December 27, 2018

Caetano Veloso: Revisão muito incompleta do ano de 2018


Fui e sou contra praticamente tudo o que os vitoriosos vêm dizendo há muito tempo




Caetano com braço levantado no palco

Caetano Veloso
O ano que acaba foi difícil. Na sexta (21) à noite vi Roberto Carlos cantar "Como Dois e Dois" na TV. Fiquei surpreso e profundamente emocionado. Canção que escrevi no exílio e que agora soa tão violentamente atual. Senti Roberto com a mesma intensidade de quando ele lançou "Se Você Pensa", de quando ele cantou, em minha casa de Londres, "As Curvas da Estrada de Santos", de quando ele me mostrou "Debaixo dos Caracóis". A sintonia dele com nossa história profunda reafirma, volta e meia, o alerta que Bethânia me deu sobre a Jovem Guarda: "Eles têm vitalidade".
Entrei na cozinha para pegar um biscoito de arroz e vi na TV o título "Muito Romântico": era o especial natalino de Roberto. Parei, me perguntando, será que ele vai cantar essa minha música? Não sei se ele a cantou: havia convidados na sala e eu só vi uns cinco números (!). "Eu Te Proponho", "Se Você Pensa", Michel Teló, Alejandro Sanz. Principalmente ouvi Roberto frisar "Tudo vai mal, tudo/Tudo é igual quando eu canto e sou mudo". Isso fechou o ano para mim. A gente precisa saber quem a gente chama de rei.

Em 2018 Gil lançou "OK OK OK", em que ele surge como um menino recém-renascido. As canções de criança e os carinhos nos médicos que o ajudaram a curar-se vêm, além de emolduradas por outras de veia reflexiva (e por uma explosão de musicalidade no duelo/homenagem com Yamandu), tratadas pela sempre impressionante clareza de visão, pela luz, pelo toque de seu filho Bem (também parceiro em "Sereno").
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Desde que Gil fez temporada voz-e-violões ao lado de Bem [Gil] que a precisão deste me exalta. Para mim, aquele show era a perfeição. E, depois, o "Gilberto Sambas" provou-se um dos momentos mais altos da nossa música popular das últimas décadas. Que delícia para Gil dever tanto dessa beleza a Bem. E que delícia para nós que Gil volte com tanta gilberteza. Sendo tão ele. Misterioso. Lunar. O lado da lua virado para a luz do Bem.
Este foi o ano em que o cantor português Salvador Sobral, em Lisboa, me perguntou se eu conhecia Tim Bernardes. Não. No Rio, ouvi Tim em casa de Paula Lavigne: meus filhos o conhecem. Fiquei encantado e intrigado. Semanas depois vi o show dele no Net-Rio. Uma maravilha de afinação, controle da dinâmica, refinamento, execução instrumental e liberdade na elegância do uso do palco e da luz —além das composições personalíssimas de caminhos fascinantemente desviantes.
 
Nelson Motta e eu éramos os únicos velhos na plateia. Tivemos certeza de que a música brasileira é forte sempre. Quem vê um show de Tim Bernardes não pode nem acompanhar o movimento mental de quem diz que nossa canção hoje não tem valor. 
 
Elza Soares é uma deusa da canção lusófona desde que apareceu. Agora fez dois discos que honram nossa tradição e a levam para mais longe. Além de inspirar, com sua personalidade, o musical Elza, inovador e livre, belo espetáculo que engrandece nossa vida. Aquelas moças todas cantando e atuando como se cada uma fosse uma exceção, mas mostrando que são a nova regra. Com a turma de sampa que produziu seus discos, ela foi para o topo da revista online Pitchfork em 2017. Em 2018 veio com "Deus é Mulher". Deusa e mulher e preta e brasileira. 

Tim participa lindamente do disco de Baco Exu do Blues, garoto que conheci na Bahia quando ele tinha 20 anos. Agora tem 22. E fez um disco de maduro acompanhamento da cena do rap anglófono –sem saber inglês. Um disco que marca uma virada no mundo do hip-hop brasileiro. Baco sabe ouvir o que os gringos fazem e cria o jeito certo para dizer o que ele próprio tem necessidade genuína de dizer. "Sofro racismo todas as horas de todos os dias", ele me disse em entrevista para a Mídia Ninja.
Suas letras citam Kanye West e Jay-Z, desavergonhadamente mostrando o fascínio pelo modelo ianque, com a saudável certeza de que a originalidade do que faz só aparecerá para muita gente daqui a um tempo. Diz: Mano Brown é para sempre. No imediato, quem já vivencia essa área do gosto aprova com entusiasmo sua empreitada. Para mim, é beleza pura: sou baiano praticante e, portanto, vejo Baiana System e Tiganá em Baco. Jesus é Blues.
Fiquei deslumbrado quando ouvi, já faz mais de ano, "De Ponta a Ponta É Tudo Praia Palma", o álbum sebastianista, transtropicalista e Thiago Amud. Com certo atraso, falei disso em entrevista a jornal. Uma noite, indo ao estúdio de Kassin, um rapaz que estava sentado no chão do Áudio Rebel com um amigo me chamou pelo nome: "Eu sou Thiago Amud". Fiquei feliz mas não tinha tempo de parar ali para uma conversa.
Este ano, antes de ele gravar seu "Cinema que o Sol Não Apaga" (que me traz de volta o tempo em que ia a vários cinemas no mesmo dia, saindo das salas muitas vezes com um filme que o sol da Bahia não conseguia ofuscar), nos encontramos e temos conversado. Ele escreve letras incrivelmente bonitas e melodias desconcertantes amparadas por orquestrações complexas e bem-compostas, escritas por ele mesmo (modernas, inteiradas do que tem acontecido com a música, mas principalmente sentidas fundo e muito pessoais).
 
