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Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib joined fellow Reps Ilhan Omar and Pramila Jayapal at a rally for Bernie Sanders in Iowa, where Tlaib passionately booed Hillary Clinton. The booing was in response to moderator Dionna Langford bringing up Clinton’s previous remarks about nobody liking Sanders in the Senate. While Langford told the crowd, “We’re not gonna boo. We’re classy here,” Tlaib responded by booing and saying, “You all know I can’t be quiet,” she added. “The haters will shut up on Monday when we win.”

With the Iowa caucus just 2 days away, campaigning has reached a fever pitch among the Democratic hopefuls. Emotions are running hot, and the stakes are higher than ever. Tlaib’s booing has been met with mixed responses from Democrats. While some cheer on Tlaib’s rejection of the Democratic establishment, others have criticized her for stoking the flames of division. After all, there is nothing unifying about calling fellow Democrats “haters” and telling them to “shut up”.

The media’s response to Tlaib’s booing is frustrating on many levels, because there are no easy answers here. Tlaib is allowed to express her frustrations and dislike of Clinton, just as Clinton is allowed to do so about Sanders. But Clinton is now a private citizen. Tlaib holds public office, so there are different expectations for her.

There is a lot to unpack here, as the situation contains nuances that aren’t easily explored in the restraints of Twitter’s character limit. Clinton supporters will take offense at Tlaib booing while Sanders supporters will root her on. But here’s what pisses me off: this is more rehashing of the 2016 election that sets Dems up to fall into the same trap that fucked us in 2016. Once again we are sacrificing good at the altar of perfection.

Democrats are uniquely skilled at eating their own, and they don’t seem to have learned their lesson from 2016. Trump and his goons have evaded a fair trial in the Senate, doing untold damage to our democracy and creating a constitutional crisis. That’s something to boo about.

Trump’s administration has rolled back protections for LGBTQ+ Americans. That’s something to boo about. He’s destroying the environment and putting children in cages. Those are horrific things to boo about.

It’s disheartening to see Democrats completely missing the forest for the trees. And it’s also worth noting that a crowd booing Clinton is not that far removed from Republicans chanting “lock her up” at a Trump rally. We have a long and grueling primary season ahead of us, but let’s not lose sight of who the real enemy is. It’s not Clinton or Tlaib or Sanders or Biden or Warren or Buttigieg. It’s Donald Trump, his craven and corrupt administration, and the spineless senators giving him permission to ruin our democracy.

Democrats, get your shit together.

(via CNN)

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Co-written with Edward Hong What do you do when you’re born with a superpower but it’s really not that super? Especially if it’s a power that can accurately pinpoint the success or failure of any romantic relationship? Gifted, which is currently playing at the Sacred Fools till February 29, explores this question in a world […]

(image: The CW)

The finale of Arrow left us with a lot of hints of things to come in a lot of the characters’ potential futures. We already know that The CW is working on a spinoff with Green Arow and the Canaries, but there is another major person on the Arrow team who might be getting their own spinoff, and that is John Diggle, a.k.a. the people’s champion.

**Spoilers for Arrow’s series finale.**

(image: The CW)

For a long time, people have speculated that John Diggle could be the Green Lantern because he shares so much similar background with Green Lantern John Stewart. Plus, his relationship with Oliver emulates the Green Arrow/Lantern friendship that has existed in the comics. It was elevated even more so when it was revealed that John’s stepfather was named Roy Stewart. Hence, he is (in a way) John Stewart.

During the finale, we have a scene of Diggle moving to Metropolis and a meteor crashing nearby. He goes to investigate and finds a box that emanates green light when he opens it. ♫Dun dun dun.♫

In an interview with TV Guide, actor David Ramsey explained that the reason they have been so vague is because there are restrictions that DC Entertainment has asked for, since the company is working on a Green Lantern series for HBO Max. Can’t muddy the waters, even though the CW shows are the most successful out of everything DC has created for the screen recently, sans Watchmen.

“We did have some restrictions from DC, so we had to kind of play within that. But it wouldn’t be Arrow if there wasn’t some question even after that opened-ended tease,” Ramsey said. “And it’s a huge tease, and obviously, your mind goes to only one thing—there being a ring and him becoming this wonderful character and joining this galactic police group—but it’s still open-ended, and that’s the way we wanted to leave it. It was great to have some sort of answer, but we’re left with some questions.”

