In the wake of Mark Halperin's suspension by MSNBC for calling President Obama the D-word, there have been numerous vulgarities aired on the network further proving his offense wasn't what he said but who he said it about. After MSNBC allowed numerous F-bombs during its Independence Day coverage of the Casey Anthony trial, Matthews uttered a D-word of his own on Tuesday's “Hardball” (video follows with transcript and commentary, vulgarity warning): CHRIS MATTHEWS: The world’s watching Greece last week, and the parliament finally got its act together and pushed through a serious budget. All of a sudden the world was at ease and we had a serious sense of relief. You don’t think they’re going to be watching the most important country in the world, us, when we start dicking around with stuff, and we don’t get it done? You don’t think they’re not going to notice we’re not getting it done? That it’s four o’clock in the morning and it’s August 3rd or August 5th or August 8th and we still haven’t gotten it done? You don’t think they’re not, there’s going to be a world watching this and saying, “They’re blowing it? There’s something wrong with America today?” So, five days after Halperin was suspended for calling Obama the D-word, Matthews used a version of it to describe all of our national elected officials if an agreement isn't reached on the debt ceiling. This came a day after numerous F-bombs were broadcast during MSNBC's Independence Day coverage of the Casey Anthony trial. Speaking of F-bombs, MSNBC intentionally aired one during last Monday's “The Last Word.” Yet the only MSNBCer to be suspended or disciplined in any way so far was been Halperin. It sure seems vulgarity is quite acceptable on this so-called “news” network – as long as it's not directed at the President, that is.
Continue reading …Goldwater Rule? What Goldwater Rule? Fox News "Analyzes" Media Matters’ David Brock
July 5, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Up front, let me just congratulate Media Matters on their DropFox campaign . It must be working really well, because Ailes & Co has ramped up the scale and scope of their attacks on Media Matters. Beginning with the call to ask the IRS to revoke their tax-exempt status, moving on to attack David Brock, and today, “informing” their viewers by putting hack psychiatrist Keith Ablow on to “analyze” Brock. Ablow is a psychiatrist (and I use the term loosely) who co-wrote a book with Glenn Beck about how one can overcome their addictions/bad habits and become just like…Glenn Beck. That’s probably all you need to know about the good “Dr.” Ablow, but here’s more if you’re interested. Dr. Ablow obediently went on Fox and Friends this morning and brought his “psychological profile” of David Brock. ABLOW: I looked at him from a distance but you don’t have to look very hard to see into the man’s mind apparently. This is somebody who seemingly has such low self esteem that he’s lurching from one group to another. Whoever will embrace him and reassure him that he’s a decent guy and be his cheerleader in a dramatic way, that’s who he’s gonna be with. Remember during the 90′s he described himself as a “right wing hit man” and his message machine said this is the guy dedicated to bringing Clinton down. It’s always very violent rhetoric about bringing the other father figure to his knees. This I think comes out of his personal life and he’ll switch sides depending on whether he thinks he’s going to get more acclaim on the other side. KILMEADE: Right, and you’re exactly right, he was a self-described right-wing hit man back in the 90s, now he’s a left wing hit man. He was a journalist, now he’s an admitted liar , now um, on a book he did regarding Anita Hill he said “I’m coming forward to tell the truth now and the truth is I lied, and it was a terrible lie…so it’s perfectly understandable that many people may not know whether to believe me now.” What does that say to you? ABLOW: You can’t believe this guy because he’s full of self-hatred, which he then projects on the world around him in order to get love. So he’s got to have somebody to hate because he thinks that’s the way — the best way — to galvanize the love in his direction. So yeah, it’s always about being a hit man, you know, exposing someone. There’s sexual connotations here, too. Taking the father figure down. This is a guy who was adopted. I don’t know whether he has deep-seated feelings about whether he wasn’t loved, he was given up for adoption. Now look, a lot of adopted people are well-adjusted but when you’ve got somebody in the public eye who’s switching sides in such vigorous fashion…it goes all the way back to college for this person apparently. When he lied , he told a very, very vigorous lie about his opposition candidate to get the editorship of the college paper in order to bring that guy down. He’s looking any way that he can get narcissistic reinforcement to tell him he’s a decent person and one good way to do it is you identify a group, you pick on them, you therefore get accolades from the other side. He switched sides when his book on Clinton didn’t do that well, so the right wing didn’t embrace him quite as much so he said you know what? Screw those people, I’m going for the left. There’s so much wrong with what Ablow says I don’t know exactly where to start, so I’m going to go for the propaganda techniques Ablow employs. Note the number of times he calls Brock a liar. And the tone of voice he uses when he talks about him “switching sides”. The psychobabble about seeking love, yada yada is a load of nonsense, but it plays well to emotion-driven viewers who don’t really look at facts or objective analysis. Ablow’s goal isn’t to really explain Brock to anyone. It’s to use jargon and Freudian nonsense to craft a propaganda spin on Brock: He’s unreliable, he’s a traitor, he’s a liar . But Ablow has a problem, too. There’s this pesky little Goldwater rule which constrains mental health professionals to speak in general terms. Here it is: On occasion psychiatrists are asked for an opinion about an individual who is in the light of public attention or who has disclosed