O meu tropicalismo exulta diante de rebento longínquo no tempo tão capaz de dar espessura a muito do que tentei sugerir quando topei fazer canções. Outra vez, fico sem poder compartilhar do desalento de quem diz que nada de novo e bom acontece. 
 
Ouço funk e pagode na FM O Dia toda tarde e toda noite –se saio de carro (e saio quase sempre). Para além de Ludmila e Anitta (e do maravilhoso clip de Nego do Borel, onde ele faz uma biba que dá um chupão num bofe –o que me lembrou das primeiras aparições de Mick Jagger a que assisti em Londres, em 1969, 70), há miríades de ideias anônimas encantadoras. E o Baile da Gaiola, com funks acelerados e inventivos. Há um em que um berimbau faz base para a batida umbanda-maculêlê que se tornou a marca. Tem muita coisa boa.

Risério dizia que o tropicalismo tinha visão antropológica da cultura brasileira. Ele próprio virou antropólogo. Os porta-vozes da direita atualmente triunfante odeiam a mirada antropológica da cultura. Eu não. Embora não ache que o tropicalismo seja ou tenha sido isso. Menos ainda "estetismo", que eu acho que é como o rapaz que segurou minha famosa cueca (a italiana Igiaba Sciego, num pequeno livro de fã sobre mim, atravessa páginas falando de cueca) prefere definir. Esse rapaz usa "cueca" como os ignorantes da obra de seu mestre usam "astrologia". Não dá. Então o conservadorismo é tão doido que nem num sonho contado em poesia de canção pode-se subverter a moral da fábula do rei nu?
Este foi o ano em que li (entre muitas outras coisas e sempre desorganizadamente) "Maquinação do Mundo", de Zé Miguel Wisnik; "O Elogio do Vira-Lata", de Eduardo Giannetti; "Ser Republicano no Brasil Colônia", de Heloisa Starling. E, com grande entusiasmo, "Economia do Conhecimento", de Roberto Mangabeira. Volta e meia volto aos citados, mas agora estou lendo, apaixonadamente, "Razão Para Crer", de David Smilde, um estudo sobre o crescimento das igrejas evangélicas na América Latina.
 
E dei uma olhada no "Jardim" de Olavo, que já tinha lido antes de as bacantes me desnudarem. Enquanto espero a saída do novo livro de filosofia de Antonio Cicero. Bom mesmo é como J.S. Mill atribui a energia histórica do "Ocidente Moderno" à instância profética que nos veio do judaísmo via Cristo. Reli muito das "Considerações Sobre o Governo Representativo" de Mill. Se tiver de escolher um lado, fico com Cicero, e não com Olavo. Mas Mangabeira me faz pensar mais.
 

Que o ano de 2019 seja bom e que possamos extrair da maluquice algo que nos faça mais capazes. Mudança houve. Passadas as eleições, torço para que muitos brasileiros encontrem o estímulo que buscavam e possam empreender. Fui e sou contra praticamente tudo o que os vitoriosos vêm dizendo há muito tempo. Mas que antagonistas ideológicos vençam é parte do jogo. E pode ser parte saudável. Nada de paralisar o andamento. Desistir do Brasil, não desisto. Gosto dele como Dostoiévski gostava da Rússia.
Mas, sendo o Brasil o que é e eu quem sou, com mais alegria. Com sonhos de tornarmo-nos caminho de luz para todos os povos, brecha aberta para passagem ao Quinto Império. Sim, Império. Sempre leio MD Magno, apesar de detestar o frou-frou francês pós-moderno –e o meu Quinto, de Pessoa Agostinho Vieira, é o quarto para ele, mas em meu rendado particular funciona o ponto, os bilros rolam, a linha corre.
Vi o General Heleno sugerir, com sorriso para Bial, que a revelação do Coaf sobre movimentações atípicas do assessor Queiroz é como que meio suspeita, dizendo-se ironicamente feliz pela eficácia do órgão. Ele não disse nada taxativo, apenas mostrou sorridente desconfiança do timing. E Lula está na cadeia. O general é simpático, até faz lembrar Ferreira Gullar —e sua presença no Haiti foi de orgulhar os brasileiros.
Bial falou no Mensalão. Mas o general fez cara de riso desconfiado, como se o Coaf só tivesse feito isso por tratar-se de Bolsonaro. O que pode levar um petista a achar confirmação de que toda a Lava Jato está cheia de lances e timings que só rolaram porque era Lula. E os jornalistas a reafirmarem que "os dois lados" são iguais. Que 2019 traga a superação desses embates simplistas. Que o Brasil esteja mesmo acima de tudo. 


