The MyPillow guy has been in the news so much in the last few weeks that you may have finally learned his name. It’s Mike Lindell, and he, the company’s founder and spokesperson, has been in the news for a reason beyond bedwear: He’s been the loudest and most stubborn of believers that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. Sticking up for the former president has cost him a lot, from lost business to huge lawsuits to banned Twitter accounts. And now it looks like even Newsmax, the proudly pro-Trump news network, has even had enough of him.
Newsmax invites Mike Lindell, who advocated for a coup and spews dangerous conspiracy theories, on air. It didn’t go well. pic.twitter.com/6xzSgXlHua
On Tuesday, Lindell appeared on Newsmax to ostensibly address his latest hiccup: The official MyPillow Twitter account was permanently suspended, reportedly because Lindell — whose own personal account was banned after repeated voter fraud allegations — took it over and said some bannable stuff. But Lindell didn’t want to talk about Twitter. He wanted to spew baseless nonsense about voting machines.
He told the anchors that his personal account was suspended “because we have all the election fraud with these Dominion machines —we have 100% proof.” But Lindell didn’t get very far. Newsmax is among the pro-Trump media outlets that have been threatened with massive lawsuits by Dominion Voting Systems, who’ve not taken kindly to proven lies about their efficacy. And very quickly the volume on Lindell’s microphone was lowered as the anchors made it abundantly clear that they did not agree with their guest’s blathering.
“Newmax accepts the results as legal and final,” the one anchor said, seeming to read a legal disclaimer at hand should someone like Lindell start saying stuff that will get them in trouble. All the while, an animated Lindell could be seen, but barely heard, ranting and raving.
When the hosts finally got him to talk about “cancel culture,” Lindell quickly nosedived again. He appeared to say he wanted the Twitter suspensions to be “permanent,” then went right back to talking about all the evidence about “election problems.” Eventually one of the anchors simply walked off.
People couldn’t believe what they saw.
When you’re too nutty for Newsmax, the only place literally left is “random street corner with a sandwich board” https://t.co/QwSRTmdAea
Try to get through this without cracking up. Just try. I don’t think you can do it. Newsmax invites Mike Lindell, the My Pillow guy, to talk about cancel culture, but he has other ideas. pic.twitter.com/M0vhYyOher via @JasonSCampbell
Getting your first tattoo isn’t a one-step process. First, you have to take that leap and actually decide to get ink. Then you have to figure what the hell you actually want. Finally, you have to find someone to carve that f*cker into your skin.
Each step is significant, but maybe that last step is a bit more so. You can always make a self-deprecating joke about a poorly-thought-out but professionally done tattoo. If it also looks like shit… well, that’s harder to get past.
That’s why it’s usually a good idea to do plenty of research on the artist who is going to poke a few million holes in your epidermis before you go all-in. Thankfully — Instagram being what it is — doing that research a lot easier these days. Tattoo artists have been using IG to show off their prowess and art since the app was invented, using their grids as curated parlor walls.
The 30 tattoo artists below cover a fairly wide spectrum of inkers from all over the world. We tried to stay broad with the art, styles, and follower counts. Some of these artists are still only in the thousands of followers on IG. Others are in the millions.
All of them are worth a follow — whether you’re getting your first tattoo or your tenth.
Dion Kaszas works in Acadia, BC, and uses the traditional methods and art of his people, the Nlaka’pamux. Kaszas works in stitching and hand poke to create award-winning and internationally recognized tattoos that stem directly from his Indigenous roots.
Wiremu Barriball has created an artistic space where Maori tattoo culture can shine. His shop in Porirua, New Zealand, is a haven for Ta Moko tattoos (ancient Maori designs) which cover all parts of the body but most famously the face.
Barriball’s feed is a celebration of the Polynesian ink-ways and design.
The work Oscar and Astiz found at Do No Eko in Paris, France, is enthralling. The duo leans toward Japanese artistry that’s sometimes Lovecraftian and always amazingly well rendered. This is pure tattoo art in the highest form via hand poke methods.
There’s a classic, almost pirate feel to the ink of Ans Pham. This is big and bold ink with enticing, throwback designs. Currently working out of Tattoo Machine Studio in Wellington, New Zealand, Pham’s ink is much sought after and totally worth checking out if you’re down New Zealand way.
