Early this morning Collider‘s Jeff Sneider broke the news that Phillip Noyce‘s Above Suspicion, which I’ve been doing cartwheels over since I first caught it in the summer of ’17, will open via Lionsgate in mid May — select theaters and on digital/VOD platforms on Friday, 5.14, Blu-ray and DVD on Tuesday, 5.18.

I wrote last summer about the film’s misadventures on the worldwide distribution and pirating circuit (“Woe to Rashly Distributed Above Suspicion“) that began…oh, sometime in late ’17.

According to the IMDB Above Suspicion‘s principal producers are Mohamed AlRafi and Tim de Graye, whose film companies are called 50 Degrees Entertainment LLC and White Knight Pictures. Despite the curious distribution strategy orchestrated by these fine fellows, there remains a commercially fertile market for what any avid cineaste would call a truly excellent film.

“There are still plenty of people who don’t torrent movies,” Sneider writes, “and [who] would be willing to pay to check out this cinematic curiosity.”

Due respect but that is an unfair and inaccurate way to describe Above Suspicion. It is, no lie, a jug of classic, grade-A moonshine — a brilliant, tautly paced, perfectly written action thriller that plays deep down like an emotional tragedy, and is boosted by an ace-level performance from Emilia Clarke.

“The Girl From Lonesome Holler,” posted on 7.24.17: “Above Suspicion, which is based on Joe Sharkey’s 1993 true-life novel, is a triple-A, tightly-wound, character-driven genre flick (i.e., rednecks, drug deals, criminals, lawmen, murder, car chases, bank robberies) of the highest and smartest order.

“Most people would define ‘redneck film’ as escapist trash in the Burt Reynolds mode, but there have been a small handful that have portrayed rural boondock types and their tough situations in ways that are top-tier and real-deal. My favorites in this realm are John Boorman‘s Deliverance, Billy Bob Thornton‘s Sling Blade, and Lamont Johnson‘s The Last American Hero.

“Noyce’s Above Suspicion is the absolute, dollars-to-donuts equal of these films, or at least a close relation with a similar straight-cards, no-bullshit attitude.”

Sneider is a savvy reporter with a good heart, but calling Noyce “an underrated director” is another off-kilter description. Noyce has been consistently proving his grade-A feature chops since the late’ 70s, and there isn’t an actor, screenwriter, agent or producer in this town who doesn’t know this.

Noyce’s theatrical highlights include the brilliant Newsfront, the classic Aussie breakouts Heatwave and Dead Calm, a hugely successful pair of Jack Ryan thrillers (Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger), the notorious Sliver and a great run of variations that followed — The Saint, The Bone Collector, Rabbit-Proof Fence, The Quiet American, Catch a Fire and Salt.

The controversial “1619 Project,” an ambitious reframing and re-branding of U.S. history by way of the N.Y. Times, wokesterism and Critical Race Theory…a massive thesis, published on 8.14.19, that became known in some quarters as (a) historically questionable in some aspects, (b) “ideology masquerading as neutral scholarship” and (c) “a thesis in search of evidence, not the other way around,” will be presented as a documentary series via Hulu.

Roger Ross Williams will produce and oversee the series, and will also direct the first episode. Shoshana Guy will serve as showrunner and executive producer. Kathleen Lingo, editorial director for film and TV at The New York Times, will also executive produce as will Caitlin Roper. The series will be made in collaboration between Lionsgate Television, The New York Times, and Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Films.

HE on 7.30.20: “Don’t tell me that slavery and racism is and always has been this country’s central definer. The 1619 Project’s revisionist zealotry rubs me the wrong way in more ways than I’d care to elaborate upon.

“Slavery has always been an ignominious chapter in the first 245 years of US history (1619 to 1865) and racism has stained aspects of the culture ever since, but to assert that slavery and racism (which other cultures have shamefully allowed over the centuries) are THE central and fundamental definers of the immense American experience strikes me as a bridge too far.

“One stone in the shoe is the 1619 Project’s contention that the American revolution against England was significantly driven by colonist commitment to maintaining slavery.

