: we’re not buying religious t-shirts, either. The retail economy is reeling from such a severe attitude of casualness that we no longer give a fuck whether we buy anything or not.
Not that we care. As our society has descended into this realm of wearing whatever we pick up off the floor and calling it our “personal style,” we don’t seem to realize that at the core lies a self-centered philosophy that no one has a right to challenge or question what anyone else does. For me to sit at the mall and question whether or not someone should be wearing those leggings is considered “shaming,” and I’m told to not do that. For me to challenge the young woman who wore her pajamas to the mall is infringing upon her personal rights. Even my choice of titles, asserting that we are all slobs, is considered judgemental and inappropriate by most. We want to wear what we like and have rejected any sense that anyone has the right to even question our decisions.
The longer-term danger, beyond the severe economic impact and the jobs being lost, is that in our self-centered casual attitude we’ve not only stopped caring about what other people think, we’ve stopped caring at all. We care about my pets, my cars, and my life experiences. Sure, we still consume, and those who cater to our selfish desires are doing well. However, the Internet has made it all too convenient for to pretend that we care about refugees by simply donating $5 online rather than actually getting out and helping people. We post our political opinions on Facebook but can’t be bothered to actually have conversations that matter with our elected representatives. We’ll join a rally if enough other people are going because our egos are stroked when we appear to be part of something popular.
Unpopular conclusions
The examination that leads me here is harsh. We are slobs. We are self-centered. We are selfish. While none of these conditions are new, we’ve been this way for thousands of years, where society once considered these traits as something to avoid, we now embrace them fully and cherish them as if they were actually desirable. We love doing and wearing whatever the hell we want. We don’t care if our actions destroy the economy as long as we’re getting what we want. We just don’t want anyone else telling us what to do, where to go, or how to behave. We’re independent, dammit, and if we have to dress slovenly and act slovenly to prove that, then that’s exactly what we are going to do.
Perhaps, however, we need to reconsider some of the lessons our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents tried to teach us. There is some benefit to following rules. Standards not only help maintain order, they keep us safe. We mind our manners because it matters how we behave and how we treat other people. We don’t put our wants and desires first because it is important to actually care about other people first. We are taught delayed gratification because it keeps us fiscally stronger and avoids the irresponsibility of debt. We dress as well as we can for any given situation not to show off but because it is a sign of respect for those around us.
That last piece there, respect, is something we’ve all but lost. We want others to respect us, we’re all about people respecting who we are and what we do, but we give no one anything to respect in the first place. Respect does not exist when we don’t care what other people think. When we choose to dress like trash, we are effectually telling the rest of the world that we think they are trash. When all of our actions and motivations are self-centered on personal pleasure and gain, we are telling the rest of the world that we think they are inferior. We can copy and share the suicide hotline number on our Facebook profile over and over and over, but the proof of whether we actually care about the lives of other people lies in our all our actions, not our words.
How we dress, how we talk, the activities in which we directly participate, tell those around us whether we respect them as humans, part of our shared society. Dressing, speaking, and behaving appropriately says that we care, that we are willing to put respect for others above our own comfort and/or convenience. Without that visible demonstration of respect, all the words we might post on social media or anywhere else are meaningless.
We when dress, speak, and behave like slobs, we tell those around us that we really don’t give a shit about them. We say that our own comfort and perceived independence is more important than anything or anyone else. Ultimately, slobs don’t even respect themselves.
We can do better. We must do better. I don’t know about you, but I don’t care to be a part of a society of slobs.
Not every choice is a good one.
[dropcap] Sleep deprivation. That’s really the only excuse I can think of for some of the copy that was offered up during our latest round of business card re-design. As a photographer and creative, I can’t keep handing people the same business card year after year. First, the phone number keeps changing in this cell-oriented world where keeping the same number is an exercise in how much patience I don’t have. Second, seeing the same business card more than twice makes one look boring. We have to keep changing this up. [/dropcap]
As we were once again going through that process this week, our habit is to choose from some images we like, whether they be cute or different or just awesome, and then try them out on our business card template along with unique copy for each one. We then eliminate them one by one until we have the look we want. or at least have some concept of what we don’t want.
In the end, the two-sided design we chose looks nothing at all like the images you’ll see here. We rejected all of these looks, all the copy, all the concepts. And after having gone through that process, we found some humor in the ones we rejected.
So, here are the ones we didn’t choose. As for the ones we did, you’ll just have to catch up with me somewhere and ask for one. They should be here in a couple of weeks.
As always, click on any image below to view the full slideshow.
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Mistakes are inevitable but intentional harm is inexcusable
The Short Version
Flagrant fouls are part of college basketball and a game can turn on a last-minute call. Sometimes it’s good strategy but it comes with risks. Acts of terrorism, political malfeasance, and the whims of the universe can also come with flagrant fouls of their own. Perhaps, like basketball, we should get a free throw when those happen. Something good to counter the bad.
More To The Story
[dropcap]One of the things that make the month of March endurable is the NCAA basketball tournament. I like basketball up through the college level. The players work hard, develop their skills, and learn to work as a team. Anything can happen on any given night during this tournament. South Carolina can take down a perennial powerhouse like Duke. Wisconsin can eliminate top-seeded Villanova. The excitement is palpable.[/dropcap]
Games can turn around, though, when someone does something questionable and intentionally fouls a player from the opposite team. Strategically, this can be a smart move at the end of a very close game. Intentionally fouling a weak player puts them on the free throw line instead of allowing them to pass the ball to a strong player who might make a three-point shot. Putting a weak player on the line holds the possibility of getting the ball back without giving up any points. Depending on the team and the player fouled, the strategy can give an edge to a team that’s only losing by one point.
A flagrant foul at the wrong time, however, can kill a victory. We saw that happen a couple of times last week in close games. A flagrant foul call against a Seton Hall player in their match against Arkansas almost certainly cost them the game. There has been a lot of debate, especially by Seton Hall fans, over whether the call was justified. Did young Desi Rodriguez really intend to commit the foul or did momentum make the contact inevitable? Referees at the game said the action violated the rules against pushing from behind (NCAA men’s basketball Rule 4; Section 15; Article 2.c.2). The action caused Arkansas’ Jaylen Barford to fall forward, losing his balance. Fortunately, Mr. Barford was not hurt, but the potential was certainly there.
Flagrant fouls in sports are part of the game. We expect them at certain points and there are times it can be a good strategy despite being a clear violation of the rules. However, we too frequently see the same strategy of flagrant fouling outside of basketball and when that occurs, the results are not nearly so entertaining and someone almost always gets hurt.
Terrorism would be a good example. What happened yesterday (22 March) in London was unquestionably a flagrant foul. One person’s deliberate and planned actions cost the lives of five people and injured some 20 others. The act was not only an offense to the people of London and the UK, but to the entire world. Civilized society does not tolerate the deliberate targeting of innocent people. Foul. Take the responsible persons out of the game.
Flagrant fouls happen in politics all the time. Again, there are times when a deliberate breaking of the rules can be a good strategy, such as when Congressman John Lewis led a sit-in on the floor of the House of Representatives last Spring. He brought attention to a critical issue that Congress was attempting to ignore. At other times, however, such actions can be devastating for justice, the rule of law, and the American people.
One of the most recent examples would be Rep. Devin Nunes assertions late yesterday that communications between the president-elect and his staff might have been “inadvertently” caught up in intelligence officials’ monitoring of other targets. Such a statement from the chair of the house intelligence committee was a foul in a couple of different ways. First, the chair was speaking to the press about information the full intelligence committee had not yet seen or discussed, a clear violation of House rules. Second, there is every possibility that the information the Congressman gave to the press was, in part, classified. A direct violation of law.
Who loses in a situation such as this? Justice. The American people. The statements by the Congressman undermine TWO ongoing Congressional investigation, one of which has severe implications regarding the interference of Russians in the US elections last fall. Such deliberate and calculated carelessness underscores the need for an independent, non-partisan investigation into both matters. Congressman Nunes needs to be removed from the intelligence game for such a flagrant foul.
Another flagrant foul would be the threats the administration and Congressional leadership have put on Members of Congress to pass the health care law scheduled for a vote today. GOP leaders and the president have been heavy-handed in their threats to members who have voiced opposition to the bill. The implication of those threats is that the party and/or the administration will “punish” those who vote against the bill. What this administration and party leadership seem to forget is that neither of them owns or control the votes of any member of Congress. Representatives are there to express the voice of their constituents. Failure on the part of a Congressperson to do so is a severe dereliction of duty. The foul is a strategical move by a losing team grasping at straws.
The strategy may well end up going against the administration and result in losing the vote. As of this morning, the Freedom Caucus, which is composed of extreme-right GOP members of Congress, still opposes the health bill. Should they, as a bloc, vote against the bill, it would not pass. The extreme right are not the only ones opposed to the bill, though. Consider the opinion of Senator Lindsey Graham:
Graham: It would be embarrassing for the GOP to pass the health care bill because “somebody tells you you have to” https://t.co/WWPBCO3OAU
— CNN (@CNN) March 22, 2017
There is a caveat here that Congressional votes such as this often come down to the wire as deals are made with individual members of Congress. Yet, getting back on point, the flagrant foul of attempting to overtly threaten Members of Congress is still wrong and, hopefully, contributes to the defeat of the bill.
I could continue to list other flagrant fouls on the part of the administration, but there is a point here at which such accusations feel redundant and fail to serve the point. I suppose, bringing the story back around to our original example, in some ways the administration’s propensity toward misbehavior is like Duke’s Grayson Allen intentionally tripping other players at the beginning of the season. The situation became so bad that Duke had to suspend Allen for several games and the ACC officially reprimanded him for his behavior. The difference is that we can’t just suspend the president for a few weeks. Even if Congress were to grow some balls and reprimand the president for his behavior, it would almost certainly have no effect.
Life throws flagrant fouls at us as well. Repeated trips to the doctor over the past two weeks have tripled the number of medicine bottles on my shelf. With so much medicine comes a wave of side effects and those are the flagrant fouls that leave me unable to stay focused, dealing with increased levels of pain and confusion. The effects are supposed to be temporary, according to the doctor, but the results, for now, are frustrating and debilitating to a large degree. Add to that forced changes in what I eat and how I live and I most certainly think the universe deserves to be whistled for the foul.
I know many of you have felt the same.
In basketball, when one is fouled, one gets a free shot. With a flagrant foul, you not only get the free throws, you get to retain possession of the ball. I think the universe needs to institute such a penalty. For everything bad that happens, for every terrorist incident or every political misappropriation of power, something of equal or potentially greater good has to happen. The two children of Ayshe Frade, whose mother was killed in yesterday’s Westminster attack, deserve for the rest of their lives to be blissful in exchange for the horrendously flagrant foul committed against them. The American people deserve an all-inclusive single-payer healthcare system that cannot be tampered with by Congress.
And me? I just want to be able to take pictures without worrying about forgetting the appointment or becoming ill in the middle of a shoot or having pain affect the quality of my pictures. I’ll take those free throws, thank you.
And against the odds, we’re pulling for Butler against North Carolina tomorrow night. This is what makes March so mad.
Monday’s news fuels Tuesday’s fallout
I first started noticing the pattern some 30 years ago and it’s only become more relevant with passing time. A lot of important decisions and statements are made on Mondays. Yesterday was a good example. Just consider some of the revelations made yesterday:
- The FBI is investigating Russia’s involvement in last year’s election and to what degree the president’s people were involved.
- The US is prohibiting electronics larger than a cell phone on flights inbound to the US from eight countries, but failed to provide those countries with details.
- The Secretary of State is snubbing NATO to meet with China and Russia. Fraternizing with the enemy, anyone?
- North Korea tested a rocket engine that could fuel ICBMs and the US is considering sanctions.
- Google is overhauling its policies and hiring more people to make sure client ads don’t appear next to Breitbart and other offensive content.
All of those issues are important in one way or another and now that they’ve been announced, the fallout starts. Expect it to be a rough day at the State Department. Firing decisions are often made on Tuesday (though they may not be announced until Friday). Don’t be surprised to see some bankruptcy and store closing announcements today. It’s going to be rough for a lot of people.
Then, there are the things one doesn’t read about in the newspaper. A dear friend became a widow at the age of 49 yesterday thanks to her husband’s heroin addiction. Another friend who had relocated across the country for a better job lost that job yesterday, less than six months after the move. There are surgeries and complications, illnesses evading diagnosis, and physical problems threatening to end careers.
Tuesdays suck.
So, though we don’t have a lot of time to just sit and look at pictures, we do have some pictures, re-processed with bolder tones. These photos won’t solve anyone’s problems. However, our hope is they will at least provide a moment’s respite from all the stress and anxiety that come with any given Tuesday. Click on a thumbnail to view the whole slide show. We’ll worry more about the news stuff tomorrow.
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When you want to get away but are short on cash
The Short Version
Not everyone has their parents’ credit cards to finance their galavanting around the world but we still want our shot at fun, adventure, and, be honest, a chance to escape the lunacy of the president and his administration. How does one finance any kind of escape? There’s a new player on the web that aims to help solve that problem by allowing companies to hire freelancers by paying for their travel, room, and board. Sounds good, doesn’t it? We decided to check it out.
A Little More Detail
[dropcap]I had gone through the process of reading the morning’s news and was in the process of banging my head on the desk yet again when I came across this article in AdWeek that captured both my attention and my imagination. The article introduces a new service that aims to connect companies with freelancers in an effort to save companies money and provide freelancers with the adventure and escape that we all want. Well, most of us. I do know a couple of people who are afraid to leave their own living room.[/dropcap]
The website is Wanderbrief and it works like some other freelance-oriented services in that it collects “briefs” from companies and then tries to match those with freelancer’s skills. Companies get to review the profiles of appropriate freelancers and then negotiate a deal. The company pays travel, room, and board and the freelancer completes the assigned project on location. Sounds like a nice way to get out of town for a few days, doesn’t it? The projects range from 1-4 weeks, so we can fit them in between the actual paying assignments so that the lights stay on at home and we don’t come home to find all our junk on the curb. They also hold the potential for increasing one’s network and thereby increasing the amount of paid work one gets.
We really liked how the article sounded, so we decided to take a slightly deeper look.
Jumping Through The Hoops
Remember, this is still a new site and service and there are places where that really shows. The form for freelancers to join is really short. The “bio” section has a 100 character limit, so they don’t really want to know too much about you. They want to check your socials and the top three items on your bucket list, so have those handy.
They only require that you list two projects, but more can be added (we don’t know that there’s a limit). The kicker here is that you can’t upload files, such as photographs and such. You have to provide a link to online content instead. Now, that could be something on Facebook or Instagram, but stop and think about what could happen after someone looks at the content you link. They start with that picture, but then they continue browsing through all your other pictures, including that one of you smashed off your ass at the Irish pub crawl this weekend. If you don’t already have your own website, ya’ might want to take care of that before you start in on this.
I was rather surprised by how short the form was. I understand the need for brevity, especially given the short attention span of many creatives. However, there are some simple things that I think would help companies make a better decision, such as:
- Do you hold a valid passport?
- Have you ever been denied a visa, and if so, why?
- Have you ever been convicted of a felony (including DUI)? Trust me, we’ve lost team members at customs because of this one.
- Have you ever been denied a bond?
These are issues that regularly come up when freelancing and it always concerns me when a prospective client doesn’t ask them. But again, the service is new. I’m sure they’ll adapt as they grow.
We Have Some Questions
Our initial experience on the Wanderbrief website was surprisingly short. It took about 15 minutes to complete the form, so now all we have to do is wait. On one hand, this seems like a lot of fun. However, after downloading the Ts & Cs, we have some questions that don’t seem to be answered anywhere on the website. These are things that come mostly from our experience and/or tails from friends who’ve gone through hell while traveling. With Wanderbrief being new, they’ve not had much chance for bad stuff to happen, but be sure that it will. We’d like to know someone is thinking about these things in advance.
- How are we defining “room and board?” While I don’t ever expect a client to put us up in four-star facilities, I don’t appreciate the cheapskate who offers the pullout bed in his den at home, either. “Board” usually refers to meals, but how much, how many, and how often? I’ve gone hungry on assignments like this. I don’t like it. You probably wouldn’t, either.
- Who’s responsible if you get stranded? This is a biggie. I’ve never had to deal with it personally, but almost every traveling model I know has encountered it at least once. Worst case scenario was a couple who were in Spain, left with no money, on a holiday weekend, and no way to get back home. Not every company is nice. Folks need to know someone has their back.
- What are the freelancer’s rights if the company requests something different from the original agreement? The conversation starts with something like, “Our scope has changed and I know we talked about you doing xyz, but now we really need you to do lmn instead.” As long as the two are related, no problem. Unfortunately, if they’re not and if the freelancer tries to refuse then the company starts making threats that can be uncomfortable, such as not paying for things. Worst case scenario: the company’s representative requests sexual favors. Sure, it’s illegal, but if that person holds your ticket home you’ve got a problem.
- How thoroughly are companies vetted? The Internet makes it relatively easy for small companies of one or two people look a lot bigger than they actually are. If companies are not thoroughly vetted, freelancers could find themselves essentially working for an individual, which doesn’t do much to pad the resume and makes the financials a bit shaky. Have you ever stood at a hotel desk and had them tell you the client’s credit card was declined? It’s not a fun situation. They expect payment from you. We need to know that companies are secure enough to handle the details.
- How are disagreements between the company and the freelancer handled? Again, this is something that’s inevitable for anyone who freelances. We turn in a finished project. The client says, “That’s not what I asked for.” Both the company and the freelancer stand to lose in these situations. What law applies? Is arbitration an option? If so, who handles that? Since Wanderbrief is an international company, this matter really needs to be resolved before they send freelancers roaming across the countryside.
- What happens if a freelancer becomes ill and is unable to complete a project? We hate it when this happens, but it does happen. You arrive in a city, your stomach feels a bit queasy, and the next thing you know you’re heaving up airplane food. Gross. Disgusting. You may try to ride it out, but if it doesn’t let up after a couple of days one may have little choice but to throw in the towel and go home. So, what happens? Is the company still on the hook for the full bill? Do you re-schedule and start over next month? You really want to know before you’re trying to handle calls between moments of intestinal pain.
Companies are likely to have some similar questions regarding their rights as well, and if the company side of the website is as brief as the freelancer side, agreeing to a project could mean taking on considerable risks on both sides.
Conclusions
I love this concept. While it’s certainly not for everyone, for those who are available to travel this service is a godsend. I want to see it do well. However, there is a lot that is missing as far as mitigating risks and legal liabilities. I would worry especially about international travel where political situations can force a change in travel plans without any warning. The US government has proven too erratic and too unstable to be trusted. Rex Tillerson’s State Department is still missing hundreds of key employees so going to the nearest consulate may not provide any help at all.
