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In Hulu’s new dramedy series, Woke, New Girl co-star Lamorne Morris plays cartoonist Keef Knight, a character who has everything lined up — the relationship goals, the new place, and the big career move. But when a thread gets pulled, things get unsettled quickly as the larger world becomes more apparent.

Created by Marshall Todd and Keith Knight (the real-life inspiration for the main character) Woke feels like a slight departure from Morris’ past on-screen work, specifically in New Girl. And that’s by design with the actor setting his sights on TV work that could specifically move people or otherwise stoak some conversation while also making them laugh. And the show definitely has that ability, launching a story that first focuses on the sometimes forgotten concept of someone too busy or caught up in their own life to get involved in the swirling storm of politics or pay too much attention to the utterly broken justice system until it directly and forcefully impacts them. How many people think like that?

As we discuss with Morris ahead, people don’t necessarily want to be as fixated on everything going on in politics as they are right now, they feel compelled to and he feels compelled to. And for Morris, Keef’s journey to wokeness and using the power of his voice feels relevant and recognizable. Something born from all he has in common with the character and something born from a close collaboration with a team of writers that, in his words, have taken “similar walks in life.”

Curious about how this came to you and also how much time you spent with Keith just trying to get the vibe of the character and what he was going for. Obviously it’s a very personal project for him.

It came about a couple of years ago. I read the script post-New Girl. I thought I’d want to take a break from television and just try to shoot my shot at film, just all film, and keep it two months on a project, take a month off, go back to work, something like that. And so we read a bunch of scripts and shot a couple of movies and I just kind of missed television a little bit. I remember reaching out to my agent saying, “Hey, what’s going on out there TV-wise?” And I got a lot of multi-cam shows, which were pretty funny, and a lot of sitcoms, which were pretty funny, but I said, “Well, I just did something that was really, really just pure comedy based.” I wanted to shoot something that kind of had more heart to it. Something that when you watch it, you kind of feel moved in some sort of way where it would have some sort of cause for discussion.

And I remember reading the script and just going, “Holy crap.” It’s kind of brilliant because it also mirrors my life and how I view the world. And so we went in and auditioned. I had a meeting. I had a meeting with the director and EP, Mo Marable, who’s fantastic. We vibed pretty well. I remember spending a little bit of time with Keith in Vancouver, texting a lot, talking a lot on the phone. Just kind of getting a sense of who he is and some of his mannerisms. I do impressions of certain people and if I really hone in, but he didn’t want that. They wanted it to be about his life and not necessarily doing a spot-on mimic him.

When I hung out with him, we spoke about his references and what he pulls from when he’s creating. The music that he likes, things like that. His family life. When you watch the show and you watch him, there are some isms that I wanted to pull from him. And I think it was a pretty good blend. It’s awkward and odd though, when he is on set, staring at you the entire time.

The music specifically is really great. Does his taste get into the soundtrack?

A thousand percent. He had his hands all over that. I think the opening title sequence has a very nineties punk feel to it. And that’s him. That’s when he was in a punk/hip-hop band in the nineties. That’s all him. A lot of times when you watch TV, if you see a predominantly black cast, a lot of times you’ll only have hip hop. That’s what you see as the soundtrack, as the backdrop. Hip-hop, hip-hop, hip-hop, and R&B. In this show, we blend a lot. Alternative, synth music, all kinds of stuff. A lot of hip hop, obviously just because it’s the best form of music to me in my opinion. But we throw a lot of punk in there. Like I said, as far as the opening title sequence.

To amplify what you were saying about the soundtrack, I really, really appreciate the diversity of sound in there. And you’re right, it’s not something you see a lot of. I think High Fidelity was another version of that where that kind of popped up. Sorry, Hulu people on this call, but they unfortunately canceled High Fidelity.

Oh, I know. When I heard about that I was so heartbroken. Just because I really do love that show.

Yeah. It was so good. I’m curious about comic book culture and cartoon culture. Is that something that you’re kind of immersed in or have been immersed in? Or is that something that you took to anew?

Anew… well, when I was a kid, obviously. I think that’s most kids. Comics and especially from our generation… I was a Marvel guy, DC guy. Oh, and I did a film called Bloodshot for Valiant Comics. And prior to it, I had already known about the character because coming up, my cousins had the comics. Now, on the comic strip side, I’d read a little bit in the Sunday paper, but I wasn’t too familiar until reading this script and obviously just doing research and having to dive in a little bit with Keith. I tried drawing. [Laughs] On set, I just remember going, “No, I’ll do it. I’ll do the drawing myself. Show me something, I’ll make it work.” And obviously we have to cheat some things, but it didn’t work out. I tried. [Laughs]

You mentioned before that the story kind of speaks to where you are in your life. Is that in regard to just being aware and socially conscious? Have you always been very engaged on social issues and very vocal or is that something that you’ve kind of grown into?