Ellie of Shantitattoo works out of London and dives deep into throwback tattoo art. Ellie’s tattoos are boldly rendered with designs that touch on East and South Asian art, pirate themes, henna, and tribal motifs with deft precision.
Angel Zimik’s tattoos are subtly bold. There’s a blend of the geometric with florae and fauna, spirituality, and mysticism in the artistry that feels unique and fresh. Zimik also works in New Delhi at Devil’z Tattooz (a good follow on its own) which is often lauded as a tattoo joint with some of the best inkers in the world.
Marine Perez — based in Oslo — has a heightened sense of artistry with a soft touch. Perez’s tattoos are almost exclusively in the world of animals with a very mystical bent and bold colors with soft lines and a unique POV. The work is both enthralling and hallucinatory.
The brilliance of Doreen Garner’s work is in the depth of artistry at play. Garner is a trained artist who finds deep beauty in the way the ink renders on the skin. There’s a minimalism to the Brooklyn inker that draws you in and makes you wish you had one of her simple yet moving tattoos on your body.
Expanded Eye is part steampunk art mixed with abstract geometry and synthetic cubism in a hip London art gallery. The artistic duo, Jade Tomlinson and Kevin James, create unique ink with a focus on math, unconventionality, and big ideas. It’s funky and gorgeous and there’s little else like these tattoos in the world.
There’s a quiet beauty to Kelli Kikcio’s hand poke tattoos. Kikcio works out of Welcome Home Studios in Brooklyn, which operates as a tattoo studio and an artist’s space. Her designs never overwhelm and are always engaging. The blend of the natural world with scenes from ordinary places like a grocery store makes for fascinating ink.
There’s a delicacy to the work that speaks volumes.
The intricacy and depth of McKenzie’s work in black is flat out stunning. McKenzie works out the Plymouth (UK) studio, Hand in Hand Tattoo, which is also worth a follow if you’re into great-looking tattoos in your feed.
NEO’s studio in Zürich, Switzerland, is the place to go if you want a tattoo that melds the worlds of heavy metal, geometry, and reptilian mysticism. NEO’s ink is intense. Whole bodies are covered with sometimes mind-boggling shapes. These ink-heavy tattoos may not be for everyone but are fun as hell to look at.
If you want a piece of natural art on your body, Stephanie Brown out in Chicago is the tattoo artist for you. Brown’s classically realistic tattoos highlight flora and fauna in a way that feels a bit like we all slipped down the rabbit hole with Alice.
Lisa Orth used to design album covers for Sub Pop Records in their grunge heyday. Today, Orth’s designs take a fresh and unique look at nature through heavy black lines. Think of the mountain vistas of the Pacific Northwest told through a mix of graphic novels, old national parks posters, and a hint of metal rock ‘n roll.
Each one of her tattoos is an original that she comes up with just for you.
Alice Carrier of Lovebird Tattoo out in Portland, OR, found a niche in illustrated flora and elevated the style. Carrier’s ability to create plant and sometimes insect focused tattoos is a wonder with a level of detail that’s bewitching. These are the sort of tattoos that’ll have you looking at flights to PDX so you can get one too.
Master inker and TV ink personality Reese Hilburn is another must-follow for even the most casual tattoo lover. Based in San Diego and (usually) touring the world, Hilburn creates moments of art in ink through gorgeously render tats. She’s also a tattoo model who lives the influencer life. Translation: You’ll be treated to a nice dose of wanderlust and #FOMO if you follow her Instagram feed.
Gabby Colledge is killing the game in London right now. Her minimalist approach to nature-driven tattoos is understated and beguiling. Colledge has a knack for bringing an almost whimsical essence to straightforward images of animals, fish, and plants.
New York City artist and inker Amanda Wachob is creating beauty on the skins of people and lemons(!). Wachob has a deft eye for creating massive canvases of beautiful back-covering art or small objects with serious depth. A tattoo from Wachob is a masterpiece of color on your body.
