Worse than Ben Lyons: Cambridge police

"Driving While Black" is a "crime" for which many African-Americans are pulled over. To this we can add the "crimes" of "Swimming While Black" (from a recent incident in Philadelphia) and "Breaking into your own house while Black." To make matters worse for the Cambridge police, the victim of this racial profiling is Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a highly respected Harvard professor.

BOSTON — Police responding to a call about "two black males" breaking into a home near Harvard University ended up arresting the man who lives there – Henry Louis Gates Jr., the nation's pre-eminent black scholar.

Gates had forced his way through the front door because it was jammed, his lawyer said. Colleagues call the arrest last Thursday afternoon a clear case of racial profiling.

Cambridge police say they responded to the well-maintained two-story home after a woman reported seeing "two black males with backpacks on the porch," with one "wedging his shoulder into the door as if he was trying to force entry."

By the time police arrived, Gates was already inside. Police say he refused to come outside to speak with an officer, who told him he was investigating a report of a break-in.

"Why, because I'm a black man in America?" Gates said, according to a police report written by Sgt. James Crowley. The Cambridge police refused to comment on the arrest Monday.

Gates – the director of Harvard's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research – initially refused to show the officer his identification, but then gave him a Harvard University ID card, according to police.

"Gates continued to yell at me, accusing me of racial bias and continued to tell me that I had not heard the last of him," the officer wrote.

Gates said he turned over his driver's license and Harvard ID – both with his photos – and repeatedly asked for the name and badge number of the officer, who refused. He said he then followed the officer as he left his house onto his front porch, where he was handcuffed in front of other officers, Gates said in a statement released by his attorney, fellow Harvard scholar Charles Ogletree, on a Web site Gates oversees, TheRoot.com
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He was arrested on a disorderly conduct charge after police said he "exhibited loud and tumultuous behavior." He was released later that day on his own recognizance. An arraignment was scheduled for Aug. 26.

Gates, 58, also refused to speak publicly Monday, referring calls to Ogletree.

"He was shocked to find himself being questioned and shocked that the conversation continued after he showed his identification," Ogletree said.

Ogletree declined to say whether he believed the incident was racially motivated, saying "I think the incident speaks for itself."

Some of Gates' African-American colleagues say the arrest is part of a pattern of racial profiling in Cambridge.

Allen Counter, who has taught neuroscience at Harvard for 25 years, said he was stopped on campus by two Harvard police officers in 2004 after being mistaken for a robbery suspect. They threatened to arrest him when he could not produce identification.

"We do not believe that this arrest would have happened if professor Gates was white," Counter said. "It really has been very unsettling for African-Americans throughout Harvard and throughout Cambridge that this happened."

The Rev. Al Sharpton is vowing to attend Gates' arraignment.

"This arrest is indicative of at best police abuse of power or at worst the highest example of racial profiling I have seen," Sharpton said. "I have heard of driving while black and even shopping while black but now even going to your own home while black is a new low in police community affairs."

Ogletree said Gates had returned from a trip to China on Thursday with a driver, when he found his front door jammed. He went through the back door into the home – which he leases from Harvard – shut off an alarm and worked with the driver to get the door open. The driver left, and Gates was on the phone with the property's management company when police first arrived.

Ogletree also disputed the claim that Gates, who was wearing slacks and a polo shirt and carrying a cane, was yelling at the officer.

"He has an infection that has impacted his breathing since he came back from China, so he's been in a very delicate physical state," Ogletree said.

Lawrence D. Bobo, the W.E.B Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard, said he met with Gates at the police station and described his colleague as feeling humiliated and "emotionally devastated."

"It's just deeply disappointing but also a pointed reminder that there are serious problems that we have to wrestle with," he said.

Bobo said he hoped Cambridge police would drop the charges and called on the department to use the incident to review training and screening procedures it has in place.

The Middlesex district attorney's office said it could not do so until after Gates' arraignment. The woman who reported the apparent break-in did not return a message Monday.