Grown into. And that’s what I mean by his journey kind of mirrored mine. Because he was always aware of what was going on, but it did take an incident to become activated and really engaged and really use his voice and platform to try to learn as much as he could. And if you can affect change somehow then do it. When I say I was the last person you’d want to ask about politics or anything happening in the world, I was the last person. I remember growing up on the Southside of Chicago and not knowing that we were different. Not knowing that there was an economic struggle. Not knowing that my mom was working 50, 60 hours a week and not making that much money and how real the struggle was. Not knowing that 30 minutes down the road, not even, other kids were getting a better education. Other kids were getting more funding for their schools, more funding for their basketball teams, more time at home with parents because they don’t have to work as hard. Or there were two parents in the household. There were all these things that you don’t pay attention to because you’re just born in it.

I remember being the smartest kid in my class on the Southside of Chicago and then moving to the West burbs of Glen Ellyn when I was about 14 or 15, something like that. And I remember going to this school and being so far behind. And I just thought, “How did I go from the top of my class? What they put in front of me, I learn it and I excel at it. What else do I need to do?” That above and beyond attitude was just limited to what I had access to. And when you move to a different side of town, you then realize, oh no, no, you’re far behind because the books are more up to date. They have computers at the school. I remember seeing my first computer when I moved to Glen Ellyn. I remember going to school and we had a computer lab class and people were legit learning how to code and build websites. This is not a joke, and I have the pictures to prove it at home and almost teared up the other day when my mom gave them to me. I hadn’t seen them in years. I was just so happy to print out photos. I just thought, “Wait, what?” Because I used to collect basketball cards, like a massive amount of basketball cards. And I just remember going to school going, “I can print out a picture of Michael Jordan and Vince Carter? I can just do that? I don’t have to go to the store, beg my mom for a few bucks so I can get some money so I can buy some cards so I can hopefully get it? I can just print it out?” I thought that was the coolest thing in the world. And the other kids were fascinated at the fact that I didn’t know. It was almost like you came from a third world country. You were like, “Wait, what?”

So even during that time, I wasn’t politically activated. I just thought, “Well, you got some catching up to do.” And I kind of struggled a little bit through school. But as I got older, then more and more I felt like my voice mattered. The more and more I would… when you’re hanging out with friends or older people who want to speak on politics, I always found myself lost in the conversation because I knew what was going on. I didn’t care to speak about it. I didn’t care about it. But in the past few years, just when you see what’s going on in our country and even in our world, you start to question things and you start to think, “Well, what can I do?” And then I just thought, “Well, you have this platform, you have a social media platform, you have TV shows and movies and stuff. Just talk about it. Speak to what you know and just try to encourage other people to get activated.” Encourage people to vote. Encourage people to pay close attention to other aspects, not just the President. Congress, things like that. People who can make change in your neighborhood. Your alderman, the mayor. All those people who can actually create change in your immediate life, that will hopefully make a happier, better living situation for you and your family. Let’s pay attention to those things as well.

When I said it mirrors him, that was the same thing. He wasn’t really speaking on it until things happened to him. And it opened his eyes to the life around him. And for anyone out there who feels the same way, it’s never too late. I’m always learning. For me, I use my instinct. Sometimes you’ll see on a post, I’ll ask, “Hey, let me know if I’m wrong on this. Somebody talk to me about something.” I get a lot of my information from my DMs where people will DM me and enlighten me on certain things. And then that’s where I kind of learn. That’s where I’ll start to do my research and do more investigating on what it is I’m talking about or what it is I think I’m talking about. So I’m still a work in progress on that end. It’s something that I would love to dive even harder into, hopefully not out of necessity, but just out of sheer curiosity and wanting to. I don’t want it to be a need. What’s happening in our world now and in our country, it’s something that I definitely don’t want to continue to happen and I don’t want to have the need to keep speaking up.

So, last thing, checked out a few tracks from the Lamorning After Pill album. How did that come together? Because it’s insane.

Oh, man. I used to joke around with my friends and freestyle and all that kind of stuff. It honestly came out of boredom. And I became good friends with this guy named Jukebox. Now he’s like a brother to me. And he’s a music producer and I knew nothing about it. I would be in the studio with him at his house sometimes literally just hanging out and different artists would pop in and out from time to time. And I just thought, “Man, that’s so fascinating how easy they make it look.” They would come in and a singer would come in and I’d be there for the whole process. In two hours, they would have this beautiful song. And I was like, “Man, that’s crazy.”