Even as someone who left the Arrow part of the Arrowverse before the show’s end, John Diggle was one of my favorite characters when I was watching. I appreciated how important he felt to the story without being the “Black Best Friend,” and I was one of the people who was waiting for him to get his Green Lantern ring. Yet, the fact that it could be happening post-Arrow makes me sad.

During Crisis, one of the things that sort of made my eyebrows tweak was the weird lineup of the “Paragons.” While I understood it from a “this is an Arrowverse Crossover” perspective, it was just odd that White Canary and Batwoman were there and Diggle, the unofficial Green Lantern expy, was absent—same with Black Lightning, although I do get it for filming reasons. I would have liked for Diggle to have had this power and presence on the actual show, especially if the Green Lantern series doesn’t get picked up or doesn’t do well. He was such an important character, and while it’s cool that our last image of him is full of potential, I would have preferred to see the Green Arrow and Green Lantern team up properly.

“No matter what level you are, we are actors who work. And it begins on the page, so whether it’s John Diggle or John Diggle Stewart or however that works, of course, I would be open to that,” Ramsey said in the interview. “Greg Berlanti, however—it’s almost without a question. I think he’s prolific. Anything he wants to talk to me about, I’m happy to hear it.”

We shall see.

(via io9)

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Whenever there’s a real life health epidemic, we often collectively turn to fictional narratives as a way of understanding them – or maybe just coping . Back in the ’90s, when the Ebola virus terrorized worldwide populations with an extinction-level plague, audiences flocked to theaters to watch Dustin Hoffman and Rene Russo fight a fake version of the virus in Outbreak. Of course, more recently the The Hot Zone mini-series focused on the actual Ebola virus and the repercussions of it spreading.

But the current health epidemic currently panicking everyone is the Coronavirus. After first identifying it in China late last year, doctors have recorded 6,171 confirmed cases of the virus, leading to 132 deaths. Meanwhile, only three known cases were identified in the United States as of right now. And as populations steel themselves for another epidemic, they once again turn to fiction for ways to identify, comprehend, and maybe be entertained by a simulation of that impending danger. According to The Hollywood Reporter (via Slashfilm), Steven Soderbergh‘s 2011 film Contagion entered the top 10 on the iTunes movie rental chart on Tuesday January 8th at the number 10 spot, alongside recent hits like Joker, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Parasite.

In Soderbergh’s film, Gwyneth Paltrow plays an American who develops aggressive flu-like symptoms after a business trip to Hong Kong. But she and the rest of the world quickly discover that it’s some kind of super virus, as it spreads like wildfire across the country. By the end of the film, some 2.5 million North Americans die before scientists can develop a vaccine. Soderbergh conceived the movie with screenwriter Scott Z. Burns (The Report)  in the wake of 2000s epidemic scares like SARS and the Bird Flu. Paltrow leads an all-star cast featuring Marion Cotillard, Bryan Cranston, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, and Kate Winslet. Unlike her Marvel films, Paltrow probably remembers making this one, since (spoiler alert) she not only dies but gets graphically dissected during an autopsy.

The original report indicates that “Google searches regarding Contagion’s availability via streaming began spiking late last week. By Monday, it rested at No. 13 on the iTunes chart before landing at No. 10 the next day.” I don’t know about you, but if I were truly scared about deadly viruses, the last thing on Earth I would watch is a Doomsday scenario movie about an extinction-level health crisis. But perhaps living vicariously through characters in a fictional scenario — especially one heavily researched and broadly fact-driven as the events in Soderbergh’s film — might offer some insights into how best to prevent or avoid catching something in real life. (Some of its presented stats, such as the number of times we touch our faces per day, are not only based in truth but genuinely surprising.)

But as realistic as Contagion may seem, it’s best to remember that its story is a work of fiction, and should not be used as a guidebook for protecting oneself from a true epidemic like the Coronavirus. Of course, why people would look to that movie — or any Hollywood virus movie — for tips in an outbreak remains baffling. But even if pure, morbid curiosity drives the recent increase in the film’s rentals, watching widespread disease and death portrayed on a global scale, there’s something reassuring about keeping those health risks quarantined in the realm of the imagination.

Featured Image: Warner Brothers 

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