RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
May 6 to May 12
Featured Investigation
The mainstream press doesn’t like the idea of the rich and powerful in the abstract. But put faces and boldface names to those privileged individuals and the coverage becomes gush city.
Consider the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s annual Costume Institute Ball, where plutocrats and celebrities are magically transformed into the publicist-groomed personas of Cary Grant and Julie Andrews.
As Judith H. Dobrzynski reported for RealClearInvestigations, the Met Gala, held this past Monday, is more than just “the party of the year,” “the Oscars of the East Coast,” and “the Super Bowl of social fashion events.” It is a remarkably exclusive event that turns away scores of people who can more than afford tickets that start at $30,000 because they aren’t considered famous enough or stylish enough by its chief organizer, Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour.
Those who make the cut receive handsome rewards – a confirmation of their status along with fawning media coverage that ignores important ways that the Met Gala, and other events like it, offer state-sponsored subsidies to the rich, contributing to the inequality the press routinely bemoans. Dobrzynski writes:
Here’s the catch: Almost all that glamor, attention, and prestige are underwritten by the American taxpayer. “Of course, we subsidize status,” says Cornell University economist Robert H. Frank, who includes on his list of tax-advantaged status symbols sports stadiums and buildings at elite universities named for philanthropists and corporations. …
Although cast as philanthropy, these contributions give back to the givers, too, in incalculable, profit-enhancing ways. As a byproduct of their donations, those businesses gain favor with Wintour — and with Conde Nast, where she is artistic director of its magazines. They receive publicity that enhances their brand, connects them to new, young consumers, associates them with a good cause, and may catapult their business into new spheres.
“The IRS clearly states that donors cannot get anything of value from their contributions, which is why they cannot deduct the meal portion of the ticket,” said David Callahan, founder and editor of Inside Philanthropy and author of “The Givers.” “Here we have a case where they get a full deduction and they’re getting value that the IRS is essentially overlooking.”
The Trump Investigations: Top Articles
About That FBI 'Source': A Spy Within Trump Campaign? Wall Street Journal
Touting Trump Access, Cohen Convinced Firms to Pay Millions Washington Post
Treasury Probes Disclosure of Cohen Bank Files Washington Post
Who Is Paying Michael Avenatti? The Hill
Mueller's Tough Week in Court National Review
Other Noteworthy Articles and Series
Eric Schneiderman Just the Latest #MeToo Shoe to Drop
For the #MeToo movement, shoes keep dropping -- only now it's exposing its own feet of clay. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman – who had prominently aligned himself with the campaign – resigned just hours after a New Yorker investigation disclosed the claims of four women that he beat them. And fresh on the heels of the Pulitzer Prizes last month, which feted the two exposés that sparked the movement, the Pulitzers' chairman, novelist Junot Díaz, stepped down but remained on the board amid accusations of sexual misconduct and verbal abuse, prompting some booksellers to remove his works from their shelves. A similar fate will not likely befall raunchy rapper Kendrick Lamar, also awarded a Pulitzer last month.
I Had to Put Up With Charlie Rose's Crap, Literally
New York Review of Books
Most reporting on sexual harassment and abuse has focused on powerful male perpetrators, less of it on the many who enabled and covered up such rampant behavior. In her firsthand account regarding Charlie Rose, Rhea Bravo writes: "During my time working for Rose, there were many who indicated knowledge of his treatment of women. I heard Upper East Side salesclerks gossiping about it; professors in my graduate program discussed it more or less explicitly; one of the show’s regular guests gave two of my female colleagues a wink and a thinly-veiled hint about his behavior by way of warning.”
See all sexual misconduct stories RealClearInvestigations has linked to here.
Private Forums Where Men Illegally Trade Upskirt Photos
Motherboard
Social media companies such as Reddit have continually cracked down so-called creepshots—revealing, close-up images of women taken without their consent, often in public. Despite these efforts, creeps dedicated to sharing the images, including ‘upskirt’ videos which are often illegal in the U.S., have formed their own private forums to trade offending pictures and clips away from the terms of service of social media networks.
A Prisoner in CIA Nominee Gina Haspel's Black Site
ProPublica
The long career of Gina Haspel, whom President Trump has nominated to head the CIA, is not an open book; it’s a story whose chapters are classified and whose pages are redacted. But we do know that she was instrumental in carrying out the Bush administration’s effort to wring information from a few top-level terrorists through techniques some consider torture. This story focuses on the interrogation of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a 37-year-old Saudi who admitted his role in the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000, an attack that killed 17 Navy sailors. At a black-op site in Thailand, Haspel oversaw the questioning of al-Nashiri, who had talked openly about planning more attacks. There he was “slammed repeatedly against a wall, locked up in a tiny 'confinement box' and told (inaccurately) that the black-clad security officers guarding him were Navy sailors who would pummel him if he did not divulge his secrets.” He was also waterboarded.
N.Y.: At Exclusive Public School, Celebs Avoid Diversity Push
New York Post
As Manhattan’s wealthy Upper West Side struggles to bring “academic diversity” and desegregation to the neighborhood, the Center School on West 84th Street stands out as an island of privilege. Enrolling just 234 students in grades 5 to 8, it uses a mysterious admissions process that pledges diversity in race and ability but has resulted in a school that is mostly white, affluent, high-performing and chock-a-block with the children of celebrities, including Cynthia Nixon, Samantha Bee and Louis C.K.
Pedestrian Fatalities Skyrocket in U.S.
Detroit Free Press
Almost 6,000 pedestrians – people out for a walk after dinner, hurrying to get to work or rushing to cross a street – were killed by motor vehicles on or along America’s roads in 2016, a 46 percent increase since 2009. Distraction behind the wheel, texting while walking and even marijuana legalization have all been tagged as potential culprits.
The Wealthy Are Hoarding $10 Billion of Bitcoin in Bunkers
Bloomberg
Argentine entrepreneur Wences Casares has spent the past several years persuading Silicon Valley millionaires and billionaires that Bitcoin is the global currency of the future, that they need to buy some, and that he’s the man to safeguard it. His startup, Xapo, has built a network of underground vaults on five continents, including one in a decommissioned Swiss military bunker, that now hold an estimated $10 billion in Bitcoin; those “deposits” are worth more than those held by 98 percent of the roughly 5,670 banks in the U.S.
Man vs. MoviePass: How I Saw 'Avengers' for 87 Cents
The Ringer
Is MoviePass the next Amazon? The startup – which allows customers who pay about $100 in yearly fees to see one movie a day at almost any theater - has one thing in common with the tech giant during its early days: It is losing money while attracting lots of customers. Right now the company – whose subscriber base has mushroomed from 20,000 to 2 million in just half a year - says it is buying 7 percent of all movie tickets in the United States, and it is paying full price for the vast majority of those tickets (often in expensive markets such as New York and Los Angeles). That has led to huge losses for Helios and Matheson, the analytics company that acquired MoviePass in August, and great benefits for many subscribers, including the reporter of this story.
