Latest news with #Taney
Miami Herald
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Miami Herald
Philly drag king gets the national spotlight in ‘King of Drag'
PHILADELPHIA -- Painter Joy Taney knows how to awe and unsettle viewers. With dynamic makeup and body painting skills, she has transformed actors into ghouls at Eastern State Penitentiary for Halloween and designed stunning looks for contestants on "RuPaul's Drag Race." Taney first met RuPaul in 2016 when she competed in "Skin Wars: Fresh Paint," which the celebrity drag queen hosted, and won the $10,000 grand prize. With the winnings, the West Philly native relocated back home to work as a professional makeup artist and quickly became a regular behind the scenes of drag shows - and on the three latest seasons of "Drag Race" - where her talent was sorely sought after. But Taney had "more outrageous ideas." She wanted more horror and gore with prosthetics and latex; she wanted something monstrous and extraordinary. Her clients found that too extreme. "I realized I was having those ideas for myself," said Taney. "The only person who was really going to be embodying the thing that I was looking for in the drag scene, but wasn't quite seeing, was me." Enter Henlo Bullfrog. Around 2017, Taney created the stage persona where she could embrace a fantastical mess of a character: "Henlo Bullfrog is Joy Taney's changeling twin brother who was stolen by the fairies at birth and dropped in a frog pond for 30 years," she explained. "He is very fae, but he's also very monstrous, because he's a shape-shifter." Bullfrog has brought Taney out of dressing rooms of other performers and thrown her into the spotlight with her own brand of dazzling weirdness. Now, Bullfrog has earned a spot representing Philadelphia on the nation's first-ever drag king reality competition show, "King of Drag," now airing on the free LGBTQ+ streaming service Revry. Philly's drag kingdom Philly's drag and burlesque workshops taught Taney the art of being a drag king - typically a female performer who dresses in masculine clothing and emphasizes gendered stereotypes. (However, as a queer art form that gleefully blurs gender divides, drag isn't prescriptive; not all kings are women, not all queens are men, and not all drag looks the same.) Drag kings constitute a smaller subgenre of mainstream drag, often booking fewer gigs and earning less stage time than the more popular drag queens. That discrepancy has played out on national television, too, as "RuPaul's Drag Race" has run for a whopping 17 seasons, expanding with franchise spinoffs like "All Stars," before the arrival of "King of Drag." For Taney, becoming a drag king meant experimenting with monster drag, embodying horror characters like the Babadook at Philly Pride Parades, and learning the best ways to showcase her artistic talent onstage at venues like Frankie Bradley's and Tattooed Mom. Airbrush makeup is Taney's speciality, a practice she learned from Philly artist Bryon Wackwitz, who, for years, ran South Street's Mutt Airbrush and Art Supply. Unlike performers who rely on dance, Taney lives with a disability called reflex sympathetic dystrophy syndrome that limits her movements. Instead, she focuses on stagecraft, costume transformations, and illusions, like layering makeup to "tear off" her face and reveal gore underneath. On King of Drag, Henlo Bullfrog delivers a unique amphibious aesthetic that helps him stand out from the other nine contestants. Nearly a decade into performing drag in Philadelphia, Taney, 38, says the queer nightlife scene has become more welcoming of drag kings. "Philadelphia is gaining a reputation as one of the better cities in the U.S. for drag kings," she said. "We have the biggest drag king scene I've ever seen in Philadelphia right now, in terms of variety of styles of king performance, visuals, and gender expression." Philadelphia drag gained more recognition on last year's season of RuPaul's Drag Race, which saw the first drag queen to represent the city: the charismatic opera singer Sapphira Cristál. Taney was part of Cristál's creative team, airbrushing a bodysuit with fig leaves to evoke Eve in the Garden of Eden and helping design winning looks like the massive flower outfit and the spooky Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater character. Cristál was a finalist for the crown and won Miss Congeniality. In classic Philly underdog fashion, some fans believe she was robbed of the title. "People were like 'RuPaul better not come to Philadelphia. We're going to fight,'" Taney recalled, laughing. Taney and Cristál first met when the latter took Taney's airbrush makeup classes and today they're close friends; Henlo Bullfrog is part of Cristál's drag house, which includes about a dozen other local drag performers. Becoming Bullfrog Raised by folk musicians in West Philly, Taney has developed her own musical talent for the stage. As Henlo Bullfrog, she pushes her performances to be more unhinged; Part of the "King of Drag" audition included a video of Bullfrog playing trombone with his feet. Beyond the folk influence, Taney's dad, Peter, has been a guiding light for the creation of Bullfrog. "My dad is so present in Henlo. I contour based on my father's bone structure," said Taney. "He's even done some monster drag with me, and wrote a song