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Has The Bachelorette finally gone too far?
Politics
Tamunofiniarisa , ,
Has The Bachelorette finally gone too far?

Politics tamfitronics

Watching Tuesday night’s finale of The Bacheloretteone phrase kept ringing in my mind: The cruelty is the point.

The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer wrote those words in 2018 to explain the appeal of Donald Trump’s particularly mean-spirited brand of politics. But the same ethos can be applied to The Bachelor franchise. That has always been true to some extent; as the audience, you are signing up to watch a bunch of hot, over-served 20-somethings fight for the right to get engaged to the lead character over the course of just two months.

Nothing about it is natural. You might even say none of it is real.

But last night’s conclusion to Jenn Tran’s season, in which the show so callously tore its lead character down, should be all the evidence you need that drama this brutal requires real pain at its center. The show’s promise of true love demands the threat of genuine heartbreak for it to feel earned. This means that, periodically, when the fairy tale ending fails to materialize and deliver the show its big cathartic finish, cast members will instead be traumatized for our entertainment.

It may have been just a television program for the producers, for many of the contestants, and for the audience. But the tears streaming down Tran’s face were an uncomfortable, piercing reminder that at the heart of all this pageantry is a real person who may genuinely believe they have the chance to find the love of their life through this silly show.

You may think that’s ridiculous, but that doesn’t make it any less true — nor does it justify the utter disregard with which Tran’s ex-fiancé and the show that cast her as its first Asian-American lead treated her at her lowest moment.

Politics tamfitronics What happened on The Bachelorette finale

Here’s a recap for the uninitiated: Tran’s decision came down to two men, Marcus and Devin. Both shared their traumatic childhood experiences with her. Marcus was more reserved, which made any steps toward love feel authentic, but Devin was a fan favorite, a buoyant personality who seemed genuinely enamored with our lead. It was almost shocking how unguarded he was with his feelings.

The only question seemed to be whether Tran would choose the exuberant Devin — admittedly less conventionally attractive than some of the other men — or the more unavailable Marcus. That was supposed to be the source of suspense.

Midway through the finale, Jenn had a difficult conversation with Marcus in which it became clear he would never “get there” emotionally, so she chose to end that relationship. That meant Devin — who appeared to be the “right” pick, the guy who was actually there for the right reasons, the one who was genuinely into her — was the only guy left. The show had primed us for months for an unprecedented finale, and many viewers had deduced that would mean Jenn proposing to her man. In Hawaii, after breaking up with Marcus, Jenn told Jesse she planned to do just that with Devin. It seemed she was on the verge of her happy ending.

But then, rather than roll the proposal footage, producers cut in with host Jesse Palmer in the ABC studios and it was quickly clear that between that moment of triumph and last night’s live taping of the post-finale special, something had gone horribly wrong. This was a break from the norm when, even if a couple has broken up since the season wrapped, the show allows the proposal to unfold before breaking the bad news to the audience. Over the next hour, we would see how far the show is willing to go to exploit genuine emotion for cheap entertainment.

First Jenn on her own and then Jenn and Devin together recapped what happened after the proposal that still had not been shown. The story, as it was presented to us, was that almost as soon as the cameras turned off, Devin switched up and went cold. When they returned from filming to real life, he was noncommittal and absent. Jenn said that he dumped her in a 15-minute phone call in which he said he never loved her and then refused to have a more detailed conversation about it until they were in front of the TV cameras again. For his part, Devin insisted that the feelings he expressed to Jenn during filming were genuine, but he otherwise did little to rebut her accusations about his behavior after production had ended, only saying repeatedly that he had “failed” her. He also copped to following on Instagram a previous season’s contestant, Maria, who was widely rumored to be the next Bachelorette before Jenn was announced.

Perhaps we the viewers should have seen this coming. Earlier in the episode, Palmer asked Jenn’s brother how he was feeling. “Angry,” was his answer. It was an odd response, but it made absolute sense once the finale’s true twist was revealed.

Then came the final twist of the knife. After rehashing their painful break-up, with Jenn struggling to keep her composure, Palmer proffered that they should watch the proposal anyway. He attempted to frame it as an empowering moment, saying that though the engagement fizzled, Jenn still “chose herself” in that moment and that is what mattered. Would she be okay with airing it?