information about himself/herself through public media. In such circumstances, a psychiatrist may share with the public his or her expertise about psychiatric issues in general. However, it is unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorization for such a statement. ” (cited In Friedman, 2008, p. 1348). I would say that his commentary above is pretty specifically targeted at Brock and not “psychiatric issues in general”. I find it interesting that Ablow didn’t address the fact that much of Brock’s disaffection with the right wing was the result of their homophobic ways and the realization that journalism, as defined by the right, is not journalism at all. From an exchange with Tucker Carlson in Slate in 1997: I’m disappointed that you’ve given me so little to work with. You write that I “seem disillusioned with journalism itself.” Well, yes. Because journalism is so often seen as a way of advancing a particular agenda or spin, and the pressures to do predictable punditry are so great, there seems no way of accommodating original thinking and unexpected conclusions. A conservative who says nice things about Hillary? It doesn’t compute in the Crossfire culture. Am I wrong? They should ask David Frum to do an analysis of “journalism”, Fox style after he, too, was shoved out of the conservative mainstream. Here’s Brock’s defense of his “switch”: One of these is the profound disillusionment with the Republican leadership. Just as I found out that the conservatives were willing to stick with Aldrich’s lies for political gain, so too have many conservatives concluded that the Republican leadership is about holding onto power with no sense of higher purpose. Those members of Congress who might challenge the leadership are afraid to do so in public, perhaps for fear of telephone calls implying retribution from so-called True Believers like the one you got from Michael Ledeen. Another is my desire to be “off the team” as a partisan conservative. Considering their appalling performance in the Aldrich affair, when I now read the Wall Street Journal editors’ admonitions that the Clinton administration “come clean,” I gag. People are sick of the hypocrisy of apologists on both sides and don’t want to be told what to think. A third point to consider is my sense–this, from a self-confessed “right-wing hit man”–that scandal politics, the criminalizing of policy differences, and attack commentary has run its course. It’s time to try to advance a legitimate conservative case on the grounds of policy. Throughout the Fox News hit by Ablow & Co, there’s an assumption that a) Media Matters is liberal; and b) David Brock has abandoned conservative values to become a liberal. In fact, nothing in any of his books or articles suggests that at all. Brock simply got tired of an unanswered conservative propaganda machine that allows for sloppy policy and propaganda spinning and decided to call it out. But don’t tell Fox News that. They might feel…unloved.
Continue reading …Tea Party Already Looking To Purge Their New Congress Members For Having The Audacity To Compromise
July 5, 2011 No Comment
enlarge I’ve known some really good politicians in my time, people who really knew how to hammer out coalitions and get things done. It wasn’t always pretty, of course, but they managed some semblance of actual governance and moved the ball down the field. The Tea Party gang has an entirely different problem: A base made up of voters who don’t accept that compromise, by definition, is inherent in a political process . That sort of binary thinking is killing this country. Now, you have a group of freshman Congress members who won election by promising that things were black and white, and they’re going to be punished for illustrating that, as extreme as they were, they have to compromise on at least some things. It would be funny if I wasn’t dreading an even more extreme crop the next time: It is miles to go before the 2012 Congressional races begin in earnest, but already some of the 87 freshmen who helped the Republicans win back the House last year are bracing for a challenge from within the party. At least half a dozen potential primary challengers to freshmen are considering a run, and there is heated chatter about more. In some ways, the freshmen are responsible for their own predicament. Many won their seats after successfully challenging establishment Republicans in primaries, proving that a combination of gumption and the right political climate could overcome the advantages of incumbency. Now, to some of the impatient and ideological voters who sent them to Washington to change things, the new House members may be seen as the establishment, and they face the disconcerting prospect of immediately defending themselves in the political marketplace. The 2012 primary “started the day I took office,” said Representative Blake Farenthold, who won last year in a heavily Democratic district in South Texas but is now likely to face a Republican primary challenger. “There is this constant pressure for fund-raising. I mean, you’re always worried about who is going to run against you, but I am willing to stand up for what I believe and on my record.” On the flip side, groups aligned with the Tea Party movement, which helped push many new-to-politics candidates into House seats, are disenchanted with some of their new hires and are pondering if they can raise the money, and the firepower, to find someone to take them on. “I do think it is going to be more competitive,” said Jenny Beth Martin, a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots. “With the freshmen who claim to be Tea Party or claim to support the ideas of the Tea Party movement but haven’t kept their promise, I think it will be tough for them.” Ms. Martin said she regularly fields e-mails from New York Tea Party groups, as well as others in Georgia and Mississippi, complaining about freshmen House members who voted for a disappointing short-term spending agreement with President Obama that fell short of the party’s budget-cutting goals. “They have broken their promises,” she said. “People are dissatisfied.”