December 25, 2018

Malandragem, dá um tempo

Leo Aversa Foto: OGlobo
Leo Aversa

 Não entendi muito bem por que o meu sogro quis trocar de carro comigo no fim de semana. Talvez para fingir de proletário em algum compromisso social, talvez para carregar alguma tralha sem sujar o seu carro novo. Melhor nem perguntar, às vezes saber só torna as coisas mais constrangedoras. No sábado até deixei o carro dele na garagem, como manda o bom senso, mas no domingo tive que ir até a Barra para uma sessão de fotos, então chutei o balde. Trabalho é sempre uma boa justificativa. Deu tudo certo, a sessão foi ótima e no final, quando eu estava indo embora, o ator que eu tinha fotografado me pediu carona. Legal, vou tirar onda com o carro do sogrão, pensei, naquela ingenuidade leviana que sempre antecede um desastre. 

Ele perguntou se podia fumar. Claro, disse eu, cigarro não me incomoda. Tirou então do bolso não um cigarro de tabaco, mas sim um baseado XXXG, quase um charuto, daqueles dignos do Fidel Castro, ou melhor, do Bob Marley. Metade do PIB do Paraguai devia estar enrolada ali. Esse fumo é especial, comentou com orgulho, vem do Afeganistão, uma erva que queima lentamente, com notas terrosas e efeito suave e prolongado. O cara não só consumia em escala industrial como era um sommelier da marofa: falava com gosto de safras, plantações, teor de THC e ainda explicava como harmonizar as diferentes sedas com os respectivos bagulhos. Um especialista.

Não fumo maconha, mas sou a favor da liberação. Como também não bebo — sim, a minha vida é melancólica —, tenho autoridade para afirmar: um bêbado perturba muito mais que um chapado. Se querem o bem da Humanidade, proíbam a venda de álcool para os chatos, que isso, sim, é uma catástrofe.

Mas naquele momento, com uma chaminé jamaicana funcionando ao meu lado, a minha preocupação era mais imediata: não ser parado pela polícia. As autoridades não iam querer saber a minha opinião sobre as drogas ou me parabenizar por ser abstêmio. Se nos pegassem só eu ia dançar: enquanto um guarda ia pedir autógrafo e tirar selfies com o meu carona famoso, o outro me levaria para “a sala de massagens” da delegacia. Pablo Escobar feelings. Dei sorte, chegamos à Zona Sul incólumes, quer dizer, mais ou menos.

Como estava chovendo, não abri as janelas do carro e liguei o ar condicionado à toda. Um erro primário, soube depois por um amigo junkie. A fumaça impregna o filtro do ar e não sai nem com um pé de cabra. O carro parecia o Circo Voador depois de um show do D2.
Agora, sim, eu tinha um problema: como entregar um carro cheirando a maconha para o sogro? Nem o Keith Richards admitiria essa desfeita do genro.
Na manhã seguinte fiquei dando voltas na Lagoa com todos os vidros abertos. Foi inútil. Tentei confiar na sorte: talvez ele não reconheça o cheiro, se eu sou do século passado, ele é do retrasado, vai ver a maconha ainda não tinha sido inventada naquela época. No desespero a gente acredita em qualquer coisa.
Trocamos os carros. Nem um comentário.
Fiquei bolado. Perguntei para a minha mulher se ele não tinha reclamado de alguma coisa.
— ’Magina, ele anda com um humor ótimo.
Efeito suave e prolongado. O cara era mesmo um especialista.

 

December 19, 2018

Facebook’s Data Sharing and Privacy Rules: 5 Takeaways From Our Investigation









By Nicholas ConfessoreMichael LaForgia and Gabriel J.X. Dance

You are the product: That is the deal many Silicon Valley companies offer to consumers. The users get free search engines, social media accounts and smartphone apps, and the companies use the personal data they collect — your searches, “likes,” phone numbers and friends — to target and sell advertising.
But an investigation by The New York Times, based on hundreds of pages of internal Facebook documents and interviews with about 50 former employees of Facebook and its partners, reveals that the marketplace for that data is even bigger than many consumers suspected. And Facebook, which collects more information on more people than almost any other private corporation in history, is a central player.
Here are five takeaways from our investigation.
“We don’t sell data to anyone,” Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, told Congress during a hearing in April. His pledge — that the torrent of data Facebook collects from its 2.2 billion users will always remain safely in Facebook’s hands — has been a cornerstone of the company’s defensive strategy this year, as lawmakers, regulators and activists have pummeled the social network over a series of privacy breaches and public relations blunders.
While it is true that Facebook hasn't sold users’ data, for years it has struck deals to share the information with dozens of Silicon Valley companies. These partners were given more intrusive access to user data than Facebook has ever disclosed. In turn, the deals helped Facebook bring in new users, encourage them to use the social network more often, and drive up advertising revenue.
Revelations in March that a political consulting firm linked to President Trump had improperly obtained data on as many as 87 million Facebook users set off the worst crisis in Facebook’s history. The company’s stock plunged, as regulators around the world demanded answers and users worried that Facebook wasn’t protecting their data. In response, Facebook pointed to changes it had made to its privacy policy in 2014, saying that developers no longer had the kind of access that Cambridge had exploited.
But The Times’s investigation reveals that Facebook continued to give huge tech companies, including Microsoft and Amazon, access to much more: the data of hundreds of millions of people a month, including email addresses and phone numbers — without users’ knowledge or consent.
Internal documents obtained by The Times show that Facebook shared data with more than 150 companies — most of them tech businesses, but also automakers, media organizations (including The Times) and others.
While Facebook users can control what data they share with most of the thousands of apps on Facebook’s platform, some companies had access to users’ data even if they had disabled all sharing. Many of the partners’ applications never even appeared in Facebook’s user application settings. According to Facebook, each of the outside companies acted as an extension of the social network. Any information a user shared with friends on Facebook, the company argues, could be shared with these partner companies without additional consent.
The data partnerships date to 2010, at the start of a period of headlong growth and expansion for Facebook. Within a few years, the social network had struck so many of these deals that Facebook employees built a tool to track the different types of access the partners had.
Despite this, Facebook appears not to have kept close tabs on how its users’ data flowed out into the world. A Russian social media company, Yandex, that has been accused of having overly close ties to the Kremlin, still had access to Facebook’s unique user IDs for years after Facebook had cut off other applications from the data, citing security concerns.
Likewise, Facebook gave Yahoo the ability to display a Facebook user’s news feed — including friends’ posts — on the search company’s home page. Yahoo got rid of the feature in 2012. But as of last year, it still had access to data for close to 100,000 people a month.
Under the terms of a 2011 consent agreement with the Federal Trade Commission, Facebook was required to strengthen privacy safeguards and disclose data practices more thoroughly. The company hired an independent firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers, to formally assess its privacy procedures and report back to the F.T.C. every two years.
Four former officials and employees of the F.T.C., briefed on The Times’s findings, said the data-sharing deals likely violated the consent agreement, since users had no way of knowing which companies Facebook had shared their data with, and no clear means of granting or withholding permission. At least one assessment by PricewaterhouseCoopers, in 2013, found that Facebook had done little to ensure that the shared data was appropriately safeguarded.
Facebook maintains that the partnerships are covered by an exemption to the consent decree. A spokeswoman for the F.T.C., which last spring opened a new investigation into Facebook, declined to say whether the commission agreed.