As an actor, we got to do so much to get five minutes of footage and they go in there and they just knock it out of the park. And so we would goof around the studio and I would just literally, as a joke, I would be in the booth and joking around and he would be recording and then he would make something out of it. And he said, “Man, you should actually try it for real. Obviously comedically as a joke because no one will take you seriously as a rapper for real. [Laughs] But try it as a joke.” And I was a huge fan of Weird Al Yankovic and Chris Rock, his comedy album and some of the just goofy things that would come out of that. And I decided, hey, I’m going to try it. I’m going to make a few songs.

The Common song, “Common Hates Oprah,” how did you talk him into that?

Some people that work at New Girl, like Jake Johnson, Damon, Max, they all thought the songs were funny. And I wasn’t going to do anything with it. I just had the songs. And I shot Barbershop with Common. And that’s when I took it seriously. Because on set, Common would like to freestyle. He’s an amazing freestyle artist. His performance at this past Oscars was absolutely incredible. And Common said to me, he goes, “Oh man, G, like you could actually kind of rap a little bit, bro. I’m for real, you should probably record some stuff.” He said that to me and I said to him, “It’s funny you say that because I have this album.” I sent it to him. Didn’t think he was going to listen to it. He flew back from Atlanta and said, “Hey man, I just listened to the four songs you sent me. These are pretty funny and actually really good. The production quality, the beats. You should really consider making an album.” And he’s like, “I’ll jump on that album if you want me to.” And my mind was blown. I just thought this is Common, he’s one of the greatest rappers of all time and he wants to get on an album with my silly, goofy ass. He came to LA, came to the studio and stayed as long as we needed to. And I remember even that process, I didn’t know what I was going to do just because I was so used to being by myself in the studio and just saying nonsense. And then he was like, “So what’s the concept?” And I thought, “What? What are you talking about concept? You just rap and I’ll rap.”

So he actually wrote his verse — not even wrote, he doesn’t write words down when he’s in the studio. He just freestyles it and does take after take until he gets it right. And then once he was done, I just thought, “I know exactly what I’ll do. I’ll go over his stuff and just negate what he’s saying. And then make Common out to be this horrible person because everyone loves him. Everybody loves Common.”

Until they hear the song.

Yeah. I mean, when they hear the song, hopefully, they’ll learn better because he’s not what he’s cut out to be. [Laughs] He’s like Santa Claus, you know what I mean? Santa Claus is the only guy that can break into your house and you don’t call the police. In fact, you leave him cookies. That’s how Common is. I’m fully convinced that Common could break into my house, kidnap my family, and I would go, “Great. When are you going to drop them back off?” He’s that type of guy. He’s so sweet. Whatever he wants, he can have it from me. I don’t care. He can kick me out of my own home if he wanted to. He can have my wife. “I’m leaving you for Common.” I’d go, “Great! He’s an amazing guy.”

I love Taco Bell’s Mexican Pizza. For 20 years, this cult-classic menu item has been part of my standard order (add nacho cheese, of course). Living in Southern Calfornia — where great Mexican food abounds — I buy them more often than I could possibly justify. I even made the dish in a recent cooking competition on Twitch.

So when the company announced that the Mexican Pizza would be discontinued last week, I planned on writing a big, dorky ode to this fan-favorite. A love letter to those flaky fried tortillas. An affectionate eulogy to the silky red sauce. I was all set to gush about how the dish was basically a nacho without any of the nacho’s ingredient distribution problems — offering equal amounts of beans, beef, cheese, sauce, and crunch in every bite.

Seriously, I was hyped. It would be an honorific so pure that fellow Mexican Pizza aficionado Bert Kreischer was going to get it tattooed on his chest. Together, we’d bring the Mexican Pizza back.

Then I lost the script. I looked at Taco Bell’s reasons for taking the Mexican Pizza off their menu in the first place — clicking on their official statement, which read:

One silver lining of saying goodbye to the Mexican Pizza that might help you rest easy is that removing it from our menus helps us work towards our commitment to leave a lighter footprint on our planet. Currently, Mexican Pizza packaging accounts for over 7 million pounds of paperboard material per year in the U.S.

Right then, I got it. Taco Bell didn’t have to take the Mexican Pizza off their menu. They made an active choice, at least partly for the sake of the environment. They did something rare in the world of mass-produced foods: make a decision not simply driven by market popularity or profit.

In short, they pursued a strategy that seems wrong but was actually right. And even if that bums you out, you have to admit it’s pretty cool.

In a world where what we eat is getting increasingly intellectualized — sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse — the Mexican Pizza was a clever dish that actually tasted good. A mashup in name and presentation that brought people four little slivers of joy. As the difference between food appropriation and appreciation grows ever more blurred, it was also an unrepentant blend of classic foods. Basically a double layer tostada topped with mild, red Enchilada sauce, melted cheese, and a few tomatoes, sliced in quarters.

