Author: Ohart

Grammy Award-winning music producer Detail was arrested Wednesday on more than a dozen charges of sexual assault, authorities said.
The 41-year-old producer was held on nearly $6.3 million bail, according to a statement from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
Detail, whose real name is Noel Christopher Fisher, was charged on July 31 with 15 counts of sexual assault and five counts of felony assault, the statement said. He is accused of crimes between 2010 and 2018.
Detectives submitted the case to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office in January, the statement said. It didn’t provide other details.
“Mr. Fisher was just arrested some hours ago and I have not had an opportunity to speak to him or look at the charges. I am quite certain he will enter a not guilty plea and contest to the fullest all of these allegations,” his attorney, Irwin Mark Bledstein, said in an email late Wednesday night.
Detail won a Grammy in 2015 for co-writing the Beyonce and Jay-Z hit “Drunk in Love” and has also produced hits for Lil Wayne, Nicki Minaj and Wiz Khalifa.
Last year, a model and aspiring singer was awarded $15 million in a Los Angeles lawsuit that accused the producer of abusing and raping her.
She is one of six women, some established professionals and others music-industry newcomers, who have spoken out publicly against what they said was Fisher’s sexual aggression.
At least two, both former assistants, have filed their own lawsuits. Fisher has said in court documents filed in those lawsuits that all the allegations against him are false, and have led to his losing all work and being evicted.
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When two strangers walking by stopped to accuse James “Jamie” Juanillo of defacing private property, the San Francisco man immediately took a defensive posture. He started recording the encounter, which eventually went viral, garnering more than 23 million views. “I came up recording not because I thought there was a potential for a viral video, but because I believed that I was going to need to prove my innocence, that they were going to accuse me of a crime,” says Juanillo, 50, a Filipino American. James “Jamie” Juanillo stands in front of the Black Lives Matter wall art that prompted a woman to question whether he was defacing private property at his San Francisco home. (Courtesy James Juanillo)His “crime” was chalking a Black Lives Matter message on the retaining wall in front of the Pacific Heights home he shares with his husband and some friends. In the video, the woman, identified as Lisa Alexander, along with her male partner, approach Juanillo and question whether he lives at the property. They say they know that he does not and suggest he is breaking the law. Juanillo is heard calmly refusing to answer any questions while challenging the woman’s apparent insinuation that a person who looks like him could not belong in the wealthy enclave. “What I experienced is this kind of polite, everyday, ubiquitous, accepted racism where it’s delivered gift wrapped and politely, stipulating your acceptance of their superiority and their supremacy,” Juanillo says. “The presumption is that they are entitled to whatever answers [to questions] that they feel like posing to a random person of color in whatever situation.” A white couple call the police on me, a person of color, for stencilling a James “Jamie” Juanillo stands in front of his San Francisco home. (Courtesy James Juanillo)Back in San Francisco, the police who responded to the call about Juanillo recognized him as a longtime resident and left without incident. Alexander and her partner released a public apology after the encounter went viral. Juanillo decided to release the video of his Karen moment to highlight what everyday racism can look like. “Racism just doesn’t mean being executed on the streets of America. Sometimes it just means being questioned for why you exist and where you exist,” Juanillo says. “Someone can call the cops — men with guns — on you for innocuous actions like designing chalk art on property that’s not theirs, that they have no vested interest in. They don’t feel threatened by you and yet, they’re still willing to bet your entire life.” The term and people who embody it will continue to exist, but people like Juanillo who might have previously felt helpless or vulnerable during such encounters, now have a powerful weapon of their own to deploy. “This is no longer a world where it’s ‘he said versus she said’ or ‘he said versus he said.’ It is now a world where technology is a great equalizer,” Juanillo says, “and we all have the ability and the technology to record the truth, and justice will be visually on our side.”
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In a ceremony watched by millions of Indians on television, Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered prayers and laid the foundation stone for a grand Hindu temple to be built in the northern town of Ayodhya on the site of a mosque demolished by Hindu radicals. 
 
The ceremony marks a historic triumph for Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, whose rise to political prominence was propelled by the three-decade campaign to build a temple to honor the revered Hindu deity Rama. 
 
“It is an emotional moment for India. A long wait ends today,” Modi said after the ceremony that was held even as the COVID-19 pandemic continues in India. 
 
The temple is being built on the exact spot Hindus believe is the birthplace of Lord Rama. The demolition of the 16th century mosque that stood there in 1992 sparked deadly Hindu-Muslim riots and became a deeply divisive issue in the Hindu-majority country, where many Hindus want the temple to be built. 
 
The Supreme Court approved the temple’s construction last November when it handed the bitterly contested plot of land to a Hindu group after a long legal battle.  
 
Modi said the site had been liberated and a “grand house” would be constructed for Lord Rama.  Devotees walk past the pillars that Hindu nationalist group Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) say will be used to build a Ram temple at the disputed religious site in Ayodhya, India, Oct. 22, 2019.Building the temple in Ayodhya has long been a rallying cry of the BJP, which critics accuse of pursuing a Hindu nationalist agenda. Wednesday’s groundbreaking ceremony coincided with the first anniversary of the scrapping of the special status for Muslim majority Kashmir — another core promise that was made by the party. 
 
The response of the Muslim community to the temple project has been muted with some saying it is time to “move on.” 
 
“Whatever happened are things of the past,” said Iqbal Ansari, one of the Muslim litigants in the Supreme Court case, who was invited to attend the ceremony.   
 
The small, sleepy town of Ayodhya was given a makeover for the ceremony. Saffron flags fluttered in the streets and houses got a splash of yellow paint, both believed to be auspicious colors.Policemen stand guard before the arrival of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi ahead of the foundation laying ceremony for a Hindu temple in Ayodhya, India, Aug. 5, 2020.Paramilitary soldiers guarded the streets as COVID-19 restrictions kept people indoors. Many, however, stood on rooftops in the pilgrim town dotted with temples.   
 
Wednesday’s ceremony marks the consolidation of Hindu nationalism under the BJP during its six-year rule, say analysts. 
 
“A constellation of forces has allowed them to take advantage now, they have a favorable court judgment and all groups have come to believe that let us resolve the issue,” says Sandeep Shastri, a political analyst and Pro Vice Chancellor of Jain University. “This also seems to be the voice in the minority Muslim community that in order to buy peace if this is what we need to agree to, it is all right.” 
 
The proposed five-domed temple spread over nearly 8,000 square meters, is expected to be completed in three-and-a-half years and could yield political dividends for the BJP when it faces the next general election in 2024. 
 
“This reinforces Modi’s persona, the halo, he is the man who has delivered the temple,” says political analyst Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay. “This is the moment of Hindu supremacy, and Muslims recognize, and there is very little they can do by law after the Supreme Court rejected their petition for a review of its judgment.” 
 
A prominent Muslim lawmaker questioned the prime minister’s attendance, though, at the ceremony, saying that it violated his constitutional oath in India. “Secularism is part of the Basic Structure of Constitution,” Asaduddin Owaisi wrote on Twitter. 
 
There is unease among the Muslim community and some fear the construction of a temple at Ayodhya could pave the way for similar demands in other towns where Hindu groups claim mosques have been built on sites holy to Hindus. 
 
“The larger question would be, would it end here or is this the starting point of other developments. That is the more serious question,” said Shastri.  People watch a live screening of the stone laying ceremony of the Ram Temple by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Ayodhya, in New Delhi, India, Aug. 5, 2020.Some questions also have been raised about holding the ceremony during a pandemic in India when there have been repeated warnings by health experts that large gatherings should be avoided. 
 
The venue of the ceremony, attended by about 175 prominent BJP leaders and Hindu priests, was cordoned off and chairs kept at a distance to maintain social distancing.   
 
The ceremony became a moment of celebration across many homes in the country, where the temple campaign turned into a deeply emotive issue. Hindus make up about 80 percent of the population. 
 
