One film journalist’s stream-of-consciousness cinematic journey through the pandemic, Part 96 By Laurence Lerman / New York City Deliverance was my first R-rated film. I saw it at the Menlo Park Cinema in Edison, New Jersey, 50 years ago this month, two weeks after it opened on August 18, 1972. I was nine years old. I can already hear you asking, “What kind of parent brings a nine-year-old to see Deliverance!?” Well, it was my idea. (You’re probably asking same the question again…). Okay, here’s the story: The previous spring, I had received straight A’s on my precious third grade report card and my parents were so pleased that they wanted to give me a gift to commemorate the accomplishment. Upon asking what I might like, my immediate response was, “I want to see an R-rated movie!” Ah, the allure of an R-rated movie! The idea had been percolating in my mind since I began seeing ads and commercial for movies that looked particularly intriguing but being denied to me. Movies like M*A*S*H (1970), Dirty Harry (1971) and Shaft (1971)—this is the kind of stuff I really wanted to see, though I learned soon enough that my very cool parents were still understandably wary of the sex, violence and other adult situations the films might contain. Still, I was a pretty hip kid…. By that time, my mom and dad parents had already taken me to see such PG-rated but still relatively mature films as Billy Jack (1971), The Omega Man (1971) and the sort of dull G-rated sci-fiers The Andromeda Strain (1971) and Silent Running (1972). Back in 1968, when I was five, my dad even brought me to see 2001: A Space Odyssey, which I didn’t really enjoy or understand at the time, but, my oh my, I would seriously come to love over the subsequent five decades. Anyway, my parents agreed with the concept of my gift, though they reserved the right to nix any choice I made should they deem the film to be a bit too much. In the summer of 1972, there were two movies up for my consideration. The first possibility was The French Connection, William Friedkin’s Academy Award-winning 1971 policier that was currently enjoyed a major rerelease (remember those?). Next, there was Deliverance, a new film that I had seen a lengthy TV ad for and that looked pretty exciting to me. Its rough-looking “man vs. nature” theme involving a bunch of guys in canoes appealed to me even at my young age. The commercial was scored to the famous “Dueling Banjos” bluegrass instrumental riff that was featured in the film and later issued as a single, where it reached #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. I decided upon Deliverance, which was based on poet-author James Dickey’s 1970 bestselling novel, which neither of my parents had read. But having checked out the reviews of both the novel and John Boorman’s film adaptation, they did know what is was all about. And though they knew there was a particularly ugly and very adult segment contained in it, they signed off on my choice. My father took me to see Deliverance the week before Labor Day—a matinee screening, not too crowded. It was intense. Deliverance revolves around a quartet of Atlanta businessmen—Lewis, Ed, Bobby and Drew—who decide to canoe down the Cahulawassee River in the remote northern Georgia wilderness before it is dammed. One of the men, Lewis (played by Burt Reynolds) is an experienced outdoorsman; his buddy Ed (Jon Voight) has been on a few trips but isn’t really seasoned or tough; while Bobby (Ned Beatty) and Drew (Ronny Cox) are novices. Needless to say, the city boys, after behaving a bit rudely to some of the locals early on, soon find themselves in over their heads when they encounter the river’s roaring rapids, the rugged surrounding terrain and a pair of nasty mountain men, leading to a struggle for their very survival. It was and is tough stuff. And, yes, there’s a sexual assault scene at the midway point involving one of the mountain men and Bobby that remains one of the most terrifying and disturbing sequences to ever appear in a mainstream movie. I can say now, as I did then, that I didn’t really understand what was happening on the screen during the assault. Asking my father in a whisper, he whispered back, to his credit, “The mountain man is really hurting Bobby. And his friends can’t help him.” So intense. The story, the you-are-there depiction of the wilderness, the horrors Bobby and his friends had to endure. Most unnerving to me back then was that I understood how each of the men, even the manly Lewis, comes to realize that he is out of his element. I was still, of course, a bit too young to be able to isolate or identify the storytelling and filmmaking techniques that made it work so well. But remembering that first time I saw it and having seen it at least a half-dozen times since, I can say that Deliverance certainly delivered. I thought the film’s four stars were really good actors, too. I hadn’t seen any of them before, but little did I know that I would see them all again on the big screen many times over the ensuing five decades, along with other films made by director Boorman. Without a doubt, Deliverance was one of the films that sparked my interested in following contemporary cinema. And this was before “Dueling Banjos” and the phrase “Squeal like a pig!” became entrenched in American popular culture. Fifty years later, it is heartening to note that none of the principals fell into the “Where Are They Now?” file. With Deliverance and his iconic nude photospread in Cosmopolitan that same year, followed up by such Seventies smashes as The Longest Yard (1974), Gator (1976) and Smokey and The Bandit (1977), Burt Reynolds catapulted to high-orbiting, if undistinguished, superstardom. Jon Voight, having already garnered an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for 1968’s Midnight Cowboy, went on to bring home the gold for 1978’s Coming Home. And there were more praised performances of his to come in Runaway Train (1985), Heat (1995), Ali (2001) and TV’s Ray Donovan. The film’s other two stars, Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox, went on to respectable, decades-long careers as primarily supporting players in a number of films and TV series—Beatty in Nashville (1975), Network (1976), Superman (1979) The Big Easy (1986), Hear My Song (1991) and Charlie Wilson’s War (2007); Cox in Bound for Glory (1976), The Onion Field (1979), Beverly Hills Cop (1984), Robocop (1987), Total Recall (1990) and TV’s Nashville (2018). Reynolds and Beatty have both since passed away, Reynolds in 2018 at the age of 82; Beatty in 2021 at the age of 83. As for director John Boorman, he continued to make films for the next 40 years, among them the critically lauded Excalibur (1981), The Emerald Forest (1985), Hope and Glory (1987), The General (1998) featuring Jon Voight, The Tailor of Panama (2001) and, most recently, Queen and Country (2014). He’s 89 now and retired from filmmaking. A couple of weeks after Deliverance, following a good deal of pleading, I convinced my father to take me to The French Connection (how much more “inappropriate” could it be, I relentlessly argued), which was awesome. My mother came, too, as she was a Brooklyn-born gal and wanted to see the film’s already-classic car chase through Bensonhurst that everyone was talking about. Several months later, at the end of the first half of the school year, I once again received straight A’s on my report card. To celebrate, my dad took me to see The Poseidon Adventure, the first in a cycle of Seventies disaster flicks. It was great! But it was only rated PG, so no biggie. Laurence Lerman is a film journalist, former editor of Video Business--Variety's DVD trade publication--and husband to The Insider's own Gwen Cooper. Over the course of his career he has conducted one-on-one interviews with just about every major director working today, including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Clint Eastwood, Kathryn Bigelow, Ridley Scott, Walter Hill, Spike Lee, and Werner Herzog, among numerous others. Once James Cameron specifically requested an interview with Laurence by name, which his wife still likes to brag about. Most recently, he is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the online review site DiscDish.com.