“Many factors drove the expansion and gradual strengthening and shaping of this country, and particularly the spirit and character of it — immigration, the industrial revolution and the cruel exploitations and excesses of the wealthy elites, the delusion of religion, anti-Native American racism and genocide, breadbasket farming, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick C. Douglas, the vast networks of railroads, selfishness & self-interest, factories, construction, the two world wars of the 20th Century, scientific innovation, native musical forms including jazz, blues (obviously African-American art forms) and rock, American literature, theatre and Hollywood movies, sweat shops, 20th Century urban architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright, major-league baseball, Babe Ruth & Lou Gehrig, family-based communities and the Protestant work ethic, fashion, gardening, native cuisine and the influences of European, Mexican, Asian and African cultures, hot dogs, the shipping industry, hard work and innovation, the garment industry, John Steinbeck, George Gershwin, Paul Robeson, Louis Armstrong, JFK, MLK, Stanley Kubrick, Chet Baker, John Coltrane, Marilyn Monroe, Amelia Earhart, Malcom X, Taylor Swift, Charlie Parker, Elizabeth Warren, Katharine Hepburn, Aretha Franklin, Jean Arthur, Eleanor Roosevelt, Carol Lombard, Shirley Chisholm, Marlon Brando, Woody Allen, barber shops & manual lawnmowers, the auto industry, prohibition & gangsters, the Great Depression and the anti-Communism and anti-Socialism that eventually sprang from that, status-quo-challenging comedians like Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce and Steve Allen (“schmock schmock!”), popular music (Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra and the Beatles), TV, great American universities, great historians, great journalism (including the National Lampoon and Spy magazine), beat poetry, hippies, the anti-Vietnam War movement, pot and psychedelia, cocaine, quaaludes and Studio 54, 20th & 21st Century tech innovations, gay culture, comic books, stage musicals, Steve Jobs, etc.”

A little more than four years ago Tatiana and I attended a J.J. Abrams Oscar Wilde party at Bad Robot. My post about same used this headline: “Hansard Recalling Guthrie — A Beautiful Moment at J.J. Abrams’ Oscar Wilde Soiree.”

The evening’s highlight, I meant, came when Once maestro Glenn Hansard sang a portion of Woody Guthrie‘s “This Land Is Your Land” a capella. Everyone was humming along and the feeling in the room was quite beautiful, which is to say patriotic in the best sense of that term.

During the recent presidential inauguration (1.20.21) of Joe Biden, Jennifer Lopez performed some verses of Guthrie’s as part of a medley with “America the Beautiful”.

But now it appears that this heartfelt Guthrie narrative — i.e., “Woody was a beautiful guy and a serious humanitarian socialist, and we all love this song for its values” — is coming to an end. The new narrative is basically that “This Land Is My Land” is a racist-white-man song that dismisses the historical rights of Native Americans and Mexican Americans, and is basically a tribute to white American expansionism and suppressing native voices, etc.

A month and a half ago essayist and culture writer Sam Yellowhorse Kesler posted a piece on npr.org piece called “The Blind Spot in ‘This Land.’

And yesterday MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell went after the song also:

Maher again: “72% of GenZ say they’d like to be an online celebrity, and 54% of GenZ and Millennials say they would become an influencer, ‘given the opportunity’. If, you know, it wasn’t too much work, like making a sex tape. Speaking of which…

[Starting at 4:40] “I can’t be in this time when we’re madly on the hunt for anything with the slightest whiff of white privilege, and then feel badly for…Paris Hilton? Quite the reverse — maybe it’s Paris who owes us an apology. For being Patient Zero for today’s vapid, entitled, famous-for-nothing culture. She kind of birthed the world in which every 15 year-old with a phone aspires to be an influencer. She’s the face that launched a thousand little shits.

“Paris led directly to the Kardashians and then to housewives and teen moms and Heidis and Snooki…a generation of young girls who look up to the ‘role models’ who managed to turn an unenthusiastic blowjob into an empire. Young people who think talent…’my talent is being me! And you wanting to live my life.’ Kylie Jenner is a billionaire based on her ability to sit near a pool.”

There are two…well, one head-turning takeaway from Scott Feinberg’s 3.12 Kim Novak interview (audio + transcript) in the Hollywood Reporter. Plus there’s a vague refutation of a rumor about Novak having been Bill Cosby-ed by Tony Curtis during a late-night party in November 1957. Plus an interesting inference or two.

