White men are raging over ‘SNL’s’ white male rage skit

White men are raging over ‘SNL’s’ white male rage skit
What does almost every Oscar-nominated movie have in common this year?

Saturday Night Live/YouTube
Rachel Kiley— Jan 26 at 2:05PM

Melissa Villaseñor completely skewered the Oscars on Saturday Night Live, taking aim at the fact that, as is so often the case, the Academy is honoring films about angry white dudes while ignoring basically everyone else.

In a segment for “Weekend Update,” Villaseñor enthusiastically declares that she’s ready to win an Oscar for her original songs she wrote for all the nominated movies. Over elevator muzak, she shares her songs. The first one, for the controversial sympathetic take on Joker, basically just describes the plot of the movie before ending with an apt observation:

“But the thing that this movie is really about is white male rage, white male rage, white male rage!”

It’s the set up for the real joke: Every single song Villaseñor sings about these Oscar-nominated movies follows the same tune and describes the films as being about white male rage. The Irishman, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Jojo Rabbit, 1917, and even Toy Story 4 all get the musical treatment in the skit, though it’s not necessarily the films themselves she’s poking fun at, it’s the fact that there’s a common theme running through all of the movies nominated for awards this year. It’s something many have found particularly frustrating in a year where great films by and about women have been collectively snubbed, something she points out in a line about Little Women and writer/director Greta Gerwig.

The skit struck a chord with people online, and it wasn’t long before #WhiteMaleRage became a hot topic on Twitter. And in a twist that shocked literally no one, white males (#notallwhitemales) got pretty ragey over it.

“Bold move SNL, singing about ‘white male rage,'” TheQuartering tweeted. “I am sure that will bring back all the ratings you’ve been losing to people who are sick of that kind of bullshit.”

Bold move SNL, singing about "white male rage" I am sure that will bring back all the ratings you've been losing to people who are sick of that kind of bullshit. 🙂 See you idiots Monday— TheQuartering (@TheQuartering) January 26, 2020

Can someone plz explain how a skit on @nbcsnl with a song "White Male Rage" is not racist. Its this garbage that continues a divide that was created 10 yrs ago at a time we should have moved past this as. #stopracistpoliticsofdivide and Unite as a proud Nation that's indivisable— Cloner (@Firemedic422) January 26, 2020

Now where could the "women aren't funny" trope come from...??? hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm— Xander (@SeaPort64) January 26, 202

Why do you idiots complain about racism yet proceed to do racist shit like white male rage? pic.twitter.com/9curPRTejE— Jingle jangle man (@NotNormalBingle) January 26, 2020

Man, you all are in here proving just how delicate you all are.It's kind of amazing lol.— bex   (@bex0760) January 26, 2020

I think I'm understanding why this sign exists pic.twitter.com/yI4rV0heyl— ade (@ASluzky) January 26, 2020

And some really took the whole thing as an attack on Joker rather than, again, just pointing out that white men getting angry seems to be the only theme predominately white male Academy voters want to get behind.

The movie is about a man with mental disorders brought on by a life time of torture, and they wanna simplify it to “White male rage”.

Go fuck yourselves.— ☠️ Lilith Lovett ☠️ (@LilithLovett) January 26, 2020

“joker is about white male rage!1!!1!!” jist say you don’t care about mental health and go— bpd hoes for kylo ren (@softbabysolo) January 26, 2020

You can really tell the SNL writers have never actually watched Joker.
"It was about a White Guy, so it must have been about White Male Rage."
That little assumption is what you would call, Ra-Ra-Ra-Racisit— Ryan Williams (@The_One_Nerd) January 26, 2020

Comedy is about sharing laughter, one of the best medicines for those with mental health issues.

Taking a movie all about such issues and mocking it for just being about 'white male rage' is a new low for you. https://t.co/npxyKwRakR— Jeko (@JekoJekoUEM) January 26, 2020

But despite all the dudes getting mad about a comedy show, most of the comments in the trending tag have been an acknowledgement of how timely and hilarious Villaseñor’s tunes are.