Jair Bolsonaro, até aqui, joga no escuro


André Singer

As tentativas de predizer como será, de fato, o mandato de Jair Bolsonaro esbarram na imprevisibilidade programada que o próprio alimenta.

Reforma da Previdência? Há declarações para todos os gostos. Mudança da embaixada brasileira em Israel para Jerusalém? Ninguém informa quando ocorrerá, o que na prática significa suspender o projeto, sem descartá-lo.

Se alguma ambiguidade é constitutiva da política, pois atende à imperiosa necessidade de construir alianças entre diferentes, o caso do futuro governo parece ser mais da ordem do duplo confusionismo. Um que emana da descoordenação e outro que visa confundir opositores. O problema é que o segundo “justifica” o primeiro e encobre deficiências.

Vencida a eleição com uma plataforma vaga e contraditória —popular e ultraliberal, nacionalista e entreguista, fundamentalista e modernizante—, o presidente eleito agora será obrigado a tomar decisões.

Cada uma delas implicará contentar uns e descontentar outros dos aliados que subiram à arca vencedora. Nada indica, até aqui, que o mandatário disponha de um plano de voo por entre os obstáculos.

O campo das aposentadorias, por ser o item número um da agenda imposta pelo mercado, condensa a incerteza bolsonariana. Se cedesse às pressões máximas da ala mercadista de sua base, Bolsonaro abriria, de imediato, três frentes de conflito. Teria que se haver com o Congresso, com os trabalhadores organizados (sindicatos) e com os militares, funcionários públicos, afinal.

Pior. Uma vez deflagrada a batalha, os fronts tenderiam a se unificar. À medida que perdesse popularidade por conta da retirada de direitos, o presidente veria encorpadas as bancadas hostis na Câmara, local sensível aos humores do eleitorado. Os deputados já estão de olho nas eleições municipais de 2020 e percebem que os candidatos a prefeito terão que prestar explicações nas ruas.

O fatiamento do problema, conforme balão de ensaio lançado terça (4), tem a vantagem de isolar as fontes de resistência. Porém, o primeiro atingido seria o funcionalismo do Estado, o que poria em pé de guerra —passe o trocadilho— as Forças Armadas, sustentáculo fundamental do bolsonarismo. Não espanta que, diante do tamanho da encrenca, o escolhido em 28 de outubro tergiverse.

Mas o mesmo teor de perigo se espalha por todo o terreno governamental. Proteção do ambiente? Se efetivar as propostas mais destrutivas, Jair Messias levantará contra si uma boa ala da sociedade, aí incluídas empresas de porte que possuem investimentos ecológicos, segundo me conta um amigo.
Governar é complicado. Quando falta um bom mapa do percurso, então, pode se tornar inviável.


 

 