One, Novak’s fabled interracial “affair” with Sammy Davis, Jr. in late 1957, which was chronicled in a September 2013 Vanity Fair piece by Sam Kashner and discussed in an August 2017 Smithsonian article by Joy Lanzendorfer, wasn’t actually sexual**.

Lanzendorfer reported this on 8.9.17, Novak reportedly repeated the claim to Larry King in 2004, and she says it again to Feinberg in the current THR piece — no salami and, the article indicates, perhaps a hint of stalking on Davis’s part.

Vanity Fair art for Sam Kashner’s September 2013 article about the brief Novak-Davis alliance.

Novak tells Feinberg that her much-whispered-about relationship with Davis had more to do with (a) Davis aggressively pursuing Novak — inviting her to join him for a Thanksgiving dinner with his parents in Los Angeles in late November 1957, and then surprising her by showing up when she invited him out of politeness to a family Christmas gathering in Chicago a month later, and (b) Novak not wanting to discourage Davis out of concern that a racial motive might be inferred if she flat-out rejected his advances.

Feinberg’s article also contains a between-the-lines inference that while Tony Curtis may have slipped Novak a Mickey Finn during a late-night after party at his Beverly Hills home (which he shared with then-wife Janet Leigh), Davis may have been “in on it” and perhaps was the guy who drove Novak back to her home, where she woke up in her bed stark naked the next morning, not having the slightest clue what had happened.

Feinberg excerpt: “One day, Novak left Paramount studios — still in her [Judy Barton] wig and green gown from Vertigo — to attend a charity dinner, where Tony Curtis invited her to an afterparty at the home he shared with Janet Leigh. Hearing that [director Richard] Quine would be there, she said yes.

“When she arrived, Quine [with whom Novak was involved to some extent] wasn’t there. But Davis was, and he offered to help her take off her wig.

“‘By the time he got it off,’ Novak recalls, ‘Tony Curtis had brought me a drink. I don’t know…I only had, I think, one drink there. But that’s the last thing I knew. I do not know anything afterward, cross my heart, hope to die. Don’t know what happened after that or how my car got back in front of my apartment.”

“Does Novak think someone spiked her drink? ‘I really do,’ she said. “I didn’t think of it then because people didn’t talk about things like that, but I could never figure it out…I’ve never blacked out in my entire life.’

“She adds, ‘I think Tony Curtis did it. I don’t want to think Sammy did that.’ And when she awoke the following morning? ‘I’ll just tell you the honest truth: I didn’t have my clothes on.'”

The “tell” is Novak saying “I don’t want to think Sammy did that.”

Friendo: I just watched this remarkable conversation again, taped on 5.11.68. Portions of it sound like it happened last night.

HE: Yeah, “portions.” Brando suggested that everyone should donate 1% of their incomes to MLK’s organization — an idea that melted the second it passed his lips. Like many superstars Brando was living in his own world. Compassionate and kind-hearted and far-sighted but at the same time isolated, pie in the sky, affluent indulgence, Tahiti man.

Why, incidentally, is this in black and white? The Tonight Show began broadcasting in color in September 1960.

If a 96 year-old Brando was somehow still with us, he would probably be seen more for his historic failings and foibles than his views on racism, and even if he was respected by Millennials and Zoomers he’d certainly be no fan of cancel culture fanaticism. Marlon might’ve even become a regular HE commenter. His handle could’ve been “budomaha” or “Jor-El.”

The May ‘68 reality was a full worldwide tilt (convulsive Paris protests, Prague spring, spillover from January’s Tet offensive in Vietnam, “Jumpin’ Jack Flash“, LBJ dropping out) and driven by Herbert Marcuse, Howard Zinn, the expanding psychedelic Beatles brand and the exposing of Sexy Sadie, the New Left, the wonderful abundance of cheap pot and LSD, great music and nonstop libertine celebrations. The US was engulfed that year by upheaval, confrontations, anti-war demos, urban riots, SDS, burning cities, RFK’s murder…’68 was the most tumultuous year of the 20th Century.

And what did it all produce in the end? Middle-class horror and a conservative pushback, the election of Nixon and the creation of anti-left domestic operations, the murder of Fred Hampton and a prolonging of the war until the final US withdrawal in April ‘75.