Continue reading …Chris Matthews Smears the ‘Scary’ GOP as the ‘Wahhabis of American Government’
July 5, 2011 No Comment
MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Tuesday escalated his attack on the Republican Party, comparing them to a violent sect of Islam. The Hardball host frothed, ” Well, the GOP has become the Wahhabis of American government, willing to risk bringing down the whole country in the service of their anti-tax ideology.” Discussing the debt ceiling vote, Matthews placed all of the blame on the right. In a tease for the segment, he fumed, “The Tea Party Republicans who are ready to bring down this country's economy in the name of ideology. This is really getting serious, and I believe scary, what's really being perpetrated here.” [See Video below. MP3 audio here .] Of course, Matthews is the same person who slammed Tea Party conservatives as unthinking ” haters “who just lash out at Barack Obama with cheap comments. On Tuesday, the MSNBC anchor said of Republicans: “The party's being driven by fanatics and they're determined to bounce America's savings bonds and have the United States begin to become like Greece.” Talking to Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill, Matthews hyperbolically wondered if Republicans want to “go right off the cliff and take this country into Greece, into the way the world watches us go down the hill.” A partial transcript of the exchanges can be found below: 5:01 CHRIS MATTHEWS: Also, is the Republican Party willing to risk economic armageddon in the name of religion, that is the religion of no taxes? Well, the GOP has become the Wahhabis of American government, willing to risk bringing down the whole country in the service of their anti-tax ideology. This is no phony crisis. If you're not careful, if we're not careful, the country risks becoming Greece. Not ancient Greece, by the way, current Greece. 5:15 MATTHEWS: The Tea Party Republicans who are ready to bring down this country's economy in the name of ideology. This is really getting serious, and I believe scary, what's really being perpetrated here. Possibly, the defaulting of United States government on our debt in the world. The party's being driven by fanatics and they're determined to bounce America's savings bonds and have the United States begin to become like Greece. 5:20 MATTHEWS: And I look around me with fanatics. I see fanatics, mostly on the right, some of the left. It seems to me that they're quite willing when I hear them talking, your own colleague Senator Roy Blunt dismissing the debt ceiling deadline saying, quote, “the deadline is never really a deadline. I don't think world markets are going to get roiled and I don't think our creditors are not going to get paid.” And here's someone from the far right, Michele Bachmann dismissing the consequences of not raising the debt ceiling. Let's listen to her now. MICHELE BACHMANN: Well, first of all it isn't true that government would default on its debt, because, very simply the Treasury Secretary can pay the interest on the debt first and then from there we have to just prioritize our spending. MATTHEWS: This, to me, is scary. What's your view? That these people are willing to go right into armageddon, not face the warning signs. Go right off the cliff and take this country into Greece, into the way the world watches us go down the hill. SENATOR CLAIRE MCCASKILL: Yeah. It's a real problem, compromise has become a dirty word and, frankly, our countries has been the greatest country on the planet, because our democracy learned the art of compromise. And now compromise is something the two ends of the spectrums don't want to see happen and we're going to suffer for it. You know, the other thing is frustrating about this, Chris, that I think they are trying to tell the American people that when we raise the debt limit we're asking for permission to spend more money. That's not true. All we're doing is making good on the spending that's already occurred. This would be like going out and buying a new car. These guys all voted for this spending. They all voted for the things that put us in this deficit position and now they're saying they don't want to pay the bill. It's like they bought a new car and don't want to make payments. It is defaulting, and we will default on obligations our government has, whether it's the people who are getting a Social Security check or to our military pay or whether it's to our debt that we have to pay, and all of those things would have serious and significant consequences. People need to quit trying to win elections and start solving the problem.
Continue reading …
In recent years, Edie Falco has become a mother and fought a very private battle with breast cancer. She tells Hermione Hoby how Carmela Soprano and Nurse Jackie have helped her stay strong When The Sopranos ended in 2007, it seemed impossible that we’d ever think of Edie Falco as anyone other than Carmela. She’d played Mrs Tony Soprano, mobster wife , for eight years in HBO’s cultural juggernaut of a series, winning three Emmys and two Golden Globes in the process. Falco seemed destined to be for ever “Carmela” in the way that Lisa Kudrow is for ever “Phoebe”. But then she was cast as Nurse Jackie . The comedy, now on its third series, is set in a Manhattan emergency room where Falco presides as a stoic, imperturbable nurse with a robust disregard for bureaucracy and a ferocious addiction to prescription painkillers. With her grim practicality and utilitarian haircut, Jackie seems a world away from the materialistic, voluptuously coiffed Carmela but both characters share a delicious moral dubiousness . The first episode – in which Jackie forges an organ donor card, steals from a rich patient to give to a poor one and flushes the severed ear of a violent diplomat down the toilet – won her an Emmy. It made Falco the first female actor to win one for comedy as well as drama but if anything validates the “best television actress of her generation” tag, it’s simply that people in the street now shout “Nurse Jackie” rather than “Carmela”. I meet Falco in her local New York cafe and she strides in looking trim and vigorous. The spiked crop is pushed back under a headband and she seems formidably together, particularly in comparison with Jackie’s chaos. “I am, yeah,” she nods. “Having been there myself I know that the alternative is yucky and I see how different my life is as a result of getting myself together.” Falco, now 47, has been sober for 20 years after giving up alcohol. “It proved to me that I don’t have to be a mess to do what I do,” she says, her large light blue eyes fixing me. “Which is a big question a lot of addicts have – like “Oh, it’s my muse” or whatever excuse you tell yourself to keep drinking. It sort of cleans the channel from where you get your inspiration, unclouds the way. It