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richardmurray

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  1. now02.jpg

    How does a bank collapse in 48 hours? A timeline of the SVB fall
    By Ramishah Maruf and Allison Morrow, CNN

    This week, the go-to bank for US tech startups came rapidly unglued, leaving its high-powered customers and investors in limbo.

    Silicon Valley Bank, facing a sudden bank run and capital crisis, collapsed Friday morning and was taken over by federal regulators.

    It was the largest failure of a US bank since Washington Mutual in 2008.

    Here’s what we know about the bank’s downfall, and what might come next.

    What is SVB?
    Founded in 1983, SVB specialized in banking for tech startups. It provided financing for almost half of US venture-backed technology and health care companies.

    While relatively unknown outside of Silicon Valley, SVB was among the top 20 American commercial banks, with $209 billion in total assets at the end of last year, according to the FDIC.

    Why did it fail?
    In short, SVB encountered a classic run on the bank.

    The longer version is a bit more complicated.

    Several forces collided to take down the banker.

    First, there was the Federal Reserve, which began raising interest rates a year ago to tame inflation. The Fed moved aggressively, and higher borrowing costs sapped the momentum of tech stocks that had benefited SVB.

    Higher interest rates also eroded the value of long-term bonds that SVB and other banks gobbled up during the era of ultra-low, near-zero interest rates. SVB’s $21 billion bond portfolio was yielding an average of 1.79% — the current 10-year Treasury yield is about 3.9%.

    At the same time, venture capital began drying up, forcing startups to draw down funds held by SVB. So the bank was sitting on a mountain of unrealized losses in bonds just as the pace of customer withdrawals was escalating.

    The panic takes root…
    On Wednesday, SVB announced it had sold a bunch of securities at a loss, and that it would also sell $2.25 billion in new shares to shore up its balance sheet. That triggered a panic among key venture capital firms, who reportedly advised companies to withdraw their money from the bank.

    The bank’s stock began plummeting Thursday morning and by the afternoon it was dragging other bank shares down with it as investors began to fear a repeat of the 2007-2008 financial crisis.

    By Friday morning, trading in SVB shares was halted and it had abandoned efforts to quickly raise capital or find a buyer. California regulators intervened, shutting the bank down and placing it in receivership under the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

    Contagion fears subside
    Despite initial panic on Wall Street, analysts said SVB’s collapse is unlikely to set off the kind of domino effect that gripped the banking industry during the financial crisis.

    “The system is as well-capitalized and liquid as it has ever been,” Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi said. “The banks that are now in trouble are much too small to be a meaningful threat to the broader system.”

    No later than Monday morning, all insured depositors will have full access to their insured deposits, according to the FDIC. It will pay uninsured depositors an “advance dividend within the next week.”

    What’s next?
    So, while a broader contagion is unlikely, smaller banks that are disproportionately tied to cash-strapped industries like tech and crypto may be in for a rough ride, according to Ed Moya, senior market analyst at Oanda.

    “Everyone on Wall Street knew that the Fed’s rate-hiking campaign would eventually break something, and right now that is taking down small banks,” Moya said on Friday.

    The FDIC typically sells a failed bank’s assets to other banks, using the proceeds to repay depositors whose funds weren’t insured.

    A buyer could still emerge for SVB, though it’s far from guaranteed.

    ARTICLE
    https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/11/business/svb-bank-collapse-explainer-timeline/

     


    U.S. regulators try to reduce bank-run risk, discuss fund to backstop deposits if more banks fail in wake of SVB collapse
    BYTONY CZUCZKA, VICTORIA CAVALIERE AND BLOOMBERG

    US regulators are racing against the clock to find solutions for failed Silicon Valley Bank while Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said officials are focusing on protecting depositors, as officials seek to avoid a wider bank run.

    After SVB collapsed into receivership on Friday in the biggest bank failure in over a decade, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. kicked off an auction process for its assets late Saturday, as it aims to make a portion of clients’ uninsured deposits available as soon as Monday, according to people with knowledge of the situation. The agency and the Federal Reserve have also discussed a fund to backstop deposits if more banks fail as part of wider contingency planning, people said. 

