5/27/2023

the little mermaid

 'the little mermaid' is out at theaters now.  and it's wonderful!  i loved it so much.  i highly recommend it.  


halle bailey is everything she needs to  be in this role.  she should be the big star of this year.  she really is something.  



and melissa mccarthy is wonderful as well.


it's my favorite film of the year so far.

let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'


Friday, May 26, 2023.  The American Taliban continues their war on democracy and on the United States, a royal visits Iraq, and much more.

The American Taliban is out to destroy democracy and freedom.  They lie and pretend they're "doing it for the kids" but they're no Robbie and Kylie.



And their not "doing it for the kids."  Their actions and their remarks make clear that's not the case.  

What they are doing is damaging children.  Beth Hawkins (THE 74) reports:

In the opening weeks of the 2023 legislative season alone, more than 400 pieces of legislation aimed at LGBTQ people— most of them targeting schools — were introduced throughout the country. 
It’s no surprise that queer students in Republican-dominated states where these laws have passed are profoundly impacted. But less visible is the dramatic effect the steady drumbeat of headlines has had on youth in places with even strong anti-discrimination laws. Newly released data from the advocacy groups GLSEN and The Trevor Project show increases in hostility, victimization and discrimination experienced by students in blue states as well as red.

The effects are devastating. Nearly half of LGBTQ 13- to 17-year-olds considered suicide last year, as opposed to some 19% of high school students overall, according to The Trevor Project. Eighteen percent actually attempted it. Seventy percent report anxiety, and 57% experienced depression.

Strong in-school relationships are a well-known protective factor. LGBTQ students who say their teachers care a lot about them are 37% less likely to consider suicide and 43% less likely to be depressed than those who don’t feel cared for, according to The Trevor Project. 

Rates of self-harm are much lower among students who feel affirmed in school, and acceptance of LGBTQ students had risen steadily — if unevenly — following legal recognition of same-sex marriage. But the number of youth who see their schools as affirming has fallen dramatically over the last four years. 

In California — where the first gay couples married in 2008 and schools began teaching LGBTQ history a decade ago — a statewide survey of students found that the number who reported hearing homophobic remarks from adults in school rose from 12% in 2019 to 49% in 2021. That’s an increase of 408%.

In Massachusetts, where same-sex marriage has been recognized for almost 20 years, the number of youth exposed to anti-LGBT remarks is up 686% over the same time frame.





Yeah, but, hate merchants, keep pretending that your concern is for the kids.  Scarface Tulsi Gabbard might try having kids -- before it's too late, she's 42 -- since she's so obsessed with other people's children.  Or is Tulsi too manly for pregnancy?    The report notes:


A new data analysis by The 74 shows how this political wedge issue, aimed at a relatively small population of students, is having an outsize effect. The number of youth who identify as something other than cisgender is growing, but it’s still a tiny number of children. 

Of the approximately 16 million high school students in the United States, an estimated 1.8 million, or 11.6%, identify as LGBTQ. Just 300,000 are gender-nonconforming. 

Ten years after same-sex marriage became widely recognized, a sizeable majority of Americans are comfortable with gay, lesbian and bisexual co-workers and neighbors. Experts say it’s harder to attempt to undo LGBT rights overall than to capitalize on confusion about the experiences of a very small subset of people.     

And unlike past campaigns to vilify LGBTQ people, this time, the rhetoric targets kids, not adults. Even though some of the new policies take aim at bathrooms and gymnasiums, the impact spills over to classrooms, hallways and libraries, affecting a much larger number of children.

They are bullied and assaulted; subjected to increasingly negative remarks even from teachers who are supposed to protect them; silenced from raising LGBTQ topics — even talking about their families during class discussions; discouraged from participating in sports or other activities; forbidden from wearing clothing with supportive messages or forming gay-straight alliances or other affirming student clubs; disciplined for identifying as LGBTQ and for wearing clothes deemed “inappropriate” for their gender.


It's like the 70s all over again. As I've noted before, not long ago, a group of gay adult malea at one group we were speaking to in the last 12 months, brought up what life was really like for them in high school and middle school.  Teachers and principals mocked them and made fun of them, publicly ridiculed them.  My response was sue.  I don't care if it gets kicked out for whatever reason.  Get on the record so that these failures do not get to enjoy their retirement but instead everyone grasps that these failures weren't just intolerant, they were actively betraying their legal obligations.  