takes what it takes to find these things out.” Before Nurse Jackie, she kept getting cast as wives and mothers, “and at the time I was neither. I thought, what if I was just a woman? And then this came along and – I never really connected it until actually right now – I realise it was what I had asked for.” Jackie is a wife and mother, albeit the kind who grinds painkillers into powder and snorts them before preparing her kids’ cereal. But the show, says Falco, “is really just about this woman’s struggle to get through the day”. When asked who’s tougher, Jackie or her, she barely hesitates: “I think I’m tougher actually, for sure,” she nods. “And my toughness was hard-won so I can stand behind everything I say and do. I get impatient with her denial; I just want to say, you’ve got a marriage, kids at stake, just get it together, enough already!” Falco grew up in Brooklyn – “a sensitive kid growing up in an imperfect environment, I’ll just leave it at that” – and seeing her mother do community theatre made her want to act. “I used to think it was the coolest thing in the world, that she had her job in the day and then in the evening she and a bunch of other grownups would put on costumes and act things out. It was the most preposterous thing, magic from beginning to end.” Falco graduated from the acting programme at the State University of New York at Purchase in 1986, but it was a long time before she was able to support herself through acting alone. There was secretary work, “waitressing for a gazillion years” and also a stint in a Cookie Monster costume. “Oh God,” she says, closing her eyes and grimacing. I apologise for bringing back the memories. “It’s all right, it’s OK, they’re never very far away. So yeah, I dressed up as Cookie Monster. At a wedding. To get people up on to the dance floor. But I got $75 a wedding and that was huge back then. Uhhh,” she exhales, with a little head shake, “I still can’t believe those days really are behind me.” The Sopranos ensured that they were. Falco quickly became a household name, but did her best to avoid the fuss around the show. “My mom would call and say, ‘Oh I was reading on a website . . .’ and I’d say [she puts on a stern voice]: ‘Mom? I can’t go there.’ It wasn’t until it ended that I became more aware of just what it was and what it meant to people. It’s just hugely flattering.” In 2003, midway through filming a season, Falco was diagnosed with breast cancer. “At 11 o’clock I got the diagnosis and I had to be at work at one,” she says. “It was important for me to go through it privately. I have great respect for people who can go out there and proclaim it but that’s not how I do things.” She told her family and close friends, who include the show’s producers – both women in their 40s. They duly scheduled Falco’s filming around chemo appointments and saw that she had a wig to play Carmela in. “It was perfect for me,” says Falco. “The more I was able to just show up for my job, the more healthy I stayed. You kind of become what people expect of you, so if nobody knows and they’re like, ‘Buck up!’ then that’s what I’ll do.” As for surviving cancer, “I had all these large thoughts and I’m embarrassed to say they kinda went away. You start out with all these grand proclamations and here it is, almost eight years later, and I still bitch about the same stuff, still complain about my wardrobe or whatever.” But motherhood has also prompted some of those large thoughts. Falco has two adopted kids, six-year-old Anderson and three-year-old Macy. “I wonder how did I ever manage without being a mom, you know? I get so much nourishment from being around these guys. I have an odd, cosmic feeling about it – we’re all the mothers to all the children, all here to raise each other and take care of each other.” They get excited when they see her face on the subway or sides of buses. But, she says, “the weirdest thing was two summers ago: I’m in the Hamptons, bouncing my baby in a swimming pool and there’s an aeroplane going by with a banner with Nurse Jackie on it . . . it was just too bizarre. We go and do our job and go home and you forget that it’s being recorded and millions of people are seeing it. That piece of it is something I don’t think about so much. Until somebody comes at me with that kind of grin as if I’m something other than human.” When she leaves a young guy recognises her and accosts her, thrilled. I think he’s grinning because onscreen and off, she is nothing but human. Nurse Jackie is on Sky Atlantic HD every Tuesday at 10pm. Edie Falco Nurse Jackie Television US television Celebrity Hermione Hoby guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …In recent years, Edie Falco has become a mother and fought a very private battle with breast cancer. She tells Hermione Hoby how Carmela Soprano and Nurse Jackie have helped her stay strong When The Sopranos ended in 2007, it seemed impossible that we’d ever think of Edie Falco as anyone other than Carmela. She’d played Mrs Tony Soprano, mobster wife , for eight years in HBO’s cultural juggernaut of a series, winning three Emmys and two Golden Globes in the process. Falco seemed destined to be for ever “Carmela” in the way that Lisa Kudrow is for ever “Phoebe”. But then she was cast as Nurse Jackie . The comedy, now on its third series, is set in a Manhattan emergency room where Falco presides as a stoic, imperturbable nurse with a robust disregard for bureaucracy and a ferocious addiction to prescription painkillers. With her grim practicality and utilitarian haircut, Jackie seems a world away from the materialistic, voluptuously coiffed Carmela but both characters share a delicious moral dubiousness . The first episode – in which Jackie forges an organ donor card, steals from a rich patient to give to a poor one and flushes the severed ear of a violent diplomat down the toilet – won her an Emmy. It made Falco the first female actor to win one for comedy as well as drama but if anything validates the “best television actress of her generation” tag, it’s simply that people in the street now shout “Nurse Jackie” rather than “Carmela”. I meet Falco in her local New York cafe and she strides in looking trim and vigorous. The spiked crop is pushed back under a headband and she seems formidably together, particularly in comparison with Jackie’s chaos. “I am, yeah,” she nods. “Having been there myself I know that the alternative is yucky and I see how different my life is as a result of getting myself together.” Falco, now 47, has been sober for 20 years after giving up alcohol. “It proved to me that I don’t have to be a mess to do what I do,” she says, her large light blue eyes fixing me. “Which is a big question a lot of addicts have – like “Oh, it’s my muse” or whatever excuse you tell yourself to keep drinking. It sort of cleans the channel from where you get your