called 'The Ballad of Henlo Bullfrog,' and we play it together." At 75, Peter Taney regularly travels from his home in the Poconos to see drag at Philly nightclubs, and to occasionally participate in local activism. In recent years, the Taneys worked to successfully petition the city to rename Taney Street, which recognized their notorious ancestor Roger B. Taney, the U.S. Supreme Court Justice behind the 1857 Dred Scott decision, which denied humanity to enslaved African Americans and claimed they could never become citizens. That street is now named LeCount, after local civil rights activist Caroline LeCount. For Joy Taney, performing as a drag king represents another activist practice in the face of the Trump administration's calls to ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth and attacks on drag performers. "One of the most fun things about the drag king medium is that you punch up at the people at the very top - the men holding power over all of these systems that are making it worse for all of us," said Taney. "Drag kings are so perfectly and uniquely posed to make fun of them … It is so punk to queer masculinity right now." ____ "King of Drag" airs weekly on Sundays on Revry. On Monday nights, Henlo Bullfrog hosts a watch party for the show at Strangelove's. Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
Boston Globe
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Boston Lyric Opera, Celebrity Series of Boston announce 2025-26 seasons
The remaining three productions are a one-night only performance of 'Ride of the Valkyries!,' an original operatic entertainment starring Christine Goerke and Morris Robinson (Nov. 12); an already-announced concert performance of 'Vanessa' in collaboration with the Boston Symphony Orchestra (Jan. 8 and 10), and an installation of Gustav Mahler's 'Das Lied von der Erde' directed by Anne Bogart and starring Raehann Bryce-Davis and Brandon Jovanovich (March 20-29). The latter will be the first major event BLO will host in its newly renovated Opera + Community Studios in Fort Point. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Though 'Das Lied von der Erde' is a symphonic work with vocal soloists, not an opera, Vernatter said it would be 'fully staged as a dramatic work with a narrative,' on a similar scale to previous BLO productions in nontraditional venues such as 2023's 'Bluebeard's Castle/Four Last Songs' at Flynn Cruiseport. Bryce-Davis will also present a solo recital in the Fort Point venue, on March 24. Subscriptions are available now; single tickets will be available for purchase at a later date. Advertisement Yunchan Lim. James Hole Celebrity Series's upcoming season features dozens of performances across classical, jazz, and dance. Artistic director Nicole Taney said she found it hard to choose which event she was most excited to have on the bill. 'They're all my favorite children,' she said, but shouted out performances by pianist Yunchan Lim (Oct. 22), accordionist Théo Ould (Dec. 2), the Budapest Festival Orchestra with Iván Fischer and members of the Boston Lyric Opera Chorus, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra with music director designate Klaus Mäkelä. Further highlights of the subscription season before New Year 2026 include a recital by mezzo-soprano J'Nai Bridges at Groton Hill Music Center (Oct. 9), a return performance by adventurous Nordic roots trio Dreamers' Circus (Oct. 26), a debut series performance by acclaimed young violinist (and current New England Conservatory student) Amaryn Olmeda (Nov. 17), and an evening uniting Third Coast Percussion with choreography by street dance specialists Lil Buck and Jon Boogz (Nov. 22 and 23). This year for the first time, Celebrity Series's free Neighborhood Arts performance series is also included in the season brochure. Taney said she had intended to bring the series, which largely features artists with ties to the Boston area, 'under the same umbrella' as the subscription series. 'It really does showcase all of what we do,' said Taney of the Neighborhood Arts series. The first half of the season includes performances by Grammy-winning jazz trombonist Kalia Vandever with harpist Charles Overton (Sept. 20), violinist Adrian Anantawan (Sept. 27), global music ensemble Biribá Union (Oct. 19 and Oct. 25), Afro-Haitian dance company Jean Appolon Expressions (Nov. 15) and pianist Kevin Harris, who will perform a new suite inspired by the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (Dec. 6). Advertisement Jean Appolon Expressions. Mika Pasco Subscriptions will be available to the public on May 22, with single tickets for fall performances available Aug. 7. Both organizations typically receive some project-based funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, but they don't expect that will continue in the near future given President Trump's recent cuts to the agency and the termination of grants. Celebrity Series executive director Gary Dunning clarified that the organization received its 2024-25 grant money shortly after New Year 2025, but 'we have not received any notification — which we normally would have — for next year's grant, which we fully expect will never happen.' BLO received an email from the agency on Friday, May 2 informing it that its award had been terminated, effective May 31. Federal grant money was not a critical chunk in the operating budgets for either organization, but BLO general director Bradley Vernatter said he was concerned about the arts sphere as a whole. 'The entire situation is having a profound impact on the arts community, and creating pressures' on both artists and individual philanthropists, he said. 'It has a ripple effect through the entire ecosystem.' BOSTON LYRIC OPERA Advertisement 617-542-6772, CELEBRITY SERIES OF BOSTON 617-482-2595, A.Z. Madonna can be reached at