By John Rolfe / Red Hook, N.Y. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. That sums up the state of America’s justice system. It has been so polluted by our toxic, polarized politics that no matter what the Department of Justice and law enforcement agencies do, the consequences will likely be dire. The F.B.I.’s search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago palace in Palm Beach, Fla. is bringing this dilemma to a head. At the time of this writing (Sunday, Aug. 14), highly classified documents had been found in apparent defiance of a subpoena that was issued in June, but charges had yet to be filed against Trump, who denies any and all wrongdoing. Meanwhile, right-wing media and the Republican Party is fiercely rallying to the former president’s defense. With Trump under investigation on multiple fronts (possible tax fraud, attempting to illegally overturn the 2020 election, improperly possessing classified documents), he and his allies are sure to rile the Republican base to fury by screaming “harassment!” even if due process is followed to the letter. But if you let Trump off the hook, you give him and anyone else carte blanche to do whatever they like, laws be damned. Some crimes (the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol in particular) are unavoidably political, but if every investigation and legal action is automatically a partisan witch hunt, then according to the Republican argument being a politician provides a shield against prosecution unless the charges come, on the very off-chance, from one’s own side. As it is, there are DOJ policies — no prosecuting a sitting president; no investigating major candidates within 90 days of an election — that too often allow rogues and scoundrels like Trump to remain unchecked. All you have to do is actually read the Mueller Report (I have) and you’ll see that Trump’s pursuers have been exceedingly fair and cautious despite having probable cause to believe dirty deeds had been done. You wouldn’t know that if all you listen to is the right’s furious spin. Long gone are the days when prominent members of both parties stood together in recognition that behavior like President Richard Nixon’s indisputable role in the Watergate break-in was unacceptable. Now, subpoenas from courts and congressional committees are openly defied and one’s own side is defended even if what it has done is indefensible. What makes the Trump era so surreal and terribly dangerous is that the right side of our political spectrum no longer recognizes the legitimacy of laws when enforced by the center or left. Even the process itself is relentlessly called into question, corroding public confidence in our institutions. Trump has hardly been under constant scrutiny for flimsy, trumped-up reasons. He’s been brazenly bending and breaking established rules and laws in plain sight for years. It was Trump himself who decided to make the illegal possession of classified documents a felony because he believed Hillary Clinton was guilty of doing so and “Lock her up!” was one of his rallying cries. Anyone who isn’t a blind follower can only slap their forehead in exasperation at how the former president keeps wriggling free and continuing to wreak havoc. The GOP’s lusty embrace of unfounded, inflammatory conspiracy theories has so rotted the party that it is now dancing by the bonfire of open civil war in response to Mar-a-Lago search and the House Select Committee’s inquiry about Jan. 6. The reports of calls to violence in pro-Trump Internet forums is truly chilling. What’s truly nauseating is the bald hypocrisy. According to Trump and his defenders: It’s our patriotic duty to endlessly investigate a Democrat such as Hillary Clinton for possible wrongdoing, but an outrage and political suicide in the party if Donald Trump or another Republican is put under a comparable legal microscope for obviously justifiable reasons. It’s acceptable to be lax in handling classified information if you are Donald Trump, but not if you are Hillary Clinton. It’s mere “political discourse” to riot and try to overthrow the government on illegal grounds because you believe an election was stolen from your candidate (never mind the constant lack of evidence), but a high crime to violently protest blatant police brutality that has yielded more than a century’s worth of clear evidence. It’s your right and common sense to plead the Fifth Amendment if you are a Republican, but all others are admitting their guilt if they do so. (It appears that Trump is suddenly woke to the true meaning of taking the Fifth after years of him saying only the Mob resorts to it and that it should disqualify someone from becoming president.) It’s fine to use your shady, backroom influence in Washington on behalf of foreign entities if you’re a Paul Manafort, a Michael Flynn, or a Rudy Giuliani, but not a Hunter Biden. (It’s worth noting that Biden’s son has yet to be specifically cited for anything.) The GOP’s radicals have succeeded in creating a situation where there is no longer a common acceptance of the rule of law and due process for all. There is only outrage and vows of revenge on the right when law is applied to Republicans. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy threatening Attorney General Merrick Garland with investigation, and Senator Josh Hawley calling for Garland’s resignation or impeachment, before anything was revealed about the grounds for the Mar-a-Lago search tell you all you need to know about what is coming. It’s hardly a shock that Trump is further inflaming his followers by suggesting that the FBI planted evidence. Reportedly, about 11 sets of documents, some highly classified and possibly pertaining to national nuclear secrets, were removed during the search. Given this climate of bitter distrust and antagonism, I fully expect violence if Trump is charged with any crimes. The deadly August 11 incident at the FBI field office in Ohio, where a gunman (who was possibly a participant at the Capitol on Jan. 6) tried to invade an FBI field office, was probably just the start. The lengthy process of prosecution and appeal all the way to the Supreme Court will allow plenty of time for Trump and his minions to fan the flames and for our society’s pot to boil over into civil war. I also expect mayhem at polling places with right-wing “observers” challenging and threatening voters they deem suspicious, and all-out chaos after the 2022 and 2024 elections, with Republican-controlled states and counties overseen by 2020 election deniers refusing to certify victories by Democrats. Mere suspicion of fraud will be the standard. Heck, you can already see it happening in GOP primaries this summer when losers rolled out this now-standard accusation. It’s far beyond bitterly ironic that “the party of law and order” is routinely accusing law of turning America into a banana republic. These derisively and aptly nicknamed “Banana Republicans” are rapidly turning us into one. John Rolfe is a former senior editor for Sports Illustrated for Kids, a longtime columnist for the Poughkeepsie Journal/USA Today Network, and author of The Goose in the Bathroom: Stirring Tales of Family Life. His school bus drivin’ blog “Hellions, Mayhem and Brake Failure” is parked on his website Celestialchuckle.com (https://celestialchuckle.com) with the meter running.

By Jessie Seigel / Washington, D.C. A week ago, on Aug. 8, pursuant to a warrant legally issued by a federal judge in Florida, FBI agents entered former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago premises and retrieved 12 boxes of U.S. government documents that Trump had absconded with when he left office. Then, all hell broke loose. Trump characterized the perfectly legal search as his residence being “under siege, raided and occupied by a large group of FBI agents.” He called it a “weaponization of the Justice system,” and added, “such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World countries.” That’s all it took for the Republican Trumpist machine—which includes the party’s entire hierarchy, these days—to get to work aping Trump’s words and projecting his fascist intentions onto his opponents. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy accused Attorney General Merrick Garland of “weaponization” of the DOJ, tweeting the retaliatory threat: “Preserve your documents and clear your calendar.”—a portent of what McCarthy will do if he becomes majority leader after the midterm election. Republican Florida Senator Marco Rubio tweeted: “Using government power to persecute political opponents is something we have seen many times from 3rd world Marxist dictatorships. But never before in America.” Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, a likely rival to Trump for the GOP presidential candidacy in 2024, nevertheless adopted the party line, tweeting: “The raid of MAL is another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the Regime’s political opponents. Now the Regime is getting another 87K IRS agents to wield against its adversaries? Banana Republic.” Republican Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Lauren Boebert of Colorado advocated for defunding the FBI. Even the New York Young Republican Club got in on that act, calling for the “total disintegration” of the FBI. And Ari Fleischer, former President George W. Bush’s press secretary, chimed in, tweeting, “This better be a slam dunk criminal case, otherwise the Biden Administration and DOJ have crossed a line of no return...If they got the goods, announce it. Otherwise, this search on a former President’s home is a disgrace.” The condemnations by these public figures along with Fox News and others’ promotion of incendiary propaganda has roused the right-wing rabble to a frenzy. The Washington Post cited name-calling like Democratic “Gestapo” and “tyrannical FBI”; fear-mongering warnings like “no one is safe,” “You’re next,” and “They’re coming for YOU;” and such admonitions as “make sure these tyrants pay the price,” “destroy the FBI, “Summertime was made for killing fields,” “lock and load,” “Tomorrow is war,” and “Pick up arms, people.” For once, one cannot blame the media for not doing its job. The New Yorker explained that it is a federal crime for someone who has custody of government documents to “willfully and unlawfully” conceal, remove, mutilate, obliterate, falsify, or destroy them. MSNBC’s Ari Melber pointed out numerous officials before the Trump Administration who were prosecuted or pled guilty for illegally taking government documents that could compromise national security. Others in the media have pointed out repeatedly that DOJ had to have probable cause and obtain a judge’s approval of the warrant. And Joe Scarborough, the co-host of Morning Joe, a former Republican, has plainly decried Trump and his so-called movement as “fascism.” The Daily Beast’s David Rothkopf wrote “Republican howls of protest in the wake of the FBI’s search of Trump’s Florida residence were as loud as they were cynical, hypocritical, and irresponsible.” Some pundits argued that Attorney General Garland needed to speak out. Others pointed out that, in fairness to suspects, it is DOJ policy not to publicize its investigations. It can be argued that there is some merit to this policy. There may be solid strategic reasons for DOJ to take the path of a legal process moving inexorably forward in its quiet way no matter how Trump shouts, twists, or turns, trying to break free. But what about those public officials who are not part of DOJ? Someone is needed to mount the defense of DOJ and the FBI—a role suited to Democratic loudmouths, if any could ever be found. Instead, the Democrats’ response has been muted or utterly mum, leaving the field for forming public opinion to Trump and his fascists. For three days, the Democrats allowed Republican lies to reign the news cycle. When anyone heard Trump’s and his cronies’ cries of so-called persecution and Gestapo tactics, there was a void where a booming, bellowing response should have been. Is it any wonder, then, that in less than a week after the warrant was served, a gunman in body armor tried to breach the Cincinnati FBI office? He was killed in a cornfield after a chase ending in a standoff during which law enforcement tried and failed to get him to surrender and they exchanged gunfire. Finally, on August 11, Garland publicly stated that he personally approved the search warrant, and that DOJ had filed a motion in the Southern District of Florida to unseal that warrant so that the public could learn its basis. He also staunchly denounced the attacks on FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors, calling them “dedicated, patriotic public servants” who “protect the American people from violent crime, terrorism, and other threats to their safety, while safeguarding our civil rights.” On Friday, August 12, the warrant was unsealed. It was executed to investigate potential crimes associated with violations of the Espionage Act. Items removed from Mar-a-Lago included files marked top secret, some of which may be related to nuclear weapons. Garland’s statement was needed, well-stated, and judicious, considering DOJ’s legal and policy obligations. And the unsealed warrant supports DOJ’s actions. But having the facts on your side is not enough when faced with rabble-rousing tweet wars. The country still needs other, vehemently passionate voices to speak up loudly and prevent reason from being drowned out by Trump and his cohorts. Otherwise, Trump’s lies will grip the nation by the throat and squeeze the last breath out of our nation’s democracy. Political columnist Jessie Seigel had a long career as a government attorney in which she honed her analytic skills. She has also twice received an Artist’s Fellowship from the Washington, D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities for her fiction, and has been a finalist for a number of literary awards. In addition, Seigel is an associate editor at the Potomac Review, a reviewer for The Washington Independent Review of Books, and a dabbler in political cartoons at Daily Kos. Of this balance in her work between the analytic and the imaginative, Seigel jokes, “I guess my right and left brains are well-balanced.” More on and from Seigel can be found at The Adventurous Writer, https://www.jessieseigel.com.