I’m anxious to see what happens next. How long will it take for us to get a brief we can consider accepting? What additional information becomes available when we enter into that conversation? I’m assuming there are more details behind that curtain. I look forward to seeing what they are.
We’ll update this story if/when something happens that makes a difference. In the meantime, go ahead and check it out for yourself. This might be just the thing to help you retain your sanity a moment longer.
Humanity demands compassion but the president isn’t listening
The Short Version
After White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney referred to the president’s budget proposal as “fairly compassionate” this week, many were offended by the characterization because of the severe cuts to social programs. But when we look at what compassion actually encompasses, many of our own lives have room for improvement as well. As we demand more compassion from our government, perhaps now is the time to demand more from ourselves as well.
What We’re Talking About
Compassion is a basic human moral value that is embraced by every major religion and progressive philosophy for the past 4,000 years. Broad in its reach and interpretation, compassion requires one to think outside themselves, to consider strongly not only the needs of others but how one’s own actions affect other people. Compassion requires forgiveness, inclusiveness, and acceptance. Compassion requires giving of oneself to the point of personal sacrifice. Compassion requires setting aside what might make sense in order to do what is right toward another human being, or even the planet. Compassion puts lives before profit and before power. Compassion does not have a bottom line.
Embraced by every major religion in the world, the Christian bible requires feeding one’s enemy (Romans 12:20), and being forgiving, kind, and thoughtful (Ephesians 4:32). The Quran teaches Muslims to “compete with each other in doing good (Surat al-Ma’ida, 48).” The Hindu god Vishnu is motivated by compassion and incarnates to bring compassion to an unbalanced world. The Talmud requires compassion from those who would seek compassion. Nearly every belief system in the world, spiritual or secular, adheres to some form of the “Golden Rule:” Do unto others as you would have done to you.
Against such a background, we can confidently state that to not show compassion is globally immoral. The overriding question, though, is how much compassion is enough? White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney calls the president’s budget proposal “fairly compassionate” because, he alleges, taxpayer money is only used “in a proper function.” That statement has received considerable backlash, however, as many of the cuts proposed by the White House would spell an end to some of the most compassionate programs that exist. In fact, between the budget and the proposed health care law, the current administration and Republicans in Congress do not appear to have any concern for compassion at all. Between the two bills, these are just some of the items that could be eliminated or severely reduced.
- Various programs that make up the system of support for expecting mothers and children known as WIC
- The Community Development Block Grant program that allows states to identify and address specific social needs within communities
- After-school care programs that provide critical meals to the children of working parents
- The Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant that provides assistance for low-income college students
- Subsidies that help lower-income people pay for out-of-pocket health care costs
- The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program that helps lower-income people pay utility bills especially during times of extreme temperatures
- $80 billion in Medicaid funding for disabled, poor, and elderly Americans
- The Legal Services Corporation that provides low-income assistance for civil cases, such as acquiring restraining orders for victims of domestic abuse
- $1 billion in funding for CDC Prevention and Public Health Fund that supports heart disease and stroke prevention, immunization, lead poisoning prevention and diabetes prevention
- The Corporation for National and Community Service supporting community-based programs such as AmeriCorp and others
- Dental, Vision, and Mental health care for low-income children
I dare anyone to sufficiently explain how any of those programs are not “a proper function.” Compassion requires that we offer all the assistance we can to the poor, the sick, the homeless, and the underprivileged. There is no profit/loss line to the budget of compassion. One does not measure compassion based on an action’s return on investment (ROI). One cannot even measure compassion based on the success or failure of a program. Compassion is exercising our resources to meet a need. When it comes to compassion, it is better to have dome something and failed than to have done nothing at all.
Compassion requires we look outside ourselves, even outside our own country. The entire concept of “America first” lacks compassion as it ignores the needs of seven billion people world to focus on the narrow needs of some 376 million people in the United States. We cannot call ourselves compassionate if we support and implement programs that remove funding for international aid simply so that we can build an ill-conceived wall across a portion of our Southern border.
For example, yesterday (March 17) was Match Day for doctoral students graduating colleges this spring. This is where the soon-to-be-physicians find out where they will be doing their residency and what communities they’ll be serving. Of course, everyone wants the elite hospitals, but the truth is that all the graduates from all the medical schools in the US are not enough to fill all the residency vacancies. As a result, we have, for many years now, been dependent on foreign doctors to help take up the slack. Without those additional physicians, there would be gaping holes of service, especially in family-oriented fields of general practice. However, the president’s travel ban stands to severely limit the number of doctors who are able to apply for residency in the United States. Not only are doctors from the six directly affected countries prohibited from applying, doctors from other countries are finding their visas under increased scrutiny, delaying or eliminating their ability to accept much-needed medical positions in the US.
Let’s cut this down to reality here: for every doctor who is denied entry to the US, an entire community of Americans has less access to health care. Show me the compassion in such a program.
What strikes me, though, is that perhaps our elected officials fail to show compassion in the legislation they author is, consciously or not, they don’t consider their constituents to be compassionate people. Part of the momentum that drove populists into important positions in the past election is an overwhelming message of selfishness. As a nation, we voted for what we thought best served our personal interest. We didn’t care how our decisions might affect other people. We didn’t care who might be hurt as long as it wasn’t us. Our votes sent a horribly selfish message to Washington and they have responded based on that selfishness.
We need a government steeped in compassion. However, we must first be more compassionate ourselves. We’re talking about more than just dipping into our pockets a bit more. As a nation, we’ve been stuck on this trend of giving approximately two percent of our national GDP for some time now. This makes us look better than we actually are. As the economy improves, so does the dollar amount that we’re giving. However, as a percentage of our income, we’re not actually giving any more. Add to that the fact that 32% of our giving goes to religious entities, of which less than three percent is distributed to social needs, and what we’re doing to help other people is, in reality, much less than we think.
There are opportunities to be compassionate everywhere we look. Just this morning, I was reading about rainforest-free clothing. Now, as a caveat, I have to say that I really don’t like rayon fabric myself, but I understand that for certain garments it is much more cost effective than silk or satin. That aside, though, when we purchase garments made with rayon and support fashion labels who don’t carefully source the fabric, we’re ultimately doing harm to communities dependent on the rainforests for their livelihood. While it’s great that labels such as Victoria’s Secret and Stella McCartney have started eliminating those fabrics from their collections, it is up to us to consciously decide to exercise compassion in choosing rainforest-free clothing.
What we do with our cast-off clothing is anther opportunity for compassion as well. While it is easy enough for us to just dump our closet rejects at the local second-hand facility, the more compassionate move is to work directly with those organizations that interface with giving away clothes to the poor. By avoiding the more corporate entities with huge overhead costs, we can get more clothes to the people who really need them rather than giving Millennials and others an inexpensive way to fund a trendy lifestyle.
Compassion often requires us to make difficult decisions, such as not seeking the death penalty despite pressure to do so, or allowing the terminally ill to die of their own accord without any interference. We don’t like issues surrounding death and often find it difficult to determine where compassion is best applied. Do we act in benefit of those who would die, or do we act for the benefit of those who still live? Compassion is not always an easy or popular choice.
Compassion also leads us to care for the mentally ill and this is where we need to pay special attention because I firmly believe that .many other social issues such as unemployment and homelessness are directly affected by undiagnosed and untreated mental illness. Our country has never recognized and funded treatment for mental illness at anywhere near the levels necessary to have a serious impact on other social challenges. We too often think that mental illness is something that is made up or contrived or created to manipulate a system. However, over 42 million Americans, by conservative estimates, suffer from some form of mental illness, whether it be depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia. If we were to be totally honest about veteran PTSD rates, the number would likely double.
Compassion for the mentally ill is challenging because when we get serious about treatment, many would do best with in-patient care but there are not enough facilities, not enough doctors and nowhere near enough funding to meet the inevitable need. Compassion is also complicated by the fact that, for many diagnoses, intervention and care has to be done at a professional level. There are times when the best we can do is to insist someone get professional help and make sure that happens.
For example, let’s take someone who is overtly paranoid and believing that important people are out to “get” them, someone who also lies on a regular basis without any reason for doing so, someone who exaggerates facts, and who lashes out at perceived criticism, someone whose sense of reality is off-base to the point of creating danger. Compassion for this person means not only providing appropriate psychiatric care but removing them from the situations that fuel and perpetuate their psychosis. Compassion also demands that we prevent this person from taking any action that might cause harm to themselves or others, either directly or indirectly. Compassion also requires severing the co-dependent relationships that facilitate the psychosis and allow it to continue.
We all know someone like that. We elected him to office.
We are required to be compassionate. To not be compassionate is immoral.
So, consider what you need to do. Be compassionate and then encourage Congress to do the same.
Current trends and historical comparisons don’t paint a pretty picture for the fashion industry
The Short Version
The retail sector at large, and the fashion industry specifically, has been having a rough time staying afloat the past two years. While a wave of populism sweeps the US and parts of Europe, fashion labels are beginning to worry that populist politics could gut fashion worse than Germany did during WWII. The comparison is frightening and gives designers more reason to insert politics into fashion.
The Long Cut
Fashion appears to be on the verge of crisis. I mentioned more than once during this past season’s coverage on Pattern that there were several names missing from the schedule, but didn’t take the time to explain why. Let’s do a bit of that now.
BCBG Max Azria has been hurting for a while and confirmed it would be seeking bankruptcy protection March 1. There were announcements that all the stores would be closing as the company shifts its attention to online sales. None of that was terribly surprising, given sales trends for the past few years. However, what did catch people off guard was when Lubov Azria, the long-time creative director, CEO, and wife of founder Max Azria, announced she is stepping down from the company completely. She is being replaced in both the corporate and creative positions by Bernd Kroeber, who has been with the brand since 2007. This announcement is generally viewed as a desperate attempt to revitalize a brand whose look and reputation seems stuck in the 90s.
The last SIBLING runway we covered was the autumn/winter 16 season last year. The amazingly popular show had erred in not requiring tickets for their presentation and, as a result, a number of editors and buyers were left out in the cold. When September came, we weren’t able to view the show due to scheduling conflicts, but in looking at the pictures we could tell something wasn’t quite right. The death of founding member Joe Bates due to cancer in 2015 was taking its toll. This season, SIBLING wasn’t on the official London schedule at all (they showed off-schedule). Then, this past Friday (March 10), the label announced they were entering liquidation. Shutting down. Game over. No immediate reason was given.
Then, catching everyone by surprise, THAKOON, the New York-based label backed by Hong Kong investor Vivian Chou, announced that the label is being put “on hold.” This comes less than a month after the label showed its current season collection in New York. While no date has been given for full closure, current inventory is being sold quickly. The reason being given is that the brand’s business model does not line up with the current retail market. Whether we will ever see another THAKOON collection coming down the runway seems doubtful at this point.
Those are just the latest in a line of recent closures that are punching larger and larger holes in the fashion industry. At the same time, department stores such as Macy’s and Saks are struggling to stay afloat as well. Should the department stores go down, the blow to the fashion industry overall would be tremendous.
Understandably, designers are very nervous. Toss international politics into the fray, though, and designers are downright scared. We saw the application of some of that fear this past season as many designers chose some form of protest, some more obvious than others, during their runway presentations. While outsiders wonder if the rhetoric has any substance, those in the fashion industry see the move toward populism as troubling. Already, the US and UK have populist leaders and designers in both countries are bracing themselves for what might be coming next.
One of the biggest reasons for such concern is that nationalism leads to closed markets and lack of access to the international talent pool on which fashion relies. Already, some 97 percent of all fashion is imported in the US, including the president’s own brand, and those of his daughter. What might be a more important number, however, is realizing that even when clothing is manufactured in the US, much of that work is being done by immigrants, roughly 20 percent of whom are undocumented. Any disruption in either trade or immigration is going to adversely affect the fashion industry and both, at this juncture, seem imminent.
Opening Ceremony’s creative directors Carol Lim and Humberto Leon, both of whom are second-generation immigrants, have never shied away from using their clothing line as means of making a political statement, but since the elections last November have found it all the more critical to be steadfastly aware of the current immigration status not only for themselves but many of the people with whom they work. Most recently, they cooperated with Justin Peck, New York City Ballet’s resident choreographer, in the production of a new piece, The Times Are Racing. The ballet looks at how the lives of first-generation immigrants affect the lives of their children as they assimilate into the world, a timely topic under most any circumstances. However, between its debut, on a Thursday, and its second performance, on the following Saturday, something changed. The president signed a travel ban leaving thousands stranded at John F. Kennedy and suddenly the protest of the ballet was being mirrored in real life. Dancers, leaping across the stage in t-shirts that read “Act,” “Defy,” “Protest,” “Shout,” and “Change,” were no longer part of what had happened but were now part of what is happening.
The Council of Fashion Designers in America (CFDA), the organization that represents US-based designers, has already been looking at the problems caused by the shift in policies and what might be done to offset the consequences. There don’t seem to be many positive options. CFDA president Diane von Furstenberg, herself a Belgian-born immigrant, said, “The fashion industry has always been a reflection of what America is all about… inclusion and diversity. I am personally horrified to see what is going on.”
New York–based designer Linda Abdalla, who was born in Ireland and raised in Ohio, told Vice magazine, “It even affects the tailors and the seamstresses, and some of the best ones come from countries that are on the banned list. … Having designers and artists coming from those countries, having this ban on people coming to visit, or study, or work for these brands is a big deal. I just started meeting more African designers who are coming to the states, but this is just another block.”
Even in France, National Front leader Marine Le Pen is leading in polls ahead of April-May elections and has said she will push for the country to leave the European Union and close France’s borders, which would be crippling to the Parisian fashion industry, one of the most influential in the world. France’s current minister of culture, Audrey Azoulay, told the Associated Press, “populist powers” are “absolutely incompatible with the idea of fashion and freedom.”
One of the reasons fashion designers and CEOs are so alarmed is because they or their predecessors have seen this before. Many fashion houses, especially those in Europe, are well over 100 years old, some of them, such as Pringle of Scotland, more than 200 years old. Embedded in those fashion catalogs are the evidence of how international politics and upheaval affect the fashion industry.
Consider the fact that we no longer look to Germany as a fashion power. Yet, prior to the rise of Adolf Hitler in that country, Berlin was just as much a fashion capital as Paris or Milan. What happened? At its peak, Germany was home to approximately 2,400 Jewish-owned clothing labels and garment manufacturers. Between 1933 and 1938, all of those companies disappeared because of one person’s severe anti-immigration stance. Imports were forbidden. Exports completely dried up. The fashion industry in Germany died.
Some of the effects of the populist politics from that era still persist. The “Made it Italy” label sewn into garments from Armani to Gucci to Fendi started under Mussolini in an effort to convince Italian women to stop buying their dresses from Paris. While the label is seen today as more of a marketing tool, the nationalistic purpose has never gone away and Italy is still more closed to immigrant designers and foreign textiles than are other countries.
Fashion is a globally dependent industry, reliant on the international travel of both people and material in order to survive. Designers such as Calvin Klein’s Raf Simons regularly travel back and forth between New York and Europe and around the world not only for inspiration for their collections but to discover new fabrics and textile technologies. When politicians begin cutting off access to the global market, either through import/export taxes or through travel bans of any kind, they drive a knife deep into the heart of the fashion industry.
Most reliant on the free flow of textiles are the “fast fashion” retailers such as H&M and Forever 21 whose low prices are dependent upon garments manufactured at the lowest possible prices, usually in places such as Turkey and Bangladesh. Were imports from those countries to see a new tax of 25 percent or more, as has been suggested by the US administration, fashion retailers across the board, from Macy’s to Wal-Mart would feel the negative effect. Stores would have little choice but to pass the increased costs on to the consumers, resulting in an unprecedented amount of inflation. Eliminate those imports entirely and H&M and its competitors would have little choice but to close. Completely.
The rhetoric of populist politics always sounds good on the surface. “Make America Great.” “America first.” “Buy American.” Yet, history has proven that such nationalism and the fashion industry don’t mix. Fashion has to be open. Fashion, as an industry, must move as freely as a summer dress. There can be no borders. There can be no domestic restrictions. Try to put fashion in a box, even if it is flag-draped, and not only will an industry die, but the economies dependent upon that industry will be crippled.
Fortunately, designers are not the kind of people likely to just slip quietly away. As we saw this past season, they intend to speak up, to use their voices not just on the runway but on store shelves and even on the bodies of their customers to express opposition.
Larger groups are getting in on the action as well because bad laws that affect one sector affect them all. To that end, the National Retail Federation (NRF) released this ad last month in opposition to what’s being called a “border adjustment tax.”
The NRF has a strong lobbying presence in the US Congress and is working against any new legislation that would be of any detriment to the already struggling retail sector.
Now, let’s bring the matter home.
Consider what you are wearing right now. Assuming the clothes were not a gift, how much did you pay for them? $10? $100? Maybe $350 for the whole outfit, including the shoes. Americans are notorious bargain shoppers and hate paying full price for anything (which is a problem unto itself). So, what happens if a 25% tax is pushed on to the customer. The actual price increase is going to be closer to 30% to cover additional administration in filing the tax. So, that $10 item is now $13. Doesn’t seem like much. The $100 dress is now $130, which still doesn’t sound like a horrible increase unless you’re on a budget, in which case crossing that $100 line may not be possible. That $350 outfit though is closer to $450, and if you’re someone who likes designer labels in your clothes that 30 percent adds up even faster.
Oh wait, we’re not done. You can’t wear just one outfit every day (though I know some who would try). Consider how much you spend on clothes for your family each year. The kids’ school uniforms. The shoes (almost none of which are made in the US). The underwear (almost all of which is imported). Can you really afford a 30=50 percent increase in your clothing budget on top of all the other prices that are increasing along with it?
If you’re part of the one percent of the US population that makes over $521,411 a year, you might not be too concerned. The rest of us, however, have every reason to worry.
Populist politics, from nationalistic protectionism to anti-immigration restrictions and overly protective import tariffs are not only bad for the fashion industry, they are equally bad for your life, your children’s lives, and your future.
You might want to consider contacting your members of Congress now.
Can machines actually be more creative than humans?
The Short Story
McCann Japan (an ad agency) created a robot that used artificial intelligence to create a commercial that was preferable to the one created by humans. If AI ‘bots can do creative work, is there any job that is safe? Insert paranoia here.
Scary Truth
We’ve been hearing about artificial intelligence (AI) for a long time. You know, it’s that part of computer science where the computer learns and then teaches itself so that it’s always getting better information and making better decisions. We’ve all seen the horror stories. Either we all become floating puffs that do nothing, like in the Disney movie Wall-E, or the machines take over and decide we’re not necessary. Neither one is really a desirable outcome.
