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| Jonathan Guijarro via Facebook |
TGIF Round-Up
Queer Film: BPM (Beats Per Minute)
France’s submission for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars, BPM (Beats Per Minute) takes an unflinching look at ACT UP Paris in the early years of the AIDS epidemic, and we get the first American trailer today.
Clip description:
In Paris in the early 1990s, a group of activists goes to battle for those stricken with HIV/AIDS, taking on sluggish government agencies and major pharmaceutical companies in bold, invasive actions. The organization is ACT UP, and its members, many of them gay and HIV-positive, embrace their mission with a literal life-or-death urgency.
Amid rallies, protests, fierce debates and ecstatic dance parties, the newcomer Nathan falls in love with Sean, the group’s radical firebrand, and their passion sparks against the shadow of mortality as the activists fight for a breakthrough.
Variety raved about the film:
What does it take to fight a pandemic? Knowledge, courage and resilience, certainly, but also rough-and-tumble argument, a range of friendships both consoling and abrasive, a healthy sense of gallows humor and soul-sustaining supplies of loud music and louder sex.
French writer-director Robin Campillo understands all of this in “BPM (Beats Per Minute),” his sprawling, thrilling, finally heart-bursting group portrait of Parisian AIDS activists in the early 1990s. A rare and invaluable non-American view of the global health crisis that decimated, among others, the gay community in the looming shadow of the 21st century, Campillo’s unabashedly untidy film stands as a hot-blooded counter to the more polite strain of political engagement present in such prestige AIDS dramas as “Philadelphia” and “Dallas Buyers Club.”
Candidly queer in its perspective and unafraid of eroticism in the face of tragedy, this robust Cannes competition entry is nonetheless emotionally immediate enough to break out of the LGBT niche.
Watch the trailer below.
#FlashbackFriday – Janet Jackson “Rhythm Nation”
Some #FlashbackFriday action as we take a trip on the “way back machine” to 1989 and Janet Jackson’s powerful “Rhythm Nation.”
I think it’s fair to say the song and video take on an even deeper cultural meaning as time goes by.
Ben Platt On Will & Grace: Stonehenge? Stonewall? Who Cares, It’s All Good Now
Last night’s Will & Grace episode found Eric McCormack’s “Will” just about to get jiggy with younger gay “Blake” played by Ben Platt.
But the getting down got laid low when “Will” realizes “Blake” is woefully undereducated about the history of the gays.
“I’m not a history puff,” declares Platt after mixing up Stonehenge with the Stonewall riots.
Watch the cute scene below.
Axios: “You Were Rex Tillerson, CEO Of Exxon”
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| Secretary of State Rex Tillerson |
In light of the recent friction reported between Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Donald Trump, smart guy Mike Allen at Axios wrote this which I feel puts a lot into perspective.
You headed one of America’s couple largest companies, and the biggest of the energy “supermajors”:
You were unusually imperious, even for a corporate big shot — waited on hand and foot by lackeys who stroked and coddled you for decades.
You had a corporate dining room, so you never had to see the rabble.
You presided over one of the most hierarchical of the world’s corporate cultures, reflecting the tone set by John D. Rockefeller.
You flew private all over the globe. You got briefing books, had your own foreign policy, and a security detail.
You were Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon.
Now you’re Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State to Donald Trump. Your life blows:
Your boss doesn’t love you, and doesn’t even think he needs someone in your job — he likes doing it himself, and thinks he should.
You don’t think much of your boss, and neither do your friends.
You’re supposed to cut your budget: always a thankless job — but one that, in this case, may not even be a good idea.
Morale in your building is terrible, and no one thinks you have juice.
You treat everyone dismissively — media, colleagues, counterparts — with predictable results.
Yes, you called your boss a “moron” during a meeting at the Pentagon. It could have been worse.
You didn’t even bother to deny it, although finally your spokesperson did. Everyone in the West Wing thinks/knows you said it.
Some people who were in the room tattled to the press. So now you have to go out and say your boss is a genius — as if you were being forced to apologize to a sibling.
And now you’re trapped. The new regime downtown wants stability. Expectations were that you’d be gone by Thanksgiving, but now that’s stretched into 2018.
On top of it all, after a perfect career, your last public act is already an obvious failure — and you have to keep doing it.
Welcome to Rex Tillerson’s life. No wonder he doesn’t feel very diplomatic.
While the White House continues to issue denials, Allen reports today that Trump advisers and allies are considering the idea of replacing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson with CIA Director Mike Pompeo — someone who’s already around the table in the Situation Room, and could make the switch without chaos.
Pay attention to Axios because the folks there correctly called the departures of Sean Spicer, Reince Priebus, and Anthony Scaramucci on their respective dates.
U.S. Loses 33,000 Jobs In September, First Job Losses In 83 Months Of Growth
The Labor Department released its official hiring and unemployment figures for September this morning.
This is the first report of job losses after 83 months of job growth.
From the New York Times:
■ The economy lost 33,000 jobs last month, the first monthly decline in employment in seven years. Wall Street economists had expected very modest employment gains of 80,000, according to Bloomberg.
■ The unemployment rate fell to 4.2 percent. August’s jobless rate was 4.4 percent.
■ The average hourly wage grew by 0.45 percent, for a year-over-year gain of 2.9 percent.