By Laurence Lerman / New York City In the first half of the Seventies, you couldn’t miss Olivia Newton-John. Her voice was all over the radio, her face was plastered all over record albums and posters in music stores, and the entire adorable package was all over television’s most popular variety shows (Donny and Marie, anyone?), as well as a pair of Newton-John’s own TV specials. But it turned out that the hoopla was only her opening act, and that she would soar even higher after her star turn in 1978 in the smash musical film Grease. Olivia Newton-John died of cancer on Monday, August 8, at her ranch in Southern California. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1992 and in 2017 she announced that it had returned and had metastasized to her lower back. She was 73. In mid-Seventies, before the Grease juggernaut occurred, the hits were already coming for Newton-John. The British-born, Australian-raised singer’s high, breathy voice brought life (and considerable sales!) to such country-flavored pop hits as “Let Me Be There” in 1973; “I Honestly Love You” in 1974; “Have You Never Been Mellow,” “Please Mr. Please” and “Something Better to Do” in 1975; and “Let It Shine,” “Come On Over” and “Don’t Stop Believin’” in 1976. All of them became Top Ten singles in the U.S. (except for “Let Me Be There,” her first song to make the charts, which climbed to #6). For those accomplishments, Olivia won a slew of Grammy Awards and American Music Awards and Billboard Awards and Country Music Association Awards. And then, in 1978, she became really popular! That year, Olivia co-starred with John Travolta in Grease, adapted from the 1971 Broadway musical by the same name. Following the antics and adventures of a group of working-class teenagers at fictional Rydell High School in 1959, Grease was initially conceived and performed as a raunchy and loud rock’n’roll-scored show. Subsequent productions sanitized the material, beginning with the Randal Kleiser-directed film, which focused on a considerably more family-friendly greaser Danny Zuko (Travolta) and his romance with the adorable, virginal Sandy Olsson (Newton-John), written for the movie as an Australian transfer student to explain non-actor Olivia’s accent. The movie was a mammoth hit both critically and commercially, becoming the highest-grossing musical ever at the time, with a soundtrack album that ended 1978 as the second best-selling album of the year in the U.S. (behind the soundtrack of the 1977 Travolta-starring Saturday Night Fever). Olivia had a couple of Top Ten hits on the album, as well, which was hardly a big surprise. What was more startling was how Grease instantly catapulted Olivia to A-list movie stardom. She had been making music for nearly a decade, since her young teenage years in Australia, before she began to climb in the business in the early Seventies, first abroad and then in the U.S. But the movies happened overnight and though she had a charming and warm screen presence in her tailor-made Grease role, Olivia’s two major films that followed didn’t really deliver, though she brought her enthusiasm to both of them. Among these were the zany 1980 musical Xanadu, where Olivia portrays a Muse who convinces co-star Gene Kelly that he should open a roller disco (it’s a cult favorite now!); and the disastrous 1983 Two of a Kind, a rom-com fantasy that reteamed her with Travolta. The latter is best remembered for Gene Hackman portraying the voice of God. (It’s not a cult favorite!) Music remained the magic for Olivia through the Eighties, beginning with the sizzling, synthesizer-fueled “Physical,” a chart-topper that was immediately considered the sexiest and edgiest record ever made by the seemingly wholesome singer. Subsequent decades saw Olivia release more than a dozen albums, supported by singles, music videos and extensive touring. She popped up regularly in the tabloids—she was married twice and also had a handful of long-term relationships, so nothing surprise there—but generally rose above the blather that the tabs published. She was warmly embraced by her large, decades-long fan base, while the rest of the public didn’t appear to ever have a problem with her and generally seemed supportive. This was very much the case when Olivia announced in 1992 that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. She recovered over the next several years, having a partial mastectomy, chemotherapy and breast reconstruction. Soon thereafter, she became an active advocate for breast cancer research and other health issues, and a product spokesperson for the Liv-Kit, a breast self-examination product. The entertainer also created the Olivia Newton-John Foundation Fund, which is dedicated to researching plant-based treatments for cancer. Later, in 2008, she raised funds to help build the Olivia Newton-John Cancer and Wellness Centre in Melbourne, Australia. Olivia even took the positivity to her music, writing her own songs for the first time in her career, many of them promoting health, strength and humanitarian causes. They didn’t make the charts or enjoy strong sales, but Olivia remained outspoken about the message she was sending through her music, foundation and other charitable work. “Once you face your fear, nothing is ever as hard as you think,” she said. Laurence Lerman is a film journalist, former editor of Video Business--Variety's DVD trade publication--and husband to The Insider's own Gwen Cooper. Over the course of his career he has conducted one-on-one interviews with just about every major director working today, including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Clint Eastwood, Kathryn Bigelow, Ridley Scott, Walter Hill, Spike Lee, and Werner Herzog, among numerous others. Once James Cameron specifically requested an interview with Laurence by name, which his wife still likes to brag about. Most recently, he is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the online review site DiscDish.com.

An interview of Jeffrey D. Sachs by Nathan Robinson Current Affairs | August 2, 2022 Prof. Jeffrey Sachs says he is “pretty convinced [COVID-19] came out of US lab biotechnology” and warns that there is dangerous virus research taking place without public oversight. Prof. Jeffrey Sachs is the Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and the President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He has also served as the chair of the COVID-19 commission for leading medical journal the Lancet. Through his investigations as the head of the COVID-19 commission, Prof. Sachs has come to the conclusion that there is extremely dangerous biotechnology research being kept from public view, that the United States was supporting much of this research, and that it is very possible that SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, originated through dangerous virus research gone awry. Prof. Sachs recently co-authored a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences calling for an independent inquiry into the virus’s origins. He believes that there is clear proof that the National Institutes of Health and many members of the scientific community have been impeding a serious investigation of the origins of COVID-19 and deflecting attention away from the hypothesis that risky U.S.-supported research may have led to millions of deaths. If that hypothesis is true, the implications would be earth-shaking, because it might mean that esteemed members of the scientific community bore responsibility for a global calamity. In this interview, Prof. Sachs explains how he, as the head of the COVID-19 commission for a leading medical journal, came to the conclusion that powerful actors were preventing a real investigation from taking place. He also explains why it is so important to get to the bottom of the origins of COVID: because, he says, there is extremely dangerous research taking place with little accountability, and the public has a right to know since we are the ones whose lives are being put at risk without our consent. NATHAN ROBINSON: I want to quote something that you said recently: “I chaired the commission for the Lancet for two years on COVID. I’m pretty convinced it came out of U.S. lab biotechnology, not out of nature, just to mention. After two years of intensive work on this. So it’s a blunder in my view of biotech, not an accident of a natural spillover. We don’t know for sure, I should be absolutely clear. But there’s enough evidence that it should be looked into. And it’s not being investigated, not in the United States, not anywhere. And I think for real reasons that they don’t want to look underneath the rug, the statement.” The statement that you made there is a controversial one. Just to read a couple of quotes from the New York Times in the last year: “In a review of recent studies and comparisons to other outbreaks, a group of virologists contends that there is more evidence to support a natural spillover from animals to humans.” “Scientists released a pair of extensive studies over the weekend that point to a large food and live animal market in Wuhan, China, as the origin of the coronavirus pandemic.” So I want to start by asking you just to tell us a little bit about the investigation that you were part of and what led you to think that what I just quoted is a misleading statement of the state of the evidence. JEFFREY SACHS: Well, the funny thing is those scientists who are saying that said the same thing on February 4, 2020, before they had done any research at all. And they published the same statement in March 2020, before they had any facts at all. So they’re creating a narrative. And they’re denying the alternative hypothesis without looking closely at it. That’s the basic point. Now, what is the alternative hypothesis? The alternative hypothesis is quite straightforward. And that is that there was a lot of research underway in the United States and China on taking SARS-like viruses, manipulating them in the laboratory, and creating potentially far more dangerous viruses. And the particular virus that causes COVID-19, called SARS-Cov-2, is notable because it has a piece of its genetic makeup that makes the virus more dangerous. And that piece of the genome is called the “furin cleavage site.” Now, what’s interesting, and concerning if I may say so, is that the research that was underway very actively and being promoted, was to insert furin cleavage sites into SARS-like viruses to see what would happen. Oops! Well, that is what may have happened. And what has been true from the start is that that very real possibility, which a lot of scientists know, has not been looked at closely, even though it’s absolutely clear that it could have happened that way. They’re not looking. They just keep telling us, “Look at the market, look at the market, look at the market!” But they don’t address this alternative. They don’t even look at the data. They don’t even ask questions. And the truth is from the beginning, they haven’t asked the real questions. But not quite the beginning. Because at the beginning, which we could date from the first phone call of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with a group of virologists on February 1, 