inspiration, unclouds the way. It takes what it takes to find these things out.” Before Nurse Jackie, she kept getting cast as wives and mothers, “and at the time I was neither. I thought, what if I was just a woman? And then this came along and – I never really connected it until actually right now – I realise it was what I had asked for.” Jackie is a wife and mother, albeit the kind who grinds painkillers into powder and snorts them before preparing her kids’ cereal. But the show, says Falco, “is really just about this woman’s struggle to get through the day”. When asked who’s tougher, Jackie or her, she barely hesitates: “I think I’m tougher actually, for sure,” she nods. “And my toughness was hard-won so I can stand behind everything I say and do. I get impatient with her denial; I just want to say, you’ve got a marriage, kids at stake, just get it together, enough already!” Falco grew up in Brooklyn – “a sensitive kid growing up in an imperfect environment, I’ll just leave it at that” – and seeing her mother do community theatre made her want to act. “I used to think it was the coolest thing in the world, that she had her job in the day and then in the evening she and a bunch of other grownups would put on costumes and act things out. It was the most preposterous thing, magic from beginning to end.” Falco graduated from the acting programme at the State University of New York at Purchase in 1986, but it was a long time before she was able to support herself through acting alone. There was secretary work, “waitressing for a gazillion years” and also a stint in a Cookie Monster costume. “Oh God,” she says, closing her eyes and grimacing. I apologise for bringing back the memories. “It’s all right, it’s OK, they’re never very far away. So yeah, I dressed up as Cookie Monster. At a wedding. To get people up on to the dance floor. But I got $75 a wedding and that was huge back then. Uhhh,” she exhales, with a little head shake, “I still can’t believe those days really are behind me.” The Sopranos ensured that they were. Falco quickly became a household name, but did her best to avoid the fuss around the show. “My mom would call and say, ‘Oh I was reading on a website . . .’ and I’d say [she puts on a stern voice]: ‘Mom? I can’t go there.’ It wasn’t until it ended that I became more aware of just what it was and what it meant to people. It’s just hugely flattering.” In 2003, midway through filming a season, Falco was diagnosed with breast cancer. “At 11 o’clock I got the diagnosis and I had to be at work at one,” she says. “It was important for me to go through it privately. I have great respect for people who can go out there and proclaim it but that’s not how I do things.” She told her family and close friends, who include the show’s producers – both women in their 40s. They duly scheduled Falco’s filming around chemo appointments and saw that she had a wig to play Carmela in. “It was perfect for me,” says Falco. “The more I was able to just show up for my job, the more healthy I stayed. You kind of become what people expect of you, so if nobody knows and they’re like, ‘Buck up!’ then that’s what I’ll do.” As for surviving cancer, “I had all these large thoughts and I’m embarrassed to say they kinda went away. You start out with all these grand proclamations and here it is, almost eight years later, and I still bitch about the same stuff, still complain about my wardrobe or whatever.” But motherhood has also prompted some of those large thoughts. Falco has two adopted kids, six-year-old Anderson and three-year-old Macy. “I wonder how did I ever manage without being a mom, you know? I get so much nourishment from being around these guys. I have an odd, cosmic feeling about it – we’re all the mothers to all the children, all here to raise each other and take care of each other.” They get excited when they see her face on the subway or sides of buses. But, she says, “the weirdest thing was two summers ago: I’m in the Hamptons, bouncing my baby in a swimming pool and there’s an aeroplane going by with a banner with Nurse Jackie on it . . . it was just too bizarre. We go and do our job and go home and you forget that it’s being recorded and millions of people are seeing it. That piece of it is something I don’t think about so much. Until somebody comes at me with that kind of grin as if I’m something other than human.” When she leaves a young guy recognises her and accosts her, thrilled. I think he’s grinning because onscreen and off, she is nothing but human. Nurse Jackie is on Sky Atlantic HD every Tuesday at 10pm. Edie Falco Nurse Jackie Television US television Celebrity Hermione Hoby guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
In recent years, Edie Falco has become a mother and fought a very private battle with breast cancer. She tells Hermione Hoby how Carmela Soprano and Nurse Jackie have helped her stay strong When The Sopranos ended in 2007, it seemed impossible that we’d ever think of Edie Falco as anyone other than Carmela. She’d played Mrs Tony Soprano, mobster wife , for eight years in HBO’s cultural juggernaut of a series, winning three Emmys and two Golden Globes in the process. Falco seemed destined to be for ever “Carmela” in the way that Lisa Kudrow is for ever “Phoebe”. But then she was cast as Nurse Jackie . The comedy, now on its third series, is set in a Manhattan emergency room where Falco presides as a stoic, imperturbable nurse with a robust disregard for bureaucracy and a ferocious addiction to prescription painkillers. With her grim practicality and utilitarian haircut, Jackie seems a world away from the materialistic, voluptuously coiffed Carmela but both characters share a delicious moral dubiousness . The first episode – in which Jackie forges an organ donor card, steals from a rich patient to give to a poor one and flushes the severed ear of a violent diplomat down the toilet – won her an Emmy. It made Falco the first female actor to win one for comedy as well as drama but if anything validates the “best television actress of her generation” tag, it’s simply that people in the street now shout “Nurse Jackie” rather than “Carmela”. I meet Falco in her local New York cafe and she strides in looking trim and vigorous. The spiked crop is pushed back under a headband and she seems formidably together, particularly in comparison with Jackie’s chaos. “I am, yeah,” she nods. “Having been there myself I know that the alternative is yucky and I see how different my life is as a result of getting myself together.” Falco, now 47, has been sober for 20 years after giving up alcohol. “It proved to me that I don’t have to be a mess to do what I do,” she says, her large light blue eyes fixing me. “Which is a big question a lot of addicts have – like “Oh, it’s my muse” or whatever excuse you tell yourself to keep drinking. It sort of cleans the channel from where