Lara Maju is doing minimalist, nature-based hand pokes at Hamburg, Germany’s Coco Schwarz tattoo studio. Maju’s ink is small features that keep things simple yet deeply detailed. These are the perfect tattoos for someone looking to dip their toes into ink without getting something overwhelming or obvious.
Miryam Lumpini is one of the most interesting tattoo artists working today. Her “Witchdoctor” aesthetic blends various styles with eye-popping color and intense detail. Lumpini’s tattoos are a lucid dream come to life via a rainbow of colors on the skin.
The level of detail and depth to Anthony Michaels’ tattoo art is phenomenal. There’s a realness to the faces he inks onto bodies that are both haunting and enticing. The two-time winner of InkMasters opened up shop in L.A. and is killing the game with pop culture-inspired ink, making this a can’t-miss Instagram feed.
Brooklyn’s Melody Mitchell is creating tattoo art with a serious flare. Mitchell’s tattoos range from classically designed to bold art pieces with clear artistry. Mitchell has the skills to pull off some of the most seriously well-inked tattoos out there today.
Berlin’s Chaim Machlev creates ink that’s once-in-a-lifetime art. Machlev’s use of lines and black is unmatched in the game. He’s blown up in recent years with rock stars lining up to get some ink from the master; so you never know who’ll pop up in his feed under the needle.
Rit Kit creates tattoos by using live leaves as stencils for designs. This unique approach brings a natural realism to her ink that feels alive. The flowers, limbs, and plants Rit Kit use jump off the skin like they’re still growing in the forest. It’s a brilliant and unique way to ink a body.
Jonboy is an inker of the elite. He tattoos celebrities and average ink-lovers at Bang Bang NYC (more on them below) if you can snag an appointment. Jonboy’s aesthetic is much sought after. He takes minimalism to new heights with tiny tats that one almost needs a spyglass to read. The detail is astounding and worth seeking out for something truly unique.
Mr. K is smashing at Bang Bang NYC. Mr. K’s ink is a meditation in subtleness. Each tattoo is a story that takes you on a journey in one single, often small, tattoo. The ink is as impressive as it is beautiful.
Sasha Unisex offers temporary tattoos for those of us who aren’t quite sure if we want to take that plunge yet. The designs are brightly colored animals and flowers with a mellow cubist bent. Then, if it feels right, you can get that tattoo permanently inked on your body. It’s kind of the best of all worlds.
Kat Tat’s Enigma Tattoo in Beverly Hills is a classic tattoo shop. Kat Tat’s ink ranges from photo-realistic faces to old-school sailor ink done with real artistry. There’s a beauty, intensity, and artistic flair here that makes Kat Tat an easy follow.
Bang Bang NYC and Keith “Bang Bang” McCurdy are dominating the ink game on the high end these days. McCurdy has tattooed Rihanna, Cara Delevingne, Lenny Kravitz, and so many more with his delicate, thoughtful art. Unless you have serious cash to put out, the likelihood of scoring an appointment with McCurdy is far and few between. Instead, you can live vicariously through his Instagram feed for Bang Bang NYC and dream of one day getting some ink from the master.
Tattoodo is a must-follow for anyone either looking to get into tattoos for the first time or looking for their next one. The feed is a repository of tattoo artists from all over the world that links to the Tattoodo app — pinpointing ink studios and tattoo artists all over the world that you can book directly.
All of that aside, the IG feed is the perfect place to start a tattoo search or a good place to just observe and dream about that tattoo you’re going to get … one day.
Things haven’t quite gone as planned for the Miami Heat this season. Just a few shorts months ago, the were the NBA’s darlings, riding high on an unexpected postseason run that saw them topple Eastern Conference juggernauts en route to a Finals appearance against LeBron and the Lakers.
But injuries took their toll, and it’s been more of the same ever since. Tyler Herro missed seven games last month due to neck spasms and could miss additional time after one of his housemates tested positive for COVID. Jimmy Butler likewise missed 10 games in January because of COVID safety protocols.
Now, you can add Meyers Leonard to that seemingly ever-expanding injury list. Leonard has already been sidelined since the first week of January with a shoulder injury, and according to the latest report, the lack of progress in his rehabilitation has prompted him to undergo season-ending surgery.
