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https://www.themarysue.com/covid-conspiracies-in-historical-perspective/
This article was originally published in Origins: Historical Events in Perspective, and has been reprinted with permission.
As national governments and the global scientific community struggle to contain the spread of the coronavirus, they have also spent the last few months confronting a different type of outbreak.
Misinformation about the current public health crisis—which has either denied the existence of the virus entirely or framed it as an intentional product—has proliferated at an alarming rate. It has also enjoyed the most mainstream attention of any conspiracy theory since the 9/11 truther movement.
U.S. government officials—including President Donald Trump—for weeks pushed the unsubstantiated claim that the virus originated in a Chinese laboratory. A trend called #FilmYourHospital encouraged people to spread pictures of hospital waiting rooms (deliberately emptied as a safety measure) to bolster their belief that the virus is a hoax.
Others watched and shared the “Plandemic” video, which garnered close to 10 million views before social media platforms removed it for violating misinformation policies. According to the film, a cadre of political and scientific elites and institutional bodies—among them Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci, CDC director Robert Redfield, the FDA, and the WHO—created the virus in coordination with a Wuhan laboratory, hoping to infect the world and reap enormous profits from a mandatory vaccine.
While such stories are representative of our particular cultural and political moment, they also continue a longer pattern of misinformation. In particular, American society witnessed an incredible outpouring of unfounded rumors around the influenza pandemic at the tail end of the First World War—a little-known history that can shed light on some of the causes and consequences of today’s coronavirus conspiracy theories.
In late 1918, as four years of global conflict were finally coming to a close, the world found itself at war once again. This time, the enemy was far deadlier, moving invisibly through society. The pandemic attacked the young and old, the healthy and the sick, with equal zeal and eventually claimed an estimated 50-100 million lives worldwide.
In October 1918 alone, Americans witnessed nearly 200,000 of their countrymen succumb to the so-called Spanish flu, a toll which roughly quadrupled the nation’s combat deaths during the war.
That same month, tales of the virus’s allegedly malicious origins flooded the nation, almost all of them pointing the finger at Germany. Letters poured into government investigators, speculating that everything from cigarettes, food, Baer aspirin tablets, and strangers with hypodermic needles might be spreading the disease for the enemy. One of the most frequent accusations was that it originated with spies recently brought ashore by German submarines. “It spread from the Atlantic to the Pacific in six weeks,” one man insisted. “Could it do so unless it was assisted by German agents?”
An article in The New York Times on the role of German U-Boats in spreading influenza.
With the benefit of hindsight, this widespread belief that Germany was somehow directing, or at least facilitating, the unprecedented outbreak seems a paranoid—and decidedly unscientific—explanation, but it conforms to what we know of rumors’ social and psychological function.
Decades of research by social psychologists has shown that false information often arises as a type of “improvised news” to explain worrisome and confusing events.
Indeed, during World War I, federal investigators tracking down influenza rumors often found that stories accumulated additional details with each retelling, slowly reducing an unknown threat to something familiar. If the health crisis was just another form of attack by the enemy, then it was something that Americans could see, surveil, and eventually defeat.
Historical analyses of rumor have contributed a crucial insight to this understanding of fake news. Rumors during a time of crisis almost always reflect and reinforce cultural fears already in existence.
At the time of the Spanish flu, people across the nation were suspicious of vaccines and they repeated the assertion that doctors and nurses in training camps were intentionally inoculating the recruits with the disease.
“They arrested one of the head nurses here to-day, she is a German spy,” wrote a woman to her sister. “She is cause of more than half of the influenza in the camp…There was bound to be something wrong when the boys begun to die by the hundreds.” Governmental vaccination requirements—which included smallpox and typhoid, though not influenza, for which there was not yet a vaccine—became an easy target of the collective paranoia.
The current coronavirus conspiracies have resuscitated a range of older concerns—including suspicion about the federal government and political authority, scientific expertise and technologies, mandatory vaccination, and eroding individual liberties—and effectively remobilized them against current and future public health measures.
“Plandemic” and other conspiratorial sources, for example, have already anticipated an eventual vaccine as a governmental tool for infecting people with the coronavirus. Recently, another story has insisted that Bill Gates will use a mass vaccination program to implant microchips in billions around the world, allowing him to track their movements.
Recognizing the historical basis of the anxieties that fuel fake news also helps to reveal how our pandemic fears can revive and perpetuate hatred against groups already branded as dangerous in the popular imagination.
