Daily Archives: April 6, 2022

Prof. Michael McConnell, Jeff Rosen, and I on the Court’s Recent Free Speech and Religious Freedom Cases – Reason

Posted: April 6, 2022 at 9:39 pm

On a Constitution Center podcast:

Last week, the Supreme Court handed down two nearly unanimous decisions in cases involving the First Amendment. One was an 8-1 decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts inRamirezv. Collier, in which the Court sided with a death row inmate who claimed he had the right to have the religious leader of his choice touch him and pray audibly for him in the execution chamber. The other opinion was 9-0 inHouston Community Collegev.Wilson, where the Court held that a legislative censure issued by a community college board did not violate the free speech rights of the respondent, another trustee on the board, in an opinion written by Justice Neil Gorsuch.

First Amendment expertsMichael McConnellof Stanford Law School andEugene Volokhof UCLA Law join hostJeffrey Rosento discuss the opinions' impact on how we interpret and understand and religious freedom and freedom of speech in America.

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How Privacy Prevails in the Age of Big Tech – The Atlantic

Posted: at 9:39 pm

This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here.

Americas first newspaper, Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick, was also one of its shortest-lived. Motivated by the creed That Memorable Occurrents of Divine Providence may not be neglected or forgotten, the inaugural issue, published in 1690, aired rumors of an affair between the French king and his daughter-in-law, along with other scandalous reportsand was promptly censored and confiscated by British authorities in Boston. But the American appetite for such salacious fare was irrepressible. By the time of the Civil War, journals such as The Illustrated Police News were devoted to graphic depictions of real-life criminal cases: Readers were served up vivid woodcuts of brothel raids, hangings, suicides, and child deathsthe more violent and gruesome, the better.

Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.

The invasiveness of contemporary gossip sites, social media, and search engines, it turns out, has a long pedigree. Although the technologies of dissemination have changed, the impulse to portrayand profit fromintimate material has thrived for centuries.

The lineage of the counter-impulselegal efforts to restrain intrusions into Americans private lives and affairsis shorter and its legacy more elusive. Public calls for a right to privacy emerged only at the turn of the 20th century, triggered by a more aggressive press as well as technical innovations like instantaneous photography, new communication platforms like the telegraph and the telephone, and, later, novel uses of personal information by private companies and government agencies. In response, state legislatures, the Supreme Court, and eventually Congress stepped in to patrol the boundary between the properly public and the deservedly private.

The battles were at times spirited. But many commentators now claim that the war is over, and that privacy has lost. Public and private organizations alike mine the minutiae of our lives, and citizensenmeshed in a culture of confession and data-driven consumerismare unable, or unwilling, to resist. Older modes of discretion have given way to an ethos of self-disclosure, an urge to be known. In this view, the sidelining of privacy as a social and cultural valueas well as a legal rightwas only a matter of time.

Read: Welcome to the age of privacy nihilism

The rise of powerful technologies (facial recognition) and businesses (Facebook) that hinge on access to our personal information understandably inspires such fatalism. Yet over the past two decades, ever-expanding surveillance has been accompanied by a wide-ranging public debate about protecting aspects of our lives from scrutinyevidence that privacy, endangered though it may be, is not yet extinct as a cultural concern. Indeed, that debate has sparked a welter of new proposals for protecting private life, such as the right to be forgotten and the right to move through public spaces undetected.

In Seek and Hide: The Tangled History of the Right to Privacy, the legal scholar Amy Gajda links our present struggle to an underappreciated tradition in American law and thought. She argues that although the right to privacy may have been a 19th-century innovation, privacy sensibilities have since the nations beginnings served as a durable counterweight to the hallowed principles of free speech, free expression, and the right to know. Ranging across several centuries, her account of the determined fight to protect privacy sounds like just the sort of road map we could use right now. But legal victories won in the name of privacy have often been sorely inadequate. Whats more, they have historically favored the privileged over the vulnerable. A realistic defense of privacy in the digital age isnt a lost cause, but it will require grappling with new social as well as technological challenges. It will also entail reckoning with privacys past uses and abuses.

Seek and Hide focuses on a specific kind of privacy conflict: the propriety of publicizing true but intimate or embarrassing facts about a person. That sort of shame-inducing exposure may sound almost pass in the era of Twitter and TMZ. Were by now used to personal missteps forever preserved online, innuendo circulating on the web, doxing as a weapon of rhetorical war. We take for granted the constant prying that seems to come with a life hooked up to the internet. But the history of disputes over press invasions serves as a kind of barometer, revealing the cyclical nature of privacys fortunes. It also highlights the persistent disparities in whose privacy has mattered to lawmakers and courts.

From the September 2020 issue: The AI panopticon is already here

Gajda traces the championing of privacy (and skepticism of an overly free press) back to the nations founding. Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamiltonwho otherwise agreed on littleboth spoke to the damage that truthful-but-embarrassing disclosures could cause. To let such details loose in the world, Hamilton charged, was a two-edged sword, by which to wound the public character and stab the private felicity of the person. (Both men, it should be noted, were considerably less bothered when those details concerned a political rival.)

Not incidentally, these men each had a personal investment in keeping certain matters quiet: Jeffersons sexual relationship with the enslaved Sally Hemings and Hamiltons affair with a married woman, made still more scandalous by his payoffs to her husband. Courts, following the lines of status in American society, were generally happy to oblige, punishing journalistic invasions chiefly when they threatened the reputations of elite white men.

The cohort of Americans who could count on their privacy being respected grew over the course of the 19th century. The middle class, with its newly genteel sensibilities and domestic sanctuaries, was now included, although womens and childrens privacy continued to matter mostly as an extension of that of male heads of household. At a time when immigrants, nonwhite people, the poor, criminals, and other unworthies were neither allotted much privacy nor thought to deserve it, the well-heeled and respectable won libel suits against reporters for printing potentially damaging stories. In the mid-19th century, for example, the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled that a local newspaper was unquestionably out of line in tarnishing the name of a good, pious, virtuous and honest woman by recounting that, during the course of a party she had attended, kisses were bestowed on ripe lips and cheeks generally innocent of such sweet tokens.

Long before a right to privacy was codified, American law thus drew a line between issues of public import that needed to see the light of day and intimate affairs that individuals had every right to cloak. Certain matters were considered especially intimate. Personal correspondence, sexual liaisons, indecorous divorce proceedings, medical diagnoses, and images of the naked body were all deemed worthy of protection. By the 1880s, the U.S. Supreme Court seemed to recognize this boundary in a search-and-seizure case, describing the privacies of life as an essential component of liberty and a sacred right.

It was in the next decade that privacy became a major public concern. This was prompted by the growing audacity of the scandal press, but also by the impact of new technologies, such as the telegraph and the telephone (and with it, the potential for wiretapping). Instantaneous photography in particular let loose a whole new species of virtual invasion in the form of Kodak fiends, proto-paparazzi who were now able to captureand disseminateindividuals images without their knowledge or consent.

In 1890, in what went on to be hailed as a landmark Harvard Law Review essay, Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis, Boston lawyers, decried the press for transgressing the obvious bounds of propriety and of decency and trafficking in gossip as a trade. They also fretted over the novel forces allowing the unauthorized circulation of portraits of private persons. What they demanded in response was an actionable right to privacy. Their article helped give shape to a new legal claim for damages: the publication of private facts. (Ironically, Warren was heir to the paper company whose product made the printing of illustrations and photographs financially feasible for the scandal presseven as it also supplied paper to more reputable organs like The Atlantic.)