“My thanks to Melissa Villaseñor for the new ringtone,” tweeted Charlotte Clymer. “It’s an instant classic.”

My thanks to Melissa Villaseñor for the new ringtone. It's an instant classic.🎶#SNL #WhiteMaleRage https://t.co/hqxcvf4wSV— Charlotte Clymer  (@cmclymer) January 26, 2020White Male Rage really is the Oscars theme song. No lies detected. #SNL pic.twitter.com/T4GMmawkcl— Lauren (@lorloLauren) January 26, 2020

This shit SLAPS I was just shimmying to this in m bathroom. When’s the album drop? https://t.co/bhylLKCcfM— Danielle is exhausted. (@some_kids_mom) January 26, 2020

Welp @TheAcademy you've just been handed your opening number for #Oscars2020. I hope you do it justice. https://t.co/XZ1y55y686— Nicole Sperling (@nicsperling) January 26, 2020

And plenty found the backlash to be just as enjoyable as the skit itself.

“Nothing validates the #WhiteMaleRage hashtag more than a bunch of white dudes getting Mad Online that a Latina woman made fun of JOKER on a comedy show,” Rob Sheridan pointed out.

Nothing validates the #WhiteMaleRage hashtag more than a bunch of white dudes getting Mad Online that a Latina woman made fun of JOKER on a comedy show.— Rob Sheridan (@rob_sheridan) January 26, 2020

Me looking at my notifications of the white males raging about how they aren't raging thus proving the point. pic.twitter.com/8k6DZfVdz1— Greg Anderson Elysée (@GregAndElysee) January 26, 2020

Fragile men set out to prove that SNL is completely irrelevant by...tweeting about it all night long 😂 #WhiteMaleRage pic.twitter.com/PfuQQ1sMDM— Queer Curmudgeon (@QueerCurmudgeon) January 26, 2020

For the record, most of us white males aren't offended by joking about "White Male Rage".

If anything, I suspect those who are triggered by it are the toxically white, toxically male, toxically angry guys who, quite honestly, deserve to get mocked because they're assholes.— If you don't know, now you know (@SethFromThe716) January 26, 2020

So don’t bother tuning in for the Oscars this year, we already know exactly what’s going to win–it’s white male rage!


READ MORE:
Women shut out of Oscars’ best director category—again
‘Joker’ isn’t as smart as it thinks it is
‘Joker’ is catnip for Batman’s toxic masculinity fandom


Rachel Kiley
Rachel Kiley is a writer who sometimes writes things and sometimes is based in L.A., but is definitely always on Twitter @rachelkiley.
BUT OF COURSE WHITE MALE RAGE HAS BEEN AROUND HOLLYWOOD LIKE FOREVER 




















SNOWFLAKES

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Our "Falling Down" election: What an Angry White Man on a ...

https://www.salon.com › 2016/04/02 › our_falling_down_election_what_a...

Apr 3, 2016 - This Michael Douglas film about the "soul sickness" of the early '90s feels ... of white guy -- embodying the rage of the “entitled” Caucasian who was now ... The movie was read at the time as a statement about the Angry White ...

Hey, White People: Michael Douglas Is the Villain, Not the ...

https://www.laweekly.com › hey-white-people-michael-douglas-is-the-villa...

Apr 26, 2017 - Starring Michael Douglas as “D-Fens” — that's the name on the character's ... white male rage and what would become the Fox News generation. ... for a few minutes on men's rights activism (MRA) movie message boards,

1993's Falling Down is an Eerie Reflection of Modern ...

https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com › article

Sep 20, 2016 - His daddy Kirk was an incredibly rich, powerful, and famous movie star and ... Yet Douglas' status as the cocky, smirking embodiment of white male ... of unhinged white male rage powering Donald Trump's political assent.

OPINION: My Country Is On Fire. Soon The Whole World Will Be.
I returned home for Christmas to find my country — and its consciousness — ablaze. What disasters will prompt similar reckonings elsewhere?