Rumors around the Spanish flu, for example, only added to the German spy scares and invasion panics that had gripped the country over the preceding years. Conspiracy theories’ insistence on the virus as a foreign attack echoed ideas of Germans as treacherous and further established them as outsiders.
They had either literally introduced the virus to American shores (as stipulated by the submarine stories) or else harbored so little loyalty to the U.S. that they had actively spread it within America’s borders. It was not uncommon at the time to hear descriptions of Germans as a “cancer”—a disease in themselves.
The parallels with our current moment are unmistakable. President Trump’s terminology of the “Chinese virus” and “Kung flu”—part of a broader denunciation of the disease as “foreign” by Americans across the country—has revived racist stereotypes about disease in order to marginalize certain groups.
The decision to assign viral outbreaks a racial or ethnic identity has long served as a tactic of white supremacy, and we again see its dangerous social consequences in the despicable acts of discrimination and violence committed against Asian Americans and people of Asian descent.
Finally, the conspiracies of the World-War-I era and today have both expressed a deep anxiety in the face of globalization. Americans fear that global connections have rendered them increasingly vulnerable to seeming intrusions by the outside world—whether that has meant German spies, immigrants, or a global pandemic.
A cartoon from Korean-Swedish artist, Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom depicting the racist remarks Asians have been subjected to during the COVID-19 pandemic (left). An anti-xenophobia poster displayed in the New York City subway amid intense racist attacks on the Asian-American communities, 2020 (right).
We have found ourselves with a powerful, and even frightening, reminder that events around the world can never be fully disconnected from those in Anytown, USA, and conspiracy theories have appeared once again to express anxiety and anger over our inherent interconnectedness.
Functionally speaking, today’s conspiracy theories differ little from a century ago. As we confront an unfamiliar and deeply frightening new reality, in which stay-at-home orders and social distancing measures have shattered the routines of everyday life, the imposition of explanations and stories, however improbable, offers a measure of comfort. Some have directed the blame abroad, many others inwards at our own government. Either way, naming an enemy has provided a target for collective fear and fury.
Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective is an online magazine dedicated to providing historical insight on current events that matter to the United States and to the world. Each month, Origins invites historians and other academic experts to analyze contemporary pressing issues—whether political, cultural, or social—in a broader, deeper context. Origins is a joint production of The Ohio State University and Miami University Departments of History, with the generous support of the Stanton Foundation. Visit their ongoing Pandemics: Past, Present, and Future for collected essays, podcasts, and videos that place coronavirus in historical perspective.
Want more stories like this? Become a subscriber and support the site!
—The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—
This article was originally published in Origins: Historical Events in Perspective, and has been reprinted with permission.
As national governments and the global scientific community struggle to contain the spread of the coronavirus, they have also spent the last few months confronting a different type of outbreak.
Misinformation about the current public health crisis—which has either denied the existence of the virus entirely or framed it as an intentional product—has proliferated at an alarming rate. It has also enjoyed the most mainstream attention of any conspiracy theory since the 9/11 truther movement.
U.S. government officials—including President Donald Trump—for weeks pushed the unsubstantiated claim that the virus originated in a Chinese laboratory. A trend called #FilmYourHospital encouraged people to spread pictures of hospital waiting rooms (deliberately emptied as a safety measure) to bolster their belief that the virus is a hoax.
Others watched and shared the “Plandemic” video, which garnered close to 10 million views before social media platforms removed it for violating misinformation policies. According to the film, a cadre of political and scientific elites and institutional bodies—among them Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci, CDC director Robert Redfield, the FDA, and the WHO—created the virus in coordination with a Wuhan laboratory, hoping to infect the world and reap enormous profits from a mandatory vaccine.
While such stories are representative of our particular cultural and political moment, they also continue a longer pattern of misinformation. In particular, American society witnessed an incredible outpouring of unfounded rumors around the influenza pandemic at the tail end of the First World War—a little-known history that can shed light on some of the causes and consequences of today’s coronavirus conspiracy theories.
In late 1918, as four years of global conflict were finally coming to a close, the world found itself at war once again. This time, the enemy was far deadlier, moving invisibly through society. The pandemic attacked the young and old, the healthy and the sick, with equal zeal and eventually claimed an estimated 50-100 million lives worldwide.
In October 1918 alone, Americans witnessed nearly 200,000 of their countrymen succumb to the so-called Spanish flu, a toll which roughly quadrupled the nation’s combat deaths during the war.