Devotees are reported to have sent silver and gold coins to pay for the temple’s construction. 
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The roses, dahlias and daisies are in full bloom at the home of 19th-century artist Claude Monet. So are colorfully clad tourists, posing for pictures in front of Monet’s iconic lily pond.But one popular perennial is absent: the Americans.The coronavirus pandemic has put on indefinite pause a century-plus pilgrimage here by U.S. artists and tourists — the leading foreign visitors to this heartland of impressionist painting. Instead, it is mostly the French who are flocking to Monet’s home and garden amid the ongoing pandemic, as they rediscover their heritage.With coronavirus cases soaring in parts of the United States, polls show many Europeans, including French, do not want American tourists entering their countries right now. Chances are remote at any rate, current European Union restrictions bar travelers from the United States, along with many other countries.But in this tiny Normandy village, nestled between rolling hills and the Seine River, the Americans are sorely missed.Nestled between rolling hills and the Seine River, Giverny has long been a hub for American tourists. (Photo: Lisa Bryant/VOA)Giverny is the region’s second most popular tourist attraction after Mont Saint-Michel island. And Americans are among the top foreigners flocking here — accounting for one-fifth of those visiting Monet’s home alone.“They love everything from Normandy, everything that’s local— the aperitifs, the digestifs,” said Gregory Laisney, director of the nearby La Musardiere restaurant, who estimates U.S. diners made up 40 percent of his clientele last year.“The Americans,” he added, “come here to discover France.”The French are backMany French are wandering through Giverny’s streets and Monet’s garden, revisiting old memories. With the coronavirus battering France’s economy and sparking fears of further infection, some 70 percent of its citizens are spending the summer in-country, according to government estimates.“It’s been 20 years since I was last at Monet’s house and I’m rediscovering the garden,” said Anne-Marie da Silva, from the Val d’Oise department north of Paris, sporting a mandatory mask as she admired the flowers.Anne-Marie da Silva snaps a photo of Monet’s garden. French tourists like herself are rediscovering their heritage this summer. (Photo: Lisa Bryant/VOA)It’s a sharp U-turn from normality. U.S. visitors have long been a fixture here, braving August crowds that French residents would normally shun.Indeed, Americans arrived shortly after Monet moved to this village in 1883. The founder of the impressionist movement, with his 1872 masterpiece “Impression, Sunrise”—of a red sun burning through fog at Le Havre port— gardened and painted here until his death.It didn’t take long for the American acolytes who had moved to Paris to study painting, to follow him. They joined an artists’ colony established in the village, extending their visits beyond the summer months—even though Monet reportedly soon tired of them.Only a few, including celebrated portrait artist John Singer Sargent and Willard Metcalf, were allowed to paint with Monet and visit his grounds.A photo of Claude Monet in his kitchen. (Photo: Lisa Bryant/VOA)Today, the French impressionist would likely be horrified to see the hordes making his home a must-see stop on their way to D-Day beaches or the French capital.Good clientsThat’s not so for abstract painter Chantal Lallemand, who exhibits her work from a small gallery down the street.“The Americans buy quite a lot of my paintings, especially the big ones,” said Lallemand, who has two shows booked for New York and Florida, pending the coronavirus’s trajectory.“They love impressionism,” she added, “but we also feel there’s an opening to modern art.”The U.S. imprint on Giverny has endured in other ways. Monet’s paintings hang in nearly a dozen major American museums.The impressionist museum in Giverny – formerly known as the American museum. (Photo: Lisa Bryant/VOA)In 1992, an American art museum was founded in Giverny. Seventeen years later, the facility morphed into an impressionist museum under French control.Work from American artists like John Leslie Breck still hangs there. These days, however, there are few fellow citizens to admire it, except for a smattering of expatriates.Indeed, EstrellaGiverny-based artist Chanal Lallemand sells a lot of her work to American clients – but not this year. (Photo: Lisa Bryant/VOA)Garcia from Madrid counted among the few foreigners touring the museum one recent afternoon.“We’re here because we weren’t able to see Monet’s house,” she said. “We’re returning home without having had a chance to see it.”Tourists check out opening hours at Claude Monet’s house, which reopened in June following France’s two-month coronavirus lockdown. (Photo: Lisa Bryant/VOA)
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Pipe by precious pipe, the organ that once thundered through Notre Dame Cathedral is being taken apart after last year’s devastating fire.The mammoth task of dismantling, cleaning and re-assembling France’s largest musical instrument started Monday and is expected to last nearly four years. It will take six months just to tune the organ, and its music isn’t expected to resound again through the medieval Paris monument until 2024, according to the state agency overseeing Notre Dame’s restoration.Amazingly, the 8,000-pipe organ survived the April 2019 fire that consumed the cathedral’s roof and toppled its spire. But the blaze coated the instrument in toxic lead dust that must now be painstakingly removed.And while the organ didn’t burn, it did suffer damage from a record heatwave last summer and has been affected by other temperature variations it’s been exposed to since the 12th-century cathedral lost its roof, the agency said.Experts started removing the organ’s keyboards Monday and will then take out its pipes in a dismantling process that will last through the end of this year, according to the restoration agency. The pieces will be placed in special containers inside the huge cathedral, where the cleaning and restoration will take place.The general who leads the agency said the organ, which dates from 1733, will next play again on April 16, 2024, marking five years since the fire.President Emmanuel Macron hopes the cathedral can reopen in time for the 2024 Olympics in Paris. But it’s taken more than a year to clear out dangerous lead residue and scaffolding that had been in place before the fire for a previous renovation effort, and reconstruction of the landmark has yet to begin. 
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Egypt’s minister of international cooperation has extended an invitation to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk after a Musk post on Twitter that the pyramids were built by extraterrestrial beings.  Musk tweeted Saturday: “Aliens built the pyramids obv.” Aliens built the pyramids obv— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 31, 2020Musk’s posting prompted Rania Al Mashat, the international cooperation minister, to tweet: “I follow your work with a lot of admiration.  I invite you & Space X to explore the writings about how the pyramids were built and also to check out the tombs of the pyramid builders. Mr. Musk, we are waiting for you.”I follow your work with a lot of admiration. I invite you & Space X to explore the writings about how the pyramids were built and also to check out the tombs of the pyramid builders. Mr. Musk, we are waiting for you 🚀. @elonmuskhttps://t.co/Xlr7EoPXX4— Rania A. Al Mashat (@RaniaAlMashat) August 1, 2020It was not immediately clear whether Musk’s tweet was serious or tongue-in-cheek. However, extraterrestrial entities as builders of Egypt’s ancient pyramids is the premise for several television shows and books.   Egypt Today reports on its website that famed Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass also weighed in on the topic on social media, saying that Musk’s tweet was a “complete hallucination.” Hawass added that he had “found the tombs of the pyramids builders that tell everyone that the builders of the pyramids are Egyptians and they were not slaves.”  He said ancient Egypt’s pyramid building was “a national project of the whole nation.” Musk had an apparent change of mind and eventually provided a link on his Twitter account about the building of pyramids.  He tweeted: “This BBC article provides a sensible summary of how it was done.”  
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A typical school day for Elon University junior Skyler Sajewski began at 7 a.m., starting with ballet, history, economics and tap classes, then rehersal for the upcoming musical. She would get back to her apartment around 11 p.m.  
 
Then, the COVID pandemic hit.  
 
The musical theater major who was used to “constantly running from place to place” returned home to Florida to shelter in place. She’s worried about missing out on “literally all of it” in terms of preparing for her future career.
 
“To be a well-rounded musical theater performer, you have to have a certain set of skills and be really good at them,” Sajewski said. “And you know, I go to a school to constantly get better. And this year, if I reach a plateau of no growth it could be potentially harming versus someone who went all their four years.”
 
Sajewski is not alone in her anxieties for the future. She has friends who are considering taking a semester — or even a year — off, realizing that an online arts education may not be worth it.  
 
When she returned home, Sajewski and her peers were faced with “Zoom University” — what many students are calling online classes — as musical theater majors. In last semester’s acting class, she and her fellow “MTs,” were “literally screaming in each other’s faces” when they were working on Greek theater.  
 
Into the screens of their laptops.  
 
For a “pretty demanding” class “where you really have to get into your body and your voice,” moving to remote learning required adjustments.  Skyler Sajewski“In acting, there’s a lot of, with permission, there’s a lot of touching,” Sajewski said. “We do partner warm ups, to get the voice open and ready by, patting them on the back really hard and doing all of this physical activity with your partner where you’re in very close corners. [Then], the pandemic hits. We are now home, my lovely scene partner and I, that we’re working on the Greek [acting class] and are now doing it over Zoom, which is incredibly hard because you can only see their face.”
 
Sajewski said it wasn’t ideal for acting class.  
 
“How can you see what my face is doing? You know what I mean? So we acted right up to the camera. So even though the Greek piece is supposed to be a whole body experience, we were mostly just using our face. It’s hard to act over Zoom. Like the whole point of acting is to react. And when you’re reacting over a camera where someone could be frozen one second, it’s just, it’s not organic. It doesn’t feel like it’s supposed to feel, but you know, we did our best with it.”
 
Sajewski said she considered taking a gap year.  
 
“When I found out that classmates of mine were doing that, and that idea became real to me, it honestly freaked me out because I’ve always known that I was graduating in 2022 when I was going to move to New York and start my life. And for that to be affected by this unprecedented pandemic is, is really scary to me.”
 
Sidney Rubinowicz said she plans to take a gap year from her production design studies at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Productions at Carnegie Mellon were canceled for the first semester and are planning on a double season for the second.  
 
“Next year, I was going to start getting lead stage manager assignments,” Rubinowicz said. “And I would be really, really sad if I didn’t have those. And for me, production is a bigger part of my education and my classes are, and I think a lot of people agree with that. So I will just be back in a year, hopefully things are better.”
 
The would-be junior at Carnegie Mellon says that she’s always been “five years ahead” in knowing what she wanted to do. Before middle school, she knew where she wanted to attend high school and in high school, she immediately knew where she wanted to go to college.  
 
“It’s so weird to be like, ‘I have no idea what I’m doing,’” she said. “I think I’m just a little more open minded now. And I think it’s not even that, I was like, ‘You have to have a plan’ but … now everyone is thrown for a loop.”
 
Carnegie Mellon is not offering a refund on housing or tuition, but they will allow students to choose to stay or withdraw after 10 days on campus.  
 