But even as prone as I am to romanticizing this dish, Taco Bell’s website takes it comically far:

Listen, we love a well-placed karate chop as much as the next guy, but we can all agree that peace is the best, right? Especially since the Mexican Pizza was created with some peace.

The most obvious reason, of course, is because no one gets hurt. But a close second, and often-overlooked reason for why peace and harmony rule is because when different cultures get along, they start swapping recipes. It’s like tearing open a brand new pack of baseball cards only to find out that you have some duplicates and your neighbor has a card you want and you have one he wants. So you just trade straight up and basically become pals after that single encounter. But one clear example of cultural companionship at work is the Mexican Pizza.

That is, I shit you not, just the first third of Taco Bell’s ramblings on the Mexican Pizza. So clearly they saw it as important to their menu at some point. But that world peace talk wasn’t enough to justify the cancellation of the dish in an effort to meet the company’s stated packaging goals. And considering the scale at which Taco Bell makes food, the quest for peace of which they wax poetically is better off with them killing the Mexican Pizza and thereby decreasing waste and packaging production worldwide.

Not to reach too far here, but I see this as an example of what life in 2020 demands of us. Doing things that will potentially piss people off in the name of progress (generally speaking, a segment of people being pissed off is certainly one of the signifiers of positive change being made). Letting our hard-earned wisdom guide us rather than the path of least resistance.

God, I miss the days when we didn’t have to overthink fast food!

Well, they’re gone. The thing about any sort of romanticization of the past is that it puts you on a slippery slope where “make America great again” is actually code for “allow me to be racist, sexist, ableist, etc. without you complaining about it.” Or when country songs about a simpler time also imply “before I was forced to know about the complexities of the world, even though they definitely still existed.”

The fact is that in 2020, thanks to excellent food and ecology-based journalism and the numbers supplied by Taco Bell itself, we can see pretty easily that the Mexican Pizza had to go. Our ecological consciousness created its downfall, but it’s still better to be conscious. Right?

As much as I love the Mexican Pizza, I won’t cry for this perfect example of Taco Bell at its most authentically inauthentic. I won’t mourn this cultural mashup that was tastier than it had any right to be. I won’t lament the loss of the dish’s perfect topping ratios or its even distribution of meat, beans, sauce, and cheese. Instead, I’m choosing to see it as a sign of the times. I’m glad that waste management actually matters to a company whose core fanbase of people buying 12 tacos at a time at midnight may not make its purchasing decisions based on ecological factors.

Maybe one day the Mexican Pizza will come back in a compostable box. Until then, I’m going to wolf down a few more and walk away. Taco Bell thinks that our nostalgia for a mass-produced menu item isn’t worth the environmental costs and I’d like to hope they’re right. The world is changing and the company is smart to shift with it. The inexorable march of time waits for no food.

Besides, that top tortilla always got soggy as hell anyway.

“Marge vs. the Monorail” is one of the most famous episodes of The Simpsons, and for good reason. It’s a classic, an effortlessly quotable episode that’s often a go-to pick when people ask where to start with the show’s now-sprawling list of episodes and seasons. The fourth season’s 12th episode features what it sounds like: Marge trying to prevent Springfield from getting suckered by a con man trying to sell the town on building a monorail. And its popularity has gotten new life now that the show is on Disney+, too, but perhaps it also helped that monorails were in the news lately thanks to the city of Las Vegas.

On Tuesday, news broke that the Los Vegas Monorail, which has been shut down since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The Las Vegas Journal-Review had more details on the news, including a statement from the company about the proceedings.

“As a result, it is in the Las Vegas Monorail Company’s best interest to file for bankruptcy and effectuate a sale of the system assets to a party who intends to keep the system in operation and help ensure that the mobility benefits the Monorail provides continue during conventions, events and throughout the year,” Myles said in the statement.

The sale has actually been in the works for a while now, and last week it was announced that the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Bureau will actually buy the monorail. But the bankruptcy proceedings as part of the same went viral thanks to a tweet that let Simpsons fans get their favorite jokes about the episode off.

Thankfully, the monorail in Vegas doesn’t appear to be going anywhere. And if Elon Musk has his way, it’ll actually have some competition in the people-moving business. There just isn’t a very good song attached to that tunnel, though, is there?

In 1979, filmmaker and activist Jean Kilbourne released the documentary “Killing Us Softly: Advertising’s Image of Women.” The landmark film provided an eye-opening look into how the the media’s sexualized, objectifying images of women negatively affect society.

Given the fact that the media hasn’t stopped objectifying women, its only got better at it through the use of digital tools, the documentary has been updated three times.

In 2010, Kilbourne released “Killing Us Softly 4” that revealed how beauty standards had become even more unobtainable in the Photoshop era.

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“You almost never see a photograph of a woman considered beautiful, that hasn’t been Photoshopped,” Kilbourne says in the video.

