WSJ's Ben Fritz weighs in on the present and future of movies

By KEVIN CRUST

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-big-picture-ben-fritz-20180319-story.html

March 19, 2018

Ben Fritz

In the 21st century, cinematic universes housing the canons of Marvel, DC, Star Wars, Harry Potter and other franchises have largely replaced movie stars on the big screen.

As Netflix and Amazon Prime gobble up content for their streaming services, and cable networks such as HBO and FX attract talent who would have worked exclusively in movies at one time, some of the major studios face consolidation or even extinction.

In his new book, "The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies," Ben Fritz, who has covered the movie business for a decade for Variety, the Los Angeles Times and currently, the Wall Street Journal, explains how we got here.

Jumping off from emails and documents uncovered through the 2014 Sony Pictures hack and through extensive interviews, Fritz details the studio's decline after 2002's "Spider-Man" (the Tobey Maguire version) launched the modern superhero craze. In a compelling, well-reported narrative, Fritz deftly ties together some of the industry's biggest questions with some arresting twists and turns, topped with the irony that two of Sony's biggest stars of the early 2000s, Will Smith and Adam Sandler, both now make movies for Netflix.

Recently, we talked to Fritz about the book and where things are heading for the movie business.

How did the book come about?

I'd been thinking about as a reporter covering this business for a long time. People always say to me, "Why are there so many superhero movies? Why are there so many sequels?" I started digging into the hack more and realized there are answers to these questions here and it's a story.

Covering these stories on a daily basis as you do, how did you get enough perspective to connect the dots?

The best advice I got was, if you get a book leave, do all your research early on. From the time I sold the proposal in the summer of 2015 to the fall of 2016, I spent researching. I was working, and I would spend an hour or two in the evenings and on the weekends, when I could, and I would read 10 or 20 emails or some of the documents or set up an interview. I did interview about 50 people for the book.

I was trying to focus on the 30,000-foot view, to immerse myself in this material. I had to virtually shut off the news — which was weird, there was a lot going on — and live in this world of what was happening to the movie business over the past decade and see where it's going.

My job for the past decade was covering the business of movies and even I hadn't really stepped back to think about this 'big picture' trend. Marvel's the great example. We all know Marvel is really successful. Marvel has become the dominant movie company of the 21st century — how did they do that and how did it impact everybody else?

Did any of these connections surprise you?

Digging into the history of Marvel and their connection to Sony surprised me. I found out Sony had the opportunity to buy the rights to all the Marvel characters for $25 million and they were like, "Who would be interested in a Captain America movie or a Thor movie or a Black Panther movie? Nobody wants that."

I understand hindsight is 20/20, but that was a shocking moment to me. And that was not from the hack; that was from interviews I did. And the story about how Marvel got into movies basically because of their anger over how successful Sony was with "Spider-Man," which was their character. Sony was making money off their character and Sony was getting credit for their character and they wanted to get into movies in response to that. They were doing it not because they cared about movies but [because] Marvel saw movies as a way to sell toys. Even to the extent that they picked "Iron Man" because they did focus groups with kids and kids liked "Iron Man" best of all the characters.

Partly intelligently and partly by chance, [Marvel] was ahead of all the trends. That was the most interesting part to me of all my reporting.

You discuss the idea of premium video-on-demand studio movies being available shortly after their theatrical premiere. Is that the next big domino to fall in this?

At this point, I would call it an evolutionary change. It's absolutely inevitable. The biggest studios — not Disney at the moment but Universal and Warner Bros. — really want it. The only reason they're not pushing for it is that with this Disney/Fox deal happening and AT&T/Time Warner, a lot of mergers, you don't want to upset anybody when you're trying to get a big deal approved by the government. The companies want it and a lot of consumers want it. Some movie lovers may be upset, but the audience, especially younger people, understandably in the age of Netflix, are used to getting what they want when they want it. It's a cliche, but it's true.

Already, the date from a movie's theatrical release to when it is available to buy online has shrunk to 75 days. It used to be 120, then it got down to 90, now it's 75. It's not going to start with day-and-date for the bigger movies; it's going to start with three or four weeks for a higher price, and eventually it will go lower. Maybe it will start to be two weeks, and then it will be fewer and fewer movies that will qualify for the longer theatrical play. We're definitely going to a shrinking window, and you'll pay a higher price to see it sooner.

This idea that a movie has to be seen in a theater, it's not going away, it's going to be a smaller class of movies and a smaller number of audience members and filmmakers who insist on that.