The reality of AI has looked a bit different than the dystopian nightmares of the movies. The personal assistant feature on your cell phone is an example. They “learn” from your repeated patterns and online habits. However, they don’t go out searching for larger and larger amounts of information on their own. They learn from what we give them. So, we limit the parameters of their learning and we stay safe, right?
Welllllll, not exactly.
You see, this brilliant person at McCann’s Japan office (McCann is a massively large ad agency), Shun Matsuzaka, created an AI bot that took massive amounts of advertising data, including response and expectation information and demographic data, and created a commercial. The commercial was for Clorets gum, emphasizing the 10-second burst of fresh breath one gets when first popping the gum. The commercial was compared to one for the same product created by humans. In an online poll, the human ad barely beat the AI ad by a narrow margin. When graded by ad executives, though. the AI ad won. Easily.
A robot not only did my job, it did all the jobs of an entire creative team, short of actually producing the commercial (real people had to get involved somewhere).
Okay, breathing deeply here, trying to not panic. The AI bot really only did data analysis and spit out a solution that then had to be fulfilled by humans who almost certainly made adjustments along the way. That’s not the same as actually taking a Creative Director’s job, except for the part where they … uhm, … well …
Yeah, this is fucking scary.
I didn’t mind AI too much when it was doing things like making dinner reservations and reminding me to pick up my laundry. I didn’t have anyone doing that for me before, so it was a help, not a hindrance.
AI taking over unskilled factory jobs hasn’t bothered me that much. We’ve seen it coming long enough to prepare for it, to help people in unskilled positions begin developing the skills they need to get better jobs that AI won’t fill until they’re dead, or at least retired.
But I’m growing increasingly concerned here. According to Forrester research, by 2025 AI robots of various forms will replace seven percent of the jobs that currently exist. Now, that number is misleading. That’s seven percent total job loss. What they’re slower to tell us is that sixteen percent of jobs, especially administrative and office support positions, will be gone. We’re supposed to be happy that nine percent of those jobs lost are replaced with other jobs, such as robot monitoring professionals, data scientists, automation specialists, and content curators. That seven percent is just the net loss.
That study was released last year, though, before Mr. Matsuzaka’s creative bot. This totally changed the equation. Creative services employee millions of people in almost every form of business in the world. If bots can take all those jobs, that number jumps much higher than seven percent.
Adding to the problem is the fact that other areas, such as engineering and construction, finance and service management, and logistics and distribution are all looking at ways AI can streamline their processes and complete them faster and more efficiently than do humans.
If there is any reprieve, it lies in the fact that there is a shortage of AI developers. For now. The biggest shortage at the moment in is the automotive sector, which is really trying to get something safe and driverless on the market ASAP. They’re spending millions of dollars on the bsst AI experts. If you’re looking for a career field, children, that’s the leader at the moment.
But where there is demand, there is always a market ready to fill it. If immigration becomes a problem, which is possible, companies will simply move AI development to where the talent is. The shortage won’t last for long.
Just this morning, after I thought I had this article finished, brokerage firm Charles Schwab announced they will begin using a hybrid robo-human method of dispensing investment advice. The human is just there primarily to keep investors from getting the heebie-jeebies working with an automated system. Those high-priced brokers could soon be without jobs.
Artificial Intelligence is coming for my job. For your job. For all our jobs. The bot at McCann’s? It’s going to try composing music next.
I can’t help but wonder if one day we all might forget how to think for ourselves at all.
With any luck, I’ll be dead by then.
What you say on social media can be used against you
The Short Story
Even the president of the United States has to play by certain rules when using social media. What we put on Facebook and Twitter can be used against us and, in some cases, prevent us from seeking legitimate legal action. While it’s natural to be angry when one has been legally wrong, Facebook is the last place one should go to vent if one wants to maintain a legal case against the person who did you wrong.
Legal Disclaimer:
I am not an attorney and nothing that follows is intended to be viewed as legal advice. If you feel you have been wronged or are a victim of fraud, you should consult your District Attorney or your personal lawyer.
The Background Info
Even though Facebook and other social media tools are over ten years old now, we’re still trying to figure out how to conduct ourselves without getting into trouble. There are things you can say, things you can’t say, things you can’t share, and pictures you can’t post. Keeping up with what you can and cannot do is rather difficult and at times runs quite contrary to what we want to do.
You’re not alone, though. Even the 45th president of the United States seems to be having difficulty figuring it all out. Last week, two Congressmen from the House Oversight Committee sent a letter to the White House counsel warning that the president could be violating the Presidential Records Act if he deletes a post from Twitter. The President frequently deletes tweets, especially when they have spelling errors. However, the Presidential Records Act requires that everything the president says or writes while in office must be preserved. This law was passed in 1978 largely as a result of the Nixon Watergate affair. Not many people knew about the predecessor to the Internet back then. This situation couldn’t have been foreseen and there’s no allowance for it.
There have been some other interesting ways in which a post on social media has come back to bite someone. For example, back in 2013, a Hawaii man was arrested after posting a video on Facebook that appeared to show him drinking a bottle of beer and then driving. While no one stopped him at the time, he was caught by surprise when police showed up at his door after he posted the video and arrested him for driving while drinking an alcoholic beverage and driving without a license. He shouldn’t have been surprised. Posts on social media have caught robbers, thieves and resulted in more than one arrest for rape on college campuses.
Rarely do we stop to think that the frustrated rant we make online can actually be used against us. Worse, we don’t realize how our words on Facebook can affect legal action in which we might be involved. When a federal Judge in Washington stayed the president’s initial travel ban he said statements by the president on social media factored into his decision against the White House.
Oops isn’t quite a big enough word to cover serious gaffes being made.
Where This Hits Home
Over the weekend, a 2016 story was re-circulated regarding a class action lawsuit against New York modeling agencies. The charges were that the agencies named “have systematically taken advantage of the models they claim to represent by unlawfully diverting millions of dollars in value from the models to themselves.” This suit is a re-submission of a suit first filed in 2012 that floundered because the plaintiffs didn’t pay sufficient attention to details and have their evidence prepared when it was needed. The second suit appears to be suffering from similar issues.
This isn’t the first time allegations have been made against modeling agencies. All kinds of serious allegations. in 2015, UK agencies Storm Model Management, Premier Model Management and Models 1 were charged with price fixing. Then, just this past September, IMG, Next and Elite were fined in Paris for the exact same thing.
Matters with models are serious business. Just the past season, fashion house Balenciaga came under severe criticism and eventually fired its casting directors amidst charges of racism and cruelty.
Against this background, Facebook pages began overflowing this weekend against yet another Midwestern modeling agency. The charges are familiar: Models not being paid on time, or at all. Underage models being exposed to inappropriately sexual situations. Models being sent to live in “flop houses” rather than hotels while on assignment. Models exposed to drug use and paraphernalia. Money charged to clients for models’ appearance diverted back into the agency rather than paying the models. Pretty serious stuff, and much of it legally challengeable.
However, any chance at legal action actually taking place and having the desired effect began to crumble by Sunday evening as the excess of related claims, from one aspiring model after another, piled onto Facebook, causing the situation to mount with claims of wrong-doing while failing to produce any actual evidence. This is a problem.
What we fail to realize is that when one posts information, especially accusations, on social media such as Facebook, it carries the exact same legal status as if it had been published by the local newspaper. Charges of libel apply if one deliberately makes a statement with the intention of doing harm to another person and/or their business. Even though we think that no one else sees what is posted on our “personal” accounts, the fact is that all social media posts are subject to subpoena and can be used as evidence.
Dangers here vary. One runs the risk of perjuring themselves if the testimony they give in court differs from accounts given on social media. Testimony can be thrown out if it differs from what was previously published on Facebook. Entire lawsuits can be found to be without merit of the judge determines the charges are nothing more than Facebook ranting. The agency may be able to claim damages for statements resulting in the loss of business.
We’ve seen this situation before. In 2007, a number of models brought a class-action suit against an Indianapolis-based model agency, claiming that they had not bee paid for services rendered. They won the civil suit. However, they saw very little of the money owed them. After making an initial payment through the court, the agency’s owner fled the state and has not returned.
What should be done instead? Again, I am not an attorney and this should not be construed as legal advice. The course of action that seems to stand a chance of being most effective, however, is to assemble and take to the District Attorney sufficient evidence as to warrant filing fraud charges against the agency and its owner(s) rather than filing a civil suit. Why?
We continue to see these situations with modeling agencies gone bad because there’s very little to stop them. There’s no oversight. There are no governing standards. If an agency gets caught doing wrong in one state, they pack up, change names, and start back up in another. However, fraud charges filed by the District Attorney brings with it the chance of actual jail time in addition to fines, and the possibility of a criminal record. If the alleged fraud took place across multiple states, there is the possibility for felony charges that could hinder a person from engaging in similar activities anywhere else.
What’s important, though, is that the accusations be presented in court, through the District Attorney, and not on Facebook. Putting such information on Facebook makes the charges all the more difficult to prosecute, especially if it is not hard, factual evidence assembled that back up the claims. District Attorneys need firm dates, places, and times. Receipts for anything resembling payment, and invoices or some other document that confirms how much was owed. Every accusation must be backed up with verifiable facts. Not a note from someone’s mother. Not a Facebook post swearing that it’s true. If there are not verifiable facts, there is no case.
Conclusion
Social media is a great place to talk with friends, share pictures and videos, and keep up with your community. It is not the place to discuss legal matters that have yet to be adjudicated in court. Bad modeling agencies are not stopped by a group of disgruntled models dropping out. If you feel you are the victim of a crime, consult the District Attorney for your county or your personal lawyer. Venting on Facebook might make one feel good for a few moments, but it does not stop people from doing bad things.
Not everything belongs on Facebook or Twitter. Intelligent people understand the value of restraint. Please, be intelligent.
Sometimes the best photos are overlooked
Something happens when one is light boarding dozens of photographs at a time. You look through a first pass, a second pass, and even a third pass, choosing only the ones you think are best for the topic at hand. Then, some time later, the topic changes and you go back through the same set of photos and select a completely different set of images.
That’s what brought us today’s images. None of them had been processed or published before today, though their siblings have. We took a different approach, looking for images that were softer, perhaps with a bit of motion blur to them. We wanted edges that weren’t quite as precise and lines not so clearly defined.
The photos are of two different women take at two different times of day in the same room. We gave them a common color palette and were careful to avoid any processing technique that might sharpen the image. We wanted soft, bright, and relaxing.
I know a lot of people who destroy images they don’t use on the first pass. I’ve done that very thing on some occasions. This gallery is a strong argument for not doing that. What doesn’t fit the first time around could well be exactly what you want or need later.
Second chances. Every image deserves them. Maybe even a third. One never knows what needs the future may hold.
As always, click any of the thumbnails below to open the full gallery.
[tg_masonry_gallery gallery_id=”11004″ layout=”contain” columns=”3″]
Daylight Saving Time renews an old debate
The Short Version
You’re going to lose an hour of sleep tonight, no matter when you go to bed. That semi-annual ritual known as Daylight Saving Time rears its ugly head again tonight, stealing an hour from us in the middle of the night, waking us before we’re ready in the morning. For those who still have manual watches and clocks, as I do, it means re-setting everything before you go to bed. Failure to comply means you’re late for everything on Sunday. Resistance is pointless.
Messing With Time
[dropcap]I moved to Indiana in April, 2005, a year before this state began observing Daylight Saving Time. The experience was rather surreal because where Indiana sits on the globe makes it extremely susceptible to messing around with time. For most of the summer, I had workable light by 6:00 AM. I could schedule a shoot call time for 4:30, be ready to start shooting as the sun came up, getting in that wonderful morning light, and be completely done before most people even arrived at work. On one hand, it was glorious. I loved getting photos in the can so early. At the same time, though, it made the days feel impossibly long. There was still sunlight at 9:00 PM despite the fact that the state was still on standard time. Summer days in Indiana last forever whether one messes with the time or not.[/dropcap]
Twice a year we enter into this all-too-brief an argument as to whether this exercise in time manipulation is necessary. Everyone in North America, Iceland, and Western Europe participates in this time warp. Governments say it saves energy, but those claims are dubious at best. The actual percentage of savings is like 0.03% and is offset by the fact we do more running around and keep air conditioning running longer. Roughly 44% of Americans are in favor of it, but 40% are against it and 15% don’t care. Sounds like how we’re split on just about every other issue on the planet, doesn’t it?
What amazes me, though, is that we spend all this time and energy worrying about something that doesn’t actually exist. Time is a totally human construct that, while based on naturally occurring events, is itself quite unnatural. Hours, minutes, days, weeks, months, and years all exist only for humans. Animals, especially those in the wild, have no concept of time. Fish don’t feel years go past. Lions note changes in seasonal migration patterns and adjust their hunting accordingly, but you don’t see them carrying around day planners scheduling when the next herd of Impala are expected to run through their territory. Time is make believe. Time is a socially-induced alternative reality designed to keep us in line with authoritarian mandates of when we should or should not participate in certain activities. Ignoring time is anti-social and socially disruptive.
Consider, for example, what would happen if you showed up at the front door of your favorite restaurant shortly after sunrise and demanded to see their dinner menu. Unless you prefer the greasy-spoon setting of a 24-hour diner, one is not likely to be greeted with warm enthusiasm. They are going to tell you that you are too early. The restaurant is not open because no one eats dinner at sunrise.
Inversely, we all know the panic of rushing to our favorite fast food place to order a muffin before “breakfast hours” end. That dining establishments dictate when we can or cannot eat certain foods is rather absurd when one gives it any decent amount of thought. Yet, they do so in an effort to group all the biscuit and gravy eaters into a specific time-space for the sake of profit. We’re told it’s unprofessional to start drinking before 5:00 PM, when most people presumably finish work, but why should the millions of people who work mid-shifts be forced to wait when they get off work at 3:00 PM?
The more we mess with time, the more we mess it up. Yet, there have been moments in history when time was crucial to our development. The industrial revolution would not have happened had their not been clocks and watches and a set, uniform measure of how a day passes. Science needs the ability to measure and quantify what happens within a precise measure of time. Synchronization of things such as flight schedules and traffic lights could not happen if there were no uniform measure on which such events could be based.
Yet, the amount of control we give time is enslaving. Not only do we allow time to dictate when we eat and work, we allow it to dictate our most primal instincts. When we sleep, and how long, is measured by an artificial time. When and how frequently we procreate is dictated by the settings on a mechanical device. Adjust that artificial measurement, as we are about to do, and one messes up our entire perception of reality.
Don’t believe me? What do you think causes jet lag? As we travel across continents, our perception of time is altered and we arrive with the physical sense of what we should be doing out of alignment with the rest of society is doing. I have problems every time I visit California because there is never a coffee shop open when I’m ready for coffee. The same thing happens on a slightly different scale when we invoke Daylight Saving Time. We confuse our bodies (and our pets) by arbitrarily saying, “no, it’s not that time anymore, now it’s this time and you just have to adjust.”
Even as I’m writing this, I realize that I abuse time as well. When I tell the family, “We’re leaving for the store in five minutes,” I fully expect everyone to have their shoes and coats on and be heading toward the car within that five minutes or I’m likely to get very upset. Just this past week, we had a day completely upended by continual interruptions after we had already set a schedule of events. By the end of the day, nothing on our original schedule had happened and we both felt tired and frustrated because other people had messed with our sense of time.
I cannot help but wonder to what degree we might all be better off if we relaxed a bit of our grip on time. Our society is less reliant on strict work schedules now, so why shouldn’t one be allowed to follow their natural body rhythms and work on a project at times when they are likely to be their most productive? We have means of communication that allow us to have conversations separated by hours and miles, why are we not using those more effectively? Perhaps most importantly, why do we limit eating certain foods to specific times of day? Is a burger any more healthy for you at 9:00 AM than it is at 1:00 PM? On mornings when I’m up and working by 4:00 AM, should I not be able to have lunch four hours later at 8:00 PM and dinner by 2:00 PM? Why should I, or anyone else, be forced to adjust to someone else’s artificial concept of time?
I know the theory of less time management and fewer time constraints would lead to more productive and healthy lives. Yet, just like our semi-annual debates over Daylight Saving Time, we ultimately just go with the flow, accepting the change forced upon us.
And so we are slaves to something that we just made up. Incredible, isn’t it?
There are a few that will always stand out
[dropcap]I spent most of Wednesday sleeping. Thursday was a surprise doctor appointment (not as bad as it sounds). Maybe it’s because I’m older, or perhaps because we put a lot more effort into our reviews this season, but by the time we reached the end of this autumn/winter fashion season I was ready for Kat to take me out back and just shoot me. These things take an inordinate amount of energy from me and more than once I’ve wondered if it is worth the effort. Of course, the answer is ultimately yes, they are worth all the effort, all the time, and all the loss of sleep. [/dropcap]
Now is the time for everyone to start with their “Best of … ” lists. I’ve already seen a couple and, while I agreed on most points, felt they missed some collections that were either very fun or very important. The list we want to present today isn’t really a “Best” list. Best is an arbitrary definition and seems a bit bullying toward those who might not agree. Instead, ours is a list of favorites, the shows that made it worth the ungodly hours, the sore muscles, the aching back, the endless eye strain, and the gallons of coffee. When all the other shows blur together, these are the ones that stand out in my memory.
Please note that there is no uniform set of requirements for making this list. Some are more because of the designer’s attitude than the clothes. Others had fantastic casting. Still others had just one piece that really caught my eye. Of course, all of our reviews are ready for you to read on Pattern. If you’re interested in the full review, we’ll include a link to each one below. What we want to acknowledge here are those that made us smile, made us feel good about our use of time, and excuse making everyone else alter their schedules so we could catch the next show.
These are the autumn/winter shows that are worth watching again, in no particular order.
Prabal Gurung
There are a couple of shows from this season where I really have no choice but to show video rather than still pictures. I love still photography and much of the time find that it presents the stronger message. Not in this case, though.
Gurung had already achieved a place on this list by casting “plus size” models Marquita Pring and Candice Huffine in his show. We didn’t see nearly enough of that this season and Gurung’s was probably the most notable show in which they appeared.
He also won the award for the most sheer we saw in a New York show this season. I’m guessing he didn’t want anyone to get too hot under those fantastic coats of his. We’re talking really sheer.
What cemented this show’s place in our hearts, though, was the finale walk. These are usually rather boring, actually. In fact, it’s not unusual for me to get up and grab another cup of coffee if I think it’s going to be long and drawn out. Prabal kept me in my seat, though, as the lights went down, the familiar introduction to John Lennon’s Imagine began playing, and models walked out in t-shirt with feminist messages of empowerment. I’ve never heard a fashion crowd go so completely quiet in all my life. The effect was amazing.
