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Coming Out: Jodie Foster At Golden Globes Proves Humanity Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

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Jodie Foster, the intensely private 50-year old award-winning actress whose silver screen career spans 47 years, Sunday night at the Golden Globes proved humanity, intelligence, independence, strength, and charm are in the eye of the beholder.

Watch: Jodie Foster Comes Out As ‘Private Person’ In Controversial Golden Globes Speech

Foster’s speech, delivered for receiving the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award — tying as the youngest person ever to be so honored — was praised and panned by Hollywood insiders and outsiders, professional and amateur critics, and activists and Average Joes alike.

Foster was celebrated and chastised for coming out as a lesbian and for not, for choosing to retain her privacy in possibly the most-public place on earth, as she, in a highly-complex and sometimes confusing tear-jerker, both reveled in and revealed her secrets.

“There is no way I could ever stand here without acknowledging one of the deepest loves of my life, my heroic co-parent, my ex-partner in love but righteous soul sister in life. My confessor, ski buddy, consigliere, most-beloved BFF of 20 years, Cydney Bernard. Thank you Cyd. I am so proud of our modern family, our amazing sons Charlie and Kit, who are my reason to breathe, and to evolve, my blood and soul.”

Foster clearly and repeatedly announced she is single, and a lesbian; a very lonely lady who likes ladies.

“So when I’m here being all confessional, I guess I just have a sudden urge to say something that I’ve never really been able to air in public. So, a declaration… that I’m a little nervous about, but maybe not quite as nervous as my publicist right now, huh Jennifer? But you know, I’m just gonna put it out there, right? Loud and proud, right? So I’m gonna need your support on this. I am… single. Yes I am, I am single.”

And while it’s not the first time she’s announced her love of women, it’s maybe the first time she’s shared her obviously deep loneliness.

“I hope you guys weren’t hoping this would be a big coming out speech tonight, because I already did my coming out about a thousand years ago, back in the stone age. In those very quaint days when a fragile young girl would open up to trusted friends and family, co-workers, and then gradually, proudly to everyone who knew her, to everyone she actually met. But now apparently, I’m told that every celebrity is expected to honor the details of their private life with a press conference, a fragrance, and a prime time reality show. You guys might be surprised, but I am not Honey Boo Boo Child.”

The Hollywood crowd at the Golden Globes understood. Tears filled many eyes in that room Sunday night, but across America’s living rooms and social media hangouts, a different response emerged, at least from some.

Anger. Ownership. Expectation. Frustration. And complete misunderstanding.

Bret Easton Ellis (BretEastonEllis) on Twitter

If an actor’s job is to create emotion — the right emotion — in her audience, Foster both failed and succeeded, for the ones who understood her message clearly are those who don’t judge, who have learned to love and accept and to be grateful. And it was to them she spoke.

Some people are angry at Jodie Foster for not coming out last night, or for not coming out clearly enough, or for coming out reluctantly, or for suggesting there might or should be shame attached, or even for saying, “I came out a thousand years ago.”

But just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so are understanding, acceptance, love, intelligence, charm, wit, elegance, independence, and strength.

Foster exhibited all that and more as she elicited tears, perhaps especially from the controversial Mel Gibson, her friend.

If Mel Gibson, known for his homophobic and anti-Semitic remarks, can watch Jodie Foster come out and reveal herself to the world, and cry like a proud parent, natch, guardian, why are so many LGBT activists so angry?

Sure, it would be great if every gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender celebrity, politician, scientist, CEO, entrepreneur, teacher, and other leaders all came out and became role models and inspirations for our LGBTQ youth, who desperately need them.

And yes, those who have achieved celebrity status have an obligation to give back to their community, in some way.

But the LGBT equality movement needs to remind itself why we’re here. We exist to further acceptance and love, to help others embrace the uniqueness of our own special beings, to provide support and solace, to achieve equality for all. “To know us is to love us,” we often say.

Sadly for a surprising some, not last night, when we revealed a dark side in response to one of our own.

If we attack instead of embrace Jodie Foster for her “lifestyle choices,” i.e. for how she chooses to live her life: in private, how are we different from, how are we any better that the anti-gay religious right?