I would recommend the same to the families of any children currently in school and experiencing this.  File immediately.  Let's identify these people who think they can abuse their jobs and harass students.  

That's the only way this will stop.  

The American Taliban is brave when egged on by a bunch of hate merchants but when they find out it's not Tulsi Gabbard that's having to pay for the actions, but themselves, they'll learn to conduct themselves as educators are supposed to.     




Rowan Johnson learned what it meant to be transgender not from a parent or a teacher, but from Jerry Springer.

Home from school one day when they were about 8 years old, Johnson caught Springer’s often-raucous daytime talk show. “There are girls here to tell their parents they want to be boys,” Johnson recalls hearing at the top of the hour.

That’s something a person can do? Johnson thought. They had sensed already that something was different about their own gender identity but didn’t know what. “I didn’t have the words for ‘transgender’ or ‘nonbinary’ or any of this.”

Most trans adults went to school at a time when there was little or no discussion of gender identity. If the subject came up, it was on tabloid television or in schoolyard taunts rather than in conversation with caring adults. Now, as Americans debate policies that affect trans Americans, there’s disagreement over how — or whether — to broach these issues in schools.

For transgender children, this question can be urgent. A Washington Post-KFF poll conducted in late 2022 found that about 1 in 3 transgender adults was 10 years old or younger when they began to understand that their gender was different from their sex assigned at birth. Forty-five percent of them said they felt unsafe at school, the place where they spent most of their time and where acceptance or rejection can make a deep impression. The isolation and discrimination that many trans people experience can lead to depression, substance abuse, self harm and suicide, experts say.


[. . .]

In other words, what trans Americans say is needed appears at odds with what many Americans appear comfortable providing. That’s unsettling to the trans community at a time when gender identity has taken center stage in the culture wars and Republican lawmakers have attacked the very existence of trans people.

“If I had had the opportunity," said Johnson, "to learn that it’s normal and common to question your gender identity and to want to experiment and explore your gender identity, I think it would have saved a lot of emotional pain.”

The poll found support for teaching these issues in high school, with more than 6 in 10 saying it was appropriate. Americans were divided when asked about middle school. But at the same time, nearly 7 in 10 Americans supported laws that would bar discrimination against trans people in K-12 schools.

The American Taliban is in the minority -- just as they are on abortion.  But what the people want doesn't matter to these authoritarians.  They want to destroy the country and destroy democracy.  The right to privacy got shredded in DOBBS and they planned and conspired for years to get to that point.  They're coming after every right and you're insane -- or married to Max Blumenthal (which may be the same thing) -- if you can't see that.




Target on Wednesday said it was removing some products that celebrate Pride Month after the company and its employes became the focus of a “volatile” anti-LGBTQ campaign.

The company said threats against employees impacted their sense of safety and well-being, but Target did not specify which products it was removing, the nature of the threats, or where they occurred. Target said it removed from shelves “items that have been at the center of the most significant confrontational behavior.”

For a decade, Target has celebrated Pride Month in and around June. The company runs advertisements to appeal to LGBTQ customers and employees, and it sells t-shirts, coffee mugs and merchandise with rainbow flags and other symbols of gay rights.

“Pride Month at Target is a time of affirmation and solidarity with the LGBTQIA+ community,” the company says on its website.


A few things.  Openly homophobic people?  They can't afford Target and don't shop there regularly.  Threats against employees?  Those need to be reported to legal authorities and done so immediately.  Isn't it interesting that Jonathan Turley is no where to be found yet again.

He's like FOX "NEWS" -- emphasizing everything that will scare the elderly but nothing that will enlighten or educate.  He's an old whore slinging it for FOX "NEWS." 


The backward and inbred homophobes who study online with Professor Turley pretend to care about democracy.  But it's not really a democracy, is it, if you're threatening violence because you don't want people to have the option of buying clothing?  That's reality and it's not an angle Turley is going to share with his cult or, for that matter, that FOX "NEWS" plans to share.  Target clearly noted threats of violence to the staff.  But here's FOX BUSINESS "NEWS" 'covering' the topic and leaving that threat out.  CNN could -- and did -- note the threats.  USA TODAY did as well.  AP did as well.  BLOOMBERG NEWS did it.    But not FOX "NEWS."  This is how FOX "NEWS" lies -- they don't present most stories and when they do present a story they lie and they leave out significant details.  A half-wit could park themselves in front of the TV, watch six hours straight of FOX "NEWS" and still be a half-wit when they turned the TV off.