David MackBuzzFeed News Reporter Posted on January 25, 2020,

Saeed Khan / Getty Images
A firefighter on the Central Coast, north of Sydney.


Australians are incredibly angry right now — at their leaders, at their media, and at themselves. I went home over the holidays and found a country whose biggest cities were under a haze of smoke and whose population was undergoing a reckoning — one that wasn’t just political, but philosophical.

It feels as if the country is finally opening its eyes. Nature, a scientific journal, has dubbed our bushfire crisis “a wake-up call,” and people are indeed now grappling with fundamental questions: What will the next 50 years look like? The next 100? What will their own lives look like? And just what did they do — or rather not do — to contribute to all this mess?

In Australia, climate change is no longer an abstract problem that future generations will inherit — it’s a problem for those here and now. There’s no going back from this — something environmentalists have warned for decades, but many are only learning now through personal experience. This realization is going to drastically reshape Australia’s political and economic consciousness in the years ahead — especially as younger generations gain more influence.

Since returning to the US last week, friends and strangers keep asking about the fires. Even the surly customs officer who stamped my passport brought them up. But I’ve also been fixated on what it will take for Americans and the rest of the rich world to have their own "come to Jesus" moment? And by that point, will it simply be far too late?

The horrible secret truth about Australians is that we’ve always desperately craved attention from the rest of the world. The little brothers of the West, we yearn for nothing more than your respect. It’s about pride, certainly, but more than that it’s about validation — acknowledgement that we’re not being ignored down here on the far side of the world, that you see us, that we exist.

We can be righteously indignant that international media outlets tend to overlook our successes and scandals — of which there are many — often focusing instead solely on stories about kooky or dangerous animals. That’s when we’re making the news at all, mind you. It took until 2017 (2!0!1!7!) for the New York Times to finally open a bureau in Australia. Even then, it dubbed the country its “next frontier” and described its first reporters there as “pioneers.”

Well, we have your attention, at last.


Mark Evans / Getty Images
The Australian Parliament in Canberra, blanketed by bushfire smoke, Jan. 23.

After decades of exporting to the world a vision of a carefree and sun-kissed Aussie quality of life — “the Lucky Country!” we like to call ourselves — our international image is suddenly going up in smoke. A tourism advert starring Kylie Minogue and targeting British holidaymakers with a cheery vision of Australia has been pulled from the air “in light of the current situation.” Tennis players at the Australian Open in Melbourne are collapsing on live TV, unable to breathe properly. Hollywood stars are offering condolences on awards show stages. Headlines around the world have proclaimed the deaths of more than 1 billion animals.

I could smell the smoke as soon as I landed in Sydney. You can smell it in New Zealand and South America. When the doors of my Qantas plane opened and I stepped onto the jet bridge, I was met with the unmistakable scent of my country ablaze.

I left the airport and found a country I barely recognized: Blankets of smoke on the streets of inner Sydney that were so thick on some days that you couldn’t see to the end of the road. People wearing masks as they made their way to work. Evening news broadcasts packed with apocalyptic scenes from down south, where the fires were raging worst: darkness in the middle of the day, children under bloodred skies, unimaginable death and destruction.

Everywhere I went, the fires were the main topic of conversation. Friends told me they were having trouble sleeping, wide awake at night thinking about loved ones in danger zones or simply worried about Australia’s future. At my cousin’s harborside wedding in mid-January, we led a thankful toast for the heavy rain that had arrived to drench the celebrations. It was the first anyone could recall in months.

Most stark, though, was the change in political tenor. A conservative government that had surprised everyone — including themselves — by romping to victory just seven months before in an election dominated by discussions of taxes on investment properties was now very much in the fire zone.

People were floored that the prime minister decided to vacation in Hawaii amid the disaster, but the real fury went deeper. A leader who two years ago brought a lump of coal to the floor of Parliament to mock his left-wing opponents — “Don’t be afraid! Don’t be scared! It won’t hurt you!” — was suddenly being pilloried for his lack of any real climate policy. Even the opposition leader was shamed for his continued full-throated embrace of the coal industry. Yet, for now, it’s politics as usual. The government has shown no intention of substantial policy change, or even a skerrick of shame over its intransigence.