Although their call for a new right was inspired by modern privacy invasions, Brandeis and Warren traded in older gender- and class-bound ideas about who suffered most, both materially and psychologically, from the slings and arrows of publicity. Delicacy around embarrassing revelations was still often imagined as the privilege of elites. As their contemporary, the editor E. L. Godkin, put it, privacy was one thing to a man who has always lived in his own house, and another to a man who has always lived in a boardinghouse. Yet the ability to at least stake a claim against unwelcome public scrutiny was becoming available to a wider array of Americans.

One flash point was a 1900 suit filed by a 17-year-old named Abigail Roberson, charging that she was made sick by the unauthorized use of her image (shown in profile, revealing a bit of collarbone, and accompanied by the tagline Flour of the family) in advertisements for the Franklin Mills flour company25,000 posters displayed in grocery stores, saloons, and other public venues. As Gajda recounts, a lower court sided with Roberson, stating that every woman has a right to keep her face concealed from the observation of the public. A higher court pointedly disagreed, however, that anyone had a right to move through the world free of unwanted publicity. Indeed, others would have appreciated the compliment, Judge Alton Parker pronounced. Popular outcry led the New York legislature to pass the nations first privacy statute the following year. Tellingly, Parker changed his tune just a couple of years later, when he ran for president and became desperate to escape camera fiends and what he described as the sleepless surveillance of surreptitious snapshotters. His own private life and affairs, unlike a pretty young girls, seemed obviously worthy of shielding.

Read: Child data-privacy laws arent protecting kids

The Roberson case pointed to the way commercial interests and evolving cultural values would recast privacy debates in the 20th century. Even as privacy rights gained a firmer footing, the notion that one could not realistically live outside the public gaze was taking hold. It was a position that scandalmongers as well as respectable papers endorsed as part of the First Amendment guarantee of press freedom. Defined relatively narrowly in Hamilton and Jeffersons day, the peoples right to know was becoming a more expansive concept, promoted by publishers and reporters and backed by courts. The ebbing of Victorian norms of propriety, which had sought to keep unseemly matters out of public places, helped loosen rules on what was publishable, too.

The impulse to tell all was temperedfor a timeby the professionalization of journalism in the 1920s. The American Society of Newspaper Editors drafted national standards of behavior for its members, more of whom now came out of journalism schools. The dean of the University of Missouris journalism school, the first such program in the country, wrote in 1914 that no one should write as a journalist what he would not say as a gentleman. (The choice of language suggests the lasting association between privacy rights and social status.) In turn, jurists began to trust reporters to make their own calls as to what was in the public interest to exposeto adjudicate what was newsworthy and what was not.

For a moment, the United States enjoyed a rare alignment of privacy sensibilities, journalistic practice, and the law. It didnt last long. As the legal historian Samantha Barbas has explained, the courts deference to the press led, by mid-century, to a transformation in the very meaning of the term newsworthy. It came to refer not to what the public needed to know but to what it wanted to know. And what the public demanded was still the stuff of The Illustrated Police News: voyeuristic accounts of sex and violence.

The courts ratified this shift. In 1966, the Supreme Court heard Time, Inc. v. Hill, which concerned Life magazines misrepresentations of a familys experience being taken hostage during an armed robbery. The Court ruled in favor of the publisher. In an echo of the Roberson case, the majority indicated that exposure of the self to others was simply part and parcel of life in a modern society that placed a primary value on freedom of speech and of press.

In subsequent decades, courts tilted further still, offering constitutional protection to parties who had exposed a private citizens sexual orientation against his wishes, published a rape victims name because it was discoverable in public documents, and televised a horrific accident scene in the name of public interest. Under American law, a private person could become a public one, his or her life stripped bare, simply by virtue of bad luck. Well before the advent of the internet age, American jurisprudence was coming around to the view that everyone was a public figure, and without the restrictions, cultural or legal, on the flow of personal information that Hamilton and Jefferson had counted on.

The vicissitudes of the right to privacy over the past two centuries suggest that we may be overdue for a reckoning akin to Brandeis and Warrens. Even in a no-holds-barred social-media landscape, we are not without resourceswhether in the form of legal precedents or changing social values.

Californias privacy regulations now permit minors to erase their past social-media posts, a version of Europes right to be forgotten. New statutes criminalize the humiliating nonconsensual sharing of explicit photos and videos known as revenge porn. Whistleblowers have begun to reveal the calculated damage to both private and public life caused by unregulated social media. Cities have banned facial-recognition technologies. Courts have ruled that Americans are entitled to some privacy in even the most public of places. Details that were never before treated as privatesuch as home addresses and geolocation datahave earned legal protections.

Pitched battles over claims of privacy and publicity underscore the urgency, and unsettled boundary lines, of our own historical moment. So far, these efforts have been scattershot. But they make clear that privacy is not over. As in the past, new privacy claims are emerging in tandem with novel violations.

Crazy/Genius: Derek Thompson on why we should care about privacy

History of course provides no tidy formula for the present. Gajdas chronicle reveals an enduring tension between principles of free speech and respect for individuals private lives. But it also throws into sharp relief how much the context for that debate has changed in the past several decades. Highly visible privacy invasions have by no means abated: Take Jeff Bezoss recent fight with the National Enquirer over its threat to print embarrassing photos of him and his girlfriend, or Hulk Hogans lawsuit against Gawker over the publishing of a sex tape featuring the former wrestler. (The success of the latter was, depending on your point of view, a victory for privacy or proof that it remains a prerogative of powerful men.) But such episodes in the tabloid press are now swamped by a much more extensive and complex ecosystem of incursions.

Our models and tools for safeguarding privacy need to catch up. We live in a world where daily, continuousand often unfelt and unseenintrusions are the rule, the work not just of traditional media but of tech companies, data-analytics firms, entertainment systems, financial industries, and state agencies seeking unfettered access to our information. Each of us now navigates competing claims of transparency and privacy every time we swipe a credit card, download an app, or pass through a smart home. Focusing on individual violations and litigation in the courts, a strategy that once served to protect (some) Americans privacy, is insufficient in the present. For a shot at privacy in the digital ageto say nothing of the coming metaversewe will need to envision privacy as a collective social good in need of collective solutions: strong public regulation that systematically reins in the parties who trample it.

There is another lesson to be drawn from Gajdas history. From the earliest days of the republic, privacy law has best served the most privileged in American society: those with considerable clout and resources at their disposal. To enact meaningful protections today, advocates will need to challenge the uneven allotment of privacy in the United States, taking careful account of who has and hasnt been served by past victories. If they do, Americans may yet summon defenses of privacy responsive to the needs and desires of ordinary citizens.

This article appears in the May 2022 print edition with the headline Privacy Isnt Dead.

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iGB ASCEND mentoring initiative expected to "start a huge movement for women in the gambling industry" – Yogonet International

Posted: at 9:37 pm

iGamingXL Director Claire Wellard, who attended her first affiliate expo the Casino Affiliate Program in 2007, has welcomed the launch of ASCEND the mentoring initiative for women in gaming which is being launched at next week's iGB Affiliate London, to be co-located with ICE London.

In an official press release where she described ASCEND as the "start of a huge movement for women in the industry", she stated: "The affiliate space has been transformed over the last 15-years. When I first started, I was literally one of just five women Affiliate Managers. On the affiliate side the gender imbalance was even more pronounced to the extent that 99% of affiliates were men. I had to learn the gambling industry fast and navigate a male dominated industry even quicker, but with resilience, hard work and determination I carved an amazing career for myself".

"However, that has not been the case for every woman and you have to acknowledge that a lot of talented people have been lost to the business simply because of such a lack of balance. With the support of the iGB brand and buy-in from across the business, I am confident that ASCEND will help to create greater diversity to the betterment of the industry and I am excited to be a part of it."