Killing Us Softly 4 – Trailer [Featuring Jean Kilbourne]

www.youtube.com

Even though the trailer for the documentary is 10-years-old, it’s still a perfect, five-minute explanation of why the media’s objectification of women is a major health issue.

“It creates a climate in which there is widespread violence against women,” she says. “Turning a human being into a thing is almost always the first step toward justifying violence against that person. We see this with racism, we see it with homophobia, we see it with terrorism. It’s always the same process, the person is dehumanized and violence then becomes inevitable.”

“And girls are getting the message these days so young that they need to be impossibly beautiful, hot, sexy, extremely thin,” she continues. “And they also get the message that they’re going to fail. That there’s no way to really achieve it.”

Watch the original “Killing Us Softly” at this free link.

The Milwaukee Bucks gutted out an overtime win in Game 4 against the Miami Heat on Sunday. While the team came out on top, gigantic questions popped up about what was on the horizon in more ways than one, as Giannis Antetokounmpo left the game after he aggravated a sprained right ankle and made his way back to the locker room in serious pain.

Antetokounmpo was ruled out for the remainder of the game and left the arena while wearing a boot, an ominous sign about his potential availability for a Game 5. About an hour before that one tips off, Shams Charania of The Athletic brings word that the team will have to make due without him, as the reigning league MVP and recently-crowned Defensive Player of the Year will miss the game due to his injured ankle.

Despite the fact that they won Game 4 with him only playing 11 minutes, it obviously cannot be overstated how big of a loss Antetokounmpo is as Milwaukee fights to keep its season alive. In those 11 minutes, he managed to score 19 points, which was the second-highest total on the team. A whole lot is going to fall onto the shoulders of Khris Middleton to improve on what was an already stellar Game 4, as the All-Star scored 36 points, ripped down eight rebounds, and dished out eight assists in 48 minutes of work.

Despite its public-facing image as a diverse cosmopolitan metropolis that brings together people from all over the world to live in relative harmony, New York City public schools are some of the most segregated in the country. The story of how this came to be is what Chana Joffe-Walt and her Serial/This American Life collaborators set out to tell, through the lens of one public school in Brooklyn, originally called IS 293.

The story was a personal one for Joffe-Walt, whose own children were approaching school age. Meanwhile, how our schools got the way they are and why we can’t just flip a switch to fix them turned out to be a complicated question, or at least an uncomfortable one. What was intended as a single episode or podcast segment about a desegregation effort in one public schools turned into a five-part stand-alone series about the disproportionate power white parents wield over public schools.

Joffe-Walt and her team had stumbled into one of the basic truths about public schools: that you can ask what you think is a straightforward question and find yourself deep in the weeds of policy and politics. This is, I think, a reflection of one of the basic truths about parenting: it challenges our utopian instincts (that parenting can turn you selfish was essentially the plot of mother!). How much oppression and exclusion has come from society’s twin terrors, “won’t someone think of the children” and “won’t someone think of the property values?”

They named the series Nice White Parents, which became a source of controversy itself. The trailer alone generated thousands of comments, with people calling it divisive and racist, all without having even heard the show. Reporting took Joffe-Walt from IS 293’s efforts to become a French-immersion program (including some extremely cringe moments from a fundraiser at the French embassy) to a charter school in the same building (with great results but questionable methods), to interviews with white parents who had initially written letters urging the school to desegregate only to eventually not send their own children there.

Through it all, she found parents who theoretically wanted to “integrate” but remained deathly afraid of their children “falling behind.” Is there a way to square that circle? I’m not sure the show comes to a definitive answer, but it certainly challenges some of our core assumptions. I spoke to Joffe-Walt about it last week.

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So tell me about your personal connection to this story.

This was now in 2015. I had been doing a lot of reporting on school segregation and was interested in public education and the role of segregation in creating and perpetuating inequality in public schools. It’s hard when you’re covering segregation to see something actually change with such an entrenched problem, and I heard that there was a school that had this dramatic demographic change basically overnight, and I was interested in watching what happened there. Initially, when I went to the school, I was really much more interested in desegregation and how to achieve that and what things get in the way of that. Then in both watching what happened that year at the school and trying to understand the dynamics there, and especially when I learned the history of the school, that’s where my focus shifted to thinking the story is actually more about the disproportionate power that white families have within public schools.

The thing that you found was the French immersion program?

Yeah, I mean, the French immersion program, the way white families came into the school with a really genuine interest in participating and creating a kind of school that they felt like would be good for everybody and missed what was there already. Then as the school year went on, that just became… I think there were many opportunities for that to be addressed that kept being missed. And so the school was really reshaped by these families that came in without a lot of participation or voice from the families that had been there already.

Right. What did they do? And what were they missing?