At Tisch School of the Arts at New York University — like many other universities — students are asking for partial reimbursement from the spring semester.
 
“NYU ignores the fact that us art students will be paying full price for an education that lacks the facilities, equipment, technology, services and hands-on experience we are explicitly paying for,” the petition stated.
 
“While we appreciate the concerted efforts of our professors to salvage what’s left of our education, we reject the assumption that an online Zoom education is equitable in content and value.”  
 
Students wrote testimonials to represent the studios that they are a part of at Tisch. Dancers, actors, filmmakers and writers alike came together in a series of Google documents to tell the administration how they were feeling.  
 
One student in dance program wrote that “these technique classes require specific equipment and a certain amount of space in order to be able to execute the exercises efficiently. Dancers also require physical attention and corrections from our instructors which is almost impossible to do on Zoom.”
 
Tisch later issued fee refunds.  
 
When performing arts curriculums will resume in person at schools nationwide is unknown. Sajewski and her colleagues say they realize you don’t have to go to school to work in the arts. But a bachelor of fine arts has its benefits.  
 
“You could very well just go out there and try your best, people can do it. They made [in the industry], they didn’t go to school and they’re fine,” she said. “But those of us that choose to go, further their education because we want to learn and better ourselves in the best way we know possible, which is through schooling. And if we can’t, you know, why am I going to school?”
 
Future job prospects, not always robust for artists, are fewer because of the pandemic.  
 
“There’s so many artists without a job right now. And it’s scary.”
 
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Wilford Brimley, who worked his way up from movie stunt rider to an indelible character actor who brought gruff charm, and sometimes menace, to a range of films that included “Cocoon,” “The Natural” and “The Firm,” has died. He was 85.Brimley’s manager Lynda Bensky said the actor died Saturday morning in a Utah hospital. He was on dialysis and had several medical ailments, she said.The mustached Brimley was a familiar face for a number of roles, often playing characters like his grizzled baseball manager in “The Natural” opposite Robert Redford’s bad-luck phenomenon. He also worked with Redford in “Brubaker” and “The Electric Horseman.”Brimley’s best-known work was in “Cocoon,” in which he was part of a group of seniors who discover an alien pod that rejuvenates them. The 1985 Ron Howard film won two Oscars, including a supporting actor honor for Don Ameche.Brimley also starred in “Cocoon: The Return,” a 1988 sequel.For years he was pitchman for Quaker Oats and in recent years appeared in a series of diabetes spots that turned him at one point into a social media sensation.“Wilford Brimley was a man you could trust,” Bensky said in a statement. “He said what he meant, and he meant what he said. He had a tough exterior and a tender heart. I’m sad that I will no longer get to hear my friend’s wonderful stories. He was one of a kind.”Barbara Hershey, who met Brimley on 1995′s “Last of the Dogmen,” called him “a wonderful man and actor. … He always made me laugh.”Though never nominated for an Oscar or Emmy Award, Brimley amassed an impressive list of credits. In 1993’s John Grisham adaptation “The Firm,” Brimley starred opposite Tom Cruise as a tough-nosed investigator who deployed ruthless tactics to keep his law firm’s secrets safe.John Woo, who directed Brimley as Uncle Douvee in 1993′s “Hard Target,” told The Hollywood Reporter in 2018 that the part was “the main great thing from the film. I was overjoyed making those scenes and especially working with Wilford Brimley.”A Utah native who grew up around horses, Brimley spent two decades traveling around the West and working at ranches and racetracks. He drifted into movie work during the 1960s, riding in such films as “True Grit,” and appearing in TV series such as “Gunsmoke.”He forged a friendship with Robert Duvall, who encouraged him to seek more prominent acting roles, according to a biography prepared by Turner Classic Movies.Brimley, who never trained as an actor, saw his career take off after he won an important role as a nuclear power plant engineer in “The China Syndrome.”“Training? I’ve never been to acting classes, but I’ve had 50 years of training,” he said in a 1984 Associated Press interview. “My years as an extra were good background for learning about camera techniques and so forth. I was lucky to have had that experience; a lot of newcomers don’t.”“Basically, my method is to be honest,” Brimley said told AP. “The camera photographs the truth — not what I want it to see, but what it sees. The truth.”Brimley had a recurring role as a blacksmith on “The Waltons” and the 1980s prime-time series “Our House.”Another side of the actor was his love of jazz. As a vocalist, he made albums including “This Time the Dream’s On Me” and “Wilford Brimley with the Jeff Hamilton Trio.”In 1998, he opposed an Arizona referendum to ban cockfighting, saying that he was “trying to protect a lifestyle of freedom and choice for my grandchildren.”In recent years, Brimley’s pitchwork for Liberty Mutual had turned him into an internet sensation for his drawn-out pronunciation of diabetes as “diabeetus.” He owned the pronunciation in a tweet that drew hundreds of thousands of likes earlier this year.Brimley is survived by his wife Beverly and three sons. 
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One of the most famous American broadcasters of the 20th century was largely unknown at home, but Willis Conover, host of the VOA Jazz Hour, was a celebrity from Warsaw to Moscow during the Cold War.  Mike O’Sullivan recalls Conover’s influence on the 100th anniversary of his birth.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on professional musicians. With concerts, festivals, tours and award shows all around the world canceled or put on indefinite hold, many professional musicians and composers who had relied on performances for their income found themselves in a difficult situation. But some say that these challenges present the opportunities to grow. Mariia Prus has the story, narrated by Anna Rice.
Camera: Kostiantyn Golubchik
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The COVID-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on professional musicians. With concerts, festivals, tours and award shows all around the world canceled or put on indefinite hold, many professional musicians and composers who had relied on performances for their income found themselves in a difficult situation. But some say that these challenges present the opportunities to grow. Mariia Prus has the story, narrated by Anna Rice.
Camera: Kostiantyn Golubchik
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The cover of September’s issue of Oprah magazine will feature Breonna Taylor, a Black woman killed by police in March. This is the first time in the magazine’s 20-year history that someone other than Oprah Winfrey will be featured on the cover of the magazine.Winfrey debuted the September cover Thursday via Twitter and Instagram. In an attached statement, Winfrey wrote, “We can’t be silent. We have to use whatever megaphone we have to cry for justice. And that is why Breonna Taylor is on the cover of O magazine. The September issue honors her life and the life of every other Black woman whose life has been taken too soon.”Taylor was shot by police officers eight times March 13. Police broke down the door to her home while executing a “no-knock” warrant as part of a narcotics investigation. Of the three officers involved in the shooting, one was fired, and none of the three were charged with any crime.Oprah’s most recent column, published Thursday, discusses the new cover, and calls on readers to “continue the fight.” She offers her readers several ways to do so, including signing petitions, calling officials and donating to the Louisville Community Bail Fund.Many celebrities have been using their status to draw attention to Taylor’s death and to advocate for the arrest of the police officers involved. The Women’s National Basketball Association dedicated its upcoming season to Taylor. The September issue of the Oprah magazine is set to arrive August 11.  
 