Looking at how major events such as IGB Affiliate London can help sustain the ecosystem, she added: "During the last two years of Covid, I have felt for anyone new coming into the affiliate sector. These events are invaluable to progressing as both an affiliate and an affiliate manager. You build relationships face to face and can learn more in a 15-minute meeting than you can from back-to-back emails. It gives you energy and passion and the wealth of information you can soak up in a couple of days is invaluable. It has always been the case that events can take everything from you mentally and physically but they make business much easier because that's where strong business relationships are built."

For Wellard, iGB Affiliate London serves as a forum in which all of the big issues of the day are discussed and debated: "The are so many hot topics right now not least NFT's, crypto and the US market. Legislation has been an extremely important topic over the last five-years, with so many changes occurring all across Europe and North America. Affiliates are always searching for a niche or looking for the next big thing so I am excited to learn more about what is up and coming in the industry and to make sure that I have my finger on the pulse."

While shows have grown from occupying hotel conference rooms to taking place at some of Europe's biggest event venues such as ExCeL London and the RAI Amsterdam, the importance of relationship building remains paramount.

"The events then were so much smaller in comparison to today. Attending the early affiliate events was like walking into an episode of Cheers (for those old enough to remember that show) it was the place where everyone knew your name! I can't wait to see all the people I have missed over the last two years of Covid. All my peers, best friends and all the new people I have met over Zoom I can't wait to see them face to face", she continued.

"I think iGB Affiliate London is going to be incredible for business and can change so many people's careers due to the quality face time, the learning programme and the huge list of operators available to affiliates at the exhibition. This was always going to be my first event back after life started returning to normal and I am so excited to see what everyone brings to the table. I have huge aspirations for 2022 and the iGB event is THE place to be in order to make it happen."

ASCEND will be launched at a networking buffet comprising hosted round tables on Wednesday 13 April at the ICC Capital Suite, ExCeL London (12.45 14.30 hours). The ASCEND programme will help mentees working across the entire gaming ecosystem to enhance their leadership skills, gain confidence and network with other like-minded women

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Clare Boynton and Pierre Cadena Nominated to Join Raketech’s Board of Directors – European Gaming Industry News

Posted: at 9:37 pm

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White-label and turnkey provider ProgressPlay has announced it has launched new gamification tools for their attendance at iGB Affiliate London stand N-D420. ProgressPlays iGaming platform provides operators with a powerful tool for optimising the performance of an online casino.

The gamification is a great add-on to the three new brands that were just launched to target Japan, as the Japanese love the ability to take missions and different challenges, and upon completion, they can buy at the shop whatever prizes they desire.

ProgressPlays unique white-label and turnkey solutions supplies operators and casino brands with a platform and game aggregator together with extensive value-added services. These services cover all the requirements of casino operators, with ProgressPlays white-label being an instant casino-in-a-box including licenses and payments, while turnkey covers operators already licensed and with their own wallet.

A raft of almost 150 online casino brands has already teamed up with ProgressPlay to bring their casino and sportsbetting platforms to life. ProgressPlay has gained industry recognition as an emerging leader as an iGaming platform provider for operators around the world. The platform includes a variety of casino games, including slots, scratch, casual, jackpots, table games, sportsbook and Live dealer.

ProgressPlay is a full turnkey solution for white label gaming operators, providing UKGC, MGA and Irish licenses, more than 2000+ casino games and over 140+ different sports, payment processing, VIP management, customer support, CRM, localization, multicurrency, gamification, flexible bonus system, compliance, risk, affiliate program, player management and more

ProgressPlay CEO Itai Loewenstein said: We are very excited to announce that we have given our Rewards dashboard a fresh new look and made it even more user-friendly than ever.

He added: In addition we have added a new mini-game Wheel of Fortune, which can be used within the Rewards Widget or as a stand-alone game that opens on the casino platform. From the new Rewards dashboard, you can see all your current missions, points, progress and more. Plus, with a quick click or tap, you can view your bonuses, tournaments and most importantly access the Rewards Store to redeem your points for great offers.

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Political Correctness – Munk Debates

Posted: at 9:34 pm

Michael Eric Dyson

"Youre telling me Im being sensitive, and students looking for safe spaces that theyre being hypersensitive. If youre white, this country is one giant safe space."

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Michael Eric Dyson

"Youre telling me Im being sensitive, and students looking for safe spaces that theyre being hypersensitive. If youre white, this country is one giant safe space."

Michael Eric Dyson is a Georgetown University sociology professor, aNew York Timescontributing opinion writerand a contributing editor ofThe New Republic.

Dyson came fromhumble roots in Detroit, where he was a welfare father, a church pastor and a factory worker. Hestartedcollegeat21and eventuallycompleted his doctorate in religion at Princeton University, studying Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

He has authored 21 books, taught at elite universities, and wonprestigious honors thatincludean American Book Award and two NAACP Image Awards.Ebonymagazine cited him as one of the 100 most influential African Americans, and as one of the 150 most powerfulBlacks in the nation.

Dysons1994 bookMaking Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X, was named one of the most important African American books of the 20th centuryand hisNew York TimesbestsellerThe Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America, has been described asan interpretive miracle andwas a finalist for the 2016KirkusPrize.

Dyson has appeared on everymajor television and radio show in theUnited States,includingThe Late Show with Stephen Colbert,Real Time with Bill Maher andNPRs All Things Considered.

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Political Correctness - Munk Debates

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Today’s letters: Readers comment on the one-party system and school lunches – Daily Commercial

Posted: at 9:34 pm

No one-party system

In response to The new liberalism, it's always interesting to me to read letters from people who compartmentalize their narrative regarding political points of view.

The letter writer wrote that we are on the verge of a metamorphosis of political values in our country. Apparently, these changing values only apply to Democrats. He threw in words like liberalism, socialism, political correctness and the popular word of late, environmentalists, as if that is a dirty word. He went on to state that the Democratic Party is not the party it once was during the Kennedy era. That I would agree with, but neither is the Republican Party the party of Eisenhower.

It's a shame that we have become not only a two-party system exclusively; it also has become only black-and-white issues as far as points of view. When did we stop talking to one another? When did it start to be anti-Republican when criticizing a particular politician who happens to be Republican? We should be allowed to criticize the people who say they are representing us in office when they are not doing their job in their constituents best interest.

This is where we are failing as a democracy. This is where we allow outside influences to dictate where this country is going. People from both parties complain constantly about the workings of our government in one way or another, but these career politicians keep getting voted back into office. Wasn't it the Republicans years ago who said the definition of stupidity is to keep putting the same people back in office and expecting a different outcome? Doesn't that apply to both political parties?

I hear Republicans saying we will be much better off without the Democratic Party. So, it would be better to have a one-party system in this country? Is that what the talking heads are recommending on the radio and TV? So, if tomorrow we found ourselves in a one-party system, who would lead us?

People worry about socialism, liberalism and the rest, but are we OK with a dictatorship? Even if the Republican president we just had was to lead the country, who would follow him, and would he be the best man for the job? You'll never know because with a dictatorship you don't have a choice.

I'd also like to add there are other countries with one-party systems like Russia, Iran and North Korea. How is it doing for the citizens living in those countries?

Bob Del Castillo, Leesburg

By the way: Top Florida Democrats remain confident even amid Biden's low approval ratings

In other news: Daughter of ex-Indiana, Florida education czar Tony Bennett shot to death. Husband charged

Gas prices: Florida's yo-yo'ing gas prices on the decline after double-digit increase last week

As the nation continues to grapple with the pandemic, 1 in 5 kids in Florida could be heading to school with empty stomachs. Hunger has long-term ramifications on children, including lower test scores, weaker attendance rates, and a higher risk of hospitalizations and chronic diseases.

