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More than 80 die in a tribal area of Pakistan riven by tensions between Shia and Sunni communities.
U.S. warns Israel against dropping detention of settlers in occupied West Bank
The Biden administration warned Israel that their decision to stop issuing administrative detention orders against Israeli settlers suspected of attacking Palestinians in the occupied West
‘I felt like I was a made man’: Stephen Graham on working with his childhood heroes
One of Britain’s most prolific actors, Stephen Graham is the face of countless hard-to-forget TV and film characters, a regular Scorsese collaborator and good mates
Facebook posts – No, President-elect Donald Trump didn’t ‘expose’ a secret program offering $6,400 to every American
There are “$6,400 in funds for every American to claim.”
CNN’s Abby Phillip Warns Dems They ‘Need To Break Out’ Of Echo Chamber: ‘Otherwise We Will Be Victims of Groupthink’
Screenshot via Institute of Politics Harvard Kennedy School
CNN’s Abby Phillip cautioned Democrats about increasing echo chambers, saying she’s noticed a disconnect in the party’s “activist class” and that “elites increasingly talk only to each other.”
The NewsNight anchor spoke at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics this week and mainly spoke on political divisiveness following President-elect Donald Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris in the election. Phillip praised her own show as a place where viewpoints are “tested” as she often has on pundits that are both pro and anti-Trump.
Phillip said:
“I have observed that elites increasingly talk only to each other and come to believe that because there is consensus among them that that consensus is shared broadly and there are not enough voices that are confident enough to disagree and to present alternatives. And we as a society need to find better ways to uplift divergent voices. Otherwise, we will be victims of groupthink. And there is a there there is an activist class, and this is particularly acute in the Democratic Party right now, there is an activist class in the Democratic Party that is multiracial, multiethnic. It is diverse, but it’s an activist class. And so because of that, they don’t they’re not able to see outside of that.”
Phillip argued Republicans “had the same problem” before Trump, but he “broke them out of that.” Democrats, she added, are now facing the same problem.
She said:
“Democrats are in that place now where they have to break out of it. And I think it is a real problem. It’s not as simple as wokeness or whatever. It’s about people who are being incentivized to think about issues in a particular way. And usually it’s it’s that light switches either on or off. There’s no nuance because they they’re activists like they’re paid to kind of be in this lane and if you’re somewhere in between, then what’s the point? But most people are not in one lane or another.”
Phillip called for “more courage” for Democrats to “speak out” with diverging opinions otherwise they will continue losing ground with rural voters and other groups.
“There needs to be more courage among people to speak out and to voice diverging opinions,” she said. “Otherwise, you know, I think it’s a I think it’s a real issue, and it’s not just the Ivy League. I think it’s elitism in general.”
Watch above via Institute of Politics Harvard Kennedy School .
The post CNN’s Abby Phillip Warns Dems They ‘Need To Break Out’ Of Echo Chamber: ‘Otherwise We Will Be Victims of Groupthink’ first appeared on Mediaite .
An Inexorable March to Legalization?
The Fairy Tale We’ve Been Retelling for 125 Years
The clearest candidate for America’s favorite fairy tale might be The Wonderful Wizard of Oz . The author L. Frank Baum set the novel, published in 1900, in a fantasy land that shares core American values: self-sufficiency, personal reinvention, the exploration of wider frontiers. The book’s young heroine, Dorothy, is whisked away to Oz, where she befriends magical creatures, thwarts a witch, and leans on her newfound strength and friends in order to return home. For Dorothy, it is a land of empowerment and possibility; for Baum—who perpetuated manifest destiny’s warped ideals in his other writings —and his many readers, it was an otherworldly representation of the American expanse, a place they perhaps wanted to see for themselves.
Baum’s novel and its sequels were major literary phenomena in their day. But Oz persists primarily through the books’ many adaptations, which established the series’ enduring iconography. Baum’s world is best remembered as it has appeared on-screen, especially in the 1939 musical film starring Judy Garland as Dorothy: a place bursting with songs such as “Over the Rainbow” and visuals such as the yellow brick road, which have become the franchise’s most memorable features. And with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’s 1956 entry into the public domain, allowing for new, noncanonical works, subsequent generations have iterated on these hallmarks to tell Oz stories of their own.
No transformation has been more vital to Oz’s longevity than Wicked, the revisionist origin story of the Wicked Witch of the West, one of Baum’s most recognizable villains. Based on the author Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel of the same name, Wicked’s prominence is up there with that of its source text, and yesterday’s release of the first part of the musical’s highly anticipated film adaptation will undoubtedly broaden its reach. Key to Wicked’s success—and its ability to bridge Oz’s past and future—is its canny understanding of what, exactly, makes that world work so well.