Yahoo
06-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump memo on civil rights, DEI executive order undermine 60 years of progress
An executive order issued by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 required the federal government to follow the letter and spirit of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. President Donald Trump's reversal of that order is a stunning blow to America's 60-year fight against discrimination. A Trump Administration memo issued last month, immediately freezing all U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division litigation, and an executive order halting any federal initiatives involving diversity, equity and inclusion, are just as disturbing. But legal assaults on established civil rights law have been increasing for a while now, fostered or ignored by both Republican and Democratic politicians. More from Freep Opinion: I'm suing Trump because of a promise I made to Michigan voters For the past few years, I've been concerned that civil rights cases are being derailed by the menacing ghost of Roger B. Taney, the former U.S. Supreme Court chief justice who wrote what many legal scholars, judges and lawyers regard as the worst decision the high court has ever made: Scott v. Sandford, better known as the Dred Scott decision. This 1857 decision, written for the majority of the court by Taney (who pronounced his name as 'tawny') remains a stain on American jurisprudence because it so perfectly articulated what racism has meant in our nation, and it made Taney the perfect example of a rogue judge. 'The black man has no rights that the white man is bound to respect,' Taney wrote, as he pronounced the fate of Dred Scott — an enslaved Black man who fought for his legal freedom in court for more than a decade. Taney's outrageous viewpoint, along with the weak reasoning of his legal opinion, provoked a fierce national debate at the time it was written — and brought the U.S. closer to civil war, which broke out only four years afterward. As a lawyer who defends the rights of people who face unfair treatment on the job and elsewhere, I see a 21st century version of the Taney doctrine taking shape in judges' decisions and jury verdicts across the nation. If judges don't fight the trend, there is a danger that Taney's ghost will represent America's official stance toward people of color in this century. More from Freep Opinion: Trump puts blame on DEI for plane crash. It's meant to exhaust us In my own law practice, which is national but based in metro Detroit, I've seen judges and juries suppress the lawsuits of workers who've suffered racial or sexual discrimination on the job. One of my clients, DeSheila C. Howlett, worked as the first and only Black police officer for the City of Warren before we sued the city for employment discrimination in 2017. A federal jury finally found in her favor in May 2023, awarding her more than a half-million dollars — largely for backpay. While the legal victory was significant, we appealed the monetary award to reflect the wrongs Howlett endured. We eventually settled with the City of Warren in 2023 for an amount that both sides agreed not to disclose. But Howlett's fight for financial justice was a draining experience. In two legal cases involving education in Detroit suburbs, I documented examples of blatant disregard for the rights of Black students — where 'no rights, no respect' attitudes were clearly evident. I represented a Farmington Hills High School student whose high school teacher called him the N-word in a classroom in 2019, with other students present. But in a December 2022 ruling, a federal judge determined that the teacher's action was not 'sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of [the student's] education and create an abusive educational environment.' In other words, a white teacher calling a Black student a word that the world recognizes as patently racist wasn't abusive at all. Similar disrespect was evident when I filed a class-action lawsuit in November 2021 against Bloomfield Hills High School for failing to address an environment where hate and death-threat messages and shocking acts of animosity against Black students abounded, including frequent use of the N-word. Numerous studies have scientifically documented that institutional racism causes psychological and physical injury to the health of Black students. I asked Enrique Nesbett Jr., a professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, to evaluate the Bloomfield Hills situation in 2022. 