How will that affect multiplexes?

We're already seeing [that] the chains are ripping out seats and putting in luxury seats. We're definitely going where the moviegoing experience is becoming more of a luxury, high-end experience. Going out of the home has to be special. It's got to be a better experience than you can have at home. That makes movies something affluent professionals can do but tougher for teenagers to do or people who don't have a lot of money.

It's a nationwide trend. I still think there will be cheap bargain theaters for movies that have been out for a month or two, but like so many things in America, the middle is what's going to fall out. The middle-class movie theater, so to speak, is going away.

What's next?

The biggest thing I'm paying attention to that I write about in the book is the push of the streaming platforms into movies. Neflix's spending on movies has risen rapidly. They've hired a bunch of executives.They're getting bigger and bigger films. They're bidding on all the biggest films in Hollywood these days. They're spending $8 billion on content this year. They have 700 pieces of content, including films, TV, comedy specials, etc. They are just eating Hollywood alive.

I think movies are the toughest area to do that, but they are pushing aggressively. How they do that and how that changes audience behavior and how the major studios figure out how to respond, I talk about that in the book. I saw it coming, but it's coming even faster than I thought.

With Disney buying Hulu, Hulu's going to become a bigger player in movies for sure. The Disney direct-to-consumer platform, is something again I think that's predicted in the book, but not talked about. Disney is making original films, family films for its direct-to-consumer platform.

How do the traditional studios differentiate their content? How do you get people to leave their homes and leave streaming to see a movie in a theater? What is the definition of a movie anymore? Those are questions I thought were a few years out when I finished the book, and in reality, they're maybe one year out. They're happening right now.

What are we losing out on?

The great thing about a movie like "Get Out" or "Black Panther" is we're all seeing it at the same time and we're all talking about it in this cultural moment. That's something that's special about theatrical release that might be lost. A Netflix movie, I put in my queue and I get around to it when I get around to it. You might see it now; I might see it in a few months. It's not this cultural moment, and that is something movies were always able to do and it's tougher now.

How does the book help readers understand the future of movies?

The entertainment business is changing so rapidly now. Since I finished the book, Disney agreed to buy Fox, Netflix has accelerated their push into movies, China's investment has taken a pause. These are all things that are changing. My hope and belief is that the book is not just about little specifics but about these big picture trends and these things happening now are not surprising to anyone who's read the book.

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How a Bay of Pigs Survivor Became a Brutal American Mobster

The mess of a CIA operation had horrific consequences for the organized crime scene back in the United States.

By Seth Ferranti

https://www.vice.com/

March 19, 2018

In April 1961, about 1,500 Cuban exiles trained and backed by the CIA set out to invade and overthrow the Fidel Castro regime. The Bay of Pigs operation, as it has since become notoriously known, was, of course, an unmitigated disaster—those exiles who weren't killed by well-prepared pro-Castro forces were rounded up and imprisoned until the Kennedy Administration was able to negotiate their release. The fiasco not only helped lay the groundwork for the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 but generally made the United States look like shit.

The mess of a CIA operation had long-term consequences for the organized crime scene back in the United States, too. Among those members of Brigade 2506—the would-be-liberators of Cuba—released back to American custody in 1962 was José Miguel Battle, Sr., a former Havana cop. He went on to reinvent himself in the US as El Padrino, a "Godfather" of the Cuban-American Mafia. Thanks in part to his connections to both legendary Italian mafiosi and the Havana underworld, he became a sort of king of the numbers racket in the New York/New Jersey metro area. With criminal interests all along the Eastern seaboard, Battle’s run continued into the George W. Bush era, when he and his son were finally arrested in 2004. Numbers, murder, and drugs—El Padrino seemed to outlast politics itself in a ruthless bid for power and riches.

In his new book, The Corporation: An Epic Story of the Cuban American Underworld, out March 20, the master of true crime TJ English explores the life of the Cuban mob boss who, the author concluded, consciously modeled himself on Marlon Brando’s Vito Corleone as he got older. VICE caught up with English about his new book and where El Padrino ranks in the chronicles of gangster lore. Here’s what he had to say.

VICE: What do you think José Miguel Battle learned as a vice cop in Havana that would help him head a criminal empire in the United States? 