    Those efforts are aimed at protecting depositors, rather than bailing out investors, Yellen said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday. 

    “During the financial crisis there were investors and owners of systemic large banks that were bailed out,” the Treasury Secretary said. “And we’re certainly not looking — and the reforms that have been put in place means that we’re not going to do that again. But we are concerned about depositors and we’re focused on trying to meet their needs.”

    Democratic Representative Ro Khanna, whose California district is home to SVB, said the FDIC is working to find a buyer and urged the US government to guarantee all of the bank’s deposits. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from California, told Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures” he’s “hopeful that something can be announced today to move forward.”  

    Concern about the health of other smaller banks focused on the venture capital and startup communities is prompting regulators to consider extraordinary measures. Officials have discussed the new fund to backstop deposits in conversations with banking executives, in the hope that setting up such a vehicle would reassure depositors and help contain any panic, said the people. They asked not to be identified because the talks weren’t public. 

    Final bids for SVB’s assets are due Sunday afternoon but a winner may not be known until late in the day, other people with knowledge said. 

    In her CBS interview, Yellen renewed assurances that the US banking system is safe, well-capitalized and resilient.

    “I simply want to say that we’re very aware of the problems that depositors will have,” she said. “Many of them are small businesses that employ people across the country and of course this is a significant concern and working with regulators to try to address these concerns.”

    US regulators are under time pressure to sell assets of SVB Financial Group, the bank’s parent, prompting offers by some investment firms to provide financing to companies with cash trapped at Silicon Valley Bank.

    Asked whether the FDIC might be open to a “foreign bank” coming in as a buyer, Yellen said, “I’m sure they’re considering a wide range of available options that include acquisitions.”

    While the FDIC insures deposits of up to $250,000, the vast majority of funds held in at SVB far exceeded that. The agency has said it will make 100% of protected deposits available on Monday.

    Asked on “Face the Nation” about the option of a private-sector bank buying SVB’s assets, Khanna said: “That would be the ideal situation and our delegation that talked to the FDIC last night made that clear. That’s what we urged them to work on, they said they’re working on it.”

    Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley said Saturday that US taxpayers shouldn’t bail out Silicon Valley Bank. “Private investors can purchase the bank and its assets,” Haley, a former South Carolina governor and US ambassador to the United Nations, said in a statement.

    The White House repeated its assurances on the US banking system, with Office of Management and Budget Shalanda Young citing regulatory changes put in place after the financial crisis more than a decade ago.

    “What I’ll say about the banking system overall is it’s more resilient, and has a better foundation than before the financial crisis,” Young said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

    “Americans can have confidence in the safety and soundness of our banking system” and the US economy is “extremely strong,” Yellen said on CBS. 

    ARTICLE
    https://fortune.com/2023/03/12/us-regulators-bank-run-risk-fund-backstop-deposits-if-more-banks-fail-after-svb-collapse/

     

    List of bank failures in the usa
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bank_failures_in_the_United_States_(2008–present)

     

    Wiki of collapse of silicon valley bank
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_Silicon_Valley_Bank
     

     