“Do I have a choice?” she exclaimed, with a pained laugh. The answer was implicit: No.

So the producers cut away to the Hawaiian beach where Jenn and Devin were to get engaged, with contemporary inserts of Jenn describing how happy she is. Meanwhile, in the corner of the screen, they showed a feed of Jenn live in the studio, sitting next to her ex, watching her proposal and knowing it was already invalidated. Jenn sobbed without constraint. Whatever you might think, whether she was truly heartbroken or more embarrassed at being humiliated, the anguish was real. (It was at this point that a friend texted me, “This is torture. This is actually a violation of the Geneva convention to be airing this.”)

Over the course of her season, I came to believe that, whatever her questionable taste in men, Jenn was a real one. She came on this absurd show for those elusive right reasons. To see it all ripped away from her in such a public way was nauseating — and admittedly riveting.

Politics tamfitronics The Bachelorette needed a ratings win, and it crushed Jenn to get it

For the production team, making good TV was surely all that mattered. The Bachelor franchise has been struggling with middling ratings for a while now. Jenn’s season was dogged by bad buzz (unfairly, in my opinion, but that was the prevailing sentiment). They needed a grand finale, and Jenn’s emotional devastation provided it. There’s no denying ABC concocted a memorable climax — we can only hope they did not permanently damage a real person’s psyche in the process.

Because that is the real risk. There has been much discussion about whether reality TV participants deserve union representation and stronger legal protections. I think the argument against those measures is usually that these people know what they’re signing up for. But that does not mean they are not vulnerable to emotional trauma as part of the experience. Jenn’s final appearance, quickly shunted to the side so that Palmer could introduce the new lead for the franchise’s next season, is a painful reminder of that.

This is the same show that once ambushed a contestant who thought she was going to see her fiancé only to learn she too was about to lose the man who loved her (or so she believed). The show that may have intentionally cast a racist for the first season with a Black bachelorette. The show that made a mockery of its lead character’s virginity.

This morning, reflecting on last night, I thought again of a 2022 essay by Catherine Horowitz in Bright Wall/Dark Room in which she analyzed a moment in which a “character” from The Bachelor appeared to suffer genuine emotional distress and stretched the show’s fabric to the point of ripping. It led her to this critical insight, one that is easy to forget in our era of ubiquitous reality television: These narratives may be disposable entertainment for us, but they are part of another person’s lived experience, something they will carry with them long after the lights go out and the studio audience heads home.

“For those who participate in it, reality television isn’t manufactured at all; it’s a real part of their lives, something that impacts them in a permanent way,” Horowitz wrote.

And almost paradoxically, these format-breaking moments give us a story that “maybe, just maybe, people could believe in.” The cost, however, may be the well-being of the show’s cast.

The Bachelor is under no directive to be humane, only to entertain. Cruelty has always been a feature of this show. That’s the point.

Finally, a Federal Court Hits Back Hard at Big Tech on Section 230
Top Stories
Tamunofiniarisa , ,
Finally, a Federal Court Hits Back Hard at Big Tech on Section 230

Top Stories Tamfitronics

This week saw a dramatic turn inour nation’s desperate efforts to clean up the increasingly poisonous onlinesewers that we call social media.

First, the backstory. If youpublish a newspaper or newsletter and you publish “illegal” content—encouragecrimes or homicide, offer to sell drugs, promote child porn, advocateoverthrowing a government—you can go to jail. If you publish things that defameor lie about persons or corporations, you can be sued into bankruptcy.

If you own a bookstore or newsstandand distribute books, magazines, and newspapers and offer for sale illegalcontent—child or snuff porn, stolen copyrighted material, instructions formaking illegal drugs or weapons—you can also go to jail. And if you sellmaterials that openly defame individuals or corporations, you can be sued intobankruptcy.

In the first category, you’d be apublisher. In the second, you’d be a distributor.

But what is social media?Particularly those types of social media that use an algorithm to pushuser-produced content out to people who haven’t explicitly asked for it?