December 18, 2018

Conservatism’s Monstrous Endgame



By Paul Krugman

The midterm elections were, to an important extent, a referendum on the Affordable Care Act; health care, not Donald Trump, dominated Democratic campaigning. And voters delivered a clear verdict: They want Obamacare’s achievements, the way it expanded coverage to roughly 20 million people who would otherwise have been uninsured, to be sustained.
But on Friday, Reed O’Connor, a partisan Republican judge known for “weaponizing” his judicial power, declared the A.C.A. as a whole — protection for pre-existing conditions, subsidies to help families afford coverage, and the Medicaid expansion — unconstitutional. Legal experts from both right and left ridiculed his reasoning and described his ruling as “raw political activism.” And that ruling probably won’t be sustained by higher courts.
But don’t be too sure that his sabotage will be overturned. O’Connor’s abuse of power may be unusually crude, but that sort of behavior is becoming increasingly common. And it’s not just health care, nor is it just the courts. What Nancy Pelosi called the “monstrous endgame” of the Republican assault on health care is just the leading edge of an attack on multiple fronts, as the G.O.P. tries to overturn the will of the voters and undermine democracy in general.
For while we may congratulate ourselves on the strength of our political institutions, in the end institutions consist of people and fulfill their roles only as long as the people in them respect their intended purpose. Rule of law depends not just on what is written down, but also on the behavior of those who interpret and enforce that rule.
If these people don’t regard themselves as servants of the law first, partisans second, if they won’t subordinate their political goals to their duty to preserve the system, laws become meaningless and only power matters.
And what we’re seeing in America — what we’ve actually been seeing for years, although much of the news media and political establishment has refused to acknowledge it — is an invasion of our institutions by right-wing partisans whose loyalty is to party, not principle. This invasion is corroding the Republic, and the corrosion is already very far advanced.
I say “right-wing” advisedly. There are bad people in both parties, as there are in all walks of life. But the parties are structurally different. The Democratic Party is a loose coalition of interest groups, but the modern Republican Party is dominated by “movement conservatism,” a monolithic structure held together by big money — often deployed stealthily — and the closed intellectual ecosystem of Fox News and other partisan media. And the people who rise within this movement are, to a far greater degree than those on the other side, apparatchiks, political loyalists who can be counted on not to stray from the party line.
Republicans have been stuffing the courts with such people for decades; O’Connor was appointed by George W. Bush. That’s why his ruling, no matter how bad the legal reasoning, wasn’t a big surprise. The only question was whether he would imagine himself able to get away with such a travesty. Obviously he did, and he may well have been right.
But as I said, it’s not just the courts. Even as Trump and his allies spin fantasies about sabotage by the “deep state,” the reality is that a growing number of positions in government agencies are being occupied by right-wing partisans who care nothing, or actively oppose, their agencies’ missions. The Environmental Protection Agency is now run by people who don’t want to protect the environment, Health and Human Services by people who want to deny Americans health care.

The same takeover by apparatchiks is taking place in politics. Remember when the role of the Senate was supposed to be to “advise and consent”? Under Republican control it’s just plain consent — there is almost literally nothing Trump can do, up to and including clear evidence of corruption and criminality, that will induce senators from his party to exercise any kind of oversight.
So how do people who think and behave this way respond when the public rejects their agenda? They attempt to use their power to overrule the democratic process. When Democrats threaten to win elections, they rig the voting process, as they did in Georgia. When Democrats win despite election rigging, they strip the offices Democrats win of power, as they did in Wisconsin. When Democratic policies prevail despite all of that, they use apparatchik-stuffed courts to strike down legislation on the flimsiest of grounds.
As David Frum, the author of “Trumpocracy,” warned a year ago: “If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.” That’s happening as we speak.
So Pelosi was right about Reed O’Connor’s ruling being a symptom of a “monstrous endgame,” but the game in question isn’t just about perpetuating the assault on health care, it’s about assaulting democracy in general. And the current state of the endgame is probably just the beginning; the worst, I fear, is yet to come.

December 17, 2018

How ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ Went From Parlor Act to Problematic




  • Rock Hudson did it with Mae West. Ray Charles did it with Betty Carter. Lady Gaga and Joseph Gordon-Levitt did it with a modern twist.
    And somewhere along the line, the 74-year-old song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” became a holiday standard, in heavy radio rotation, playing overhead in department stores, and covered on Christmas albums.
    “I’ve got to get home,” the woman sings in the duet. “But baby, it’s cold outside,” the man replies. “The answer is no,” she protests later. By the end they’re singing the chorus together.
    Now, a long-simmering debate over the lyrics has reached a boil. The annual holiday culture wars and the reckoning over #MeToo have swirled together into a potent mix. Say — what’s in this drink?





    Several radio stations have pulled “Baby” from the air. Arguments have erupted on social media, and multiple panels on Fox News and CNN have latched on to the debate.
    William Shatner has emerged as a vocal champion of the song. “You must clutch your pearls over rap music,” he told one critic, urging him to listen to a 1949 classic version on YouTube.

    Have you watched the original choreography, myopic Peter or are you one of those who needs to take the lyrics & extrapolate worst case? You must clutch your pearls over rap music. 😂 Here’s the original choreography from 1949: https://youtu.be/7MFJ7ie_yGU

To some modern ears, the lyrics sound like a prelude to date rape. The woman keeps protesting. “I ought to say no, no, no, sir,” she sings, and he asks to move in closer. “My sister will be suspicious,” she sings. “Gosh, your lips look delicious,” he answers. She wonders aloud what is in her drink.
“I think the song has always been creepy, but we didn’t have the words to explain why,” said Lydia Liza, 24, a singer-songwriter.
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But some believe this to be a case of political correctness run amok. “Do we get to a point where human worth, warmth and romance are illegal?” the conservative commentator Tucker Carlson argued on Fox News.
Faced with protests, radio stations are doing their best to walk the line. “I gotta be honest, I didn’t understand why the lyrics were so bad,” Glenn Anderson, a radio host for Star 102 in Cleveland, wrote in a blog post last month after the station pulled the song from rotation. “Until I read them.”
“Baby” is usually sung by a man insisting and a woman resisting, but not always. In “Neptune’s Daughter,” the romantic comedy that brought the song to the silver screen — it won an Academy Award for best song in 1950 — it was performed twice, and the gender roles were reversed the second time for comedic effect.
“Baby, It’s Cold Outside” had humble origins. The composer Frank Loesser, known for “Guys and Dolls” and other Broadway hits, wrote it in 1944 for himself and his wife Lynn Loesser to perform for friends in their living rooms.
On their original score, the parts were labeled “Wolf” and “Mouse.” But the couple performed it as a flirtatious song, said their daughter, Susan Loesser, 74. “In those days, in the entertainment business, you had to bring an act to parties,” she added. “This was their act.”