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“Watchmen,” cloaked in superhero mythology and grounded in real-world racism, received a leading 26 nominations Tuesday for the prime-time Emmy Awards.  
The series, which captured America’s unease as it faces racial clashes amid a pandemic, was nominated as best limited series and received bids for cast members including Regina King and Jeremy Irons.
King was part of a vanguard of actors of color who showed that TV academy voters took heed of the calls for change.
The Amazon comedy “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” is the second most-nominated series with 20, followed by Netflix’s “Ozark” with 18.  
“This year, we are also bearing witness to one of the greatest fights for social justice in history. And it is our duty to use this medium for change,” Frank Scherma, chairman and CEO of the Television Academy said at the outset of the presentation.
The nominations, typically unveiled with fanfare at the TV academy’s Los Angeles headquarters, were announced online Tuesday by Leslie Jones (“Saturday Night Live”) and presenters Laverne Cox (“Orange is the New Black”), Josh Gad (“Frozen”) and Tatiana Maslany (“Orphan Black”). Cox, Gad and Maslany appeared on by video feeds.
The nominees for best comedy series are: “Curb Your Enthusiasm”; Dead to Me”; “The Good Place”; “Insecure”; “The Kominsky Method”; “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”; “Schitt’s Creek’: “What We Do in the Shadows”
The nominees for best drama series are: “Better Call Saul”; “The Crown”; “Killing Eve”; “The Handmaid’s Tale”; “The Mandalorian”; “Ozark”; “Stranger Things”; “Succession.”
The nominees for drama series actress are: Jennifer Aniston, “The Morning Show”; Olivia Colman, “The Crown”; Jodie Comer, “Killing Eve”; Laura Linney, “Ozark”; Sandra Oh, “Killing Eve”; Zendaya “Euphoria.”
The nominees for drama series actor are: Jason Bateman, “Ozark”; Sterling K. Brown, “This is Us”; Billy Porter, “Pose”; Jeremy Strong, “Succession”; Brian Cox, “Succession”; Steve Carell, “The Morning Show.”
The nominees for lead actor in a comedy series are: Anthony Anderson, “black-ish”; Don Cheadle, “Black Monday”; Ted Danson, “The Good Place”; Michael Douglas, “The Kominsky Method”; Eugene Levy, “Schitt’s Creek”; Ramy Youssef, “Ramy.
The nominees for lead actress in a comedy series are: Christina Applegate, “Dead to Me”; Rachel Brosnahan, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”; Linda Cardellini, “Dead to Me”; Catherine O’Hara, “Schitt’s Creek”; Issa Rae, “Insecure”; Tracee Ellis Ross, “black-ish.”
A high energy Jones kicked off the announcement Tuesday morning by appearing on a virtual set and joking that she was told there would be many others on set to announce the nominees and that she was locked in a studio with only a camerman.
The Emmy Awards, hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, will be presented Sept. 20 on ABC.
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Partial list of nominees for the annual prime-time Emmy Awards, announced Tuesday by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. For the complete list, visit Emmys.com: Comedy series: “Curb Your Enthusiasm”; Dead to Me”; “The Good Place”; “Insecure”; “The Kominsky Method”; “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”; “Schitt’s Creek”: “What We Do in the Shadows.” Actor, comedy series: Anthony Anderson, “black-ish”; Don Cheadle, “Black Monday”; Ted Danson, “The Good Place”; Michael Douglas, “The Kominsky Method”; Eugene Levy, “Schitt’s Creek”; Ramy Youssef, “Ramy.” Actress, comedy series: Christina Applegate, “Dead to Me;” Rachel Brosnahan, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel;” Linda Cardellini, “Dead to Me;” Catherine O’Hara, “Schitt’s Creek;” Issa Rae, “Insecure;” Tracee Ellis Ross, “black-ish.” Supporting actress, comedy: Yvonne Orji, “Insecure”; Alex Borstein, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”; Betty Gilpin, “GLOW”; Marin Hinkle, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”; Kate McKinnon, “Saturday Night Live”; Cecily Strong, “Saturday Night Live”; D’Arcy Carden, “The Good Place;” Annie Murphy, “Schitt’s Creek.” Supporting actor, comedy: Mahershala Ali, “Ramy”; Alan Arkin, “The Kominsky Method”; Sterling K. Brown, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”; Daniel Levy, “Schitt’s Creek”; Tony Shalhoub, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”; Kenan Thompson, “Saturday Night Live”; William Jackson, “The Good Place”; Andre Braugher, “Brooklyn Nine-Nine.” Drama series: “Better Call Saul”; “The Crown”; “Killing Eve”; “The Handmaid’s Tale”; “The Mandalorian”; “Ozark”; “Stranger Things”; “Succession.” Actor, drama series: Jason Bateman, “Ozark”; Sterling K. Brown, “This is Us”; Billy Porter, “Pose”; Jeremy Strong, “Succession”; Brian Cox, “Succession”; Steve Carell, “The Morning Show.” Actress, drama series: Jennifer Aniston, “The Morning Show”; Olivia Colman, “The Crown”; Jodie Comer, “Killing Eve”; Laura Linney, “Ozark”; Sandra Oh, “Killing Eve”; Zendaya, “Euphoria.” Supporting actor, drama series: Kieran Culkin, “Succession”; Billy Crudup, “The Morning Show”; Giancarlo Esposito, “Better Call Saul”; Bradley Whitford, “The Handmaid’s Tale”; Mark Duplass, “The Morning Show”; Nicholas Braun, “Succession”; Matthew Macfadyen, “Succession”; Jeffery Wright, “Westworld.” Supporting actress, drama series: Helena Bonham Carter, “The Crown”; Laura Dern, “Big Little Lies”; Julia Garner, “Ozark”; Thandie Newton, “Westworld”; Fiona Shaw, “Killing Eve”; Sarah Snook, “Succession”; Meryl Streep, “Big Little Lies”; Samira Wiley, “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Limited series: “Little Fires Everywhere”; “Mrs. America”; “Unbelievable”; “Unorthodox”; “Watchmen.” 
 
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Johnny Depp’s libel case against a British tabloid that accused him of abusing ex-wife Amber Heard was wrapping up Tuesday after three weeks of court hearings that dissected a toxic celebrity love affair.
The “Pirates of the Caribbean” star is suing News Group Newspapers, publisher of The Sun, and the newspaper’s executive editor, Dan Wootton, at the High Court in London over an April 2018 article that called him a “wife-beater.”  
In closing arguments, Depp’s lawyer, David Sherborne, said the actor strongly denied “this reputation-destroying, career-ending allegation.”
Once Sherborne is finished, judge Andrew Nicol will retire to sift claim and counterclaim as he considers his verdict. He is expected to hand down his ruling in several weeks.What Is The Judge Deciding?
Neither Depp nor Heard is on trial, though it has been easy to forget that during a case that raked over messy details of the couple’s volatile relationship.
Depp is the claimant in the civil case, NGN and Wootton are the defendants and Heard is their main witness. To defeat Depp’s libel claim, the newspaper must persuade the judge that, on the balance of probabilities, its story was accurate.
NGN’s lawyer, Sasha Wass, said in her summing-up that there was no doubt Depp “regularly and systematically abused his wife” and so the “wife-beater” label was justified.
But Sherborne said The Sun’s article — which urged J.K. Rowling to have Depp fired from the movie version of her book “Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them” — gave the false impression Depp had been “tried, convicted and sentenced” for domestic violence.
“Acting as both judge and jury, the defendants plainly and squarely state that Mr. Depp is guilty (of a) series of serious and violent criminal offenses,” he said.What Is In Dispute?
The two sides agree that the relationship between Depp and Heard, which began after they met on the set of 2011 comedy “The Rum Diary,” soured long before they divorced in 2017. Texts, emails and recordings attest to the increasingly bitter relations between Depp, now 57, and the 34-year-old model and actress.
But they disagree completely over who started and escalated their fights.
Depp denies Heard’s claim of 14 separate incidents in which he allegedly hit, slapped and shoved her, pulled her hair and threw bottles at her “like grenades.” The judge was shown photos of Heard with black eyes, red marks on her face and an injured scalp — alleged evidence of Depp’s violence.
Depp said the photos were part of a “dossier” of fake evidence and claimed that Heard hit him, even severing the tip of his finger with a thrown vodka bottle. Under cross-examination Depp admitted headbutting Heard during a tussle, but said it was by accident as he tried to stop her punching him.
Heard acknowledged having a short temper and said she punched Depp once in March 2015. But she said it was to prevent him hitting her sister.What Have We Learned?
The trial has provided an up-close and often unflattering look at Hollywood stardom, revealing details of Depp’s life of wealth, luxury, emotional turmoil and substance abuse.
Mark Stephens, a media lawyer at law firm Howard Kennedy, said the sensational case “has all of the hallmarks of the Roman arena.”
“People will remember this case not for the results, but for the evidence — the rather nasty, gory evidence — that was involved,” he said.
The settings for the disintegrating relationship were as glamorous as the allegations were sordid. The alleged assaults took place on Depp’s private island in the Bahamas, a Los Angeles penthouse, a luxury train and a private jet.
Depp said in the witness box that he had made $650 million since he joined the lucrative “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise — and ended up $100 million in debt after his financial advisers neglected to pay his taxes for 17 years. Friends described Depp as a generous big spender, and he said he’d spent $5 million sending the ashes of his literary hero, drug-fueled journalist Hunter S. Thompson, into space.  
Whichever spouse was to blame, the relationship left a trail of destruction. Damage to a rented house in Australia where the couple had an altercation was estimated at more than $100,000. The couple’s downtown L.A. penthouse was trashed during another argument.
The low point of the relationship, according to Depp, came when excrement was found in a bed at the penthouse. Heard blamed one of the couple’s two Yorkshire terriers, but Depp suspected Heard or one of her friends was to blame.Who Are The Winners And Losers?
British libel law is widely considered to favor claimants over defendants, but Depp could end up a loser even if he wins.
Depp said he sued The Sun because his career had been harmed by Heard’s allegations. But the case has amplified the claims for millions of people around the world, whatever the judge ends up deciding.
“It almost beggars belief that anyone rational has taken this case to court,” Stephens said. “Now, I know that many people say it’s all about vindication. It’s all about proving he’s not a wife beater. But the stakes are very, very high for everybody. And at some level, mud sticks.”
Heard also has had her character questioned and has been accused of fabricating evidence. She was accused by a #MeToo activist, Katherine Kendall, of appropriating a violent rape that happened to Kendall for her own ends.
The most likely winners are Wass and Sherborne, tough lawyers who both made strong cases for their clients. Sherborne also has a starring role in another big celebrity trial — he’s representing the Duchess of Sussex in her lawsuit against the Mail on Sunday newspaper over publication of a private letter she sent to her father Thomas Markle.Will The Verdict Be The End Of The Story?
Not likely. Depp is suing Heard for $50 million in Virginia over a Washington Post story about domestic violence. The trial is due to be held next year.
Stephens said that if Depp “loses in London, he’s almost certain to lose that American case. So this is in some ways a dress rehearsal for the second case.”
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New York state authorities are opening an investigation into a drive-in concert by the musical group the Chainsmokers on Long Island this weekend that did not appear to be adhering to COVID-19 social distancing guidelines.The Saturday concert, which might have had an audience of thousands of people, was intended as a benefit, with proceeds going to charity and took place in the town of Southampton.New York Governor Andrew Cuomo tweeted Monday that videos of the concert “show egregious social distancing violations. I am appalled.” He added that, “The Department of Health will conduct an investigation” and “we have no tolerance for the illegal and reckless endangerment of public health.”The concert, according to its event page, was intended to be a socially-distanced drive-in event with a maximum of 600 vehicles. Attendees were supposed to stay within a certain distance of their car and leave only to use the restroom, in which case they were required to wear a mask.But various clips from the concert show large groups of people standing shoulder to shoulder, many without masks.All non-essential gatherings of over 50 people are banned in New York, with a fine of up to $1,000.New York State Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker sent a letter on Monday about the concert to Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman. In his letter, Zucker said he was “greatly disturbed” by reports of “thousands of people in close proximity, out of their vehicles, a VIP area where there was no pretense of a vehicle, and generally not adhering to social distancing guidance.”He added that he did not know why the concert was “allowed to continue when it became clear violations were rampant.”The U.S. has had over 140,000 COVID-19 deaths. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends social distancing and wearing a mask to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
 
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Bollywood star and former Miss World Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and her 8-year-old daughter have been discharged from a hospital after testing negative for COVID-19, Aishwarya’s husband Abhishek wrote on Twitter.  
 