Twenty-eight years ago, socialmedia sites like CompuServe and AOL were regulated as if they werepublications, with the occasional secondary oversight as if they weredistributors. They had an obligation to make sure that illegal or defamatorycontent wasn’t published on their sites, or, if it was, to remove it within areasonable time period.

The internet back then was arelatively safe and peaceful place. I know, as I ran a large part of one of thelargest social media sites that existed at the time.

But then things got weird.

Back in 1996, some geniuses inCongress thought, “Hey, let’s do away with the entire concept of the publisheror distributor having responsibility for what happens in their place.”

Seriously. Selling drugs,trading in guns and ammunition, human trafficking, planning terrorist attacks,overthrowing governments, sparking genocides, promoting open lies and nakeddefamation. All good. No problem.

No matter what happens on a socialmedia site, Congress said, its owners and managers bear no responsibilitywhatsoever for what’s published or distributed on and from thesite. None. They’re untouchable. They take the profits but never haveto worry about being answerable for the damage their site is doing.

Sounds crazy, right?

But that’s exactly what Congressdid with Section 230 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 in what theythought, at the time, was a good-faith effort to help the brand-new internetgrow in a way they hoped would eventually become an important and useful socialgood.

It sure hasn’t worked out that way.And, as noted, it wasn’t always this way in the years before 1996.

Back when the internet started, butbefore hypertext markup language, or HTML, was invented, there were really onlytwo big “houses” on the internet: CompuServe and AOL. My old friend andbusiness partner NigelPeacock and I ran “forums” on CompuServe starting around 1979, rightup until 1996.

We ran the IBM PC Forum, theMacintosh Forum, and about two dozen other “social media forums” where peopleinterested in ADHD, UFOs, the Kennedy assassination, international trade,spirituality, and a bunch of other topics could log in and discuss.

CompuServe paid us well, because wehad to make sure nothing criminal happened in any of the forums we ran. Weeven had to carry our own liability insurance. And we split the revenue withthe 20 or so people who worked with us.

We kept those places open and safe,as did hundreds of other “Sysops,” or Systems Operators, who ran other forums onCompuServe and AOL. After all, these were CompuServe’s and AOL’s“publications” or “bookstores,” and the companies were paying us to make surenothing illegal happened inside it.

Until 1996, that is. That year,after Section 230 became law, CompuServe decided they no longer needed to paySysop moderators to keep their forums clean and crime-free, so they quit payingus. Most of us left.

The result of Section 230 of theTelecommunications Act of 1996 is obvious today. The attack on our Capitol waslargely planned on social media and the internet more broadly, where you canalso buy ghost guns, other people’s credit card numbers, drugs, and illegalporn.

Social media sites now runalgorithms that choose specific content from users to push out to other usersto keep them “engaged” so they’ll have maximum exposure to advertisements,which have made the owners of the sites into billionaires.

In 1997, in the caseZeran v. America Onlinethe Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled thatSection 230 is written so tightly that even when an online serviceknowingly allows lawbreaking, it can’t be held accountable.

More recently, last month inMoody v. NetChoicethe Supreme Court ruled that social media companiesarealsoprotected, like newspaper publishers are, by theFirst Amendment. They essentially affirmedBecause,writing:

“[A] platform’s algorithm thatreflects ‘editorial judgments’ about ‘compiling the third-party speech it wantsin the way it wants’ is the platform’s own ‘expressive product’ and istherefore protected by the First Amendment.”

Mark Zuckerberg, who owns one ofthose “publications,” has become one of the richest men on the planet becausehe doesn’t have to pay for content moderation. Twitter made a few billionaires,too, before Elon Musk turned it into a right-wing disinformation machine.

Nonetheless, Section 230 lives on.I wrote a book that covers it,TheHidden History of Big Brother: How the Death of Privacy and the Rise ofSurveillance Threaten Us and Our Democracy.

So did JoshHawley, the Republican senator from Missouri who hopes to be the nextTrumpy president, and his book’s take is pretty much the same as mine: Section230 is extremely problematic, at the very least.

Which brings us to this week’s bignews. For the first time, a federal appeals court (the Third Circuit, seated inPhiladelphia) has ruled that because Section 230 largely deals with socialmedia sites as “publishers,” that doesn’t protect them as “distributors” (likebookstores).