I keep returning to how David Wallace-Wells described my country in The Uninhabitable Earth. “By far the richest of all the countries staring down the most intense, most immediate warming barrages,” he writes, “Australia is an early test case of how the world’s affluent societies will bend, or buckle, or rebuild under the pressure of temperature changes likely to hit the rest of the well-off world later this century.”

For decades, Australia has been the world’s coal mine. Now we’re the canary in it too.

David Mack is a deputy director of breaking news for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.

Leftist Magazine Jewish Currents Is Expanding — And Hiring A Leading Writer On American Jewish Politics

The recently relaunched magazine has hired Peter Beinart, suggesting a power shift in the politics of American Jewish media.

Rosie Gray BuzzFeed News Reporter Posted on January 27, 2020

David Goldman / AP Peter Beinart at an event in Atlanta, Nov. 14, 2012.

Jewish Currents, a leftist magazine founded in 1946 and initially linked to the Communist Party USA, was relaunched two years ago; its new editors sought to broaden the media horizon on Jewish topics and appeal to young, progressive American Jews who don’t identify with communal institutions’ consensus on Israel.

Energized by the leftist resurgence in American politics since the 2016 election, Jewish Currents has carved out a progressive niche for itself in the Jewish media landscape. It has published on a range of topics from Jewish identity in Uncut Gems to, controversially, a recent illustrated guide on how to carry out a medical abortion at home. It made a splash with two high-profile commissions last year: one, a review by the feminist theorist Judith Butler of New York Times opinion columnist Bari Weiss’s book How to Fight Anti-Semitism, and two, an op-ed by Bernie Sanders about his views on anti-Semitism and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

Now, Jewish Currents is preparing to expand further — and hiring one of the leading commentators on American Jewish politics and Israel. Peter Beinart, the author of the much-discussed 2012 book The Crisis of Zionism and a key voice on the left of the Zionist spectrum, is joining the magazine with a twice-monthly column, leaving his post as a columnist for the Forward. Beinart will retain his other affiliations, with the Atlantic and the City University of New York.

That Beinart would move from the Forward, one of the central organs of American Jewish life which has been in publication since 1897 in Yiddish and in English, to a smaller journal that has an explicitly left point of view, and which has provided a home for anti-Zionist views considered taboo by more centrist organizations, suggests a power shift in the politics of American Jewish media.

Jewish Currents’ publisher Jacob Plitman said in an interview that the publication is also expanding its roster of writers in addition to Beinart, bringing on as contributing or staff writers Lara Friedman of the Foundation for Middle East Peace; Elisheva Goldberg, media director of the New Israel Fund and a former adviser to former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni; Joshua Leifer, an associate editor at socialist magazine Dissent; and Chicago-based writer Mari Cohen. Plitman said that the magazine, a nonprofit, had significantly increased its fundraising, enabling growth. He declined to discuss specific fundraising figures, beyond saying that the organization had previously been operating with a less than $500,000 budget and now anticipated “significant growth” with new pledges.

“Peter in many ways has set the benchmark for what it means to both hold the Jewish community accountable to progressive values and do it in a way that's unflinchingly Jewish and that's directly in contact with our fears, with our history, with all the things that actually make us tick. And that's exactly what Jewish Currents is trying to do,” Plitman said. Plitman referenced Beinart’s influential 2010 essay “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment,” which identified an increasing alienation among young American Jews from Zionism as a primary concern and disillusionment with Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. The essay, Plitman said, reflected his experiences growing up in a conservative Jewish community in North Carolina.

“There’s I think a tremendous need for a kind of American progressive Jewish publication which really sees itself as trying to intervene in a whole series of debates, and confront what I see as the kind of moral corruption of the American Jewish establishment and its complicity in various ways with some of the things that Trump is doing and the direction that [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu is taking Israel,” Beinart said.

“It just seemed really fitting that I could try to be a part of [Jewish Currents], given that I had been yearning to see something like that built,” Beinart said.