Gates joined the Harvard faculty in 1991 and holds one of 20 prestigious "university professors" positions at the school. He also was host of "African American Lives," a PBS show about the family histories of prominent U.S. blacks, and was named by Time magazine as one of the 25 most influential Americans in 1997.

"I was obviously very concerned when I learned on Thursday about the incident," Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust said in a statement. "He and I spoke directly and I have asked him to keep me apprised."

Originally posted at The Huffington Post

Worse than Ben Lyons - The RNC

Keepin' it real. Real sexist.After John McCain announced that Sarah Palin would be his running mate in the presidential campaign, the Republican Party was shocked--shocked!--to discover that sexism still existed in the United States. Every criticism of her was turned into an attack on all women--although some of them were--and she was held up as a fighter against the "old boys club" of the Republican Party in Alaska. An odd compliment, coming from the old boys club in Washington, DC.

But now that the campaign is over, they can go back to their old ways. In spite of Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele's promise that their attacks on Obama and the Democrats would be "classy", there is no evidence that they will be.

Case in point: the RNC released a video this week attacking Nancy Pelosi's accusation that she was lied to by the CIA. Personally, I could believe both that the CIA lies (even to Congress) and that Pelosi and other Democrats don't want to admit that they actually knew that the Bush administration was torturing people.

But the RNC has descended into pure sexism in their attacks on Pelosi. They released this video which begins with the James Bond theme and Nancy Pelosi in the cross hairs, tending to her hair. The video ends with the image to the left, basically equating Pelosi with the Goldfinger character "Pussy Galore".

According to Politico.com, this is only one of a series of sexist attacks on Pelosi:

Earlier this week, Pittsburgh radio host Jim Quinn referred to the speaker on his program as “this bitch”; last week, syndicated radio host Neal Boortz opined “how fun it is to watch that hag out there twisting in the wind.”

There has also been a steady stream of taunts about the speaker’s appearance, and whether it’s been surgically enhanced. On CNN’s “State of the Union,” Republican strategist Alex Castellanos said, “I think if Speaker Pelosi were still capable of human facial expression, we’d see she’d be embarrassed.”

This is exactly the sort of backroom frat-boy humor that occurs in any old boys club, where making crude comments about women and their bodies is considered just plain fun. Although unlike most old boys clubs, the RNC is incapable of telling the difference between their offensive backroom banter and what is acceptable as public discourse.

Stay classy, Michael Steele.

Worse than Ben Lyons - This trailer

This fake trailer may be worse than Ben Lyons insofar as it misrepresents The Shining, but the guy who made it is totally awesome:



I found this through an otherwise uninteresting article at Big Hollywood.

Worse than Ben Lyons - Virginia Foxx

What is an unknown Republican Congressperson supposed to do when their party is in a shrinking minority and they want get their name out to the broader public? Well, there are two options. One, do something beneficial for all of humanity so that maybe your name will be associated with some great deed and maybe even you will be remembered in history as somebody important. Or, two, take a page out of Michelle Bachman's book and say something crazy.

Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) took the latter option, claiming that gay-bashing victim Matthew Sheppard was not killed because he was gay at all:



I was in college in 1998 at San Francisco State University at the time Sheppard was killed. In response, some of us organized a speak-out about homophobia on campus and a march at Castro and Market on Halloween of about 1,000 people. Granted, it's not hard to get a bunch of pro-gay people together at that place and time, but it was important to speak out, even in SF. But there was also an outpouring of opposition to homophobia with small rallies all across the country.

Foxx's lunacy--not just calling it a "myth" or a "misunderstanding" but a "hoax"--sounds all too much light nutty paranoia. The only reason to say this sort of thing on the floor of Congress--even if she believed it were true--is to rally a voting base of ultra-right homophobes.

Worse than Ben Lyons - Harry Denton

Harry Denton's Starlight Room is a hip/shmancy nightclub in San Francisco at the top of the Sir Francis Drake hotel on Union Square, although in their defense, I hear that they don't have a dress code and have a regular drag queen show.