In an unfinished memoir, her mother recalled performing the song at one such party. “Well, the room just fell apart,” Lynn wrote. “We had to do it over and over again and we became instant parlor room stars. We got invited to all the best parties for years on the basis of ‘Baby.’ It was our ticket to caviar and truffles.”



Frank later sold the song to the movies, against Lynn’s wishes. (They divorced a few years later.)

As decades passed, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” which makes no mention of any holiday, became a Christmas standard.
There had been criticism over the years, too, but it seems to have reached a crescendo this year.
“We’re all kind of mystified,” Susan Loesser said. “The #MeToo movement, which I approve of, has really overstepped in this. You have to look at things in cultural and historical context.”
One of the earliest critiques came from Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian writer whose work influenced modern Sunni Islamism and who went on to become a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Upon visiting Greeley, Colo., in 1949, Mr. Qutb wrote angrily about a church dance where the minister dimmed the lights and went to the gramophone to put on “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.”
“The ‘Father’ waited until he saw people getting into the rhythm of that erotic song,” Mr. Qutb wrote in an article for an Egyptian magazine, according to a translation by John C. Calvert, a history professor at Creighton University in Omaha.
Decades later, as discussions of date rape and consent became widespread, listeners began to notice just how often the woman says “no.”
There have been a few parody versions about date rape, including a 2015 video from Funny or Die, in which a man physically restrains a woman who is desperate to escape. She knocks him out with a fireplace shovel.





But the song has been defended by some feminists who argue that it tells the story of a woman who wants to spend the night. They note that her stated reasons for leaving are not all her own — she mentions a worried mother, talkative neighbors and one vicious aunt — and that she’s looking for excuses to stay.






Lea Michele and Joey McIntyre performed “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” at Disneyland last year. CreditMatt Petit/Disney Parks, via Getty Images
Judith E. Smith, a professor of American studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston, said the song was written as World War II was upending societal norms; more women were entering the work force, and military deployments were interrupting traditional courtships. Women were starting to exercise more sexual freedom.
“It’s alluding to both men’s and women’s sexual desire in a playful way, but it seems to me there isn’t really any issue about consent,” she said.
But in the #MeToo era, some say it makes sense to look at those old lyrics with fresh eyes.
“I think a lot of men and women were blind to the power men had over women,” said Ms. Liza, the singer-songwriter. “And I think as we move forward, things totally transform, and we can put names to those feelings.”
She wrote her own version of the song, which she performed in 2016 with Josiah Lemanski, who sings that she can leave whenever she likes. “Baby, it’s cold outside” becomes “Baby, I’m cool with that.”









Ms. Liza said she thought the original song was melodically beautiful. But stories of sexual abuse or trauma inspired her to work on a new version. “I think people need to be open-minded and listen to women, listen to survivors,” she said. Proceeds from her song support organizations that help survivors of sexual violence.



Heated debates notwithstanding, it appears that “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” is growing more popular, not less.
One San Francisco station that pulled the song earlier this month, KOIT-FM, reversed course after a survey determined that most listeners wanted the song to be in rotation. And according to Billboard’s sales chart for holiday-themed digital songs, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” is rising in the rankings. Three cover versions appear in the Top 50, more than any other title.
At least Mr. Shatner can rest easy. But if past years are any indication, this battle is far from over.
“It’s a shame that the actions of people like Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby have left people with a bad taste in their mouths over this song,” Ms. Loesser said of her parents’ creation. “It’s lasted now for about 70 years. Pretty good for a party song, no?”


December 13, 2018

Facebook Thwarted Chaos on Election Day. It’s Hardly Clear That Will Last.

Facebook’s war room at its headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., where workers monitored election-related content on the social network.CreditCreditMonica Davey/Epa

By Kevin Roose


After an Election Day largely free of viral social media misinformation, and with little trace of the kind of Russian troll stampede that hit its platform in 2016, executives at Facebook may be tempted to take a victory lap.

That would be a mistake.

It’s true that Facebook and other social media companies have made strides toward cleaning up their services in the last two years. The relative calm we saw on social media on Tuesday is evidence that, at least for one day, in one country, the forces of chaos on these platforms can be contained.
But more than anything, this year’s midterm election cycle has exposed just how fragile Facebook remains.

Want a disaster-free Election Day in the social media age? You can have one, but it turns out that it takes constant vigilance from law enforcement agencies, academic researchers and digital security experts for months on end.

It takes an ad hoc “war room” at Facebook headquarters with dozens of staff members working round-the-clock shifts. It takes hordes of journalists and fact checkers willing to police the platform for false news stories and hoaxes so that they can be contained before spreading to millions. And even if you avoid major problems from bad actors domestically, you might still need to disclose, as Facebook did late Tuesday night, that you kicked off yet another group of what appeared to be Kremlin-linked trolls.