A right-wing outlet (tiny and we're not promoting it) wants you to know that conservatives are "successfully" boycotting Target.  Homophobic conservatives don't shop there.  Try the Dollar General.  This is the same crowd -- small and vocal -- that Nancy Reagan sneered at (they were focused on ending abortion when she was First Lady) and this crowd buys beers and Fritos but, as demographics make very clear, they don't have the income to spend at Target.  Walmart is a big treat for them.  So, no, they're not "successfully" boycotting a store that they don't actually shop at.  If they did shop there, they would have noticed, years ago, that Target celebrates Pride every June.  Bad news for them, Walmart did last year too.  May have done so before last year but last year Walmart even offered a Pride ice cream. For this crowd, Dollar General and Dollar Tree and Dollar whatever are their go-tos. Again, that's demographics. This is the group that loved FOX "NEWS" but couldn't find it in their budget to pay for the streamer FOX NEWS NATION.  

This is a war on freedom carried out by the American Taliban.  They are not patriotic and they do not believe in democracy.  They're for tyranny and oppression.  


California Governor Gavin Newsom called out the war on the LBGTQ+ and hate merchant Marjorie Taylor thought her response was called for.



Good for Gavin.  As for Marjorie?  Yes, she is the space laser person.  Let's again note Chelsea Handler on MTG. 

 




Marjorie Taylor Greene: I have people come up to me and say crazy things to me out of the blue in public places that they believe because they read it on the internet.

Chelsea Handler:  Well if that's not the pot calling the kettle QAnon.  This woman thought 9/11 was a hoax, that the Clintons killed JFK Jr. and that Jews are in charge of space lasers.  But please, don't come at her with some crazy ideas -- she might believe them. 



Crazy Marjorie will continue attempting to destroy this country.   Paul Rudnick noted Crazy Marjorie this week.





This is not about helping the kids.  It's not helping children, first of all, but that's just their cover story. 


Amid recent, highly publicized conservative backlash to several corporations partnering with LGBTQ+ artists and activists, two far-right commentators are saying the quiet part loud: Their goal is to make support for the LGBTQ+ community “toxic” to brands.

On Wednesday, Matt Walsh, a host for far-right media outlet The Daily Wire and one of the most virulently anti-trans voices in the country, kicked off a tweet storm about recent calls to boycott brands like Bud Light and Target by explicitly outlining what he says has been the goal from the start.

“The goal is to make ‘pride’ toxic for brands,” Walsh tweeted. “If they decide to shove this garbage in our face, they should now that they’ll pay a price. It won’t be worth whatever they think they’ll gain. First Bud Light and now Target. Our campaign is making progress. Let’s keep going.”

On his own Daily Wire show, host Michael Knowles reiterated Walsh’s point. “This has been the point that has been building for months now, which is we need to make that symbol toxic, the Pride flag symbol, we need to make that toxic,” Knowles said. “We need to have companies think twice about it.”

“Everyone was talking about the Dylan Mulvaney incident as being harmful to the Bud Light brand,” he continued. “That’s true. But more importantly, it was harmful to the Dylan Mulvaney brand. Now, other companies are going to think twice before sponsoring Dylan Mulvaney because they don’t want to lose $6 billion in market cap in two days. That’s what we got to do. And then once we make these things culturally toxic or as we’re making these symbols culturally toxic, we’ve got to bring in the cavalry, we’ve got to come back in with more political force to ban some of this stuff and to say no.”

The Bud Light debacle started in early April, when the beer brand partnered with Mulvaney, a trans influencer and popular target for anti-trans trolls, sending her a one-off commemorative beer can with an image of her face on it. Transphobes both online and in the media quickly called for a boycott of parent company Anheuser-Busch’s products. The corporation’s lackluster response to the backlash drew criticism from the LGBTQ+ community and led the Human Rights Campaign to downgrade Anheuser-Busch’s previous 100 percent rating on the organization’s corporate equality index.

On Wednesday, Walsh also tweeted that, “The Bud Light boycott will prove to be one of the most significant conservative victories of this decade. It was never just about Bud Light. It was about sending a message.”


This is a war declared by the American Taliban.  

Acceptance of gays and lesbians has increased and most Americans grasp that.  So these hate merchants seized upon the "T" and worked overtime to lie and scare the easily frightened over transgender persons and pretend that there are all these five-year-olds having gender surgery.  