Brando obviously believed in civic consciousness and doing the right thing, but his personal life was mainly (to go by Peter Manso) about whims and urges and appetites. His career had been downswirling since Mutiny on the Bounty. He reignited in ‘72 and ‘73 with The Godfather and Last Tango. Then he went down again. He looked pretty good in ‘68 but by the mid ‘70s he’d became an irrevocably rotund Buddha figure — a prisoner of late-night ice cream raids, driven on some level by self-loathing.

But yes, certainly, of course…sitting on Johnny Carson’s couch that night he sounded clear-eyed and morally righteous and ahead of the curve.

Friendo: And then the assassination of Bobby Kennedy a month later. But what’s interesting here is the noncontroversial Carson drinking the Kool-Aid, which was huge and also a risk for him as the King of Late Night, appealing as he was to his core conservative audience of golf-playing, plaid-pants-wearing milquetoast breadwinners and their Susie Homemaker wives.

The official 2021 Oscar poster has been unveiled, and it mostly conveys a feeling of vague fear — a hodgepodge of different design concepts intended to “say” as little as possible about anything.

It certainly says nothing at all about what’s happening in Hollywood culture right now, and particularly about the woke psychology among the vanguard of Academy voters — a collective owning up to past and current sins (toxic white masculinity, systemic racism, predatory old-boy behaviors that suppress women) by advocating a certain corrective favoritism.

I prefer a concept that was created by Edmon de Haro [below] for a 1.27.21 N.Y, Times piece called “How Can the Oscars Be More Entertaining?”

I’m not much of a designer but I’d also love to see an Oscar poster (unlike the below Francis Bacon nightmare) that visually conveys the power that women and POCs are currently, justifiably wielding along with (here’s the tricky part) some nebulous conveyance of cancellation terror a la ’50s blacklisting. Something in that realm.

N.Y. Times poster concept by Edmon de Haro.

From Richard Brody‘s “The Best Movie Performances of the Century So Far” (3.6.21), a perfectly written explanation of his #1 pick — Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street.

Brody: “DiCaprio is the most paradoxical of actors. A star since he was a teenager, he built his career around his charisma and his gift for mimicry; in most of his early performances, he seemed to be impersonating a movie star, and slipped frictionlessly into his roles as if they were costumes, regardless of the physical difficulty they involved. With The Wolf of Wall Street, he finally achieved his cinematic apotheosis. In the role of Jordan Belfort, a super-salesman and super-con-man whose hedonistic will to power is one with his consuming fury, DiCaprio seemed to tap deep into himself, even if in the way of mere fantasy and exuberant disinhibition. He so heatedly embraced the role’s excesses that they stuck to him; he flung himself so hard at its artifices that he shattered them and came through as more himself than he had ever been onscreen; he and his art finally met.”

Jordan Ruimy: “Richard Brody is the Armond White of ultra-progressive cinematic Bernie Bros.”

From “Druggy Wolf of Wall Street Is New Scarface,” posted on 12.13.13:

I saw Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf of Wall Street (Paramount, 12.25) for the second time last night, and it felt just as wild and manic as it did the first time. (And without an ounce of fat — it’s very tightly constructed.) And yet it’s a highly moral film…mostly. Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill and all the rest are never really “in the room” with these depraved Stratton Oakmont brokers. They’re obviously juiced with the spirit of play-acting and pumping the film up and revving their engines, but each and every scene has an invisible subtitle that says “do you see get what kind of sick diseased fucks these guys were?…do you understand that Jordan Belfort‘s exploits redefined the term ‘asshole’ for all time?”

Why, then, did I say that Wolf is “mostly” moral? Because there’s a subcurrent that revels in the bacchanalian exploits of Belfort and his homies. It broadly satirizes Roman-orgy behavior while winking at it. (Or half-winking.) Unlike the Queens-residing goombahs in Goodfellas, whom he obviously feels a mixed affection for, Scorsese clearly doesn’t like or relate to the Stratton Oakmont guys. But the 71 year-old director also knows first-hand how enjoyable drug-abuse can be for cocky Type-A personalities in groups, and he conveys this in spades. Wolf is clearly “personal” for Scorsese. Like everyone else who came of age in the ’60s and ’70s, he is believed to have “indulged” to some extent. (Whatever the truth of it, 1977’s New York, New York has long been regarded as a huge cocaine movie.) One presumes that Scorsese is living a sensible and relatively healthy life these days, but boy, does he remember!