Artists across genres and mediums have, for decades, found great storytelling potential in Baum’s characters and mythology. But the mode that Oz has continued to lend itself to best is musical theater, a genre predicated on suspension of disbelief and thus well-suited to conveying Oz’s odd earnestness. The Wizard of Oz’s 1903 Broadway musical debut was a hit, firing up demands for more stories, which prompted Baum to write a total of 13 sequels to his book.
[Read: The Wizard of Oz invented the ‘good witch’ ]
The Garland film, inspired in part by the success of the musical, cemented Oz’s connection to music, but it was The Wiz that brought it back to the theater, in 1974. The latter was the franchise’s first majorly reenvisioned entry, a celebration of Black culture that took Dorothy’s story to the 1970s. During its four-year run on Broadway, The Wiz earned several Tony wins; the (less well-received) film adaptation notably starred the then-superstars Diana Ross and Michael Jackson as Dorothy and the Scarecrow, respectively. The Wiz showed that Baum’s novel could be successfully reinterpreted within a contemporary frame, and its story and characters updated accordingly. This transposition didn’t sacrifice the core imagery and themes—Dorothy still fights off flying monkeys and dons magic slippers to make it back home—but instead retained and even grew their cultural power.
Oz hasn’t translated as well into dramatic, adult-oriented settings, despite numerous writers’ and filmmakers’ efforts. The 1985 Disney film Return to Oz reintroduced the world by utilizing lesser-known characters from Baum’s later books; although it exhibited Oz’s compelling peculiarities , such as sentient furniture and disembodied human heads, it was a critical and box-office failure, deemed too dark for young viewers. Science-fiction authors including Robert Heinlein, Philip José Farmer, and even Stephen King wrote stories incorporating Oz that received mixed reviews. The Syfy miniseries Tin Man and NBC’s one-season flop Emerald City also mostly failed to resonate. Only Maguire’s Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West —a tale laden with adultery, murder, and slavery—has taken hold of the popular imagination. Wicked has become the contemporary Oz text, perhaps even superseding Baum’s work: It carries forward the original novels’ mix of campy magic and violent spectacle while bringing in modern literary themes. Maguire’s biggest change was recasting Baum’s antagonist as the antihero, reframing a straightforward villain as a woman misunderstood by her peers—an experience likely more relevant to today’s readers than Dorothy’s simpler tale of good versus evil.
Wicked used Oz’s whimsy and weirdness to deepen Baum’s seemingly unambiguous world, one strictly divided between right and wrong. The basic premise was a powerful one: What if the Wicked Witch of the West wasn’t so bad after all, and what if the Wizard—and the seemingly perfect society he oversaw—was the real threat? In his retelling, Maguire, an Oz fan since childhood, named Baum’s one-dimensional and green-skinned villain Elphaba Thropp; he also gave her a complicated parentage, a soapy romantic arc, and a dorm room. She attended Shiz University alongside a diverse spread of colorful, slang-talking Ozians. And, developing a darker side to Baum’s fanciful creation, Maguire also gave Elphaba a political motivation for wreaking havoc on her homeland: the oppression of its talking animals. But Maguire’s most important addition was the college friendship between Elphaba and Glinda the Good Witch (one of the Wicked Witch’s sworn enemies in Baum’s novel); the musical turns that bond into its emotional core.
[Read: Hollywood’s new crown prince of musicals ]
The 2003 Broadway adaptation lent some of the Garland-led film’s sparkle to Maguire’s story and made it appropriate for an all-ages audience. By foregrounding Elphaba and Glinda’s relationship, the musical emphasized Baum’s thematic interest in friendship and self-discovery. Theatergoers could relate to Glinda’s perkiness and craving for popularity and Elphaba’s fish-out-of-water awkwardness the same way they could, in watching The Wizard of Oz or reading Baum’s novel, imagine themselves in Dorothy’s shoes, searching for home. By simplifying Maguire’s plot, the musical better captured the fairy-tale feeling of Baum’s novel. Since its opening, its appeal has proved universal—Wicked has become the second-highest-grossing Broadway musical of all time.