Luckily, we have a powerful tool to combat childhood hunger: nutritious school breakfasts. School breakfast is a critical way to ensure kids get the consistent nutrition they need to feel better, learn and grow up strong.

Despite unanticipated supply chain disruptions and labor shortages, school nutrition staff across the state have pivoted efforts to ensure kids received a healthy meal to start the day. We celebrate the critical role school nutrition professionals play in helping Floridas children succeed in and out of the classroom.

Sky Beard, director, No Kid Hungry Florida

Send a letter to the editor (up to 250 words) toletters@dailycommercial.com. Letters must include the writer's full name and city of residence.Guest columns of up to 750 words are also accepted on a limited basis.More information onsubmitting letters and columns can be found at dailycommercial.com/opinion.

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So-Called Cancel Culture Is a Vacant Concept, So It Can Be Turned Back Against the Culture Warriors – Justia Verdict

Posted: at 9:34 pm

Is American society being overcome by an oppressive gang bent on stifling other peoples free speechand even worse, are people now self-censoring in ways heretofore unseen, to avoid the wrath of so-called woke mobs who are intolerant of dissenting views?

In a word, no. What right-wing culture warriors have successfully labeled cancel culture continues to be an empty vessel into which anyone can pour their grievances, as part of an effort to gain victimhood status by claiming that the world is just so unfair to them. It would be funny if it were not so serious. Come to think of it, it continues to be both funny and serious.

In two Verdict columnsone last week and the other last MayI have pointed out that the rights decades-long effort to label everything politically correct has now been re-branded under the cancel culture/wokeness banner. The new packaging in no way changes the fact that there is no substance to any of this. No matter the epithet, complaints of this sort all boil down to conservatives saying: I dont like being disagreed with, and youre being intolerant for not agreeing that Im right.

When there is a phrase that is being misused or that has no meaning, I try to follow George Orwells instructions to refuse to use the phrase. As Orwell taught us, when people speak without truly understanding what they are saying, they can inadvertently reinforce a narrative that is socially destructive.

It has now reached the point, however, where the better move might simply be to deliberately overuse the offending phrases, hoping to make them useless through dilution and mockery. After all, if there is no meaningful definition of political correctness, cancel culture, or wokeness, then everything and everyone can be accused of being guilty of them. Why play defense when we can go on offense?

I try to be careful when choosing my words, both when I write and when I interact directly with people. I do not always get everything just right, of course, but the effort is important. If we want to be understoodand, again per Orwell, to prevent our own loose word choices from twisting our own thinkingwe should only use words and phrases that have clear meanings.

And this is just as true in academic contexts as it is in popular culture. For example, I have long been fighting a losing battle against the use of the term efficiency in the sense that economists use the word. One of the reasons that I moved from economics into law was that I had figured out that the concept of efficiency (sometimes called Pareto Efficiency, although all economic definitions of efficiency suffer from the same fatal flaw) has no fixed meaning. After leaving economics, however, I was disheartened to see my colleagues in law toss around the word efficiency as if it meant something, just as my economics colleagues had done.

At some point, I realized that there might be no putting that genie back in the bottle, so I decided simply to claim that every policy I like is efficient and that every policy I dislike is inefficient. And because there is no neutral, objective baseline against which efficiency can be measured, I will not be wrong. I will also not be right, but neither is anyone else. That is what happens when people use empty words.

We are definitely at that point now with PC/cancel culture/wokeness. As I noted in my column last week, the brothers Cuomo are both hiding behind claims that their falls from grace were the dastardly result of cancel culture, turning themselves into victims of an intolerant world rather than facing the truth, which is that they did bad things and faced at least some consequences for doing sotoo little and too late, but still something.

One might have thought that it could not become any more absurd than Chris and Andrew C., but then we all witnessed the spectacle of Vladimir Putin complaining about having been canceled. He even tried to compare himself to the author J.K. Rowling, who has received much-deserved criticism for her anti-trans rantings on Twitter and elsewhere.

Unsurprisingly, Rowling wanted nothing to do with Putin, so she distanced herself from the murderous war criminal. Even so, the episode exposed the emptiness of cancel culture in another important way.

A Canadian comedian who runs a YouTube channel called Rational National responded to the Putin/Rowling situation in two ways, both of which are useful for thinking about what is and is not happening. First, he said that Rowling had not in fact been canceled because she is still quite successful, her books still sell, and she has upcoming projects that have not been taken away from her.

This is true, and it applies just as much to the other high-profile people who whine about being canceled even as they either face no consequences at all or quickly land on their feet after a brief period of minor discomfort. Even so, this way of thinking suggests that it would truly be an example of cancel culturewhich, to be clear, we are to believe is most definitely badif someone like Rowling were to lose her career as a result of backlash against something that she said or did. The idea is apparently that it is not cancel culture if something has not in fact been canceled.

This, however, completely misunderstands what is happening. Those of us who truly believe in freedom of choice and the power of the free market understand that not everyone has a right to earn a living in exactly the way that they would like. If I am selling something but no one is buying, I have not been canceled. I have just been told that there are no customers who are willing to give me money, clicks, or likes.

If Rowlings bigotry resulted in her never selling another book, then, she would simply be facing the consequences of market choices made by free people. Entertainment is the ultimate at-will employment situation. In most American workplaces, people can be fired for any reasonor for no reason at all. And an authors employers are her potential readers, who have every right to stop buying her books for any reasonor again, even for no reason at all. I happen to believe that at-will employment is a bad way to run most workplaces, but it is inevitable in the context of entertainment.

Rational Nationals second argument is that, even though J.K. Rowling has not been canceled, when symphonies and other public entertainment venues change plans and decide not to perform works by Tchaikovsky and other Russian artists, that is genuine cancel culture. Tchaikovsky, after all, did not invade Ukraine, and his being dead makes it impossible to know whether he would have supported Putins mass murder. Why should his music be censored?

The answer is that nothing is being censored. Rather, the market is speaking. It does not matter whether the symphonies decisions are being driven by the opinions of the people who run them or by fear of the publics reaction. There is nothing wrong with saying, You know, right now, I just dont want to celebrate Russian culture. I know thats not necessarily rational, but it just feels wrong.

Republicans canceled French fries in the early 2000s after the government of France criticized the Bush administrations rush to war in Iraq. I, along with most people, thought that that was beyond silly, but it was certainly their right. If a restaurant owner today were to decide not to offer Russian salad dressing, or borscht, or vodka, we might think that she is overreacting (or we might not); but there is nothing about this that is inappropriate or oppressive. Buyers and sellers can decide what they are willing to buy and sell, and they can change their minds if they want to. This is not censorship, political correctness, or any of the rest. It is capitalism.

But what about situations in which people harshly condemn other people for their views. As I described in my column last week, the editors of The New York Times became very exercised by the idea that people were shaming and shunning those with whom they disagree. To which I responded, in essence: Yes and?

People are always making decisions about who they like, who they will avoid, and whether they will respond to or simply ignore someone with whom they disagree. An article in The New Republic last week reported that OkCupid Users Dont Want to Date Climate Deniers, and my first thought was: Oh great, now climate deniers are going to complain about being canceled or woke-mobbed, or something. But for heavens sake, is it really a problem if someone says that climate change is a deal-breaker for them in the dating world?

The issue, however, is supposedly that democracy itself is at stake, at least in the eyes of The Times. Far beyond the realm of dating, young people are supposedly now uniquely unwilling to listen to those with whom they disagree. I, however, am confident that democracy is not going to die because some twenty-somethings sometimes exercise bad judgment (at worst) and refuse to listen to someone. Again, the right to speak is not the same as a right to have other people listen.

