“Intriguing: 'GWTW' actress broke barrier - CNN” plus 3 more

Intriguing: 'GWTW' actress broke barrier - CNN
Marxist Psychology Today Blogger Demonizes Tea Partiers as 'Paranoid' - News Busters
'Hurt' locks it up - Los Angeles Times
Two-faced testosterone can make you nasty or nice - EurekAlert

Intriguing: 'GWTW' actress broke barrier - CNN

Posted: 08 Mar 2010 06:24 AM PST

Editor's note: Every weekday, CNN focuses on a handful of people in the news. This is a chance to find out more about what they've done -- good or bad -- what they've said or what they believe, and why we think they're intriguing.

(CNN) -- Adam Gadahn: Conflicting reports emerged Sunday about whether the U.S.-born spokesman for al Qaeda has been arrested in Pakistan. The reports came hours after Gadahn, in a newly released videotape, praised Nidal Malik Hasan, the U.S. Army psychiatrist who allegedly killed 13 people and wounded 30 others at the Fort Hood military base in Texas in November. Gadahn, also known as Azzam the American, called in the video for other Muslims to follow Hasan's example.

Gadahn said, "Brother Nidal is the ideal role model for every repentant Muslim in the armies of the unbelievers and apostate regimes. You shouldn't make the mistake of thinking that military bases are the only high-value targets in America and the West. On the contrary, there are countless other strategic places, institutions and installations which, by striking, the Muslim can do major damage. Nidal Hasan is a pioneer, a trailblazer and a role model who has opened a door, lit a path and shown the way forward for every Muslim who finds himself among the unbelievers. I am calling on every honest and vigilant Muslim in the countries of the Zionist-Crusader alliance in general and America, Britain and Israel in particular to prepare to play his due role in responding to and repelling the aggression of the enemies of Islam."

CNN reported in June that Gadahn said in a video that his grandfather was Jewish, as he called on fellow Muslims for "weapons, funds and Jihad against the Jews and their allies everywhere." Gadahn was born in 1978 and grew up in rural California. He embraced Islam in the mid-1990s, moved to Pakistan and began appearing in al Qaeda videos. He was indicted in the United States in 2006 on charges of treason and material support to al Qaeda, according to the FBI. Gadahn is on the FBI's Most Wanted List, with a reward of up to $1 million offered for information leading to his capture.

Mixed reports over whether al Qaeda American arrested in Pakistan

American al Qaeda member acknowledges Jewish ancestry

David Gilbert: The associate professor of auto technology at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, testified before Congress last month that he had conducted tests of the Toyota Avalon and found a possible flaw in its electronic controls. Rather than pointing to faulty gas pedals, the electrical engineer claimed that he had been able to cause the car to accelerate by producing a short circuit that was not documented by the car's onboard computer.

The Financial Times reports that Toyota plans to refute Gilbert's claims by presenting the results of a technical demonstration of its own on Monday. Toyota has asserted the electronic problems had nothing to do with the acceleration problems that led the company to a massive recall of some 8 million cars.

The newspaper reports that Gilbert did acknowledge that his research was sponsored by the law firms involved in cases against the Japanese automaker. Referring to today's demonstration, Toyota said, "This presentation will show that the sequence and nature of manipulated faults in the Gilbert demonstration are completely unrealistic under real-world conditions and can easily be reproduced on a wide range of vehicles made by other manufacturers."

Financial Times: Toyota to rebut faulty electronics claims

Carly Fiorina: The former CEO of Hewlett-Packard is scheduled to officially file paperwork today and join other Republican candidates running for a Senate seat from California.

Fiorina ran HP between 1999 and 2005 and was the first and, so far, the only woman to run a Fortune 20 company. The biography on her Web site reports that she put herself through Stanford by doing the books for a local hair salon and paid for her MBA from the University of Maryland by teaching undergraduates. She received her Master of Science in business from MIT and began her career in business as a secretary.

One of the most powerful women in corporate America, Fiorina was forced from HP's board of directors in 2005. HP's deal to buy Compaq in 2002 didn't produce the profits Fiorina had promised, as CNNMoney.com reported. "Nobody liked Carly's leadership all that much," Robert Cihra, an analyst with Fulcrum Global Partners, told CNNMoney.com in 2005. "The Street had lost all faith in her and the market's hope is that anyone will be better." In March 2009, Fortune magazine reported that Fiorina underwent surgery for breast cancer.

Fiorina is running for the seat held by Sen. Barbara Boxer. On her Web site, Fiorina says, "I am an optimist and believe that people will make the right choices about their lives and their leaders if they know the issues and are equipped with the facts."