They lied -- and they were helped by THE NEW YORK TIMES and other outlets -- and they've scared a country.  

And on the left we get idiots like Max Blumenthal's wife offering smears on transgendered person because the left doesn't want to her February event which was putting a convicted pedophile on stage.  Grasp that Mrs. Blumenthal can't defend transgender people (and has a pinned Tweet attacking them at the top of her feed since February) but she will gladly share the stage with a convicted pedophile who was sent to prison.  

And, of course, Marjorie had the pro-pedophile working for her.  These anti-Trans people are the ones hanging around with child molestors.  

This war is doing great harm.  Applause for Gavin and everyone who is standing up right now.  Shame on those -- especially if you claim to be left -- who are silent or, even worse, encouraging this war.  Daniel Villareal (LGBTQ NATION) reports:

A cisgender mother helping her cis disabled son use the restroom was prevented from entering a Kansas library’s women’s restroom with him, even though they’ve done that for years. The mother thinks that the state’s recently passed anti-transgender bathroom bill is to blame, but the library has called the incident “a mishandled customer service moment.”

On May 20, Karen Wild entered a women’s bathroom in the Wichita Public Library’s central branch with her son, Ellis Dunville. She was assisting her son, who is on the autism spectrum, has a seizure disorder, and is nonverbal, The Topeka Capital-Journal reported.

A male security guard told her that her son couldn’t enter the restroom. Wild said they had used the women’s restroom together for years without any issues. However, she also noted that another person in the women’s restroom objected to her son’s presence.

Shortly after, a female library employee entered, said the library had policies regulating restroom use, and asked Wild if she and her son could use the building’s gender-neutral family restroom, which Wild never knew existed.

Wild told the aforementioned publication that she suspected the incident might have occurred because the legislature recently passed S.B. 180, a law that bans trans people from using bathrooms and other facilities matching their gender identity.

“There isn’t anything I can think of that has changed except that they heard about that law and decided they needed to be emboldened by it somehow,” she said. “I can’t explain it any other way.”



Let's turn to Iraq.  BBC NEWS notes:

The Duchess of Edinburgh has become the first UK royal to visit Baghdad - as part of her work to support survivors of sexual violence in conflict.

Buckingham Palace said Sophie had spent two days in Iraq's capital to learn of the challenges women and girls face.

She visited a girls' school to hear from pupils about their education.

After meeting Iraq's women young and old, Sophie visited President Abdul Latif Rashid and prime minister Mohammad Shia Al Sudani.

She was praised for being the first member of the Royal Family to visit Baghdad by the UK's ambassador to the country, Mark Bryson-Richardson, whom she spent most of the trip with.

Sophie, who gained the title of Duchess of Edinburgh when her husband Prince Edward took on a new role in March after the death of Queen Elizabeth II, has said in the past that she is passionate about supporting women and gender equality around the world.  


Really not sure what to say here.  First, Sophie's visit brings attention to Iraq and that is a good thing.

But there's more than just that.

Why are we supposed to be enthused?  The current king of England visited Basra in 2009.  

More the point, England destroyed Iraq as much as the United States did.  Are we ignoring that as we rush to celebrate a ruling class figure visiting the country they destroyed?



+ As most readers of Roaming Charges know, I’ve been skeptical of Seymour Hersh’s reporting on the sabotage of the Nordstream pipelines. Some of his initial assertions were easily disproved and others seemed highly speculative and thinly, very thinly, sourced.  Hersh’s narrative was problematic and antiquated. One of the most glaring issues to me was: why use scuba divers, like something out of a 70s Bond movie, which require decompression tanks and conspicuous naval support, when you could deploy the weapon de jour: underwater drones controlled by a joystick and a laptop? Now comes James Bamford, an intelligence reporter whose credentials are at least as accomplished as Hersh’s (and somewhat less tarnished), with a detailed and persuasive account in The Nation that explains how it’s much more likely that Ukrainian intelligence operatives, trained in underwater demolition techniques by the Brits and the US, blew up the pipelines using submersible drones, with the probable assistance of Poland.  Where Hersh is vague, Bamford is specific. Where Hersh relies on a sole anonymous source, Bamford meticulously builds his piece from documents. Bamford explains in compelling detail how it was done, the kind of drones used and why both Ukraine and Poland wanted to take the pipelines out. Bamford also suggests that both Russian and US intelligence knew that a plot in was the works and that the US kept quiet because the sabotage had been committed by its allies. This is deeply informed journalism and also a terrific read.