If we, as a community, can’t treat one of our own — one who has never embarrassed us or disrespected us, who never created scandal or shame for our community — with love, honor, and respect, how can we expect the same in return from the rest of the nation?

There are far too many problems in this world. Children are dying. People are hurting. Families are being torn apart. Loving couples cannot marry. People and animals are starving to death. The planet is warming at an ever-increasingly alarming rate. Women are shamed trying to exercise their rights, and made ashamed to acknowledge they were raped. Smart and deserving kids cannot afford to go to college, while local school boards insist on teaching creationism as science and David Barton as history. Christian warriors are indoctrinating children into becoming Christian warriors. The Pope says gay marriage will cause the end of humanity and Uganda wants to impose the death penalty on people for the “crime” of being gay. The PATRIOT Act is alive but the Violence Against Women Act is dead. Lunatics in America are buying guns, semi-automatic assault rifles, and ammunition at an increasingly faster rate every month, while 34 men, women, and children are shot to death every single day. Even now, it’s nearly impossible for many to get affordable health care, as the nation is engulfed in a flu epidemic. Fox News is literally making people more stupid than if they watched no TV at all. LGBTQ people are being fired from their jobs, beaten in the streets, and bullied on the playgrounds, simply because they are LGBTQ people. The federal government is bullying people like Aaron Swartz, literally to death, and killing innocent civilians, including children, halfway around the world with unmanned drones. The Catholic Church has never been fully prosecuted for raping children, Wall Street bankers have never been fully prosecuted for robbing homeowners, and the Bush administration has never been prosecuted at all for war crimes and for lying about WMD. The GOP and the Tea Party want to make abortion illegal, same-sex marriage illegal, education, voting rights, and health care harder to obtain, cut Medicare, Social Security, equal access to the Internet, enshrine torture and discrimination into our constitution, deport all the “illegals,” expand “Stand Your Ground” and concealed carry laws, and bomb Iran as a first resort.

Instead of setting ourselves up as the celebrity conformity cops, let’s harvest, share, and celebrate the gifts and achievements within our community.

There are far too many problems in this world. Surely Jodie Foster is not one of them. As an amazing, diverse, beautiful, intelligent, independent, strong community, let’s not be one either.

 

Transcript of Foster’s speech via Vulture. 

Image: Screenshot via YouTube

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OPINION

‘Have to Get Back to Law and Order’: Trump Declares at NYPD Officer’s Wake

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Donald Trump attended the wake of the slain New York City police officer who was shot and killed while conducting a traffic stop this week. The four-times indicted ex-president demanded America “get back to law and order,” barely days after a New York judge imposed a gag order in the case where the presumptive Republican presidential nominee faces 34 felony counts for “falsifying New York business records in order to conceal damaging information and unlawful activity from American voters before and after the 2016 election,” according to the New York District Attorney.

That damaging information included hush money payments to several women including an adult film actress.

“We have to stop it,” Trump said Thursday, speaking before the cameras about crime as he stood under an umbrella in front of police officers. “We have to stop, we have to get back to law and order. We have to do a lot of things differently because this is not working. This is happening too often.”

“Police are the greatest people we have. There’s nothing and there’s nobody like them. And this should never happen,” Trump said as he lamented how repeat offenders “don’t learn because they don’t respect.”

READ MORE: Trump Campaign Says It Will Deploy ‘Soldiers’ to Polling Places

“We’ve got to toughen it up. We’ve got to strengthen it up. It should never be allowed things like they shouldn’t take place and to take place so often,” said Trump, who is out on bail and currently faces 88 felony charges after three were dropped.

The Trump campaign announced that the ex-president had been invited to attend the wake.

“President Trump is moved by the invitation to join NYPD Officer Jonathan Diller’s family and colleagues as they deal with his senseless and tragic death,” Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said, according to The Daily Beast.

The Associated Press added that “Trump has deplored crime in heavily Democratic cities, called for shoplifters to be shot immediately and wants to immunize police officers from lawsuits for potential misconduct. But he’s also demonized local prosecutors, the FBI and the Department of Justice over the criminal prosecutions he faces and the investigation while he was president into his first campaign’s interactions with Russia.”

