Latest news with #post-America
Los Angeles Times
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
What's the matter with men? The year's most-talked-about TV shows have answers
They've hurt people in sudden fits of rage and calculated, premeditated attacks. They've blackmailed, threatened, lied and seduced. Now, they're starting to face the consequences. After years of showing toxic male behavior onscreen, this TV season has seen plenty of badly behaved men — well, at least the fictional ones — receive retribution. Netflix's 'You' ends with white-knight-in-his-own-mind Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) behind bars. During the final season of Hulu's 'The Handmaid's Tale,' Nick Blaine (Max Minghella) and Joseph Lawrence (Bradley Whitford), onetime functionaries of the fundamentalist post-America known as Gilead, realize that oppression based on one religion's beliefs may not be a good idea. 'Black Mirror' sequel episode 'USS Callister: Into Infinity' showed just how deep the toxicity of an abusive captor can run. And after four episodes of Netflix's 'Adolescence,' baby-faced teen killer Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper) finally admits fault. 'Handmaid's,' the 2017 drama series Emmy winner that many saw as a coded message about President Trump's first term, is a particularly potent example of the shift. 'There's no such thing as a good commander,' says Yahlin Chang, who with Eric Tuchman serves as this season's showrunner. 'If you are commander in Gilead, then you are by definition this toxic, poisonous force that needs to be rooted out from top to bottom.' In a world where the powerful increasingly act with impunity, taking fictional villains to task makes sense, a form of Hollywood wish fulfillment for those who feel stuck or hopeless. Programs such as Prime Video's 'The Better Sister' and Apple TV+'s 'Bad Sisters' further the conversation by showing the domino effect male toxicity has on others. The first season of creator and star Sharon Horgan's dark comedy 'Bad Sisters' is about a family of women who hate their sister's emotionally and physically violent husband almost as much as they want to save her from him. In the second season, which premiered last November, the sisters learn there's more to it than simply removing him from the situation. 'Something I was really drawn to write about is that, in the end, they didn't save her,' Horgan says of the battered Grace, played by Anne-Marie Duff. Instead, with years of trauma to work through, she retreats into herself — exactly the outcome her sisters hoped to prevent. 'She couldn't reach out to her sisters, who were heroes to her, and who she knew, deep down, would have done everything for her,' Horgan says. 'But she couldn't quite save herself. And it, structurally, gave us this journey for them.' With 'The Better Sister,' creators Olivia Milch and Regina Corrado look at all the people affected by Corey Stoll's Adam, a husband and father who's only perfect in the public eye. This isn't just about the abuse he inflicts on his wife, Chloe (Jessica Biel), a media personality known for her cutting feminist wit. It also includes Adam's mockery of teen son Ethan (Maxwell Acee Donovan). 'Ethan is at this intersection of childhood and adulthood, and he has this innocence as well as this somewhat complex understanding of adult relationships because he's been witnessing this tension unfold with his parents,' Milch says. Like a lot of teens, Ethan seeks guidance in the online manosphere, going down a rabbit hole of misogynistic comments about his stepmother. Ethan could easily label Chloe a hypocrite in these forums or at home. Instead, the other users disgust him. 'We wanted to talk about how there was a healthy aspect to it for him … that he needed to get it out … and that this was something that was cathartic for him,' adds Corrado. By contrast, the British series 'Adolescence' delves into the ways the internet can push boys in the wrong direction. But co-creator Jack Thorne stresses that collaborator Stephen Graham, who stars as Jamie's father, didn't want this to be the only factor. 'I know that, when I was 13, if I'd read or been told '80% of women are attracted to 20% of men' — a common misogynist talking point online — 'I'd have said, 'Yes, I believe that,'' says Thorne, who is in his 40s. He adds that he also would have acted on the idea that 'your job is to make yourself attractive; your job is to get yourself fitted; your job is to learn how to manipulate the situation.' Thorne says he, Graham and director Philip Barantini weren't just concerned with younger men, though: 'We wanted to examine ourselves in this a bit.' 'We're three men, all of the same age,' Thorne explains. 'We've had different lives, but we've all exhibited cruelty. We've all behaved in ways that were less than perfect. We've all got a relationship with our own shame.' The reason 'You' worked for five seasons is that Badgley's love-obsessed stalker has the charisma to gaslight himself and others into believing he's a good guy. He is incapable of self-examination. 'Performatively, he's a feminist,' says co-showrunner Michael Foley, noting that Badgley's Joe sees himself as a lover rather than a killer — albeit a lover who will kill anyone who keeps him from the object of his infatuation. 'You' premiered in 2018. Co-showrunner Justin Lo says that, if it premiered now, 'Joe would have started off a lot meaner.' 'The toxicity would be more unapologetic, more front and center,' Lo continues. 'Our Joe's toxicity began in a way that was more buried, more covert. And as the series and our culture has progressed, it's gotten more pronounced.' In fact, Joe's final words to his viewers are that he isn't to blame for his actions. You are — for watching.