Anyway, a friend recently forwarded me an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about cheap dining options (cheap by SF standards, anyway), which included this line:

Harry Denton's Starlight Room launches a new monthly dance party tonight ($10, 9 p.m.-2 a.m.) with DJs and drink specials, including the "Recession" - Pabst Blue Ribbon in a brown paper bag ($4)

That's right, for only $14 you can have a "recession" inspired beer! Which assumes, of course, you have not been laid off and are willing to pony up this kind of money rather than the less than one dollar per PBR you can get at Safeway, where a 12 pack goes for $7.50.

Way to show that you are down with the little guy, Harry Denton.

Worse than Ben Lyons - Debbie Schlussel

Way, way, WAY worse. If you read my previous comments on her take on Taken, it should come as no surprise that her "film criticism" is merely a superficial shell encapsulating her right-wing worldview. Her most recent writing to have caught my attention--unfortunately highlighted on the Big Hollywood blog--is a "review" and a follow-up article about Watchmen.

What's wrong with it? First, Debbie Schlussel wants you to die:

The e-mails they [Watchmen defenders] send me and the comments they make about how "deep," "edgy" and "profound" this vile piece of trash (which is none of these) is, reminds me of the blind statements of followers of Jim Jones. And we all know what happened after they drank he purple Kool-Aid. If only this movie could achieve that result, it would be the most fantastic exercise in natural selection ever conducted in America.

She calls it "a movie based on a comic book promoting rape, torture, and brutal killing." But the book does no such thing. These vile acts are committed to show us how despicable these characters are. The point is that superheroes are glamorized in comic books but if we had "real" masked vigilantes, they would be pretty awful people. It is not so much to make a point about superheroes as it is about who rules our society and how heroes are conjured to ideologically defend it. In short, saying that the graphic novel condones rape is like saying that Doubt balks at making "a clear condemnation of child molestation."

But that appears to be a standard right-wing tactic--if something is shown in less than your starkly black-and-white misinformed view of the world, say that it condones the evil thing being discussed. You think that not all Muslims are terrorists and that we should understand why some Muslims hate America? You condone terrorism! This line of attack makes very poor politics and even worse film criticism.

It is also hypocritical. For all her railing against condoning "torture and brutal killing," she enthusiastically praised the movie Taken, a movie whose hero both "tortures" and "brutally kills" people. This can easily be seen as an argument in defense of these tactics, and Schlussel's article cheering on the movie can be seen as a defense of them as well. But for Schlussel it is OK, because in Taken the victims are Muslims.

Among the other horrible things Schlussel objects to in Watchmen:

* Superhero "The Comedian" (a bad Robert Downey, Jr. look-alike) brutally beating and raping another superhero--this movie concludes that the rape was a good thing b/c the slutty superhero had a slutty superhero daughter from him;

* Superhero "The Comedian" shooting and killing a Vietnamese woman because she's pregnant with his kid;

* Superhero "The Comedian" being thrown off a roof of a tall building--we see his body hit the ground and the blood flow out;

Having not seen the movie but only read the book, all of this sounds very familiar. And while I can't comment on whether the film pulls this material off, it seems unlikely that the "movie concludes that the rape was a good thing." The whole point of all of this in the book was that these vigilantes would be very nasty people, nothing like the boyscout-like Superman who fought for "truth, justice, and the American way."

Maybe if the Comedian had been an Arab or a Muslim rather than a white American mercenary working for the US government, then Debbie Schlussel would have found much more to like in the portrayal of his disgusting acts and his ultimate demise.

Finally, Schlussel comes up with this brilliant comment:

It's 1985 and Nixon is President. We've won in Vietnam . . . Wow, isn't that cool that they got it wrong on purpose? I'm so amazed at this "high-brow art" of deliberately getting dates and timelines wrong, you know, just to be "artistic," and get the drooling of the critics. That is sooooo genius. Like way totally cool.