The following sites updated:






Posted by at

5/25/2023

the people want dianne gone

senator dianne feinstein - the 1 who couldn't take a hint.  'newsweek' reports:


A majority of Democratic voters in California believe that Dianne Feinstein's recent illness is a sign that she is no longer fit to serve as the state's senior senator, a new poll shows.

A survey of 7,465 registered voters by the Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies (IGS) conducted between May 17 and May 22, and released on Thursday, found that 63 percent of Democrats agreed that the 89-year-old's health precluded her from continuing to represent the state in Congress. Seventy-five percent of Republicans also agreed, and 67 percent of overall California voters supported the sentiment.

[. . .]

The Berkeley IGS poll found 56 percent of voters thought Feinstein's health issues were "creating serious problems for the Democratic Party's ability to get judicial nominees confirmed and get important legislation approved."

Just 20 percent disagreed with the statement. Democratic voters were the most likely group to agree, the survey found, with a margin of four to one.

Californian voters are largely split along partisan lines about what should be done.

A majority of 52 percent felt that Governor Gavin Newsom appointing a replacement would benefit the state, as Feinstein's successor "could better represent California's interests"—with a large majority of Democrats agreeing, but Republicans disagreeing three to one.

A similar majority of Californian voters, 56 percent, agreed that such a move would be "a bad thing" as voters would not get a say. Republican voters "overwhelmingly" expressed a preference for Feinstein to continue with her current term and be replaced after the 2024 election.
she needs to go.  she needs to resign.  since her return, she's claimed she was never gone.  and she wasn't lying to the reporter, she honestly thought that.

forget california for a 2nd, this is an embarrassment to the entire country.  and, no, we should not have 1 of the 100 senators so senile that they have no idea what's going on.  not at all.  she's not fit and she should retire.  and this isn't a california issue, it's a united states issue.  this is appalling. 


A staff photographer for the Los Angeles Times revealed that he was "shouted at" after he tried to photograph Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., while her staff "tried to hide her wheelchair behind a pillar." 

"I photographed the senator as a staff member tried to hide her wheelchair behind a pillar at a low-profile exit last week. A Capitol Police officer shouted at me to move back — despite already being 30 feet away from the senator. Feinstein waved as she was escorted to a waiting vehicle," photographer Kent Nishimura wrote in a story published Wednesday. 

Nishimura explained that Senate security also works overtime to protect Feinstein from the media. 
"For two days in a row last week, the Senate sergeant-at-arms office has said her arrival at the Capitol ‘is closed press,’ shutting doors and using the Capitol police to chase journalists out of hallways and public spaces. This unprecedented act of restricting press freedom only raises more questions," he said.


get her out.  and shame on every 1 for trying to fool the american people.

if the democratic party wants to look as corrupt as the republicans, keep di fi in the senate.  make it clear that you aren't the adults in the room and you are not responsible at all.


let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'


Thursday, May 25, 2023.  Tina Turner is the focus for the snapshot today.


The Queen of Rock and Roll has died.  This after a multi-decade career which saw Tina Turner awarded with 12 Grammys -- the only woman to win a Grammy in all three popular music genres -- rock, soul and pop.  



As a member of a revue, she found fans in 1960 with her vocals on "A Fool In Love."  She would next touch recording genius when she went into the studio with Phil Spector for "River Deep, Mountain High."  Phil wanted nothing to do with the revue, he just wanted Tina in the studio by herself to record the vocal.  Just as Mary Wilson and Cindy Birdsong had nothing to do with "Someday We'll Be Together" (Diana Ross is the only Supreme that sings on that number one song), Tina was the only artist from the revue performing on that song.  





Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich wrote the song with some tinkering around by Phil.  It was the culmination of Phil's entire work.  And it flopped in the US.  It only went to 88 on the US pop charts but it went to number three in England and the song is now considered a historically and artistically significant recording, one that was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and one that regularly makes the lists of all time great recordings.