  2. @Pioneer1 just remember it is always bothways in humanity, meaning everything is always positive plus negative, it is never one way. Anything can lead to negative or positive , anything.
  3. @Chevdove jasmine guy voicing a cruella deville-esque ethnic doll terrorizing some girl/family.. part of me want to see that film made, not for financial profit, but the art attempt:)
  4. @Chevdove If you were in the creative control situation, you would had said for the doll to be non white european looking?
  5. @Pioneer1 I do know that individual luck is not collective|communal luck. The luck that separated Jesse JAckson from Barack Obama is not the luck that separated Asanteman/the ashanti land from Ethiopia. Collections of people always have or have not opportunity simultaneously. As well as a mix of preparation or no preparation. The individual elements don't solely apply to collectives. TO be blunt, collectives have the factor of collective choices. Solomon Northrop being freed from enslavement you can say is opportunity plus preparedness though we all know not all free blacks who were exactly in Solomon Northrops shoes received the same fate. So... but, the luck of the black community in the usa has more factors that for solomon northup.
  6. @Pioneer1 The answer to your question is yes. They are that financially successful . Black wealth isn't new in the usa, but it isn't common in the black community in the usa. It is far far from common. We black people know why. If over 95% of wealth is inherited in the usa, then how the hell can black people make huge gains. Our forebears didn't have money, they were enslaved and burned alive and sharecropped and imprisoned and cheated by white institutions, which includes the USA. All black people know this but since the usa was founded the black community, internally, in the usa has never figured out how to have one side that is pro usa and one side that is anti-usa.
  7. @Pioneer1 I can provide my answers but I will not. But I will support your questions with the amendment. The problem is, in assessing human life collectively, what happens when people don't concur on what luck is. Individually it is easy. Why? even if you are unsure, whatever you think in the end, no matter it's quality, you can utilize to guide or support your own actions. But when human beings have to work in concert. variations will occur and when it comes to determining success anywhere in humanity or generating success anywhere in humanity as part of a group, said variations can be devastating. As the history in the USA prove.
  8. 1970s fans rejoice, the high heel has been replaced by the high toe cap https://www.complex.com/style/mario-boots-red-wing-shoes
  9. Mario Day 2023 Animation by knitetgantt https://www.deviantart.com/knitetgantt/art/Mario-Day-2023-Animation-952994700
  10. @Troy I have no power to ensure anyone do anything online outside myself so to think on that is dysfunctional thus why i asked. you mentioned a comparison between the roman empire's length of duration and other empires. was I the first to mention a comparison of the roman empire's time of life to another government? You said Did I say anything like that in this comment stream before? Now the following was the comment I made that you replied with the above quote with I didn't compare empire's times to each other. I made statements opposing the position of yours that short sighted thugs used violence, using the USA, the government you currently live under aside others who use and used violence for everything they have. I was countering your position, but then you make a suggestion that didn't relate to anything I said in a reply to me. I don't comprehend why that keeps happening in this forum.

  11. A Long-Lost Manuscript Contains a Searing Eyewitness Account of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921
    An Oklahoma lawyer details the attack by hundreds of whites on the thriving black neighborhood where hundreds died 95 years ago

    Allison Keyes

    Museum Correspondent

    May 27, 2016

    now04.jpg
    This first-person account by B.C. Franklin is titled "The Tulsa Race Riot and Three of Its Victims." It was recovered from a storage area in 2015 and donated to the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture. NMAAHC, Gift from Tulsa Friends and John W. and Karen R. Franklin


    The ten-page manuscript is typewritten, on yellowed legal paper, and folded in thirds. But the words, an eyewitness account of the May 31, 1921, racial massacre that destroyed what was known as Tulsa, Oklahoma’s “Black Wall Street,” are searing.

    “I could see planes circling in mid-air. They grew in number and hummed, darted and dipped low. I could hear something like hail falling upon the top of my office building. Down East Archer, I saw the old Mid-Way hotel on fire, burning from its top, and then another and another and another building began to burn from their top,” wrote Buck Colbert Franklin (1879-1960). 

    The Oklahoma lawyer, father of famed African-American historian John Hope Franklin (1915-2009), was describing the attack by hundreds of whites on the thriving black neighborhood known as Greenwood in the booming oil town. “Lurid flames roared and belched and licked their forked tongues into the air. Smoke ascended the sky in thick, black volumes and amid it all, the planes—now a dozen or more in number—still hummed and darted here and there with the agility of natural birds of the air.”

    Franklin writes that he left his law office, locked the door, and descended to the foot of the steps.

    “The side-walks were literally covered with burning turpentine balls. I knew all too well where they came from, and I knew all too well why every burning building first caught from the top,” he continues. “I paused and waited for an opportune time to escape. ‘Where oh where is our splendid fire department with its half dozen stations?’ I asked myself. ‘Is the city in conspiracy with the mob?’”

    AUDIO

     

    Franklin’s harrowing manuscript now resides among the collections of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. The previously unknown document was found last year, purchased from a private seller by a group of Tulsans and donated to the museum with the support of the Franklin family.