He learned how corruption works and how the world operates. How organized crime is a conduit between the upper world (the business and political class) and the underworld (the criminals and gangsters). Battle delivered the skim from the casinos to the presidential palace. He was the go-between, the bagman between Meyer Lanksy and President Fulgencio Batista and his government. Battle really understood how you needed to take care of people within the system. Payment would be made to whoever needed.

When he got to the United States and wanted to set up this gambling empire revolving around a numbers racket, or what Latinos called “bolita,” he knew if it was properly organized, it could be a goldmine. Part of organizing it was making sure he cleared it with the necessary Mafia figures in the United States. He set up meetings, through Santo Trafficante, with all the key Mafia figures in the New York/New Jersey area and started this bolita enterprise, which was quite vast and profitable on many levels.

It's remarkable that the failed Bay of Pigs invasion seemed to ultimately bring together the men who would become the Cuban Mafia in America. But given the way things were run in Batista's Cuba, it's not exactly shocking, right?

A lot of the Mafia figures and Cubans who were displaced by the revolution were angry. They had lost money, property, and belongings, had been unceremoniously kicked out of the country, and wanted to take Cuba back. They had a mutual interest with the CIA and the US government, who saw the Communist government of Fidel Castro as a threat, and wanted to overthrow it. All these elements—the Mafia, the CIA, and the Cuban exiles—formed a coalition and became determined to kill Castro and take back Cuba. The biggest initiative in that effort was the Bay of Pigs invasion. The men from this botched invasion, including Battle, became the foundation of The Corporation.

A lot of Americans' frame of reference for Cuban gangsters is probably still Brian De Palma’s Scarface, which emphasizes the Mariel boatlift of Cubans into Florida. How did Al Pacino's Tony Montana compare to the real man they called El Padrino?

José Miguel Battle was more of an establishment figure, the guy with lots of connections in the upper world. Tony Montana was a refugee, a guy with nothing, from the lowest level of the gutter who rose up. El Padrino was much more of an old-school don, because of his understanding of how the system worked. But the Mariel boatlift did have an impact on The Corporation. When they arrived in New Jersey and Miami, they were immediately integrated into the criminal underworld, and they were the kinda guys who would do the type of criminal assignments that other people might not be willing to do. Murders, all kinds of hard-line criminal activities. Some of the most violent criminal activity was done by the Marielitos, as they were called.

Like plenty of real-life and fictional mob figures, El Padrino didn’t exactly take kindly to betrayals. But the incident with his one-time protege Ernesto Torres—whom he is said to have ordered killed—was the closest he came to hard time in prison before he actually got nabbed in 2004, right?

Ernesto Torres was known to the organization as El Hijo Prodigo, the prodigal son. He was this young kid, 19-years-old, who showed talent as a gangster and as a killer. He started out pretty much as a hitman: One of his first missions was to try to avenge the murder of Battle's brother. Battle saw him as someone he could mentor and shape, maybe even to take over the organization. Others in the organization couldn't quite understand it, because this guy Torres wasn't very bright and didn't seem like the kind of guy who would make a good leader. Ernesto was always broke. He started kidnapping other bankers in the organization, and holding them for ransom money.

Eventually, Torres did the unthinkable and shot one of the kidnapped bankers. The guy survived, but Torres almost killed him. The other bankers told Battle that he had to do something about it because this guy was a loose cannon.

[After Torres's death], Battle was put on trial for conspiracy and found guilty on one of the counts. It looked like he was going to be put away for a long time—his reign was over. Torres's girlfriend had testified against him, but Battle beat that charge on a technicality. He got a lighter sentence. When there was some belief that he would be tried again using the girlfriend as a witness, the organization took care of that situation by murdering her before that trial could ever take place.

El Padrino was eventually brought down due to the dogged pursuit of one law enforcement official—David Shanks—whom you had access to. Why do you think he made bringing down this mafioso his career? 

David Shanks was just a Miami cop who came into the story of The Corporation kind of late. By the time he was involved, Battle had moved from New Jersey down to Miami, and the Corporation had been up and running for a least 15 years or 20 years in the New York area, and was now moving its operations. David Shanks was the guy who had worked organized crime, particularly street gambling and money laundering. He's one of the guys who first comprehended, I think, the full scope of what the Corporation was all about. He did a lot of it through tracking the money and how the money was being laundered by a kind of a check-cashing scheme, and he had connected that money-laundering scheme to the organization itself. He investigated them for about 20 years.

How do stories that teeter in the grey areas of politics and crime, like the ones you are so inclined to write, reflect on what’s going on today in that arena in our country? 