The anecdotes floating around about people losing their jobs over seemingly minor things turn out to be isolated cases, and there have always been injustices in the workplace. On campuses, for all the rending of garments over students supposed unwillingness to risk being judged, I have not seen any change in that regard over the last thirty-plus years of teaching. And as long as we are dealing in anecdotes, I have asked various of my current students whether there is something that I am missing, and they have said that there is nothing to this whole brouhaha.

That, of course, does not stop the right-wing culture warriors from trying to use the PC/cancel culture/wokeness panic to their advantage. In response to political pressure, my states university system has announced that it will soon administer an Intellectual Freedom and Viewpoint Diversity Survey, the purpose of which is to assess the extent to which you feel free to express your beliefs and viewpoints on campus. This is essentially a casting call for people willing to take on the comforting role of societys innocent victim.

There is nothing new here, with old grievances being reissued with different labels. Again, my point in writing this column is to acknowledge that there is no turning back now, because we have entered the phase of the social panic where people have begun to reflexively refer to cancellation in a completely mindless way.

Most amusingly, the editors of The Washington Post opined last Wednesday that former Vice President Mike Pence deserves a fair hearing as he tries to rehabilitate his reputation so that he can run for president in 2024. The headline? Mike Pence provokes bipartisan intolerance. He deserves to be heard.

Pardon me, but it is not intolerant to judge Mike Pence. He has fully revealed who he is, and if people do not want to sit and listen while he piously whitewashes history (pun intended), they have every right to turn away. He does not deserve to be heard, and no one has any reason to listen to him. Those who choose to do so are free to indulge him, but that is a matter of grace on their part.

The amusing part of The Posts editorial, however, was the opening line: Whatever ones views on former vice president Mike Pence ours have been critical theres no denying that efforts to silence and cancel him have been bipartisan. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we now live in a world in which one of the major newspapers in the world uses the word cancel as a synonym for ignore, as is everyones right.

The Posts unthinking use of silence and cancel regarding Pence unmistakably tells us that there is no going back. There is no longer any point in begging people, Stop talking about cancel culture. It means nothing! Game over. The language has been further debased by an all-purpose, content-free insult.

The only response, then, is to start the next game, in which we say that everythingand I mean everythingis cancel culture. Donald Trump is trying to cancel Hunter Biden. Republican senators voting against Ketanji Brown Jacksons Supreme Court nomination are merely a bunch of censorious cancel-culture warriors. The Stop the Steal people are trying to cancel American democracy. And what do I have to say to anyone who disagrees with this column? Stop canceling me!

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So-Called Cancel Culture Is a Vacant Concept, So It Can Be Turned Back Against the Culture Warriors - Justia Verdict

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The Oral History of PCU, the Culture Wars Cult Classic – VICE

Posted: at 9:34 pm

In the early 1990s, there was a lull in the lucrative tradition of college comedies. Sensing an opportunity, 20th Century Fox greenlit PCU, a low-budget film that featured a cast of largely unknown actors. Considered a direct descendent of 1978s raucous Animal House, it updated the premise by setting the movie on a campus dominated by activist politics and political correctness. At the time, P.C. was still a new cultural concept to most Americans, and as the movies hero helpfully explains, Its not just politics, its everything. Its what you eat, its what you wear and its what you say. And if you dont watch yourself, you can get yourself in a buttload of trouble.

The film was released on April 29, 1994. It flopped.

Then as the years passed, it found an audience and achieved cult status through constant replays on cable and robust home video rentals.

Written by Adam Leff and Zak Pennwho had just graduated from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticutmuch of PCU satirized their own experiences. They attended Wesleyan during a tumultuous time that included protests over the schools investments in Apartheid-era South Africa, a push for more faculty of color, and the firebombing of the presidents office.

The movie mostly takes place over a single day as a clueless pre-frosh named Tom (played by Chris Young) visits the fictional Port Chester University. He is assigned to stay with Droz (Jeremy Piven, in his first lead performance), a fast-talking shitstarter who rules over The Pit, a former fraternity thats become the home of the schools wastoids and weirdos. The Pit is in the midst of a multi-front war. The house is loathed by the Causeheads, whose protests dominate campus life, as well as a group of radical feminists called the Womynists. They are also seen as a blight on the college by both the schools self-servingly progressive administration (represented by an acidic Jessica Walter as President Garcia-Thompson) and Balls and Shaft, a crew of preppy Reaganites led by David Spades Rand McPherson. When the residents of The Pit learn they must pay $7000 in property damages or lose their house, they plan to raise the cash with a rager that will attract the entire student body. After house band Everyone Gets Laid cant perform, they miraculously get Parliament-Funkadelic to replace them. Good times and fleeting student unity ensues.

PCU included the first major role for Jon Favreau, who proved himself to be a multifaceted talent as the writer of Swingers and, more recently, a critical component in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Star Wars television shows. Matt Ross has a small part, decades before he had more memorable appearances (like Hooli founder Gavin Belson in Silicon Valley) and transitioned into directing projects like the film Captain Fantastic and the upcoming Watergate series Gaslit. Additionally, PCU marked the directorial debut of Hart Bochner, an actor best known for playing the ber-yuppie prick Ellis in Die Hard and who recently portrayed billionaire Larry Ellison in Hulus The Dropout. Not long after PCUs release, its writers stopped working together, with Leff eventually leaving the film industry. Penn has amassed decades worth of work in entertainment, including credits on films like Ready Player One and last years Free Guy.

Almost 30 years later, many of the ideas that PCU skewered have returned as national debates on wokeness and cancel culture. These subjects have become an obsession in cable news, talk radio, podcasts, social media platforms, and political messaging. Under the clips of the film that have made it to YouTube, some commenters see PCU as a dark prophecy of societys future that went unheeded. That wasnt the movies intention, though, and its creators still dont see it that way. Instead, they were more troubled by a climate where young people turned against each other, rather than attacking the institutions that wielded power over them.

The thing that drove PCU was a messagethough it definitely is not a message moviethat we can all see each other in our different categories and hopefully still find some common ground, says Paul Schiff, the movies producer. And that common ground may be defined by the ability to laugh at ourselves, at each other, and find some common humanity in what we all share. Thats an idealistic and probably well-intentioned notion, but one that might feel out of touch in 2022.

After the disappointment of PCU, Jeremy Piven returned to supporting parts before going on to win three Emmys for his work as the agent Ari Gold on Entourage. Then in 2017 and 18, BuzzFeed News reported that multiple women accused Piven of sexual assault and harassment. Piven denies all these allegations and says hes subsequently been excluded from the mainstream entertainment industry, enmeshing him in the modern cancel culture debate. In response, he has turned to careers in podcasting and stand-up comedy.

While PCU fans are still out there, once again its presence has started to recede. Not only is it unavailable on any streaming service, it currently cant be rented or bought from Amazon and Apple.

Here, PCUs creators, the actors who played the inhabitants of The Pitand even George Clinton, king of interplanetary funktell the story of how this film was made and how its been received over the decades.

THE SCRIPT AND INSPIRATION

Zak Penn (screenwriter): I got to Wesleyan in 1986, graduated in 1990. I was actually a theater major.

Adam Leff (screenwriter): I did five years, 85 to 90. The fifth year I was there, I was just making my student film. Wesleyan back then was far more loosey-goosey. I don't think they would let a student just do a fifth year for fun anymore. We weren't paying tuition or anything.

Zak Penn: There were a lot of protests over the things that there still are on college campuses, which are violence against women and racism. And sometimes there were protests over really random things. That was part of Wesleyan's charm.

Adam Leff: It was the birth of Womanist House and women's studies. Every weekend there was a vigil outside the frat houses.