I’ve experienced Facebook’s fragility firsthand. Every day for the past several months, as I’ve covered the midterms through the lens of social media, I’ve started my day by looking for viral misinformation on the platform. (I’ve paid attention to Twitter, YouTube and other social networks, too, but Facebook is the 800-pound gorilla of internet garbage, so it got most of my focus.)

Most days, digging up large-scale misinformation on Facebook was as easy as finding baby photos or birthday greetings. There were doctored photos used to stoke fear about the caravan of Latin American migrants headed toward the United States border. There were easily disprovable lies about the women who accused Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh of sexual assault, cooked up by partisans with bad-faith agendas. Every time major political events dominated the news cycle, Facebook was overrun by hoaxers and conspiracy theorists, who used the platform to sow discord, spin falsehoods and stir up tribal anger.
Facebook was generally responsive to these problems after they were publicly called out. But the platform’s scale means that even people who work there are often in the dark. Some days, while calling the company for comment on a new viral hoax I had found, I felt like a college R.A. telling the dean of students about shocking misbehavior inside a dorm he’d never visited. (“The freshmen are drinking what?”)

Other days, combing through Facebook falsehoods has felt like watching a nation poison itself in slow motion. A recent study by the Oxford Internet Institute, a department at the University of Oxford, found that 25 percent of all election-related content shared on Facebook and Twitter during the midterm election season could be classified as “junk news.” Other studies have hinted at progress in stemming the tide of misinformation, but the process is far from complete.
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A Facebook spokesman, Tom Reynolds, said that the company had improved since 2016, but there was “still more work to do.”
“Over the last two years, we’ve worked hard to prevent misuse of Facebook during elections,” Mr. Reynolds said. “Our teams worked round the clock during the midterms to reduce the spread of misinformation, thwart efforts to discourage people from voting and deal with issues of hate on our services.”

Even with all Facebook has done, the scale of misinformation still often feels overwhelming. Last month, a viral post falsely claimed that Cesar Sayoc, the suspect in the attempted bombing of prominent liberals and news organizations, was a secret Democrat participating in a “false flag” conspiracy. The post racked up nearly 80,000 shares, more than any post by The New York Times, The Washington Post or Fox News during the entire month of October.
When the news on Facebook was not blatantly false, it was often divisive and hyperpartisan — exactly the kind of thing Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive, has said he wants to combat by using Facebook to “bring the world closer together.” Nearly every day, the stories that got the most engagement across the network came from highly partisan sources — mostly conservative outlets like Fox News, Breitbart and The Daily Caller, with a handful of liberal pages like Occupy Democrats and The Other 98% thrown in — that skewed heavily toward outrage and resentment.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, has said he wants to combat divisiveness and partisanship by using Facebook to “bring the world closer together.”CreditTom Brenner/The New York Times

Even the anti-abuse systems the company put in place after the 2016 election have not gone smoothly. One of the steps Facebook took to prevent Russian-style influence campaigns was to force political advertisers to verify their identifies. But the company left a loophole that allowed authorized advertisers to fill the “paid for by” disclaimer on their ads with any text they wanted, essentially allowing them to disguise themselves to the public.
Facebook has framed its struggle as an “arms race” between itself and the bad actors trying to exploit its services. But that mischaracterizes the nature of the problem. This is not two sovereign countries locked in battle, or an intelligence agency trying to stop a nefarious foreign plot. This is a rich and successful corporation that built a giant machine to convert attention into advertising revenue, made billions of dollars by letting that machine run with limited oversight, and is now frantically trying to clean up the mess that has resulted.
As the votes were being tallied on Tuesday, I talked to experts who have paid close attention to Facebook’s troubles over the past several years. Most agreed that Election Day itself had been a success, but the company still had plenty to worry about.
“I give them better marks for being on the case,” said Michael Posner, a professor of ethics and finance at New York University’s Stern School of Business. “But it’s yet to be seen how effective it’s going to be. There’s an awful lot of disinformation still out there.”
“On the surface, for Facebook in particular, it’s better because some of the worst content is getting taken down,” said Jonathan Albright, the research director at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. Mr. Albright, who has found networks of Russian trolls operating on Facebook in the past, has written in recent days that some of the company’s features — in particular, Facebook groups that are used to spread misinformation — are still prone to exploitation.
“For blatantly false news, they’re not even close to getting ahead of it,” Mr. Albright said. “They’re barely keeping up.”
Jennifer Grygiel, an assistant professor at Syracuse University who studies social media, said that Facebook’s pattern of relying on outside researchers and journalists to dig up misinformation and abuse was worrying.
“It’s a bad sign that the war rooms, especially Facebook’s war room, didn’t have this information first,” Professor Grygiel said.
In some ways, Facebook has it easy in the United States. Its executives and engineers are primarily English-speaking Americans, as are many of the content moderators doing the work of policing the platform. The country also has a strong independent press, law enforcement agencies and other stable institutions that are capable of filling in some gaps. And Facebook is highly incentivized to behave well in the United States and Europe, where its most important regulators (and the bulk of its advertisers) are.
It is hard to imagine Facebook extending the same kind of effort to prevent misinformation and interference in Madagascar, Armenia or El Salvador, all of which have upcoming elections. And if you think Facebook will spin up a 24/7 “war room” to help stop meddling in Nigeria’s February elections, I have a bridge in Lagos to sell you.
It’s worth asking, over the long term, why a single American company is in the position of protecting free and fair elections all over the world. But that is the case now, and we now know that Facebook’s action or inaction can spell the difference between elections going smoothly and democracies straining under a siege of misinformation and propaganda.
To Facebook’s credit, it has become more responsive in recent months, including cracking down on domestic disinformation networks, banning particularly bad actors such as Alex Jones of Infowars, and hiring more people to deal with emerging threats.
But Facebook would not have done this on its own. It took sustained pressure from lawmakers, regulators, researchers, journalists, employees, investors and users to force the company to pay more attention to misinformation and threats of election interference.