In this case, a 10-year-old girlreceived a TikTok video—pushed out to her by that company’s algorithm—for athing called the “blackout challenge” where people see how long they can cutoff their own breathing or blood supply before blacking out. Little NylahAnderson tried the challenge and accidentally asphyxiated herself to death.

Her mother sued in Pennsylvania fornegligence and wrongful death, using state product liability laws as the basisfor her suit. From there it went to federal court, whereAndersonv. ByteDanceended up before the Third Circuit.

Two Trump-appointed and oneObama-appointed judges ruled unanimously that ByteDance, which owns TikTok,isn’t “publishing” a social media site but—because their algorithm “curates”content and sends its choices, unsolicited, to users on the site—is actually“distributing” content.

In other words, social media sitesare bookstores, not newspapers. And online “bookstores,” they ruled, arenotprotectedby Section 230.

The case is far from settled; fromhere it’ll go to the Supreme Court, and its fate there is hard to predict giventhe court’s embrace of the First Amendment argument in previous cases.

And the social media companies,raking in billions in profits, have so far stymied all efforts to do away withSection 230 or regulate their behavior by taking advantage of the SupremeCourt’s legalization of political bribery: Silicon Valley is one of the largerplayers in the lobbying and campaign contributions game.

Nonetheless, there’s now a veryreal possibility, even absent of congressional action, that social mediacompanies may end up back where AOL and CompuServe were before 1996, having tohire thousands of content moderators to protect themselves from both criminaland civil action.

Europe is moving in this directiontoo, with the arrestin France last week of the Russian founder of Telegram, a social mediachannel where human trafficking and other criminal activity were both commonand known to the Systems Operators.

If Zuckerberg and his peers have tostart hiring people to do what Nigel and I did for CompuServe years ago, it mayreduce their income from tens of billions to mere billions. They probably won’teven notice the difference.

And society will be the better forit, our political landscape will stabilize, and fewer children will die.

That’s a trade-off that’s well worthmaking. But why wait for the Supreme Court (which may well not agree with theThird Circuit)? Congress can also repeal or substantially rewrite Section 230.

It’s time to consign Section 230 tothe trash heap of history and begin to hold accountable and regulate thesetoxic behemoths to the same simple standards to which magazines, newspapers,and newsletters like this and bookstores must adhere.

Politics
Tamunofiniarisa , ,
Finally, Shekarau Breaks Silence On Kano Emirate Tussle

Politics tamfitronics

Malam Ibrahim Shekarau, the former Governor of Kano State has revealed why he does not want to meddle in the Kano Emirate tussle.

Speaking further on the programme, the political stalwart blamed the crisis on politicians in the state.

Shekarau who spoke on Channels TV’s Politics Today said despite being so worried about the emirship crisis in the state he decided not to comment on it, stating that it would be resolved soon.

He said, “I am a very senior member of the emirate council and apart from that I governed the state. So, I am a very senior citizen of the state. The day the matter went to court, I said I would not discuss or interfere no matter what.

“This bothers me. I am from Kano. I want everything in Kano to be peaceful. We are waiting and my prayer is that we overcome it soonest. There will be peace. We need the traditional institution. I will not go into that because I belong to the institution.

“It was the political angle that seemed to have led us into this crisis. If the politicians had kept away from all of this and of course the traditional institution if properly engaged, I don’t see any disagreement.

“The traditional institutions are leading in their own right in society. The governor or any government appointee is a leader. There has to be this synergy of understanding.

“I just told you about the 50-people Almajiri council I set up. It was the emir of Kano and I that were presiding over it. By bringing in the emir and all categories of people, we were working together.”

Democrats Finally Have Their Answer to Martyr Trump
Politics
Tamunofiniarisa , ,
Democrats Finally Have Their Answer to Martyr Trump

Politics tamfitronics

Jurisprudence

Politics tamfitronics Joe Biden pumping his fist and smiling grimly with a halo around him.

Joe Biden has created a mirror image of Trump’s mythological ascent born of violence.Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images.