That same month, tales of the virus’s allegedly malicious origins flooded the nation, almost all of them pointing the finger at Germany. Letters poured into government investigators, speculating that everything from cigarettes, food, Baer aspirin tablets, and strangers with hypodermic needles might be spreading the disease for the enemy. One of the most frequent accusations was that it originated with spies recently brought ashore by German submarines. “It spread from the Atlantic to the Pacific in six weeks,” one man insisted. “Could it do so unless it was assisted by German agents?”
An article in The New York Times on the role of German U-Boats in spreading influenza.
With the benefit of hindsight, this widespread belief that Germany was somehow directing, or at least facilitating, the unprecedented outbreak seems a paranoid—and decidedly unscientific—explanation, but it conforms to what we know of rumors’ social and psychological function.
Decades of research by social psychologists has shown that false information often arises as a type of “improvised news” to explain worrisome and confusing events.
Indeed, during World War I, federal investigators tracking down influenza rumors often found that stories accumulated additional details with each retelling, slowly reducing an unknown threat to something familiar. If the health crisis was just another form of attack by the enemy, then it was something that Americans could see, surveil, and eventually defeat.
Historical analyses of rumor have contributed a crucial insight to this understanding of fake news. Rumors during a time of crisis almost always reflect and reinforce cultural fears already in existence.
At the time of the Spanish flu, people across the nation were suspicious of vaccines and they repeated the assertion that doctors and nurses in training camps were intentionally inoculating the recruits with the disease.
“They arrested one of the head nurses here to-day, she is a German spy,” wrote a woman to her sister. “She is cause of more than half of the influenza in the camp…There was bound to be something wrong when the boys begun to die by the hundreds.” Governmental vaccination requirements—which included smallpox and typhoid, though not influenza, for which there was not yet a vaccine—became an easy target of the collective paranoia.
The current coronavirus conspiracies have resuscitated a range of older concerns—including suspicion about the federal government and political authority, scientific expertise and technologies, mandatory vaccination, and eroding individual liberties—and effectively remobilized them against current and future public health measures.
“Plandemic” and other conspiratorial sources, for example, have already anticipated an eventual vaccine as a governmental tool for infecting people with the coronavirus. Recently, another story has insisted that Bill Gates will use a mass vaccination program to implant microchips in billions around the world, allowing him to track their movements.
Recognizing the historical basis of the anxieties that fuel fake news also helps to reveal how our pandemic fears can revive and perpetuate hatred against groups already branded as dangerous in the popular imagination.
Rumors around the Spanish flu, for example, only added to the German spy scares and invasion panics that had gripped the country over the preceding years. Conspiracy theories’ insistence on the virus as a foreign attack echoed ideas of Germans as treacherous and further established them as outsiders.
They had either literally introduced the virus to American shores (as stipulated by the submarine stories) or else harbored so little loyalty to the U.S. that they had actively spread it within America’s borders. It was not uncommon at the time to hear descriptions of Germans as a “cancer”—a disease in themselves.
The parallels with our current moment are unmistakable. President Trump’s terminology of the “Chinese virus” and “Kung flu”—part of a broader denunciation of the disease as “foreign” by Americans across the country—has revived racist stereotypes about disease in order to marginalize certain groups.
The decision to assign viral outbreaks a racial or ethnic identity has long served as a tactic of white supremacy, and we again see its dangerous social consequences in the despicable acts of discrimination and violence committed against Asian Americans and people of Asian descent.
Finally, the conspiracies of the World-War-I era and today have both expressed a deep anxiety in the face of globalization. Americans fear that global connections have rendered them increasingly vulnerable to seeming intrusions by the outside world—whether that has meant German spies, immigrants, or a global pandemic.
A cartoon from Korean-Swedish artist, Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom depicting the racist remarks Asians have been subjected to during the COVID-19 pandemic (left). An anti-xenophobia poster displayed in the New York City subway amid intense racist attacks on the Asian-American communities, 2020 (right).
We have found ourselves with a powerful, and even frightening, reminder that events around the world can never be fully disconnected from those in Anytown, USA, and conspiracy theories have appeared once again to express anxiety and anger over our inherent interconnectedness.