Six Dr. Seuss books by Theodor Geisel (1904 – 1991) have been zotzed by the p.c. police.

Earlier today Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced the cancellation of “If I Ran The Zoo,” “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street”, “McElligot’s Pool,” “On Beyond Zebra!” “Scrambled Eggs Super!” and “The Cat’s Quizzer” because portions of said volumes “portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong” by way of “offensive imagery.”

Everyone wants hateful images erased and hate speech squelched, but how aggressive and widespread will future cleansings be? And when will the dragnet extend to movies?

If there’s to be any consistency how can certain films that contain offensive content within a certain context — Martin Scorsese‘s cameo scene in Taxi Driver, for one, not to mention huge chunks of Quentin Tarantino‘s Django Unchained and portions of The Hateful Eight….how can these films be left alone while the legacy of Dr. Seuss is shamed and to some extent dismissed?

Friendo #1: “What’s weird is that under Obama Seuss was praised, understood and wildly appreciated. In 2021 not so much. I guess no one can really argue with this. Our culture has simply and dramatically changed where the past is no longer tolerated. Or understood.”

Friendo #2: “Ugh…I want to move to Neptune. Fortunately, those aren’t classic Suess titles, but still: Erasing the past is a Marxist-fascist paradigm. You don’t erase a work of art because of stereotypes. What’s next — erasing Taxi Driver because of Scorsese’s back-seat rant? This is madness.”

Friendo #1: “Yeah, good point.”

Friendo #2: “I think most liberal/progressives think that doing this is common sense — right in line with the idea of making blackface or the N-word verboten. They don’t seem to realize that this is book burning. You don’t erase the past. At least, not in a free society. I’m also outraged at the demonizing of Laura Ingalls Wilder.”

Friendo #1: “It’s really the corporations that buckle.”

Friendo #2: “The corporations love wokeness. Most of them are run by racists (i.e., the bro ‘libertarian’ fascists of Silicon Valley), but wokeness has turned out to be the greatest means of dividing and conquering their workers, and controlling their every move, that has ever been devised.

“Robin DiAngelo isn’t a racial-sensitivity guru. She’s a highly paid, whip-wielding corporate disciplinarian who cloaks her control-freak ideology in race propaganda. It’s no surprise, really, that her latest book is an attack on white progressives. I have no doubt that she’s a closet Republican.”

Friendo #3: “Even Biden broke tradition by not mentioning Dr Seuss in his ‘Read Across America Day’ proclamation He’s woke! Or at least scared of the wokesters.”

HE: During last year’s election campaigns I was nursing an idea that wokesterism and cancelling might begin to ease when Trump is finally gone. Now I’m not so sure.”

Friendo email: “I’ve said this a thousand times, and here goes again: Wokeness, cancel culture, etc., is a pathological disease, no argument…one that’s been building since around 2016, and the fact that Trump was in the White House totally fueled it. He didn’t create it, but he fueled it. That’s obvious.

“I get the fact that the Republicans and the right-wing media — deplorable scumbags, all — are officially against wokeness and cancel culture. But actually, they’re not. That’s an illusion.

“If you gave me a magic wand and told me that within the space of five seconds, I could wave it and cancel wokeness and cancel culture, what do you think I would do? I’d wave that fucking wand. I’d crawl across broken glass to wave that fucking wand. And so would you.

“But do you think, right now, that if Donald Trump or Ben Shapiro had an opportunity to wave that magic wand and cancel wokeness and cancel culture, that they would do it?

“OF COURSE THEY WOULDN’T!!!

“They love, love, love having it to fight against. Because the right in this country isn’t selling policies. It’s selling vengeance.”

I’m not sensing a driving narrative or thematic undercurrent in these Spotify conversations between Bruce Springsteen (who’s worth around $500 million) and former President Barack Obama ($60 or $70 million).

If they were to sit down and grapple with, say, five burning topics of the day, and really dig into them while exploring how their personal histories have led to certain views, I’d definitely want to listen.