Abhishek also wrote that he and his father, legendary actor Amitabh Bachchan, remained in the hospital over two weeks after they first tested positive.Thank you all for your continued prayers and good wishes. Indebted forever. 🙏🏽 Aishwarya and Aaradhya have thankfully tested negative and have been discharged from the hospital. They will now be at home. My father and I remain in hospital under the care of the medical staff.— Abhishek Bachchan (@juniorbachchan) July 27, 2020Amitabh Bachchan, who has starred in over 200 Indian films since the early 1970s, tweeted July 11 that he had tested positive for the coronavirus.   
 
He has been a prominent figure in India’s campaign to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus, filming ads about wearing masks and appealing to citizens to stay home.  
 
Still, despite enforcing one of the strictest lockdowns in the world earlier this year, India’s case numbers of COVID-19 are rising.   
 
India has reported over 1,435,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, the third highest case number in the world following the United States and Brazil.
 
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Major League Baseball last week opened its sharply curtailed season nearly four months late because of the coronavirus pandemic. Now one team, the Miami Marlins, has been hit with an outbreak of infections. The Marlins played a three-game weekend series in the eastern city of Philadelphia but canceled its Monday night home opener in Miami against the Baltimore Orioles when eight more players and two coaches tested positive for the coronavirus. The new infections brought the total on the Marlins team to least 14 in recent days. The team stayed in Philadelphia Sunday night as it weighed health precautions. In addition, the Phillies, the Philadelphia team that played the Marlins, called off their Monday night game at home against the New York Yankees. Major League Baseball cut its normal 162-game regular season schedule to 60 games and started the season with empty stadiums in hopes of averting a widespread health disaster. Some reserve players have been sitting in the stands to give their teammates ample room to socially distance in the dugouts. Even so, several star players have contracted the coronavirus, including Freddie Freeman of the Atlanta Braves and Juan Soto of the Washington Nationals, the 2019 World Series champions. Some coaches, players and on-field umpires have been wearing face masks during the opening games. The Toronto Blue Jays were banned by Canadian authorities from playing at its home field. The Canadian government balked at allowing U.S.-based teams from repeatedly crossing the border when it has already blocked U.S. tourists from entering the country. Toronto Blue Jays’ Brandon Drury celebrates with Danny Jansenafter scoring on a two run single by Bo Bichette off Tampa Bay Rays relief pitcher Andrew Kittredge during the sixth inning of a baseball game, July 26, 2020, in Petersburg, Fla.Two other U.S.-dominated professional sports leagues, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League, have opened training camps and hope to restart their seasons in the next few days after halting play for four months. All basketball games are being played in Orlando, Florida, rather than at the normal home arenas of each team, while all hockey games are all being played at arenas in two Canadian cities, Toronto and Edmonton. The National Football League is opening training camps this week but has already canceled the usual four exhibition games each team plays in August in advance of the start of the regular season in September.
   
