LibertyVoter.Org

By Erin Keane, Salon

This is my own garbage confession: Woody Allen’s “Manhattan” used to be one of my favorite movies. If I am confessing fully, I have to admit that on some level, I will always feel drawn to it, maybe in the way that disillusioned former church-goers might feel a yearning from somewhere deep inside of them when they pass a door they know on so many levels they can never cross again. Knowing the truth about what you believe and longing for the time before you knew it are not mutually exclusive states of being.

That is how I, and I’m sure many others, have long approached “Manhattan,” since I became aware of the allegations of sexual abuse against Woody Allen and started seeing the film’s April-December “romance” in the stark and unforgiving light which it deserves. To love that film as an adult is to embrace a willful innocence about art, business and life that none of us can really afford to begin with.

Mariel Hemingway was 17 when she played the teenage girlfriend of Woody Allen, then 44, in the film he wrote, directed and starred in. It’s considered one of his finest pieces of work — and on many purely aesthetic levels, it is. It is witty, lovingly shot, and in so many ways a frank and unflinching indictment of conflicted male desire, pitting Hemingway’s winsome high schooler Tracy against the charmingly neurotic intellectual (and very much adult) Mary (Diane Keaton) in Allen’s Isaac’s struggle between his head and his heart.

Blah, blah, blah your conflicted male desire.

If you had asked me at 17 if I would ever date a 44-year old, I might have actually barfed.

If you had asked me at 19 if I thought there was anything disgusting about Tracy and Isaac’s relationship in “Manhattan,” I would have said something like, well, it’s not real life, is it? It’s a story. And to make great literature and film and drama, we have to create spaces of empathy for characters who …read more

Source: ALTERNET

By Kali Holloway, AlterNet

The Church of Scientology has a well-publicized history of going after its critics with everything it has, including its tons and tons of dollars, which reportedly total about $3 billion. So it’s not all that surprising that, as Alex Gibney’s much talked-about Scientology documentary “Going Clear” – which numerous reports claim uncovers some fairly batshit revelations – heads to HBO on March 29, the Church has undertaken a full-scale, multimedia counterattack. Here are six ways Scientology, gloves off, is going after Gibney and everyone involved in “Going Clear.”

1. Buying A Super Bowl Ad. After the film was lauded by critics from numerous outlets after its Sundance Film Festival premiere in January, the Church ran an ad before America’s biggest television event. The commercial, titled “The Age of Answers,” looked like any generic ad for a new rising technology, except that the hot, new gadgetry shown is an e-meter. “Imagine an age in which the predictability of science and the wisdom of religion combine,” says a voiceover in the deep, disembodied voice of someone who knows more than you. A few seconds later, the words “spiritual technology” appear on the screen, which in a literal flash blend to become the word “scientology.”

The Super Bowl ad, which appeared in markets around the country, likely cost the Church millions by even the most conservative estimates. Not that it matters when you have billions, but it's a mark of commitment, nonetheless.

2. Sending a Five-Page Letter to the Hollywood Reporter Calling Every Ex-Scientologist in the Film a Liar. Earlier this month, the Hollywood Reporterrequested to screen the documentary with high-ranking Church officials. Instead, Church spokesperson Karin Pouw suggested the magazine send a list of questions relating to allegations, which she in turn would “be …read more

Source: ALTERNET

By Denis Campbell, The Guardian

Consuming three alcoholic drinks a day can be enough to cause liver cancer, experts have said.

The World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) has pinpointed the level of drinking implicated in liver cancer after undertaking what it says was the biggest review so far of the evidence on the relationship between diet, weight, physical activity and the disease.

Its assessment of 34 previous studies covering 8.2 million people, more than 24,500 of whom had liver cancer, revealed “strong evidence” linking intake of three drinks a day to the disease. 

“Around three or more drinks per day can be enough to cause liver cancer,” said Amanda Mclean, director of the charity’s UK branch. “Until now we were uncertain about the amount of alcohol likely to lead to liver cancer. But the research reviewed in this report is strong enough, for the first time, to be more specific about this.”

The WCRF’s findings prompted the Alcohol Health Alliance, a coalition of health organisations, to claim that alcohol is so toxic that cans and bottles should carry health warnings.