you get your inspiration, unclouds the way. It takes what it takes to find these things out.” Before Nurse Jackie, she kept getting cast as wives and mothers, “and at the time I was neither. I thought, what if I was just a woman? And then this came along and – I never really connected it until actually right now – I realise it was what I had asked for.” Jackie is a wife and mother, albeit the kind who grinds painkillers into powder and snorts them before preparing her kids’ cereal. But the show, says Falco, “is really just about this woman’s struggle to get through the day”. When asked who’s tougher, Jackie or her, she barely hesitates: “I think I’m tougher actually, for sure,” she nods. “And my toughness was hard-won so I can stand behind everything I say and do. I get impatient with her denial; I just want to say, you’ve got a marriage, kids at stake, just get it together, enough already!” Falco grew up in Brooklyn – “a sensitive kid growing up in an imperfect environment, I’ll just leave it at that” – and seeing her mother do community theatre made her want to act. “I used to think it was the coolest thing in the world, that she had her job in the day and then in the evening she and a bunch of other grownups would put on costumes and act things out. It was the most preposterous thing, magic from beginning to end.” Falco graduated from the acting programme at the State University of New York at Purchase in 1986, but it was a long time before she was able to support herself through acting alone. There was secretary work, “waitressing for a gazillion years” and also a stint in a Cookie Monster costume. “Oh God,” she says, closing her eyes and grimacing. I apologise for bringing back the memories. “It’s all right, it’s OK, they’re never very far away. So yeah, I dressed up as Cookie Monster. At a wedding. To get people up on to the dance floor. But I got $75 a wedding and that was huge back then. Uhhh,” she exhales, with a little head shake, “I still can’t believe those days really are behind me.” The Sopranos ensured that they were. Falco quickly became a household name, but did her best to avoid the fuss around the show. “My mom would call and say, ‘Oh I was reading on a website . . .’ and I’d say [she puts on a stern voice]: ‘Mom? I can’t go there.’ It wasn’t until it ended that I became more aware of just what it was and what it meant to people. It’s just hugely flattering.” In 2003, midway through filming a season, Falco was diagnosed with breast cancer. “At 11 o’clock I got the diagnosis and I had to be at work at one,” she says. “It was important for me to go through it privately. I have great respect for people who can go out there and proclaim it but that’s not how I do things.” She told her family and close friends, who include the show’s producers – both women in their 40s. They duly scheduled Falco’s filming around chemo appointments and saw that she had a wig to play Carmela in. “It was perfect for me,” says Falco. “The more I was able to just show up for my job, the more healthy I stayed. You kind of become what people expect of you, so if nobody knows and they’re like, ‘Buck up!’ then that’s what I’ll do.” As for surviving cancer, “I had all these large thoughts and I’m embarrassed to say they kinda went away. You start out with all these grand proclamations and here it is, almost eight years later, and I still bitch about the same stuff, still complain about my wardrobe or whatever.” But motherhood has also prompted some of those large thoughts. Falco has two adopted kids, six-year-old Anderson and three-year-old Macy. “I wonder how did I ever manage without being a mom, you know? I get so much nourishment from being around these guys. I have an odd, cosmic feeling about it – we’re all the mothers to all the children, all here to raise each other and take care of each other.” They get excited when they see her face on the subway or sides of buses. But, she says, “the weirdest thing was two summers ago: I’m in the Hamptons, bouncing my baby in a swimming pool and there’s an aeroplane going by with a banner with Nurse Jackie on it . . . it was just too bizarre. We go and do our job and go home and you forget that it’s being recorded and millions of people are seeing it. That piece of it is something I don’t think about so much. Until somebody comes at me with that kind of grin as if I’m something other than human.” When she leaves a young guy recognises her and accosts her, thrilled. I think he’s grinning because onscreen and off, she is nothing but human. Nurse Jackie is on Sky Atlantic HD every Tuesday at 10pm. Edie Falco Nurse Jackie Television US television Celebrity Hermione Hoby guardian.co.uk
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As self-imposed deadline expired many international campaigners planning to sail through the area returned home Activists seeking to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza with a flotilla of aid ships appeared close to defeat on Tuesday as a self-imposed deadline expired and many of the international campaigners due to sail began to return home. Although some vowed to continue with their quest, no new date has been set for departure of the flotilla, which was supposed to be taking medicines, food, gifts and building materials to Gaza. An Israeli law centre claimed credit for ending the flotilla’s ambitions. Just over a year after nine people were killed when Israeli marines stormed a pro-Palestinian flotilla, authorities last week banned ships destined for Gaza from leaving Greek ports, aiming to stop the latest flotilla “for their safety”. The Greeks have intercepted several of the flotilla’s 10 ships as they tried to leave port in recent days, while others were forced to withdraw from the voyage due to damage which passengers blamed on Israeli sabotage. One small French craft did manage to evade the Greek coastguard and reach international waters on Tuesday, but those on board decided not to try for Gazan waters alone and have now turned back. Meanwhile, the American captain of The Audacity of Hope, a flotilla vessel which was forced back to shore after attempting to break free on Friday, was released from custody on Tuesday. John Klusmire had been arrested on charges of setting sail without permission and endangering passengers, prompting a hunger strike from activists on board. Other protests by flotilla campaigners in Athens – including the occupation of the Spanish embassy – are ongoing. “We will wait no matter how long it takes,” Alejandro Fierro, an activist on the Spanish ship Guernica, which is docked in Crete, told al-Jazeera. “We’ve learned patience from the Palestinian people who have been resisting Israeli occupation for 60 years, so we can wait. We are not going to move until our government makes some solution for the Greek government to let us sail.” The Greek foreign ministry has