Miami Heat center Meyers Leonard will undergo season-ending shoulder surgery, sources tell @TheAthletic@Stadium.
Leonard appeared in just three total games this season and was averaging 3.3 points and 2.3 rebounds. The Heat are 7-13 for the season and have lost seven out of their last 10 games. They’ll try to gain some kind of traction when they play back-to-back games against the Wizards this week on Wednesday and Friday.
For nearly a century, the Hollywood sign has loomed over its namesake region of Los Angeles, surviving earthquakes and rabid heat and the ravages of time. But on Monday a group of pranksters tried to change the iconic attraction. According to The Los Angeles Times, the LAPD arrested six people who scaled the steep terrain and changed two of the letters so it read, of course, “Hollyboob.”
They decided to make it the ‘Hollyboob’ sign because of Instagram ‘censorship’ https://t.co/fy9LbRBbyC
It wasn’t just a juvenile joke. (Though it would be okay if it was.) The perpetrators — five men and one woman — said they had done it to raise awareness of breast cancer. They were charged with a misdemeanor for trespassing, not for vandalism. After all, all they had done is put a tarp over two letters, putting “B”s where the “W” and the “D” stand.
The Hollywood sign — which once read “Hollywoodland” — began as a real estate advertising gimmick to sell property in the Hollywood Hills. The “land” part was removed in 1949 as it had evolved from an advertising ploy to a key part of the city’s cultural landscape. It fell into disrepair over the years; one possibly apocryphal story has it that “H” was partially destroyed by the sign’s caretaker during a drunk drive. It was restored in 1978, in part thanks to a campaign by Hills resident Hugh Hefner. And it’s remained intact ever since, until now — or that time on BoJack Horsman that our equine hero stole the “D” as a failed romantic gesture.
Ricky Powell — famed photographer and iconoclast — died yesterday, at the age of 59. “The Rickster” made his name as a tour photographer for the Beastie Boys and Run DMC in the mid-80s. Through his lens, he captured the first Golden Age of NYC hip-hop and became famous in his own right, often called “The 4th Beastie Boy” after being shouted out in the lyrics of “Car Thief” on Paul’s Boutique.
To honor Ricky’s life, we asked photographer Mel D. Cole to share his memories and reflections with us. As adept with words as with images, Mel paints a picture of a man whose place in the culture and the vintage New York firmament is unquestionable and whose charisma was balanced out by an impeccable bullshit detector.
* * * *
I met Ricky Powell in 2007. By that point, people had been telling me that my photos reminded them of his work for at least five years — which was flattering because I knew so many of his classic images. Most people know the Run DMC/ Eiffel Tower shot, but there are lots of others.
The man photographed Warhol.
As rap photographers, we had a lot of mutual friends and, finally, we met at a party. The connection was instant — I admired him and, once he saw my work, the respect went both ways. He would introduce me to people as “the Black Ricky Powell,” which I found lovely.
This was a man who would call people cornballs right to their faces. One of those people who, if he doesn’t like you, he doesn’t like you. If he does like you, you can’t help but be flattered.
Getty Image
One of my favorite stories:
I had this “turkey burger” party at my friend’s place in Jersey City, and I invited Ricky. He’s one of those people where if you have him over it’s not gonna be boring. Something’s gonna happen. You always had to expect the unexpected.
My friend Shawn Morrissey was there, I was surprising him — because he was the biggest Ricky Powell fan. Had all his books, prints, everything. Ricky walks in and Shawn couldn’t speak, he was completely starstruck.
After a minute, Ricky starts getting weirded out and says, “Damnnnnn, you’re looking at me like I owe you money or something. Do I know you?” But out of that awkwardness, they became friends — hanging out and texting all the time.
He could be harsh like that, but he was also open to connection. His life was big but there was space in it, too.
Over the years, Ricky taught me a lot — directly and indirectly — and motivated me to learn, both from his work and from his mistakes. He got to a point where he had an amazing catalog that he lived off of, but he got stuck professionally for many years after his heyday. This pushed me to be known as more than “the guy who takes photos of The Roots.”
You couldn’t have told him to do more, though. His life was full. He might not have it all, but he’d had it all. And there wasn’t regret about how anything worked out, from what I could see.