It greatly expanded the appreciation of and audience for Tina Turner.  She recorded the song in 1966.  For context, Cher was also a solo artist and part of a duo at this time.  In 1967,  Sonny & Cher would have their last significant hit of the decade with "The Beat Goes On" (number six on the US pop chart) and Cher would have her last significant solo hit of the decade with "You Better Sit Down Kids" (number nine on the US pop chart).  Both women, who would become great friends, saw the careers sag and both would look at the older men in charge of the duo and say they needed to modernize and go younger.  Sonny didn't believe that was the answer.  Tina had more luck because the revue was forever doing club dates and needed to have songs that got the room pumping so current hits by others could be worked in.  As a result of Tina's interest in and love of the music around her, she would do vocals on covers such as "Let It Be," "Honky Tonk Woman," "I Want To Take You Higher," "Get Back," "Everyday People," "With A Little Help From My Friends,"  "Up On The Roof" and many more.  She always made the songs her own.




Many would only realize how great her interpretive skills were when she took "Proud Mary" back into the top ten in 1971.  I just probably do a note right here that I knew Tina and she was a great friend.  In this obit, we're not naming people who were mean to her.  That's not just her first husband, that's also people who thought it was cute, as late the 80s, to refer to Tina with the n-word.  So if you see "Proud Mary" and think of some 60s White group, don't e-mail me telling me I should have included their racist ass in this entry.  It's not an oversight on my part, this is about honoring Tina and I'm not honoring anyone who hurt her.

Tina took the tired 60s song and made it unique.  Resulted in a Grammy win.

She also was a song writer.  One of the songs she wrote was the song about her hometown "Nutbush City Limits."  It would become a top forty hit in the early seventies and she would re-record it and perform it repeatedly throughout her career.



She was an amazing live performer and one of the few women who could regularly fill auditoriums.  Janis Joplin recognized Tina's onstage brilliance as did audiences.  Of the female musical artists who came to fame in the sixties and survived (Janis would pass away shortly after that decade ended; Joni Mitchell would garner her audience in the 1970s), Tina was part of a rare group of women who set records with ticket sales for their performances -- it was Tina, it was Cher and it was Diana Ross.

Aretha Franklin!  No, it was just those three.  Aretha didn't tour that often and she had a reputation by the end of the 70s as cancelling too often that led to poor ticket sales -- you don't want to buy a ticket, make plans to attend only to show up and find out that the artist has decided they're not doing the concert.  Cher, Diana Ross and Tina were the three that sold tickets.



She made a name for herself and she did it with hard work.  No one was going to take her name from her.




I, TINA, her 1986 book with Kurt Loder, was made into the film WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT starring Angela Bassett who was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in the film.

Part of the story of Tina Turner is her courage and her love for life and people.  She was terrorized throughout the sixties and most of the seventies by a man who claimed to love her but didn't.  He was a liar and he was a thief who stole songwriting credits throughout his career.  His beating up Tina was well known by the time he thankfully died.  But, for those too young to remember, when he did die in 2007, there were people trying to praise him and trying to minimize what he did.  Those people included Danny Schechter who thought doing one interview with Tina gave him 'insight' into her abuser and that Tina needed to forgive him and . . .

Garbage.  Ava and I took that on in 2007 and this is from what we wrote and I am pulling the man's name (he's called by his last name in the clip earlier from WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT IT):


Now reading some of the boys last week, it appeared that the film What's Love Got To Do With It confused them. Or possibly it was Angela Bassett's fighting figure that confused them? Her deltoids are world class and could qualify her for a bodybuilding competition, no question. While she gave an amazing performance, it was too strong to capture Tina (offstage) in the days before she left [terrorist]. The body type was wrong as well which is why it's so very jarring when Tina takes over the performance during the last minutes of the film's final scene. It's equally true that [terrorist] was softened by the actor performing him who also had the benefit of being attractive.



Somehow, the film's timeline?, some people seem to have the idea that he beat her up real bad in a limo in Dallas in 1976 and Tina up and left. Wrong. He beat her repeatedly. He beat her through the sixties, he beat [her] through the seventies until she left. And when she left, this 'kind' man threatened to kill her and did a little more than threaten.



That wasn't about 'love.' What's love got to do with it? Not a damn thing.



Tina was a meal ticket and long before [terrorist] moved into his 'open' relationship ('open' for him only, of course), Tina was well aware of his many girlfriends, mistresses and one-night-stands. When she would try to leave, he would beat her. When she did leave, he would pull her off a bus and beat her. When the song didn't sail up the charts, he'd beat her. When he was having a bad day, he'd beat her. When he thought she was getting too much credit (she was the act), he'd beat her. He'd beat her for any reason whenever he damn well felt like it. It was a non-stop abusive relationship.