■ Revised figures for July and August showed that a total of 38,000 fewer jobs were created in those two months than previously reported.
Experts blame the job losses on Hurricanes Irma and Harvey, but President Obama was able to maintain job growth through Hurricanes Matthew and Sandy.
#ThingsThatMakeYouGoHmm
Investigators Exploring Whether Others Were In Las Vegas Shooter’s Hotel Room
While investigators continue to search for a motive for the Las Vegas shooting massacre that left 58 dead and over 500 wounded, they are also now exploring if another person had been in shooter Stephen Paddock’s room at the Mandalay Bay Hotel.
From NBC News:
Investigators are trying to nail down whether anyone else was in the hotel suite reserved by the Las Vegas gunman during the time he was registered there, multiple senior law enforcement officials briefed on the investigation into the shooting told NBC News.
The investigators are puzzled by two discoveries: First, a charger was found that does not match any of the cell phones that belonged to Stephen Paddock, the man who killed himself inside the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino after sending a barrage of bullets down on a crowd of 22,000 people below.
And second, garage records show that during a period when Paddock’s car left the hotel garage, one of his key cards was used to get into his room.
Trump Mocks Hispanic Accent During “Hispanic Heritage Month” Ceremony
Donald Trump is clearly devoid of any modicum of respect when speaking about Puerto Rico, where millions of American citizens are woefully struggling in the aftermath of Hurrican Maria.
During a ceremony today commemorating “Hispanic Heritage Month,” President Trump laughingly mocked the Latino accent in saying “PUerto Rico,” laughing, and then saying it in his usual accent.
Between the glacial pace of aid to the U.S. territory and his Twitter feud with the mayor of San Juan, it’s crystal clear this is just a wink and a smile to his racist supporters.
Watch below.
Pres. Trump: “PUerto Rico. We love PUerto Rico. And we also love Puerto Rico.” pic.twitter.com/3fbzGvybd4— Dan Linden (@DanLinden) October 6, 2017
Attorney General Issues “Religious Freedoms” Guidance Which Undermines LGBT Protections
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| Attorney General Jeff Session |
Donald Trump promised his evangelical/religious supporters he would work to undercut LGBT protections and today his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, issued new guidance to agencies that will allow a simple claim of a violation of religious freedom to justify LGBT discrimination.
From the AP:
The guidance, an attempt to deliver on President Donald Trump’s pledge to his evangelical and other religious supporters, effectively lifts a burden from religious objectors to prove that their beliefs about marriage or other topics are sincerely held.
Under the new policy, a claim of a violation of religious freedom would be enough to override concerns for the civil rights of LGBT people and anti-discrimination protections for women and others. The guidelines are so sweeping that experts on religious liberty are calling them a legal powder-keg that could prompt wide-ranging lawsuits against the government.
This new guidance comes a day after Sessions rescinded an Obama-era policy protecting transgender people from discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
More from the Washington Blade:
Key portions of the memos should be troubling to proponents of LGBT rights. The memo to agencies allows individuals to act or abstain from action according to their religious beliefs and prohibits the government from targeting religious individuals and organizations for acting on those beliefs.
Although the memo asserts the change won’t enable anti-LGBT discrimination under the law, that language is found nowhere as a limiting principle in the memos themselves. That assurance is left out in important passages asserting the primacy of religious freedom that could be construed to allow anti-LGBT discrimination.
Under the principles of the guidance, for example, a Social Security administrator charged with processing benefits applications could see an application for same-sex spousal benefits and refuse to process that application for religious reasons.
From the Human Rights Campaign:
“Today the Trump-Pence administration launched an all-out assault on LGBTQ people, women, and other minority communities by unleashing a sweeping license to discriminate,” said HRC President Chad Griffin. “This blatant attempt to further Donald Trump’s cynical and hateful agenda will enable systematic, government-wide discrimination that will have a devastating impact on LGBTQ people and their families. Donald Trump and Mike Pence have proven they will stop at nothing to target the LGBTQ community and drag our nation backwards. We will fight them every step of the way.”
FEMA Website Removes Any Stats That Show Slow Progress In Puerto Rico
The website for the Federal Emergency Management Agency has removed any statistics that might show slow progress being made in Puerto Rico regarding the response and recovery efforts in the wake of Hurricane Maria.
From the Washington Post:
As of Wednesday, half of Puerto Ricans had access to drinking water and 5 percent of the island had electricity, according to statistics published by the Federal Emergency Management Agency on its Web page documenting the federal response to Hurricane Maria.
By Thursday morning, both of those key metrics were no longer on the Web page.
FEMA spokesman William Booher noted that both measures are still being reported on a website maintained by the office of Puerto Rican Gov. Ricardo Rosselló, www.status.pr. According to that website, which is in Spanish, 9.2 percent of the island now has power and 54.2 percent of residents have access to drinking water. Booher said that these measures are also shared in news conferences and media calls that happen twice a day, but he didn’t elaborate on why they are no longer on the main FEMA page.
“Our mission is to support the governor and his response priorities through the unified command structure to help Puerto Ricans recover and return to routines. Information on the stats you are specifically looking for are readily available” on the website maintained by the governor’s office, Booher said.
Watch below as Rep. Luis V. Gutiérrez of Illinois rails at the Trump administration’s response to the horrific devastation in Puerto Rico: “They don’t want you to know the truth.”