Good idea: Barack and Bruce discuss the takeover of the N.Y. Times by the Khmer Rouge, and whether or not sensible liberal types like themselves have to stand up to the New Racism (tagging all white people as inherently evil because of their skin color), or whether or not they believe in this shit? Or if Barack thinks one way about it and Bruce thinks another? (Don’t be afraid to debate!) Perhaps they should discuss why liberal media types won’t even discuss this madness, and why the forecasted “blue wave” of 2020 never happened. (It didn’t because average Americans feel that liberals are too much in the pocket of ideological leftist crazies.) I would definitely pay attention to a discussion along these lines.

But Bruce and Barack sitting around talkin’ about their bad dads and anxious childhoods? Bruce playin’ a little guitar and Barack singin’ along? Not feeling the urgency. Why are they doing this? Because Spotify is paying them a fee? Are they looking to promote their products (albums, books)? Aren’t they rich enough?

Bruce and Barry do have a 42-minute conversation about race in America called “American Skin: Race in the United States.” They “reflect on their early experiences with race and racism and the uncomfortable conversations we need to have.” But I’ll bet they don’t come with 200 feet of Average Joe discomfort with totalitarian lefties, cancel culture and certain people losing their jobs because they posted the wrong tweet.

Spotify “is a Swedish audio streaming and media services provider, launched in October 2008. The platform is owned by Spotify AB, a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange since 2018 through its holding company Spotify Technology S.A. based in Luxembourg,” blah blah.

Last year, I sat down with my good friend Bruce @Springsteen for a long and meaningful conversation that touched on so much of what we’re all dealing with these days. I’m excited to share it with you over the next few weeks: https://t.co/sQACD08AWx pic.twitter.com/biMoxCLhAG

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) February 22, 2021

Actual conversation that took place yesterday (HE being one of the participants), mostly focused on Kylie Jenner:

Friendo #1: “You can be as shamelessly sexual as you want any time you want. You just can’t be a guy noticing or commenting or looking.”

Friendo #2: “I think that cognitive dissonance you’re talking about in the culture — i.e., encouraging male lust while demonizing male lust — is almost psychotic. And toxic in its hypocrisy. One can only weep for the vanished honesty of Sex and the City. The demonizing of male sexuality now symbolizes a kind of cultural death wish.”

Friendo #1: “Hah — I can’t imagine what it’s like to grow up as a young white male right now.”

HE: “But wasn’t female sexuality (much less open expression of same?) rigidly of not punitively repressed in this country and throughout the world for centuries? Since forever? The pendulum has simply swung sharply in the other direction. Woke society to young males: We can’t stop your natural hormonal urges, but step out of line just once and WE WILL LOP YOUR HEAD OFF.”

Friendo #2: “True enough. But that repression of female sexuality took place within a more repressed culture, period. That didn’t justify it, but that was the context. Trying to make the pendulum swing the other way in a culture as openly, rabidly sexual as ours is insane. It doesn’t work. It only breeds…more Republicans!”

Kylie Jenner

HE: “Funny.”

Friendo #1: “What I’m noticing is the Kardashian brand…Cardi B or Miley Cyrus or any young female on Instagram or Tiktok, and even the rise of ‘only fans’ where young women are selling naked pictures of themselves. For instance, on Tinder apparently young beautiful girls attract a whole bunch of men who then pay them to send photos. Most of the young women only want that kind of interaction.”

“But the puritanism is played out on a much bigger stage where men are ‘creepy’ if they even comment on a woman’s looks (like Variety‘s Dennis Harvey). Maybe this ONLY applies to white men. Maybe black men or men of color can say or do whatever they want and it won’t matter. But I just find it all very odd — women seem to be at once infantilizing themselves as perpetual victims while also, and at the same time, feeling empowerment by displaying their hyper sexuality.

“I find it all really confusing. We know what the rules are who must obey them but they seem to change all of the time with the one constant being to remove the cultural power of straight white men.

“Like, for instance, how does this picture [of Kylie Jenner] get 12 million likes on Instagram:

HE: “What’s she drinking, iced tea? WHO CARES?”

Friendo #1: “I know. But she has 200 million followers. Barack Obama only has 34 million. The point is that ALL she’s selling is sexuality. That is it. Sold mostly to women, I would imagine.”

Friendo #2: “The power of EVERYONE is being removed. Women are coerced into these roles, and it only looks like ‘freedom.’ This is late-capitalist corporate control — Orwellianism in a thong.”