2020, the virologists said “Oh my god, that is strange, that could well be a laboratory creation. What is that furin cleavage site doing in there?” Because scientists knew that was part of an active ongoing research program. And yet, by February 3, the same group is saying “No, no, it’s natural, it’s natural.” By February 4, they start to draft the papers that are telling the public, “Don’t worry, it’s natural.” By March, they write a paper—totally spurious, in my view—called the proximal origins paper that is the most cited bio paper in 2020. It said: it is absolutely natural. [Note: the paper’s conclusion is “we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”] But they didn’t have any of the data that you read about in the New York Times. They didn’t have any of this. They just said the labs weren’t working on this alternative. But you know what, they don’t know what the labs were working on, because they never asked, and NIH hasn’t told us. ROBINSON: Let me ask you if we can distinguish between what we know for certain and what is speculative because we just haven’t got the data. So we doknow that there was—correct me if I’m wrong—research proposed that would have dealt with this category of viruses and would have modified them in ways that would have made them potentially more lethal. Do we know whether that kind of research was in fact actually ongoing somewhere? SACHS: We have enormous reason to believe that it was. And clearly, we haven’t even asked that question. But we have a lot of reason to believe that it was, because the scientists that were doing that research loved that research. And they explained to us publicly why it’s so important. And they wrote editorials about why this research must continue. And they made grant proposals saying that it should continue. And for those of us in the business of writing grant proposals, the fact that a particular grant proposal that’s deeply troubling was turned down doesn’t mean that it wasn’t carried out afterwards. But where is NIH saying, “Yeah, that’s an interesting question. Why don’t we get the evidence?” It doesn’t even ask that question. And the scientists like those that talk about the Huanan market, they don’t even discuss that research that was underway. That is just misdirection, to my mind. It’s like sleight of hand art. Don’t look over there. Look over here. But we know that there was a tremendous amount of this research underway. We have interviews by the lead scientists. We have these research proposals. I know the intention of doing this research from discussions. I’ve read so many studies of the importance of this research claimed by the scientists. And yet I see NIH with its head in the ground. “Oh, no, nothing here to look at.” And then I see the scientists. “Oh, nothing here to look at. We know it’s the market. Did we find an animal? No. Do we have an explanation of where that furin cleavage site came in? No. We don’t have an explanation of the timing, which doesn’t quite look right. Oh, but don’t look over there, because there’s nothing there,” they keep telling us. Well, that’s a little silly. So my point is, there is a huge amount of reason to believe that that research was underway. Because there are published papers on this. There are interviews on this. There are research proposals. But NIH isn’t talking. It’s not asking. And these scientists have never asked either. From the very first day, they have kept hidden from view the alternative. And when they discuss the alternative, they don’t discuss the research program. They discuss complete straw men about the lab, not the actual kind of research that was underway, which was to stick furin cleavage sites into SARS-like viruses in a way that could have created SARS-Cov-2. What I’m calling for is not the conclusion. I’m calling for the investigation. Finally, after two and a half years of this, it’s time to fess up that it might have come out of a lab and here’s the data that we need to know to find out whether it did. ROBINSON: One of the things that struck me that I didn’t know when I started writing about this and actually doing some some research is realizing that in the years leading up to the pandemic, there was a huge controversy about whether it was wise to modify viruses in the course of research in ways that could make a virus more infectious or more lethal. And some people were arguing that this kind of research was insane. And some people were warning that in the case of a lab accident—an accident, mind you, not as an intentional “bioweapon”—a simple human error could cause a real catastrophe. SACHS: That is exactly right. There were several kinds of experiments of manipulation of the genes of dangerous viruses. And this raised a lot of alarm. And there was actually a moratorium in 2014. But the champions of this kind of research pushed on, they applied for waivers, which they got, and finally the moratorium came off in 2017. And they said how important it is to do this dangerous kind of research, because they claimed, “Well, there are lots of viruses out there. And we don’t know when they’re going to become highly pathogenic, and we need to develop drugs and vaccines against a wide spectrum of them. So we have to test all these viruses that we can find, to see whether they have high spillover potential.” But they weren’t actually aiming to just test viruses that they were collecting in nature. They were aiming to modify those viruses. Because the scientists knew that a SARS-like virus without a furin cleavage site wouldn’t be that dangerous. But they wanted to test their drugs and vaccines and theories against dangerous viruses. Their proposal was to take hundreds, by the way—or least they talked about in one proposal more than 180 previously unreported strains—and test them for their so-called “spillover potential.” How effective would they be? And to look: do they have a furin cleavage site, or technically what’s called a proteolytic cleavage site? And if not, put them in. For heaven’s sake. My God! Are you kidding? Okay, but we didn’t even ask the question from the first day: did you guys do that? Tell us what you did. Could you give us your lab notebooks? We’re kind of curious. Instead, these people who are writing these New York Times articles right now and publishing these pieces about the market, from the first day—without asking about the experiments—they said, “Nope, it’s natural.” That’s why I don’t trust them. Because they’ve never looked at the alternative hypothesis. And their hypothesis has so many gaps, so many holes in it. But they don’t even try to look at the alternative hypothesis. ROBINSON: I think it’s very important to make clear that the “alternative hypothesis” is mainly a hypothesis about an accident, and scientific hubris. It’s important to distinguish the kooky theories from the incredibly plausible theories. Because what you’re talking about is people who did not appreciate the dangers of what they were doing. SACHS: In fact, it’s very interesting. The alternative that is the right one to look at is part of a very extensive research program that was underway from 2015 onward, funded by the NIH, by Tony Fauci, in particular NIAID [National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases], and it was to examine the spillover potential of SARS-like viruses. The champions of this research explained in detail their proposals. But after the event, we’d never asked them, “So what were you actually doing? What experiments did you do? What do you know?” We somehow never asked. It was better just to sweep it under the rug, which is what Fauci and the NIH have done up until this point. Maybe they could tell us, “Oh, full exoneration,” but they haven’t told us that at all. They haven’t shown us anything. So there’s nothing “kooky” about it, because it’s precisely what the scientists were doing. And then you can listen to the scientists on tape describing why they think the research program is so important, because they say these are dangerous viruses, and therefore we have to prepare broad spectrum vaccines and drugs. They explain it’s not good enough to test one or two viruses. We have to test all of them. And then they came to realize, as I said earlier, that just having a SARS-like virus, if it doesn’t have this piece of the gene, it’s almost surely not going to be that effective. So they got around to the idea. “Well, let’s put these in,” if you can imagine that. To my mind, it’s mind-boggling. But they were proud of this, because it’s actually genius at a technological level. Can you imagine: you can take a sequence of letters, which defines the genome, you can recreate the virus just from the letters. You don’t even have to have the biological virus in hand, you just need the sequence. Then you can say “I’m going to add these four letters RRAR, the furin cleavage site, or maybe it’s eight, RRARSVAS, this is a sequence of eight amino acids—I’m going to stick it in there right at the S1 S2 junction of the spike protein, because I know from my research program that will make it more pathogenic, that is more disease-causing. And then I can see whether my drug candidates like remdesivir, or some other candidate works against it. That is their idea. There’s nothing kooky about our claim: Hey, what were you doing? Because they told us that they wanted to do these projects. And they told us that they were wanting to do these projects in the months leading up to this outbreak. And then what is absolutely strange is that even though scientists knew right from the start, that is very weird to have that RRAR furin cleavage site in there—never saw that before in a SARS-like virus, and that that could well have come from a lab—hush, hush. Don’t talk about it. Don’t even discuss it. Just say right from the beginning: This is natural. Of course, it’s natural. Everything else is kooky. So you saw a narrative being created. And the scientists are not acting like scientists. Because when you’re acting like a scientist, you’re pursuing alternative hypotheses. And the scientists just wrote recently an op-ed saying the only evidence that this came out of a lab that’s been put forward is that it came in a city, Wuhan, where an institute was located. Well, that’s a lie. That is not the only coincidence that leads to this theory. What leads to this alternative hypothesis is the detailed research program the NIH funded that was underway in the years leading up to the outbreak. So I see the scientists absolutely trying to create a narrative and take our eyes off of another issue. Now, again, let me emphasize, we don’t have definitive evidence of either hypothesis. But what we do have is definitive evidence that officialdom has tried to keep our eyes away from the lab creation hypothesis. ROBINSON: You mentioned the lab in Wuhan. It’s not just that there was a lab in Wuhan doing research on viruses. But there were ties between the lab and those pursuing this program. What do we know about the research that was actually occurring there? SACHS: We know that at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the scientists there had been trained by American scientists to use advanced bioengineering methodologies. And in particular, we