And, sad to say, many of the rock press knew about it when they were together and many of them sided with [terrorist]. That was the attitude in the rock press. It was especially the attitude at Rolling Stone and, for those who doubt it, you can comb the archives and find that attitude displayed everywhere -- even in an article on Sonny & Cher's then-new TV show, where it was 'shared': "Many of my friends favor the belief that after work Sonny beats the sh*t out of her with a tire iron." (For those too lazy to do their own research, the pig 'sharing' that bit of 'amusement' was Chris Hodenfield.)



That was the Rolling Stone attitude. It didn't disappear. In 1981, editor Brant Mewborn was screaming loudly for the magazine to feature Tina (who just done two multiple night engagements of SRO business at the Ritz and been brought on Saturday Night Live by Rod Stewart to sing a duet of "Hot Legs") and the reaction was one of indifference, one of 'she walked out on [terrorist].' The abuse was well known by then. Didn't matter. That was the 'feel' and 'mood' at Rolling Stone: Tina walked out on the man who beat her, she didn't matter.



Rolling Stone was long aware of what actually went on in The [terrorist] and Tina Turner Revue. Some of the truth leaked out in Ben Fong-Torres' hard hitting piece in the magazine's October 14, 1971 issue. Rolling Stone was made even more aware after the publication of the article when the police nabbed a man who had been hired by Ike to break the legs of Ben Fong-Torres and publisher Jann Wenner. The article noted his 'flirtations' with other women and his heavy coke use.



Tina was the one who got them to update their sound when their music was dying in the sixties. So the idea that "even Tina has to" feel anything is beyond belief.



She was enslaved. She wasn't allowed to live her life. She wasn't allowed to practice her religion. She wasn't allowed to be just an artist in the revue. She would try to bargain her way out of the relationship with that and [terrorist] would just beat her.



He beat her because he was damn lucky she presented herself in his life. He beat her because he couldn't beat men and he couldn't make the male singers stay. He beat her because she was his ticket to big money and big fame. Even with all her talents provided him with, he still beat her and that was because he really couldn't take the fact that no one really considered it "[terrorist] and Tina," it was just Tina. Which is why the Who wanted Tina for their film (Tommy) and not [terrorist]. Which is why Phil Spector wanted Tina (and not [terrorist] for "River Deep Mountain High." By the end of the act, he couldn't even keep it together in the studio.



He beat her over and over for their entire relationship. He beat her with his fists, he beat her with wire hangers, he beat her with whatever was handy. An electrical cord could and would do. He threatened her with death (repeatedly) if she left him.


[. . .]

No, Elijah, [terrorist] did not "discover" Tina. And comparing the serial physical abuse Tina endured for over sixteen years to a sex act ("groupies and playthings") reveals a lot of stupid. The choice of the word "treatment" as opposed to "abuse" ("his treatment of her") is also sadly revealing. (Wald does use abuse elsewhere. But we don't think abuse is "treatment." Even "mistreatment" would be an improvement over "treatment.") As for Wald's claim in the article that a White musician's death wouldn't result in the same kind of obituary attention to his violence, give us an example? We can provide one who would get the same treatment: Phil Spector.



And that would have been true if he'd died long before Lana Clarkson was murdered. He was another control freak and he was abusive to Ronnie Spector. Not on an [terrorist] scale but few people in the world will reach that kind of scale while in the spotlight.



Jim asked us to write about this and showed an e-mail explaining why this topic needed to be addressed. A reader of two years had been on the AOL message boards and saw [terrorist]'s abuse minimized by guys with man-crushes on [terrorist] who repeatedly down-played the physical abuse of Tina Turner, the beatings, the crimes. The reader said it brought back for her the denial she was met with when she brought charges against her then husband for abuse.



Boys, it's sad when your heroes have feet of clay, we understand. It must be even sadder when your hero turns out to be an abusive crook. But that is the reality of [terrorist]. And he didn't 'just beat Tina once,' he did so repeatedly. And the message that the reader copied and pasted into her e-mail, where a man was saying that all that happened, all that caused Tina to leave, was [terrorist] was in a bad mood and just slapped her, is a nice little fantasy for those who need their daily dose of denial. But it's not reality.

[. . .]