If you don't understand the history and the workings or organized crime in America, you can't understand America. That's how intertwined they are, and always have been, and still are. We talk often about how the mafia diminished and all that, and, of course, it has. But I don't think the corrupt mandate that created organized crime has diminished at all. It just keep taking on new forms and new shapes depending on what the dominant racket is in any given era at any given time. At one time it was illegal booze. Then it was sort of labor racketeering, and then it was narcotics. Any number of things. Political corruption and law enforcement corruption is always part and parcel to what makes the world go around. I don't think that's changed much.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. Learn more about English's new book, which drops Tuesday, here.

Follow Seth Ferranti on Twitter.

France: Toward Total Submission to Islam, Destruction of Free Speech

by Guy Millière

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12051/france-islam-free-speech

March 19, 2018

After the murders of much of the staff at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris on January 7, 2015, the hostage-taking and slaughter at a kosher supermarket two days later confirmed what was already obvious: France was a target of Islamic terrorism. A huge demonstration, organized in Paris on January 11, brought together a million and a half people, with politicians from around the world in attendance.

For a brief moment, France seemed to be the country where the multitudes were ready to stand up for freedom of speech, and the government was ready to fight for Western values.

Unfortunately, that impression did not last long.

For years, freedom of speech in France has been in the process of being crushed, particularly regarding Islam and Islamic terrorism. Journalists who said that Islam often did not look much like a religion of peace but more like a religion of war were systematically and harshly prosecuted. Charlie Hebdo's new director and editor-in-chief were also not spared: they were sued as early as 2006, the year the magazine republished the Danish Mohammed cartoons. They were sued again in 2007, 2012 and 2013. The writer Michel Houellebecq was summoned to court in 2010 for saying that Islam is a "stupid" religion. The first judicial sentence against the polemist Éric Zemmour dates from 2011. The website Riposte Laïque was established in 2007 to fight censorship, defend secularism, and preserve the right to criticize Islam. Lawsuits against its founder, Pierre Cassen, immediately became overwhelming.

Judicial harassment against those who still dared to speak "incorrectly" about Islam did not stop after the murders at Charlie Hebdo: rather, they intensified. The terrorist attacks that took place in France in November 2015 and in July 2016 did not lead to any demonstrations; merely to displays of sadness, fear and resignation. French politicians used empty words, spoke of the dangers of "fanaticism" and said that France was "at war" -- but they never named an enemy. Journalists and writers who said that terrorists attacking France were Muslim, and that "Islamism" was not foreign to Islam, had to answer for their words in court and were fined thousands of euros.

Both Éric Zemmour and Pierre Cassen have spent hours on trial providing conclusive evidence -- in vain.

Emmanuel Macron at the fasting dinner of the French Council of the MuslimFaith , in June 2017. Photo Benjamin Cremel. AFP

Since the election of President Emmanuel Macron a year ago, the situation has become worse. On June 20, 2017, at the end of a post-Ramadan iftar dinner he shared with Muslim leaders, President Macron stated that "...no one should make believe that Islam is not compatible with the Republic"; that " no one should say that France reject Muslim faith" and that "attempt to give Islam the image of a religion condoning murder and terror" must be condemned. Most French critics of Islam got the message and cautiously chose silence. Riposte Laïque did not, but here were consequences.

On January 20, 2018, Pierre Cassen was convicted of "incitement to hatred against Muslims" and a fine of $12,000 was imposed on him. He was also given a three-month suspended prison sentence. He will soon be tried again for repeating the same "crime", and could be sent to prison.

Several European governments have made it clear that criticizing Islam may lead to prosecution and conviction. Recently, British, Danish and Germancitizens have been handed suspended sentences. If Pierre Cassen is imprisoned, it will be the first time that someone in a Western democracy is sent to jail for criticizing a religion.

Worse, Cassen is not even the author of the article targeted by the judges, and the article only says what is obvious: that extremist Muslims are at war with France and the West, and that incitement to kill infidels is present in the Qur'an. Cassen was sentenced as the editor of Riposte Laïque; since 2012, however, Riposte Laïque has been hosted by Switzerland and has a Swiss editor. Pierre Cassen no longer even has an official role in the organization. He is just easy prey because he lives in France. Pierre Cassen, clearly a victim of prosecutorial abuse, is planning to apply for political asylum in Switzerland.