Functionally speaking, today’s conspiracy theories differ little from a century ago. As we confront an unfamiliar and deeply frightening new reality, in which stay-at-home orders and social distancing measures have shattered the routines of everyday life, the imposition of explanations and stories, however improbable, offers a measure of comfort. Some have directed the blame abroad, many others inwards at our own government. Either way, naming an enemy has provided a target for collective fear and fury.
Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective is an online magazine dedicated to providing historical insight on current events that matter to the United States and to the world. Each month, Origins invites historians and other academic experts to analyze contemporary pressing issues—whether political, cultural, or social—in a broader, deeper context. Origins is a joint production of The Ohio State University and Miami University Departments of History, with the generous support of the Stanton Foundation. Visit their ongoing Pandemics: Past, Present, and Future for collected essays, podcasts, and videos that place coronavirus in historical perspective.
Want more stories like this? Become a subscriber and support the site!
—The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—
Representative John Lewis, longtime congressman and Civil Rights Movement luminary, died Friday following a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 80 years old.
“It is with inconsolable grief and enduring sadness that we announce the passing of U.S. Rep. John Lewis,” his family said in a statement. “He was honored and respected as the conscience of the U.S. Congress and an icon of American history, but we knew him as a loving father and brother. He was a stalwart champion in the ongoing struggle to demand respect for the dignity and worth of every human being. He dedicated his entire life to nonviolent activism and was an outspoken advocate in the struggle for equal justice in America. He will be deeply missed.”
Lewis, who protested alongside Martin Luther King and braved state violence on “Bloody Sunday,” the 1965 voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, was an activist who helped galvanize some of the most important movements for racial equality. He was the last surviving speaker of the 1963 March on Washington, which he helped organize, and where King delivered his historic “I Have a Dream” speech.
The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (center), is escorted into a mass meeting at Fisk University in Nashville. His colleagues are (from left) John Lewis, national chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and Lester McKinnie, one of the leaders in the racial demonstrations in Nashville recently. King gave the main address to a packed crowd. (Photo: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)In December, Lewis announced that he was battling stage 4 pancreatic cancer.
“I have been in some kind of fight—for freedom, equality, basic human rights—for nearly my entire life. I have never faced a fight quite like the one I have now,” Lewis said in a statement at the time. “While I am clear-eyed about the prognosis, doctors have told me that recent medical advances have made this type of cancer treatable in many cases, that treatment options are no longer as debilitating as they once were, and that I have a fighting chance.”
The announcement of Lewis’s death followed earlier news Friday of the passing of another civil rights leader, Rev. C.T. Vivian.
Lewis was born on February 21, 1940, to Eddie and Willie Mae Carter, sharecroppers who owned their own farm in rural Alabama. One of ten children, he was known among those who loved him as “Preacher,” after he famously baptized and ministered to the farm’s chickens. The story is immortalized in a children’s book, Preaching to the Chickens: The Story of Young John Lewis, by Jabari Asim.
“I could imagine that they were my congregation,” he wrote in his 1998 memoir, Walking With the Wind. “And me, I was a preacher.”
As a theological student in Nashville, he met one of his mentors, Rev. James Lawson, Jr., who taught him the meaning of civil disobedience. Soon, Lewis was among early students to protest the city’s segregated lunch counters. Later, he would help found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
He became one of the original 13 Freedom Riders, a multiracial coalition of activists who challenged segregation across southern state lines. Lewis braved multiple brutal physical attacks against his body in his long protesting career. According to The New York Times, he was arrested 40 times over the period of 1960 to 1966, and spent 31 days in Mississippi’s infamous Parchman Penitentiary.
Two blood-splattered Freedom Riders, John Lewis (left) and James Zwerg (right), stand together after being attacked and beaten by pro-segregationists in Montgomery, Alabama.His friendship with Dr. King shaped his ideologies and he often described the late leader as one of his greatest sources of inspiration. At the age of 23, he helped King organize the March on Washington, where Lewis also delivered his own speech.
“By the forces of our demands, our determination and our numbers, we shall splinter the segregated South into a thousand pieces and put them together in an image of God and democracy,” he boldly declared in 1963.
SELMA, AL – FEBRUARY 14: Congressman John Lewis on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on February 14, 2015. Lewis was beaten on the bridge on “Bloody Sunday” in 1965. While still recovering from injuries, Lewis walked 54 miles during the Selma to Montgomery March that followed two weeks later. (Photo: Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post via Getty Images)Two years later, he was by King’s side as they and hundreds more marched across the now famous Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. Images of Lewis, in his tan trench coat, with his skull fractured by police, were emblazoned in history.