I think they were missing a sense that this was a community already before they showed up. The school was under-enrolled, but that did not mean that the people who were there didn’t choose to be there. And then I think being able connect with parents who were there and have an open discussion about what everybody wanted for this community, and then I think also just not talking about the racial dynamics, clearly. Part of what was happening at that time in 2015 was that people and school leaders were recognizing that schools were segregated and that was a problem that was getting worse. But the response to that was to create magnet programs, incentive programs, programs like dual-language programs, to encourage white families who previously had neglected public schools to invest in and participate.

And those programs really don’t talk about racial dynamics at all. The idea is that you get everybody into the same building through a sideways effort. And then it was a question of, “Well, what happens next?” Once everybody’s in the same building, that’s not really enough to create a real integrated community without speaking directly about the change that has happened and the power and racial power that’s happening in the building.

And so then they did start talking about the racial dynamics at some point, didn’t they?

Yeah. I went into the school in 2015 and a lot has happened in the country since then. I think there was a shift just in the community in their understanding of some of these dynamics. And I think within the school more directly, there were staff and leaders and families that resisted the change that was happening and felt like… People started to use the word that the school felt like it was being colonized, and that there needed to be some barriers in place to more powerful families being able to set the agenda. And part of what came along with that was a more explicit conversation about racism and power and what it meant to be creating an integrated school.

Did that help, the more explicit conversation, I mean?

Yes, I think that did help. I do. I think that the school has become a place where a more diverse set of families feel like they have a place and belong and have a voice in what happens. I think it has helped empower students to also feel like they get more of a say in what’s happening in the school. It’s not a systemic solution to have one school that is doing that, but I think it did within the building really help.

Speaking of magnet programs, in reporting this, you had to go back into the history of school segregation. What was the original idea behind busing and how well did that work and then how is that affecting what’s happening in this story?

Do you mean the original story of the school or just–

I mean, with school choice and these magnet programs, that’s a way to try and recapture what they were originally trying to do with busing, isn’t it?

I mean, within New York City, when there was a large movement led by black families and Puerto Rican families for integration, there was tremendous resistance to that. And that was talked about as busing, although busing was not really the issue at the time. There were also parents, white families who aligned themselves with that movement for desegregating schools. And some of those families wrote letters and advocated for this particular school building to be an integrated school building, but then did not end up sending their kids to that school. Over the many decades of the building’s life since from when it was built in 1968 until now, until 2015, there were many efforts to recapture the white families that had abandoned the building and keep them in the school system, cater to their interests and needs and keep them in the city. And yeah, that has been a long story basically ever since then.

And then there was a charter school vignette in this. Can you explain how the charter schools work?

Yeah. Charters are not operated by the city. They’re public schools in that they are free for anybody to go to and you can apply through a lottery process for most charters, including the charter that’s in the building. But they’re privately run and they get public funding. And then in the case of the charter that’s in the building, there’s still private funding as well. And so they have more flexibility in terms of the curriculum and the teachers — they don’t have a union for their teachers. They generally have a fairly different approach to education or a particular brand.

So the brand of the school that’s in the building, Success Academy, is that they are very focused on achievement and delivering the same educational quality and achievement for poor kids, for kids of color, as white kids get. And so this school, Success Academy, is incredibly successful in terms of test scores. It’s also a fairly regimented and uniform approach to education, so there’s some kids who thrive there and there’s also kids and families who feel like it’s too demanding or demanding in a way that does not suit their needs. And what I was interested in Success is the difference between Success, which is down in the basement of this building, and BHS, the original school, which is upstairs, that have just two totally different approaches to what it means to be a public school and provide a public education all within the same building.

Right, and how would you describe those two different approaches?

The thing I thought about a lot was that in education, people talk about equality versus equity. And I think Success is very focused on equality, meaning that every child has an equal outcome and is treated equally and served equally and the education is equal and it really feels that way in Success classrooms. Teachers say the same words in the same way and teach the same curriculum and the discipline and behavior management is very uniform and regimented. Upstairs at BHS, they’re more focused on equity, and equity is really within education talked about as more meeting every kid where they’re at and understanding that kids have different experiences out in the world. The school is sort of a microcosm of the world. And so treating everybody equally does not make sense when you have some kids who are coming from a shelter and have not had adequate education up to that point and they’re really needing remediation instead of whatever else is happening in the classroom. And that racism is a thing that kids are experiencing outside of the school and needs to be addressed in different ways for different people. I think the equity/equality difference to me felt like the biggest separation in terms of the ideology of those two schools.

I mean, is that part of the whole root problem, that you have all these kids that are expected to be in the same classroom and they all need to go at different speeds and need different things?