How could there be? He did everything his exact style. No imitation. So when he got tired of what he’d been doing, he just moved on. His inspiration changed and he started shooting dogs and cats.
Sure, he got in his own way a lot. But who was gonna tell him to change? He liked his place in the world; he was “The Rickster.”
I remember I took Ricky to a Roots show in 2009. He hadn’t seen Questlove in a while and you could just tell that he was having such a good time. He looked so happy — walking around with this little radio where he’d listen to jazz music.
You see what I mean about an original?
Ricky pulled it off so easily. Smoking his invisible jazz cigarettes. No one questioned him because he was 100% himself. He kept it more than a buck, always, and people felt that.
I want to talk about being in his apartment, which you can see in the photo above, by Aviva Klein. We took that in 2008. It was like a museum in there and only a few people got to come in.
Inside, it was like… gross but in the most amazing way. You’d want to ask questions about his artifacts and his interests — basketball, the Knicks, Clyde Frazier, concert passes and posters of rappers, Keith Haring art, 50s-era pin-up girls next to fucking Basquiat.
This guy had stories about everyone. And he had no patience for fakes. “Cornball” was one of his favorite words to refer to people he did not fuck with.
There are people out there who look like other people, act like other people, talk like other people. That wasn’t Ricky. He wore glasses with one arm for years — just walking around and going to parties like that — and you couldn’t tell him to get them fixed.
It wasn’t his priority. He had no one to impress.
There’s this specific type of authenticity that certain New Yorkers from that era had. You couldn’t fake it or imitate it; social media and TV hadn’t destroyed regionality yet. Ricky was that era of New Yorker.
He was an icon; an institution.
Getty Image
When I got the call that Ricky died, I wasn’t surprised. It wasn’t a shock, it was just fucking sad.
I’ll miss him giving me that “Yeowwwww, let’s go smoke a doobie.” Which always felt good because if he liked you, he respected you. And if he didn’t like you… he had no filter for that.
He didn’t give a fuck. And yet, to know him was to care about him. Not many people can pull that balance off.
He’s the guy who we accepted for exactly who he is. Nobody could ever even think about changing Ricky Powell — it makes me smile just to think about someone trying. He was unchangeable to the very end.
Monday night’s Hawks-Lakers game in Atlanta gave us one of the strangest and most entertaining beefs of the NBA season so far. At some point, a fan who was sitting courtside started heckling LeBron James, as if his recent response to a Cavs GM attempts to rattle him weren’t enough of a cautionary tale that it’s best not to poke the bear.
The woman, who LeBron dubbed “Courtside Karen,” later went online to defend herself, saying that she was simply sticking up for her husband. LeBron, for his part, has shrugged the whole thing and even went so far as to say they shouldn’t have been ejected from the arena. Now, it appears the woman, whose real name is Juliana Carlos, apologized in an Instagram post.
Trash-talking, even with fans, is a part of the game, but there is a line that gets crossed every now and then, and this is a good opportunity to take a step back and evaluate the right way to handle situations like this.
Almost a month after Donald Trump supporters assaulted the U.S. Capitol building in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election, Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has issued an apology to his staff for being a tad too overzealous in her support of all things MAGA — including buying into the conspiracy theories that led to the insurrection on January 6. Via The Washington Post:
“I owe you all an apology. I have likely imposed on you my lifetime passions,” Thomas, who goes by Ginni, recently wrote to a private Thomas Clerk World email list of her husband’s staff over his three decades on the bench. “My passions and beliefs are likely shared with the bulk of you, but certainly not all. And sometimes the smallest matters can divide loved ones for too long. Let’s pledge to not let politics divide THIS family, and learn to speak more gently and knowingly across the divide.”
However, Thomas support for the MAGA riot wasn’t contained to just the private chat. On the morning of January 6, she voiced her “love” for the demonstration on her now-private Facebook page, and only after the deaths were reported did she amend the post to add “[Note: written before violence in US Capitol]” according to Slate. Thomas is also a vocal opponent of Black Lives Matter and government shutdowns to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, which she often expressed on Facebook along with sharing conspiracy theories that Jewish billionaire George Soros was organizing a secret “coup” to oust Trump. Not good!