defended its decision to stop the flotilla leaving its ports. “It is time to step up so that we can show everyone that at a critical turn of affairs for the Middle East, which is currently in the midst of tensions, there will not be developments that will exacerbate the climate further,” said a ministry spokesman. Greece and Israel completed a fortnight of joint air force drills this week, more evidence of growing ties between the two. Meanwhile, an Israeli law centre has said it was responsible for ending the flotilla’s plans. Shurat HaDin, a group with the stated objective of stemming the flow of money to terrorists, said it had been working for months to obstruct the flotilla by threatening legal action against any group that helped them in the US, Europe and Asia. “We attacked them from many different directions. It was hard work but it succeeded,” said Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, the group’s founder. Even before the flotilla began to assemble, Shurat HaDin wrote to insurance and marine service companies claiming they could be aiding and abetting terrorism if they provided insurance to flotilla ships. “Shurat HaDin was initiated to fight for Jewish rights and safeguard the state of Israel,” added Darshan-Leitner. “Fighting for victims of terror was just one part of our activity. Fighting for Jewish rights, stopping the delegitimisation of Israel and preventing harm to Israeli soldiers are also important parts of our work.” Gaza Gaza flotilla Israel Palestinian territories Middle East Activism Jack Shenker Conal Urquhart guardian.co.uk
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Documents list companies that caused more than 100 potentially lethal – and largely unpublicised – leaks in 2009 and 2010 Serious spills of oil and gas from North Sea platforms are occurring at the rate of one a week, undermining oil companies’ claims to be doing everything possible to improve the safety of rigs. Shell has emerged as one of the top offenders despite promising to clean up its act five years ago after a large accident in which two oil workers died. Documents obtained by the Guardian record leaks voluntarily declared by the oil companies to the safety regulator, the Health and Safety Executive(HSE) , in a database set up after the Piper Alpha disaster of 6 July 1988 which killed 167 workers. They reveal for the first time the names of companies that have caused more than 100 potentially lethal and largely unpublicised oil and gas spills in the North Sea in 2009 and 2010. They also deal a significant blow to the government’s credibility in supporting the oil industry’s fervent desire to drill in the Arctic. Charles Hendry, the energy minister, has said operations to drill in deep Arctic waters by companies such as Cairn Energy off Greenland are “entirely legitimate” as long as they adhere to Britain’s “robust” safety regulation. Shell has been at the forefront of plans to drill in the Arctic waters of the Beaufort and Chukchi seas. The documents, released under freedom of information legislation, record leaks classed by the regulator as “major” or “significant”, which, if ignited, could cause many deaths. The two rigs with the most frequent oil spills are owned by Shell and the French conglomerate Total . Shell executives regularly claim in public that safety is their most important commitment. Last November, Peter Voser, the Shell chief executive, said: “Safety is, has been, and forever will be, our number one priority. It is our core value.” The Shell-run platform responsible for the most spills, Brent Charlie , first began pumping oil in 1976 from its location 115 miles (180km) north-east of Scotland. The documents record seven leaks on it over the two-year period, with the worst happening on 26 April last year when four tonnes of leaked gas from one of its columns led to a shutdown of production. On another occasion, on 30 September 2009, safety inspectors ordered Shell to stop producing oil from Brent Charlie after gas leaked from its ventilation system. Last Friday, the HSE formally threatened to close down some operations on Brent Charlie within two weeks over undisclosed safety issues. Since January this year, Shell has stopped exporting oil from the rig and three others in the Brent oilfield as the company struggles to put right safety problems. Critics say the oldest rigs, built in the 70s when oil was found in the North Sea, are the most dangerous and fear safety is neglected as the platforms come to the end of their productive commercial life. Shell came under intense criticism over its safety record in 2006 when a judge ruled that it could have prevented the deaths of two men if it had properly repaired a hole in a corroding pipeline on a platform in the Brent field. In the same year, one of Shell’s own safety consultants, Bill Campbell , alleged that safety procedures in the North Sea had been ignored for years. Shell’s then chief executive, Jereon van der Veer, admitted in a private email at the time that the company had a second-rate safety record and pledged to spend substantial sums of money to improve it. A Shell spokesman said: “No spill is acceptable and we have made progress. We work closely with regulators and invested over a billion dollars in recent years to upgrade facilities across the North Sea to continue this improvement of our performance.” Other major oil companies which are high in the spills league include the Danish conglomerate Maersk and Canadian firm Talisman , which both have a rig with five leaks. Four spills came from a rig known as Mungo Etap, which is owned by BP. Whistleblowers have told the Guardian that the list of spills recorded in the documents is the tip of the iceberg. Other accidents are kept quiet, they claim, because workers fear they cannot report them in case they lose their jobs. One veteran said that although everyone is formally told to report anything that goes wrong, staff adhere to an informal code to remain silent to avoid a halt in drilling that loses money for the companies. The HSE documents also undermine claims by the major oil companies that last year’s Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 workers was unlikely to ever happen to them. Jake Molloy, general secretary of the Offshore Industry Liaison Committee (OILC), a union representing North Sea workers, said Deepwater Horizon showed that “even the most up-to-date, cutting-edge safety technology can go wrong if it is not maintained properly and not operated by competent people”. He added: “We have been very lucky in the UK that we have not had another major incident with multiple fatalities. We have come very close on several occasions, very, very close. It is more luck than good management in some cases. Some operators don’t give a damn. Because of the high price of oil, they are cutting corners. Some of them are