At 49, Beinart represents a different generation than the Jewish Currents cohort and a different context for thinking about questions of Jewish identity and Israel. He described how Jewish Currents had “started to reverberate up to my kind of relatively fuddy-duddy, Gen X, Upper West Side life.”

The expansion of Jewish Currents comes as the more mainstream Jewish center-left as exemplified by Beinart finds itself increasingly alienated during the Trump presidency. Last year, Trump, who has repeatedly presented himself as the best American president for Israel, told reporters that “if you want to vote Democrat, you are being very disloyal to Jewish people and very disloyal to Israel.” This week, Trump is welcoming Netanyahu and his political rival Benny Gantz to the White House, amid the administration’s push for a new Middle East peace plan that’s expected to be radically different from what liberals have advocated for.

“I think that the institutional Jewish world, particularly for people our age, is so far away from what kind of, the average kind of progressive millennial is experiencing or thinking about,” said Arielle Angel, Jewish Currents’ editor. “And so I think that we have given expression to something that just doesn't exist anywhere else in this space.”

The Forward, from which the magazine has hired Beinart, has struggled in recent years, laying off a large portion of its staff, including its former editor-in-chief, and ending its print edition last year. Last summer, in a step out of that period, the outlet hired Jodi Rudoren, the former Jerusalem bureau chief of the New York Times, as its new editor-in-chief. Some Jewish progressives have criticized the Forward for publishing right-wing voices like Zionist Organization of America leader Mort Klein, and Jewish Currents has published criticism of the paper.

"We loved having Peter in our pages and we’re excited to see his next chapter," Rudoren said. "We’re excited to see Currents grow and that there’s more investment in Jewish journalism. It was a great run for Peter at The Forward and I hope he has equal success at his next place."

Both Angel and Plitman wished the Forward well. “The Forward is the sole daily Jewish newspaper that has the resources and capacity to do the kind of reporting we need done,” Angel said, noting that what Jewish Currents does as a smaller intellectual journal that only publishes once a day isn’t comparable to what the Forward does as an outlet that also covers news.

“My experience at the Forward was a really good one,” Beinart said, adding that he hopes they “thrive.”

This is the second move that Beinart has taken to advance his progressive agenda on Israel–Palestine in recent months; he is also part of the progressive “Hatikvah” slate running for the World Zionist Congress, a historical legislative body dating from before the founding of the state of Israel open to all Jews worldwide to vote in with power over how certain funds are allocated inside Israel with regard to settlements and religious funds. Beinart hopes to stop funds being spent on settlement projects in the West Bank.

Welcoming Beinart also shows that Currents is welcoming in a more center-left strain of Jewish intellectual writing and potential readership.

“We don't have a manifesto,” Plitman said. “We’re the magazine of a community and a community that wants to speak for itself and also have some internal conversations that haven't always been given the air they need.” Plitman mentioned Norman Podhoretz’s Commentary magazine, which published writers like James Baldwin and Hannah Arendt, as a template: “These are heavyweights, you know, and we're trying to cultivate the heavyweights of today and tomorrow.”

Rosie Gray is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.
Contact Rosie Gray at rosie.gray@buzzfeed.com.

AOC Is Campaigning For Bernie Sanders In Iowa And Voters Are Falling In Love

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is gaining fans in Iowa as she campaigns for Bernie Sanders. "I would love to see her run for president one day."

Nidhi PrakashBuzzFeed News Reporter
Reporting From Ames, Iowa Posted on January 27, 2020,

Win McNamee / Getty Images

AMES, Iowa — With Sen. Bernie Sanders largely stuck in DC in the days leading up to the first contest of the 2020 election, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is storming across Iowa for his campaign and making a big name for herself in the process.

On Saturday morning, the Sanders campaign’s field office in Cedar Rapids was filled with chants of “AOC” as Ocasio-Cortez walked to the front of the room. Her reputation — driven by her Twitter presence, her role in the vanguard of a new generation of progressive Democrats, and by the prolific attacks on her from the right — had somewhat preceded her.