“Alcohol, like tobacco and asbestos, is a class 1 carcinogen and it is totally unacceptable that the public is not provided with such basic information”, said Prof Sir Ian Gilmore, the alliance’s chair. 

“This report shows that there is no safe level of drinking when it comes to cancer prevention. It’s time for the government to take action to minimise the risk of harm, including ensuring that labels carry mandatory health warnings and lists of ingredients to standards that are developed independently from groups with vested interests.”

About one in 100 men and one in 200 women in Britain develop liver cancer at some point in their lifetime, and 4,703 people were diagnosed with it in 2012. It has one of the lowest survival rates among the 200 different types of cancer. 

Women should try to limit themselves to no more than one drink a day and men to two in order to minimise their risk of the disease, the WCRF said. 

Dr Sarah Jarvis, …read more

Source: ALTERNET

By Kali Holloway, AlterNet

There are no surprises in the details emerging from a recent story involving Tucker Carlson, his brother and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s female spokesperson. It's not surprising that leaked emails reveal Carlson is a patronizing jerk; nor that Carlson’s brother’s name is Buckley; and certainly not that Buckley referred to the spokesperson in question as “labiaface” and a “self-righteous bitch.”

The whole kerfuffle began when DeBlasio spokesperson Amy Spitalnick reached out to Peter Fricke, a writer for Tucker Carlson’s conservative website the Daily Caller, asking for a correction to a story. After a few exchanges in which she specified precisely how the story was erroneous, Spitalnick sent Fricke and Daily Caller editor Christopher Bedford an email asking that they “correct the story now.” Bedford responded thusly:

“We’re reviewing the video now, Amy. If you annoy me with another whiny email before then, I’m muting this thread, thanks.”

As anyone might do when dealing with an employee behaving like a total asshole, Spitalnick then reached out to Bedford's boss, Tucker Carlson. Spitalnick wrote:

“Tucker – it’s pretty appalling that this is how your staff chose to respond to us requesting a basic correction (and providing a transcript that directly contradicts the original story).”

Carlson, who almost always looks like he’s on his way to some frat’s bow-tie formal, used the opportunity to respond in the most smug and mansplainy way possible:

“Dear Amy,

Thanks for your email. You believe our story was inaccurate and have demanded a correction. Totally fair. We are going over the transcript now.

What Bedford complained about was your tone, which, I have to agree, was whiny and annoying, and I say that in the spirit of helpful correction rather than as a criticism. Outside of New York City, adults generally write polite, cheerful emails to one another, even when asking for corrections. Something to keep in mind the next time you communicate with people who don’t live on your island.”

It stops just short of telling her to “smile more” or asking if it’s her “time of the …read more

Source: ALTERNET

By Kali Holloway, AlterNet

Chelsea Handler claims a decade-old personal encounter with Bill Cosby made her certain that charges of sexual assault against the comedian are true. In a recent interview with Esquire, Handler euphemistically stated that America’s ex-Favorite Dad had “tried to Cosby” her. Said Handler:

“Oh, I was in Atlantic City playing, doing stand-up, and he was doing stand-up in Atlantic City in the same hotel, and at like three o'clock in the afternoon, someone from the hotel came down and said, ‘Oh, you know, Mr. Cosby would really like to meet you up in his hotel suite.’ And I thought, ‘That's really weird.’ This was like ten years ago. And I said, ‘That's really weird. I don't want to go alone.’”

Handler recalls bringing three men with her, including a producer from a project she was working on at the time. “I brought them up with me to his room and thank God I did, because now I know what would've happened if I went up there alone.”

Handler says she’d long forgotten about the incident, even after numerous women stepped forward to report that Cosby had sexually assaulted them on charges that go back for decades. She says she remembered only after the prodding of a friend.

“Then my friend texted me the other day saying, ‘Do you remember that night we went up to, or that afternoon we went up to Bill Cosby's and you were so freaked out you made us come with you?’ And I said, ‘Yeah,’ and he said, ‘Hello! You could've been one of his victims if we weren't there.’ And I went, ‘Oh my gosh…’ Yeah, so yeah, he's guilty.”

Read the full interview, which also includes Park and Recs’ Nick Offerman talking sex and relationships, here. 

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  Source: ALTERNET