I mean, that is a huge question in education in general. I think if you are in the equity camp, yes, you believe that what schools should do is affirm and address every child exactly where they are. And that is, going back to the founding, really, is a big part of what the ideology of public school is: that it’s a place for every child, that serves every child, and every child gets a quality education. I think that equality people would argue that it doesn’t need to be different for every single child, that if everybody is well-resourced and treated the same, everybody can achieve the same.

I mean, so the idea here is we’re trying to stop white flight away from these certain public schools, right? They’re trying to get them back into certain ones that they’ve left and have gotten sort of underfunded?

I think that has shaped a lot of policy leading up to maybe around 2015 when I went into this school. There’ve been all these initiatives to lure white families into schools and into participating in schools with black kids in particular and kids of color, and that you can induce integration and reduce white flight without explicitly committing to it or forcing it. I mean, I would say that that is a fairly demeaning approach to education and that the schools can’t be entirely focused around trying to lure in people who are not willing to participate on equal terms in public schools. But yeah, I think that has really shaped school policy for many decades.

What does being willing to participate in public schools on equal terms mean?

I think it means recognizing that you and your needs are not the only needs within a public system and that the goal of a public institution is to meet the needs of everybody and pursue what is in the greater good. I think for white parents in particular, that means remembering that we are not the only people in public schools and that we need to listen to what our neighbors of color want and dream of in public schools and then support them in demanding that from the institutions that serve all of us, and remembering that those things might not always directly benefit our child and are part of a larger public good that we all benefit from in a bigger picture way.

I mean, if you take out some of the more racially coded stuff, it seems like a lot of what these parents worry about is if their kid is reading or doing math or whatever at a higher level and they send them to a school where the kids are doing it at a lower level, that it’s going to slow their kid down. Is that a legitimate concern? Is there a way to assuage that fear?

I mean, for me, I feel like the most compelling argument is this larger vision of public schools, that public schools are created, that the purpose of public schools in my mind is to be a common space where people come together and that we need for a functioning democracy. I think for me, it’s balancing that responsibility that I think we should have as citizens to trying to foster community and not shelter ourselves from the experiences of the people who live right next door to us. I don’t know if that assuages a fear about math. I think that is a compelling argument for me about wanting to participate in an integrated school and is important, is a value to me that feels like it’s a public good value that you could invest in.

All episodes of ‘Nice White Parents’ are available via Apple, Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcasts.

Kal Penn and Freeform are teaming up in an effort to get America to “FF’ing Vote” and “Kick 2020 in the Ballots.”

As part of a new, non-partisan voter initiative to encourage young Americans to take part in the upcoming presidential election, Freeform will be dropping a series of PSAs both on-air and on YouTube. “This activation will encourage fans to share on social media what issues they want to kick in the ballots and tag a friend to continue inspiring each other, using the hashtags #Kick2020intheBallots and #FFingVote,” according to a press release from the network.

The #FFingVote campaign will also be buoyed by the launch of a six-part election series Kal Penn Approves This Message, which will culminate in a one-hour special on October 27. Much like the PSAs, Penn’s show will hopefully energize young voters as he tackles multiple issues that can be affected by the 2020 election.

Here’s the official synopsis:

Hosted by Kal Penn, the show is a smart, irreverent unscripted comedy series that explores issues relevant to Millennial and GenZ voters. Each episode will consist of comedic field pieces as well as a sit-down interview with Kal and a featured guest. With topics ranging from voting basics to voter empowerment, the economy to climate change, the series will break down key issues young voters are passionate about and arm them with the tools they need to make an impact and vote.

Kal Penn Approves This Message premieres September 22 on Freeform with new episodes available on Hulu the following day.

(Via Freeform)

Travis Scott is going all-out to promote his collaboration with McDonald’s, pulling up at a South Los Angeles McDonald’s location in his cherry-red Ferrari to sample his meal and causing a fan frenzy in the process. The McDonald’s in Downey, California is the burger chain’s oldest location still in existence, so it’s naturally the location Travis chose to make a public appearance, prompting fans to whip out their phones and mob his vehicle in the drive thru.

The oldest McDonald’s is a drive-up hamburger stand and was opened on August 18, 1953, making it the third restaurant opened by the original MacDonald family. It’s become something of a tourist attraction and is eligible for addition to the National Register of Historic Places, although its owner refused the addition in 1994. Travis’ McDonald’s collaboration includes a meal he inspired, as well as apparel he helped design.

In other, non-food-related collaborations, Travis recently appeared on Big Sean’s Detroit 2, providing a guest verse on “Lithuania.” He has also been tooling around with his predecessor, Kid Cudi, after releasing their first collaborative song, “The Scotts,” during another corporate-sponsored event — Travis’ virtual concert within Fortnite. On the solo front, Travis recently released the new track “The Plan,” which some believe to be the kickoff for his followup to Astroworld.

If nothing below suits your sensibilities, check out our guide to What You Should Watch On Streaming Right Now.