You can read our full review on Pattern, then watch the video here:
https://youtu.be/GV6G9LQxw9o?t=6m52s
Calvin Klein
This could be one of those collections that go down in history: Raf Simons’ first show for Calvin Klein. There was a lot of speculation beforehand as to whether or not the designer best known for his time at Christian Dior. Could he produce something that Americans would notice and want to wear?
While the jury may still be out on whether Americans actually want to wear this new version of Calvin Klein, it definitely got attention when he sent down some “sweaters” with sheer bodies. It was an interesting look, to be sure:
Granted, Calvin Klein is known for being a very sexy line of clothing, especially when it comes to their men’s underwear ads. But is the US ready for this? Actually, what this look does is allow one to make a sweater with any t-shirt. The sheer bodice let’s the shirt’s message shine through while keeping one’s arms warm and toasty. At least, we think that’s the direction Raf was going. It will be interesting to see if anyone actually tries wearing the sweater as it appeared on the runway.
We suggest reading the full review over on Pattern for more details. There are several interesting pieces in this collection, but this one, available for men as well, could make this fall’s college football games a lot more interesting.
Marc Jacobs
You won’t find any pictures from inside the Armory where Marc Jacob’s fashion show was held. In a season where spectacle often exceeded the value of the clothes show, Marc seemed to give the entire industry a giant middle finger by going with an anti-spectacle. No set. No photographers pit. Just one long aisle down the center of the floor with folding chairs on either side. No music. No distractions. Just the sound of models’ heels clicking on the hardwood floor. Stripped back and as bare bones as possible.
Only when models stepped outside the Armory were there cameras and music. Lots of cameras and lots of music. Models came out and sat in front of large speakers playing Issac Hayes’ cover of Walk on By while everyone snapped pictures of them, and the models snapped pictures of everyone else. It made for a most interesting end to NYFW. Our full review is here.
Burberry
A lot of people don’t understand this Burberry collection. No matter how much explanation Christopher Bailey has given, I’ve been amazed by the number of people who just don’t get it. The challenge seems to be that the collection is based on the work of a specific sculpture artist, Henry Moore. Even with Moore’s work on display right there in front of them as the models walked, not everyone seemed terribly thrilled with the collection and more than a few have wondered aloud whether Bailey’s days are numbered.
No, Christopher Bailey isnt’ going anywhere, and this collection is better than the credit it’s been given. There is some critical work going on here and while it’s not necessarily down the normal trench-coat-laden path it is still a strong collection with a number of worthwhile pieces. Among them, Bailey’s new take on that famous trench. What really blew my mind, though, were the amazing oversized capes that he put on models for the end of the show. While these pieces are not part of the collection that will hit stores, they definitely made the collection stand out and demonstrate how incredibly creative Bailey is. There’s a lot more to say, and you can find it all on Pattern. And for the record, I like the new trench, too.
Antonio Marras
This show kind of takes the cake for coolness this season. Not only was the runway diverse in terms of age, gender, and size, it was 100% entertainment without using outlandish set design as a spectacle. Instead, Marras employed a German-based theater method known as Tanztheater. As a result, there were ongoing skits between couples and silent monologs from individual models that were constantly taking place as the incredibly colorful line of clothes made their way around the catwalk. It was fun and entertaining without taking away from the clothes.
Then, came the finale, which involved a choreographed march of sorts. Humorous, to be sure. But oh, they weren’t done! Marras comes out to take his bow and the entire Tanztheater cast chases him crazily around the runway. I put the link to the show in our review, but I’m including it again here because it’s just that much fun to watch! Absolutely nothing like it all season!
Missoni
Politics was on the mind of a lot of people this season and with good reason. As trade policies with the US could become less friendly to imports, many labels are looking for ways to express their dissent. Many designers kept their protest subtle so that it wouldn’t cause too much of a stir. Not Angela Missoni. She caused a stir and stirred hard.
First, there were pink knit “pussy” hats on all the guests’ seats. Then, at the end of a fairly typical Missoni show, came these three looks:
Now, in case you don’t catch all the symbolism, let me help you out a bit. The pink triangle is for AIDS awareness. The Venus symbol is for feminism. And the two hearts over the breasts are to protest the social media censorship of women’s nipples. That’s a LOT to put into one fashion show.
Oh, but she wasn’t done. After models made their finale walk wearing those same pink knit hats, Ms. Missoni and her entire extended family come out onto the runway where she read the following statement:
“I feel the need to recognize that in a time of uncertainty there is a bond that can keep us strong and safe, that unites those that respect all human rights. Let’s show the world that the fashion world is united and fearless.”
Wham. This was without question the boldest activist statement we saw all season and it was BEAUTIFUL. You’ll want to read the full review for more detail.
Dries Van Noten
This season marked Dries Van Noten’s 100th runway show, which is pretty impressive. Rather than putting on some great spectacle, however, Dries chose simply to review his past 20 years of fashion by bringing back the models who wore the looks the first time around. Talk about age diversity! That meant there were models ranging from 45-years-old to 16-years-old all on the same runway. The entire atmosphere was fun, jovial, and sufficiently celebratory without going over the top.
Equally important is that Van Noten kept his catalog parade from feeling like a catalog parade. He overlayed his house silhouettes with geometric patterns that fit well with contemporary looks and kept everything fresh and lively. He even incorporated metallic fabrics there were literally everywhere this season. While Van Noten doesn’t always get an overwhelming amount of press during the season, he gave plenty of people reason to look at him this time around and they’ll likely stick around to see what happens next. Read more in our Pattern review.
Christian Dior
This was Maria Grazia Chiuri’s blue season, which would, in of itself, have been enough reason to include this Dior collection on our list of favorites. Blue is such a wonderful color for fashion in the first place, and her sense of design and styling fits the color very well. There was no way that this wasn’t going to be a strong collection.
However, what really causes this collection to stand out for me is her use of denim as a metaphor for women’s strength. When she sent down a set of blue denim overalls with a wool blazer, she had me. The message she was sending was emphatic: women can be strong, stylish, and feminine all at the same time. Women can work at the hardest manual labor jobs you want to throw at them and still turn around and be the belle of the ball without batting an eye. This was a more subtle form of political statement, but be very certain Ms. Chiuri was making a statement and women heard it. You’ll find more in our review.
Andreas Kronthaler For Vivienne Westwood
Vivienne walked.
That’s really all I should need to say. Instead of waiting and coming out at the end of the collection to take a bow as she always does, Dame Vivienne Westwood became a model in her husband’s collection and walked twice during this season’s show. The auditory response she received from the crowd was overwhelming. Dame Westwood is loved throughout both the fashion and environmental communities. Her clothes speak to those who don’t care to fit into current trends and those who love her clothes love her as well.
So, when Dame Westwood set foot onto the runway, the entire crowd erupted in cheers and totally forget anything else that came afterward. Nothing else mattered. Vivienne walked! Catch the full review on Pattern.
Stella McCartney
Leather has been a huge trend this season, but there are a lot of people who find the use of animal products cruel. The size of that audience is significant and leading that charge in the fashion world is Stella McCartney. Her animal-friendly collection has been the go-to line for animal activists for quite a while.
This year, however, she took it a step further with not-skin-skin, a new high-tech material that looks and feels identical to leather. Ms. McCartney is picky, mind you. She’s very much aware of her brand’s luxury status and knows that if she doesn’t maintain quality she loses that status. She waited until she had a material that she’s confident is as strong and as durable as real leather. While I can’t speak to the durability of the product, I can say that it certainly looks like leather with the exception of being a bit more flexible. The question now is whether the rest of the industry will follow suit. The answer lies in what consumers demand, so that one’s totally up to you. See the full review on Pattern.
And now we’re done, although I’m sure I’m leaving someone out. Overall, this hasn’t been as boring a season as some of those previous. Perhaps the sense of activism helped more of the clothing lines take a more serious tone, which is a good thing. We didn’t get the sense that anyone was “phoning it in” this season as we often have before. Not that every collection was great, mind you. We’re still wondering about both the Gucci and Prada collections. Those were both… interestingly creative. And if we didn’t review your favorite designer it may very well be because we watched and decided there wasn’t any point in dragging the whole label through the mud because we couldn’t find anything nice to say. We try to not be totally mean, but there are limits.
So, the Autumn/Winter 17 season is past and we’re already looking toward Spring/Summer 18. Just this morning, Chloé announced Clare Waight-Keller’s replacement as Natasha Ramsy-Levi. Already we have something to which we can look forward. Who knows what else might happen between now and then. Perhaps Roberto Cavalli will find someone worthy to take the reigns of that ship. Know that we’ll be watching, waiting, and planning a great experience for you this fall.
Rethinking the ethics of Photoshop is missing the point of Photoshop
The Short Version
Yet another group is taking aim at photo retouching, this time pushing their agenda through something called “The Retouchers Accord.” Their aim is to rid the world of what they consider photographic “fake news” that comes from altering images significantly. Our take, of course, is there is a purpose to retouching that defies any kind of blanket statement or set of rules. We also challenge their definition of “fake news.”
NOTE: We are not, under any circumstances, saying that body image and self-esteem, especially among teens, isn’t an issue directly affected by the media at large. We are well aware of the research in that regard and don’t argue that point. We do, however, take exception to the allegation that photo retouching itself constitutes a “public health crisis” or can, in any significant way, resolve the larger issue.
A Bit Of Background
Sitting at a table in a coffee shop back in 2007, I’m talking with a young woman anxious to get into modeling. She’s tall enough, attractive enough, and seems to have above-average intelligence, everything a model needs. As we’re talking, I ask, “How do you feel about having your pictures Photoshopped?”
“Oh, Photoshop the hell out of me,” she said. “I have trouble keeping my face clear so, by all means, clean that shit up. Oh, and make my boobs bigger if you can.”
I stared back at her for a moment. Make her boobs bigger? The young woman was far from being flat-chested. Increasing her size any risked moving into comical proportions. She was quite serious, though. So serious that she had implants doubling the size of her breasts just a couple of years later.
We’ve shot with this model for several years, but my favorite shots of her are the ones I have to retouch the least. She has a wonderful face and on days when her skin is clear, which happened more frequently as she got older, there was very little that makeup didn’t cover. Of all the pictures we’ve taken, only twice has she asked me to go back and airbrush her skin. I’ve never augmented the size of her breast.
Here’s the thing: when it comes to photo editing I’m lazy. I don’t want to spend any more time with an image than is required for it to meet client expectations, whether that client is a model, a family, or an ad agency. My take has always been that if I’m having to spend hours on photo editing, we failed to take a good picture in the first place. All-night editing sessions should never be necessary on a standard photograph.
However, not every situation is the same. As technologies have developed making some tasks much easier, many art directors look to creative photo editing as a way to save money. Increasingly, shots that once involved hundreds of thousands of dollars as we transported entire crews to the middle of the Amazon jungle are done in studio in front of a green screen. Not only does this save a tremendous amount of money, I can speak first-hand to how much safer the studio is than putting an insulin-dependent model on a boat in the middle of the freakin’ jungle. The move makes sense and there’s no good reason, in my mind, to not do so.
If you’ve been reading these pages long, you know Photoshop is a sensitive topic for me. While it frequently comes under fire because of some very public misuse of the tool, the fact is that photo editing is now, and always has been, one of the most critical aspects of the job. Even long before Photoshop was a thing, post-editing skills were necessary to make sure a photo was suitable for public release.
We’ve written about Photoshop issues rather extensively. Roughly 37 times in the past three years by our count. Rather than making you do a search, though, let me save you some time. Here are the ones you most likely need to read:
Everything else we’ve said on the topic is more instructional or relates only to how a specific set of photos were produced. Still, know that as much as I dislike spending endless hours editing, I will, to the last pixel, defend the right to do so. Editing is a necessary and valuable skill. Suggest otherwise and you’ll likely make me angry.
They Made Me Angry
There I was, reading during a moment of downtime between shows in Milan. I start flipping through the online version of Fast Company Design, a magazine whose ideas I want to like but question frequently. What catches my eye is Katharine Schwab’s article, Rethinking the Ethics of Photoshop. The subheading instantly had me feeling defensive:
Retouching is its own form of fake news. Can an oath change a problem that stretches from fashion to product design?
What the living fuck? “Retouching is its own form of fake news?” Are you fucking kidding me? Do you even understand the concept of photography and imagery and portraiture? Do you understand the fundamental difference between photojournalism and boudoir photography? How is transitioning from a color image to a black and white image suddenly equivalent to telling a blatant lie?
If I had been reading a paper copy of the magazine I would have thrown the damn thing across the room. This article isn’t just full of bullshit, “its own form of fake news,” if you will, it is irresponsible in the way it fails to understand why we edit photos, how we edit photos, and the results of editing photos. Not to mention the fact I find it fucking insulting.
I apologize for all the four-lettered expletives, but every time I look back at this article it feels like a slap in the face and I just don’t respond well to that kind of offense.
The article is written in support of the Retouchers Accord, a statement of ethics being pushed as though every photographer and photo editor on the planet were going around dramatically altering their photos. Sarah Krasley, the author of the accord believes:
“The downstream impacts of the design decisions that postproduction artists and retouchers are making are causing public health problems. You have young women and men looking at those pictures and thinking their body needs to look like that in order for them to be beautiful, to be loved or accepted.”
Excuse me, but “public health problems?” McDonald’s is responsible for more public health problems that retouched photographs. Let’s get grip on reality here.
Yes, we know there is a relationship between consumed media and eating disorders, but what Ms. Krasley is trying to push is a questionable 2014 study by Kristen Harrison and Veronica Heffner, Virtually Perfect: Image Retouching and Adolescent Body Image, which claims to show that retouched photos resulted in lower self-esteem and higher body image consciousness among teens. There are all kinds of problems with the research and how it was conducted, but the biggest issue is in translating what they found. The changes in self-esteem and body image occurred only in the group that was told the photographs had been retouched. In other words, make a big deal about the retouching and a few kids are going to respond.
Ms. Harrison and Ms. Heffner do make a big deal about the effect of media on eating disorders. Between the two of them, they’ve since authored dozens of articles not merely related to retouched photographs, but every kind of visual media, claiming that the images were shown to have a detrimental effect on adolescents. One might say the two are rather obsessed with the topic, but obsession does not make for accuracy. Even their own research shows that the majority of teens are well aware of the line between real and fantasy and don’t fall for what they know is unattainable. The hype is unfounded.
In fact, not only is the hype unfounded, it is misdirected. More substantial research points to obesity being the more serious health effect from media consumption. Teens, on the whole, are better arbiters of the images they’re fed than we give them credit. I know because I happen to have one in my home. Show my 18-year-old a dramatically enhanced image of a shirtless Hugh Jackman and he will scoff. Not only does he know that the actor’s form has been enhanced, he also knows that muscle is difficult to maintain and turns to fat. Krasley, Harrison, and Heffner are making a big deal about something that might have personally affected them at some point in their lives, but does not affect a large enough group of adolescents to constitute a “public health crisis.”
Nonetheless, being the passionate and highly-motivated person she is, Ms. Krasley has decided that every photographer and retoucher on the plant needs to acquiesce to her little “ethics” accord because, you know, less than one-tenth of one percent of the global adolescent population might be adversely affected by a retouched image. Never mind that for most of us getting that level of exposure is a pipe dream. Never mind that there’s no negative nor positive effect at all if the viewer doesn’t know the image has been altered. Ms. Krasley has the “If one child is saved …” attitude that sounds altruistic but actually ends up making life more difficult for more people than would ostensibly be helped.
What Does The Retouchers Accord Say
There are five steps in the Retouchers Accord, and two of them are actually decent ethics statements. Not that I would try to force any of them on anyone, mind you. Ethics are a personal decision and only once someone has agreed to abide by a certain code can they be judged by whether or not they follow it. What we need to look at are the parts of the accord that are either unnecessary, offensive, or unrealistic. Let’s do that now. I’m pulling the images directly from the Retouchers Accord website, so don’t think for a moment I created any of it.
What the living fuck? That’s how you’re going to start, by demanding that one let everyone else know that they’re in the fucking club? What strange sort of cultic evangelism is this?
No, just absolutely no-way-in-literal-or-figurative-hell am I going out of my way on any level to let someone outside an organization—any organization—know that I am a member of said organization. I had enough of that nonsense rammed down my throat while growing up in church. The same maxim applies now that applied then: “If you have to tell someone you’re doing something good, you’re not doing it very well.”
The world is already far too full of people who talk too much and do too little. We elected such an idiot president. We don’t need more people running around essentially saying, “Hey, look at me! I’m doing this thing that’s good for society,” just because it brings attention to them. I never have understood that form of reasoning and never will.
Extending that reasoning out, this is why I’m not a member of any professional organization. I don’t want anyone looking at whether I’m a member of this group or that association when deciding whether or not to hire me. Look at my work. My work is what matters. Anything else is a distraction away from that work and I really don’t like distractions. So no, I’m not signing anything that forces me into a position of being any kind of evangelist.
This statement reflects how little Ms. Krasley understands about the greater scope of photography and retouching outside her own little world. For example, one of the aspects of my work that I enjoy most is taking pictures of newborns. Each one of them is lovely and perfect in their own special way and it’s wonderful to interact with a young family that is just starting out with this little one, or adding to their young family, and feeling all the warmth and joy they have for this precious little life.
So, in the midst of this beautiful setting, you now want me to “fuel a dialog about social impact, diversity, and authenticity?” Have you lost your fucking mind?
That’s not saying that such a discussion is never appropriate, but it’s damn sure not going to be with every client or partner. In fact, for the majority of photographers, it’s not likely to ever be an appropriate topic of conversation. If I’m shooting the wedding of a black Muslim to a White Jew, the last thing I need to discuss with them is social impact, diversity, and authenticity. If I’m covering the local women’s march and selling the images to a wire service, no one really cares what my views are on ethical matters. They expect those things to be reflected in my images if they actually impact the topic.
This “each and every” thing is a sign of severe ignorance and antipathy toward the greater scope of photography and retouching and borders on being insulting both to photographers and our clients.
I’m curious at this point as to what manner of strange, fucked-up world Ms. Kraley lives in where she thinks anyone needs to “improve and build upon my knowledge of retouching techniques” every, single, fucking day? Does she not understand how education works? Retouching isn’t something where one sits down, reads a book, and then instantly is better at retouching. It just doesn’t work that way.