Two members of the French National Assembly, Gilbert Collard and Marine Le Pen, a former presidential candidate who secured 35% of votes in the May 2017 run-off, were also recently charged with "inciting violence". They did not even publish texts criticizing Islam. After a journalist compared their party (National Front) to the Islamic State, they tweeted photos showing atrocities committed by the Islamic State, and added under the photos: "This is the Islamic State". They are also facing serious fines and prison sentences. The photos they tweeted are not even secret: they are widely available on the internet.

Originally, Collard and Le Pen were protected by parliamentary immunity. Their parliamentary immunity, however, was revoked by an almost unanimous vote in the French National Assembly. This is the first time that members of a democratic Western government risk being imprisoned for publishing widely available photos of Islamic crimes.

French laws are being used more and more often by the French justice system to suppress any criticism of Islam. Furthermore, in a dangerous inversion of reality, critics of Islamic terrorist violence are now systematically presented by French judges as examples of incitement to hatred and violence. The threat of jail time is added to the threat of fines.

Consequently, those who criticize Islam -- or who just show the results of Islamic terrorism -- are victims of fierce prosecution, while hate-filled, racist organizations are never touched. The Islamic "Natives of the Republic" movement, for instance, regularly publishes texts saying that " greedy Jews control the global financial system" and that "Zionists kill Palestinian children for pleasure" but are never condemned. Houria Bouteldja, the spokesperson for the movement, published a book describing Jews as vicious supporters of "Islamophobia", and stating that the Holocaust is "infinitely less than a detail" of history. She recently took part in anti-Israel demonstrations where flags ofHamas and Hezbollah were waved and portraits of murderers of Jews were held up. Jewish organizations expressed their indignation and filed complaints -- to no avail.

The French government and the French justice system claim to treat all religions equally, but they treat Islam as if it were "more equal than others" -- able to enjoy special privileges.

In France, attacks against Islam are benign and rare, but lead to severe convictions: in January 2016, a man dropped slices of ham in front of a mosque. He was immediately sent to jail for several weeks. Attacks against Christianity, however, are countless, sometimes violent, but almost never lead to any conviction. French theaters produce anti-Christian shows almost every year. In a play called "On the Concept of the Face of God," currently on tour throughout the country, for almost two hours, a large portrait of Jesus Christ is insulted and covered with matter that is supposed to be feces. The French Ministry of Culture subsidizes the tour. No theater director, however, would imagine producing an anti-Islam show.

Six to eight million Muslims live in France, and the number is increasing. France's 400,000 remaining Jews have not yet left France, but every year their the numbers shrink. Practicing Christians vanish; churches are often empty.

Polls show that a significant proportion of the French population thinks that Islam is a threat, but French authorities choose to harass those who speak of this threat.

In 2005, the situation was already serious. Muslim riots took place throughout the country. French President Jacques Chirac asked imams to restore calm and began to abandon the French government's sovereignty over many districts. A few years later, President Nicolas Sarkozy claimed to organize an "Islam of France", based on a structure he had created in 2003 when he was Minister of the Interior. He asked French Muslim leaders to call for "moderation". He failed: French Muslim leaders said unanimously that "Islam is not violent" and "does not need moderation". He promised to end "no-go zones" and to take back the districts abandoned under Jacques Chirac. He also failed; in 2006 there were already 751 no-go zones in France, and "as of last count," that number is no different. President François Hollande did nothing and let the situation rot. President Emmanuel Macron now speaks of the need to "reorganize the Islam of France" but instead appears to surrender.

Macron recently said he wants to create the post of "Grand Imam of France", a man who would be the "spiritual leader" of Islam in France. He added that he would like to see the construction of large "cathedral mosques" in every important French city. He also wants the Arabic language to be taught in every high school, to maintain a relationship between Muslims and the language of their religion. He promises affirmative action in favor of Muslims and a more resolute fight against "those who attack Islam". He never uses the words "radical Islam". He speaks of "radicalization", but says that the main danger is the "radicalization of secularism". He does not hide that those who defend secularism -- and a clear separation between the government and Islam (Riposte Laïque, for example) -- are an obstacle on the path he intends to follow. Clearly, the fight against "radicalization of secularism" is in high gear!

Marwan Muhammad, spokesman of the "Collective against Islamophobia in France" said in 2011:

"Who has the right to say that in thirty to forty years, France will not be a Muslim country? No one in this country has the right to extinguish our right to hope for a society that is globally faithful to Islam ".

Every day in France, men such as Marwan Muhammad have more reason to hope.