Good news, the late-night talk shows are back after a weeklong hiatus:

The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon — Michael Strahan, Big Sean

Jimmy Kimmel Live — Daisy Ridley, Josh Gad

The Late Show With Stephen Colbert — Senator Bernie Sanders, Jon Batiste, and Nathaniel Rateliff

Late Night With Seth Meyers — Jane Fonda, Jorma Taccone

In case you need some laughs (and who doesn’t?), Netflix has dropped many comedy specials over the past few months, and here are the highlights:

Eric Andre: Legalize Everything — This New Orleans-filmed special shows Eric Andre once again busting through comedic boundaries while taking on the wars on sex, drugs, and… fart jokes? Alright. Seriously though, It’s the best comedy special of the year and highly relevant to the U.S. police-related discussion today.

Jim Jefferies: Intolerant — The Aussie comedian (who remains notorious for his gun-control opinion) pulls a 180 from where he was five years ago. He’s less focused on issues these days and grows incredibly banal at times, but he’s still uproariously funny. While reflecting upon the state of comedy today, he manages to dole out some hefty insight on life while telling an epic tale of the pursuit of lactose at all costs.

Pete Davidson: Alive From New York — From SNL to a ton of upcoming movies, Pete Davidson’s doing everything, and now, he’s got his very first Netflix original comedy special. Yes, he’s dropping all kinds of unfiltered anecdotes on everything from his SNL-related discomfort to his Louis C.K. beef and Ariana Grande relationship.

Patton Oswalt: I Love Everything — The Emmy and Grammy winning comedian brings his newest comedy special to the streaming giant. Look forward to anecdotes involving a full-scale Millennium Falcon replica and how home buying gets tied to the term “suicide squad.” Stick around for the post-credits bonus, in which Patton introduces another one-hour comedy special, Bob Rubin: Oddities & Rarities.

Jerry Seinfeld: 23 Hours To Kill — The legendary Jerry Seinfeld has dropped his second Netflix special. Expect him to keep mining everyday life to unveil comedy in the commonplace. Although the title of this special feels Bond-esque, Seinfeld doesn’t disappoint those expecting his trademarked sharp perceptions about everyday life.

Sam Jay: 3 In The Morning (Netflix standup special) — For her first hour-long comedy special with the streaming giant, SNL writer Sam Jay headed to Atlanta, Georgia to get witty, candid, and raw at The Masquerade club.

Marc Maron: End Times Fun — The long-time standup comic, GLOW star, and prolific podcaster unleashes his latest comedy special. Expect Maron’s thoughts on cell phones, vaccinations, and Tumeric. Oh, and he’s definitely talking about his ongoing beef with Marvel movie fans.

George Lopez: We’ll Do It For Half (Netflix stand-up special, Tuesday) — Somehow, this is Lopez’s first Netflix comedy special despite his storied stand-up roots. In one hour, Lopez dives into lessons that he’s learned from the Latino community, along with issues related to emotional support animals, gender reveal parties, and elevator etiquette.

Hannah Gadsby: Douglas (Netflix stand-up special) — The newest Netflix comedy special arrives today with Hannah Gadsby following up on Nanette with a second turn named after one of her dogs. Gadsby’s hope was that Douglas would “inspire comedy disobedience,” according to Netflix, and this LA-filmed special promises to upend all expectations.

Joe Exotic really is going right to the top with his request for a pardon for the crimes that currently have the Tiger King star in an Oklahoma prison. According to Mediate, Exotic’s legal team will submit a lengthy letter to the Trump administration outlining several reasons why he should receive a pardon from the president.

TMZ has more details on the reportedly 257-page request, which argues in part that Exotic should be pardoned because he’s claimed sexual abuse by prison staff. His legal team also added that he’d never tried to kill Carole Baskin, as the apparent murder-for-hire plot is what landed him in jail in the first place.

Exotic, who has run for office himself in his extremely colorful past, apparently asked the president to “be my hero” and even included his support for both Trump and his son in a potential run for president in 2024.

“I have been sexually assaulted by jail staff, beat up and tied in a chair to the point the skin came off my arms,” Exotic wrote in his letter to the president, before asking him to excuse his writing and spelling, explaining that his hands have been damaged from the abuse.

“Please be my hero…My hands are damaged from the abuse in jail so I’m sorry for the soppy (sic) writing and spelling,” he added. “Allow me to make you proud, to make America proud, to make the world proud. Be my hero please.” He also solidified his support for Trump and his family, adding “#TrumpJr.2024” to his 257-page case.

Among the hefty filings reportedly coming from Exotic’s legal team, led by Eric Love, are claims that he was convicted due to anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments and that what was identified as threats on Baskin’s life were “merely jokes” made “in bad taste.” There are also several statements from character references, including one from Exotic’s husband, Dillon Passage.