First, one must focus on a specific area within which they are challenged. Just for the sake of having a real-world example, let’s say that challenge is masking. For the sake of those who are not familiar with the photographer’s use of the term, masking comes from when one would place a piece of acetate over an image being processed and cut out specific areas to which a given treatment would then be applied. This protected the rest of the image while working on a selected area. With film, it is extremely time-consuming and frequently messy. With digital images, it’s a lot safer but many people still find it confusing and difficult. So, if one wants to improve their masking technique, they don’t just read and practice it one day then move on to the next subject. They start with the basics and keep practicing, over and over and over sometimes for months, as the need and opportunity presents itself.
Even then, are we going to focus on improving our masking technique every day? Nope. Probably not even close. There are plenty of days I never open an image for editing purposes. There are plenty of other days when the editing I do does not require expanding beyond my current skill set. The whole “daily basis” thing is excessive to the point of being abusive.
Another issue with this article is the effectual adage that when one only has a hammer everything looks like a nail. In other words, when one learns a new skill, one looks for and even deliberately creates situations where that skill can be applied, whether appropriate or not. We see this almost every time a rookie encounters the Photoshop filters menu for the first time. Everything is so cool! All the effects are so neat! Let’s use this on everything! A torrent of really bad images floods Facebook shortly thereafter.
Photoshop, and editing programs like it, is huge. Adobe has packed more power and capability into that one piece of software than any one person would ever have any reason to use, but addresses the needs of the imaging community at large. There is a limit to what any one person needs to know. A photographer who specializes in landscape images doesn’t have to worry about carefully removing skin blemishes. The photographer who only shoots black-and-white images doesn’t really need to know the finer aspects of color control. Everyone’s skill set is specialized to the aspects of retouching they actually need. When we add skills we don’t need, we start making mistakes because we want to use that knowledge and information. Instead of getting better at what we do, learning new or different techniques might actually make someone’s end product worse because of the tendency to apply it where it’s not needed.
Learn what you need to know, by all means, but don’t make the mistake of thinking you have to know everything. There’s a limit.
I have less of an issue with this one and the one following. Practicing integrity and empathy isn’t limited to creating images. Integrity and empathy are global characteristics that I would hope we are applying in every situation we face. In fact, if one only attempts to practice integrity in one aspect of their life and not others, they don’t understand integrity at all.
For example, let’s say you see someone drop their wallet and you pick it up and return it to them. Integrity, right? But then, you see someone drop a twenty-dollar bill, something not so noticeable, something whose ownership cannot be easily traced, and you pick that up and slip it into your pocket, hoping no one else was noticing. Guess what: you don’t have integrity. It’s not a switch one turns off and on. Either it’s there in every situation or its not there at all and you’re just pretending.
Empathy is even more difficult to apply randomly. We are not natural empaths and depending on one’s age there’s a very good chance one was taught to ignore those feelings in order to get certain tasks accomplished. Empathy takes practice and can be easily misplaced and/or misused. Exercising empathy requires patience and the ability to put oneself in another’s position. Not everyone can, or should, do that.
There is a great need for empathy in a number of situations, but misapplied it can cause trouble. Ask the photojournalist who defies instruction and befriends native children in a war zone. Empathy leads the photographer to want to help the children but in doing so they put the entire military unit to which they’re assigned in danger.
We have to give hard examination to both ourselves and our work to decide where and when it is appropriate to be empathetic. We cannot take every story at face value. Such is the reality of the world in which we live. Not everyone can or should be trusted. People can and will lie if they sense they might get something out of it. We want to be sensitive to real situations, not taken in by false ones.
I can live with this one. Granted, I’m not sure how much actual impact I am ever going to have “throughout the industry” given that 99.985% of the industry doesn’t even know that I exist. That’s okay, they probably don’t know you exist, either. There are millions of photographers and retouchers out there and there are only a handful, probably fewer than ten, who command enough respect to actually get anyone to change their method of operation.
I’m sorry if that deflates your ego. This is what is known as “keeping it real.”
Is body image distortion a problem? Absolutely. Most of that distortion comes from other forms of media, though, and, get this, from the people with whom one chooses to associate. It’s the difference between having a parent who says, “Hey, you look nice today,” versus, “You’re not going to wear that are you? It makes your butt look big.” The root of self-image problems start long before anyone steps in front of our camera or sees any of our images.
We need to be careful with what we say. I saw a photograph recently of a young woman who happens to be a ballet dancer. To say that she is thin would be an understatement. We know the photographer well and know he would not engage in any body manipulation techniques, but I double checked just to be sure. The woman really is that thin. Does that mean she has an eating disorder? Should we say something?
We should be very careful here. I’ve known far too many women, especially models, whose metabolism runs high enough that they simply don’t gain wait. What, when, and how much they eat is irrelevant. They’re not going to gain any more weight until their body metabolism slows down. Then, when all the weight gain suddenly hits, the threat of developing an eating disorder gets real because they miss how they once looked.
Body shaming occurs in both directions and is just as equally wrong. What matters is that we promote healthy attitudes in both directions not only with the photos we take, but perhaps more importantly with the things we say to models and clients as we’re taking those pictures. We can do a lot more harm with our words than with our photographs.
We also need to understand that there is no one set definition of a healthy body. That call is made between an individual and their physician. We have no right to imply that someone’s body needs improvement or modification.
So yes, we can advance the understanding of a healthy body image, but we’re likely to be more effective in that goal on an individual basis rather than trying to take on the whole industry. The industry will change on its own as we alter our individual methods of operation.
All that being said, I can’t encourage anyone to sign this Retouchers Accord. The first three articles alone are sufficient reason to walk away and the final two are more complicated than a simple statement can address. If what we sign is going to mean something, we have to find points that make sense, take the diversity of our industry into consideration, and don’t accidently lead us into activities that could do more harm than good.
About that “fake news” line
By this point, I’ve had nearly two weeks to mull over Ms. Schwab’s assessment that retouching is the equivalent of fake news. I am still as angered by her misuse of the term “fake news” as I am by the president’s repeated and offensive misuse of the term. Perhaps we’re using different definitions here as to what is fake. So, let’s see if we can get this straightened out.
First, calling something “fake” implies that something was fabricated in whole with no intention of utilizing any element of truth. For example, if I were to re-color a photo from World War II and paint all the German soldiers green then make the fantastic claim that the Nazis were actually aliens attempting to invade the planet, that would be fake news. If, however, I took that same image (without the green part) and made it sharper so that the details of that image were more clear, that would not be fake but enhanced.
The distinction between what is fake and what is enhanced becomes increasingly important in situations like we are experiencing now where the allegation is being used as a weapon against legitimate media taking on a corrupt leader. To call an image fake simply because it has been enhanced to more fully communicate its message is a disservice and disrespectful to everyone involved.
Claiming that by simply retouching an image somehow falsifies its content is like saying that editing a book makes it less interesting. Denouncing retouching creates an expectation of perfection that is unfair and unreasonable. Not only would the photographer have to do their work perfectly, but the model would have to be perfect, the hair and makeup artists would have to be perfect, the stylist would have to be perfect, the art direction would have to be perfect, and the lighting would have to be perfect. In my over 30 years of photography, all those elements have worked in perfect harmony exactly zero times. Sure, there have been some wonderful images that came very close but at no time has anyone been foolish enough to think that there wasn’t room for improvement and then proceed to make that improvement in post production.
Here’s the thing: photographers have always manipulated photographs. We’ve had to. Early cameras were extremely fussy and if a photographer wasn’t as diligent about the developing process as he was about taking the picture itself they would wind up with an unusable pile of garbage. As the cameras and films developed, so did our processing techniques. We learned to use masking, as we mentioned above. We learned to use dodging (making something lighter) and burning (making something darker) and we even learned how to use cloning (an extremely difficult process in film) to remove blemishes. By the mid-1950s, we had learned to make skin appear more even and soft as well as remove wrinkles and the bags under a subject’s eyes. Portrait photographers’ entire reputations were built upon their ability to retouch a photo and mind you, this was well before computers were small enough to fit in anything smaller than a three-story building.
To think that suddenly, somehow, all this retouching of images has gotten out of control and become a “public health concern” is both naive and insulting.
What makes articles like Ms. Schwab’s troubling is that they are too often read by people who know absolutely nothing about photography beyond the snapshots they take with their cell phone. Neither is their audience likely to have any appreciation for what actual photo retouching involves. So, I’m going to try and show you using a series of photos in various stages of processing.
Understand, every time I open Photoshop or any other image processing software, I’m faced with thousands of choices for how to process my picture. Even when I know what steps I must take to make an image acceptable for public consumption, there are still multiple different ways to achieve exactly the same results. While I am showing you a particular method (sort of) that I used on this particular image, a different photographer would likely approach it in a very different way, with different results, and still be just as correct in their interpretation of the image. There are no exacts. There are no absolutes. Artistic vision and understanding of what the client wants comes into heavy play here. Are you ready? Let’s go:
The Image
To help everyone understand the issue more clearly, I needed to use an image fully under my control with a model not opposed to me displaying both the raw image and it’s final form. Obviously, the easiest and most convenient solution to that issue was to toss Kat kicking and screaming in front of the camera. Okay, maybe not kicking and screaming, but she really didn’t like having the sun in her eyes. I processed the photo and then gave her the finished image. She then posted the image as her profile picture on Facebook. Here’s the picture:
Having been posted less than a week, the image already has nearly seven times as many likes as her previous image, more than twice as many likes as her most popular image over the past four years. So, it would seem that the overwhelming response to the finished image has been positive.
Oh, but you know the raw image, the one we started with, didn’t look quite this way. Here, let me show you:
The RAW image
This isn’t a totally horrible image, mind you. In fact, under different conditions, I might just adjust the contrast and color tone a bit and let it go at that. Still, there are some things about this picture that just bug me, so we need to fix those issues.
First revision
Before you go jumping to conclusions, I didn’t touch Kat at all in this photo. We balanced color and tone then cleaned up the background a little bit, primarily removing the fire hydrant that was inconveniently near Kat’s head in the photo. It doesn’t take much to dramatically alter the appearance of a photo.
Second Revision
First round of blemish removal. I focused primarily on the eyes and removing the pesky shadow caused by the glasses. We’ll do a little more later, but it’s too early in the process to get all heavy-handed. Anything feel fake yet? No? Good.
Third Revision
This is a tough one. Look carefully at this image and the one before it. Can you see the difference? The revision applied here is only necessary with digital cameras that do not have a full frame sensor. Because the size of the lens and the sensor don’t match exactly, we have to correct the distortion that occurs. A lot of times the difference is so subtle even I can barely tell the difference. Here, though, because of all those angle and ratio factors, there was actually a significant difference. Oh, and we cleaned up her left eye a little, also.
Fourth Revision
By this point, we’ve lived with the image a little bit and the softness of some areas is beginning to bother me. We have to be careful in applying a solution. While there are a number of tools that can sharpen an image, applying them globally can really cause problems. Here’s where masking comes in. I won’t bore you with the details, but we sharpened up the places where it makes sense while being careful to not adversely affect the places we want to remain soft.
Fifth Revision
Cross processing. This is a concept, like most others photographers apply in Photoshop, carried over from film processing. Originally, cross processing was a mistake caused by using the wrong chemical solution for the type film being processed. Depending on how far apart the pairing was, the results could be extremely dramatic. Obviously, we don’t apply chemicals to digital photos, but we can mimic some of the same effects, typically by raising contrast in certain areas and adjusting the colors and hues appropriately. We didn’t want too dramatic a difference, just enough to brighten the image and make certain colors pop a bit more. While all that might sound like we’re faking the look, what we’ve done is come all that much closer to duplicating the actual environment of that morning.
Sixth Revision
Okay, there’s a lot to this one because stopping after every little process and method was getting exhausting and I realized I was soon going to have more than a dozen images with changed so subtle that even in telling what they were one might not be able to see the difference. So, you should know we did a lot of manipulation between the previous photo and this one, which is the finished image. We cleaned up the remaining blemishes and removed some wrinkles. We dealt moderately with the offset on the right side of the glasses that was caused by the camera looking through her prescription lens. We did some selective color adjustment where the cross processing had created problems and pulled back on some highlights that had gotten out of control.
That’s it, folks. That’s all we did. The whole process, including stopping to save the interstitial files, making coffee, and checking on photos from a fashion show, took less than two hours. Oh, and I think I played with the dog some in there. We could have gone faster had there been motivation, but there wasn’t. I sent the picture to Kat, she posted it to her profile, and the fandom began.
The image is processed, not faked.
So, where’s all the fake stuff?
Is this to say that no one ever fakes anything in Photoshop? You know better than to ask that question. Of course, there are people who dramatically alter photographs. For some, that’s what they do for a living. What matters is their intention in doing so. Most of the time, such revisions are an artistic decision to make the image a little less boring or, perhaps, give an image a specific meaning. Not everyone wants their portrait in front of a plan-colored background. When done well, changing the background scenery makes all the difference in how a photo is received. As long as the intention isn’t to make someone believe you were on a beach in the South of France when you were actually off having an affair with your dog groomer’s cousin, then I don’t see a problem.
Yes, there are times, especially in advertising, when no one is paying enough attention to detail and an image slips past that shouldn’t. Yes, there are times when clients have severely unreasonable expectations and push agencies into releasing images they probably shouldn’t. I have two thoughts regarding those situations.
First, negative consumer feedback has done a lot to curb over-manipulated photos. Remember that research by up there a few pages ago? There was only a response when viewers were aware that the image had been manipulated. People don’t like being played for fools and an obviously over manipulated photo in a product ad does just that. Organic change comes slowly, but it’s more likely to stick as opposed to trying to force change from the outside through some unrealistic statement.
Second, the number of times when a photographer or retoucher has much say in the matter is actually rather small. You don’t know to know how many times I’ve been shown a finished ad and not recognized that it was a photo I took. We submitted the slides and the editing department took it from there. My opinion was neither considered nor requested. Targeting photographers and retouchers with some ethics statement might work in tiny little boutique agencies where everyone is all family and time is lost consulting everyone on every decision. Major agencies, who produce the majority of ads, don’t work that way. They don’t have time. And if a photographer or retoucher has ethics issues with how a photo is used, they know how to find the door. The Retouchers Accord addresses the people who are in the least position to actually effect any change when it comes to major advertising accounts.
Been there. Survived that ass-chewing. Wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
The Proper Place For Fake Images
If we really wanted to, and had sufficient motivation (specifically, pay me a lot of money for all the eye strain), we could easily create a bunch of totally faked photos. We’ve done it before when the concept called for such. In fact, just to demonstrate what a fake image really looks like, we took the picture of Kat and spent a couple of days throwing every bad idea at it that we could find. We call our finished product, Invasion of the MasterCard Alien. If you don’t get the reference then you’re really out of touch.
Is that image over-the-top? Oh my stars, yes! Not only is it over the top, it is totally impractical. This one image required days of work. While Kat and I can sit here and laugh at it, this isn’t the kind of we engage in because we’re not in the business of designing sci-fi book art or anything related to it. Is it an entertaining exercise on occasion, yeah. but ultimately we’re not fooling anyone. This is “fake” and was created to be fake.
Now, since you are aware that this image is fake, how does that make you feel? Are you upset that your skin tone isn’t a strange shade of green? Would you like your eyes to be oversized? Do you wish you had a clue what is going on in the background? Should I have given you more warning before we showed you the image? Do you need to go to your safe place now?
I realize there will always be some people who believe anything. The late Orson Welles’ epic War of the Worlds broadcast in 1938 proved that point. Today, that same broadcast would likely be referred to as fake news simply because too many people failed to realize that what Welles was doing was all scripted for radio. They had no intention of creating a national panic, but that’s what happens when people over-react to something. Just as Welles cannot be blamed for the chaos that followed his infamous broadcast, neither can photographers and retouchers be blamed when people over-react to obviously over-processed images. Step back, consider what the digital artist is trying to communicate (and this is digital art at this point, not a photograph) and understand that obvious manipulation might be sending a message different than the face value of the image.
Conclusions and considerations
First, and let’s be excessively clear on this point, if you or someone you care about has an eating disorder, severe body image issues, or suffers severe depression due to low self-esteem, please seek professional help immediately. The solution is not blaming external causes. Very few of those external causes can be controlled. The solution is in how one responds to and processes that external input. This is not easy work and the risk factors are high. No solution should be attempted without professional guidance.
Second, realize that all commercial media, everything consumed on TV, radio, and the Internet, has the same basic purpose: to sell a product. Products are made by companies and companies, especially the big ones, are largely amoral. Therefore, the way to effect change within a corporation is to disrupt its bottom line, not attacking or questioning the ethics and practices of mid-level or lower employees who are simply doing what they’re told.
Third, understand that creators of non-commercial media, such as portrait, wedding, and boudoir photographers, edit their images to meet the direct requests of their client. If a client has body image issues when they walk in the door, those issues are not going to be resolved by giving them back photographs that fail to address their misgivings. The responsibility first and foremost is to that client and everything else is secondary.
Fourth, appreciate the reality that there is a time and place to hold conversations about body image and self-esteem but unless a photographer also happens to hold an advanced degree in and licensure for practicing psychotherapy, the photo studio is not the place to be holding that conversation. More damage is likely to be done from bad advice than a bad photo.
Fifth, let’s acknowledge that labeling something as a “public health crisis” is the job of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and/or the World Health Organization. No one else has that authority and attempts at claiming such from parties unrelated to those organizations only serves to inflame fear and panic among the general populous. Calling something a public health crisis on your own does not make it so. Furthermore, such unwarranted and baseless statements make it all the more difficult to address the core issues because of the uncertainty and confusion created by non-authoritative sources.
Sixth, accept the fact that asking people to join your group just so they can get others to join your group is not only anti-ethical but also self-defeating. If your group or cause is actually doing something good versus merely talking about doing something good, people will ask to join. Proselytizing is bad form even if you’re not a religion.
Seventh, know that as long as we are all imperfect there remains a need and justification for photograph manipulation. Using Photoshop or some other editing tool on an image does not create “fake news” in the same manner in which Kelly Ann Conway opening her mouth creates #alternativeFacts. Editing manipulation and editing can either improve the message of a photo or create a work of digital art for a specific purpose. Stop demonizing people who edit photographs.
Eighth, maybe it’s time we stop harping on first world issues when there are so many infinitely more severe problems among third-world countries that are being ignored. Each of us has limited time and resources. We do better by applying that time and those resources to places where it does a lot more good, such as providing clean drinking water, sustainable food sources and distribution, and getting medicine to where it is needed. If you can look at a starving child and tell them you cannot help them because you need to whine about an over-edited photograph, you desperately need a change of perspective.