Daily Mirror
28-04-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mirror
Trump's catastrophic first 100 days prove he's a runaway crisis in motion
If the first 100 days of a presidency were a probationary period, Donald Trump would be sent packing with nothing more than a severance cheque and a framed photo of himself. Instead, America - and the world - are stuck with a man governing like he's still hosting The Apprentice, only now the prize is global stability, economic survival, and whatever is left of America's battered reputation. The damage has been immediate and profound. Trump began by axing USAID, the agency responsible for delivering humanitarian aid across the globe. His message was clear: America is closed for charity. Into the void stepped China, armed with cheque books and bulldozers, extending its influence while Trump raged on social media. As Beijing cements power from Africa to Southeast Asia, Trump looks like a man who brought a kazoo to a diplomatic gunfight. Then there were the tariffs. His economic 'strategy', if you can call it that, has been to slap levies on everything that moves, triggering a global trade war. Markets tanked, inflation will surge, and American farmers are wondering if selling soybeans to Mars might be their last hope. If economic diplomacy is chess, Trump isn't playing; he's flipping the board with misplaced anger. And let's not forget his cabinet, a hall of fame for incompetence. Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth - a man who once proudly declared he doesn't believe in germs - is now responsible for the world's largest military. He's already managed to alienate NATO, misplace strategy briefings, and send classified attack plans via unsecured messaging apps. If he were consulting a Magic 8-Ball before every decision, it would somehow be an improvement. Vice President JD Dunce - sorry, Vance - meanwhile, appears to believe his job is to cosplay as a social media meme, turning every public appearance into a gaffe-riddled spectacle. Across the States, protests are swelling, not just from Democrats, but from everyday Americans horrified at how their government now resembles a bad reality show with no off switch. The chants aren't even partisan anymore; they're desperate pleas: 'Please, anyone else.' Globally, the chaos has emboldened adversaries. Mad Vlad is eyeing Eastern Europe. China is redrawing maps. And US allies are hedging their bets while quietly building a post-America world order. The 100-day mark is supposed to be a test of direction. Trump's direction isn't just wrong, it's a cliff dive into disaster. The incompetence, the grifting, the chorus of sycophants, it is all undeniable proof: Donald Trump is not just a bad fit for office. He's a crisis in motion. America and the world can't afford to wait. Trump needs to go before the damage becomes truly irreversible.