Zak Penn: One of the inspirations for the movie was one of the first classes I was in. The professor said that he was a Black lesbian trapped in the body of a white man. Nowadays, that would go over extremely poorly, but in those days it was considered radically progressive.

Adam Leff: It always seemed comical. Here we were at this super privileged liberal arts college in Connecticut, and yet the campus looked like Berkeley in 1968.

Zak Penn: I had written a bunch of plays, and then I wrote a screenplay for one of the student films. Adam and I decided to team up. As soon as we left Wesleyan, we immediately wrote a script about a giant rat in Central Park, which we decided not to show anyone. We did actually sell it years later, but whatever. A year out of college, we sold Last Action Hero and had a career. We got fired almost immediately, which is why we don't have a screenplay credit on it.

Adam Leff: We started to pursue the idea that it would be really funny to make a modern-day Animal House.

Zak Penn: We sold the pitch for PCU to Paul Schiff, another Wesleyan graduate.

Paul Schiff (producer): I had my producing deal at Fox. I had started that with the film My Cousin Vinny. Zak and Adam came into my office and we were just talking about our experiences at Wesleyan. Out of that conversation, an idea sprung up.

Zak Penn: In Hollywood, [political correctness] wasn't a big deal. Nobody really talked about it back then. We were just kind of making fun of the stuff that we had just been living with for four years. It wasn't like, Oh, we need to make a statement to warn the world about encroaching P.C. culture.

Adam Leff: I don't think we ever walked around Wesleyan and said, This is where the country's headed. It always seemed fringe.

Zak Penn: It's based on my own pre-frosh weekend at Wesleyan. I stayed with a guy I knew named James Drosnes, who lived in Eclectic House.

Adam Leff: Eclectic was filled with a lot of punk rockers. They had the best parties every weekend, so we would go get wasted and occasionally score some drugs, to be totally honest.

Zak Penn: Eclectic had a great sense of humor and had great bands.

Adam Leff: They were very apolitical. They weren't actively at war with Womanist House. That's something that we invented.

Zak Penn: Almost all of the people in the movie have some basis [in real people].

Adam Leff: Pigman was based on an actual guy named Pigman. He was not constantly watching TV. I don't think he had a TV. He was constantly smoking pot.

I don't think we ever walked around Wesleyan and said, This is where the country's headed. It always seemed fringe. Adam Leff, screenwriter

Zak Penn: Gutter is a dumb version of my very smart friend, Marc Flacks, who had dreadlocks and quit the football team to follow his Marxist studies desires.

Marc Flacks (sociology professor, kinda inspiration for Gutter): I grew up in the hard left. [Politically correct] was a term we used. It was a way that leftwing people would help each other stay on message and be righteous. It was never expected that somebody at Dartmouth would be politically correct. We knew that they knew they were conservative bastards.

Zak Penn: Three different people think they're the basis for Droz. It's kind of an archetypal character, a guy who always seems to have the right line and is constantly down for having a good time.

PRE-PRODUCTION

Paul Schiff: It was a very different time in the feature business than now. Fox was probably making 40 to 50 movies a year.

Zak Penn: I learned subsequently that often you sell a pitch and you're working on it for years, then it sits around and one day, a long time later, it gets made. [PCU] was incredibly lucky. It all happened really, really fast.

Paul Schiff: [Foxs] distribution pattern consisted of big-budget movies, international titles that they knew would travel, dramas, comedies, romance, action, adventure The idea of sprinkling in some lower-budget movies was very common in those days. We were able to kind of slip into the system because they had a pipeline to fill.

Megan Ward (actor, plays Katy): There were all those 90s movies that had that high-concept, low-budget thingthese mini studio movies.

Zak Penn: Paul Schiff and the studio executives were basically like, Move onto the lot and take these offices. I believe Mel Brooks had the other half of the bungalows.

Hart Bochner (director): Ive been acting since 1975. Since I was a little kid, I wanted to be a director. So in 1991, I wrote and directed a short [The Buzz], which was a black comedy that I got my buddy Jon Lovitz to do about a guy who gets trapped in his apartment with a mosquito. 20th Century Fox and Paul Schiff saw it, and then the campaign began to try to secure the job directing [PCU].

The more I examined the script and the more I did my homework about where culture was going on campuses, the more I thought, geez, theres an opportunity here. Hart Bochner, director

Zak Penn: We were huge fans of his because he was in Die Hard. That's all we wanted to talk about.

Hart Bochner: Initially, I thought its not really my sensibilities, its not really my area of expertise. I had been out of college at that point for over a dozen years. But the more I examined the script and the more I did my homework about where culture was going on campuses, the more I thought, geez, theres an opportunity here.

Zak Penn: The first draft for PCU was pretty insane. We had an ending where President Garcia-Thompson pulls off her face. It's a mask and it reveals that it was Ed McMahon. Then he pulls off that mask and its President Garcia-Thompson again. We had this crazy subplot that The Pit had been built on a Native American burial ground and also a pet cemetery. So at the end, this ghost appears and its a dog. Then they say, Oh my God, it's a ghost dog. And he was like, Non-human animal companion, please.

Hart Bochner: We steered the writers. These guys were exceptionally talented. It wasnt necessarily a joke-driven piece of material, but in its observations of campus life and political correctness, I thought we could mine it for more humor.

Zak Penn: The Simpsons had come out while we were in college, and we wanted to embrace that and do something where you just dont know quite where this movie is going to go. As we got closer to production, the studio started to have cold feet about some of that stuff and said, Maybe we should just focus on the characters and the comedy and less on breaking the fourth wall.

Hart Bochner: We didn't reinvent it. We just strengthened stuff.

Zak Penn: In the earliest drafts, theres a lot more drug-taking. Theres a whole sequence where Gutter gets really high and the heads of the studio appear on-screen and disavow smoking pot.

Hart Bochner: We had our R-rated version of the script, which was a little raunchier. When the Womynists are playing Frisbee versus the Deadheads, the women were topless. The studio said, No, no, no. You gotta deliver a PG-13. So I shot a PG-13 version.

Zak Penn: We had a lot of nudity because naked guy, who was a real guy, was always nude. We just had a lot of ironic nudity in it, frankly.

CASTING

Hart Bochner: We met all the actors of the day.

Zak Penn: We got to watch the auditions. We saw a parade of actors coming through, many of whom became big stars. I remember one day, were in this front office and John Stamos comes in. We were shocked that he was coming in to read for Droz, which just seemed totally wrong. He thought we were interns. He was like, Have you guys read this script? So many words. Jesus. And we were just like, Yeah, we wrote it.

Hart Bochner: I talked to Adam Sandler, Ashley Judd. I was kind of dating Naomi Watts at the time, I felt she was too young. Steve Zahn was up for the role of the pre-frosh. There was an abundance of talent out there. I felt that it was critical that not only did everybody have to get the joke, but there had to be a sort of sweet innocence about all the actors. Young actors would come in that were edgy or a bit angry, and that wouldnt have worked. And there were actors like Andy Dick, who were really punctuating the humor physically, which wouldn't have worked either.

Paul Schiff: The studio was betting on new, fresh comedy voices. There were certainly discussions about bigger names, but there was no pressure of: We're not going to make the movie unless you can get a famous name.

Hart Bochner: I had seen Adam [Sandler] on Saturday Night Live and thought, frankly, he was too broad. I wanted something more grounded in reality. He has turned into a terrific actor who can play any number of personalities, which was my mistake,

Adam Leff: We had originally hoped Chris Farley would play Droz. I dont know what the movie would have been like with Farley and Spade. I think it probably would have been very funny, but in a different way.

Before carrying PCU, many of Jeremy Pivens early roles were in films starring John Cusack, his real-life best friend who he grew up with. When Piven was cast in PCU, he had a job playing a writer on The Larry Sanders Show, which he left to shoot the film.