I am really tired of having to continually address people who feel they are justified in attacking those who edit photographs. I do not do what I do to make some random person in Boston happy. I recently had a model upset with me because I didn’t do enough to her picture. Now, if someone else wants to lecture her on body image and self-esteem, you just go right on over there and do so. Me, I’m going to give her new pictures because I want her to be happy. That’s what matters.
I won’t sign the Retouchers Accord or anything remotely like it. Instead, I will focus on the work I do, consistently try to do it better, and hope that the people with whom I work are happy with the end result.
And scream at the idiots running the stop sign on the corner because that affects our children’s safety.
Focus on what really matters.
Still too busy to edit anything new
As I’m writing this, I’m waiting for yet another fashion show to start in Milan. To say this past week has been hectic would be a tremendous understatement. In the past four years, we’ve never gone this long without adding anything to the website. I feel bad about that.
I wish we had new pictures as well, but it would be unfair to ask anyone to come in for new pictures when I don’t have time to edit them immediately. We’ve made that mistake before. The pictures are still sitting there. Not making any promises on that front.
What I do have is a curated set of pretty people. Understand, when I use the term “pretty,” we are in no way talking about physical appearance. Pretty is who one is, the person they display, who you allow other people to see. Unfortunately, we’ve photographed a lot of people over the years who are attractive enough on the outside, but less so when it came to who they really were. The people in these pictures were wonderful, every last one of them. We would happily work with any of them again.
Sigh. For some reason all the pretty people keep disappearing, moving away, getting on with their lives. I do wish they’d come back occasionally.
As always, click on any thumbnail to open the full slideshow.
[tg_masonry_gallery gallery_id=”10946″ layout=”contain” columns=”3″]
Update: 04.13.17: NPR reports that the Alabama State Senate has approved a bill allowing Briarwood Presbyterian Church to form its own police force. The measure has yet to be voted on by the House.
Religion needs to leave behind the hate
| Ed. note: This is a long read, over 8,000 words in length. Worth your time? Absolutely. We wouldn’t have posted it if we thought it were waste. However, coming at the time it does, right smack in the middle of our month-long fashion coverage for Pattern, we’ve not had the normal level of resources to double check what was being written. There may still be some misspellings or improper verb associations. If so, we apologize. Please consider sharing this post to fuel the conversation necessary. Let us know if you find an error. |
The Short Version
Religion has come to the front of the headlines the past two weeks as the 45th president denounces anti-semitic violence but is still berated by the Anne Frank Center. At the same time, Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Alabama is asking to establish its own police force. All this as the president re-writes a travel ban affecting primarily Muslim nations. Our relationship with religion has disintegrated to being a flash point for violence. However, religion itself may be responsible for inciting the hate.
First, the facts
Briarwood Presbyterian Church, a 4,100-member megachurch located in suburban Birmingham, Alabama, has requested of that state’s legislature the ability to form its own police department. The model for that request is based on the university police departments at higher education facilities around the state. Briarwood operates a k-12 Christian School as well as Birmingham Theological Seminary. As of yesterday (February 21, 2017), the bill had been introduced in both houses of the state legislature.
Meanwhile, over the course of the past week, bomb threats were sent to 11 Jewish community centers and over 170 tombstones were toppled at Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery in University City, a suburb of St Louis, Missouri. The president had twice refused to answer reporters’ questions regarding what he would do in response to anti-semitic violence. Then, yesterday, he finally made a statement:
The anti-Semitic threats targeting our Jewish community and community centers are horrible and are painful and a very sad reminder of the work that still must be done to root out hate and prejudice and evil.
However, the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect says the president’s statement is too little, too late. In a Facebook post, the center’s director said:
“The President’s sudden acknowledgment is a Band-Aid on the cancer of Antisemitism that has infected his own Administration. His statement today is a pathetic asterisk of condescension after weeks in which he and his staff have committed grotesque acts and omissions reflecting Antisemitism, yet day after day have refused to apologize and correct the record. Make no mistake: The Antisemitism coming out of this Administration is the worst we have ever seen from any Administration. The White House repeatedly refused to mention Jews in its Holocaust remembrance, and had the audacity to take offense when the world pointed out the ramifications of Holocaust denial. And it was only yesterday, President’s Day, that Jewish Community Centers across the nation received bomb threats, and the President said absolutely nothing. When President Trump responds to Antisemitism proactively and in real time, and without pleas and pressure, that’s when we’ll be able to say this President has turned a corner. This is not that moment.”
Underscoring all these activities is the recent chaos from the hastily applied ban on travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries which has been stayed by federal courts. Reports from February 10 of this year state that the ban is being rewritten, but that the same seven countries continue to be targeted.
A little history
The United States has always had a difficult relationship with managing religion. The original settlers, the ones we refer to as Pilgrims, were Puritan Congregationalists, known as Brownists, and had fled Holland to escape religious persecution. Ironically enough, once they established a settlement in North America, they became extremely intolerant of any other religious belief system. That was 1620. Ideologically, not much has changed since that time.
Among the framers of the US Constitution were several whose relationships with religion were something less than what one might have been taught in Sunday School. In a letter to Ezra Stile, President of Yale, written shortly before his death, Benjamin Franklin said:
As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the system of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupt changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some doubts as to his divinity; though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the Truth with less trouble.
Franklin, despite his personal misgivings, was a tolerant man, however. He found “no harm, however, in its being believed, if that belief has the good consequence as probably it has, of making his doctrines more respected and better observed; especially as I do not perceive that the Supreme takes it amiss, by distinguishing the unbelievers in His government of the world with any particular marks of His displeasure.”
Let me translate that last bit for you: Dr. Franklin that whatever deity (he never mentions God directly) might be in control would not consider unbelief something to get terribly upset about. Franklin saw a benefit in mutual respect and unified moral teaching that might be achieved through religion. He did not, however, see it being beneficial to government.
Thomas Jefferson was even more pointed in his opinions. He was writing a section in his autobiography about the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom when he penned these words:
Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting “Jesus Christ,” so that it would read “A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;” the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo [sic] and Infidel of every denomination.
If that was indeed the opinion of “the great majority,” as Jefferson implies, that opinion didn’t last for long or at least only applied strictly to government as popular opinion held that the United States was a Christian nation and that, as such, no other forms of religious observance was acceptable.
I should also point out that the term “Christian” in this particular context, should be taken to mean protestant Christianity. Catholics have often felt the sting of popular discrimination as well. The arrival of Franciscan monks in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1844 nearly caused riots as the monks walked down the streets and throughout the South, both prior to and after the Civil War, Catholics were considered subversive because their bible was different from the King James version used by protestants.
We should also note that as much as the white supremacy movement has been about race, it has also been very much about religion, with Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and even atheists having historically been targets of the various hate groups. This sad tragedy continues right up to this very moment.
Religion hating religion
There is nothing I can do to stop religious persecution or discrimination beyond my own actions and activities. Individually, the same applies to everyone reading this. The problem with religious intolerance starts with religion itself and its ability, whether intentional or not, to create extremists. If society, especially American society, is to ever get past this life-long problem we have with religious intolerance, the religions themselves need to deal firmly with the intolerance they themselves perpetuate.
And adding a police force isn’t going to help any.
Mind you, I’m not sure any of the religious organizations in the United States see themselves as part of the problem. All religions tend to view themselves as the solution to the problem caused by everyone else who, at the very least, is terribly misguided.
Please allow me to use my own history as an example.
As long-time readers know, I was raised Southern Baptist. My father was a pastor of small, mostly rural churches. A regular part of the indoctrination, from as early as I can remember, involved the need to know everything “wrong” with every other denomination and why only Southern Baptists were getting it right. In abbreviated form, the litany went something like this:
The Church of Christ was totally misinterpreting what the bible says about musical instruments. Free Will Baptists were wrong about “losing” one’s salvation. Methodists were absolute lunatics for baptizing babies (there was a standing joke about getting in out of the rain lest the sprinkles turn one into a Methodist). Presbyterian belief in predestination precluded any need for the gospel. Lutherans encouraged alcoholism by using real wine in their sacraments. And Catholics? Catholicism was a cult.
Can you see how those very basic teachings bred complete contempt for anyone and anything different? The juxtaposition made for a very strange sermon: God wants us to love everyone and make them just like us. That same kind of underhanded intolerance applied to non-religious differences as well, including what one wore, how one’s hair was styled, how gender defined one’s role in society, and how sexuality was a sin. What were minor points of difference that should be set aside were actually an indoctrination of hate.
Not that anyone ever sees what they’re doing as hate. One typically has to step outside religion to come at the problem from that perspective. The religions themselves like to think they’re pushing a message of peace, love, and forgiveness, and to a limited extent, that is true. However, in their insistence that devotees of their religion be “pure” and “faithful” to their beliefs at the total and complete exclusion of everything else, they lay a foundation for exactly the opposite of what they claim to desire.
When religions use phrases such as “be full of the Spirit,” and “be wholly consumed in devotion to God,” and “know nothing but the will of God,” regardless of what the intention might actually be, the effect is to lay in the cornerstone of extremism. While most people are, thankfully, not committed enough to their religion to act on such extremism, it only takes a handful to wreak complete chaos and perpetuate the intolerance and misunderstandings between peoples of the world.
Among Christians specifically, the misinterpretation of scripture such as Romans 12:1-2 don’t help the matter any at all. I don’t think most pastors consider the extreme that can be reached from these verses:
1Therefore I urge you, brothers, on account of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. 2Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.
Do you catch the danger phrases? Lifting things totally out of context, the phrases “offer your bodies as living sacrifices,” and “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed …” are the type of verbiage extremists latch onto when defending attitudes, opinion, and behavior that are in direct contradiction with the religion itself. Tell the wrong person to “offer your bodies as living sacrifices” and the next thing you know they’ve strapped a bomb to their chest and are heading for the nearest mosque or shooting at people coming out of a synagogue.
The phrases are not unique to Christianity, though. They exist in virtually every major religion; statements of exclusivity that emphasize how that those holding to one specific belief system are the only ones worthy of salvation and that everyone else is unworthy, or infidels, and deserving death. Never mind that the death being spoken of is metaphorical or, at the very least, spiritual. Every time someone says their scripture is “the literal word of God,” they are adding to the extremist’s mentality of hate and violence. “Deserving of death,” in their minds, becomes “license to kill.”
Extreme Solutions
I’m unconvinced that there is anything that stops extremism. The number of people given to it can be reduced, I am sure. Hate has a way of finding an excuse, though, and even if it were possible to completely remove the religious equation from society, and it’s not, hate would still be there rearing its ugly head in the name of some form of belief system, whether political, spiritual, or possibly even culinary (some folks gets really uptight about pork).
Still, there is much that religion can do in not only reducing extremism within their ranks, but eliminating the undercurrents that allow that extremism to flourish in the first place. Unfortunately, doing so means up giving some presumed authority on moral matters as they relate to society at large. Religions have to first and foremost allow people to exist, all people, without any presumption of guilt or exercise of judgment. What I’m about to suggest is not going to set well with hardline conservatives within any camp because they refuse to give up any ground at all. They insist that their way is correct and fail to see how such a stance invokes hate and intolerance that snuffs out any sermon on peace. Yet, for those of a more reasonable nature, and just for the sake of making it a matter of public record, here are some things that must happen.
Reaching outside yourself
A lot of religions think they’re involved outside of their own bubbles. They have all these “ministries” to which they claim some level of commitment. Child care. Single moms. Teens. Homeless. Some ministries are more effective than others but all of it gives a religion the feeling that it is making a difference in their community and many actually are. The question comes now, given our previous statements, are they doing enough?
Let’s consider for a moment the situation at Briarwood. When I first saw the story I couldn’t help wondering what might lead this storied congregation down a path to where they felt that they need their own police force. Surely this was more than just petty thieves here and there. What could be the motivation behind such action?
Of course, the official line from the church is that the move allows them to create a safer environment “in a fallen world.” The very language of their statement reeks of exclusivity at the very time they need to be reaching deeper into their community. Calling all that is outside of the church “a fallen world” is condescending, claiming a superiority that the unchurched world isn’t willing to recognize. Without having done anything physical, the church has already established a wall between itself and the community. Adding a police force only heightens that wall.
At the same time, there are religions that are afraid to open up to communities that have already been hostile toward them. The lack of understanding on both sides of the equation creates a tense and uncertain environment that is lacking in trust simply because one side doesn’t know enough about the other to create an informed and enlightened opinion.
The solution for either type of religion is simple in theory but extremely difficult, and sometimes expensive, in practice: do unto the least of these.
Here’s the thing: those who are at the same middle-class economic level as the church, synagogue, or mosque don’t need that much, if any, help outside of emergency situations. Those who need the help are those who many religions cast off because they’re too poor. They have nothing to offer the church economically and until that person’s need is resolved they’ve nothing to offer the religion in return. They are what I’ve heard some clerics refer to as “a drain on the system.”
Yet, that is exactly where religions need to be if they want to begin breaking down the barriers and developing a sense of mutual trust and understanding, something that mutes the hate rather than stoking the fire. When people drive by and see a huge edifice worth millions of dollars, the communication is that the religion would rather spend money on itself than the poor and needy around them. That the religion may already have ministries allegedly addressing needs is insufficient. As long as there are poor, as long as there are those suffering, as long as there is anyone going hungry, money spent on buildings and internally-focused programs is hypocritical.
Nothing is going to take the suspicion away from a religion faster than feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, housing the homeless so long as it is done without an attempt at proselytizing. Historically, however, religions haven’t been too good at not trying to convert those they help. They’ll feed the hungry, as long as the hungry listen to a sermon first. They’ll clothe the poor who come to the church or synagogue or mosque to get the clothing, not realizing the intimidating effect of a religious facility. They’ll house the homeless as long as the homeless attend their weekly services in return.
I’ve seen those programs. I’ve seen the judgment and animosity they create. People inside the congregation either look down on those they’re helping or are jealous that, “no one ever helped me with anything.”
For religion to make any progress in reducing hate, they must give with absolutely no strings attached, with no expectation of any return, and no complaining when the service eats through the budget faster than expected.
Being understanding
There were moments when my father was ahead of those around him, such as when he swapped pulpits with a black pastor in the midst of the civil rights movement. He made some enemies within the denomination when he did that, but he knew it was the right thing to do in building bridges within a community on the verge of becoming violent. He never shied away from opportunities to meet with other religious leaders, even though he knew little about their belief systems, but again, doing so almost always caused ripples of unrest within his congregation.
We lived in Southeastern Oklahoma when the Iranian hostage situation occurred. On one level, that politically-induced tragedy didn’t affect us. There was no one of Middle Eastern heritage in our small town. There were some Iranian students at the local junior college a town over, but the State Department quickly whisked them away for their own safety. While we watched the situation unfold on television, there were no practical means of immediately understanding the Muslim perspective nor their religion.
As the situation continued and anger grew, a rabbi from the nearest synagogue, nearly 100 miles away, suggested a gathering of clerics from across the region. The event would simply be an opportunity to develop understanding between the different religions so they would be better able to address the anger in their communities before it erupted into violence. Poppa received an invitation and promptly replied that he would attend. However, others within the denomination did not approve of the event. They couldn’t be ecumenical, they said, because in refusing to accept the deity of Christ there was no common ground on around which a conversation could occur.
Never mind that all three major religions represented, Christian, Judaism, and Islam, all share a common Abrahamic heritage. Tension grew within the clerical community to the point that the event was canceled to prevent any further friction.
Where there is not understanding between religious leaders hate and distrust grows between the people of their faiths. People of faith respect and follow the actions of their leaders, no matter what the religious hierarchy may be. If an iman voices distrust in a Christian leader, those around him will hold the same distrust. If a rabbi speaks disparagingly toward a Muslim leader, be sure the members of his synagogue are likely to do the same. When a Southern Baptist pastor demonizes the pope, his entire congregation develops a distrust for all Catholics. As those statements and habits are repeated from one religious leader to the next, distrust, fear, and a severe lack of understanding eventually develop into full-fledged hate that is willing to justify violence.
I have never understood how so many religious leaders come to the conclusion that to talk with their counterparts among other religions somehow involves a compromise of their own faith. We are not giving anything up when we simply enter into a conversation. We still hold tight to our own beliefs. No one has the power to take anything from us. Yet, just getting clerics of any faith to sit down and talk with someone outside their religion proves difficult.
Hate and distrust grow anywhere we do not illuminate. When religions sequester themselves within their own bubble, they place their beliefs in the shadows for anyone outside. It is not enough to suggest that someone read the approved literature on a different religion because the literature itself is biased and steeped in verbiage and nomenclature that is foreign to someone not already familiar with the religious system. The path to understanding, the path to peace, is found in relationships of mutual respect for one another.
I find it interesting that it is relatively simple for me, from the outside, to find unifying messages of peace, harmony, and love within all the world’s major religions. The texts are obvious about the importance of those attributes. Yet, those who should know those texts the best seem unable to find the common ground between people of diverse faith.
When religions finally begin talking openly to one another, placing aside their fears and opening their hearts before opening their mouths, we will see hate decline.
Leading The Way
Peace does not come from governments and politicians. War comes from governments and politicians because war creates the illusion of power. Desire for power inherently corrupts as it creates a stranglehold on those who attempt to wield it. We have only to look at the obnoxiousness coming from our own government entities and personalities to see how this plays out. Why did the US president not immediately condemn anti-semitic violence? To retain power among the base of white supremacists partially responsible for his election. Why did the Israeli prime minister not challenge the US president on his silence? To retain a positive relationship with the power that comes from being allied to the US president.
If looking to governments for peace is folly, then where are we to look? While there are many possible answers to that question, the one that makes the most sense, the one that already has the structure built in to make an immediate and lasting impact around the world is religion. As religions are no longer limited to a specific geography, they have the unique ability to spread a message decisively and quickly to their adherents, reaching more people and affecting more action than any government could ever hope to achieve.
Here is where religious hierarchy comes into play because I know at the individual congregation level there are already those who are attempting to do that very thing. Ask almost any member of the clergy who has a predominantly urban congregation challenged by the reality of inner-city violence. They will tell you that the influence of religion has a strong impact on what happens in their communities. Where religious influence is the strongest, violence declines. Hate between rivals dissipates. Not because anyone is converting entire gangs or getting people to trade in guns for religious texts. People of faith are effective when they simply lay down an expectation for peace above all in their communities.
Now, if individual clerics can lead their congregations to exert an expectation of peace within a single community, why are those within religious hierarchies not creating similar expectations across larger geographies? Religious leaders who do not lead toward peace, respect, and understanding show themselves to be little more than the religious equivalent of the power mongers we see in governments, and the results are almost exactly the same. Religious corruption is just as real and just as damning as political corruption and as long as it is ignored and tolerated and even supported at the congregational level, that corruption continues to generate hate and distrust that leads to violence and destruction.