Prominent Islamic preacher Tariq Ramadan is presently being held at the Fleury-Mérogis prison near Paris: judges could not dismiss the overwhelming charges against him of rape. Some French Muslims still claim he is being unfairly accused. Many others say he is an impostor and seem ready to get rid of him. They say it is urgent to create "authentic French Islamic institutions" fully "recognized by the French government". President Macron could not have said it better. The Islamization of France will not stop.

President Macron recently said he wants a law against "fake news". If the law is adopted, all online magazines in France that do not broadcast what the government defines as "true news" could be subject to immediate government suspension. If they are located outside France, access to them would be blocked. Islamic online magazines and websites are not on the list of "fake news" providers. What online magazines and websites top the list? Those that question Islam.

Dr. Guy Millière, a professor at the University of Paris, is the author of 27 books on France and Europe.

History and the Human Condition: Reflections on Kate Bowler’s 'Everything Happens for a Reason'

By Kristen Du Mez

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbench/

February 22, 2018

I remember the day a couple years back when my Facebook feed was suddenly overtaken with grief. Kate Bowler, the preeminent historian of the prosperity gospel, but more importantly beloved friend to so many in my circle of religious historians, had been diagnosed with stage IV cancer. As she broke the news to all her “dears,” with characteristic grace and wit, the sorrow was palpable.

At that time I hadn’t yet met Kate, but for at least a couple of years mutual friends had kept insisting that we really must meet. It wasn’t long before our paths did cross, at an academic conference. What most amazed me wasn’t that Kate was giving a keynote address while battling cancer while raising a toddler while writing two books. But it was Kate herself. She has an uncanny power to make you feel like her best friend. It wasn’t just that we had read each other’s books, or that we both had an academic interest in the caffeine intake of Christian women bloggers. No, she has an enviable and extraordinary way about her that makes you feel smart and cherished and like you’re sharing a joke together, even if only for a minute.

But Kate had cancer. She was no longer a “shiny” person, a person for whom everything had fallen in place in a charmed sort of way. The irony was impossible to ignore. The historian of the prosperity gospel, the author of Blessed, had come up against something that all the positive thinking in the world couldn’t cure.

Kate wrote about this irony, about coming to terms with her prognosis in light of her research, in a New York Times essay two years ago. That essay ended up being one of the most popular essays the Times ran that year, and it’s now been expanded into a beautiful book, Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I’ve Loved, just out from Random House.

Having just experienced a loved one’s illness and death, I had been eagerly awaiting the release of Kate’s book. When it arrived, I read it cover to cover.

As a religious historian, I ought to have been drawn to Kate’s reflections on the prosperity gospel, to how her expertise in that tradition shaped her own encounter with catastrophe. And it’s true that her scholarly background brings depth and unique insight to this book.

But in truth, I really just wanted to listen to Kate talk. I’m not sure if her reflections on life and death are more profound because she knows everything there is to know about the prosperity gospel, or if she wrote such a powerful book about the prosperity gospel because she has a depth of insight, because she has a heart for what it is to be human. I think, perhaps, the latter.

I’m not the only one drawn to her work. Her book has shot to #8 on the New York Times bestseller list for nonfiction books. She’s been on NPR’s Morning Edition, Fresh Air, and I’m sure a host of other places, and her book has been reviewed pretty much everywhere in its first week. Over and over, she’s been peppered with merciless questions: Tell us about dying. Tell us again, this time in more detail. Let’s talk again about your imminent death…

I have to admit that, at a certain point, this started to make me cringe. Why are we all so fascinated with Kate’s story? What are our motives? My motives?

I remember one of her early blog posts, not long after her diagnosis, where she wrote of standing on one side of a glass wall. The rest of the world was on the outside, looking in. I am on the outside. What compels us to stare at those behind the glass? Surely compassion, but perhaps something more? Relief? An almost voyeuristic sense of relief that we are on the outside, that we can walk away when we tire of looking, or when the reality of what we’re glimpsing becomes unbearable?

But mixed with that relief is something more, I think. Deep down, we all know that we are only a stabbing pain, a dreaded phone call away from being relocated to the other side of the glass. In the words of Kate’s doctor, we’re all terminal. Some just have more information.

And so we want to know how to think, what to do, when that day comes. And it’s hard to imagine a better guide than Kate.

At the end of her book, she provides a helpful “short list” of things that should absolutely never be said “to people experiencing terrible times” starting with “Well, at least…” and ending with “How are you really?” Chances are you’ve stumbled into at least one of these, and probably several. I know I have. Happily she also offers another appendix outlining better options.