“I would have her be president. She’s unabashed. She’s not afraid of the political garbage that we have,” said Joe Organist, 60, at the stop in Cedar Falls. “If I were running for president, she’d be the only one I’d want speaking for me.”

He added that he’d come to the Sanders event partly because he knew Ocasio-Cortez would be there.

For other voters at the Sanders campaign events in Iowa on Saturday, however, this was their first time really getting to know her, and in some cases, the first time they’d even heard of her.

Close to two dozen voters who spoke to BuzzFeed News over the course of the four-stop day, including two with Sanders, said they were impressed with her — several adding that they would like to see her be part of a Sanders cabinet, and could see her running for president down the track. (Ocasio-Cortez, who is 30, is not yet old enough to be president or vice president.)

“I actually didn’t know anything about her. My friend told me about this,” said Dominique Eniola, 21, a student at the University of Northern Iowa. “I have heard that a lot of politicians don’t like her because she’s a woman and because she’s very ‘radical.’ I think a lot of people throw around the word radical very interchangeably because they might not like just one key thing about someone. I think it is very hard being a woman and not having people take you seriously.”

“I didn’t even know who she was, to be honest,” said Angela Hodge, 45, at a town hall in Marshalltown. “I love her. I love that she’s multicultural, being multicultural myself, I am Hispanic … I would like to see her in more politics because I think she really has a lot to say and it’s very meaningful. She has a lot of good points that she made.”

Ocasio-Cortez made her second swing through Iowa this weekend — last time she was here, in November with Sanders, her focus was on a climate forum at Drake University. In December, she spoke at a campaign stop in Las Vegas entirely in Spanish, in an event that saw young Latino Sanders supporters bring in their parents and grandparents to engage directly in their first language for the first time in the presidential campaign.

Ocasio-Cortez’s approach on the presidential campaign trail — dating back to her first New York City rally after endorsing Sanders in October — is a combination of sweeping progressive discourse tied in to very personal stories. This weekend, she talked about the “surreal” experience of sleeping on an air mattress in her first days in Congress, and then walking to work on the Hill, where she says she was “told that our lives are too politically inconvenient to fight for.”


Daniel Acker for BuzzFeed News
Attendees hold the initials of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, as she speaks during a rally supporting the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders in Iowa City, Iowa, on Jan. 24.

“She’s got such a captivating voice. She makes you feel like she’s no more important than you,” said Matt Schneider, 23, a Sanders volunteer canvasser at the Cedar Rapids event on Saturday morning. He added that he would “support her in almost anything she does.”

“I think she can go as far as she wants. I would love to see her in a Bernie cabinet position,” said Catherine Shea, 37, at the same event.

During a stop at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, a woman stood up and told Ocasio-Cortez a story about her wages being garnished because of medical debt.

“I’m going to try not to cry because you’re right there,” the woman said, before she started crying. After hugging her, Ocasio-Cortez told her own story of not being able to afford blood tests her doctor said she needed — while she was running for Congress.

“It is so wrong. This is so wrong,” said Ocasio-Cortez. “To garnish a person’s wages because they needed to go to the doctor is morally wrong.”

Some Iowans have been paying attention to Ocasio-Cortez’s online presence and also how she’s conducted herself in several high-profile hearings since becoming a member of Congress last year.

“She’s young, but she’s an extremely astute politician, and a sharp questioner in hearings. I also really like that she pays her staff a living wage,” said Joe Balong, 47, who is undecided between Sanders and Warren. “I hope that she remains on the national stage. I would love to see her run for president one day. I think she’d absolutely be a great cabinet member.”

“She’s all over the place, so even the average person would know [who she is],” said Ricardo Ligas, 26, at an event in Cedar Falls. “She’s genuine and it's refreshing just to see someone young. Years from now hopefully, with good health, she’s doing the same thing. It would be very ambitious to say right away, ‘Oh run for president,’ but as long as she keeps doing right by her district, maybe in 30 or 40 years, or sooner than that, I could see a presidential run.”