    In the manuscript, Franklin tells of his encounters with an African-American veteran, named Mr. Ross. It begins in 1917, when Franklin meets Ross while recruiting young black men to fight in World War I. It picks up in 1921 with his own eyewitness account of the Tulsa race riots, and ends ten years later with the story of how Mr. Ross’s life has been destroyed by the riots. Two original photographs of Franklin were part of the donation. One depicts him operating with his associates out of a Red Cross tent five days after the riots.

    John W. Franklin, a senior program manager with the museum, is the grandson of manuscript’s author and remembers the first time he read the found document.

    “I wept. I just wept. It’s so beautifully written and so powerful, and he just takes you there,”  Franklin marvels. “You wonder what happened to the other people. What was the emotional impact of having your community destroyed and having to flee for your lives?”

    now05.jpg
    B.C. Franklin and his associates pose before his law offices in Ardmore, Oklahoma, 1910 NMAAHC, Gift from Tulsa Friends and John W. and Karen R. Franklin

    The younger Franklin says Tulsa has been in denial over the fact that people were cruel enough to bomb the black community from the air, in private planes, and that black people were machine-gunned down in the streets. The issue was economics. Franklin explains that Native Americans and African-Americans became wealthy thanks to the discovery of oil in the early 1900s on what had previously been seen as worthless land.

    “That’s what leads to Greenwood being called the Black Wall Street. It had restaurants and furriers and jewelry stores and hotels,” John W. Franklin explains, “and the white mobs looted the homes and businesses before they set fire to the community. For years black women would see white women walking down the street in their jewelry and snatch it off.”

    Museum curator Paul Gardullo, who has spent five years along with Franklin collecting artifacts from the riot and the aftermath, says: “It was the frustration of poor whites not knowing what to do with a successful black community, and in coalition with the city government were given permission to do what they did.”

    “It’s a scenario that you see happen from place to place around our country . . . from Wilmington, Delaware, to Washington, D.C., to Chicago, and these are in some ways mass lynchings,” he says

    As in other places, the Tulsa race riot started with newspaper reports that a black man had assaulted a white elevator operator. He was arrested, and Franklin says black World War I vets rushed to the courthouse to prevent a lynching.

    “Then whites were deputized and handed weapons, the shooting starts and then it gets out of hand,” Franklin says. “It went on for two days until the entire black community is burned down.”

    More than 35 blocks were destroyed, along with more than 1,200 homes, and some 300 people died, mostly blacks. The National Guard was called out after the governor declared martial law, and imprisoned all blacks that were not already in jail. More than 6,000 people were held, according to the Tulsa Historical Society and Museum, some for as long as eight days.

    now06.jpg
    Practicing law in a Red Cross tent are B.C. Franklin (right) and his partner I.H. Spears with their secretary Effie Thompson on June 6, 1921, five days after the massacre. NMAAHC, Gift from Tulsa Friends and John W. and Karen R. Franklin

    “(Survivors) talk about how the city was shut down in the riot,” Gardullo says. “They shut down the phone systems, the railway. . . . They wouldn’t let the Red Cross in. There was complicity between the city government and the mob. It was mob rule for two days, and the result was the complete devastation of the community.”

    Gardullo adds that the formulaic stereotype about young black men raping young white women was used with great success from the end of slavery forward to the middle of the 20th century.

    “It was a formula that resulted in untold numbers of lynchings across the nation,” Gardullo says. “The truth of the matter has to do with the threat that black power, black economic power, black cultural power, black success, posed to individuals and . . . the whole system of white supremacy. That’s embedded within our nation’s history.”

    Franklin says he has issues with the words often used to describe the attack that decimated the black community.

    “The term riot is contentious, because it assumes that black people started the violence, as they were accused of doing by whites,” Franklin says. “We increasingly use the term massacre, or I use the European term, pogrom.”

    now07.jpg

     

    now08.jpg

     

    now09.jpg
    June 1, 1921, Tulsa, Oklahoma NMAAHC

    Among the artifacts Gardullo and John W. Franklin have obtained, are a handful of pennies collected off the ground from a young boy’s home burned to the ground during the riot, items with labels saying this was looted from a black church during the riot, and postcards with photos from the race riots, some showing burning corpses.