Decades on, the fight continues and Lewis had remained vocal throughout. Just weeks ago, in response to the nationwide protests against the police killing of George Floyd, he appeared on CBS News.
“You cannot stop the call of history,” Lewis said. “You may use troopers. You may use fire hoses and water, but it cannot be stopped. There cannot be any turning back. We have come too far and made too much progress to stop now and go back.”
In 1986, he became only the second Black man to represent the state of Georgia in Congress since Reconstruction, the Times reported. He served 17 terms and was often referred to as Washington’s moral compass.
On Friday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi confirmed the news of his passing with the release of a statement.
“In the Congress, John Lewis was revered and beloved on both sides of the aisle and both sides of the Capitol,” she said. “All of us were humbled to call Congressman Lewis a colleague, and are heartbroken by his passing. May his memory be an inspiration that moves us all to, in the face of injustice, make ‘good trouble, necessary trouble.’ ”
President Barack Obama, who awarded Lewis the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011, penned a lengthy tribute to his longtime friend following his death Friday.
“He loved this country so much that he risked his life and his blood so that it might live up to its promise,” Obama wrote. “In so many ways, John’s life was exceptional. But he never believed that what he did was more than any citizen of this country might do. He believed that in all of us, there exists the capacity for great courage, a longing to do what’s right, a willingness to love all people, and to extend to them their God-given rights to dignity and respect.”
WASHINGTON, DC – FEBRUARY 15:U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) is presented with the 2010 Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama during an East Room event at the White House on February 15, 2011, in Washington, D.C. Obama presented the medal, the highest honor awarded to civilians, to 12 pioneers in sports, labor, politics and arts. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)Earlier this year, Lewis had endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign for the presidency.
A longtime critic of Trump, in one of his final high-profile speeches, Lewis decried the President during the impeachment hearings last fall.
“When you see something that is not right, not just, not fair, you have a moral obligation to say something, to do something,” he said. “Our children and their children will ask us ‘What did you do? What did you say?’ ” While the vote would be hard for some, he said, “We have a mission and a mandate to be on the right side of history.”
Lewis’s wife, Lillian Miles, died in 2012. He is survived by their son, John Miles Lewis.
The post John Lewis, Congressman And Civil Rights Icon, Dead At 80 appeared first on Essence.
Paul Dini and Bruce Timm’s Batman: The Animated Series has inspired several fantastic artists over the years. All of whom evoked the comic book noir of the series. However, we think this latest series from artist Raid71 and the folks at Bottleneck Gallery captures the Art Deco look and feel of the seminal cartoon series more than almost any other illustrations we’ve seen.
Raid71 / Bottleneck Gallery
Bottlneck’s online gallery showcases not only the Dark Knight and his city, but also several of his most infamous rogues. Raid71’s Batman: The Animated Series show became available in its entirety for viewing and purchase on Friday, July 17, at 9:00am PT through Bottleneckgallery.com. Here’s what the artist had to say about his latest collection:
While researching Batman: The Animated Series I stumbled across this brief for the background artists.
“Night in Gotham City. Only the faintest of rays of moonlight break through the steamy darkness. Shadows are black, twisted, and frightening. The thick night air carries many sounds: breaking glass, sputtering neon, harsh, bitter voices, and police sirens. Always police sirens. Most of Gotham’s daytime inhabitants have long since fled to the suburbs or into security-gated apartments. This is not a safe place after dark.”
Add in some 1930’s Art Deco architecture and I had all the information I needed to create the posters and naturally I re-watched every episode!