have scientists in North Carolina, Texas, and so forth who do this kind of research, believe in it, argue for it, and say that they don’t want any regulations on it and so on. And they were in close contact with Wuhan Institute of Virology, and they were part of a joint research group that was stitched together by something called EcoHealth Alliance. And EcoHealth Alliance was the kind of marriage maker between the American scientists and the Chinese scientists. That was the vehicle for funding from the U.S. government, especially from the National Institutes of Health, and especially from Tony Fauci’s unit, the NIAID. There were years of grants, there were grant proposals. We don’t know exactly what was done. But we have enough reason to know that we should be asking exactly what was done. And we know definitively that from the beginning, NIH has been running from telling us what has been done. They’re not telling us the truth, that they had reason to fear from the start that this came out of a lab. And that to this day, they have reason to suspect it, but they’re not talking. ROBINSON: A shocking thing to me was that the head of the EcoHealth Alliance was on the World Health Organization team that actually investigated the origins of COVID and concluded that it wasn’t the lab. SACHS: Well, more than that: I appointed him—this was Peter Daszak—I appointed him to chair the task force of the pandemic commission that I was running for the Lancet. And he headed a task force on the origins. I thought, naively at the beginning, “Well, here’s a guy who is so connected, he would know.” And then I realized he was not telling me the truth. And it took me some months, but the more I saw it, the more I resented it. And so I told him, “Look, you have to leave.” And then the other scientists in that task force attacked me for being anti-scientific. And I asked them: “What are your connections with all of this?” They didn’t tell me. Then when the Freedom of Information Act released some of these documents that NIH had been hiding from the public, I saw that people that were attacking me were also part of this thing. So I disbanded that whole task force. So my own experience was to witness close up how they’re not talking. And they’re trying to keep our eyes on something else. And away from even asking the questions that we’re talking about. We don’t have the answers. But we have good reasons to ask. And we have good reasons to know that NIH is not doing its job properly right now. ROBINSON: So you’re saying that Daszak and others did not disclose to you pretty serious conflicts of interest? Since, on the hypothesis that it had something to do with this kind of research, that would have implicated Daszak himself in the origins of the crisis? SACHS: Well, he could have explained to me right from the beginning that there was a big research program and that they were manipulating the viruses, and here’s how. He could have given me the research proposals. And when I asked him for one of the research proposals, he said, “No, my lawyer says I can’t give it to you.” I said, “What? You’re heading a commission. We’re a transparent commission. You’re telling me your lawyer says you can’t give me your project proposal.” I said, “Well, then you can’t be on this commission. This is not even a close call.” But there were so many other things. He was just filled with misdirection. I don’t know whether he understands or not, maybe he doesn’t understand. But the things he said just were absolutely not right. ROBINSON: When people hear you say, “They’re sweeping it under the rug, they don’t want to look,” one question that may come to their minds is “Well, why? Why would people not be interested in getting to the truth?” But the alternate hypothesis from the natural spillover that you’re talking about could have serious repercussions. It would implicate a lot of people in potentially millions of deaths. So there’s a lot at stake here for the scientific community. Which explains why there would be an interest in directing people away from this possibility. SACHS: There are at least two reasons why they might be doing what they’re doing. One is, as you say, the implications are huge. Imagine if this came out of a lab. And we have, by some estimates, about 18 million dead worldwide from this. That’s not the official count. But that’s the estimated excess mortality from COVID. Well, the implications of that—the ethical, the moral, the geopolitical—everything is enormous. But there’s a second matter that is really important, too. One thing that is rather clear to me is that there is so much dangerous research underway right now under the umbrella of biodefense or other things that we don’t know about, that is not being properly controlled. This is for sure. And that’s happening around the world. And governments say “don’t poke your nose into that.” That’s our business, not your business. But it’s actually our business. It’s our business to understand what is going on with this. This is not to be kept secret. We don’t trust you. Let me put it this way: I don’t trust them right now. I want to know. Because even what we know of the dangerous research is enough to raise a lot of questions of responsibility for the future. And to pose the question: “Hey, what other viruses are you guys working on? What should we know?” Because no matter what the truth is on SARS-Cov-2, what is pretty clear is we’ve got so much technological capacity to engineer dangerous pathogens right now. And a lot of that is being done. And it’s classified. It’s secret, and we don’t know what it is. And I don’t like that feeling at all. I don’t recommend it for us and for the world. ROBINSON: Well, you’ve rather answered the question of why it’s important to get to the bottom of this. Because one of the excuses you hear is, “Well, who really cares? Does it matter? It was an animal, it was a lab, whatever it is, it’s here.” But what you’re saying is, “No, we actually need to know where this started.” Because this isn’t going to be the only one, whatever the origins are. And we don’t want people to die from future viruses. This is critically important. If we’re going to save millions of lives, we have to find out the answer. SACHS: I can tell you one thing that I’ve learned from talking to a lot of scientists in the last couple of years: the technological capacity to do dangerous things using this biotechnology is extraordinary right now. So I want to know what’s being done. I want to know what other governments are doing, too, not just ours. I want some global control over this stuff. We’ve kind of understood the nuclear risk—even that, of course, is in a lot of ways hidden from view. But this is a clear and present risk. And there’s reason to believe we’re actually in the midst of it, not just hypothetically. So come on: it’s time to open the books everywhere. It’s time to find out. Maybe it was the marketplace. Maybe it wasn’t a lab. But we need to get real answers, now. Not the kind of misdirection that’s been going in since February 2020. Enough nonsense! Enough New York Times stories saying, “Oh, it’s this, it’s that,” without looking closely at the very plausible laboratory hypothesis. ROBINSON: It seems from what you’re saying that as the head of the Lancet’s COVID-19 commission, you didn’t feel you were able to get satisfactory answers or see the data you wanted. What kind of investigation do we need and who ought to do it? SACHS: The most interesting things that I got as chair of the Lancet commission came from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits and whistleblower leaks from inside the U.S. government. Isn’t that terrible? NIH was actually asked at one point: give us your research program on SARS-like viruses. And you know what they did? They released the cover page and redacted 290 pages. They gave us a cover page and 290 blank pages! That’s NIH, for heaven’s sake. That’s not some corporation. That is the U.S. government charged with keeping us healthy. What I found is that we have a lot of data which we’re not finding right now. And I don’t want to have to rely on FOIA and leaks, though those can be incredibly informative. I want clear, independent scientific investigation and transparency. One way to do this would be a bipartisan congressional oversight investigation that had subpoena power. Give us your lab records, your notebooks, your data files of virus strains, and so forth. There are many questions that we need independent scientists to define, to tell us exactly the kinds of information. But we know right now we’re operating in an environment in which the government is working to hide the data that we need to make a real assessment. https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/08/why-the-chair-of-the-lancets-covid-19-commission-thinks-the-us-government-is-preventing-a-real-investigation-into-the-pandemic Jeffrey D. Sachs, University Professor at Columbia University, is Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He has served as adviser to three UN Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary-General António Guterres. His books include The End of Poverty, Common Wealth, The Age of Sustainable Development, Building the New American Economy, A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism, and, most recently, The Ages of Globalization.

By Andy Borowitz August 5, 2022 WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—As it reportedly considers a criminal prosecution of the former President, the Department of Justice has “strongly urged” Donald J. Trump to retain Alex Jones’s legal team. “We at the Justice Department can think of no one better to represent you than Alex Jones’s lawyers,” Attorney General Merrick Garland wrote recently, in a letter to Trump. “They are, quite simply, the Dream Team.” Garland added, “After watching these lawyers in action, my associates at the D.O.J. and I looked at each other and said, ‘These guys have to represent Trump.’ ” The Attorney General acknowledged that Trump might be considering hiring his longtime attorney, Rudy Giuliani, but noted, “As amazing as Rudy would be, we think that Alex Jones’s lawyers would be even more amazing.” In a final inducement to Trump, Garland added, “We’ll pay them.”

Fred Plotkin, a pleasure activist and passionate Italy and culinary expert, speaks each Friday with leading people in the arts FRED PLOTKIN is one of America’s foremost experts on opera and has distinguished himself in many fields as a writer, speaker, consultant and as a compelling teacher. He is an expert on everything Italian, the person other so-called Italy experts turn to for definitive information.  Fred discovered the concept of "The Renaissance Man" as a small child and has devoted himself to pursuing that ideal as the central role of his life. In a “Public Lives” profile in The New York Times on August 30, 2002, Plotkin was described as "one of those New York word-of-mouth legends, known by the cognoscenti for his renaissance mastery of two seemingly separate disciplines: music and the food of Italy." In the same publication, on May 11, 2006, it was written that "Fred is a New Yorker, but has the soul of an Italian."