But more than what to say, the book offers us a guide for how to think, how to feel, in a world that is more broken than shiny.

“What would it mean for Christians to give up that little piece of the American Dream that says, ‘You are limitless’? Everything is not possible. The mighty Kingdom of God is not yet here,” she writes. “What if rich did not have to mean wealthy, and whole did not have to mean healed? What if being people of ‘the gospel’ meant that we are simply people with good news? God is here. We are loved. It is enough.”

We sense the truth in her father-in-law’s words, that “life is a series of losses.” Those who are privileged to live long enough already know that “with age we slowly lose our senses and even our pleasures, our parents and then our friends, preparing us for our own absence.”

Kate helps us see that, whatever our stated theological convictions, we all cling to the illusion of control: “Control is a drug, and we are all hooked, whether or not we believe in the prosperity gospel’s assurance that we can master the future with our words and attitudes. I can barely admit to myself that I have almost no choice but to surrender, but neither can those around me.”

And she puts words to the disorienting reality of grief. “There must be rhythms to grief, but I do not know them,” she concedes. Yet she is able to capture the gnawing pain of grief in just a couple of sentences: “I used to think that grief was about looking backward, old men saddled with regrets or young ones pondering should-haves. I see now that it is about eyes squinting through tears into an unbearable future. The world cannot be remade by the sheer force of love.”

Kate offers us words to live by, too, reminding us not to surrender too much of ourselves to “someday,” because “someday” might come before we’re ready. And, she advises, “Don’t skip to the end.”

The same week I devoured Everything Happens for a Reason, I came across another reflection on death and grief written by a historian. Two days before Kate’s book was released, the Chronicle of Higher Education published an essay by Stéphane Gerson, “History in the Face of Catastrophe.” Gerson’s catastrophe was the tragic death of his son in a whitewater rafting accident. In the aftermath of the tragedy, he found that the enormity of grief changed the way he approached his scholarship. In some ways, the scope of his questions, “their conceptual reach,” and his “engagement with other scholars and students had narrowed.” But in other ways, he found himself “returning to the past with an urgency” he hadn’t possessed before. “Without realizing it,” Gerson writes, “I grieved not only as a father and husband, but also as a historian. And this, I later came to understand, broadened my relationship to history. It made me a different kind of scholar.”

He was no longer concerned with historiographical contributions, with solving questions about “grief across the centuries,” for instance. Instead, he found himself seeking companionship. “I wanted to know these men and women who…kept ‘the uncertainty of this life ever in view.’” In Gerson’s words, “Though history had lost its scholarly luster, it came alive in other ways. The past provided solace and companionship, immediacy and distance, inklings of understanding and a finer appreciation for what I could never understand.”

Gerson goes on to wonder if we might imagine a scholarly practice that “acknowledges that what speaks to us may also be what moves us?” To consider that “the historical actors and events we deem important may be the ones who touch something inside us?”

I wonder, too, if much of the conversation around “Christian scholarship” in recent decades hasn’t missed something vital. Attention to epistemological questions and questions of purpose are certainly valid, but perhaps there’s something to be gained by thinking more broadly about the human condition. How can the past help us speak to that condition, to live in the reality that we inhabit a world where everything doesn’t always happen for a reason, where we can’t control our futures, or hold on to those we love?

In Kate’s words, “Life is so beautiful. Life is so hard.”

Read more at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbench/2018/02/history-and-the-human-condition-reflections-on-kate-bowlers-everything-happens-for-a-reason/#JcTtTcrOyKgX6S2R.99

Related:

Kate Bowler: Things We Learn in the Dark -
https://stories.duke.edu/kate-bowler-things-learn-dark

Prosperity Gospel Scholar Says Belief That Pain Will Always Bring Reward is a 'Beautiful Lie'-
https://www.christianpost.com/news/prosperity-gospel-scholar-says-belief-pain-will-always-bring-reward-is-beautiful-lie-220934/

Kate Bowler: I Reject the Prosperity Gospel but I Still Crave What It Promises-

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2018/january-february/kate-bowler-i-reject-prosperity-gospel-but-i-still-crave-wh.html

Waco: The Untold Story

By David T. Hardy

https://www.americanthinker.com/

March 17, 2018

Smoking fire consumes the Branch Davidian Compound during the FBI assault to end the 51-day standoff with cult leader David Koresh and his followers. Greg Smith/Corbis via Getty

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Waco atrocity, the bloodiest and most expensive law enforcement operation in the history of the United States.  The gun battle, siege, and lethal fire have already been the subject of three commemorative documentaries and docudramas on the subject, with more to come.  The sad fact is that the documentaries to date contain major errors.  I know this because I spent three years in Freedom of Information Act lawsuits in a quest for the truth.