CNNMoney.com: Fiorina out, HP stock soars

Carly for California

Walt Baker: The Nashville Convention & Visitors Bureau dropped Baker's marketing firm over the weekend after Baker, the CEO of the Tennessee Hospitality Association, sent an e-mail comparing first lady Michelle Obama to a chimpanzee.

According to one published report, Baker's e-mail began, "I don't care who you are, this is funny." The Tennessean reports that on Saturday, Baker apologized in a follow-up e-mail message. "Thursday night I spontaneously forwarded -- to a small group of people -- an email that had been sent to me as political humor," Baker wrote. "As I forwarded it, I did not think or consider its implications, other than that it was political humor. I am saddened that anyone misinterpreted the sentiments behind the email. I deeply apologize to anyone who is offended by this action."

The Tennessean found that Baker had sent his e-mail to a dozen hospitality professionals, public relations executives and members of Nashville media. According to his biography at the Mercatus marketing and public relations company Web site, Baker's long career includes such clients as Opryland USA, Odom's Tennessee Pride Country Sausage, and SeaWorld of Texas.

Tennessean: Contract dropped over controversial Obama e-mail

Hattie McDaniel: As Mo'Nique accepted the Oscar for best supporting actress Sunday night for her role in "Precious," she offered thanks to the actress who she says paved the way. Mo'Nique said, "I would like to thank Miss Hattie McDaniel, for enduring what she had to so that I would not have to."

McDaniel won the best supporting actress award for her role of Mammy in the 1939 MGM classic, "Gone with the Wind," becoming the first African-American to win an acting Oscar. According to a profile at IMDb.com, the Internet Movie Database, she was also the first African-American to attend the Academy Awards as a guest, not a servant.

The daughter of a slave, McDaniel was born in the mid-1890s and died in 1952. She was honored by the U.S. Postal Service in 2006 on a Black Heritage stamp. As of Sunday night, McDaniel is one of only five African-American actresses to receive the Academy Award. She once said, "Why should I complain about making $700 a week playing a maid? If I didn't, I'd be making $7 a week being one."

IMDb.com: Hattie McDaniel

What makes a person intriguing?

There are people who enter the news cycle every day because their actions or decisions are new, important or different. Others are in the news because they are the ones those decisions affect. And there are a number of people who are so famous or controversial that anything they say or do becomes news.

Some of these people do what we expect of them: They run for office, pass legislation, start a business, get hired or fired, commit a crime, make an arrest, get in accidents, hit a home run, overthrow a government, fight wars, sue an opponent, put out fires, prepare for hurricanes and cavort with people other than their spouses. They do make news, but the action is usually more important than who is involved in the story.

But every day, there are a number of people who become fascinating to us -- by virtue of their character, how they reached their decision, how they behaved under pressure or because of the remarkable circumstances surrounding the event they are involved in.

They arouse our curiosity. We hear about them and want to know more. What they have done or said stimulates conversations across the country. At times, there is even a mystery about them. What they have done may be unique, heroic, cowardly or ghastly, but they capture our imaginations. We want to know what makes them tick, why they believe what they do, and why they did what they did. They intrigue us.

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Marxist Psychology Today Blogger Demonizes Tea Partiers as 'Paranoid' - News Busters

Posted: 08 Mar 2010 06:24 AM PST

During the final years of the Soviet Union many political dissidents weren't sent to slave labor camps as happened in the bad old Stalin era if they weren't outright liquidated. Instead, their divergence from the official party line was viewed as some sort of mental disorder that must be treated, usually with forced confinement in mental institutions which were little more than prisons. And now we have a Marxist blogger for Psychology Today who proposes that Tea Party participants suffer from a mental disorder. The funniest thing is that when one reads the rantings of Michael Bader, he appears like Captain Queeg on the witness stand. The more he writes, the less rational he sounds. Take a look at just the first sentence of Bader's extended rant and guess who comes off as sanity challenged. BTW, the word "f---ers" in his primal scream article is fully spelled out:

These tea-party folks seem to most liberals-well, to most of us who live in the "reality community," or, as I like to call it, "reality"-like crazy f---ers.

Bader doesn't hide his outright hate for the tea party folks:

I hate these folks but I also understand them. And, well, uh, I also empathize with them. They share the same psychology as the paranoid patients I treat every day. The only difference is that the paranoid beliefs of the tea-party movement are political while those in my consulting room are of a more personal nature.

So it's all just a mental disorder, just like what the Soviet dissidents suffered from. Bader then proposes to "understand" the tea partiers...so as to fight them:

I have come to have empathy for the tea-party'ers, even as I despise their influence and work hard to defeat their ideology. It's crucial that progressives do likewise because if we don't understand the ways that decent, god-fearing, and victimized people can come to espouse such a dangerous ideology, we won't be able to fight them effectively.