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Outside, the soundtrack of sirens wailed, each another death blow to the city that had nurtured my development as a musician for so long. But from inside my life on lockdown, an unexpected reconnection to my catalog of sounds was handing me hope for New York’s future.
When I moved here in autumn 1996, as I learned to engineer and produce music, I started recording everything from found sounds to late-night jam sessions to my own dabbling. And I’d saved everything.
In January, my longtime musical collaborator suggested we catalog, curate and upload my decades-rich audio archive to the online music site Bandcamp. Under normal circumstances I would’ve said no; I’d considered those recordings unfinished, meant for private enjoyment and reflection.
But within the context of a pandemic, I pushed aside insecurity and instead saw opportunity.
And so the excavation of long-forgotten boxes began. From their depths came microcassettes. MiniDiscs. CDs. Hard drives. What emerged was a historical document shaped by my personal and professional journey in the city.
To a wide-eyed 23-year-old from Las Cruces, New Mexico, New York offered unexpected adventures and limitless possibilities. Inspiration was always around the corner.  
One night I ended up in the basement of the fabled CBGB, rubbing elbows with Iggy Pop, Joey Ramone and Neil Young while watching Sonic Youth perform a private set. Another evening, I landed in a makeshift studio, deploying my nascent recording skills for a session with Gordon Gano of the Violent Femmes.
New York’s serendipitous moments have long been fueled by the streets and subway tunnels, its arteries. These great equalizers compel coexistence, pushing inhabitants into its daily motion, fabric and swell. What is left when the people — the hemoglobin in this multicultural organism — disappear? Does New York die?
I decided to keep my city alive by revisiting my relationship with it one audio file at a time. Each box I opened yielded a different medium, a different state of mind.
My first instrument was the microcassette recorder. I’d play it like a turntablist, jerking the forward/reverse switch to “scratch” the sounds I’d collect — from a radiator to a frozen lake to a revving engine. I found recordings of interviews I’d conducted with artists including Mike Patton, Marc Ribot and Latin Playboys.  
A synergy was taking place, I realize now. Journalism was granting me access to master classes on songwriting and production; I would use what I’d learned to feed myself and The Associated Press, where I became de facto in-house composer and created music tracks for our journalism.
Sitting in my studio surrounded by artifacts, I pieced together a memoir from lo-fi samples and Alan Lomax-inspired field recordings: Mexican songs from family singalongs. Church hymns sung by relatives. Rancheras played by prison inmates in Juarez, Mexico, where I was researching a documentary.
As lockdown days dragged on, I dug deeper. Next up: nested folders inside my first laptop, the Apple Powerbook G3, the model used by Sarah Jessica Parker’ in “Sex and the City.” While Carrie Bradshaw was recording observations on romance, I was sampling, layering and manipulating New York’s sounds in ways unimaginable prior to 1998.
The laptop would become my mobile recording studio — and, in the mid-2000s, my ticket into music venues and apartments of the musicians who appeared on my AP podcast, “One Mic, One Song.”
As I listened to the episode featuring Lila Downs, who displayed her range with a jaw-dropping acapella rendition of “La Noche De Mi Mal,” I thought of my late parents, who grew up listening to its songwriter, Jose Alfredo Jimenez.
Their voices, prominent throughout my archive, were fresh in my mind alongside the countless other people who have participated in — and defined — the soundtrack of my life in New York City.
During the past four months, we have each sought refuge in different ways. I found mine. I have reframed my New York narrative, moment by unearthed moment. Along the way, I’ve discovered a years-long song that I never realized I was writing.
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So you’ve probably read a lot about “cancel culture.” Or know about a new poll that shows a plurality of Americans disapproving of it. Or you may have heard about a letter in Harper’s Magazine condemning censorship and intolerance.  
But can you say exactly what “cancel culture” is? Some takes:  
— “It seems like a buzzword that creates more confusion than clarity,” says the author and journalist George Packer, who went on to call it “a mechanism where a chorus of voices, amplified on social media, tries to silence a point of view that they find offensive by trying to damage or destroy the reputation of the person who has given offense.”
— “I don’t think it’s real. But there are reasonable people who believe in it,” says the author, educator and sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom. “From my perspective, accountability has always existed. But some people are being held accountable in ways that are new to them. We didn’t talk about ‘cancel culture’ when someone was charged with a crime and had to stay in jail because they couldn’t afford the bail.”
— “‘Cancel culture’ tacitly attempts to disable the ability of a person with whom you disagree to ever again be taken seriously as a writer/editor/speaker/activist/intellectual, or in the extreme, to be hired or employed in their field of work,” says Letty Cottin Pogrebin, the author, activist and founding editor of Ms. magazine.
— “It means different things to different people,” says Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.  
In tweets, online letters, opinion pieces and books, conservatives, centrists and liberals continue to denounce what they call growing intolerance for opposing viewpoints and the needless ruining of lives and careers. A Politico/Morning Consult poll released last week shows 44% of Americans disapprove of it, 32% approve and the remaining 24% had no opinion or didn’t know what it was.
For some, “cancel culture” is the coming of the thought police. For others, it contains important chances to be heard that didn’t exist before.  
Recent examples of unpopular “cancellations” include the owner of a chain of food stores in Minneapolis whose business faced eviction and calls for boycotts because of racist social media posts by his then-teenage daughter, and a data analyst fired by the progressive firm Civis Analytics after he tweeted a study finding that nonviolent protests increase support for Democratic candidates and violent protests decrease it. Civis Analytics has denied he was fired for the tweet.
“These incidents damage the lives of innocent people without achieving any noble purpose,” Yascha Mounk wrote in The Atlantic last month. Mounk himself has been criticized for alleging that “an astonishing number of academics and journalists proudly proclaim that it is time to abandon values like due process and free speech.”
Debates can be circular and confusing, with those objecting to intolerance sometimes openly uncomfortable with those who don’t share their views. A few weeks ago, more than 100 artists and thinkers endorsed a letter co-written by Packer and published by Harper’s. It warned against a “new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity.”
The letter drew signatories from many backgrounds and political points of view, ranging from the far-left Noam Chomsky to the conservative David Frum, and was a starting point for contradiction.  
The writer and trans activist Jennifer Finney Boylan, who signed the letter, quickly disowned it because she “did not know who else” had attached their names. Although endorsers included Salman Rushdie, who in 1989 was forced into hiding over death threats from Iranian Islamic leaders because of his novel “The Satanic Verses,” numerous online critics dismissed the letter as a product of elitists who knew nothing about censorship.
One of the organizers of the letter, the writer Thomas Chatterton Williams, later announced on Twitter that he had thrown a guest out of his home over criticisms of letter-supporter Bari Weiss, the New York Times columnist who recently quit over what she called a Twitter-driven culture of political correctness. Another endorser, “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling, threatened legal action against a British news site that suggested she was transphobic after referring to controversial tweets that she has written in recent months.
“The only speech these powerful people seem to care about is their own,” the author and feminist Jessica Valenti wrote in response to the Harper’s letter. “(‘Cancel culture’ ) is certainly not about free speech: After all, an arrested journalist is never referred to as ‘canceled,’ nor is a woman who has been frozen out of an industry after complaining about sexual harassment. ‘Canceled’ is a label we all understand to mean a powerful person who’s been held to account.”
“Cancel culture” is hard to define, in part because there is nothing confined about it — no single cause, no single ideology, no single fate for those allegedly canceled.This combination photo shows, from left, morning news show anchors Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose, filmmaker Woody Allen and actor Kevin Spacey, who have all been accused of sexual abuse and harassment.Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby, convicted sex offenders, are in prison. Former television personality Charlie Rose has been unemployable since allegations of sexual abuse and harassment were published in 2017-18. Oscar winner Kevin Spacey has made no films since he faced allegations of harassment and assault and saw his performance in “All the Money in the World” replaced by Christopher Plummer’s.
Others are only partially “canceled.” Woody Allen, accused by daughter Dylan Farrow of molesting her when she was 7, was dropped by Amazon, his U.S. film distributor, but continues to release movies overseas. His memoir was canceled by Hachette Book Group, but soon acquired by Skyhorse Publishing, which also has a deal with the previously “canceled” Garrison Keillor. Sirius XM announced last week that the late Michael Jackson, who seemed to face posthumous cancellation after the 2019 documentary “Leaving Neverland” presented extensive allegations that he sexually abused boys, would have a channel dedicated to his music.  
Cancellation in one subculture can lead to elevation in others. Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has not played an NFL game since 2016 and has been condemned by President Donald Trump and many others on the right after he began kneeling during the National Anthem to protest “a country that oppresses black people and people of color.” But he has appeared in Nike advertisements, been honored by the ACLU and Amnesty International and reached an agreement with the Walt Disney Co. for a series about his life.
“You can say the NFL canceled Colin Kaepernick as a quarterback and that he was resurrected as a cultural hero,” says Julius Bailey, an associate professor of philosophy at Wittenberg University who writes about Kaepernick in his book “Racism, Hypocrisy and Bad Faith.”
In politics, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, a Democrat, remains in his job 1 1/2 years after acknowledging he appeared in a racist yearbook picture while in college. Sen. Al Franken, a Democrat from Minnesota, resigned after multiple women alleged he had sexually harassed them, but Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax of Virginia defied orders to quit after two women accused him of sexual assault.
Sometimes even multiple allegations of sexual assault, countless racist remarks and the disparagement of wounded military veterans aren’t enough to induce cancellation. Trump, a Republican, has labeled cancel culture “far-left fascism” and “the very definition of totalitarianism” while so far proving immune to it.
“Politicians can ride this out because they were hired by the public. And if the public is willing to go along, then they can sometimes survive things perhaps they shouldn’t survive,” Packer says.
“I think you can say that Trump’s rhetoric has had a boomerang effect on the rest of our society,” says PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel, who addresses free expression in her book “Dare to Speak,” which comes out next week. “People on the left feel that he can get away with anything, so they do all they can to contain it elsewhere.” 
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A lawyer for British tabloid The Sun said Monday that Johnny Depp abused Amber Heard during their relationship, committing acts of violence fueled by misogyny and unleashed by addiction to alcohol and drugs.
Attorney Sasha Wass was summing up at Depp’s libel case against the newspaper over an article alleging he physically abused ex-wife Heard — a high-stakes celebrity trial in which the reputations of both former spouses are at stake.
Depp is suing News Group Newspapers, publisher of The Sun, and the newspaper’s executive editor, Dan Wootton, at the High Court in London over an April 2018 article, which called him a “wife-beater.” He strongly denies being violent to Heard.
The case is due to end Tuesday, but judge Andrew Nicol is not expected to deliver his ruling for several weeks.
In closing arguments, Wass said the newspaper’s defense “is one of truth — namely that Mr. Depp did indeed beat his wife.”
Wass said there was “overwhelming evidence of domestic violence or wife-beating behavior, cataloged over a three-year period.”
She said Depp was “a hopeless addict who repeatedly lost his self-control and all ability to restrain his anger.”
“Permeating all of the evidence in this case is the character of Mr. Depp himself — his well-documented evidence of violence and destruction over his adult life which have occurred when he was under the influence of drink and drugs.”
She said Depp “was subject to irrational mood swings and abnormal behavioral patterns, which would not have been present when Mr. Depp was clean and sober, and Mr. Depp has a name for this metamorphosed entity — namely, The Monster.”
Depp, 57, and Heard, 34, met on the set of the 2011 comedy “The Rum Diary” and married in Los Angeles in February 2015. Heard filed for divorce the following year, and the divorce was finalized in 2017.
The former spouses have both been in court throughout three weeks of testimony at the grand neo-Gothic court building, though Depp did not attend on Monday morning. His lawyer is due to sum up on Tuesday.
Lawyers, journalists and members of the public have heard lurid details of the couple’s tempestuous relationship, including prodigious drinking and drug consumption, furious arguments, hurled objects and a deposit of excrement left in a bed — whether by dog or human is disputed.
The Sun’s defense relies on 14 allegations made by Heard of Depp’s violence between 2013 and 2016, in settings including his private island in the Bahamas, a rented house in Australia — where Depp’s finger was severed in contested circumstances — and the couple’s downtown Los Angeles penthouse, which was trashed during the couple’s altercations.
Wass said that the first year of the couple’s relationship, during which Depp was sober, was “idyllic,” but that the violence started in 2013 after he relapsed.