Observer
09-04-2025
- Politics
- Observer
Opinion- Trump, Bibi steer towards an ugly world, together
There was a time when a meeting between the president of the United States and the prime minister of Israel brought only pride to both Israeli and American Jews, who saw two democratic leaders working together. Well, I know that I am not alone when I say that pride is not the emotion that welled up in me on seeing the chummy picture of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu meeting in the Oval Office on Monday. It was disgust and depression. Each is a wannabe autocrat, each is working to undermine the rule of law and so-called elites in his respective country, each is seeking to crush what he calls a 'deep state' of government professionals. Each is steering his nation away from its once universal aspiration to be a 'light unto the nations' towards a narrow, brutish might-equals-right ethnonationalism that is ready to mainstream ethnic cleansing. Each treats his political opposition not as legitimate but as enemies within and each has filled his Cabinet with incompetent hacks, deliberately chosen for loyalty to him instead of the laws of their lands. Each is driving his country away from its democratic traditional allies. Each asserts territorial expansion as a divine right — 'From the Gulf of America to Greenland' and 'From the West Bank to Gaza.' Trump and Netanyahu are engaged, each in his own country, in creating a 'post-America' and a 'post-Israel' world. By 'post-America,' though, I don't mean an America that is losing relative power but an America that is deliberately shedding its core identity as a country, on its best days, committed to the rule of law at home and the betterment of all humanity abroad. By 'post-Israel,' I mean an Israel that is deliberately shedding its core identity — that of a proudly proclaimed rule-of-law democracy in a region of strongmen that will always prioritise a permanent peace with Palestinians (if its security can be assured) over 'a permanent piece'' of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. One simply cannot imagine Trump or Vice President JD Vance aspiring to build the America that Ronald Reagan described in his January 11, 1989, farewell address. Reagan spoke of the need to reinforce in our children 'what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world.' That America was a moral and political beacon, 'a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.' In mindlessly shrinking our own government and dissing so many of our traditional allies, 'Trump is not just destroying careers and values, he is quite literally making America weak again,' Stanford democracy expert Larry Diamond told me. That is about as 'post' the America I grew up in — and aspire to see my grandchildren grow up in — as I can imagine. Netanyahu has been hard at work creating a similar post-Israel. Trump forced out his FBI director for being insufficiently loyal; Netanyahu is close to doing the same with Ronen Bar, the widely respected head of Israel's FBI equivalent, the Shin Bet, at a time when Bar is investigating some of Netanyahu's top aides. Netanyahu himself is on trial on corruption charges. He stands accused by the Israeli opposition — and by more than a few relatives of hostages — of prolonging the war in Gaza to appease the Jewish supremacists who keep him in power and potentially out of jail. He is also trying, as we speak, to remove Israel's independent and courageous attorney general because he apparently considers her disloyal. Since coming to office in late 2022, Netanyahu has also been on a mission to undermine the power of the Israeli Supreme Court to check the decisions of the executive and legislative branches. Netanyahu's aim today is 'dismantling all the essential components of democracy,' Mickey Gitzin, director of the New Israel Fund, wrote in Haaretz on Sunday. 'The method is a simple one: You create a maelstrom of daring, illegal moves, simultaneously and on all fronts. While the public is reacting to the dismissal of the head of the Shin Bet security service, you advance draconian legislation against' non-governmental organisations. Trump's and Netanyahu's domestic strategies have truly merged with the weaponisation of antisemitism as a way to silence or delegitimise critics. Readers of this column know that I have zero respect for any campus protesters who bash Israeli actions in Gaza without uttering a word of censure for Hamas — let alone a word of support for Ukrainians whose democracy is being savaged by Vladimir Putin's Russia. But ours is, for now, still a free country and if people aren't engaging in violent acts, or harassing other students in or out of class, they should be free to say whatever they want, including advocating a Palestinian state of whatever size they want.