Its success has also translated offstage in a particularly generative fashion. Wicked is now the jumping-off point for numerous fanworks—a meta development, because the show itself is a fanwork of a fanwork. Fan fiction based on the musical has become a genre unto itself; many works imagine a queer relationship between Elphaba and Glinda. Showstoppers such as Glinda’s bubbly “Popular” and Elphaba’s anthemic “Defying Gravity” are well-orchestrated articulations of the show’s ethos, inspiring amateur and professional renditions alike. Enamored artists and theatergoers often reimagine and revisit Wicked, as do budding Broadway lovers who haven’t attended an in-person production: An abundance of bootleg recordings has made Wicked one of musical theater’s most accessible entry points. It’s also a gateway into the broader world of Oz. Wicked and its own iterations—including its long-awaited film adaptation, which has already become a cultural event—work for the same reasons Baum’s original story did: They conjure a world that is buoyant, relatable, and unforgettable.
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Rabbi Found Dead in Dubai in What Israel Calls Terrorist Act
The Israeli authorities called the killing of the rabbi, Zvi Kogan, an act of terrorism. He had been missing since Thursday.
What Comes Next for Trump’s Nominees
Editor’s Note: Washington Week With The Atlantic is a partnership between NewsHour Productions, WETA, and The Atlantic airing every Friday on PBS stations nationwide. Check your local listings or watch full episodes here .
Matt Gaetz has withdrawn from consideration for attorney general but many of Donald Trump’s other nominees continue to draw controversy. On Washington Week With The Atlantic, panelists joined Jeffrey Goldberg to discuss Trump’s other equally improbable Cabinet choices, and what could come next for these nominees.
With the announcement of Gaetz’s withdrawal, much attention has now turned to Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, who, like Gaetz, also faces allegations of sexual assault. “The senators to watch on this nomination are going to be not just the national-security hawks but female Republican senators like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, who are always the wild cards, but also someone like Senator Joni Ernst,” Andrew Desiderio said last night. Although Ernst has been complimentary thus far about Hegseth’s nomination, Desiderio explained, she has also been open about her support for women in combat roles, something that Hegseth has spoken out against.
As for longtime Republican lawmakers, questions still remain over how their reactions to Trump’s Cabinet picks will play out in the confirmation process. Are we going to see Mitch McConnell “lead an insurgent faction now that he’s not going to be the Senate leader?” Goldberg asked panelists last night.
“There might be a story of what he does behind closed doors compared to what you see publicly,” Zolan Kanno-Youngs said. No longer serving as the leader of his party, “he now does not need to worry about managing the factions of the Senate” and, given his past criticism of Trump, McConnell “now has the leeway to be more outspoken.”
Joining the editor in chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, to discuss this and more: Laura Barrón-López, a White House correspondent for PBS NewsHour; Andrew Desiderio, a senior congressional reporter at Punchbowl News; Zolan Kanno-Youngs, a White House correspondent at The New York Times; and Ashley Parker, a senior national political correspondent for The Washington Post.
Watch the full episode here .
The Long-Held Habits You Might Need to Reconsider
This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
One of the most humbling parts of being alive is realizing you’ve long been doing a simple thing wrong—or, at least, not in the way experts say you should be doing it. Did you know that the best time to apply deodorant is right before bed? Or that you should get rid of your black plastic spatulas? Or that you probably shower too much?
Being hit with these truths can feel unmooring. What if some of your reflexive daily rituals need to be reconsidered? But there’s power in the knowledge too. Today’s newsletter explores our ever-evolving understanding of how humans live, and what’s best for us.
On Our Habits
Your Armpits Are Trying to Tell You Something
By Yasmin Tayag
The best time to apply antiperspirant is right before bed. Seriously.
Throw Out Your Black Plastic Spatula
By Zoë Schlanger
It’s probably leaching chemicals into your cooking oil.
You’re Showering Too Much
By James Hamblin
Wash your hands, but lay off the other parts. (From 2020)
Still Curious?
- Stop looking at your therapist : The couch is there for a reason, Shayla Love argues.
- Nutrition science’s most preposterous result : Studies show a mysterious health benefit to ice cream. Scientists don’t want to talk about it, David Merritt Johns wrote last year.
Other Diversions
- Three ways to become a deeper thinker
- A ridiculous, perfect way to make friends
- One food to change the world
P.S.
Sign up for our new newsletter Being Human for more stories on the mysteries of the body and the mind.
I recently asked readers to share a photo of something that sparks their sense of awe in the world. “In my garden, I was mesmerized by this dahlia’s fractal symmetry, a kaleidoscope in nature,” Monica Shah from Edison, New Jersey, writes.
— Isabel