As Trump’s lawyers wrapped up their arguments earlier than scheduled Saturday, Sanders was able to join Ocasio-Cortez for two events, before joining her for more on Sunday. The senator spoke of Ocasio-Cortez as the next generation in his political movement.

“I honestly cannot remember any first-term member of Congress having as much of an impact on our country as Alexandria has,” he said at a Saturday night rally in Ames.

Ocasio-Cortez’s endorsement was always going to be a significant get for any of the progressive candidates — but her presence on the campaign trail has become even more important as Trump’s Senate impeachment trial continues to keep four of the candidates off the campaign trail.

As Sanders has pulled ahead in some polls of Iowa in recent days, his campaign continues to emphasize that turnout is going to be key to actually winning the nomination — and Ocasio-Cortez could potentially drive that turnout, especially among younger voters.

“On caucus night, if somebody tells you that turnout is high, we can win,” Sanders said Saturday night.

On Friday night, the end of the third day of Trump’s impeachment trial in DC, Sanders was in the Senate chamber, sometimes “slouched in his chair and staring at the floor” and in another moment “rubbing his head aggressively,” according to a reporter in the Senate.

At the same time, at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Ocasio-Cortez was commanding a crowd of more than 800. On Saturday, she made four stops across the state, culminating in a packed rally in Ames, just outside Des Moines, where voters jostled for space with dozens of reporters.

"I think she's received well in Iowa," said Alisha Jenecke, 36, who also saw Ocasio-Cortez at the climate forum in November. "I like her compassion and the fact that she's passionate about issues and gets right in there, in their face."

MORE ON AOC AND BERNIE SANDERS
The Sanders Campaign, With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Front And Center, Is Speaking To Older Latino VotersNidhi Prakash · Dec. 24, 2019

Nidhi Prakash is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Washington, DC.
Contact Nidhi Prakash at nidhi.prakash@buzzfeed.com.

US Prosecutors Say Prince Andrew Isn't Cooperating In The Epstein Investigation

Andrew said in November that he would comply with law enforcement.

WAITING TILL IT BLOWS OVER THEN DENY DENY DENY

Posted on January 27, 2020, at 1:38 p.m. ET

Lindsey Parnaby / Getty Images

Despite a pledge to comply, Prince Andrew has provided "zero" cooperation with the Jeffrey Epstein inquiry, New York prosecutors said.

"The Southern District of New York and the FBI have contacted Prince Andrew's attorneys and requested to interview Prince Andrew and to date Prince Andrew has provided zero cooperation," US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey Berman told media on Monday.

"He publicly offered, indeed in a press release, to cooperate with law enforcement investigating the crimes committed by Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators."

Buckingham Palace declined to comment when reached by BuzzFeed News.

In November, Prince Andrew stepped back from public duties "for the foreseeable future" over the "disruption" of his association with the late Epstein.


Handout / Getty Images

"I continue to unequivocally regret my ill-judged association with Jeffrey Epstein," Prince Andrew said in a statement.

"Of course, I am willing to help any appropriate law enforcement agency with their investigations, if required."

But Berman, speaking outside Epstein's former Manhattan mansion, said the Duke of York has not followed through.

Epstein was found dead in his New York jail cell last summer and his death was ruled a suicide. He was arrested in July and accused of running a sex trafficking operation in which he allegedly sexually abused dozens of underage girls, some as young as 14, in his New York and Florida homes between 2002 and 2005.

In August, Prince Andrew released a statement defending his relationship with Epstein, saying he had never participated in the alleged sexual abuse and at no point did he "see, witness or suspect any behaviour of the sort that subsequently led to his arrest and conviction."

The prince also said he saw Epstein "infrequently and probably no more than only once or twice per year."

One of the alleged victims, Virginia Giuffre, has said she was forced to have sex with the prince when she was 17 and under Epstein's control.

In a November interview with the BBC, Prince Andrew claimed Giuffre's account was false because she described him as sweating on a dance floor. He said he was unable to sweat at the time.