    “Riot postcards were often distributed . . . crassly and cruelly . . . as a way to sell white supremacy,” Gardullo says. “At the time they were shown as documents that were shared between white community members to demonstrate their power. Later . . . they became part of the body of evidence that was used during the commission for reparation.”

    In 2001, the Tulsa Race Riot Commission issued a report detailing the damage from the riots, but legislative and legal attempts to gain reparations for the survivors have failed.

    The Tulsa race riots aren’t mentioned in most American history textbooks, and many people don’t know that they happened.

    Curator Paul Gardullo says the crucial question is why not?

    “Throughout American history there’s been a vast silence about the atrocities that were performed in the service of white history. . . . There are a lot of silences in relation to this story, and a lot of guilt and shame,” Gardullo explains.  That’s one reason why the events of May 31 and June 1, 1921, will be featured in an exhibition at the new museum called “The Power of Place.” Gardullo says the title is about more than geography.

    “(It’s) the power of certain places, about displacement, movement, about what place means for people,” he says. “This is about emotion and culture and memory. . . . How do you tell a story about destruction? How do you balance the fortitude and resilience of people in response to that devastation? How do you fill the silences? How do you address the silences about a story that this community has held in silence for so long and in denial for so long?”

    Despite the devastation, the black community in Tulsa was able to rebuild on the ashes of its neighborhood, partly because Buck Colbert Franklin battled all the way to the Oklahoma Supreme Court to defeat a law that would have effectively prevented African-Americans from doing so. By 1925, there was again a thriving black business district. John W. Franklin says his grandfather’s manuscript is important for people to see because it deals with “suppressed history.”

    “This is an eyewitness account from a reputable source about what he saw happen,” he grandson John W. Franklin says. “It is definitely relevant to today, because I think our notions of justice are based partially on our own history and our knowledge of history. But we are an a-historical society, in that we don’t know our past.”

    The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture opens on September 24 of this year on the National Mall.


    Allison Keyes  https://twitter.com/allisonradio

    Allison Keyes is an award-winning correspondent, host and author. She can currently be heard on CBS Radio News, among other outlets. Keyes, a former national desk reporter for NPR, has written extensively on race, culture, politics and the arts.

    Referral
    https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/long-lost-manuscript-contains-searing-eyewitness-account-tulsa-race-massacre-1921-180959251/#:~:text=This%20first-person%20account%20by%20B.C.%20Franklin%20is%20titled,Friends%20and%20John%20W.%20and%20Karen%20R.%20Franklin

     

    MY COMMENT
    My error is in being too busy to share everything before I communicate on topics, but I just can't always. I need sleep:)

    I love the audio. a black person admitted she was idealistic. She admitted SHE WAS IDEALISTIC. Black people in Tulsa Oklahoma didn't defend themselves, they were IDEALISTIC. WHich is another word for dishonest. 
    They didn't defend themselves, they didn't use violence. Building a wall is violence. Having sentries is violence. HAving a trench is violence. HAving spies is violence. HAving lookouts is violence. Having counter measures is violence. The prey isn't violent. The lamb isn't violent. The wolf is violent. The lamb defending itself is violent, but not before. The people of Tulsa were nonviolent and any black person who utters they were violent in any way is a liar.
    This article culminates the grand difference between Black people in Haiti for a time, or in the viceroyalty of florida for a time, or the black people that fought against the creation of the usa for a time,  aside Black people everywhere else in the American continent, canada to argentina, at any time. 
    Somehow, Black people who knew and know whites are their enemy didn't and don't think to actually defend themselves against whites. Black people talk about nonviolence today, but that nonviolent call has shown itself to be not only at the cost of black people's lives, but black people's fault. Ideals and laws and nonviolence never protected anyone. if someone says they hate you and you think you can defend against their hate by acting like it doesn't exist,acting like the law has value, acting like you can pick and choose when to protect yourself in a way,  I quote the word used by the elder black in the audio, IDEALISTIC, you are an asshole, you are an idiot, you are a liar to yourself or the community you live in, you are a fool. And sadly, in Tulsa's case, the people of Tulsa sealed their own doom.