EA Sports is getting back in the college football game sometime soon. While details are pretty sparse, EA Sports College Football is somewhere on the horizon, with the news dropping on Tuesday morning to the delight of the legions of gamers who have been jonesing for a new release since NCAA Football 14 came out in 2013.
One detail we do know is that more than 100 teams will appear in the game, and EA Sports will agree to licenses with licensing company CLC. Those specific teams are, of course, unclear for now, but there is no doubt in my mind what school must make a cameo: Flavortown U.
The good news is that Flavortown U chancellor and tenured good vibes professor Guy Fieri very much wants this to be the case. Fieri tweeted on Tuesday afternoon a picture of himself wearing what appears to be a Clemson uniform and sure as heck makes it look like he wants to get into some sort of agreement with EA Sports to make this into a reality.
So, obviously, this needs to happen. An entire roster of Food Network personalities in EA Sports College Football would be a delightful Easter egg in the game, and the good news is they would have the most important position in the sport all figured out because former Florida quarterback Jesse Palmer gets that Holiday Baking Championship money. I am confident that if EA Sports and various decision-makers at Flavortown U sat down to hammer out a deal that something would come of it.
What happened at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 was a violation. Even Americans observing from home felt it. The loss of security. The destruction in the seat of our democracy. The peaceful transfer of power tradition broken. The flag of the United States being replaced by the flag of Donald Trump.
The details of the storming of the Capitol have only gotten worse as more footage has come out. It’s now clear how narrowly our lawmakers escaped a rabid mob who had built gallows and chanted “Hang Mike Pence!”, who sent men dressed in tactical gear and carrying flex cuffs into Congress chambers, who dared to carry white supremacist symbols through the hallowed halls as they trespassed, leaving a trail of literal piss and shit behind them.
Few Congress members have given detailed accounts of what they personally experienced that day, but there’s no question it was traumatic for everyone involved. Lawmakers had to flee for their lives. People were killed in their workplace as they hid from the insurrectionists. They survived a terrorist attack. That’s a big deal.
But it would be wrong to pretend the threat was equal for all lawmakers. Republican members of Congress who peddled election lies were not the target of the attack (some, in fact, appeared to be on the side of the insurrectionists). Considering the nature of the mob and what they were there for, the worst position to be in that day was to be Democrat woman of color.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez fits that bill. As an attractive, outspoken woman, she has also been a specific target of violent and often sexualized death threats online since she came to Congress. But it’s one thing to deal with online trolls, even particularly troubling ones, and another to know that there is a mob who wants to kill you roaming the halls of your workplace looking for you.
Other women of color who serve in Congress spoke of their trauma and fears of the racist mob during the attack in a piece published on Slate yesterday. But AOC took to Instagram Live last night to share a much more detailed account of what she personally experienced.
The full video (shared below) is long, but it’s worth watching. After making it clear that it’s her personal story, not “the” story of the Capitol attack, she shared a detail that informed her experience and shouldn’t be brushed aside. AOC is a sexual assault survivor—an admission she’d never made publicly before. It’s an important detail because 1) It’s not uncommon—approximately 1 in 5 American women have survived a rape or attempted rape, which means it’s statistically likely that many other members of Congress are also survivors, and 2) That trauma colors other traumatic experiences—such as surviving a terrorist attack—since trauma tends to compound.
AOC’s description of how she hid in the bathroom and thought she was going to die is harrowing, but details in the story require an understanding of her perspective as a survivor. For instance, as she was hiding in the bathroom, a man came into her office yelling “WHERE IS SHE? WHERE IS SHE?” In those few seconds, she literally thought she was going to die. It turned out the man was a Capitol Police officer, but he didn’t announce himself as such. As she was hiding behind the bathroom door, all she could see was that he was a white man in a beanie cap. When her aide told her it was safe to come out, she did, but even then she said something didn’t feel right, as the officer looked at her with anger and hostility.
She questioned if she was projecting. Maybe she was. That’s the thing about having survived a sexual assault and knowing you’re a target in an attack—you really don’t know who you can trust. And considering how terribly prepared law enforcement was for the attack, she had reason to be fearful.