Facebook has shown, time and again, that it behaves responsibly only when placed under a well-lit microscope. So as our collective attention fades from the midterms, it seems certain that outsiders will need to continue to hold the company accountable, and push it to do more to safeguard its users — in every country, during every election season — from a flood of lies and manipulation.


December 11, 2018

Ilha de Paquetá é poupada do vazamento de óleo, retido nas APAs


Os ventos que sopraram ontem na Baía de Guanabara afastaram os riscos do vazamento de um duto de óleo bruto da Transpetro, subsidiária da Petrobras, atingir a Ilha de Paquetá, conforme constatou o analista ambiental e chefe da APA de Guapimirim, Maurício Muniz, em vistoria de barco que fez de manhã. “O problema é que o óleo se acumulou em duas áreas de proteção ambiental importantes, dos manguezais do Rio Estrela e do Parque Municipal Barão de Mauá, e a limpeza desse tipo de ecossistema é bastante complexa. As praias do Ipiranga e de Magé também foram muito impactadas”, disse.

Muniz considera prematura a estimativa da Petrobras de que foram 60 mil litros vazados, “feita só com o sobrevoo da região. Pode ser mais ou pode ser menos, ainda é cedo para avaliar”, completou. Segundo a bióloga do Instituto estadual do Ambiente (Inea) Vânia Ferreira ainda não é possível avaliar nem o volume de óleo despejado pelo vazamento e tampouco o valor da multa que será aplicada contra a empresa petrolífera.
"Barreiras tentam conter o vazamento de óleo na foz do Rio Estrela, mas ele já chegou à Baía de Guanabara. Os mangezais foram bastante atingidos(Foto: Olho Verde/Moscatelli)
A bióloga afirmou que os pescadores impediram os trabalhos de remoção do óleo pela Petrobras durante toda a manhã, para que o estrago pudesse ser melhor estimado pelas autoridades responsáveis e pela mídia, de forma que os trabalhos só foram retomados à tarde. Segundo Eliane Ferreira, da Colônia de Pescadores Artesanais Z-9, que vai de Guapimirim a Duque de Caxias, “eles estão tentando encobrir o problema, jogando um produto para que o óleo afunde. Tem pescadores ajudando na limpeza desde ontem e ainda estamos fazendo um levantamento dos prejuízos”, afirmou.
Conforme Alexandre Anderson, da Associação de Homens e Mulheres da Baía de Guanabara, mais de mil pescadores sofreram prejuízos diretos com o vazamento e mais de dois mil, indiretos. “Fomos os primeiros pescadores a chegar no local, às 9h de domingo. E pela minha experiência, em 30 anos de atuação, posso afirmar que não se tratou de furto”, contestou a justificativa da Transpetro.
O biólogo Mário Moscatelli, que hoje vai em campo para acompanhar de perto o vazamento, detectou, em sobrevoo realizado no domingo, que o desastre ambiental afetou diretamente mais de 80 mil m² de manguezais do fundo da Baía de Guanabara e do Rio Estrela. “Se as árvores morreram intoxicadas, perderão as folhas. O mais grave, porém, é que passamos pelo período reprodutor de caranguejos, que estão ferrados. Um diagnóstico mais preciso, contudo, só será possível em pelo menos 15 dias”, estima. Moscatelli também observou do alto 4 km do Rio Estrela lambidos pelo óleo, “principalmente abaixo do ponto do vazamento. No entanto, a maré alta também conduziu o óleo para áreas acima do vazamento”, completa.

O que o ambientalista não pretende questionar é se o vazamento foi de fato provocado por uma tentativa de furto. “Fui informado por pessoas da região que o vazamento teria começado na sexta-feira. Verdade ou não, a empresa só começou a providenciar as contenções no domingo. Questiono como uma empresa de ponta como a Petrobras não dispõe de um mecanismo para monitorar qualquer tipo de alteração na pressão dos dutos?”

Ações de limpeza

A Transpetro informa que um sobrevoo de helicóptero realizado na manhã de ontem na área da Baía de Guanabara afetada pelo vazamento constatou a presença de vestígios de óleo contidos na foz e nas margens do Rio Estrela. “Cerca de 45 mil litros de óleo (75% do volume vazado) já foram recolhidos pelas equipes de emergência. A companhia continua trabalhando nas ações de limpeza e recuperação da área atingida e instalou uma unidade de atendimento à fauna no local, com atuação de uma médica veterinária e de especialistas em meio ambiente.”
Ainda segundo a empresa, são 413 profissionais mobilizados, 24.600 metros de barreiras absorventes e de contenção, 19 caminhões, 22 embarcações de apoio, uma aeronave e três drones, entre outros recursos. “O duto foi reparado e voltou a operar”, concluiu a nota oficial.

December 10, 2018

Os ataques de Trump à imprensa estão funcionando