The Insider: Hi Charles! Thanks for doing an interview with The Insider. Charles: You’re welcome. The Insider: On Thursday, the Biden Administration declared monkeypox a national health emergency. I would imagine that there is a lot of concern now in the gay community here about monkeypox, now that New York City is the epicenter of the crisis. Charles: I am! People are scared The Insider: Have you been reading a lot about it? Charles: Yes and listening also. The Insider: When did you first learn about it? Charles: I first started seeing info showing up on my newsfeed in mid-May. The Insider: And were your gay friends talking about it soon after that? What were people saying? Charles: I started having discussions with them, but they told me stop being an alarmist. I started sending articles and a podcast I heard about a gay man traveling to Berlin and an outbreak there. That was the first bit of news I read talked about random outbreaks around the world. The Insider: So at the beginning, do you think people in Manhattan were skeptical about it? Charles: The same as Covid--watching from afar The Insider: Did that begin to change, though? When? Charles: I think when the vaccine started coming out, people started thinking seriously The Insider: When you began to become concerned, did you change your lifestyle in any way? Charles: I’ve not been having random sex because of Covid, so I was not concerned that I was exposed. But I was concerned about gathering where there are shirtless people or being close because of airborne particles. Like a dance party. From what I’ve read or been told, you need to be in very close contact. The Insider: Did this remind you of how it used to be during the height of AIDS? Charles: Yes, it did bring back feelings from the AIDS crisis The Insider: Of people being worried about sex? Charles: Yes, sexual contact is definitely putting yourself at risk The Insider: Had the pandemic already changed sexual habits in the gay community, do you think? Charles: For some yes, others no. I was more cautious in the Covid situation definitely. Some of my friends still continue to see other people. Or were not concerned The Insider: Do you personally know anyone who has had monkeypox? Charles: I don’t know anyone at the moment The Insider: According to the New England Journal of Medicine, 95% of the people in the U.S. with monkeypox are sexually active gay or bisexual men. New York City is the main site. What specific steps have you personally taken to make sure that you don’t get it? Charles: I’m not being sexually active with random people. The Insider: Is that a change for you? Charles: I have been more cautious around sex in the last five years The Insider: Partly because of the pandemic? Charles: Even before the pandemic. The Insider: Because of something in particular? Charles: I don’t find it as intriguing as I used to. Also, with PrEP on the market, people are having more unsafe sex and there is a rise of other STD’s The Insider: I’m not sure what “PrEP” is. Charles: It protects you from HIV The Insider: What would be the name of one of those commonly prescribed drugs? Charles: Truvada The Insider: Do you have a doctor whom you talk openly with? What has he or she told you about monkeypox? Charles: The only doctor I’ve spoken to was an infectious disease specialist who I met. I had a conversation with her. She told me if you have very close contact with someone face-to-face or sexual intimacy if someone’s infected with the monkeypox virus, then you have a high risk of contracting it. She said casual touch is not going to infect you The Insider: Have you tried to get a vaccine for it? Charles: Yes. I did the other day, but to no avail. I couldn’t get an appointment. Everyone kept saying they were taken when I pressed on appointments. I saw this morning that they’re going to try a new technique where they’re going to take one vaccine and be able to use it five times on five different people The Insider: It said in an article that I just read that gay men were waiting in line into the middle of the night in San Francisco trying to get them. How about your friends? Have any of them changed their sexual activities because of this? Charles: Not that I know of. I hear straight people talking about how they want to get vaccinated because they’re becoming concerned that this is going to become a huge pandemic. Some of my gay friends have gotten the vaccine The Insider: What did they tell you about that? Was it just like getting a Covid vaccine? Charles: It sounded similar. No one got a bad reaction The Insider: Do you think that the government is being too slow to act about this, like it was in the AIDS crisis? Charles: It sounds like they’re really not prepared from, what I’m listening to The Insider: You would think that they would have learned their lesson from Covid! Charles: It does not seem like they have The Insider: Do you think that if monkeypox were spreading in the straight community that it would be getting quicker action from the government? Charles: I don’t think so The Insider: So the government is just slow about everything! Charles: I think monkeypox is becoming more in the limelight and people are talking about it I think they’re going to be forced to get themselves in gear. I think they’re not prepared, which you would think they would be after the Covid epidemic. When a virus emerges that is out of our control, extreme measure should have been taken to control an outbreak. I was thumbing through my mail up yesterday and a guy in the elevator looked at me and said that’s a lot of trees I wanted to say to him I don’t think we have to be worried about trees I think we need to be worried about viruses. We might be compost for the trees of the virus is take over The Insider: It seems particularly unfortunate that the gay community is going through this again, especially since gay rights appear to be under fire from the right-wing these days. I have wondered whether gay marriage will be next, after abortion being banned. Charles: I don’t think gay marriage is going to be under fire. Too many people in America have gay friends, gay brothers, gay sisters. I don’t think people want to see the gay community restricted or sent back to 50 years ago. Maybe I just have a bit of faith in humanity. The Insider: You do! I’m not sure I do anymore. They’re sending women back 50 years. Charles: I was listening to something about the midterm elections and how if the Republicans attack gay marriage, it’s not going to be good for the whole voting bloc. The Insider: Yes, I’m hoping that will be true, and true of abortion too. I don’t think the country is as conservative as the Supreme Court is. Charles: I agree. But I am afraid of the backlash the monkeypox virus could cause against the gay community The Insider: That’s interesting. There was a backlash about AIDS too, as I remember. Charles: Yes. Did you see that polio bacteria was found upstate? And there are cases of a new hepatitis that have passed from animals to humans The Insider: No, I didn’t see that. The world is falling apart, right? Charles: Seems like it The Insider: Thanks so much for your time, Charles! Much appreciated. Charles: Thank you! Read a Follow-Up Interview with Charles here

One film journalist’s stream-of-consciousness cinematic journey through the pandemic, Part 95 By Laurence Lerman / New York City I treated myself to my latest “fill in the blanks” film series a couple of weeks back. That is, I checked in with a favorite filmmaker and screened some of his films that I’ve never seen. Gaps in a cinephile’s education frequently emerge with the films of the great foreign language filmmakers, those lions of the international cinema whose works haven’t always been easily accessible. Yes, a lot of them were issued on DVD and even Blu-ray over the past 25 years, but there have been plenty of others during that time that weren’t released in restored or at least acceptable editions. Fortunately, it’s gotten a lot easier to track down the goodies in the streaming era. So on Wednesday evening, July 27, I began bridging the gaps on the great Federico Fellini. For me, the Italian master Fellini, one of the essential filmmakers in the history of world cinema, is perfect for this kind of exercise. By my count, he has directed and co-written 20 feature films, as well as four shorts that appear in various anthology projects. I have seen the bulk of the films that are rightfully considered his masterworks—it’s a list that includes La Strada (1954), Nights of Cabiria (1957), La Dolce Vita (1960), 8 ½ (1963), Juliet of the Spirits (1965), and Amarcord (1973)—but there are nearly as many others that I’ve never seen. Fittingly, they span the nearly 40 years that Fellini sat in the director’s chair. Like a handful of the 20th century’s most prolific and eminent artists, Fellini sustained his distinct identity while also dramatically breaking new ground over the course of his long artistic life. (For other legends whose evolution fueled their art and vice-versa, see Pablo Picasso and Miles Davis.) So in curating my Fellini furlough, I was able to choose five of his films from five different decades. I felt it was a sound methodology for me to experience the wondrous breadth and growth of Il Maestro’s work. I began with 1955’s I Vitelloni, Fellini’s third feature. Like most of Fellini’s early work in the 1950s, it embodies the tenets of the neorealist film movement of post-WWII Italy. Featuring contemporary stories about the working class and their daily lives (in an economical, moral and spiritual sense) and frequently shot on location with staid camerawork and nonprofessional actors, these were the kinds of films that Fellini had first worked on as an apprentice for neorealist giant Roberto Rossellini (Rome, Open City, Paisan) in the 1940s. I Vitelloni (Italian slang for “the layabouts”) flashes its neorealist cred in the early depictions of its characters, along with its provincial setting on the Adriatic Coast. But its bittersweet story of five twentysomething young men drifting between their immature ways and the call of adulthood as they lazily plan to escape their small town lives offers something more. The narratives about each of the men—an aspiring playwright, a newly married womanizer, and an amateur singer, among them—exude more flair and emotional substance than was customary of films from this period. Fellini’s active camera captures the fast-talking crew smartly, almost telling them (and the audience) that if that if they don’t slow down and begin taking things seriously, nothing better will come their way. The playful score by Fellini’s regular composer Nino Rota, in the pair’s first collaboration, enlivens the drama and its occasional laughs. Sequences set during a town festival and on the beach are also forerunners to major scenes in later Fellini films. I Vitelloni notably laid the groundwork for a number of American twentysomething male-buddy films, including George Lucas’s American Graffiti, Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets and, most of all, Barry Levinson’s Diner. Next up was 1968’s Spirits of the Dead, an Italian/French horror omnibus comprised of three Edgar Allen Poe stories adapted by Fellini along with France’s Roger Vadim and Louis Malle. Fellini’s segment, “Toby Dammit,” the filmmaker’s second color film following Juliet of the Spirits, was inspired by Poe’s 1841 tale “Never Bet the Devil Your Head.” It concerns a vice-ridden gambling man who engages in a series of wagers with the Devil himself. The gambling escalates in risk, ultimately ending badly for Toby, who would have done well to avoid the story’s titular bet. Fellini only uses the ending of Poe’s story in his adaptation, crafting a contemporary story around a dazed and drunken British film star (Terence Stamp) who arrives in Rome to make a western-styled tale of redemption. He is soon zipping around in a Ferrari and encountering the kind of baroque and bizarre characters and situations that Fellini had begun embracing earlier in the decade in La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2—the films that began to define his later brand of cinema as “Felliniesque.” It remains the style by which Fellini is most identified. Where else to see nuns in sunglasses hauling musical instruments through an airport and the Devil in the form of a blonde-tressed young girl? Clocking in at 45 minutes, “Toby Dammit” isn’t essential Fellini, but it’s frisky, luridly fun and the most memorable installment of the anthology. I jumped ahead a decade to 1978’s relatively tame Orchestra Rehearsal, a satire that follows an Italian orchestra as its members discuss what drew them to their instruments before going out on strike against their conductor. This following a memorably excessive and indulgent cycle by the filmmaker that included Fellini Satyricon (1969), The Clowns (1970), Roma (1972) and Fellini’s Casanova (1976). Subtitled The Decline of the West in C# Major and told from the point of view of a television documentary crew covering a rehearsal in a medieval auditorium, this one is as political a Fellini film as I’ve ever seen. At least, it feels political or metaphorically so, particularly when the rehearsal descends into anarchy and destruction. But as I’m not all that up on Italian politics of that time (or today, for that matter), it didn’t wholly work for me. Orchestra Rehearsal could be considered another minor entry, yes, but as it concludes with everyone working their problems out and coming together in the name of music, of artistry, it did leave me smiling at the end. With its clear reference to Hollywood’s favorite dancing couple and star turns by longtime Fellini collaborators Marcello Mastroianni and Giulietta Masina (Mrs. Fellini!), I arrived at 1986’s Ginger & Fred with curiosity and anticipation. The two veteran performers are perfect as Pippo and Amelia, Italian impersonators of Astaire and Rogers who are brought out of 30 years of retirement to reprise their ballroom dancing act on the gala Christmas special of a TV variety show. Since this is a Fellini film sending up Italian television, other guests include a squad of merengue-dancing midgets, a defrocked priest and his soon-to-be-bride, a cow with 18 teats, a charming Mafia kingpin, and the inventor of vitamin-enriched edible underwear. There’s a lot of glittery spectacle to take in here, reminiscent of Roma’s infamous Vatican fashion show sequence—the costumes, sets, performances and production pieces are all fantastically over-the-top—but Ginger & Fred is a hit-or-miss affair, sort of like the kind of European variety shows it’s satirizing. With Masina as a proud but sensible widow who agrees to the show to please her grandchildren and Mastroianni as her former partner, a boozing, weary womanizer, the two actors and their warm, knowing, been-there-done-that smiles are the highlight here. And their climactic “Cheek to Cheek” dance number is worth the wait. Fellini was nearing 70 when he made his final film—and the last pic for my series—1990’s evocatively titled The Voice of the Moon. The film concerns a poet (Roberto Benigni) recently released from a mental institution who finds himself smitten by a lovely young woman (Nadia Ottaviani). His obsession fuels his journey across several small towns in Northern Italy, where he encounters other off-center characters who are weaving their way through their own stories. An uneven, episodic work that contains some sections that are absolutely stunning, the film contains major sequences set at a beauty pageant, a dance club, a sprawling warehouse and, most significantly, a cemetery with a ladder that leads to the stars. Clearly, it’s an allegorical dream film that points towards death. At one point, our poet asks, “Where does the fire go when it goes out? It’s just like music. Nobody knows where it goes when it ends.” Voice didn’t receive a regular theatrical rollout in the U.S.—it was never clear as to why—but it ultimately made its stateside debut in 1993 and was subsequently included in a handful of U.S. retrospectives before its Blu-ray and DVD premiere in 2017. Made three years before his death at 73 in 1993, The Voice of the Moon is a very satisfying final chapter in Fellini’s cinematic oeuvre, with reflective, lower-key samplings of his inimitable views of life, death, love and sex on full display. Well-liked in Europe but virtually ignored in the U.S., it definitely makes for engaging viewing for fans of Il Maestro who’ve already taken a substantial dip into his remarkable four-decade filmography. It's also for people like me, who have seen most of Fellini’s previous works and have every intention of hopefully checking them at least one more time. Laurence Lerman is a film journalist, former editor of Video Business--Variety's DVD trade publication--and husband to The Insider's own Gwen Cooper. Over the course of his career he has conducted one-on-one interviews with just about every major director working today, including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Clint Eastwood, Kathryn Bigelow, Ridley Scott, Walter Hill, Spike Lee, and Werner Herzog, among numerous others. Once James Cameron specifically requested an interview with Laurence by name, which his wife still likes to brag about. Most recently, he is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the online review site DiscDish.com.