And now a paranoid theory about tea parties put forward by one Michael Bader:

For new tea-party members, however, the drift toward paranoia is facilitated by the right-wing media machine that offers several ready-made narratives perfectly designed to help its consumers clear up their confusion, understand their helplessness, absolve them of any blame, and offer a way out. The conspiratorial alliance of business and government, a growing tyranny intended to disenfranchise, disarm, and exploit ordinary citizens, secret pacts to overthrow the constitution, etc. all currently led by an un-American, godless, colored, elitist, contemptuous, foreigner--Barack Hussein Obama. A grim and frightening picture of the world to be sure.

Yeah, a "right-wing media machine." Now who is being paranoid, Mr. Bader?

A few final swings with the butterfly net by Bader:

The "problem" is that tea-party activists move from legitimate feelings and normal longings to paranoid political positions that are dangerous and cruel. But because these positions serve an important psychological function, because they resolve an emotional dilemma, they can't be changed by rational argument.

...Perhaps the progressive movement shouldn't waste its time dealing with the tea-party movement except as a spur to get our own house-and movement-in order. A legitimate argument can be made that these people are, simply, the enemy and that our challenge is to build progressive majorities immune to their sabotage and interference. But I would argue that to the extent we want to reach people who are drawn to tea-party, patriot, libertarian, and other right wing movements but are not yet hard-line ideologues, or prevent others from becoming so, we have to begin with empathy. We have to get inside their heads, figure out how their choices are reasonable from their point of view.

As for the claim by your humble correspondent that Bader is a Marxist, is that some sort of scurrilous "McCarthyite" charge? Nope. The person who claims that Michael Bader is a Marxist is...Michael Bader as you can read in his biography:

I was always a lefty. My father was the only liberal in a family and community of racist republicans. My older brother went to U.C. Santa Barbara in 1967 and gave an adoring younger brother regular reports from "the front.' And I went to Berkeley from 1970 to 1976. 'Nuff said.

At first, politics for me was all about the New Left, Marxism, and political economy. I was "out-there," active in various extremist groups, and fully engaged at the same time with the counter-culture. Eventually, with the decline of the New Left, I gave up being active in the public political world and chose a profession—psychology. I never gave up my sentiments or beliefs, but couldn't figure out how to blend them with my work, since I don't believe that good therapy should have a political agenda in any way.

Got that? Bader still clings the the stale economic beliefs of a discredited 19th century deadbeat who never held a regular job and spent his days jotting down impractical rantings in a London library reading room while hitting up his friends for money. And yet Bader, who claims to be based in reality, continues to cling to those same beliefs as subscribed to by the likes of Lenin, Stalin, Castro, and Hugo Chavez.

For further proof of Bader's complete divorce from reality, check out his Why We Should Stop Demonizing John Edwards.

—P.J. Gladnick is a freelance writer and creator of the DUmmie FUnnies blog.

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

'Hurt' locks it up - Los Angeles Times

Posted: 08 Mar 2010 05:48 AM PST

"The Hurt Locker," a gritty, challenging and little-seen drama about bomb disposal in the Iraq war, was the leading winner with six Academy Awards on Sunday night, including best picture and the first directing honor for a female filmmaker.

Academy Award organizers had doubled this year's best-picture contest to 10 movies to rope in more mass-appeal hits and boost the ceremony's ratings; but "The Hurt Locker," an emotionally exhausting account of an Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal team, stands apart as the lowest-grossing film in modern history to capture Hollywood's highest award.

"This has been such a dream -- beyond a dream -- for all of us," screenwriter and producer Mark Boal said in his best picture acceptance speech, calling the film's performance in the 82nd annual ceremony "beyond anything we could have imagined." The film also was honored for its original screenplay, editing and two sound awards.

The Iraq-bomb-defusing drama's Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win the Academy Award for directing. "There's no other way to describe it. It's the moment of a lifetime," said Bigelow, who was only the fourth woman nominated for directing in academy history.

"The Blind Side's" Sandra Bullock was named best actress, and "Crazy Heart's" Jeff Bridges won for best actor. Mo'Nique won for best supporting actress for "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire," and Christoph Waltz was named best supporting actor for "Inglourious Basterds."

Already on DVD shelves with domestic theatrical receipts of less than $15 million -- about 2% of the domestic haul of James Cameron's box-office behemoth "Avatar" -- "The Hurt Locker," like many other movies about conflict in the Middle East, has sold substantially fewer tickets than several low-grossing best picture winners, including 2005's "Crash" and 1987's "The Last Emperor."