The solution is painful to those in seats of religious power, but it must happen. We need Christian pastors to publicly and forcibly denounce hate toward Muslims. We need imams to publicly and forcibly support the right of Jews to exist not only in their homeland but wherever they wish around the world. We need rabbis to publicly and forcibly denounce the antagonism for anyone who is not Jewish.
Understand, we do not need sermons on peace in general terms. We need leaders who speak in specific terms in specific communities. After what happened in Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery every congregation in Missouri, regardless of faith, should be hearing homilies not only teaching why the toppling of tombstones was wrong, but how the hate behind that act is destructive. No one should have any question but what that act was worthy of condemnation in the strongest language possible.
The situation at that Missouri cemetery is a good place for examples to be set. As people from all over the St. Louis area gathered to help repair the tombstones, Muslim activists raised over $70,000 to help cover the costs. This is exactly the kind of religious leadership needed to put an end to the hate directed toward people of different faiths. Yet, that leadership needs to be at even higher levels for the message to become universal. There are people of every faith willing and ready to follow a message of peace and understanding if only people will step to the front and lead.
Police yourselves
One of the major aspects breeding animosity toward religion is when people, especially nonbelievers, see extremists and flamboyant clerics spouting off propaganda well outside the mainstream of their religion without any retribution. Giving into the whole freedom of speech issue applies only to government. Religions themselves not only have the right but the responsibility to reign in those who misrepresent their religion in ways that not only breed hate, sometimes on both sides, but grossly mislead those who are truly faithful.
For Americans, names such as Joel Osteen, Pat Robertson, and Creflo Dollar are among the more recognizable names of so-called “preachers” who operate without any oversight, saying whatever they please, stirring hate and anger, and doing a disservice to all of Christianity while swaying the loyalties of many looking to that religion for guidance. We may not so quickly recognize the names of extremists from other religions, such as Allama Kaukab Noorani Okarvi, Rabbi Berl Lazar, or Chandraswami. Yet, each is guilty of manipulating their religions, even if it is out at extreme fringes, for their own benefit, whether political or financial.
We have reached a point in world relations where it only takes one religious extremist to inflame the hatred of thousands towards other religions. Take, for example, that time back in December of 2015 when Pat Robertson declared that Islam is not a religion. How is that not considered hate speech? Yet, too many people dismissed the statement as the continued ramblings of a senile old man who just happens to have a television program watched by millions of devout Christians.
Words like these are not innocent. Statements like Robertson’s cannot be allowed to continue without severe and immediate repercussions and those consequences need to come from within the religion itself, not government. Religious leaders have to take a public stand against those within their own denomination, within their broader religion, to stop the inflammatory rhetoric. Shut down their support systems that steal funding from local congregants. Pressure them to be removed from cable networks and public media systems. Take away their audience.
Religious leaders have to be held accountable at a strict level we’ve not seen before because the results of their incendiary speech are inciting religious-based violence and hate crimes like we’ve never seen before. This is a major religious issue and to the extent that religions refuse to address it for themselves, they leave the entire religious body open to criticism and condemnation from those affected by the actions of a few.
Something religions seem to have difficulty understanding is that they are not obligated to let those who use their name to say anything they wish and remain under that religious umbrella. Christians are not required to tolerate Joel Osteen. They have every right to shut him up and throw him out because what he says is not Christian. Muslims have every right to defrock Allama Okarvi and shame him into silence. His words are not those of true Islam and everyone within Islam knows that.
Strict religious discipline within the religion, and not external to it, is a necessity for a religion to maintain any cohesiveness or moral authority among their members. I know this bristles those who believe in a congregationalist form of religious governance. There are those who resist hard against any kind of authority outside their own body. I get it. Yet, without some form of external authority, there is a very real and very severe danger of those congregations becoming nothing more than radicalized social clubs bent on hating those who are not like them.
I’ve seen it happen. Small, rural, Southern Baptist churches whose pastors are not required to have any actual religious training, become swept up in the rhetoric of a fire-and-brimstone preacher who blames societies perceived ills, especially problems that don’t even come close to affecting the congregation but are observed through the media, on Muslims, or blacks, or Jews, or immigrants, or Catholics.
Rural pastors garner a lot of respect within their small towns. People listen to what they have to say. Preachers are often considered the ultimate authority figure in that they are that communities moral representative anointed by God. So when a pastor stands behind a pulpit and denounces the “scourge” of Muslims as being a threat to the nation, those words stick in the minds of his congregation. Never mind that most of them have never knowingly met a Muslim and are not, within their small community, likely to do so. They are all now convinced that a different religion is responsible for the world’s problems.
How does that perpetuate hate?
A young man I came across in high school couldn’t wait to get out of his small town and off to college. The small town didn’t have anything to offer him and he was certain he would make it big at the university. Upon arriving at the university, however, he was introduced to people and cultures that hadn’t existed back where he grew up. The “outside” world was different. There were people of every different color, with difficult to understand accents, wearing clothes that seemed strange and with religious habits he didn’t understand.
At first, this young man took his new environment as a challenge. He would be a “witness” for his God and attempt to “save” as many as he could. Not only were his efforts fruitless, however, but he found others disliked him for daring to insinuate that their own faith was insufficient or unacceptable. He became more and more marginalized within his dorm until he came across a small group of guys equally frustrated. They were all white, all devout members of their church, and all tired of having to apologize for what they saw as God-ordained evangelism.
In an ideal world, they would have found ways to share their religion without being insulting. While such methods don’t rack up high numbers of converts, they do exist within the tenets of most every religion. These young men, unfortunately, did not look for those methods. Instead, they took a more violent route, attacking an Iranian medical student in a parking lot and leaving him for dead. Everyone involved in the crime was eventually caught, convicted, and expelled from the university (along with appropriate jail sentences).
As much as I would like to say that was a lone event from 40 years ago, I can’t. All across the country, those same type of events keep happening. Again, just this week, in Olathe, Kansas, a former air traffic controller in a crowded bar yelled, “Get out of my country!” along with a host of racial slurs and then shot at what he thought were two Middle Eastern men, killing one, wounding the other, and also wounding another local man trying to stop the shooting. Here’s the thing: the men he shot weren’t Middle Eastern. They werent Muslim. They were Indian. They were Hindu. Just the fact that they weren’t white was enough for one ignorant man to decide to kill them.
Olathe, Kansas is a very small town. I’ve been there more than once. The town is so small, in fact, that there’s a Southern Baptist church directly across the street from that bar. The churches in Olathe are the most dominant influence in that town. People listen to the pastors of those churches when they’ll listen to no one else. The sermons they preach this Sunday are critical. While I’m quite sure none of them directly intend to perpetuate hate, without directly addressing attitudes such as the one expressed in the bar, they participate in hate’s spread toward both Muslims and Hindus and other non-Christian religions.
I am aware that all major religions have a number of different factions and there is no one within any of them that can speak with authority over the entire religion. Yet, there is someone at the top of every denomination, every variation, every off-shoot who can, at the very least, strongly influence those under them.
Avoiding Political Entanglement
Far too many of the problems that exist in this current state of existence owe their origination to the fact that too many governments hold an allegiance to one or more religions, some more formally than others. Within the United States, our Constitution prohibits the establishment of a state religion and prevents the government from hindering the “free exercise” of any religion. Yet, the concept that we are, or should be, a Christian nation is still dominant. Dominant to the point that many radicals spent eight years claiming that president Barak Obama was unfit for office based on the incorrect assumption that he is Muslim. He’s not. He never was. The amount of hate spewed toward president Obama for religious reasons was unprecedented for the United States.
However, such associations between government leaders and religions are hardly new. Even now, the ruling monarch of the United Kingdom must, by law, be a member of the Church of England and the monarch is the titular head of that religious body. While Queen Elizabeth II is directly involved in religious affairs even less than she is matters of state, the very fact that such a connection still exists underlines the ubiquity of a global problem that has done little more than producing hate and violence for the past two millennia.
Here, we have to stop and give serious consideration as to whether the world would still be as dangerous were governments with strong religious affiliations replaced with secular ones. The answer is probably not as clear cut as one might want. Two of the world’s largest superpowers, Russia and China, are officially atheistic. Yet, one might argue that their communist ideals hold the same emotional if not spiritual value for their adherents as would any formally accepted religion. The only major difference between ideology and theology is having a central figure who is worshiped. So, to assume that the world would be any safer by removing all religiously-enabled governments is likely absurd.
Still, we look across the world at the places where governments are detached from any religious preference, including atheism, and we see a much more peaceful existence within those countries than we do the world at large. Consider the list of the most peaceful countries in the world as calculated by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP). The list for 2017 looks like this:
- Iceland
- Denmark
- Austria
- New Zealand
- Portugal
- Czech Republic
- Switzerland
- Canada
- Japan
- Slovenia
- Finland
- Ireland
- Bhutan
- Sweden
- Australia
- Germany
- Norway
- Belgium
- Hungary
- Singapore
Now, for the sake of brevity, which almost seems laughable as we just passed the 6,000-word mark, let’s look at just the top five of those countries and check their relationship to religion.
Iceland: Officially, there is a state church of Iceland and the government pays the salaries of its ministers. The primary purpose of the state church, however, is telling: it operates all the cemeteries across the countries. Also, officially, there is a religious tax that Icelandic people pay. That tax, however, doesn’t necessarily go to the state church. Instead, it goes to whatever religious or philosophical organization to which one belongs. Don’t belong to any philosophical organizations? Fine. The money goes into the general fund. From a more practical point of view, Iceland has one of the most secular societies in the world. Even though churches do exist, attendance is extremely low and their authority within the country is largely non-existent. Until you die.
Denmark: As with Iceland, the Church of Denmark is the state’s official religion and has a strong history of influence in the country. However, the government’s website says of the church, “Denmark is also among the world’s most secularised countries, in which religion and Christianity play only a minor, often indirect, role in public life.” The country’s “striving for the Church of Denmark to become more independent, with a looser association to the state.” The potential for conflict with Arab immigrants has grown over the past few years, but even there are efforts to avoid problems before they occur. “In the so-called Arabian Initiative the Danish government is seeking to build positive relations with Muslim countries. This initiative also includes projects promoting religious dialogue which is supported by the majority of Denmark’s religious communities.”
Austria: We’ve all seen The Sound of Music, right? 60% of Austrians still identify themselves as Catholic. While the country’s Constitution prohibits the establishment of a state religion, just as the US Constitution does, defining any portion of Austria’s population as strictly secular would be incorrect. Instead, we do best to consider the country pluralistic, which is the way Austria defines itself. In a 2015 speech, Austria’s Human Rights Commissioner, Tim Wilson, put it this way:
In Australia the role of government is to be secular. But that is not the nature of Australian society. We are not a secular society, we are a pluralist society. That means everyone is entitled to their faith, and to express it so long as they do no harm to others.
But pluralism means more than just faith. It also means pluralism for people based on other factors, such as ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation. To have a pluralist society we have to have laws that respect everyone’s individuality and accommodate for everyone’s unique needs, this is especially true for religion.
New Zealand: If you’re beginning to think that I’m just typing the same thing over and over again, you’re not alone. There is a great deal here that is identical across all five countries, which is probably worth noting. New Zealand is also predominantly Christian, with the Anglican church being dominant. As with the other countries, however, religious adherence outside of major ceremonies around the beginning and end of life has dropped significantly. There has also been a blending within the denominations themselves where Māori have their own versions of Christian denominations. While the number of Hindus, Muslims, and Buddhists have increased with recent immigration, New Zealand’s attitude of letting everyone alone to set their own path has worked well in helping to keep matters peaceful.
Portugal: It wasn’t all that long ago when the phrase “to be Portuguese is to be Catholic” applied across this critical European country. In fact, the Church held a tight grip on the country until the latter part of the 20th century. However, as the influence of the Church waned after World War II, attitudes shifted and in 1976 Portugal adopted a new Constitution that permanently separates the roles of Church and State. Since then, the influence of the Church has fallen from first to eighth among all social groups. Moral issues once considered within the responsibility of the Church have instead been decided by those outside it. Today, to be Portuguese is to be of whatever faith one wants without any interference.
Note the commonality across all these countries. They have all moved from a strongly Christian background to one that is either immensely secular or, at the very least, highly pluralistic. Religious establishments have had to step back and allow their influence to wane in order for the countries to become the peaceful places they are now. The same holds true for almost all the other countries on the top twenty list.
The exceptions would be Japan and Bhutan. Japan’s path has been relatively similar to European countries, transitioning from a blend of Shintoism and Buddhism to a more secular society. Only Bhutan, a landlocked Asian country located wholly within the Himalayan mountain range, still holds strongly to a dominant religion. Mahayana (tantric) Buddhism is the official state religion and practiced by some 75% of the small country’s inhabitants. Unlike other major religions, however, the goal of Mahayana is not to evangelize or “save” the world, but rather to achieve an elevated state of being by becoming one with and respecting not only other people but every aspect of the physical world. As a result, people of Bhutan are not only inherently peaceful, but have a strong concern for the preservation of the environment and animal rights.
What we see, on the whole, is that dramatically reducing the social influence of authoritarian religions is a significant and helpful factor in reducing the amount of hate present within a country. While that obviously may not be the solution that religious leadership wants to hear, the practice has born true time and time again in country after country. Mahayana works in Bhutan because it is an inherently peace-oriented religion but it is unreasonable to expect \entire nations to achieve something that Bhutan has been cultivating for centuries. Bhutan’s geographic isolation likely participates in their success as well. For almost every other country, however, the complete removal of religion from political influence and a reduction of its social authority is critical to establishing a consistent environment of peace.
Conclusions and considerations
A lot has happened since I started right this article Tuesday morning. I never fully intended for it to be as long as it has become, but I didn’t want to leave out any necessary part of the conversation, either. Even now, I’m not fully convinced but what there isn’t more we need to discuss.
What’s important, though, is that the discussion begins in earnest, that we take seriously the impact of religion in cultivating hate toward its counterparts and even toward secularism itself. Backed into a corner with their power and authority at risk, the religious establishment frightens me. There are still a large number of charismatic leaders across all the major religions who can marshall a very large number of supporters to do their bidding, even if that bidding is not legal. While those majorities whose religious views are centrist and not overly committal may not be at risk, there are still hundreds of thousands, if not millions on the fringes, already marginally radicalized, and willing to make themselves “a living sacrifice” for their deity.
Religions could take away much of the sting from such a transition themselves simply by changing the language they use to avoid terms that are unnecessarily exclusionary or even elitist. Surely it is possible to teach the tenets of one’s religion without needing to refer to others as “unclean” or “infidels.” Referring to yourself as a “sinner” is one thing, but to project that title onto someone from outside your religious belief system is insulting and inflammatory. The decision to make religion offensive is one largely made by the people in pulpits and the leaders who put them there. Change that attitude, change that rhetoric, and we’re more than half-way to achieving a level of peace this planet has not known in the modern era.
I shuddered this past week when the vice-president proclaimed loudly and proudly that the world would know that the US stands with Israel. Mr. Pence might as well reach out and sucker punch the heads of state for every country in the Middle East that is predominantly Muslim. Whether he intended for his words to be offensive is irrelevant and any apology he might give now is empty. As a representative of the United States government, the vice-president made a statement that effectively establishes a level of religious favoritism that quite likely, in a finite sense, violates the First Amendment. This is not the first time such a statement has been made, but it needs to be the last and steps must be taken to make sure that it never happens again without severe and immediate repercussions.
Religious leaders have an important choice. Either they can tone down the rhetoric and step back to a more leisure place in American life that they fashion for themselves, or they can risk becoming like Denmark when the only time people think of religion is when they die. Already, the number of Americans who don’t identify with any religious belief system has grown from 16.1 percent of the population in 2007 to 22.8 in 2014. By even the most conservative estimates, more than a quarter of Americans are now totally unaffiliated with any form of religion or organized spiritual philosophy. This comes while every form of Christianity has seen a serious decline in terms of both membership and attendance. Change is going to happen. Religious leaders can either claim a place at the table or find themselves victims a secularization that shuts them out, in part, because they are too hateful toward other people.
Those who drive religions, all over them, not just Christianity, need to desperately get back in touch with the peaceful tenets of their teachings, the ones that focus on being a better individual, on helping others, on providing an example of selflessness, not selfishness. Religions must look to growth mechanisms not based in fear or shaming. Threatening to bomb one’s place of worship because they are merely a different sect under the same religious umbrella does not serve your deity at all. There is a core of peace, love, and harmony within every religion out there. Adherents need to find that core, stick to that core, teach that core, and not be persuaded to move from it.
In no way do I want anyone to think I condone a world without religion. Too many people need something that answers life’s larger questions for them: the question of why am I here, what is my purpose, and where am I going. For some, religion is a point of comfort, a sense of security, and I would not suggest that those people be denied the good things that can come from religion. When religions adhere to their core, when they demonstrate love through acts of charity and selflessness, when they feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, and provide medical care to the ill without expecting even as much as a thank you in return, that is when religion is a benefit to society. That is a religion with which we can co-exist.
What we can no longer tolerate is a religion that attempts to dominate all others, religions that consider themselves exclusive holders of God’s favor, religions that place repugnant and offensive titles on those not part of their elite membership, religions that look to usurp government and establish theocracies, religions that look to impose their limited and narrow moralities upon people who hold to a different belief system, or religions that perpetuate any form of hate among people of color, sexuality, gender, marital status, or any other form of social or personal identification. These are the religions that have brought us to the unacceptable point we now find ourselves. These are the religions that excuse the dismantling of headstones, encourage the burning of a mosque in Florida, and look right past the murder of Hindus in Kansas.
We can no longer tolerate religions that say one has a right to a parcel of land to the exclusion of another religion. We can no longer tolerate religions that encourage the ongoing animosity between other religions.
Those within religious bodies must look up from their constant self-serving prayers that never cease a litany of favors requested from their deity, realize the messengers of hate that their religions have become, and press those in leadership to either make a change or be replaced. Religions do not exist without followers. Now is perhaps the time for those who have followed to become the leaders toward a new direction, back to core beliefs, back to inclusion and peace.
We have often heard the phrase, “We can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way.”
Religion in America specifically, and to a lesser extent around the world, faces that same choice. Those coming behind us, those who hold an intelligence we never knew, those who understand the meaning of life from a very different perspective where answers are not found in ancient texts but in double-blind studies with extensive peer review, those who have no long-standing regard for pointless traditions, are growing rapidly in number. They are much better than my generation at rejecting hate. At the same time, however, they are also, in overwhelming numbers rejecting religion.
The “easy way” is for the religious to adjust themselves, find a different way of communicating, and demonstrating core values that are not patently offensive to the rest of the world.