The officer told her and her aide to flee to another building but didn’t tell them exactly where to go. She ended up banging on the door of Rep. Katie Porter’s office and hiding out in there for hours. She changed out of her heels and into gym shoes that belonged to one of Porter’s aides and borrowed a puffer jacket from Porter in case she needed to escape out a window and blend in with the mob. She worried about the aides who were willing to put themselves in between the mob and the lawmakers.
The simple telling of the story, with AOC talking straight into the camera, is powerful. It’s a reminder that this is not just about politics, but about human beings, that what they experienced in that attack was real, and terrifying, and traumatic. And most importantly, it makes it clear that calls to “move on,” as if the attack wasn’t really a big deal or should just be forgotten, are wrong.
That point cannot be made any clearer. The lawmakers who don’t want people held accountable for the Big Lie that led to American citizens attacking their own government in a violent coup attempt are wrong. The attack on the Capitol wasn’t just a random blip—it was an enormously big deal. According to the Coup D’etat Project at the University of Illinois’ Cline Center—an academic group dedicated to studying government overthrows around the world—Jan 6 was an “attempted coup d’état: an organized, illegal attempt to intervene in the presidential transition by displacing the power of the Congress to certify the election.”
An attempted coup on behalf of an outgoing president who refused to accept the results of an election is unprecedented and unAmerican. And yet lawmakers are refusing to accept and acknowledge their role in supporting the basis for the coup. Even worse, some have called for AOC to apologize for being angry at the lawmakers who pushed the Big Lie—which she rightly called out as a manipulation tactic used by abusers to avoid accountability.
Unfortunately, one of the reasons people don’t speak about traumatic experiences is that they fear they won’t be believed. Not being believed just adds to the trauma, but it’s a common scenario with sexual assault, as well as domestic violence and other forms of abuse. Considering the video footage we have of the Capitol attack, AOC’s account of what she experienced is totally believable, but she’s still being attacked for being “overly dramatic” or making it all up or using it as a way to manipulate people.
She literally just shared her experience and how she feels about it. Is she supposed to not do that? Is she supposed to remains silent so people don’t have to be reminded of the trauma the whole nation has experienced? So that people culpable in the Big Lie can remain comfortable despite the trauma they contributed to? Eff that.
Telling her story is an act of courage and hopefully it will inspire other Congress members to share their own accounts. It shouldn’t be necessary, and no one should feel pressured to relive their trauma for all the world to see, but since there’s a whole lot of denial going on, we need to hear these stories to get the full picture of what the Capitol attack entailed and what it meant. There can be no “moving on” without fully investigating this attack on our country and holding those responsible for it accountable. To suggest otherwise is simply wrong.
A few years ago, the NBA All-Star Game was badly in need of a shake-up. All of annual festivities leading up to the main event continued to be the strongest of the bunch, but the game itself had longed ceased to have any sense of urgency and, at its worst, had devolved into a glorified pick-up game featuring the world’s best players that lacked anything even approaching intensity.
After the borderline unwatchable 2017 game in New Orleans, the league made the savvy move to create team captains and allow those captains to choose their own squads from the pool of players who earned All-Star nods. It was just the punch it needed, and the following year gave us one of the best All-Star Games in recent memory.
But this year, with the pandemic raging on and teams across the leagued hit hard by COVID itself or the healthy and safety protocols associated with it, the 2021 All-Star Weekend is set to be a massively scaled-down event that will reportedly take place on a single evening in Atlanta following the mid-season break in early March. Part of that will also include reverting back to the original format that pits the East All-Stars against the West.
The NBA and the National Basketball Players Association are progressing toward an agreement for an All-Star Game on March 7 at State Farm Arena in Atlanta, a single-night event that encompasses a game between the Eastern and Western Conferences and skills competitions, sources told ESPN.
Many across the league are divided about the prospect of holding the game, given the safety issues involved. Yet, the league appears to be close to finalizing an agreement to move forward with plans to host one of the NBA’s most popular events of the season. The game will reportedly benefit historically black colleges and universities (HBCU) and COVID relief efforts.
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Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