"There's a slight problem with the sweating because I have a peculiar medical condition which is that I didn't sweat at the time," Andrew told the BBC. "I didn't sweat at the time because I had suffered what I would describe as an overdose of adrenaline in the Falklands War when I was shot at."

Andrew was roundly mocked for the defense.


Lauren Strapagiel is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Toronto, Canada.

Contact Lauren Strapagiel at lauren.strapagiel@buzzfeed.com.

Achieving ‘American Dream’ more likely in Canada than US, report finds

Most economies don't let citizens thrive, entrenching historic inequality, says World Economic Forum

Rory Sullivan

The “American Dream” is much easier to achieve in Canada than the US, data from a new report into social mobility suggest.

The report, by the World Economic Forum, found it would take someone born into a low-income family in the US four generations to approach mean income — one generation more than it would in Canada.

Figures also showed the top 1 per cent of earners in the US in 2018 earned almost 160 per cent more than they did in 1979. Over the same period, the bottom 90 per cent of earners only saw a 24 per cent rise in income.

Research came from the Global Social Mobility Index, which ranks 83 countries in terms of social mobility.

The report suggests that huge wage disparities, which have grown “exponentially” since the 1970s, are part of the problem.

Klaus Scwhab, the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, said in a statement that an individual’s chances in life were still “disproportionately influenced” by their socio-economic background.

This year’s index, published to coincide with the start of the World Economic Forum in Davos, revealed that Nordic countries were the best for social mobility, with Denmark topping the list.

Canada and the US came lower down the rankings, in 14th and 27th place respectively. The UK came in between them in 21st place.


Among the world’s large emerging economies, Russia ranked 39th, followed by China in 45th, Brazil in 60th and India in 76th.

The World Economic Forum said in a statement on Monday that most economies currently fail to give their citizens the opportunity to thrive, with only a “handful” having the necessary conditions to foster social mobility.

It added: “As a result, an individual’s opportunities in life remain tethered to their socio-economic status at birth, entrenching historical inequalities.”

Technology is also another issue the report highlights, since it reduces the need for low-skilled jobs and rewards high-skilled jobs disproportionately.

The World Economic Forum recommends a range of measures countries could adopt to improve their social mobility rankings, including the introduction of more progressive tax systems and better quality education.

The World Economic Forum’s Global Social Mobility Index 2020 measured economies across five criteria: health, education, technology access, work, and protection and institutions.

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Rising inequality risks leading to new ‘financial disaster’

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Growing inequality is dangerous for democracies, particularly ours

British man dies in US immigration detention centre
No word on detainee's identity or status in US

Officials in the UK have confirmed they are looking into reports that a British man has died while in the custody of US immigration authorities.

Reports said a 39-year-old had been found dead while being held in Florida by the enforcement of arm of the nation’s border agency, known as ICE.

The incident marked the fifth person to die in ICE custody since October, reports said..

Eight people total died in ICE custody during the 2019 fiscal year.

A spokesperson for the foreign office in London told The Independent: “Our staff are in contact with the US authorities following the death of a British man in Florida.”

In late January, the agency was detaining nearly 41,000 immigrants.

The peak came this summer, when around 55,000 immigrants were in custody in local jails and private prisons across the country.

Reports said it appeared the man had taken his own life.

BuzzFeed News, which was the first to report the death, said ICE has expanded the number of people it detains to record levels under the presidency of Donald Trump.

There were no immediate details about the man’s identify or why he had been detained.

US immigration authorities did not immediately respond to enquiries

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KATE BUSH CLOUDBUSTING ABOUT WILHELM REICH

Official music video for the single "Cloudbusting" written, produced and performed by the British singer Kate Bush. It was the second single released from her no.1 1985 album Hounds of Love. "Cloudbusting" peaked at no.20 in the UK Singles Chart.
The music video, directed by Julian Doyle, was conceived by Terry Gilliam and Kate Bush. The video features Canadian actor Donald Sutherland playing the role of Wilhelm Reich, and Bush playing the part of his young son, Peter. 

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