“He has also embraced those imprisoned for their roles on the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, when a mob of his angry supporters overran police lines and Capitol and local police officers were attacked and beaten.”

Earlier on Thursday NBC News reported on Trump’s mischaracterizations of crime.

“Surging crime levels, out-of-control Democratic cities and ‘migrant crime,'” the network noted. “Former President Donald Trump regularly cites all three at his campaign rallies, in news releases and on Truth Social, often saying President Joe Biden and Democrats are to blame.”

READ MORE: ‘Hunger Games at NBC News’: New McDaniel Revelations Have ‘Enraged’ Staffers, Report Says

“But the crime picture Trump paints contrasts sharply with years of police and government data at both the local and national levels,” NBC added. “FBI statistics released this year suggested a steep drop in crime across the country last year. It’s a similar story across major cities, with violent crime down year over year in Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C.”

Watch Trump’s remarks below or at this link.

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OPINION

‘Hunger Games at NBC News’: New McDaniel Revelations Have ‘Enraged’ Staffers, Report Says

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The backlash from NBC News’ hiring of Ronna McDaniel is not over. New reporting from Puck, CNN, and The Washington Post reveals the considerable efforts from top NBC and MSNBC brass to recruit, hire, and support the former RNC chair who promoted false election claims, was allegedly involved in helping Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, and refused to say Joe Biden had been elected fairly.

Staffers at NBC News and MSNBC were outraged at McDaniel’s hiring, but new details about behind-the-scenes efforts reportedly have increased that outrage.

Some critics are either calling for resignations of NBC News and MSNBC  leadership, or questioning how long they can ride out the mess.

“What is Brian Roberts going to do?” CNN‘s Oliver Darcy asks. “The Comcast boss is watching an unceasing five-alarm fire rage at 30 Rock, scarring the reputation of NBC News and threatening to consume multiple parts of the Cesar Conde-run NBC Universal News Group.”

“Conde has lost control of his organization, prompting industry insiders to wonder how he continues to remain in his role as chairman of the NBC News Group. In the words of one veteran media executive I spoke to Wednesday, ‘It’s inconceivable that he should,'” Darcy writes, saying Conde’s actions and those of his top executives have “hosed gasoline” on the scandal.

READ MORE: Lawmaker Slammed for Claiming College Basketball Players Were Actually ‘Illegal Invaders’

That scandal involves these revelations from Puck’s Dylan Byers, who reports, “bringing McDaniel to 30 Rock had been part of a nearly two-month-long effort that was spearheaded by Budoff Brown and her boss, NBC News President Rebecca Blumenstein, with buy-in from Conde and his deputies at both NBC News and MSNBC.”

“Rashida Jones,” he adds, “the president of MSNBC, was very interested in having McDaniel appear as a contributor on her network, as well.”

But this bombshell has drawn a good deal of attention. Noting how Chuck Todd led off the very public pushback against the hiring of McDaniel, Byers reports, “On Sunday, Budoff Brown reached out to McDaniel’s aide and former chief of staff at the R.N.C., Richard Walters, to see if there were any friends or colleagues who could speak up on her behalf.”

“The two sides also discussed having these folks call attention to what they saw as a double standard—after all, this was the same network that was turning Psaki, a former Biden White House Press Secretary, into a Maddow-adjacent prime time star. Walters later assured Budoff Brown that they’d been able to advance conservative pushback on social media against Todd, specifically, and that this might give NBC News some cover, for which Budoff Brown thanked him.”

CNN, pointing to those details, adds, “staffers inside NBC News are enraged at the fact an executive would have engaged in such behavior.”

Former Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacobs, who now writes about politics and the media, called for the firing of Jones, Blumenstein, and Budoff Brown.

Other critics are expressing concerns on multiple fronts.

READ MORE: Ronna McDaniel Is Just a ‘Normal’ Person Who ‘Never Denied the Election’ Says Hugh Hewitt

“It’s like the hunger games at @NBCNews. Every day new, horrible stories of journalism & corporate malpractice. Every single one of these managers must go,” observed Jennifer Schulze, a media critic who was a Chicago Sun-Times executive producer, WGN news director, and adjunct college professor of journalism.