By Jessie Seigel / Washington, D.C. According to Newton’s third law of motion, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. And our society right now is a living example of that. A person could get whiplash from it. On one hand, people have been fighting for social tolerance and acceptance of differences for decades. That work has resulted in the determinations that racial intermarriage, a woman’s right over her own body, decriminalization of homosexuality and lesbianism along with the right to legal recognition of same sex marriage are constitutional rights . But along with those progressive changes has come the right-wing reaction: the murder of doctors who perform abortions, attacks on and even murder of LGBTQ+ people, along with a rise in a variety of hate crimes based in xenophobia, an ever-present racism, and the calumny of Jews. Powerful reactionaries are now on the march, bolstered by the Supreme Court’s evisceration in June of the constitutional right to abortion as held in Roe v. Wade and Justice Thomas’ concurring opinion in which he advocated the court use future cases to do the same to Griswold v. Connecticut (the right to obtain contraception), Lawrence v. Texas (the right to same-sex intimacy), and Obergefell v. Hodges (the right to same sex marriage). Although Justice Alito’s majority opinion in the Dobbs case, which overturned Roe, voiced a pretense that the opinion did not augur attacks on other constitutional rights like same-sex marriage, he revealed his true leanings in a November 2020 speech to the Federalist Society. In it, he complained that one can no longer say that marriage is a “union between one man and one woman”–that to do so is now considered “bigotry.” Well, Mr. Alito, that is bigotry. It betrays a political slant unworthy of a Supreme Court justice. That Alito feels free to so openly express his own bias gives full license to right-wing zealots like Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (as if she needed any) to go even further, calling educators “trans terrorists” and claiming heterosexual people will disappear. But the right-wing putsch goes far beyond Alito, Thomas, and fringe Marjorie Taylor Greene types. According to the Human Rights Campaign, state legislators have introduced more the 340 anti-LGBTQ+ bills this year, the Equality Federation has estimated that at least 35 of those have passed thus far. Furthermore, Alabama, Arkansas, and Tennessee have passed laws restricting the provision of transgender health care. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ administration has also gotten in on the act, making moves to restrict transgender care for minors and for trans people of any age who are on Medicaid. Naturally, gay people feel threatened, with concerns ranging from possible loss of their marital status and the medical, parental, and estate rights which go with that, to fears of gay parents that their children could be taken from them. And if that were not enough, there is fear that monkeypox, which currently is found mostly among gay men, will be–as AIDS was in the 1980s–-tagged as a “gay” disease, resulting in scapegoating and renewed attacks on the homosexual community. But pro-gay organizations and their allies are determined to fight back. Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of GLAAD, an LGBTQ+ advocacy organization, told the Washington Post, “Thomas’ [opinion] is a blaring red alert for the LGBTQ community and for all Americans. We will never go back to the dark days of being shut out of hospital rooms, left off of death certificates, refused spousal benefits, or any of the other humiliations that took place in the years before Obergefell.” New Jersey, acting proactively, passed a law codifying marriage equality in that state. And Democratic Utah state Sen. Derek Kitchen also introduced a bill to codify marriage equality in his state. Many gay couples are opting for second parent adoptions to make sure that both parents will retain parental rights even if their marriages are invalidated. Most important, there seems to be a recognition that gay people cannot fight only for preservation of their own rights. The Rev. Wes Mullins, a senior pastor at the Metropolitan Community Church of Greater St. Louis, told NPR, “Throughout history, gay rights have always followed women's rights. Now really is the time to stand up and to recognize that whether you are a person who is able to bear children or not, Roe is about all of us.” And Steven Louis Brawley, who documents gay history, also told NPR, “People understanding their history matters because it helps them realize how precious our rights are if they can be taken away.” Andy Cohen, host of Watch What Happens Live, a late-night talk show, cautioned the government and the media not to stigmatize the gay community regarding monkeypox, saying, “if you’re not a gay man you might think this doesn’t affect you now, but this is everyone’s problem because…unless we act now these things can get a whole lot worse very quickly.” The lessons here are that any right that is given can be taken away. And all those whose rights are threatened—LGBTQ+ people, Black people, Hispanics, Muslims, Jews, women and others—should band together to advocate for all their rights. Because, as Benjamin Franklin is reported to have said at the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776: “We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.” Political columnist Jessie Seigel had a long career as a government attorney in which she honed her analytic skills. She has also twice received an Artist’s Fellowship from the Washington, D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities for her fiction, and has been a finalist for a number of literary awards. In addition, Seigel is an associate editor at the Potomac Review, a reviewer for The Washington Independent Review of Books, and a dabbler in political cartoons at Daily Kos. Of this balance in her work between the analytic and the imaginative, Seigel jokes, “I guess my right and left brains are well-balanced.” More on and from Seigel can be found at The Adventurous Writer, https://www.jessieseigel.com.