Observer
09-04-2025
- Politics
- Observer
Trump, Bibi steer towards an ugly world, together
There was a time when a meeting between the president of the United States and the prime minister of Israel brought only pride to both Israeli and American Jews, who saw two democratic leaders working together. Well, I know that I am not alone when I say that pride is not the emotion that welled up in me on seeing the chummy picture of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu meeting in the Oval Office on Monday. It was disgust and depression. Each is a wannabe autocrat, each is working to undermine the rule of law and so-called elites in his respective country, each is seeking to crush what he calls a 'deep state' of government professionals. Each is steering his nation away from its once universal aspiration to be a 'light unto the nations' towards a narrow, brutish might-equals-right ethnonationalism that is ready to mainstream ethnic cleansing. Each treats his political opposition not as legitimate but as enemies within and each has filled his Cabinet with incompetent hacks, deliberately chosen for loyalty to him instead of the laws of their lands. Each is driving his country away from its democratic traditional allies. Each asserts territorial expansion as a divine right — 'From the Gulf of America to Greenland' and 'From the West Bank to Gaza.' Trump and Netanyahu are engaged, each in his own country, in creating a 'post-America' and a 'post-Israel' world. By 'post-America,' though, I don't mean an America that is losing relative power but an America that is deliberately shedding its core identity as a country, on its best days, committed to the rule of law at home and the betterment of all humanity abroad. By 'post-Israel,' I mean an Israel that is deliberately shedding its core identity — that of a proudly proclaimed rule-of-law democracy in a region of strongmen that will always prioritise a permanent peace with Palestinians (if its security can be assured) over 'a permanent piece'' of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. One simply cannot imagine Trump or Vice President JD Vance aspiring to build the America that Ronald Reagan described in his January 11, 1989, farewell address. Reagan spoke of the need to reinforce in our children 'what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world.' That America was a moral and political beacon, 'a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.' In mindlessly shrinking our own government and dissing so many of our traditional allies, 'Trump is not just destroying careers and values, he is quite literally making America weak again,' Stanford democracy expert Larry Diamond told me. That is about as 'post' the America I grew up in — and aspire to see my grandchildren grow up in — as I can imagine. Netanyahu has been hard at work creating a similar post-Israel. Trump forced out his FBI director for being insufficiently loyal; Netanyahu is close to doing the same with Ronen Bar, the widely respected head of Israel's FBI equivalent, the Shin Bet, at a time when Bar is investigating some of Netanyahu's top aides. Netanyahu himself is on trial on corruption charges. He stands accused by the Israeli opposition — and by more than a few relatives of hostages — of prolonging the war in Gaza to appease the Jewish supremacists who keep him in power and potentially out of jail. He is also trying, as we speak, to remove Israel's independent and courageous attorney general because he apparently considers her disloyal. Since coming to office in late 2022, Netanyahu has also been on a mission to undermine the power of the Israeli Supreme Court to check the decisions of the executive and legislative branches. Netanyahu's aim today is 'dismantling all the essential components of democracy,' Mickey Gitzin, director of the New Israel Fund, wrote in Haaretz on Sunday. 'The method is a simple one: You create a maelstrom of daring, illegal moves, simultaneously and on all fronts. While the public is reacting to the dismissal of the head of the Shin Bet security service, you advance draconian legislation against' non-governmental organisations. Trump's and Netanyahu's domestic strategies have truly merged with the weaponisation of antisemitism as a way to silence or delegitimise critics. Readers of this column know that I have zero respect for any campus protesters who bash Israeli actions in Gaza without uttering a word of censure for Hamas — let alone a word of support for Ukrainians whose democracy is being savaged by Vladimir Putin's Russia. But ours is, for now, still a free country and if people aren't engaging in violent acts, or harassing other students in or out of class, they should be free to say whatever they want, including advocating a Palestinian state of whatever size they want.
CNN
15-03-2025
- Politics
- CNN
Allies React to Trump's Global Realignment & Trade War - Amanpour - Podcast on CNN Audio
Allies React to Trump's Global Realignment & Trade War Amanpour 42 mins As Trump's global trade war rattles markets and allies prepare for a post-America world, and just after President Putin weighed in on the U.S. Ukrainian ceasefire proposal, Christiane spoke with Trump's former EU ambassador Gordon Sondland about his global realignment. Then, Christiane speaks with exiled Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar who explains why the Kremlin is celebrating the chaos ushered in by Trump, seeing it as accelerating America's demise. Plus, the ACLU's Cecillia Wang breaks down the case of Columbia graduate and pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, explaininf its significance for first amendment rights. Also on the show, Nic Robertson reports from East Jerusalem on Israel's crackdown on free speech. And from her archive, forty years since Mikhail Gorbachev became the last leader of the Soviet Union, Christiane revisits her 2012 interview with him.