Hart Bochner: My buddy Cameron Crowe had used [Jeremy Piven] in Singles. I thought, That guy has the right energy for it.

Paul Schiff: I remember Piven's audition very well. It was wild and hilarious and full of that great manic vibrating quality.

Jeremy Piven (actor, plays Droz): My father [the actor and drama teacher Byrne Piven] was someone who never shied away from the truth, for good or ill. He introduced me to people like John Malkovich, who as a child I got to see do True West, and he was an absolute beautiful anarchist. Of course John Belushi. I started at Second City with Chris Farley. There were a lot of great wild animals, and you draw from everything in your world.

Megan Ward: Chris [Young] I kind of knew as a peer. We were in that same pack of people who audition for the young leads of shows. I didn't know him personally, but he had done work around things that I had auditioned for. He was rising at the time.

We were shocked that John Stamos was coming in to read for Droz, which just seemed totally wrong. He thought we were interns. Zak Penn, screenwriter

Paul Schiff: It was a hard role because he was essentially the straight man. It was played with innocence and wide-eyed wonder, walking into this crazy world. That takes a certain finesse and I thought he did that quite well.

Young left acting in the late 1990s and currently works as an executive in technology-based entertainment. He declined to be interviewed for this article.

Alex Dsert (actor, plays Mullaney): I had just done The Heights. I had been working on some TV shows that would go, like, a season.

Megan Ward: Spade was famous, but I think he had only been on Saturday Night Live for a year.

Gale Mayron (actor, plays Cecilia): I'd gone to film school, so I had been trying to figure out how am I going to direct something. Acting was always something I did, but kind of half-assedly because it's such a fraught, difficult business, especially as a woman. I had done lots of tiny B-movies. I was always the girl that wound up dead, strangled alongside the road or thrown in a refrigerator. I got a job for three months at MTV. It was [co-hosting] a live TV show [Hangin w/ MTV], the before-TRL.

Paul Schiff: [Jon Favreau] was completely unknown at the time. The studio felt they needed to put him through his paces, but we knew from the get-go that there was no one else we were interested in.

Hart Bochner: The smartest guy on the set was Favreau. He had tremendous ideas. I wanted him to play it like a goofy puppy.

Alex Dsert: They gave Jon dreadlocks for the movie. [During filming] I remember going, Yo, you got to know what it feels like to be a dreadlock, and there happened to be a double feature of The Harder They Come and Rockers going. We were on the train and then this rasta walked on. He gives me the proper whats up nod and gives Jon the once over real slow and real hard, then looks him in the eye and goes, Respect, and walks away. I remember going, Youre indoctrinated!

FILMING

Paul Schiff: We wanted to make the movie in the States and find that perfect college-on-the-hill setting. There were financial pressures, and the best way to get the most days of shooting and the most resources was to go to Toronto. Connecticut at the time didnt have any tax incentives and there was no infrastructure for filming. We did sneak onto Wesleyans campus and shot a few establishing shots, just for fun.

Zak Penn: We all hung out together in Toronto and we were all around college age. It was kind of an amazing experience,

Paul Schiff: What was great about making a small movie at a studio that's making all these other projects is we didn't get a lot of surveillance.

Megan Ward: I had done a season of a series [Class of 96] in Toronto the year before, so I became Julie Your Cruise Director of Toronto for everybody.

Alex Dsert: In my head, its like the Peanuts gang walking down the streets of Toronto.

Adam Leff: Lots of times the writers get booted to the side or replaced. We were on set the whole time, which is rare in my experience and super fun. It was what I thought screenwriting was going to be like before I actually experienced it.

Zak Penn: We were there rewriting anything that we were asked to. There have only been two or three movies that Ive written that Ive been on set the whole way, and PCU was one of them.

If you remember it, you werent there. George Clinton, musician

Paul Schiff: It was their idea, and the specificity of their observations about their own experience was a big part of the project. It seems pretty silly not to have the creators there to be able to make adjustments and tweaks and fixes along the way to sharpen the writing and sharpen the jokes.

Megan Ward: [Piven] got malaria. How do you get malaria in Canada? He was literally in the hospital for like 48 hours.

Alex Dsert: Piven is just the king of improvisation, letting it flow. Whats great about that is you dont have to do too much, just react and act.

Megan Ward: So many of those lines came from Piven and Favreau.

Zak Penn: We had the whole discussion about dont wear the shirt of the band youre going to see, and Piven came up with, Don't be that guy. We were just like, Oh my God, that's brilliant. And were totally going to get credit for it.

Alex Dsert: There was supposed to be a big band [play the party], but we weren't sure who it was going to be. We thought it was going to be Stevie Wonder. There were all these different rewrites.

Zak Penn: Originally it was Nirvana. It was before they were huge, and then they got so big we couldnt get them. Then for a minute, it was going to be Anthrax. I remember going to meet with them at a hotel in LA.

Hart Bochner: It was floated by a buddy of mine who was a music supervisor, What if you got the Goo Goo Dolls? Even though they were popular at the time, it doesnt make sense for this movie tonally. We hired Ralph Sall [as music supervisor] and he said, What about George Clinton?

Zak Penn: Clinton ended up being perfect.

In the film, George Clinton and his bands bus gets lost on the way to a show in Hartford and they end up in Port Chester. Not recognizing who they are, the character Gutter asks for a ride back to The Pit. When they get there, Droz convinces the group to play their party instead, which is what causes the students to pause their in-fighting and have fun.

George Clinton (founder of Parliament-Funkadelic): If you remember it, you werent there. I do remember that they had some of the first of what they called kind budchronic and all of that. We had a ball, that's what I remember.

Alex Dsert: When they arrived, Jon, George, and I were in the van. They were driving us to set and Jon asked him, Have you ever been to Toronto before? And George looks up, takes a minute and says, "Yeah, it was 1967." And Jon goes, What was it like? And he goes, All I remember is a green pill. And that was it.

George Clinton: We went through a lot of the colleges for real, especially during 67, 68, and 69. We was living in Cambridge, around Harvard, BCU, and Amherst. We played all those colleges so much that we saw all of those actual characters that was in that movie in real life.

Alex Dsert: When they were on set, doing the playback, it was electrifying.

George Clinton: We came up with doing Erotic City, and they wanted us to do Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off). [Erotic City] was one of Princes funkiest ones and that was my boy. We always jam with his songs in rehearsals. I just knew [Erotic City] would be a slick one, just like the way Otis Day and them did Shout and Shammalamma Ding Dong from the 50s [in Animal House].

Gale Mayron: I had to do a scene with [Clinton]. The band were all hanging out for a couple of days, and I just went over and I started hanging out with them. And then I was like [to the other actors], It's OK guys, come over. Its really cool. He was so sweet. I asked for a souvenir and he gave me a couple of his dreadlocks, which I kept, and a signed P-Funk CD.

Production on PCU ended in the summer of 1993.

RELEASE AND DISAPPOINTMENT

Hart Bochner: [During filming] everybody was raving about the dailies. I remember people [at Fox] saying to me, Youre our A-list comedy guy here.

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The Oral History of PCU, the Culture Wars Cult Classic - VICE

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Ideology and Disunion – The American Conservative

Posted: at 9:34 pm

If you doubt modern leftisms totalitarian ambitions, look around.

For the first time since the 1850s, discussion of secession is spreading in the formerly United States. There is even talk of civil war. What is driving such a strange development in American politics? An attempt to transform this country into an ideological state.

History is familiar with ideological states, states where dissent from the official ideology is dangerous: the Soviet Union, Communist China, Fascist Italy, National Socialist Germany, etc. At times, various ideologies have attempted to draw in Americans, with some temporary success. Fortunately, none gained sufficient power to impose themselves on the countryuntil now.