By John Rolfe / Red Hook, N.Y. I have been on this planet for 64 years and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more horrifying, disgusting person — I balk at using the term “human being” — than Alex Jones. That’s saying a lot. Donald Trump comes close for being a black hole of self-absorption with a total disregard for others who do not serve his ends. So does Vladimir Putin and the host of despots and madmen who have unleashed war, terror and unimaginable misery on others. But their ilk is not new. What Jones has been doing as the preeminent figure of the modern and very lucrative misinformation industry viscerally hits home because I am a parent. I’m beyond deeply grateful not to know firsthand the agony of losing a child. However, I do know parents who have endured it, so I am certain there is no greater torment. The parents of the 26 victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting — 20 of them were only six or seven years old — know that pain all too well. Yet Jones has been willfully compounding their suffering for years with his baseless claims that the shootings were a hoax or staged by the government with paid crisis actors for the sake of generating support for comprehensive gun control. There was a glaring lack of evidence to support anything that Jones said about Sandy Hook. But as is so often the case with conspiracy theorists, mere questions suffice as proof in their minds. So Jones has pressed on to the point where the families of the victims have been viciously harassed by demented followers of his popular, mind-numbing, revenue-generating show InfoWars, which has an audience of millions. The case of Neil Heslin is particularly egregious. Heslin’s car and house have been shot at, and he and his wife had to hire a security detail to protect them. The couple now suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome brought on by nearly 10 years of often public abuse from people who believe Jones. “I fear for my life,” Heslin testified during hearings that were held in Travis County District Court in Austin, Texas, to determine how much Jones must pay him and his wife for defaming them. “I fear for my safety and my family’s safety and their life.” Three years ago, on the air during his show, Jones threatened one of the lawyers representing other Sandy Hook families and was later found in contempt of court and sanctioned by the Connecticut Supreme Court. The defamation lawsuit by Heslin and his wife, Scarlett Lewis, was filed in 2018 in Travis County, where Jones’s company is based. It is one of four suits that have been filed against Jones. He has also been found liable for damages in Connecticut. The other two trials will begin soon. Watching Jones react and respond to the grieving parents after initially avoiding having to face them in court, he came across as a heartless, blustering coward who has grown wealthy, plump and neckless off his ill-gotten gains, which are said to be in the neighborhood of $62 million. His defense — that he was merely asking questions about Sandy Hook — is nauseating, like the “just following orders” excuse Nazis used during their trials after World War II. He even had the mindboggling gall to say he never meant to hurt the families of the victims. What the hell did he think his words were going to do? It’s no surprise that Jones was admonished for lying under oath and could face charges and a 10-year prison sentence due to a blunder by his own attorneys that borders on cosmic justice: They inadvertently sent to Heslin’s and Lewis’ lawyers the entire contents of Jones’ phone after Jones had said under oath that some of the texts and financial documents on it did not exist. “Do you know what perjury is?” Mark Bankston, an attorney representing Heslin and Lewis, asked Jones. “You believe everything you say is true, but your beliefs do not make something true,” Judge Maya Guerra Gamble told him. “Just because you claim to think something is true does not make it true. It does not protect you. It is not allowed. You’re under oath. That means things must actually be true when you say them.” The judge in Texas awarded Heslin and Lewis $4.1 million in compensatory damages — and later tacked on $49.3 million in punitive damages. Although he was finally forced to admit (while squirming and sweating) that the Sandy Hook shootings were real, Jones’s company, Free Speech Systems, which produces his show, has filed for bankruptcy. It’s a naked, shameless attempt to avoid having to actually pay for his crimes. Of course, Jones continues spreading his lies undaunted, just as Trump and his supporters are still doing with their claims of massive voter fraud in the 2020 election or that the January 6 riot at the Capitol was staged … or committed by political enemies … or was an outright hoax. The explanations are always changing, but one constant remains: no credible evidence to prove them. I can see the cynical manipulation in those who push conspiracies for financial and/or political gain, and the madness that prevails in people who embrace them. Insisting, without a shred of proof, that anything and everything that goes against you in life is the result of a massive, complex and highly organized plot gives you an excuse to blame and not use your brain. Do any of these people ever stop to think about what it would actually take to pull off a Sandy Hook-style hoax? Do they really think 20 families, and the families of six school staff members, could be bought, or simply agree, to fake the deaths of their children or loved ones and send them off to live elsewhere under assumed identities? All members of those extended families would have to be in on it, too. And what about the rest of the staff? The local police and other emergency responders? The other families in the district? Heck, humans have trouble keeping plans for a surprise party secret. With something so fantastical, surely even a few knowledgeable people would come forward to spill the beans or provide inside information as they are doing for the House committee investigating Jan. 6 and Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Refusing to confront inconvenient truths and harsh reality is complete cowardice. Yet millions of people willfully overlook facts and shun common sense, so Alex Jones is in the vanguard of a sadistic free speech movement that seeks to protect the spread of dangerous lies. This is the equivalent of shouting “fire!” in a crowded theatre even though there is no evidence that the building is burning. How does someone like Jones live with himself? I can only assume that money, fame and power are a narcotic that blocks even the smallest glimmer of human conscience in such a self-centered, insensitive lout. Still, I keep waiting for a moment of dawning recognition in people like him, a sign of actual remorse, a shred of genuine feeling, empathy and compassion. All I can think of is the Biblical verse, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” Alex Jones has profited in terms of money, but he has clearly lost his soul … assuming he had one in the first place. Fittingly, he has also lost $49.3 million and quite possibly a lot more in days to come. He can’t lose enough to suit me. John Rolfe is a former senior editor for Sports Illustrated for Kids, a longtime columnist for the Poughkeepsie Journal/USA Today Network, and author of The Goose in the Bathroom: Stirring Tales of Family Life. His school bus drivin’ blog “Hellions, Mayhem and Brake Failure” is parked on his website Celestialchuckle.com (https://celestialchuckle.com) with the meter running.

By John Rolfe / Red Hook, N.Y. As upset as I am about the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade and the ensuing wave of abortion bans in states, I will give credit where credit is due: At least some pro-life advocates are acknowledging the need to better support mothers and children. But they should get cracking right away because they already have a hell of lot of work to do and much more is on the way. For starters, according to a July 28 report in the New York Times, the 24 states with abortion bans have some of the nation’s weakest social services and highest rates of infant and maternal mortality, teen pregnancy, and lack of medical insurance. Most have decided not to expand Medicaid, leaving hundreds of thousands uninsured, or to extend it to a full year for mothers who have given birth. None of these states offer paid work leave to care for newborns. Pro-lifers also urgently need to address a ghastly downside to the laws they are enacting. Perhaps you’ve heard of the horrifying case of Elizabeth Weller of Houston, whose pregnancy went dangerously awry at 18 weeks. When Weller’s water suddenly broke on May 10, her fetus was left with a heartbeat but near zero chance of survival and a great likelihood of being born with severe defects and disabilities. Weller was left vulnerable to a life-threatening hemorrhage or uterine infection, which is what she developed shortly thereafter. Under Texas law, Weller had only two options: end the pregnancy according to the maternal danger provision or try to reach fetal viability at 24 weeks and hope for a live delivery. "You have to ask yourself, would I put any living thing through the pain, and the horrors, of having to try to fight for their life the minute that they're born?" Weller, who was born with a disability but hoped to never have an abortion, told NPR. Unfortunately, the Texas state law created agonizing delays. Because of the fear of prosecution or a lawsuit (anyone can sue a doctor for performing an abortion), Weller had to wait until the baby’s heartbeat stopped or she became endangered. No providers wanted to risk legal jeopardy. As it turned out, not even bouts of cramps, vomiting, bleeding and yellow discharge were enough to qualify as “endangered” and get Weller the help or even the advice for which she begged. It wasn’t until Weller and her husband were on the verge of traveling to another state, and her condition worsened, that a stillborn delivery was finally, mercifully, induced at Houston Methodist Hospital. Weller told NPR she is furious at the Republican legislators who passed the Texas law and at political rhetoric that only sees abortion as "a black-and-white issue, when abortion has all of these gray areas." The key problem here is that — unbelievably — precious few legislators have bothered to clearly define the term “medical emergency” or the point at which a mother’s life is sufficiently endangered to receive an abortion. The resulting uncertainty now paralyzes caregivers in Texas even in cases of ectopic pregnancy, which are well documented as being life threatening. This scenario will occur wherever strict abortion bans are in effect. "It's terrible," maternal-fetal specialist Dr. Alan Peaceman of Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine told NPR. "The care providers are treading on eggshells. They don't want to get sucked into a legal morass. And so they don't even know what the rules are." As Weller’s case shows, delays can and certainly will prove fatal. Idaho’s abortion ban inhibits emergency care for pregnant mothers to such an extent that the Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against it. Then we have the case of Indiana ob/gyn Caitlin Bernard, who provided a legal abortion in early July for a 10-year-old rape victim from Ohio. Dr. Bernard says she is being harassed and threatened by strangers and attacked by right-wing politicians. There is an absolutely absurd mental and physical cruelty in forcing women to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term, especially if the baby is unlikely to survive or live a reasonably enjoyable life, will be a constant reminder of the trauma of rape, or will put a woman through a stretch of physical pain and mental torment while wondering if it will kill her. Prosecuting women who seek to avoid such a fate, or who simply lose their pregnancy, is even more horrific. Given that there is no way to tell the difference between a miscarriage and a chemically-induced abortion, many more women are going to end up in prison, especially if fellow citizens are encouraged to anonymously rat them out. Add possible contraception bans to the country’s legal landscape and you have a formula for ruined lives and widespread misery. Fifteen states (Ohio, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, Wisconsin) now allow abortion only when the mother’s life is in obvious jeopardy. Six more (Georgia, Idaho, North Dakota, South Carolina, Utah, Wyoming) make an allowance for rape or incest. Indiana is very close to enacting a ban with strict requirements for all cases. One (Mississippi) allows it for rape, but not incest. Fortunately, on Aug. 2, voters in Kansas overwhelmingly said “no” to giving state lawmakers permission to add restrictions. Abortion there remains legal for any reason up to 20 weeks after fertilization or 22 weeks after the last menstrual period. The referendum's defeat by such a large margin (18 percent) strongly suggests that in the November midterms, there will be a voter backlash against the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. It is said that it’s easy to advocate for the unborn because after they arrive on this mortal coil you can walk away and not have to deal with the daily burdens of caring for them. Nor do you have to endure the dangers and physical and mental trials of pregnancy. Truly being pro-life demands recognizing and fighting for the quality as well as the quantity of life for mothers and their children. Talk is cheap. The right to life movement should demand that legislators revisit draconian abortion bans and at least add humane provisions and crystal clear exceptions that will help prevent great harm from being done in the name of saving lives. John Rolfe is a former senior editor for Sports Illustrated for Kids, a longtime columnist for the Poughkeepsie Journal/USA Today Network, and author of The Goose in the Bathroom: Stirring Tales of Family Life. His school bus drivin’ blog “Hellions, Mayhem and Brake Failure” is parked on his website Celestialchuckle.com (https://celestialchuckle.com) with the meter running.