Nor are we willing to allow that [terrorist] got a bum deal because his abuses, his crimes, were noted in his obits. He was an abuser who regularly beat Tina, made her live in fear (to the point that she once tried to take her own life just to be free of him -- a detail that got left out by the [terrorist] Defenders) and really only controlled her because she was a woman. He thought it was his 'right' and when men defend him, they, intentionally or not, further that message. The reader who wrote saw her then-husband convicted of violent abuse (some of which he admitted to in court but tried to justify it with the 'pressure' he was under) and yet, even with that, nearly a decade later, she still encounters people who feel the 'need' to sing his praises to her and say they hope someday she can put her 'issues' behind her. Her 'issues.' Had she been assaulted by a stranger would the same 'caring' people stop to wonder when she and the criminal could be in the same room together? No.



Here's the thing, if [terrorist] had beat a woman he wasn't involved with even once the way he regularly beat Tina, his ass would have been hauled off to jail and it's doubtful that people would be writing "Poor [terrorist]" pieces today. But because it was his wife (or 'wife'), we're supposed to allow for something. What, we're not sure. But there's a lot of minimizing going on about the fact that he 'only' beat his wife. (And for the record, he also beat many of his mistresses. Ann Thomas is only one of the many women who've gone on record explaining how [terrorist] also beat them.) As if it's somehow 'different' if the woman you physically attack is your wife. Almost as if they're saying, she probably asked for it.



The American Bar Association's Commission on Domestic Violence notes that 1.3 million women "are physically assaulted by an intimate partner" each year in the US. That's nothing to minimize. 


Tina survived.  Nothing could take the abuse or the memories away.  She was terrorized and she suffered throughout her life as a result.  It's nothing to be minimized or excused.  Or glamorized by two idiots in music who felt their own boring lives needed dressing up.

Tina couldn't change what she'd endured but she could  -- and did -- make the rest of her years matter.


In 1984, she returned to the charts with her PRIVATE DANCER album (ten million copies sold around the world) which included the hits "Better Be Good To Me," "Let's Stay Together," "Show Some Respect" and the number one hit "What's Love Got To Do With It."  She'd start touring for the album as Lionel Richie's opening act but quickly go out on her own and rock the whole world.  She'd have one achievement after another.  Many more hits, many more record topping concert tours.

She'd also find lasting and real love with Erwin Bach.  She would detail their nearly forty years together in her 2018 book MY LOVE STORY: A MEMOIR.  ESSENCE writes about their love affair and offers a photo essay.  Alex Ross (PEOPLE) notes:

 The music legend — who died at age 83 on Wednesday after a "long illness," her rep confirmed — opened up about her romance with Bach, now 67, in her 2021 HBO documentary Tina.

"He was [16 years] younger [than me]. He was 30 years old at the time and had the prettiest face. I mean, you cannot [describe] it. It was like insane. [I thought], 'Where did he come from?' He was really so good-looking. My heart [was beating fast] and it means that a soul has met, and my hands were shaking," Turner recalled in the film.

"We met at Cologne [Bonn] Airport — actually it was Düsseldorf Airport [in Germany], and her manager Roger [Davies] asked me to pick up Tina," added Bach, a former music executive, in the documentary," Bach said in the documentary. 

THE GUARDIAN offers their pick of her ten greatest songs, Australia's ABC offers their pick of five greats, ULTIMATE CLASSIC ROCK serves up their ten choices and BILLBOARD goes with 15.  In 1994, a three disc retrospective contained 48 tracks and even it couldn't represent all her greatest songs -- not even all her greatest up to 1994.  1986's "One Of The Living," for example, wasn't on the box set.  The song co-written by Holly Knight (who also co-wrote Tina's "Better Be Good To Me" and "The Best") made it to number 15 on the pop charts.



As the Iraq War dragged on and on -- and continues to -- it became a song we'd note here many times.  "You can't stop the pain of your children crying out in your head/ We always said that the living would envy the dead."

Tina's passing is the news.  Someone else thought he'd be the news but it's Tina Turner that the world is thinking of.  In "Tina" last night, we noted those commenting on her passing -- that included Diana Ross, Jennifer Hudson, Ringo Starr, Keith Urban, Dionne Warwick, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Kamala Harris and Joe Biden.  It's a passing that touches the world, a loss that many of us feel.



How would you like to be remembered?

As the Queen of Rock’n’Roll. As a woman who showed other women that it is OK to strive for success on their own terms.





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