She also highlights a Washington Post report that ropes NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt into the mess.

“Every @NBCNews exec who thought hiring a reputed liar & phony elector co-[conspirator] needs to resign or be fired,” Schulze says.

“The @NBCNews managers who recruited & signed an election denier should be out the door, too,” she adds. “Not only was it downright offensive to hire Ronna, it was journalism AND corporate malpractice.”

Pointing to his newsletter, former Obama senior advisor Dan Pfeiffer writes, “NBC’s ill-fated decision to hire Ronna McDaniel is a story of a media outlet unwilling to accept the ways Trump changed politics, but it’s also one of the best arguments for Dems need to build our media ecosystem ASAP.”

READ MORE: Comer Refuses to Investigate Trump Family Member Over ‘Influence Peddling’ Allegation

He calls McDaniel’s hiring “evidence” the media has “yet to accept the reality that this is not a normal election between a Republican and a Democrat.” And adds, “An [industry] that prizes objectivity above all else, is incapable of accurately covering an election where one candidate is a normal politician and the other is an insurrectionist. Many in the media would rather stumble into autocracy than take a side.”

Veteran journalist and Sirius XM host Michelangelo Signorile observes, “We couldn’t have asked for a better situation to shine a bright light on the corruption of the corporate media—and its impulse to legitimize MAGA extremism and lawbreakers for profit—than NBC’s hiring former RNC chair, election denier, and Trump enabler Ronna McDaniel.”

And he warns, “The forces that made the coup-plotting former RNC chair a paid contributor are still shaping news and information about this pivotal election.”

 

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News

Lawmaker Slammed for Claiming College Basketball Players Were Actually ‘Illegal Invaders’

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Michigan MAGA Republican state Rep. Matt Maddock is under fire after claiming three buses were “loaded up with illegal invaders.” The buses, according to multiple reports, were actually loaded with the Gonzaga University basketball team arriving for March Madness.

“Happening right now. Three busses just loaded up with illegal invaders at Detroit Metro. Anyone have any idea where they’re headed with their police escort?” Rep. Maddock wrote on social media Wednesday evening, tagging far-right former U.S. Congressman Pete Hoekstra, who served as U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands under Donald Trump and is now the state’s Republican Party chair.

Informed of his error on social media, Rep. Maddock doubled down, and attacked.

READ MORE: Ronna McDaniel Is Just a ‘Normal’ Person Who ‘Never Denied the Election’ Says Hugh Hewitt

“Probably teams for the NCAA Mens Sweet 16 playing at LCA on Friday and Sunday,” a user on X wrote.

“Sure kommie. Good talking point,” Maddock quickly shot back.

ABC affiliate WXYZ executive producer Maxwell White, responding to the Maddock’s original post wrote: “Just to be clear, this was the Gonzaga basketball team. Photos show Gonzaga getting on an Allegiant plane to Detroit for the Sweet 16, and Flight Radar shows a plane from GEG to DTW landed at 7:25 p.m., around the time this photo was posted.”

“This is a wild tweet,” White added, before adding more evidence.

Hoekstra, who was accused of using racism and xenophobia to win his campaign for a U.S. Senate seat (he lost), did not respond directly to Maddock but did repost the apparently false claim.

Michigan State Senate Democratic Majority Whip Mallory McMorrow denounced Maddock’s claim as “dangerous.”

Maddock’s remark also made the national stage when U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell responded.

READ MORE: Trump Campaign Says It Will Deploy ‘Soldiers’ to Polling Places

“Hey Einstein,” the California Democrat wrote, “your state is hosting the Sweet 16. Could it be a team bus? If it is, will you resign for your spectacular stupidity?”

In 2021 The Washington Post reported, “Michigan state Rep. Matt Maddock and his wife, Michigan Republican Party co-chair Meshawn Maddock, have repeatedly been called out by fact-checking journalists for promoting baseless claims of widespread voter fraud and falsely suggesting that covid-19 is comparable to the flu.”

See the social media posts above 0r at this link.

 

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