overdue for prosecution.” Robert Paterson, health and safety director of the Oil & Gas UK , which represents the industry and aims to make Britain’s oil industry the safest in the world , said oil companies last year agreed to “redouble efforts to reduce the number of leaks by 50% over three years and many companies are building this target into their business plans”. He rejected the whistleblowers’ concerns: “We believe there is a very high standard of compliance when it comes to companies reporting offshore incidents to the regulator and a constructive culture in the workforce when it comes to reporting health and safety concerns.” The disclosures have provoked criticism of the government over its claims that regulation of the oil industry in the North Sea is one of the toughest in the world. Chris Huhne, the energy secretary, claimed in January that the UK’s safety and environmental regime was “one of the most robust in the world.” Frank Doran, Labour MP for Aberdeen North, said: “Chris Huhne needs to have a rethink. There is a continuing problem, of particularly gas leakages, and that is a sign that the infrastructure in the North Sea is ageing and that maintenance and investment is still not sufficient to ensure the safety of offshore workers. There is still a long way to go.” Oil spills Oil and gas companies Energy industry Oil Gas Gas Energy Rob Evans Richard Cookson Terry Macalister guardian.co.uk
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Exclusive: Airstrike in Helmand province is first confirmed operation in which Reaper aircraft has caused civilian deaths Four Afghan civilians were mistakenly killed and two others injured in an attack by a remotely controlled RAF “drone” targeting insurgent leaders in Helmand province, the Guardian has learned. The airstrike marks the first confirmed operation in which one of the UK’s Reaper aircraft has been responsible for the deaths of civilians, and comes amid growing concern on both sides of the Atlantic about increased use of drones in combat zones. The revelation may also complicate the task of British commanders in the province as they try to secure the trust of local people ahead of “transition” – the symbolic moment later this month when Afghan forces take the lead for security in areas currently under UK control. However, the British military remain convinced about the use of Reapers and insist the civilian deaths were due to intelligence failures on the ground rather than problems with the aircraft. Military officials have told the Guardian it is possible that almost one third of the RAF could be made up of remotely controlled aircraft within 20 years, such is the confidence in their capability. The airstrike that caused the civilian casualties was meant to kill a Taliban commander who was being tracked on the ground in the Now Zad district of north Helmand. According to sources, the leader was correctly identified and the Reaper, which was flying close by, was instructed to attack. The Reaper pilots were thousands of miles away at a US Airforce base in Nevada when they were given the all clear to fire on two trucks. Both vehicles were destroyed – at least one of them is thought to have been packed with explosive. An insurgent commander and an associate were killed, but it soon became clear that civilians were also in the vehicles. “It was extremely unfortunate that the civilians were killed,” said a Whitehall source. “The attack would not have taken place if we had known that there were civilians in the vehicles as well.” The incident took place on 25 March this year and an inquiry was launched by investigators from the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). ISAF confirmed that “civilians were discovered in the vehicles following the airstrike during a battle damage assessment”; this was conducted by soldiers sent to confirm what had happened. “This is the first case when civilian deaths have been caused by one of our Reapers,” said the source. “There has been a comprehensive investigation to ensure it doesn’t happen again.” A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: “Any incident involving civilian casualties is a matter of deep regret and we take every possible measure to avoid such incidents. On 25 March a UK Reaper was tasked to engage and destroy two pick up trucks. The strike resulted in the deaths of two insurgents and the destruction of a significant quantity of explosives being carried on the trucks. Sadly, four Afghan civilians were also killed and a further two Afghan civilians were injured. There are strict procedures, frequently updated in light of experience, intended to both minimise the risk of casualties occurring and to investigate any incidents that do happen. “An ISAF investigation was conducted to establish if any lessons could be learnt from the incident or if errors in operational procedures could be identified; the report noted that the UK Reaper’s crews actions had been in accordance with procedures and UK Rules of Engagement.” The families of the civilian victims will be entitled to compensation if they report to a British base and can prove their identity. Chris Cole, a campaigner who runs the Drone Wars UK website, which monitors the development of unmanned weapons systems, said he was concerned at the time it took for the attack to be made public. “The secrecy and lack of accountability surrounding the use of British armed drones is a matter of great concern. There needs to be a full and public investigation of all the issues raised by the increasing use of armed unmanned drones by British forces.” The RAF has been piloting Reapers from Creech Air Force base in Nevada since late 2007. The MoD bought the aircraft as an “urgent operational requirement” to help in the fight against the Taliban. Since then the Reapers have flown a total of 23,400 hours and fired 176 missiles and laser guided bombs. Last year David Cameron said 124 insurgents had been killed by UK drones during their Afghan deployment. The RAF’s leading expert on Reapers, Wing Commander Chris Thirtle, told the Guardian some pilots in the future may never have to actually fly aircraft, beyond their initial training. Instead, they will be trained to use remote controlled aircraft for combat missions. Most of the concern about drones has centred on their extensive use by the CIA and American military commanders to attack al-Qaida commanders in Pakistan. Some studies have estimated that hundreds of civilians have also been killed in these strikes. In 2009 an RAF drone fired on suspected insurgents in Sangin, helping Royal Marines who were patrolling in the area. The attack is thought to have injured two children, who were flown to the British base at Camp Bastion for treatment. Military Afghanistan Unmanned drones Nick Hopkins guardian.co.uk
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