'Evidence (from cases such as Bloomfield Hills) points to racial discrimination as a clear contributor to racial and ethnic health disparities among African American populations,' including higher death rates, Nesbitt concluded. This is applicable to adults of color as well. Legal disrespect for Black Americans extends even to how the law itself is cited by lawyers and judges. According to the Citing Slavery Project, founded and led by Justin Simard, an associate professor of law at Michigan State University, much of American property law is based on slavery cases from the 1800s. The American legal system has unashamedly used slaveholders' claims of property rights in Black people as a basis for the development of property law in this country, and continues to use slave-related cases as legal precedent, pointing to how insensitive our courts are to the suffering of African Americans and the impact of institutional racism. Again: no rights, no respect. Nevertheless, there are glimmers of hope. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in April 2024 on a case similar to DeSheila Howlett's lawsuit against Warren. In that lawsuit, Sgt. Jatonya Muldrow, a Black woman, sued the St. Louis police department for discrimination against her on the basis of her gender, after an involuntary job transfer that involved changes in working hours, overtime opportunities and working attire. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled that Muldrow's job transfer was not a 'materially significant disadvantage' to her. Yet, the extremely conservative U.S. Supreme Court decided 9-0 in Sgt. Muldrow's favor. The court ruled that the Black female officer was clearly targeted for mistreatment and the harm she suffered did not have to be 'significant,' as the lower courts had mistakenly ruled. Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the majority, noted that in similar cases, such claims were 'rejected solely because courts rewrote Title VII, compelling workers to make a showing that the statutory text does not require.' Established law, namely Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, not political posturing, should be the standard in the relentless fight against discrimination. Anything less constitutes rogue law, which Trump is now trying to establish through his executive orders addressing civil rights. If Roger Taney had brought a solid interpretation of the Constitution, as written, to the Dred Scott decision, his reckless lurch toward 'no rights' and 'no respect' for Black citizens could have been avoided. Our judges and elected leaders today should avoid following the rogue example of Taney and stick to the legislative intent of civil rights statutes enacted by our state and federal legislatures. Leonard Mungo is owner of Mungo & Mungo at Law PLC, which specializes in employment and civil rights law. He is also general counsel for the National Black State Troopers Coalition. This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Trump memo freezing civil rights lawsuits is dangerous | Opinion
USA Today
06-02-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
Trump memo on civil rights, DEI executive order undermine 60 years of progress
Trump memo on civil rights, DEI executive order undermine 60 years of progress | Opinion Show Caption Hide Caption Kristen Clarke reflects on DOJ's progress reforming police Kristen Clarke, the first Black woman to serve as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, discusses police reform and stopping hate crimes. An executive order issued by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 required the federal government to follow the letter and spirit of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. President Donald Trump's reversal of that order is a stunning blow to America's 60-year fight against discrimination. A Trump Administration memo issued last month, immediately freezing all U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division litigation, and an executive order halting any federal initiatives involving diversity, equity and inclusion, are just as disturbing. But legal assaults on established civil rights law have been increasing for a while now, fostered or ignored by both Republican and Democratic politicians. More from Freep Opinion: I'm suing Trump because of a promise I made to Michigan voters The ghost of Roger Taney For the past few years, I've been concerned that civil rights cases are being derailed by the menacing ghost of Roger B. Taney, the former U.S. Supreme Court chief justice who wrote what many legal scholars, judges and lawyers regard as the worst decision the high court has ever made: Scott v. Sandford, better known as the Dred Scott decision. This 1857 decision, written for the majority of the court by Taney (who pronounced his name as 'tawny') remains a stain on American jurisprudence because it so perfectly articulated what racism has meant in our nation, and it made Taney the perfect example of a rogue judge. 