You can check out his Batman: The Animated Series inspired series, along with each piece’s individual specs, below:
Batman vs. Catwoman by Raid71 – Screen print
36 x 24 inches / Hand-numbered edition of 325 / $50
Raid71 / Bottleneck Gallery
Batman vs. Catwoman – Foil Variant by Raid71 / Screen print on foil paper
36 x 24 inches / Hand-numbered edition of 175
$60
Raid71 / Bottleneck Gallery
Batman vs. Harley Quinn by Raid71 / Giclee
18 x 24 inches / Hand-numbered edition of 125
$45
Raid71 / Bottleneck Gallery
Batman vs. Joker by Raid71 / Screen print
36 x 24 inches / Hand-numbered edition of 250
$50
Raid71 / Bottleneck Gallery
Batman vs. Joker – Foil Variant by Raid71 / Screen print on foil paper
36 x 24 inches / Hand-numbered edition of 150
$60
Raid71 / Bottleneck Gallery
Batman vs. Man-Bat by Raid71 / Giclee
18 x 24 inches / Hand-numbered edition of 75
$45
Raid71 / Bottleneck Gallery
Batman vs. Mr. Freeze by Raid71 / Giclee
18 x 24 inches / Hand-numbered edition of 150
$45
Raid71 / Bottleneck Gallery
Batman vs. Phantasm by Raid71 / Screen print
24 x 36 inches / Hand-numbered edition of 250
$50
Raid71 / Bottleneck Gallery
Batman vs. Phantasm – Foil Variant by Raid71 / Screen print on foil paper
24 x 36 inches /Hand-numbered edition of 150
$60
Raid71 / Bottleneck Gallery
Batman vs. Poison Ivy by Raid71 / Giclee
18 x 24 inches / Hand-numbered edition of 100
$45
Raid71 / Bottleneck Gallery
Batman vs. Riddler by Raid71 / Giclee
18 x 24 inches / Hand-numbered edition of 100
$45
Raid71 / Bottleneck Gallery
Batman vs. Two Face by Raid71 / Giclee
18 x 24 inches / Hand-numbered edition of 100
$45
Raid71 / Bottleneck Gallery
Batman: The Animated Series by Raid71 / Screen print
24 x 36 inches / Hand-numbered edition of 325
$50
Raid71 / Bottleneck Gallery
Batman: The Animated Series – Foil Variant by Raid71 / Screen print on foil paper
24 x 36 inches / Hand-numbered edition of 175
$60
Raid71 / Bottleneck Gallery
Gotham by Raid71 / Screen print
36 x 18 inches / Hand-numbered edition of 325
$50
Raid71 / Bottleneck Gallery
Gotham – Foil Variant by Raid71 /Screen print on foil paper
36 x 18 inches / Hand-numbered edition of 175
$60
Raid71 / Bottleneck Gallery
For more information, be sure to head on over to Bottleneck Gallery’s official site.
Featured Image: Raid71/Bottleneck Gallery
The post New BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES Prints Evoke Gotham’s Art Deco appeared first on Nerdist.
In the words of arguably one of the world's greatest entertainers, James Brown....let's "get up, get into it and get involved!" Check out the latest episode of Afronerd Radio's Mid Week in Review airing this Wednesday at 8pm eastern. Your friendly neighborhood AFROnerdists will be unpacking about the following topics: Hat tip to stalwart Afronerd Radio supporter for tweeting about a recent LA Times piece highlighting the trials and tribulations of black animators in the aftermath of the George Floyd protests; just after we spoke about the Simone Biles Vogue cover fiasco, it appears that actress, Viola Davis Vanity Fair cover struck the correct chord; why did it have to be him? controversial filmmaker, Lee Daniels is purportedly rebooting the fondly remembered Wonder Years ABC TV show with a black cast; thoughts about the release of CBS All Access trailer for an upcoming Star Trek animated series entitled, Star Trek: Lower Decks which hit the cyberwebs a few days ago; in a tweet discussing legendary actor, Giancarlo Esposito's desire to be cast in a Marvel project, somehow Dburt was accused of "gatekeeping" (white) characters....what does that mean?; funny how unresolved story twists can still linger in viewers minds. Case in point-noted director, Cheo Hodari Coker recently gave further insight into the killing off of the Cottonmouth character (masterfully portrayed by Mahershala Ali) in season 1 of Netflix' Luke Cage:
And in even more animated news, just what is the Disney plus Star Wars animated project, Bad Batch?; we're going to tidy up the place by addressing some of the topics left on th etable from Sunday's Grindhouse show; Dburt revisits the very progressive (for its time) early aughts Alan Moore penned pulp comic, Tom Strong (and why not a streaming series in the vein of Buck Rogers); Dburt is absolutely elated about the return of S2 of TNT's Alienist: Angel of Darkness while simultaneously angry about the cancellation of the Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector series; And lastly, our thoughts about a Huffpost article exposing leadership flaws and mistreatment of employees at the black owned media imprint, OkayMedia. Call LIVE at 508-645-0100.
As a man of science and nature, when driving this vehicle, I am amazed at the fusion of the two. A machine that aspires to manifest a soul will be used to stop a machine that rejects its soul. Appropriate.-T'Challa.
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