Earlier this month, but what now seems like a lifetime ago, after the horrific attempted assassination of Donald Trump, the mythologizing bordering on deification of the former president began.Impeachments, indictments, convictions, even an attempted murder, andhe survived it all—so went the rapidly emerging storyline.There was talk from Trump supporters that the hand of God was in it all, even more than in the past. Republican members of Congress, Trump’s followers, and of course Trump himself spoke as if he had some divine right to power.

Big if true, as they say. After all, we don’t typically choose our leaders based on which one might be divinely selected. We rejected that sort of approach in 1776.

Still, Trump as Chosen One has been a powerful myth that could continue to be persuasive in an arena where narrative and story are the coin of the realm. Thankfully, we are about to see another mythical figure rise in response: a postcandidacy Joe Biden.

In stepping aside, Biden invokes another of our mythical founding moments: George Washington relinquishing the powers of the presidency. Washington’s stepping aside set the stage for more than 225 years of democratic self-government and peaceful transfers of power that have been interrupted only twice: by the Civil War and by Trump’s refusal to accept election results.

At a time when our republic is once again imperiled by a leader who would break that tradition by trying to hold on to power violently and against the will of the voters; at a time when that leader is poised to retake the White House, having mused about being a “dictator,” “terminating the constitution,” and seeking to hold the presidencyindefinitely—in such a moment as this, for a sitting president to voluntarily forgo holding on to that power in the interest of the greater good will have mythmaking powers of its own.

Of course, the story that has been emerging indicates that Biden was reluctant to take this step. Perhaps at some point Washington was too. (He didn’t have a 24-hour news cycle reporting on his every internal vacillation.) Biden seemed to sincerely believe he had the best chance to defeat Trump and save the republic. That may have reflected part misplaced confidence and part altruism. Still, the choice was ultimately his, and his noble act is not myth but reality. With it, Biden has earned a selfless, patriotic moral authority that will elevate him above the fray of our modern politics.

In this current era, we see so little personal sacrifice in service of the common good. So little humility and selflessness. Few leaders hand over the reins or take one for the team. As even the postliberal authors on the far right decry: We live in an era in which individualismtrumpsthe public good and interests we share. Americans are hungry for a shift in our consciousness toward more communitarian solidarity and meaning-making.

Into that moment steps Joe Biden, with his established reputation for public service, who with this act has created a mirror image of Trump’s mythological ascent born of violence.

His act here, in the twilight of his career, propels Biden to a place few if any Americans currently occupy: above our fraught and self-serving politics. In a word, he has elevated himself to anetherealplace. There’s a conspiracy circulating in Trumpworld that Biden has already passed from this world. As Joe would say, that’s literally—literally—false. But metaphorically? They might be onto something. In counterpoise to a candidate trying to claim divine powers, we have a public servant elevated to the role of secular angel, guardian of our democracy.

And from there, he will be able to campaign on behalf of his chosen successor, Vice President Kamala Harris, to save our democracy, in a unique position of moral authority.

Biden will be able to claim that he saved American democracy as a candidate in 2020 and as a president for four years but, realizing he was not best poised to do so as a candidate in 2024, opted instead to relinquish the earthly powers of an office in order to protect the soul of the nation from a higher perch and deliver it finally through its moment of trial.

Harris—who in remarks on Monday praised her boss as a man of honesty, integrity, faith, family, and patriotism—will have Biden over her shoulder in guardian form. “I’m watching you, kid,” he could be heard to say as she spoke for the first time to her campaign staff that day.

Americans tend to appreciate former leaders more than present ones. Most every prior president’s approval rating has gone up after they have left office. Nostalgia is a powerful force. Biden’s approval rating has never matched his accomplishments, but that may change as he ceases to campaign for himself for another term.

Removed from the battlefield, Biden is likely to become more politically powerful, as his rating climbs from a nostalgic effect and appreciation for his selfless move.

And as he ascends in Americans’ minds and political myth onto a higher plane, his model will strike a powerful contrast in this election between a figure representing our better angels, and one who has risen by playing to our darkest instincts. Both with claims above, in spirit, the earthly realm of our politics but otherwise contrasts between the two fundamental paths people and societies can take.

Biden will become a reminder of the fragile but fundamental principle at the heart of our republic, that in this country the people are sovereign and those we elect are merely temporary holders of that trust who, when the time comes, give that power back from whence it came, to all of us: We the People.