The 1993 operation was begun by the then-Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) and directed at a religious group sometimes called the Branch Davidians, led by David Koresh.  The basis for the raid was flimsy evidence that the Davidians possessed unregistered machine guns.  On February 28, eighty agents, backed by three borrowed military helicopters, tried to storm the Branch Davidian center near Waco, Texas.  Shooting broke out that left four agents and six Davidians dead and led to a 51-day siege.  The siege in turn ended with a fire that killed more than 80 additional people.

There were, of course, official investigations and congressional hearings.  The documentary films released to date largely parallel the government's "official line" voiced during these.  David Koresh was a government-hating fire-eater, he could not be arrested peacefully, and the fanatic Davidians raked the approaching agents with machine-gun fire.

The FOIA lawsuit turned up evidence contradicting all of this.  Just to take three major points:

The official explanation for why the ATF did not peacefully arrest David Koresh was that he was a paranoid recluse who never left the Davidian building; a sudden, forceful, raid was the only way to root him out.  The ATF had installed undercover agents in a house across the street from the Davidians, but they weren't sure what Koresh looked like and never saw him leave.

This explanation was a complete fabrication.  An ATF "Report of Investigation," filed by the undercover agents in the nearby house, reports how they spent February 19, nine days before the raid.

They had gone shooting.

With David Koresh.

At the outset, the agents had all the guns (until they loaned Koresh a pistol – he was, after all, providing them with ammunition).  The report was approved all the way up to the special agent in charge, who would command the raid.  ATF management knew that a peaceful arrest would have been easy to arrange – if they wanted it that way.

ATF management did not.  At this point, it was a beleaguered agency, wracked by scandals, with a new administration promising to "reinvent government" by doing away with small, inefficient agencies.  The beginning of the ATF's appropriation cycle was under two weeks away.  ATF management desperately needed lots of good publicity, the type that a dramatic raid would generate and a quiet arrest would not.

Second, the official position was that the Davidians had deluged the approaching ATF with machine-gun fire.  At the surviving Davidians' criminal trial, agents testified to being fired at from multiple positions that employed six different types of machine guns, and as a result, five Davidians received long sentences for illegal use of machine guns.

This, too, was a fabrication.  The FOIA lawsuit forced release of an ATF audiotape that picked up sounds of the gunfight.  Only one burst of automatic fire is heard, followed by a radioed message to ATF snipers to shoot, followed by ATF cheers of "Yes!  Yes!  We got the machine gun!"  There had been only one machine gun, and its user was quickly killed; he could not have been among the five Davidian survivors who received 40-year sentences for use of machine guns.

Third, the official position was that when the Davidian residence was consumed by fire, FBI did all it could to rescue those inside.  Regrettably, it couldn't let fire engines approach for fear that the fanatical Davidians would shoot the firemen.

Here the infrared videotapes, made by an FBI aircraft circling the scene, are revealing.  The tapes' soundtrack revealed radio traffic between the two highest-ranking FBI supervisors during the fire.  The one at the scene is shouting, in increasing frustration, for the fire engines to be let through.  "If you have any fire engines, get them out here right now!"  "I want the fire engines up here at the scene!"

His superior, who was detaining the fire engines at a checkpoint a mile away, responds with stony silence; four minutes pass.  Then the superior asks, "Our people focused on the school bus area for the kids – is that what we're doing?"  "That's what we're trying to do" is the reply.

The superior responds coldly, "No one else, I hope."  His tone suggests that he saw the Davidians as cop-killers who were getting what they deserved.  At that, the fire engines were held up for four more minutes, by which time the blazing building had collapsed.  Twenty-four children and fifty men and women had died in the flames.

All this evidence has been available, largely on the internet, for over a decade.  We are left to hope that some journalist or documentarian will pick up the ball.

David T. Hardy is an attorney and a New York Times bestselling author.  He devotes a chapter to Waco in his recent book, I'm from the Government, and I'm Here to Kill You.  The audio and video mentioned in this article can be found at www.fromthegovernment.com.