During four days in the witness box last week, Heard claimed Depp flew into jealous rages and turned into violent alter ego the “Monster” under the influence of alcohol and drugs. She accused him of slapping and hitting her and throwing bottles at her “like grenades,” and claimed that she often feared for her life during their relationship.
Heard’s evidence was backed by witnesses including her sister Whitney Henriquez, who said she had seen Depp hit Heard “multiple times” during a fracas at the couple’s Los Angeles apartment in March 2015.
Depp, who gave evidence for almost five days, denies all the allegations and claims Heard was the aggressor during their volatile relationship, which he has likened to “a crime scene waiting to happen.” Several current or former employees gave evidence backing his version of events, and former romantic partners Vanessa Paradis and Winona Ryder said in written witness statements that he had never been violent to them.
He acknowledged using a wide variety of drugs including marijuana, cocaine and opioid painkillers, but denied drugs made him violent.
Summarizing the defense case, Wass said that “a deep misogyny … lay at the root of Mr. Depp’s anger.”
“He created a misogynistic persona of (Heard) as the stereotype of a nagging woman,” Wass said. She said Depp branded Heard “a gold-digger, a shrew and an adulterer” in order to discredit
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President Donald Trump won’t be throwing out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium next month after all.Trump tweeted Sunday that he won’t be able to make the trip because of his “strong focus” on the coronavirus, vaccines and the economy. Trump said in the tweet: “We will make it later in the season!”  He had announced at a briefing Thursday on Major League Baseball’s opening day that he’d be at Yankee Stadium on Aug. 15 to throw out the first pitch.Trump has been trying to show voters that he is taking the virus seriously by holding briefings and canceling Republican convention events set for Jacksonville, Florida. Florida is among several states where the virus is raging. 
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Olivia de Havilland, the doe-eyed actress beloved to millions as the sainted Melanie Wilkes of “Gone With the Wind,” but also a two-time Oscar winner and an off-screen fighter who challenged and unchained Hollywood’s contract system, died Sunday at her home in Paris. She was 104.  Havilland, the sister of fellow Oscar winner Joan Fontaine, died peacefully of natural causes, said New York-based publicist Lisa Goldberg.De Havilland was among the last of the top screen performers from the studio era, and the last surviving lead from “Gone With the Wind,” an irony, she once noted, since the fragile, self-sacrificing Wilkes was the only major character to die in the film. The 1939 epic, based on Margaret Mitchell’s best-selling Civil War novel and winner of 10 Academy Awards, is often ranked as Hollywood’s box office champion (adjusting for inflation), although it is now widely condemned for its glorified portrait of slavery and antebellum life.The pinnacle of producer David O. Selznick’s career, the movie had a troubled off-screen story.  Three directors worked on the film, stars Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable were far more connected on screen than off and the fourth featured performer, Leslie Howard, was openly indifferent to the role of Ashley Wilkes, Melanie’s husband. But de Havilland remembered the movie as “one of the happiest experiences I’ve ever had in my life. It was doing something I wanted to do, playing a character I loved and liked.”During a career that spanned six decades, de Havilland also took on roles ranging from an unwed mother to a psychiatric inmate in “The Snake Pit,” a personal favorite. The dark-haired De Havilland projected both a gentle, glowing warmth and a sense of resilience and mischief that made her uncommonly appealing, leading critic James Agee to confess he was “vulnerable to Olivia de Havilland in every part of my being except the ulnar nerve.”She was Errol Flynn’s co-star in a series of dramas, Westerns and period pieces, most memorably as Maid Marian in “The Adventures of Robin Hood.” But De Havilland also was a prototype for an actress too beautiful for her own good, typecast in sweet and romantic roles while desiring greater challenges.  Her frustration finally led her to sue Warner Bros. in 1943 when the studio tried to keep her under contract after it had expired, claiming she owed six more months because she had been suspended for refusing roles. Her friend Bette Davis was among those who had failed to get out of her contract under similar conditions in the 1930s, but de Havilland prevailed, with the California Court of Appeals ruling that no studio could extend an agreement without the performer’s consent.  The decision is still unofficially called the “De Havilland law.”De Havilland went on to earn her own Academy Award in 1946 for her performance in “To Each His Own,” a melodrama about out-of-wedlock birth. A second Oscar came three years later for “The Heiress,” in which she portrayed a plain young homebody (as plain as it was possible to make de Havilland) opposite Montgomery Clift and Sir Ralph Richardson in an adaptation of Henry James’ “Washington Square.” In 2008, de Havilland received a National Medal of Arts and was awarded France’s Legion of Honor two years later.She was also famous, not always for the better, as the sister of Fontaine, with whom she had a troubled relationship. In a 2016 interview, de Havilland referred to her late sister as “Dragon Lady” and said her memories of Fontaine, who died in 2013, were “multi-faceted, varying from endearing to alienating.””On my part, it was always loving, but sometimes estranged and, in the later years, severed,” she said. “Dragon Lady, as I eventually decided to call her, was a brilliant, multi-talented person, but with an astigmatism in her perception of people and events which often caused her to react in an unfair and even injurious way.”De Havilland once observed that Melanie Wilkes’ happiness was sustained by a loving, secure family, a blessing that eluded the actress even in childhood.  She was born in Tokyo on July 1, 1916, the daughter of a British patent attorney. Her parents separated when she was 3, and her mother brought her and her younger sister Joan, to Saratoga, California. De Havilland’s own two marriages, to Marcus Goodrich and Pierre Galante, ended in divorce.Her acting ambitions dated back to stage performing at Mills College in Oakland, California. While preparing for a school production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” she went to Hollywood to see Max Reinhardt’s rehearsals of the same comedy. She was asked by to read for Hermia’s understudy, stayed with the production through her summer vacation and was given the role in the fall.Warner Bros. wanted stage actors for their lavish 1935 production and chose de Havilland to co-star with Mickey Rooney, who played Puck.”II wanted to be a stage actress,” she recalled. “Life sort of made the decision for me.”She signed a five-year contract with the studio and went on to make “Captain Blood,” “Dodge City” and other films with Flynn, a hopeless womanizer even by Hollywood standards.”Oh, Errol had such magnetism! There was nobody who did what he did better than he did,” said de Havilland, whose bond with the dashing actor remained, she would insist, improbably platonic. As she once explained, “We were lovers together so often on the screen that people could not accept that nothing had happened between us.”She did date Howard Hughes and James Stewart and had an intense affair in the early ’40s with John Huston. Their relationship led to conflict with Davis, her co-star for the Huston-directed “In This Our Life”; Davis would complain that de Havilland, a supporting actress in the film, was getting greater and more flattering time on camera.De Havilland allegedly never got along with Fontaine, a feud magnified by the 1941 Oscar race that placed her against her sister for best actress honors. Fontaine was nominated for the Hitchcock thriller “Suspicion” while de Havilland was cited for “Hold Back the Dawn, a drama co-written by Billy Wilder and starring de Havilland as a school teacher wooed by the unscrupulous Charles Boyer.Asked by a gossip columnist if they ever fought, de Havilland responded, “Of course, we fight. What two sisters don’t battle?” Like a good Warner Bros soap opera, their relationship was a juicy narrative of supposed slights and snubs, from de Havilland reportedly refusing to congratulate Fontaine for winning the Oscar to Fontaine making a cutting crack about de Havilland’s poor choice of agents and husbands.Though she once filmed as many as three pictures a year, her career slowed in middle age. She made several movies for television, including “Roots” and “Charles and Diana,” in which she portrayed the Queen Mother. She also co-starred with Davis in the macabre camp classic “Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte” and was menaced by a young James Caan in the 1964 chiller “Lady in a Cage,” condemning her tormenter as “one of the many bits of offal produced by the welfare state.”  In 2009, she narrated a documentary about Alzheimer’s, “I Remember Better When I Paint.” Catherine Zeta-Jones played de Havilland in the 2017 FX miniseries about Davis and Joan Crawford, but de Havilland objected to being portrayed as a gossip and sued FX. The case was dismissed.Despite her chronic stage fright, she did summer stock in Westport, Connecticut, and Easthampton, New York. Moviemaking, she said, produced a different kind of anxiety: “The first day of making a film I feel, `Why did I ever get mixed up in this profession? I have no talent; this time they’ll find out.'” 
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Britain’s Prince Harry took offence at what he thought was Prince William’s “snobbishness” when he advised his brother to “take as much time as you need to get to know this girl” when he was dating Meghan Markle, a new book says.Harry and his wife, Meghan, have distanced themselves from the book called “Finding Freedom,” saying they were not interviewed for the biography being serialized by The Times and The Sunday Times newspapers and made no contributions to it.The book documents, citing sources, a time when Harry and Meghan were dating and William wanted to make sure the American actress had the right intentions, The Sunday Times said.”Don’t feel you need to rush this,” William told Harry, according to sources cited by the book. “Take as much time as you need to get to know this girl.”The Sunday Times said Harry heard a tone of snobbishness in the last two words, “this girl”, and that Harry no longer felt he needed looking after.The couple and their son, Archie, now live in Los Angeles after they stepped down from their royal roles in March to forge new careers. In January they announced plans to lead a more independent life and to finance it themselves. Harry and Meghan married in May 2018 in a wedding heralded at the time as infusing a blast of Hollywood glamour and modernity into the British monarchy and which made them one of the world’s biggest celebrity couples. 
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Peter Green, the dexterous blues guitarist who led the first incarnation of Fleetwood Mac in a career shortened by psychedelic drugs and mental illness, has died at 73.A law firm representing his family, Swan Turton, announced the death in a statement Saturday. It said he died peacefully in his sleep? this weekend. A further statement will be issued in the coming days.Green, to some listeners, was the best of the British blues guitarists of the 1960s. B.B. King once said Greenhas the sweetest tone I ever heard. He was the only one who gave me the cold sweats.”Green also made a mark as a composer with Albatross,'' and as a songwriter withOh Well” and Black Magic Woman.''  He crashed out of the band in 1971. Even so, Mick Fleetwood said in an interview with The Associated Press in 2017 that Green deserves the lion's share of the credit for the band's success.Peter was asked why did he call the band Fleetwood Mac. He said, Well, you know I thought maybe I'd move on at some point and I wanted Mick and John (McVie) to have a band.' End of story, explaining how generous he was,'' said Fleetwood, who described Green as a standout in an era of great guitar work.Indeed, Green was so fundamental to the band that in its early days it was called Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac.Peter Allen Greenbaum was born on Oct. 29, 1946, in London. The gift of a cheap guitar put the 10-year-old Green on a musical path.He was barely out of his teens when he got his first big break in 1966, replacing Eric Clapton in John Mayall's Bluesbreakers _ initially for just a week in 1965 after Clapton abruptly took off for a Greek holiday. Clapton quit for good soon after and Green was in.In the Bluesbreakers he was reunited with Mick Fleetwood, a former colleague in Peter B's Looners. Mayall added bass player McVie soon after.The three departed the next year, forming the core of the band initially billed as ``Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac featuring (guitarist) Jeremy Spencer.''Fleetwood Mac made its debut at the British Blues and Jazz festival in the summer of 1967, which led to a recording contract, then an eponymous first album in February 1968. The album, which included ``Long Grey Mare'' and three other songs by Green, stayed on the British charts for 13 months.  The band's early albums were heavy blues-rock affairs marked by Green's fluid, evocative guitar style and gravelly vocals. Notable singles included ``Oh Well'' and the Latin-flavored ``Black Magic Woman,'' later a hit for Carlos Santana.But as the band flourished, Green became increasingly erratic, even paranoid. Drugs played a part in his unraveling.On a tour in California, Green became acquainted with Augustus Owsley Stanley III, notorious supplier of powerful LSD to the The Grateful Dead and Ken Kesey, the anti-hero of Tom Wolfe's book ``The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.''  ``He was taking a lot of acid and mescaline around the same time his illness began manifesting itself more and more,'' Fleetwood said in 2015. ``We were oblivious as to what schizophrenia was back in those days but we knew something was amiss.''``Green Manalishi,'' Green's last single for the band, reflected his distress.In an interview with Johnny Black for Mojo magazine, Green said: ``I was dreaming I was dead and I couldn't move, so I fought my way back into my body. I woke up and looked around. It was very dark and I found myself writing a song. It was about money;The Green Manalishi’ is money.”In some of his last appearances with the band, he wore a monk’s robe and a crucifix. Fearing that he had too much money, he tried to persuade other band members to give their earnings to charities.Green left Fleetwood Mac for good in 1971.In his absence, the band’s new line-up, including Christine McVie, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, gained enormous success with a more pop-tinged sound.  
 
Green was confined in a mental hospital in 1977 after an incident with his manager. Testimony in court said Green had asked for money and then threatened to shoot out the windows of the manager’s office.  Green was released later in the year, and married Jane Samuels, a Canadian, in 1978. They had a daughter, Rosebud, and divorced the following year. Green also has a son, Liam Firlej.  Green returned to performing in the 1990s with the Peter Green Splinter Group.  In 1998, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame along with other past and present members of Fleetwood Mac.
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Regis Philbin, the genial host who shared his life with television viewers over morning coffee for decades and helped himself and some fans strike it rich with the game show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” has died at 88, People magazine reported.Philbin died Friday, just more than a month before his 89th birthday. He died of natural causes, according to a family statement to the magazine.Celebrities routinely stopped by Philbin’s eponymous syndicated morning show, but its heart was in the first 15 minutes, when he and co-host Kathie Lee Gifford — on “Live! with Regis and Kathie Lee” from 1985 to 2000 — or Kelly Ripa — on “Live! with Regis and Kelly” from 2001 until his 2011 retirement — bantered about the events of the day. Viewers laughed at Philbin’s mock indignation over not getting the best seat at a restaurant the night before or being henpecked by his partner.FILE – Co-hosts Regis Philbin and Kathie Lee Gifford share a champagne toast at the end of her last appearance on their morning talk show, in New York, July 28, 2000.”Even I have a little trepidation,” he told The Associated Press in 2008, when asked how he does a show every day. “You wake up in the morning and you say, ‘What did I do last night that I can talk about? What’s new in the paper? How are we gonna fill that 20 minutes?’ “”I’m not gonna say it always works out brilliantly, but somehow we connect more often than we don’t,” he added.After hustling into an entertainment career by parking cars at a Los Angeles TV station, Philbin logged more than 15,000 hours on the air, earning him recognition in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most broadcast hours logged by a TV personality, a record previously held by Hugh Downs.”Every day, you see the record shattered, pal!” Philbin would tell viewers. “One more hour!”He was host of the prime-time game show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” briefly television’s most popular show at the turn of the century. ABC aired the family-friendly program as often as five times a week. It generated around $1 billion in revenue in its first two years — ABC had said it was among the most profitable shows in TV history — and helped make Philbin himself a millionaire many times over.’Is that your final answer?’Philbin’s question to contestants, “Is that your final answer?” became a national catchphrase. Philbin was even a fashion trendsetter; he put out a line of monochromactic shirts and ties to match what he wore on the set.”You wait a lifetime for something like that and sometimes it never happens,” Philbin told the AP in 1999.In 2008, he returned briefly to the quiz show format with “Million Dollar Password.” He also picked up the Lifetime Achievement Award from the daytime Emmys.He was the type of TV personality easy to make fun of, and easy to love.When his son Danny first met his future wife, “we were talking about our families,” Danny told USA Today. “I said, ‘You know that show “Regis and Kathie Lee”?’ And she said, ‘I hate that show.’ And I said, ‘That’s my dad.’ “FILE – Regis and Joy Philbin attend a special screening of “The Hero” at the Whitby Hotel, June 7, 2017, in New York.Yet Philbin was a favorite of a younger generation’s ironic icon, David Letterman. When Letterman announced that he had to undergo heart surgery, it was on the air to Philbin, who was also there for Letterman’s first day back after his recovery.Letterman returned the favor, appearing on Philbin’s show when he went back on the air in April 2007 after undergoing heart bypass surgery.In the 2008 AP interview, Philbin said he saw “getting the best out of your guests” as “a specialty. … The time constraints mean you’ve got to get right to the point, you’ve got to make it pay off, go to commercial, start again. Play that clip. Say goodbye.” He gave his desktop a decisive rap.”And make it all conversational.”Regis Francis Xavier Philbin grew up in the New York borough of the Bronx, the son of Italian-Irish parents and named for the Roman Catholic boys high school his dad attended. He went to Notre Dame University, and was such an enthusiastic alum, he once said he wanted his ashes scattered there.After leaving the Navy in 1955, Philbin talked his way into a meeting with the stationmaster at KCOP-TV in Los Angeles. He got a job parking cars, then progressed into work as a stagehand, courier, newswriter and producer of a sports telecast. When its sportscaster didn’t show up one day, Philbin filled in.Program in San DiegoPhilbin got far more on-air experience in San Diego in the early 1960s, when KOGO-TV began producing “The Regis Philbin Show” for a national audience. The program of music and celebrity interviews was taped two weeks before each airing. It was canceled after four months.In 1967, Philbin was hired as the announcer and sidekick to comic Joey Bishop on his network show. When he heard that he was going to be fired because of poor ratings, Philbin tearfully announced he was leaving on July 12, 1968, walking off during a live broadcast. He returned three days later after letters of support poured in.He and Bishop had bad blood: Bishop called Philbin an “ingrate” for walking off during a salary dispute and later badmouthing him.Philbin’s second wife, Joy, was Bishop’s assistant.After three years of commuting to St. Louis each week for a local Saturday night show, Philbin became a star in local morning television — first in Los Angeles, then in New York. In 1985, he teamed with Kathie Lee Johnson, a year before she married former football star Frank Gifford, and the show went national in 1988.The gentle bickering and eye-rolling exasperation in Philbin and Gifford’s onscreen relationship was familiar to anyone in a long-lasting relationship.”No arguments, no harsh words in all this time,” Philbin told a theater audience in 2000. “Well, there was the time I didn’t talk to her for two weeks. Didn’t want to interrupt her.”FILE – Regis Philbin laughs with co-host Kelly Ripa during a broadcast of “Live! with Regis and Kelly,” Feb. 5, 2001, in New York.Gifford left the show in 2000. After a tryout period for a replacement, soap star Ripa (“All My Children”) filled the slot.The same hustler who parked cars in Hollywood worked just as hard to land the job on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.”  “I begged my way on,” he told People magazine. “There was a short list, and I wasn’t on it. I called my agent, and we made a full assault on ABC in L.A.”The audience responded to Philbin’s warm, comic touch in the role. He later jokingly referred to himself as the man who saved ABC. It wasn’t complete hyperbole: ABC was suffering in the ratings before the game became a smash success. Forbes reported that two-thirds of ABC’s operating profit in 2000 was due to “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.”Philbin appeared to love every minute of it. Even the ultimate arbiter of hip, the MTV Video Awards, asked him to make an appearance.’No more mountains'”It’s better to be hot,” he told the AP. “It’s fun. I know this business. I was perfectly content with my morning show. People would ask me, ‘What’s next?’ There is nothing next. There are no more mountains for me to climb. Believe me when I tell you, all I wanted when I started this show in 1961 was to be a success nationally.”The prime-time game burned out quickly because of overuse and ended in 2002.Philbin enjoyed a side career as a singer that began when he sang “Pennies from Heaven” to Bing Crosby on Bishop’s show. He said a record company called him the next day, and he made an album.Even though the series “Regis Philbin’s Health Styles,” on Lifetime in the 1980s, was part of his lengthy resume, Philbin had health issues. Doctors performed an angioplasty to relieve a blocked artery in 1993. He underwent bypass surgery in 2007 at age 75.He’s survived by his wife, Joy, and their daughters J.J. and Joanna Philbin, as well as his daughter Amy Philbin with his first wife, Catherine Faylen, according to People.
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