By the nature of ideology itself, all ideologies seek a totalitarian state. Every ideology says that, on the basis of this or that set of abstract ideas, certain things must be so: only Aryans can do anything right and Jews are inherently evil; everything is determined by ownership of the means of production and the bourgeoisie is evil; modern Italy can be a new Rome and only Italians can make good coffee, etc. Invariably, reality contradicts the ideologys central theses. The ideologues respond by outlawing discussion of the contradictions. Freedom of thought and expression are deadly threats to ideologies, and are therefore every ideologys first targets.

The ideology now attempting to impose itself on America is cultural Marxism, Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms by a think tank established in Germany in 1923, the Institute for Social Research, commonly known as the Frankfurt School. (Those wanting a quick introduction to the Frankfurt School can find it on YouTube under History of Political Correctness.) Cultural Marxism says all of history is determined by which groups, defined by race, sex and sexual orientation, have power over which other groups.

Whites, males, and straights have been on top, so they are oppressors, while some (not all) other races, women, and gays have been victims. All Marxism is loser-worship; cultural Marxism just redefines the losers. Its goal is to empower blacks, feminist women (only feminists), gays, etc., over straight white males.

If someone doubts the totalitarian ambitions of cultural Marxism, all he needs to do is look at most university campuses. Dissenters from cultural Marxism, student or faculty, are persecuted. More broadly, in todays America you cannot be a member of the elite if you defy the aspiring state ideology.

Not surprisingly, many Americans, probably a majority, reject cultural Marxism and its attempts to make them mouth lies. Weve seen that lately in parents efforts to keep critical race theory out of their kids schools. (Denials that it is being taught are lies; the whole of public schools curricula are shaped by the Frankfurt Schools critical theory, of which CRT is a subset.) These Americans are not looking for a fight, but they will fight before they bow and scrane to cultural Marxism. The cultural Marxists, in turn, regard any dissenters as not merely wrong but evil. They may not be tolerated, rather they must be canceled: fired from their jobs, banned in their professions, rendered unpublishable, sometimes physically attacked. They are unpersons. Only through a groveling apology can their existence again be recognized. Trump voters, and millions of Americans who did not vote for Trump, will reach for their rifles before they go down on their knees.

While cultural Marxism is the ideological threat of the moment, another ideology, even more dangerous, is waiting in the wings; extreme environmentalism, sometimes called Deep Green. Deep Green environmentalism sees man as a curse on the planet whose duty is to eliminate himself. Other ideologies have called for liquidating this or that minority or social class; Deep Green targets everyone. It offers a perfect basis for totalitarianism because it argues that everything a person does, including eat and breathe, affects the environment. Currently hiding under the wings of cultural Marxism, Deep Green ideology is waiting to come forth if its protector falters. Again, tens of millions of Americans would rather fight than switch.

At present, no ideology from the right threatens freedom of thought and expression in this country. History shows such ideologies are possible; fascism and national socialism are examples. Libertarianism is an ideologyanyone who thinks free markets solve all problems should drive through a city that has no zoningbut it appeals only to a small intellectual clan and by its own logic cannot oppose freedom of thought and speech.

Conservatism is not an ideology. As Russell Kirk wrote, it is the negation of ideology. It rejects any and all attempts to remake man and society along lines dictated by some abstraction. It seeks a culture and a politics that is shaped from the bottom up by the experience of many generations. It manifests itself in customs, habits, and traditions, which vary widely from place to place, a variety conservatives embrace.

From a conservative perspective, ideology itself, regardless of its tenets, is the ring of power in Tolkiens trilogy. In the long run, it cannot be used for good, regardless of its promises. Our task is to bring our fellow citizens to see all ideologies as what they are, roads to tyranny, and to oppose them one and all. That is a tall order, because ideologies lend themselves to dumbing down, and dumbed down sells. But it is what we must do to redeem the time. Frodos road was not an easy one, either.

William S. Lindis the author, with Lt. Col. Gregory A. Thiele, of the4th Generation Warfare Handbook.Linds most recent book isRetroculture: Taking America Back.

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Ideology and Disunion - The American Conservative

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Hungarian media freedom is alive and well – Washington Examiner

Posted: at 9:34 pm

On Sunday, Hungarian voters handed the governing right-wing Fidesz-KDNP alliance a landslide win and Prime Minister Viktor Orban his fourth consecutive term in office.

Some Western commentators suggest that the contest wasnt really free. They blame the conservative governments alleged control of the media. But far from being controlled by the government, the media market has grown and diversified since Orban took power. Progressives and liberals are free to express their opinions but without a complete, Soviet-style monopoly of ideas; social traditionalists, Christian Democrats, and champions of national sovereignty also have a voice, though they often dont enjoy a dominant position.

Conservative opinions are simply free to compete with liberal narratives, which may look like "government control of the media" to Western commentators who are used to silencing noncompliant voices on the Right. "Free media" likely means liberal-only media to them.

Not in Hungary.

Still, the international establishment never tires of warning that Hungarian media are under assault. To make it official, Freedom House downgraded Hungary to "partly free," though recently leaked documents showed former director of the Soros Foundation Andrej Nosko admitting that the ranking is part of a coordinated campaign against the "illiberal" Hungary and Poland. What, then, is the media market in Hungary, a country of 10 million?

According to media research, 6.8 million Hungarians turn to conservative outlets for information, 6.7 million to liberal sources, with 6 million reading both. Most major media companies across the political spectrum are profitable. It wasnt always this way. When Orban and his conservative government came to power in 2010, there were 33 left-liberal media outlets, mostly foreign-owned. Now, there are 43, mostly Hungarian-owned. There are also five new, right-leaning, anti-Orban outlets. Together, they represent 45% growth of the anti-government, politically relevant media on Orbans watch.

Is that what a government takeover of the media looks like?

All top media outlets are liberal. Out of 29 left-wing and 11 conservative online news portals, three liberal outlets 24.hu, Telex, 444 consistently rank highest in readership. There are three conservative and two liberal TV stations. As elsewhere in Europe, there is a major state-owned Hungarian television network, the MTVA ("Royal TV"), run by government appointees. The left-leaning RTL Klub TV attracts the most viewers. In radio news, five stations lean conservative, four are liberal, and one centrist. In print, there are five conservative and three liberal dailies on offer left-leaning Blikk and Nepszava have the highest readership. Among the weeklies, out of four conservative and six liberal titles, anti-government HVG and Magyar Narancs enjoy the biggest audience.

Despite the Hungarian media markets dynamic growth over the last 12 years, there have been losers, too. Before 2010, the ownership was predominantly foreign, mostly German. Following a flurry of domestic acquisitions, media companies are now 95% Hungarian-owned, although the 5% remaining in foreign hands represent one-third of the market by income and profit.

Ironically, the government-takeover-of-the-media narrative comes not from the oppressed Hungarians, but from foreign-owned outlets whose control over Hungarys media market was successfully challenged by local players after Orbans Fidesz came to power.

The result? In Hungary, you can criticize migration, Islam, or the LGBT-movement; you can question liberal pieties. And/or you can openly and loudly oppose the conservative government.

Far from taking over the media, the conservative government has liberalized media laws and helped create a more diverse news market. There are more choices. As Hungarians vote, their media landscape reflects the diversity of opinion that the West used to have when it was still a beacon of freedom, before political correctness and cancel culture destroyed the marketplace of ideas. After 44 years of communism, thats not the path we Hungarians want to follow.

Gergely Szilvay is a Hungarian journalist at Mandiner based in Budapest.

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Hungarian media freedom is alive and well - Washington Examiner

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