It was pretty clear in the book (although I don't think it was ever spelled out) that Dr. Manhattan's powers guaranteed the dominance of US imperialism and helped Nixon stay in power for decades. That is actually kind of interesting when you think about it for a second.

But that is apparently more than Schlussel was willing to do.

Worse than Ben Lyons - Prince Harry

That would be Prince Harry in the photo to the right, caught recently--in a video of his own making--using the racial epithets "raghead" and "paki". The latter is considered a bit more offensive in the UK than the US.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has found it in himself to stand up for this fool (the lackey British politicians always do), saying:

'Prince Harry knows these comments aren't acceptable. He's made an apology.

'I think the British people are good enough to give someone who has been a role model for young people and has done well fighting for our country - gone into very difficult situations with bravery - the benefit of the doubt.'

Yeah, some role model, dressing up like Nazi. And does he really need the benefit of the doubt, or should he be held to a higher standard? The benefit of the doubt was not given to Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian man running to catch his subway train in London in July 2005, shot to death by the police who assumed he was a suicide bomber.

The family of the young man Harry called a "paki" is still pissed, calling Harry a "coward" for not issuing a televised apology, and calling the term a "disgraceful insult".

This is all the result of aristocrats stuck in their bubble, knowing what all the little forks at their fancy dinners are used for but having no clue as to what ordinary people really think is appropriate.

Or, as Eddie Izzard said in Dressed to Kill, "This is what happens when cousins marry."

Worse than Ben Lyons - Big Hollywood

I just got back from vacation and had my first chance to take a look at the new right-wing movie site Big Hollywood. Oh boy--maybe I should head back to Las Vegas. I sometimes worry about having enough material every week to maintain a Web site to stopping Ben Lyons--most weeks the only things that happens is an episode of At the Movies. So I try to supplement the Ben Lyons news with other movie- and culture-related articles. After taking a look at Big Hollywood, I imagine I will have a regular and easy target for ridicule. Unfortunately, there is also a fellow who contributes to the blog named "Scott W. Johnson". Rest assured, I am the real Scott Johnson, please do not accept any imitations.

Here are a few choice pieces (and some commentary by me):

John Nolte reviews Doubt:

[T]he portrayal of the sympathetic child molester, the onscreen hyper-sexualization of young girls, and child characters liberated through sexual behavior, for a number of years now the film industry has waged a drip-drip campaign in favor of the normalization of sex between adults and underage children. The offensive is a quiet, insidious one slowly slithering into the mainstream, and like all Leftist movements, will not stop until it gets what it wants . . .

. . . Laden with subtext referencing the daily headlines exposing the Catholic church’s disgraceful sexual abuse scandal from a few years ago, Doubt does those victims a disservice. All of us Catholics are tired of Hollywood taking shots, but where openhanded criticism is appropriate they balk, even at a clear condemnation of child molestation.

Scott's comment: Holy crap, I loved Doubt! Does that mean I am going to turn into a child molester?

Hooray For Big Hollywood by Andrew Klavan:

Top of the box office so far: the blatantly pro-war on terror Dark Knight. The Christian Prince Caspian is at number eleven. The pro-abstinence Twilight is currently at sixteen and still hot. And perhaps most delightfully, and of course most ignored by the MSM: the Christian pro-marriage film Fireproof, despite suffering from its shoestring budget, still out-performed such favorites of our media elites as W, Religulous and Stop-Loss.

Scott's comment: Even Ben Lyons, who early on tried to ride the coattails of the Twilight phenomenon, panned it once it came out. Its success is not a sign of anything other than the rabid lust of teenage girls for Robert Pattinson and possibly the spread of STDs and unwanted pregnancies. It's message is, well, contradictory at best. And don't even get me started on The Dark Knight.