'The black man has no rights that the white man is bound to respect,' Taney wrote, as he pronounced the fate of Dred Scott — an enslaved Black man who fought for his legal freedom in court for more than a decade. Taney's outrageous viewpoint, along with the weak reasoning of his legal opinion, provoked a fierce national debate at the time it was written — and brought the U.S. closer to civil war, which broke out only four years afterward. As a lawyer who defends the rights of people who face unfair treatment on the job and elsewhere, I see a 21st century version of the Taney doctrine taking shape in judges' decisions and jury verdicts across the nation. If judges don't fight the trend, there is a danger that Taney's ghost will represent America's official stance toward people of color in this century. More from Freep Opinion: Trump puts blame on DEI for plane crash. It's meant to exhaust us Shameless In my own law practice, which is national but based in metro Detroit, I've seen judges and juries suppress the lawsuits of workers who've suffered racial or sexual discrimination on the job. One of my clients, DeSheila C. Howlett, worked as the first and only Black police officer for the City of Warren before we sued the city for employment discrimination in 2017. A federal jury finally found in her favor in May 2023, awarding her more than a half-million dollars — largely for backpay. While the legal victory was significant, we appealed the monetary award to reflect the wrongs Howlett endured. We eventually settled with the City of Warren in 2023 for an amount that both sides agreed not to disclose. But Howlett's fight for financial justice was a draining experience. In two legal cases involving education in Detroit suburbs, I documented examples of blatant disregard for the rights of Black students — where 'no rights, no respect' attitudes were clearly evident. I represented a Farmington Hills High School student whose high school teacher called him the N-word in a classroom in 2019, with other students present. But in a December 2022 ruling, a federal judge determined that the teacher's action was not 'sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of [the student's] education and create an abusive educational environment.' In other words, a white teacher calling a Black student a word that the world recognizes as patently racist wasn't abusive at all. Similar disrespect was evident when I filed a class-action lawsuit in November 2021 against Bloomfield Hills High School for failing to address an environment where hate and death-threat messages and shocking acts of animosity against Black students abounded, including frequent use of the N-word. Numerous studies have scientifically documented that institutional racism causes psychological and physical injury to the health of Black students. I asked Enrique Nesbett Jr., a professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, to evaluate the Bloomfield Hills situation in 2022. 'Evidence (from cases such as Bloomfield Hills) points to racial discrimination as a clear contributor to racial and ethnic health disparities among African American populations,' including higher death rates, Nesbitt concluded. This is applicable to adults of color as well. Legal disrespect for Black Americans extends even to how the law itself is cited by lawyers and judges. According to the Citing Slavery Project, founded and led by Justin Simard, an associate professor of law at Michigan State University, much of American property law is based on slavery cases from the 1800s. The American legal system has unashamedly used slaveholders' claims of property rights in Black people as a basis for the development of property law in this country, and continues to use slave-related cases as legal precedent, pointing to how insensitive our courts are to the suffering of African Americans and the impact of institutional racism. Again: no rights, no respect. The fight against rogue law Nevertheless, there are glimmers of hope. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in April 2024 on a case similar to DeSheila Howlett's lawsuit against Warren. In that lawsuit, Sgt. Jatonya Muldrow, a Black woman, sued the St. Louis police department for discrimination against her on the basis of her gender, after an involuntary job transfer that involved changes in working hours, overtime opportunities and working attire. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled that Muldrow's job transfer was not a 'materially significant disadvantage' to her. Yet, the extremely conservative U.S. Supreme Court decided 9-0 in Sgt. Muldrow's favor. The court ruled that the Black female officer was clearly targeted for mistreatment and the harm she suffered did not have to be 'significant,' as the lower courts had mistakenly ruled. Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the majority, noted that in similar cases, such claims were 'rejected solely because courts rewrote Title VII, compelling workers to make a showing that the statutory text does not require.' Established law, namely Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, not political posturing, should be the standard in the relentless fight against discrimination. Anything less constitutes rogue law, which Trump is now trying to establish through his executive orders addressing civil rights. If Roger Taney had brought a solid interpretation of the Constitution, as written, to the Dred Scott decision, his reckless lurch toward 'no rights' and 'no respect' for Black citizens could have been avoided. Our judges and elected leaders today should avoid following the rogue example of Taney and stick to the legislative intent of civil rights statutes enacted by our state and federal legislatures. Leonard Mungo is owner of Mungo & Mungo at Law PLC, which specializes in employment and civil rights law. He is also general counsel for the National Black State Troopers Coalition.