But the film, released last June, scored where it mattered most -- with the 5,532 voters of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Although almost every film producer and distributor passed on making Bigelow's film, financed independently for $11 million, "The Hurt Locker" was among last year's most critically acclaimed releases, and won any number of key awards in the weeks leading up to the Oscars ceremony. To win the best picture prize, it had to get past "Avatar," the first feature from Cameron (Bigelow's former husband) since his 1997 disaster epic "Titanic" swept the Oscars. Cameron's futuristic thriller, the most expensive production ever, was awarded with Academy Awards for visual effects, art direction and cinematography.

"The Hurt Locker's" Oscar ascendancy was not without controversy.

Just as ballots were due early last week, one of "The Hurt Locker's" producers, financier Nicolas Chartier, sent an e-mail to friends and colleagues suggesting they vote for his film, not "Avatar." Because academy rules prohibit negative campaigning, Chartier was forced to apologize and forfeit his tickets to the show.

Many film critics praised the movie's authenticity, yet some active and retired soldiers said "The Hurt Locker" was inaccurate and made the military look unprofessional; citing similar concerns, the Department of Defense pulled its production cooperation at the last minute when the movie was being shot in 2007.

The evening's winner for best actress, Bullock, represented a far more popular movie, the blockbuster football story "The Blind Side." Best known for crowd-pleasing (and critically dismissed) works such as "Miss Congeniality" and "The Proposal," Bullock won the Oscar with her very first nomination for playing Leigh Anne Tuohy, the real-life adoptive mother of a homeless teenager who went on to become an NFL standout.

Bullock dedicated her win "to the moms that take care of the babies and the children no matter where they come from."

Bridges, one of Hollywood's most respected performers, won the best actor Oscar for depicting alcoholic singer Bad Blake in the fictionalized country music biography "Crazy Heart." The son of the actors Lloyd and Dorothy Dean Bridges said on stage, "I feel an extension of them. This is honoring them as much as it is me."

Stung by declining television ratings and an aging television audience (2008's ceremony was the least-watched ceremony ever), the academy expanded the best-picture race from five to 10 movies for this year. (The field hadn't been that size since 1942's "Casablanca" took the best picture prize.)

Although "Avatar" probably would have been shortlisted had there still been five best-picture picks, the expanded best picture field did sweep up several mass-appeal movies that probably would have stayed home on Oscar night, particularly "The Blind Side" and the aliens-on-Earth thriller "District 9."

The broadcast's two producers -- former studio chief Bill Mechanic and director/choreographer Adam Shankman -- larded the show, hosted by Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, with youthful presenters whom no one would mistake as Oscar contenders, including "Twilight's" Taylor Lautner, "High School Musical's" Zac Efron and "Hannah Montana's" Miley Cyrus.

The show's producers also excised performances of the year's five nominated songs (condensing them into a quick montage of clips), and delayed presentation of the best actress award (considered one of the closest races of the show) until after the best actor prize.

Even in the other main categories that kept to five nominees, this year's contest had a noticeably populist feel. "Up," the winner of the animated feature and score award, also was nominated for original screenplay. The story of the balloon-buoyed septuagenarian became the first animated movie selected for the best picture race since the academy added a separate animation category in the 2002 ceremony.

Although many of the major awards went to assumed favorites, there were several minor upsets.

Most prominent among the surprises was the adapted screenplay triumph for Geoffrey Fletcher, a first-time writer who won for "Precious." "This is for everybody who works on a dream every day," said Fletcher, who struggled for a decade to sell his writing and was forced to take temp jobs to make ends meet. The presumptive favorite in the category, "Up in the Air," went home with no awards.

Mo'Nique, a stand-up comedian who made her dramatic acting debut as an abusive mother in "Precious," dedicated her award to her husband, saying, "Thank you for showing me that sometimes you have to forgo doing what's popular in order to do what's right."

In the evening's first award, Waltz collected the supporting actor statuette for his depiction of a fastidious Nazi in the World War II revenge fantasy "Inglourious Basterds." But the film's writer-director, Quentin Tarantino, lost the original screenplay race to "The Hurt Locker's" Boal.

In addition to Bridges' best actor triumph in a movie that almost debuted not in theaters but on Country Music Television, "Crazy Heart" collected the original song Oscar for "The Weary Kind."

Argentina's "El Secreto de Sus Ojos" was named best foreign language film, and the harrowing dolphin slaughter story "The Cove" won the documentary feature prize.

Said Bigelow backstage: "This has been an extraordinary year for content that is diverse and rich and complex and exciting."

john.horn@latimes.com

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Two-faced testosterone can make you nasty or nice - EurekAlert

Posted: 08 Mar 2010 06:38 AM PST