Does Hollywood Love Christians Now? by Dallas Jenkins:

After my first feature film Hometown Legend had been sold to Warner Brothers, I had some meetings with the WB marketing team in 2001. Near the end of their presentation, I said, “Now you know that this film has some faith elements in it, and my Dad (the executive producer) wrote the Left Behind books, so we could take advantage of his fan base and also promote the film to churches and youth groups.”

Scott's comment: Oh my God! Is Dallas Jenkins the Ben Lyons of right-wing filmmaking?

Worse than Ben Lyons - Larry King

I use to do this as a regular thing--just to keep a little perspective, I like to talk about people who are worse than Ben Lyons, or dumber than Ben Lyons, or have done something worse (or dumber) recently. After all, Ben has never killed anybody or stolen anything (unless you count disappointed advertiser money), he is just a scourge on film criticism. There is a whole world to screw up that has nothing to do with movies.

So here it is--Larry King is a fucking idiot. I am watching Larry King Live right now and he has a group of UFO guys on. At first I thought this was an Orson Welles War of the Worlds thing--set up a hoax, get people to go nuts, then admit you are just doing it all for entertainment. Hey, it's New Years Eve, why not have some fun?

No, that would make sense. Instead, in the year that gave us the most obvious and stupid Bigfoot hoax in a field full of obvious and stupid hoaxes, King falls for it all over again. This time it is aliens.

King just said, "Do you think there is a national defense plan for aliens? Sounds crazy, that's up next." Then he asks his guests "Do you think there is a plan for invasion by aliens?"

With crack journalism like this, I understand why Bush got away with invading Iraq based on faulty intelligence.

Worse than Ben Lyons - Cell phone lady

I went to see Rachel Getting Married this weekend and I find myself agreeing with Lyons over Mankiewicz on this one. It was funny, gut wrenching, awkward, and painful, just like ordinary family life.

Unfortunately, one of Ben's followers seems to have made her way to my theater based on his recommendation. In the middle of the movie, she gets up to answer her cell phone. That would be annoying enough, but she is not sitting on the aisle and has to climb over her friend to get out of her seat, then walks up the aisle STOMP! STOMP! STOMP! STOMP! to the exit.

A couple of minutes later, she walks back in, this time sitting in the aisle seat. That's fortunate because of course her cell phone goes off again! Apparently, THIS is the call she was waiting for, the last one was just a robocall to make sure that she knew that unless you vote for Prop 8 the state is going to require kindergarten teachers to show gay pornography every day to their students. Anyway, off she goes again, STOMP! STOMP! STOMP! STOMP! All this while the Princess Diaries is sitting in an AA meeting and breaking our hearts with a tragic story that I won't spoil.

Thanks a lot, Ben Lyons. It looks like your film-going behavior is rubbing on regular people. I guess that means you are an effective film critic.

Worse than Ben Lyons - Elizabeth Dole

In defense of the ignorant American voter, it's time to take a look at the scare-mongering Republican politician. It looks like some people have not learned their lesson from the backlash John McCain has found from stupid tactics like these.

The voice at the end saying "There is no God," is supposed to sound like Kay Hagan, Elizabeth Dole's opponent in the North Carolina Senate race.

Worse than Ben Lyons?

Oh yes, you can do much worse than Ben Lyons. I mean, just to be fair. For example, it must be said that Ben is by far not the worst film critic associated with Jeffery Lyons. Mediocrity isn't enough--it takes a particular sort of evil to stoop that low into the depths of hell.

Then why pick on Ben? Because he has helped destroy my cherished At The Movies. Once that train wreck has been canceled or Lyons is replaced, and that can't be any more than six months to a year, I can put this blog to rest. In the meantime, I have a mission.

On that note, and in light of the current election season, I will have some "worse than Lyons" postings just to keep things in perspective.

First up, the lunatic right-wing American voter! Not all of them, of course. This one, form Virginia, is likely going to feel awful lonely down there once Obama wins that state on election day, which he probably will. That doesn't stop idiots like these from spewing their filth with a proud ignorance: