[There’s been] a bit of a debate about Johnson’s ideological record. Just how conservative is he? A look at the data reveals that Johnson is most certainly well to the right of the median American voter. But he is actually fairly close to the center of a Republican Party that has shifted further right in recent years.
Consider what most people have learned about Johnson: He is an ardent defender of former President Donald Trump and was a key figure in the efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Joe Biden, of course, was the legitimate winner of that election, and there is no real proof that he wasn’t. Most general election voters agree that Biden won the election legitimately. A recent ABC News/Washington Post poll found that just 29% of registered voters feel he didn’t.
Among Republicans, however, 60% of them said Biden’s win wasn’t legitimate, according to that same poll. Only 23% disagreed.
Meanwhile, the overwhelming majority of Republicans (70%) in a recent CNN/SSRS survey indicated that the criminal charges Trump faces over his failed attempts to overturn the 2020 election are not relevant to his fitness to serve another term. Even among the general electorate, just 49% said it should be disqualifying.
Indeed, we can’t forget that a clear majority of House Republicans (139 of them, including Johnson) voted against certifying 2020 election results from at least one state. Their votes were outside the mainstream among all House members but not within the House Republican Conference.
The same is true for an amicus brief that Johnson led supporting an effort to get the Supreme Court to overturn the 2020 election results in four Biden-won states. Most House members didn’t sign. A majority of House Republican members (126) did.
The fact is, whether you like it or not, arguing that Biden was the rightful winner of the 2020 election is the minority point of view among Republicans today.
Johnson has also faced criticism for his position on abortion. He co-sponsored a bill to prohibit abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected, usually around six weeks.
A May Gallup poll found that 59% of Americans were opposed to such legislation, with 37% in favor. This lines up with the pro-abortion rights side winning every abortion-related ballot measure since Roe v. Wade was overturned last year, including in several red states.
But take a look at what that same poll found among Republicans: A majority (61%) wanted abortion banned after six weeks. Johnson, again, is within the mainstream of his party.
I could go on and on about Johnson’s record on different issues that many object to, and we’ll find fairly consistently that while he may not be with the median general election voter, he is with the median Republican voter.
This is best seen through aggregate statistics compiled by the academics at Voteview. Since entering the House in 2017, Johnson has built a voting record that is more conservative than 81% of all members currently serving. He is, however, only more conservative than 63% of his GOP colleagues. In other words, 37% of House Republicans are more conservative than the new speaker. That puts Johnson right in the middle third of today’s House Republican Conference.
In fact, Johnson has voted with the Republican majority 94% of the time this Congress. That almost matches the median House Republican member (93%).
To put that in perspective, take a look at failed speaker hopeful Jim Jordan. The Ohio congressman’s voting record is more conservative than 91% of other House Republicans. Unlike Johnson, Jordan really is out of the mainstream not just within Congress overall but the House Republican Conference, as well.
This isn’t to say that Johnson isn’t more conservative than the Republicans of yesteryear. It’s just that Republicans, as a whole, have become more conservative.
For example, Kentucky Rep. Hal Rogers, who was first elected in 1980 and is the longest-serving House Republican incumbent, was more conservative than 59% of GOP members during his first term. He’s more moderate than over 80% of House Republicans today.
And Republican members of Congress remain representative of their voters. According to a 1982 CBS News poll, less than 50% of adults who self-identified as Republican called themselves conservative. This past year, Gallup has found that over 70% of Republicans say they are conservative.
Of course, polls also show that Democrats have become considerably more liberal over the same stretch. As a result, independents, who are about as likely to identify as moderate as they were 40 years ago, probably feel like neither party represents them.
But there are no independents in the House. There are Democrats and Republicans. And it’s in this political universe where someone like Johnson could have attained the House speakership. He’s simply emblematic of today’s GOP.
Enten isn’t being entirely honest with that last “both sides” comment.
Here’s the comparison:
Here it is from a global perspective:
Don’t blame the Democrats for the sharp rise in polarization. The wingnuts have gone full fascist. And a whole lot of Americans think it’s just great.
Trump, who defended his supporters chanting “Hang Mike Pence” during the Jan. 6 insurrection, spoke about the former VP at a campaign event Saturday night shortly after Pence announced the suspension of his campaign.
“People are leaving [the race] now, and they’re all endorsing me,” Trump said at a campaign event in Las Vegas on Saturday night. “I don’t know about Mike Pence. He should endorse me. You know why? Because I had a great successful presidency, and he was the vice president, he should endorse me. I chose him, made him vice president. But… people in politics can be very disloyal. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
There is no limit to the amount of humiliation Mike Pence is willing to suffer at the hands of Donald Trump. I’m only surprised he didn’t announce his endorsement when he dropped out.
Protest votes are not. They only help the worst people.
To anyone contemplating not voting for Biden over the Israel war, it’s probably a good idea to also contemplate what will replace him if you do that:
Trump: All the resident aliens that joined in the pro jihadist protests this month.. Come 2025, we will find you and deport you. pic.twitter.com/n00sGlzSnH
To all those who say that it’s simply too painful for them personally to vote for the lesser of two evils, I’ll just quote that old establishment puppet Noam Chomsky who famously said, “of course you should vote for the lesser of two evils — you get less evil.”
What a healthy church needs, a healthy political party needs too
This message from a retired minister in Knox County, Tennessee has wider application than southern churches:
God may not be dead, but his church is headed for hospice if we don’t get our heads out of our ecclesiastical backsides.
My wife and I visited a mainline church on a Main Street in a deep red southern town last month and found … the audience from a 1972 episode of Lawrence Welk.
Every hymn sounded like a dirge from the funeral I feared we had stumbled in on. But, no, the only thing dying was this church. We couldn’t count five people under the age of 50.
That is a problem Democrats have as well in many places. Political life in this country is dominated by a gerontocracy. That is one reason so many younger people are rejecting political parties and opting to register to vote unaffiliated. If they register. If they vote.
Churchgoing is on a steady decline. Buzz Thomas suggests that if churches don’t evolve, they will die.
That’s why things like the Southern Baptist Convention’s recent decision to oust churches that have women on their pastoral staff makes me think Charles Darwin may have the last laugh. A church foolish enough to discriminate against the gender that does 90% of the work doesn’t deserve to survive.
Thomas offers some suggestions. First churches should stay in their lane and out of politics. That will be a hard sell to white evangelicals threatened by the shifting demographics eroding their cultural/political dominance. Rather than roll with it, they have convinced themselves that God wants them to rule the rest of us whether or not we like it. They are making concerted efforts to make it so.
People with no memory of Lawrence Welk or 9/11 have a deep focus on climate change. Climate denial doesn’t fill pews:
If you want your church to thrive in the 21st century, you’ll also need to brush up on climate change. The number one issue for many young people is the environment. And who can blame them? They’re the ones who must live on this hot, stormy, drought-stricken hellhole we’ve created.
What a healthy church needs, and a healthy political party too, is to let the air in and the stuffiness out:
And perhaps the most important lesson of all. If we want to reach young people, not only must we accept them – be they rich, poor, gay, straight, black, white or anything in between. We must help them. With their careers and their marriages. With child rearing, addiction, loneliness, depression, you name it. The church should be a place where all people can find hope, a sense of purpose and a place to serve.
Church should also be fun. Joyful even.
My pastor says the church should be like an Irish pub. The thing about a good pub is you don’t have to believe in anything or behave in a particular way to go. The first thing is community. Acceptance. Belonging.
A woman here organizes a monthly Dem Happy Hour Social unconnected to the local party committee. People talk politics, sure, but there is no program, no pressure, no volunteer signup sheets. For newcomers, it’s far more welcoming. If they want to get more connected, well, I offer one of my cards.
Younger people will feel more welcome in local Democratic orgainzations if they have paths available to leadership not blocked by sclerotic bureaucrats. They won’t be handed the keys on day one, but they need to see that they’re not being hoarded either.
“If [churches] don’t make some serious adjustments,” Thomas warns, “20 years from now a whole lot of church buildings are going to be restaurants.”
BBC this morning offers drone footage of the destruction in Gaza.
Geopolitically, Israel could no more not retaliate for the Hamas butchery and hostage-taking than the U.S. could brush off the 9/11 attacks. The question in each case was always how.
“While you feel that rage, don’t be consumed by it,” President Joe Biden cautioned on his 7 1/2-hour visit to Israel after seemingly ISIS-inspired Hamas attacks. “After 9/11, we were enraged in the United States. And while we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes.”
Some of us still remember the mistakes. The PATRIOT Act, the Office of Special Plans, “Curveball,” aluminum tubes, yellowcake uranium, Colin Powell’s U.N. address, the Iraq invasion, Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 2, Abu Ghraib, extraordinary rendition, enhanced interrogation techniques, Guantanamo. Plus, “We’re an empire now.“
The Guardian cited that report and followed up, reporting:
The war has sparked a crackdown by the Israeli government against perceived dissent, with hundreds of people arrested or disciplined for speech sympathetic to Gazans. Police have been given wide new powers to determine what applies as “support for terrorism”, and have declared they will not allow solidarity demonstrations in support of Gaza.
If you’ve got a sinking feeling that you picked a bad week to stop sniffing glue, join the club.
Biden has pledged America’s unwavering support for Israel. Does the United States of America support Israel shooting domestic protesters? How far does that unwavering support extend?
What Israel has done is launch its own version of Shock and Awe against Gazans. The BBC this morning offers drone footage of the results to date:
The streets of the city are covered in large piles of rubble from collapsed buildings, and homes can be seen filled with debris, having lost their roofs.
Israel has been bombing Gaza since Hamas militants crossed the border into Israel on October 7 and killed 1,400 people.
This would all play better for Israel on the world stage if we saw the bodies of Hamas fighters on TV, not just Palestinian civilians weeping over their dead and wounded. With Hamas invisible, even if buried in their tunnels beneath hundreds of tons of collapsed apartment blocks, what the world sees is Israel slaughtering civilians and starving the survivors.
One well-educated young woman inside Gaza, Amal, told me over WhatsApp that the victims she knew of were mostly civilians, and she sounded full of despair.
“Constant bombardment has me feeling as if I am not human anymore, as if our souls mean nothing at all,” she told me. “We are being massacred.”
A 16-year-old girl in Gaza offered this message, conveyed through Save the Children: “It’s like we are overpaying the price for a sin we didn’t commit. We were always with peace and will always be.”
As Israel launches ground operations, even if necessary for its security, is eradicating Hamas even possible? And when, not if, Israel withdraws, then what? Who will step in to fill the power vacuum? No regional player wants to.
I’m skeptical, and when I hear backers of an invasion speak of removing Hamas I have the same sinking feeling as when I heard hawks in 2002 and 2003 cheerily promising to liberate Iraq. Just because it would be good to eliminate a brutal regime doesn’t mean it is readily achievable; the Taliban can confirm that.
Then there is the moral cost Israel (and the U.S.) will pay for managing this response badly:
The second prism through which to consider the Gaza war is a moral one, for we have values as well as interests. Decades from now when we look back at this moment, I suspect it’s the moral failures that we may most regret — the inability of some on the left (and many in the Arab world) to condemn the barbaric Oct. 7 attacks on Israelis, and the acceptance by so many Americans and Israelis that countless children and civilians must pay with their lives in what Netanyahu described as Israel’s “mighty vengeance.”
When Israeli Jews were asked in a poll whether the suffering of Palestinian civilians should be taken into account in planning the war on Gaza, 83 percent said “not at all” or “not so much.” I can’t help feeling that while we say that all lives have equal value, President Biden has likewise greatly prioritized Israeli children over Gazan children.
[…]
Every account I’ve heard from Gaza this past week, including directly from people there who despise Hamas, suggests that the civilian toll there has been horrendous. One gauge is that at least 53 United Nations staff members have been killed so far, including teachers, an engineer, a psychologist and a gynecologist. More than 20 journalists have been killed, too, and an Al Jazeera correspondent lost his wife, son, daughter and grandson to an airstrike.
It will get worse before it gets better, and maybe not in what remains of our lifetimes.
Kristof concludes:
Israel faces an agonizing challenge: A neighboring territory is ruled by well-armed terrorists who have committed unimaginable atrocities, aim to commit more and now shelter in tunnels beneath a population of more than two million people. It’s a nightmare. But the sober question must be: What policies will reduce the risk, not inflame it, while honoring the intrinsic value of Palestinian life as well as Israeli life?
People will answer that question in different ways, and I don’t claim to have all the answers. But I think some day we will look back in horror at both the Hamas butchery in Israel and at the worsening tableau of suffering in Gaza in which we are complicit.
(With apologies to Rod Serling for my frightfully tacky paraphrasing) Good evening, and welcome to a private showing of 25 films. Each is a collector’s item in its own way—not because of any special artistic quality, but because each captures on a celluloid canvas, streaming in time and space, a frozen moment of a nightmare. And …Happy Halloween!
Beauty and the Beast (1946)– Out of myriad movie adaptations of Mme. Leprince de Beaumont’s fairy tale, Jean Cocteau’s 1946 version remains the most soulful and poetic. This probably had something to do with the fact that it was made by a director who literally had the soul of a poet (Cocteau’s day job, in case you didn’t know). The film is a triumph of production design, with inventive visuals (photographed by Henri Alekan).
Jean Marais is affecting as The Beast, paralyzed by unrequited passion for beautiful Belle (Josette Day). This version is a surreal fairy tale not necessarily made with the kids in mind (especially with all the psycho-sexual subtexts). The timeless moral of the original tale, however, is still simple enough for a child to grasp: It’s what’s inside that counts.
The Blair Witch Project – Love it or hate it, there is no denying the impact of this cleverly marketed horror flick. In the event that you spent 1999 in a coma, this is the one where a crew of amateur actors were turned loose in dark and scary woods, armed with camping gear, video cameras and a plot point or two provided by filmmakers Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, who then proceeded to play creepy, “gotcha” mind games with their young troupe.
The result was surprisingly effective; after all, it’s the perception that “something” in the woods is out to get you that fuels nightmares-not a stunt man in a rubber monster suit lurching about in front of the camera. Arguably, you could cite The LastBroadcast (1998) or relatively more obscure 1980 cult flick Cannibal Holocaust as the progenitors of the “found footage” genre, but The Blair Witch Project took it to a an entirely new level.
Bubba Ho-Tep – This 2002 tongue-in-cheek shocker from Don “Phantasm” Coscarelli could have been “ripped from the headlines”…if those headlines were from The Weekly World News. In order to enjoy this romp, you must unlearn what you have learned. JFK (Ossie Davis) is still alive (long story)…he’s now an elderly African-American gentleman (even longer story). He resides at a decrepit nursing home in Texas, along with Elvis Presley (midnight movie icon Bruce Campbell).
The King and the President join wheelchairs to rid the facility of its formidable pest…a reanimated Egyptian mummy (with a ten-gallon hat) who’s been lurking about waiting for residents to pass on so he can suck out their souls. Lots of laughs, yet despite the over-the-top premise, both Campbell and Davis’ portrayals are respectful; even poignant at times.
Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter – “What he doesn’t know about vampires wouldn’t even fill a flea’s codpiece!” This unusually droll Hammer entry from 1974 benefits from assured direction and a clever script by Brian Clemens (co-creator of The Avengers TV series). Captain Kronos (Horst Janson) and his stalwart consultant, Professor Hieronymus Grost (John Cater) assist a physician in investigating a mysterious malady befalling the residents of a sleepy hamlet…rapidly accelerating aging.
The professor suspects a youth-sucking vampire may be involved…and the game is afoot. Along the way, the Captain finds romance with the village babe, played by lovely Caroline Munro. The film was released at the tail end of Hammer’s classic period; possibly explaining why Clemens seems to be doing a parody of “a Hammer film”.
Delicatessen– Love is in the air…along with the butcher’s cleaver in this seriocomic vision of a food-scarce, dystopian “near-future” along the lines of Soylent Green, directed with trademark surrealist touches by co-directors Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro (The City of Lost Children). The pair’s favorite leading man, Dominique Pinon (sort of a sawed-off Robin Williams) plays a circus performer who moves into an apartment building with a butcher shop downstairs.
The shop’s proprietor seems to be appraising the new tenant with a “professional” eye. In Jeunet and Caro’s bizarre universe, it’s all par for the course (and just wait ‘til you get a load of the vegan “troglodytes” who live under the city). One memorable sequence, a comically choreographed lovemaking scene, stands as a mini-masterpiece of film and sound editing.
Don’t Look Now – This is a difficult film to describe without risking spoilers, so I’ll be brief. Based on a Daphne du Maurier story, this haunting, one-of-a-kind 1974 psychological thriller from Nicholas Roeg (Walkabout, The Man Who Fell to Earth) stars Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie as a couple who are coming to grips with the tragic death of their little girl. Roeg slowly percolates an ever-creeping sense of impending doom, drenched in the Gothic atmosphere of Venice.
Eating Raoul– The late great Paul Bartel directed and co-wrote this twisted and hilarious social satire. Bartel and his frequent screen partner Mary Waronov play Paul and Mary Bland, a prudish, buttoned-down couple who are horrified to discover that their apartment complex is home to an enclave of “swingers”. Paul is even more shocked when he comes home from his wine store job one day and discovers Mary struggling to escape the clutches of a swinger’s party guest who has mistakenly strayed into the Bland’s apartment.
Paul beans him with a frying pan, inadvertently killing Mary’s overeager groper. When the couple discovers a sizable wad of money on the body, a light bulb goes off-and the Blands come up with a unique plan for financing the restaurant that they have always dreamed of opening (and helping rid the world of those icky swingers!). Things get complicated, however when a burglar (Robert Beltran) ingratiates himself into their scheme. Yes, it’s sick…but in a good way.
Ed Wood – Director Tim Burton and his favorite leading man Johnny Depp have worked together on so many films over the last several decades that they are surely joined at the hip by now. For my money, this affectionate 1994 biopic about the man who directed “the worst film of all time” remains their best collaboration. It’s also unique in Burton’s canon in that it is somewhat grounded in reality.
Depp gives a brilliant performance as Edward D. Wood, Jr., who unleashed the infamously inept yet 100% certified cult classic, Plan 9 from Outer Space on an unsuspecting movie-going public in the late 50s. While there are lots of belly laughs, there’s no punching downward at Wood and his decidedly off-beat collaborators; in a way the film is a love letter to outsider film makers. Martin Landau steals his scenes with a droll, Oscar-winning turn as Bela Lugosi. Also with Bill Murray, Sarah Jessica Parker, Patricia Arquette and Jeffrey Jones.
Forbidden Zone – Picture if you will: an artistic marriage between John Waters, Max Fleischer, Busby Berkeley and Peter Greenaway. Now, imagine the wedding night (I’ll give you a sec). As for the “plot”, well, it’s about this indescribably twisty family who discovers a portal to a pan-dimensional…oh, never mind. Suffice it to say, any film that features Herve Villechaize as the King of the Sixth Dimension, Susan Tyrrell as his Queen and soundtrack composer Danny Elfman channeling Cab Calloway (via Satan), is a dream for some; a nightmare for others. Directed by Danny’s brother Richard.
I Married a Witch– Clocking in at 77 minutes, Rene Clair’s breezy 1942 romantic fantasy packs in more wit, sophistication and fun than any ten modern “comedies” you’d care to name put together. I’ll tell you what else holds up pretty well after 80 years…Veronica Lake’s allure and pixie charm. Lake is a riot as a witch who re-materializes 300 years after putting a curse on all male descendants of a Puritan who sent her to the stake.
She and her equally mischievous father (Cecil Kellaway) wreak havoc on the most recent descendant (Fredric March), a politician considering a run for governor. Lake decides to muck up his relationship with his fiancé (Susan Hayward) by making him fall in love with his tormentor. All she needs to do is slip him a little love potion, but her plan fizzes after she accidentally ingests it herself. And yes, hilarity ensues.
J-Men Forever!– Woody Allen may have done it first (What’s Up, Tiger Lily?) and the Mystery Science Theater 3000 troupe has since run the concept into the ground, but Firesign Theater veterans Phil Proctor and Peter Bergman did it best with J-Men Forever.
I am referring to the concept of re-appropriating footage from corny, no-budget B-films and re-dubbing the soundtrack with comic dialogue. I’ve been a devotee of this film since it aired on the USA Network’s after hours cult show Night Flight back in the 80s (alright, raise your bong if you remember that one).
The creators had a sizable archive from the old Republic serials to cull from, so they were not restricted by the narrative structure of one specific film. As a result, Proctor and Bergman’s wonderfully silly concoction about saving Earth from a nefarious alien mastermind called “The Lightning Bug” benefits from quick-cut editing, synced with their trademark barrage of one-liners, puns and double entendre, all set to a rock ‘n’ roll soundtrack. “Schtay high!”
Mulholland Drive – David Lynch’s nightmarish, yet mordantly droll twist on the Hollywood dream makes TheDay of the Locust seem like an upbeat romp. Naomi Watts stars as a fresh-faced ingénue with high hopes who blows into La-la Land from Somewhere in Middle America to (wait for it) become a star. Those plans get, shall we say, put on hold…once she crosses paths with a voluptuous and mysterious amnesiac (Laura Harring).
What ensues is the usual Lynch mind fuck, and if you buy the ticket, you better be ready to take the ride, because this is one of his more fun ones (or as close as one gets to having “fun” watching a Lynch film). This one grew on me; by the third or fourth time I’d seen it I decided that it’s one of the iconoclastic director’s finest efforts. Peter Deming’s cinematography is stunning. The truly fascinating cast includes Justin Theroux, Ann Miller, Michael J. Anderson, Robert Forster, Lee Grant, Chad Everett, Dan Hedaya, and, erm, Billy Ray Cyrus.
Multiple Maniacs – Warning: This 1970 trash classic from czar of bad taste John Waters is definitely not for the pious, easily offended or the faint of heart. The one and only Divine heads the cast who became Waters’ faithful “Dreamland” repertory (Edith Massey, Mink Stole, David Lochary, etc.) in a tale of mayhem, filth and blasphemy too shocking to discuss in mixed company (you’ll never see a Passion Play the same way).
Watching this recently for the first time in several decades, I was suddenly struck by the similarities with the contemporaneous films of Rainier Werner Fassbinder (Love is Colder than Death and Gods of the Plague in particular). Once you get past its inherent shock value, Multiple Maniacs is very much an American art film.
The Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933) – “Images of wax that throbbed with human passion!” Get your mind out of the gutter…I’m merely quoting the purple prose that graced the original posters for this 1933 horror thriller, directed by the eclectic Michael Curtiz (Adventures of Robin Hood, The Sea Hawk, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Casablanca, Mildred Pierce, King Creole, et.al.).
Beautiful (and busy) Fay Wray (who starred in King Kong the same year) captures the eye of a disturbed wax sculptor (a hammy Lionel Atwill) for reasons that are ah…more “professional” than personal. Wray is great eye candy, but it is her co-star Glenda Farrell who steals the show as a wisecracking reporter (are there any other kind of reporters in 30s films?). Farrell’s comedy chops add just the right amount of levity to this genuinely creepy tale. A classic.
Night of the Hunter – Is it a film noir? A horror movie? A black comedy? A haunting American folk tale? The answer would be yes. The man responsible for this tough-to-categorize 1957 film was one of the greatest acting hams of the 20th century, Charles Laughton, who began and ended his directorial career with this effort. Like a great many films now regarded as “cult classics”, this one was savaged by critics and tanked at the box office upon its initial release (enough to spook Laughton from ever returning to the director’s chair).
Robert Mitchum is brilliant (and genuinely scary) as a knife-wielding religious zealot who does considerably more “preying” than praying. Before his condemned cell mate (Peter Graves) meets the hangman, he talks in his sleep about $10,000 in loot stashed on his property. When the “preacher” gets out of the slam, he makes a beeline for the widow (Shelly Winters) and her two young’uns. A disturbing tale unfolds. The great Lillian Gish is on board as well. It’s artfully directed by Laughton and beautifully shot by DP Stanley Cortez.
No Such Thing– Director Hal Hartley’s arch, deadpan observations on the human condition either grab you or leave you cold, and this modern Beauty and the Beast tale is no exception. TV news intern Beatrice (Sarah Polley) is sent to Iceland to get an exclusive on a real-life “monster” (Robert Burke), an immortal nihilist who kills boredom by drinking heavily and terrorizing whomsoever is handy.
After her plane goes down en route, her cynical boss (Helen Mirren) smells an even bigger story when Beatrice becomes the “miracle survivor” of the crash. The Monster agrees to come back to N.Y.C. if Beatrice helps him track down the one scientist in the world who can put him out of his misery.
The pacing in the first half is leisurely; dominated by the Monster’s morose, raving monologues, set against the stark, moody Icelandic backdrop (I was reminded of David Thewlis’ raging, darkly funny harangues in Naked). Once the story heads for New York, however, the movie turns into a satire of the art world (a la John Waters’ Pecker), as the couple quickly become celebrities du jour with the trendy Downtown crowd.
Psycho – Bad, bad Norman. Such a disappointment to his mother. “MOTHERRRR!!!” Poor, poor Janet Leigh. No sooner had she recovered from her bad motel experience in Touch of Evil than she found herself checking in to the Bates and having a late dinner in a dimly lit office, surrounded by Norman’s unsettling taxidermy collection. And this is only the warm up to what Alfred Hitchcock has in store for her later that evening (anyone for a shower?).
This brilliant thriller has spawned so many imitations, I’ve lost count. While tame by today’s standards, several key scenes still have the power to shock. Twitchy Tony Perkins sets the bar for future movie psycho killers. Joseph Stefano adapted the spare screenplay from Robert Bloch’s novel. Also in the cast: Vera Miles, John Gavin, Martin Balsalm, and Simon Oakland.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show – Speaking of Fay Wray…50 of years of midnight showings have not diminished the cult status of Jim Sharman’s film adaptation of Richard O’Brien’s stage musical about a hapless young couple (Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon) who have the misfortune of stumbling into the lair of one Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry) one dark and stormy night. O’Brien co-stars as the mad doctor’s hunchbacked assistant, Riff-Raff.
Much singing, dancing, cross-dressing, axe-murdering, cannibalism and hot sex ensues-with broad theatrical nods to everything from Metropolis, King Kong and Frankenstein to cheesy 1950s sci-fi, Bob Fosse musicals, 70s glam-rock and everything in between. Runs out of steam a bit in the third act, but the knockout musical numbers in the first hour or so makes it worth repeated viewings.
Rosemary’s Baby – “He has his father’s eyes!” Roman Polanski put the “goth” back in “gothic” in this devilish 1968 metropolitan horror classic. A New York actor (John Cassavetes) and his young, socially phobic wife Rosemary (Mia Farrow) move into a somewhat dark and foreboding Manhattan apartment building (the famed Dakota, John Lennon’s final residence), hoping to start a family. A busybody neighbor (Ruth Gordon) quickly gloms onto Rosemary with an unhealthy zest (to Rosemary’s chagrin). Her nightmare is only beginning. No axe murders, no gore, and barely a drop of blood…but thanks to Polanski’s impeccable craft, this will scare the bejesus out of you and continue to creep you out after credits roll. Polanski adapted the screenplay from Ira Levin’s novel.
The Shining – “Hello, Danny.” It has been said that Stephen King hated Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of his sprawling novel about a family of three who hole up in an isolated Rocky Mountain hotel for the winter. Well-that’s his personal problem. I think this is the greatest “psychological” horror film ever made…period (OK that’s a bit hyperbolic-perhaps we can call it “a draw” with Polanski’s Repulsion).
Anyway…Jack Nicholson discovers that all work and no play make Jack a dull boy. Jack Nicholson discovers that all work and no play make Jack a dull boy. Jack Nicholson discovers that all work and no play make Jack a dull boy. Jack Nicholson discovers that all work and no play make Jack a dull boy, etc.
The Shout – This unsettling 1978 sleeper was adapted from a Robert Graves story by Michal Austin and its director, Jerzy Skolimowski. The late John Hurt is excellent as a mild-mannered avant-garde musician who lives in a sleepy English hamlet with his wife (Susannah York). When an enigmatic vagabond (Alan Bates) blows into town, their quiet country life begins to go…elsewhere. This is a genre-defying film; somewhere between psychological horror and culture clash drama. I’ll put it this way-if you like Peter Weir’s The Last Wave(which would make a great double-bill) this one is in your wheelhouse.
Siesta – Depending on who you ask, Mary Lambert’s 1987 thriller is either a compelling riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma…or an unfinished film in search of a narrative. It was not well received by critics, but has a modest cult following, of which I am a card-carrying member.
Ellen Barkin stars as an American daredevil who wakes up on a deserted runway in Spain, dazed, bruised and confused. As she wanders about getting her bearings, pieces of her memory return. She encounters assorted characters in increasingly weird scenarios. The film lies somewhere between Carnival of Souls and Memento.
Also with Gabriel Byrne, Julian Sands (who passed away this year), Isabella Rossellini, Martin Sheen, Grace Jones, and Jodie Foster. Patricia Louisiana Knop (9½ Weeks) adapted the screenplay from Patrice Chaplin’s novel. Atmospheric score by Miles Davis. Long out-of-print on DVD, this is a film begging for a Blu-ray release (should any boutique reissue label folks be reading this…hint, hint!).
Trollhunter – Like previous entries in horror’s “found footage” sub-genre, Trollhunter features an unremarkable, no-name cast; but then again you don’t really require the services of an Olivier when most of the dialog is along the lines of “Where ARE you!?”, “Jesus, look at the size of that fucking thing!”, “RUN!!!” or the ever popular “AieEEE!”.
Seriously, though- what I like about Andre Ovredal’s film (aside from the convincing monsters) is the way he cleverly weaves commentary on religion and politics into his narrative. The story concerns three Norwegian film students who initially set off to do an expose on illegal bear poaching, but become embroiled with a clandestine government program to rid Norway of trolls who have been terrorizing the remote areas of the country (you’ll have to suspend your disbelief as to how the government has been able to “cover up” 200 foot tall monsters rampaging about). The “trollhunter” himself is quite a character. And always remember: while hunting trolls…it’s best to leave the Christians at home!
Ugetsu Monogatari – Kenji Mizoguchi’s eerie 1953 ghost story/morality tale was adapted from several short stories by 18th-Century writer and poet Ueda Akinari.
The story is set in 16th-Century Japan, in the midst of one of the civil wars of the era. A potter of modest means and grandiose financial schemes (Masayuki Mori) and his n’er do well brother (Eitaro Ozawa) who fantasizes about becoming a renowned samurai warrior ignore the dire warnings of a local sage and allow their greed and ambition to take full hold, which leads to tragic consequences for their abandoned wives (Mitsuko Mito and Kinuyo Tanaka).
Beautifully acted; particularly strong performances by the three female leads (Mito, Tanaka, and the great Machiko Kyo as the sorceress Lady Wakasa). It’s a slow-burning tale, but if you just give it time the emotional wallop of the denouement will floor you.
Young Frankenstein – Writer-director Mel Brooks’ 1974 film transgresses the limitations of the “spoof” genre to create something wholly original. Brooks goofs on elements from James Whale’s original 1931 version of Frankenstein, his 1935 sequel, Bride of Frankenstein, and Rowland V. Lee’s 1939 spinoff, Son of Frankenstein.
Gene Wilder heads a marvelous cast as Dr. Frederick Frankenstein (pronounced, “Franken-schteen”) the grandson of the “infamous” mad scientist who liked to play around with dead things. Despite his propensity for distancing himself from that legacy, a notice of inheritance precipitates a visit to the family estate in Transylvania, where the discovery of his grandfather’s “secret” laboratory awakens his dark side.
Wilder is quite funny (as always), but he plays it relatively straight, making a perfect foil for the comedic juggernaut of Madeline Khan, Marty Feldman, Peter Boyle, Cloris Leachman (“Blucher!”), Terri Garr and Kenneth Mars, who are all at the top of their game. The scene featuring a non-billed Gene Hackman (as an old blind hermit) is a classic.
This is also Brooks’ most technically accomplished film; the meticulous replication of Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory (utilizing props from the 1931 original), Gerald Hirschfeld’s gorgeous B & W photography and Dale Hennesy’s production design all combine to create an effective (and affectionate) homage to the heyday of Universal monster movies.
Judi Dench was on Graham Norton last night to push her new book about her life and work with Shakespeare. After making the point we quote Shakespeare daily without knowing it, this happened: pic.twitter.com/CIhP39b4Bs
That’s all he said about Ivanka. As you can see, it’s really all about him.
It is perfectly justified to bring Ivanka to testify. She wasn’t made part of the case because of the statue of limitations. A technicality. She was one of the main conduits between the Trump org and its major lender, Deutsche Bank so she is certainly an important witness.
“It doesn’t get better than this,” Ivanka Trump boasted in 2011, in an email celebrating the low interest rate she’d just won on a $125 million loan her father needed for his Miami golf course.
Lawyers for the New York attorney general’s office, who plan to call Ivanka Trump to the witness stand on Friday at their ongoing, $250 million Trump fraud trial, agree it was quite the deal.
The terms on the golf course loan were so good, “She didn’t even want to negotiate on it,” Kevin Wallace, James’ senior enforcement counsel, noted four weeks ago, during opening statements.
But the interest-rate savings, which ranged as high as 8 percent, were won through fraud, Attorney General Letitia James argues, and the trial judge has already found. And when she takes the stand, Ivanka Trump will be asked to describe how she turned this underlying fraud – in the form of Trump’s annual, widely exaggerated net worth statements – into easy cash for the family business.
Her testimony at the non-jury trial could prove highly damaging to her father and two eldest brothers, Donald Trump, Jr., and Eric Trump – Trump Organization vice presidents who, like their father, are defendants in James’ lawsuit. Through this lawsuit, James seeks to permanently ban them and the company from doing business in New York.
Someone Ivanka Trump’s testimony won’t damage — other than, perhaps, reputationally — is herself. She was originally a defendant for her alleged complicity in using the fraudulent statements to win loans. But she was cut from the case on statute of limitation grounds in an appellate decision over the summer.
“Until 2017,” when she left New York to work in the Trump White House, “Ms. Trump was the primary contact for the Trump Organization’s largest lender, Deutsche Bank,” James said in first laying out a detailed case against the Trumps in a court filing nearly two years ago.
“In connection with this work,” the AG wrote then, “Ms. Trump caused misleading financial statements to be submitted to Deutsche Bank and the federal government.”
Ivanka Trump will certainly be asked about using the net worth statements to win and maintain the three Deutsche Bank loans, and about what representations she may have made to the bank’s private wealth management group, which underwrote them.
She’ll also likely be asked about one number she did negotiate with Deutsche Bank. The private wealth management group demanded Trump maintain a net worth of $3 billion.
“Ivanka Trump tried to negotiate the number down to 2 billion,” Wallace said in openings, “before agreeing to 2.5 billion.”
She’ll also likely be asked to describe the far higher interest she would have been stuck with had the Trump Organization continued to use Deutsche Bank’s commercial real estate loan division, which did not rely on net worth statements.
Ivanka Trump didn’t just negotiate loans, however.
She played a key role in the Trump Organization’s effort to win a ground lease from the US government for the Old Post Office property in Washington, the historic building Trump converted into a luxury hotel.
When the federal General Services Administration began seeking requests for proposals for the property’s development, Ivanka Trump was the one who presented the Trump Organization’s bid, the AG alleges.
She cited “Donald J. Trump’s significant net worth” in her bid, which included his most recent net worth statement, and instructed, “Please find Trump’s Statement of Financial Condition in an envelope submitted with each copy of this proposal.”
Ivanka Trump can also expect to be asked about the apartment she and her husband, Jared Kushner, rented more than a decade ago in her father’s Trump Park Avenue property in Manhattan.
The couple paid a rent that was a mere fraction of that of other penthouses in the building, the AG alleges.
In 2011 and 2012, the couple had an option to purchase the unit for $8.5 million, documents already in evidence show. But during the same period, Donald Trump’s net worth statements valued the exact same unit at $20.8 million.
Ivanka Trump is scheduled to testify Friday, though it’s possible a last-minute appeal could delay or cancel that timing.
Her brothers are scheduled to take the stand earlier in the week, with Donald Trump, Jr. slated for Wednesday, and Eric Trump slated for Thursday.
Donald Trump himself is scheduled to be the last of the Trumps to testify, on Monday, November 6.
Lately, it seems like all the very richest, most successful people (men, mostly) are batshit crazy. Here’s a primary example:
The Adidas team was huddled with Kanye West, pitching ideas for the first shoe they would create together. It was 2013, and the rapper and the sportswear brand had just agreed to become partners. The Adidas employees, thrilled to get started, had arrayed sneakers and fabric swatches on a long table near a mood board pinned with images.
But nothing they showed that day at the company’s German headquarters captured the vision Mr. West had shared. To convey how offensive he considered the designs, he grabbed a sketch of a shoe and took a marker to the toe, according to two participants. Then he drew a swastika.
It was shocking, especially to the Germans in the group. Most displays of the symbol are banned in their country. The image was acutely sensitive for a company whose founder belonged to the Nazi Party. And they were meeting just miles from Nuremberg, where leaders of the Third Reich were tried for crimes against humanity.
That encounter was a sign of what was to come during a collaboration that would break the boundaries of celebrity endorsement deals. Sales of the shoes, Yeezys, would surpass $1 billion a year, lifting Adidas’s bottom line and recapturing its cool. Mr. West, who now goes by Ye, would become a billionaire.
When the company ended the relationship last October, it appeared to be the culmination of weeks of Mr. West’s inflammatory public remarks — targeting Jews and disparaging Black Lives Matter — and outside pressure on the brand to cut ties. But it was also the culmination of a decade of Adidas’s tolerance behind the scenes.
Inside their partnership, the artist made antisemitic and sexually offensive comments, displayed erratic behavior, and issued ever escalating demands, a New York Times examination found. Adidas’s leaders, eager for the profits, time and again abided his misconduct.
When he exploded in bitter outbursts at Adidas managers, the company typically sought not to rein him in but to appease him. In negotiations over the years, Adidas kept sweetening the deal, doubling down on its investment and tethering its fortunes more closely to him.
Even as Mr. West voiced increasingly toxic beliefs, privately and publicly, Adidas stepped up production and released Yeezys more frequently. And executives disregarded employee concerns that his troubling conduct risked tainting the brand’s reputation.
As companies increasingly turn to deals with celebrities, the Yeezy collaboration shows the precarious balance of risk and reward. Adidas entered the partnership in hopes of catching up to Nike, which had long dominated the hypercompetitive global sneaker market. But working with Mr. West, one of the most influential artists in the world — a “master of spectacle,” as one former executive put it — meant being tied to a provocative, polarizing and sometimes unstable personality.
While some other brands have been quick to end deals over offensive or embarrassing behavior, Adidas held on for years.
This article is the fullest accounting yet of their relationship. While some details have been reported earlier, The Times interviewed current and former employees of Adidas and of Mr. West, and obtained hundreds of previously undisclosed internal records — contracts, text messages, memos and financial documents — that reveal episodes throughout a partnership that was fraught from the start.
Just weeks before the 2013 swastika incident, The Times found, Mr. West made Adidas executives watch pornography during a meeting at his Manhattan apartment, ostensibly to spark creativity. In February 2015, preparing to show the first Yeezy collection at New York Fashion Week, staff members complained that he had upset themwith angry, sexually crude comments.
He later advised a Jewish Adidas manager to kiss a picture of Hitler every day, and he told a member of the company’s executive board that he had paid a seven-figure settlement to one of his own senior employees who accused him of repeatedly praising the architect of the Holocaust.
Again and again, Mr. West contended that Adidas was exploiting him. “I feel super disrespected in this ‘partnership,’” he said in one text message. “I’ve never felt understood,” he wrote in another. He routinely sought more money and power, even suggesting that he should become Adidas’s chief executive.
His complaints were often delivered amid mood swings, creating whiplash for the Adidas team working with him. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder, he at times rejected the assessment and resisted treatment. Tears were common; so was fury.
Meeting with Adidas’s leaders in November 2019 to discuss his demands, he hurled shoes around the room. The month before, an internal text message described him becoming “fully, fully ramped up” and charging, “‘This is slavery’” — an accusation he leveled multiple times during the partnership.
As Adidas grew more reliant on Yeezy sales, so did Mr. West. In addition to royalties and upfront cash, the company eventually agreed to another enticement: $100 million annually, officially for Yeezy marketing but, in practice, a fund that he could spend with little oversight.
At the same time, he scaled his goals, opening an unaccredited Christian school, taking on a disastrous 2020 presidential campaign that reflected his rightward political drift, and promising to create flying cars, build futuristic communities and otherwise solve the world’s problems.
In a statement to The Times, Adidas said it “has no tolerance for hate speech and offensive behavior, which is why the company terminated the Adidas Yeezy partnership.” The brand turned down interview requests and, citing confidentiality rules, declined to comment on financial aspects of the collaboration and Adidas’s relationship with Mr. West.
Mr. West declined interview requests and did not respond to written questions or provide comments.
After the relationship ruptured and Yeezy sales came to a halt, both Adidas and the musician were hit hard. The company projected its first annual loss in decades. Mr. West’s net worth plummeted.
But they had at least one more chance to keep making money together.
The company announced in May that it would begin releasing the remaining $1.3 billion worth of Yeezys from warehouses around the world. As the shoes have reappeared, so has Mr. West. He performed onstage for the first time in over a year. Music from what is rumored to be his comeback album has leaked online.
And he trademarked a new Yeezy creation, a sock shoe, suggesting he intends to keep making footwear — with or without Adidas.
There’s a lot more at the link. The man is very seriously mentally ill with an extremely ugly character — and Adidas didn’t care at all. I guess there have always been grotesquely immoral wealthy entrepreneurs but it sure seems like we’ve had an unusual spate of them lately.
He’s an educated man but his knowledge of history is nil. Someone should tell him about the centuries of religious wars in Europe that shaped the founders beliefs about religion and the state:
Mr. Johnson, a mild-mannered conservative Republican from Louisiana whose elevation to the speakership on Wednesday followed weeks of chaos, is known for placing his evangelical Christianity at the center of his political life and policy positions. Now, as the most powerful Republican in Washington, he is in a position to inject it squarely into the national political discourse, where he has argued for years that it belongs.
Mr. Johnson, 51, the son of a firefighter and the first in his family to attend college, has deep roots in the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. For years, Mr. Johnson and his wife, Kelly, a licensed pastoral counselor, belonged to First Bossier, whose pastor, Brad Jurkovich, is the spokesman for the Conservative Baptist Network, an organization working to move the denomination to the right.
Mr. Johnson also played a leading role in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and has expressed skepticism about some definitions of the separation of church and state, placing himself in a newer cohort of conservative Christianity that aligns more closely with former President Donald J. Trump and that some describe as Christian nationalism.
“Speaker Johnson really does provide a near-perfect example of all the different elements of Christian nationalism,” said Andrew Whitehead, a sociologist at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. He said those included insisting on traditionalist family structures, “being comfortable with authoritarian social control and doing away with democratic values.”
Mr. Johnson declined an interview request and did not respond to a request for comment about whether he considers himself a Christian nationalist. But the little-known speaker of the House has made clear that his faith is the most important thing to know about him, and in previous interviews, he has said he believes “the founders wanted to protect the church from an encroaching state, not the other way around.”
Over the arc of his career, Mr. Johnson, a lawyer and a member of the Louisiana Legislature before his election to Congress, has been driven by a belief that Christianity is under attack and that Christian faith needs to be elevated in the public discourse, according to a review of his appearances on talk shows and podcasts, as well as legislative speeches and writings over the past two decades.
He refers to the Declaration of Independence as a “creed” and describes it as a “religious statement of faith.” He believes that his generation has been wrongly convinced that a separation of church and state was outlined in the Constitution.
In his first interview as speaker, Mr. Johnson described himself to the Fox News host Sean Hannity as “a Bible-believing Christian” and said that to understand his politics, one only need “pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview.”
That includes opposition not just to abortion, which he has called “a holocaust,” and same-sex marriage, but to homosexuality itself, which he has written is “inherently unnatural” and a “dangerous lifestyle.” He is the sponsor of a bill that would prohibit the use of federal funds for providing education to children under 10 that included L.G.B.T.Q. topics — a proposal that critics called a national version of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law.
In a 2006 column for Townhall, a conservative website, Mr. Johnson railed against “the earnest advocates of atheism and sexual perversion.”
“This sprawling alliance of anti-God enthusiasts has proven frighteningly efficient at remaking America in their own brutal, dehumanizing image,” he wrote.
He added: “In the space of a few decades, they have managed to entrench abortion and homosexual behavior, objectify children into sexual objects, criminalize Christianity in the popular culture, and promote guilt and self-doubt as the foremost qualities of our national character.”
In Washington, the prime role of religion in Mr. Johnson’s political life is often the first thing colleagues learn about when they meet him.
“It doesn’t take long,” said Representative Byron Donalds, Republican of Florida, who said that Mr. Johnson often begins meetings by leading a prayer. “You’ll pretty much know that in the first five minutes. He’s truly a humble man.”
Yet he is not shy about framing his political career as a divinely driven battle to put religion at the center of American policy and lawmaking. From gun violence to abortion to immigration, Mr. Johnson’s policy views are shaped by his belief that too many Americans are “denying existence of God himself.”
In remarks to a Louisiana congregation in 2016, Mr. Johnson linked school shootings to no-fault divorce laws (he is in a covenant marriage with his wife, which makes divorce more difficult), “radical feminism” and legal abortion. “We’ve taught a whole generation — couple of generations, now — of Americans that there is no right and wrong,” he said then.
In an episode of his podcast, “Truth Be Told,” Mr. Johnson explained how his religion drives his hard-line immigration stance, arguing that while the Bible teaches Christians to practice “personal charity,” that commandment was “never directed to the government.”
“The left is taking it and using it out of context,” Mr. Johnson said. Welcoming the stranger, he added, is an exhortation to “individual believers,” while the government’s duty is to enforce laws — in this case, strong border control policies to stop the influx of migrants into the United States.
In lectures to student groups he addresses across the country, Mr. Johnson has lamented: “There’s no transcendent principles anymore. There’s no eternal judge. There’s no absolute standards of right and wrong. All this is exactly the opposite of the way we were founded as a country.”
It is a viewpoint fervently embraced by much of the hard-right Republican base, which reveres Mr. Trump and identifies with his frequent claims of being persecuted, aggrieved and looked down upon by liberal elites.
On his podcast, which he co-hosts with his wife, Mr. Johnson often bemoans what he considers to be the repression of religious views in America.
“What we found was often the Christian viewpoint is not given equal treatment and equal platform and equal chance,” he said in one episode, according to transcripts of the shows compiled by the Brookings Institution. “Very often religious viewpoints, specifically Christian viewpoints, are censored and silenced.”
In the same episode, Mr. Johnson said the removal of religion from public schools had a “tragic effect,” adding: “People are separating what is religious, quote unquote, with quote unquote real life, right? And that dichotomy was never intended by the founding fathers.”
He said that sometimes “hostile” interviewers would ask him why he represented only Christians in his work as a lawyer doing religious liberty litigation, and not, say, Muslims or Jews.
“I would say because the fact is very simple: There is not an open effort to silence and censor the viewpoints of other religions,” he said. “It is only and always the Christian viewpoint that is getting censored.” He added, “The fact is the left is always trying to shut down the voices of the Christians.”
His colleagues on Capitol Hill describe Mr. Johnson as not particularly verbose or flamboyant, someone who lacks a flashy social media presence and may get lost in a sea of attention seekers. But his more mellow style can mask the fact that he proselytizes extremely hard-line views and has been hitting the right-wing talk show circuit doing that for decades.
In the 2000s, Mr. Johnson, then a lawyer and spokesman for the anti-abortion and anti-gay rights group Alliance Defense Fund, was also a prolific writer, posting columns to Townhall and writing opinion pieces for his local newspaper in Shreveport.
In his writings, he harshly criticized opponents on the left and those who did not share his beliefs. Almost always, the views he espoused were intertwined with his Christian beliefs.
In 2007, Mr. Johnson wrote a column claiming ulterior motives by proponents of the “Day of Silence,” an annual event where supporters pledge silence to bring attention to bullying and harassment of L.G.B.T.Q. students.
“The event is being sold to sympathetic schoolteachers and administrators as a gentle plea for sexual tolerance and understanding,” he wrote. “But the real agenda is to gild and glamorize homosexual behavior while gagging anyone who opposes it.”
“Experts project that homosexual marriage is the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic,” he wrote in an article in 2004.
On Thursday, Mr. Hannity asked him to explain some of his previously stated views about same-sex marriage, which is broadly supported across the country, including among many Republicans.
“I don’t even remember some of them,” Mr. Johnson said of his previous comments. “I genuinely love all people, regardless of their lifestyle choices. This is not about the people themselves.”
Mr. Johnson’s political career has been a rare glide path that has put him in the most powerful position in Congress without ever having run a competitive race. When he took office in the Louisiana House of Representatives in 2015, he ran unopposed for a seat that had been vacated. In his first run for Congress in 2016, he handily defeated his Democratic opponent, Marshall Jones, and last year he ran unopposed for his seat.
He has also recorded over a thousand interviews on talk radio and television — much of it from his time at the Alliance Defense Fund, now called the Alliance Defending Freedom — leaving a long trail of words that help paint a picture of an arch-conservative who promotes a literal reading of the Bible.
In 2015, Mr. Johnson provided legal services to Answers in Genesis, a fundamentalist Christian group founded by Ken Ham that rejects scientific findings about evolution and the early history of the cosmos. The organization cites “the Word of God” in saying that the universe is 6,000 years old and suggests that “we simply have been indoctrinated to believe it looks old.” The universe is in fact about 13.8 billion years old, astronomers generally agree.
It retained Mr. Johnson after tourism officials in Kentucky refused to grant tax incentives for the building of a Noah’s Ark theme park, citing the organization’s plan to require employees to submit a statement of faith. Mr. Johnson successfully sued in 2015, arguing that the denial of tax breaks was discriminatory.
Mr. Johnson praised Ark Encounter, the theme park, which includes dinosaurs in its life-size replica of the ark, in a 2021 interview with Mr. Ham as he guest-hosted the radio show of Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, whom he has called his “original mentor.”
“The Ark Encounter is one way to bring people to this recognition of the truth that, you know, what we read in the Bible are actual historical events, and that there are implications to what you do with all these stories in the Bible there,” Mr. Johnson said.