The “hard way” is for the religious to remain indignant and defiant as their numbers decrease, until they are seen as nothing more than doddering old fools, and their empty buildings are left to disintegrate into rubble.
Make a choice. One way or the other, this hate has to end.
We must do something about the terror that hasn’t happened
The following is satire. You should be able to tell that, but we’re taking this precaution just in case. Some of you have been watching too much Alex Jones, Suzanne.
The Short Version
First Bowling Green. Then Atlanta. And now, Sweden. The rate of non-terrorist activities by non-terrorists has accelerated over the past month to levels so dramatic as to demand a non-response. We must not do something and we must not do that something immediately before the entire world is out of control with non-activities not happening anywhere. The problem is real. Sort of.
Brace Yourself, This Isn’t Pretty
We thought we were safe. Right here, in Middle America, which looks nothing at all like Middle Earth, we thought we were safe. We thought we were protected. We thought we were healthy.
We were wrong. We were misled. We were fooled.
We didn’t know that there are non-terrorist all over the United States. Real people who dare to be non-threatening with their lifestyles. People we pass on the sidewalk every day who might well be on their way to doing something totally harmless and innocent. We never know.
They look like you and me, these non-terrorists. In fact, for all I know, you could be one of them. Are you? Would you tell me if you were? Can I even trust you with this article?
We are now a nation, nay, a world on edge. The incidents reported by the representatives of our White House administration have confirmed the severity of the situation on multiple instances now. The people who haven’t been lost. The crimes that haven’t been committed.
First, there was the Bowling Green Massacre. Oh, the horror! I can hardly bear to type about the tragedy as I sit here with my fourth cup of coffee this morning. Thinking about all that didn’t happen, the lives that weren’t ruined, the families that weren’t torn apart by that horrible, horrible non-incident, causes me to not shudder with fear. Bowling Green is so close to where we live, a mere four hours’ drive away if you don’t get caught in a speed trap just outside Louisville. How could something so non-earth shattering happen right here, right in our own neighbor’s backyard?
Then, not striking another blow to our heart, came the incident in Atlanta. We love Atlanta. We sort of lived there once, but stayed in outlying counties so we wouldn’t have to pay Fulton County taxes. Atlanta is very near and dear to us and it almost broke my heart to hear of the terrible tragedy that didn’t happen there. In fact, I didn’t know several of the people who weren’t killed that fateful night. They were all wonderful people who are now doomed to living wonderful lives all because some madman didn’t do something wicked that fateful night.
And now, just this past weekend, the level of non-terror escalated as it jumped across the not-a-real-pond known as the Atlantic Ocean and invaded Sweden with unseen force. Sweden is such a noble country, with lovely people who have immortalized fish by giving them their country’s name and possibly citizenship. They are endearing and attractive and frequently blonde. How could they ever fall victimless to such an excruciating level of non-terror in just one night? We didn’t want to believe it was true, but there stood our Commander-In-Orange declaring the non-tragedy himself. When the concern over non-terror reaches our nation’s highest office, we have no choice left but to pay attention.
We must guard ourselves against this non-terror. We must protect ourselves from the things that cannot invade us. Our government has proven itself unable to stop these repeated attacks of nothingness. They could happen anywhere. We never know when we ourselves might not become victims of some horrible attack by those evil and wicked non-terrorists. We are every one of us at risk. No one is safe.
What can we do? What should we do? I don’t know that there is anything that can stop this growing reign of non-terror. There are people all around us, every day, and there is no way to tell who might be a non-terrorist and who isn’t. It’s not like they all walk around with “I’m a Republican” bumper stickers on their asses. We don’t have the space to put all the non-terrorists in prison, or send them off to Guantanamo. Their numbers are too many. Non-terrorists have thoroughly infiltrated our society in ways we can’t even begin to imagine.
Still, there are some things we can do to try and minimize the consequences of these non-terroristic activities should they occur in our communities and among our friends and family.
- Call these events what they are: non-terror. Don’t try and sugar coat it by saying they were misstatements of alternative facts. We must face the horrible truth that there is non-terror among us or else we can never begin to eradicate it from our lives.
- Be vigilant. Look around you. If you think you don’t see something, don’t say something. You never know when your assumption of nothing might be correct.
- Beware of Faux News Network. Apparently, based upon reports from the Cheeto-In-Charge, they were the ones who shared inside information of the non-terroristic activity occurring all over Sweden. We suspect they are colluding directly with the non-terrorists in an attempt to beat other news organizations to the scoop on non-terror. The Faux Network looks to become the champions of covering nothing where ever it may occur.
- Be careful of what you smoke. I think the former prime minister of Sweden, Carl Bildt, was being very astute when he asked of #45, “What has he been smoking?” It may very well be that smoking certain non-tobacco products might make us more vulnerable to the non-terrorist events and their aftermath. We might be better off if we stick to smoking things that we already know will kill us.
- Don’t attack them before they don’t attack us. We have to consider the possibility that we have aggravated this increase in non-terror through our own aggressive actions. We’ve been trying to do something when, in fact, the better approach would be to do nothing. We must become passionate about doing nothing toward everyone who wants to do nothing to us. To help us do more nothing, we should consider removing from office the people who want us to do something, especially stupid somethings like building walls and hating people. Those are the very actions that led more people to commit acts of non-terror.
I cannot sit here and promise you that any of those things will work, though. My vision of a non-terror-free world may be a pipe dream. Non-terror could very well be the new non-reality. There is every chance that our children and grandchildren will grow up thinking that these non-terroristic events are the norm and will not think twice when they or their little friends become victims of non-terror. Oh, what a horrible, horrible world we leave them.
Still, we have an obligation to try. We have to spread the word about non-terror. We must call out non-terrorists on social media. We must confront non-terrorists in places of power where ever they may be.
We cannot afford to be silent. Non-terror has claimed too many non-lives. Speak up now. The world begs this of you. Do not be silent. See those buttons down below this article? Use them.
Found on the digital floor
I never have been the most graceful person on the planet. I trip over nothing, fall over anything, and have an uncanny ability to not see that giant obstruction standing directly in my path. I’ve gone through life with a never-ending array of cuts and bruises on my shins, knees, hips, and elbows. There’s always a sore spot somewhere.
What makes being clumsy especially challenging is what happens when you’re carrying something. How many white shirts did I ruin with a splash of coffee before I learned to stop wearing them? All it would take is one loose thread in the carpet, my foot would find it, and I’d stumble just enough to turn that white shirt brown. The more valuable the thing I was carrying, the more troubling the fall would be.
It doesn’t seem all that long ago when one of the things I would frequently carry were trays of photo slides. Those things never were secure and it never seemed to take much to upend the whole thing and send slides scooting across the floor. There would always be a few that would escape under some random piece of furniture and not found until months later.
Finding those random slides, though, could be exciting, if they weren’t ruined. They would bring back to memory some long-forgotten photo shoot, or a model who we hadn’t seen in years, or stories of some little out-of-the-way place I couldn’t find again. Then would come the challenge of trying to find the rest of the original set and returning the slide to its proper place.
We don’t have those problems with digital files, obviously, but we do have problems of another kind. Namely, I’m really bad about nesting folders and then giving them some bland label that does nothing to tell me what’s nested inside. Only when I’m desperately searching for an image I know exists somewhere in this mess do I occasionally come across those folders and become sidetracked by their contents.
Hence, this week’s gallery. I won’t embarrass myself by saying how far down the nesting chain these were, but it’s been a couple of years since this folder was opened. What’s here are some of my favorites from that collection. There’s no real cohesion, as they were specifically processed to go with specific articles somewhere back in the long ago but not too terribly far, far away. They’re just pictures scattered across the digital floor that we picked up and dusted off for your enjoyment.
As always, clicking on any thumbnail opens the full gallery slideshow.
[tg_masonry_gallery gallery_id=”10897″ layout=”contain” columns=”3″]
What he sees he don’t believe
The Short Version
While the president and those sympathetic to him rant on about fake news and lying reporters, the true onus is on citizens who are far too willing to believe anything they read or hear based on their existing biases. If the narrative of a story supports their belief system, a person is more likely to believe something at face value without checking for validation of the source.
The Dirty Details
I have been a fan of the rock group The Doobie Brothers since I was in high school, which as a very, very long time ago. One of the band’s biggest hits, penned by Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald, is What A Fool Believes. The song is about a guy who refuses to accept that the girl for whom he longs wasn’t into him back in the day and he still doesn’t stand a chance now. Yet, he keeps believing, despite all the evidence to the contrary. He, therefore, is a fool.
The song is catchy enough to make abject desperation sound attractive. Take a listen.
I’m going to guess that anyone over 30, maybe younger depending on one’s life experience, knows someone like this. You can’t tell them anything. They have their mind made up, whether it’s about a girl or the quality of food at a restaurant or how “dope” their first car was. We see them trying to get a girl they’ll never get, or still trying to relive 1979, and we just shake our heads. There’s nothing anyone can do to sway their course.
When a fool latches onto a belief, they don’t let go no matter how much evidence to the contrary one presents them with. Facts are irrelevant. Like the guy in the song, they keep replaying the fantasy in their mind and even as she stands up to walk away, he doesn’t realize his mistake. Fools never do. They’re blind to what is so obvious to everyone else.
Part of the problem with people like this is that we have always tolerated their foolishness. So he wants to pine for a girl that he can’t have. Okay, just let it go. What harm can it do to let him have that fantasy?
Yet, one fantasy leads to another. Fools surround themselves with the tales they want to hear, blocking out reality piece by piece until they are totally out of touch and disconnected. Eventually, they are no longer able to function within society. At that point, we often stop calling them fools and start calling them crazy, which is a bit insulting to people with real mental illness. With such a strong disconnect from reality, these people become a danger to themselves and others.
How bad can it get? Let me show you what happens when a fool is confronted with reality (with apologies should an ad run in front of the embedded video):
See what he did there? The deflection is first, “Well, that was just information that was given to me,” and then seconds later, “I saw it around somewhere.”
Let’s not be confused by the facts, is what the president means to say. He doesn’t even get the number of his own electoral college votes correct. For the record, that number is 304, not 306, and yes, it matters because it’s the difference between telling the truth and telling a lie. As for the claim that his victory was the biggest? Again, let’s not engage in any form of information other than the facts:
- Obama, 2012: 332 electoral votes
- Obama, 2008: 365 electoral votes
- Clinton, 1996: 379 electoral votes
- Clinton, 1992: 370 electoral votes
- GHW Bush, 1988: 426 electoral votes
That last one, Bush Sr.’s 462 electoral votes, is especially important because the president attempts to head off the reporter’s facts by saying interrupting with “among Republicans.” No sir, not even among Republicans.
One has to wonder why the president continues to engage in this electoral college penis measuring contest when time after time he’s proven to lose. His victory is not the largest. Not even close.
Oh yeah, the song explains that, doesn’t it?
He came from somewhere back in here long ago
The sentimental fool don’t see
Tryin’ hard to recreate what had yet to be created
Repetition. That’s the name of the game. Building off the concept that if one repeats a lie often enough that it becomes truth, the president and those around him continue to claim their victory was large because they want the lie to become truth. Repeat. Rewind. Repeat. Rewind.
Fools believe some incredible things and we’ve tolerated them for years and years. Only now, with fools in charge of the government, what a fool believes can actually put the rest of us in danger.
Let’s take, for example, the whole concept that we need clean drinking water to live. Only a fool would believe anything different, right? The amount of evidence is overwhelming. I mean, all we have to do is point toward Flint, Michigan as an example, right?
But then, THIS happened just this week:
Because, you know, who needs clean water when it puts a few hundred (not thousands) of jobs at risk?
What a fool believes, he sees
No wise man has the power
To reason away
What it seems to be
Is always better than nothin’
And nothin’ at all
Foolishness isn’t limited only to certain heads of state, of course. There are fools all over the place saying all kinds of crazy things. Let’s consider this fool for a moment:
Exquisite design by @ArkEncounter artists for new Diorama depicting wicked population in the pre-Flood world to be installed @ArkEncounter pic.twitter.com/4JHQiTEWbG
— Ken Ham (@aigkenham) February 16, 2017
Take a really good look at those pictures. I dare you. Try to not laugh too hard, I’d hate for you to hurt yourself. If you think you’re seeing a depiction of really burly humans fighting really small dinosaurs in gladiator-style combat, you’re not mistaken. That would be exactly what Ken Ham and the fools at Ark Encounter believe.
Never mind that dinosaurs were extinct more than 64 million years before homo sapiens ever began evolving, let alone learned how to work out and get all buff. Fools can’t be bothered with things like science because it gets in the way of their fantasy. In fact, fools like this do their best to demonize science so that they can believe whatever the hell they want without those nasty little facts spoiling their totally unrealistic story.
Now, it would be one thing if we were pulling stories from, say, twenty-five years ago. Something pre-Internet where there was no wealth of factual information not only at your fingertips but sufficiently indexed so that you can find it in a reasonable amount of time. AKA: the Dark Ages. We’re not going that far back, though. Everything I’ve mentioned so far has happened this week! And guess what? I’m not done! There’s still more!
This next one really pains me a bit because it involves someone whose work I’ve respected for a very long time. I’m going to post a video that is over an hour long. Watch as much of it as you wish. However, be very much aware that these are fools talking.
https://youtu.be/DqWhzKewILk
Please, allow me to fast forward through the horseshit for you. What is being claimed here is that vaccines, you know the shots we get starting at birth to prevent really horrible and deadly disease, are dangerous. So dangerous, in fact, that famed actor Robert De Niro, and cousin that always pops up looking for free food Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., are offering a $100,000 reward for anyone who can “prove” that vaccines are safe.
Dear Mr. DeNiro, Here’s your proof: How many people do you know with polio? None, correct? There’s your proof that the vaccine works. Please give Dr. Jonas Salk the reward. Okay, since he’s not around, perhaps the Salk Legacy Foundation could use the funds. The science has endured over 60 years of continued research and still shows to be effective in defending us against disease.
Now, does every vaccine work with such a high rate of efficacy? Nope. We’re not silly enough to believe that, either. What we do believe, though, is that, among the general population, vaccines are the best way of preventing common forms of disease.
What’s scary about this particular set of fools is that they’ve been telling this same lie, perpetuating this same fantasy, for so very long now that people whose opinions we once respected are being taken in. If otherwise intelligent beings can be fooled, what does that do to the very large portion of the population for whom intelligence is a pipe dream? Those are the ones who fail to vaccinate their children, thereby putting all the other children around them at risk. These people aren’t just fools, these people are dangerous!
There are times when I am tempted to think that the Internet is nothing more than one giant tabloid. The kind of things that fools are willing to believe is extensive and, quite honestly, embarrassing to the human race. When we have mountains of evidence supporting the facts and we still refuse to believe them, can our own extinction be very far behind? I remember laughing at the people we would see picking up tabloids at the grocery. I can’t laugh at all the people reading the same kind of nonsense on the Internet because there’s too many of them! I’d crack a rib from laughing if it wasn’t so scary at the same time.
What gets me is that young people, people who have had the opportunity to be educated in such matters, are still believing in some of the same fairy tales that were common when I was a kid. Again, sticking with things that happened just this week.
No, I didn’t blur the names. Fools need to be called out on their foolishness. Part of what bothers me is that this is such an old myth and has been disproven so many times that it isn’t even funny. Yet, just as with everything else we’ve listed, people are still believing this nonsense. The whole issue of chemtrails goes back to 1958 when NASA started using lithium in the launch of certain rockets in order to better observe certain atmospheric conditions. Conspiracy theorists twisted the science and ran with it.
NASA is now and always has been very open about the vapor trails they use, what’s in them, the amounts used, and why the use is necessary. They have an entire section of their website devoted to this funny thing we keep mentioning called the facts.
What might be even more disturbing from Amee’s post, however, is the belief shared by many like her that the government is trying to kill us. Kill us all. Dead. I have some problems with this concept.
First, if jet vapor is the means of dispersal for whatever poison is being spread among us, it’s not working. We are, generally speaking, living longer and healthier than any generation before us. So much so, in fact, that the leading causes of death in the US are our own fault due to silly things such as overeating and lack of exercise. We are doing a much better job of killing ourselves than the government is.
I’ve been watching jet vapor trails since I was a small boy. If anyone was in a position to be poisoned at an early age, it would be me. Yet, here I am, perhaps not the healthiest person in the world, but what ails me is in no way the result of any kind of external poisoning, either by the government or that cook I accidentally insulted back in SoHo.
The nonsense surrounding ways in which the government is allegedly trying to poison us is nothing short of insane. Do a quick search and you see claims that the government is really heavily involved in this whole trying to kill us scheme. They’re allegedly using:
- Flouride
- Food additives
- Women working
- Homosexuality
- Tax incentives
- Recycled paper
- Grocery receipts
- Food packaging
- Gum
- Artificial sweeteners
On and on this list goes and it leaves the logical mind thinking that if the government really is trying to poison then, they’re really, really bad at it. Why would I say that? We’re all still alive. We have more centenarians living now than at any time in the past two thousand years. In fact, we’re so very good at staying alive that we have exceeded the planet’s level of sustainability for all of us. We passed that point back in 2009.
Oh, and let’s not bother thinking about the lack of logic in trying to solve the world’s overpopulation problems by killing off Americans. The population of the United States is largely insignificant on a global scale that encompasses some 7.5 BILLION people. Now, for those of you who are not stellar at math, the current US population is only around 375 million, so we don’t even take up the .5 in the global calculation. If one is going to perform a mass genocide in the name of sustainability, one needs to start on a different, more populous continent.
She musters a smile for his nostalgic tale
Never comin’ near what he wanted to say
Only to realize
It never really was
The frightening thing at this juncture is that the list of fools goes on and on. We’ve not even touched on those who still believe things such as trickle-down economics or that a “paleo” diet is healthy. There are hundreds of belief systems that are nothing more than pure foolishness and believed by pure fools. Trying to list them all would be exhausting and, quite honestly, I have better things to do.
People whose wisdom far surmounts mine have written of fools before. Perhaps we would do well to heed their advice:
It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere. -Voltaire
Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something. -Plato
The world is not fair, and often fools, cowards, liars and the selfish hide in high places. -Bryant H. McGill
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts. -Bertrand Russell
Wise men don’t need advice. Fools won’t take it. -Benjamin Franklin
The wise have always said the same things, and fools, who are the majority have always done just the opposite. -Arthur Schopenhauer
And then, there’s the Doobie Brothers, who know what a fool believes. And every time there’s a White House press conference now, I keep hearing that song in the back of my mind.
Immediately followed by this:
When will they ever learn?
Page 6 of 39
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