    And moreover...
    Why didn't Blacks talk about it! why? Is that nonviolence ? Is that having an opinion? A Black person's opinion is to not be honest and have their viewpoint on a clear act of war which wasn't new wasn't unknown, wasn't unheard of but  Black people like the Tulsa folk before their inevitable burning, were of the opinion it is best not to say anything. Not to be violent and walk around with guns and live behind walls and protect your resources. No, it is best to be nonviolent and quite. 
     

  12. @Troy tulsa didn't defend itself, they were nonviolent and paid the price for it. I didn't argue the roman empire lasted longer than any other empire, the point was to emphasize an empire based on what you called, I Quote has a very lasting impression in humanity, that still permeates in humanity today, even though that empire is gone. But ok, don't reply.
  13. @ProfD I will say I see the following of what you wrote as truth I concur, it is true that individuals are free to think individually, doesn't mean they are telling the truth. Nor is liking or agreeing a prerequisite to anything.
  14. @ProfD And my point was maybe a platform isn't needed, greater individual quality can be the solution. They didn't just fight for the freedom, say the whole thing, they won it. And I as I mentioned before. And I oppose your historical assessment. Your suggesting that Haiti's modern and near modern financial situation is a reward or resultant for them using violence to earn freedom which no other black community in the american continent, which includes the usa , has ever earned from their oppressors. Your suggestion I view, I view, as a lie. Modern haitian fiscal situation is disconnected . It isn't a reward for earning their freedom. It is an inevitability to being surrounded by enemies. Haiti's problem isn't hard to comprehend. To haiti's north was the USA, a country founded on white power, white domination, or black enslavement. To HAiti's west was the british colony of jamaica which Marcus Garvey fled and used as inspiration for saying all black people of african descent in the american continent needed to return to africa, nonviolently, but immediately. To the east or south was various latin american countries where negras are totally dominated in the casta system where blancos are top mestizos are second and negras are at the bottom. Haiti had only one way to stop the inevitable financial attack from the outside and that was greater natural resources in haiti, but haiti is an island in the caribbean. IT doesn't have the natural resources to support itself like that. I am afriad to ask how many black children have heard the lie you have continually mentioned on here about haiti. it is false assessment historically. you have the right to make it, it is yours, I don't want you to change it, but it is false,. Your statement on oppression is disconnected to the point. Black people in haiti as in all countries have layers of oppressors. Haiti was able to be whites out of haiti but not the entire planet and unfortunately for Haiti, whites ran all of humanity except haiti. Well thank you. The truth is I don't see myself as a bad writer, but I don't like people assessing from my words falsely. Varying opinions is one things, but false assessments or lies is another, and I find in this forum, looking at many comments, not merely my own, 1+1=5 to often in multilogs in here. I don't think that sort of calculation is constructive, i think it is dysfunctional.

  15. Review: Chris Rock’s ‘Selective Outrage’ Strikes Back
    A year after Will Smith slapped him at the Oscars, Rock responded fiercely in a new stand-up special, Netflix’s first experiment in live entertainment.

    now02.png

    Kirill Bichutsky/Netflix

    By Jason Zinoman
    March 5, 2023
    Selective Outrage

    One year later, Chris Rock slapped back. Hard.

    It was certainly not as startling as Will Smith hitting him at the Oscars, but his long-awaited response, in his new Netflix stand-up special “Selective Outrage” on Saturday night, had moments that felt as emotional, messy and fierce. It was the least rehearsed, most riveting material in an uneven hour.

    Near the end, Rock even botched a key part of one joke, getting a title of a movie wrong. Normally, such an error would have been edited out, but since this was the first live global event in the history of Netflix, Rock could only stop, call attention to it and tell the joke again. It messed up his momentum, but the trade-off might have been worth it, since the flub added an electric spontaneity and unpredictability that was a drawing card.

    At 58, Rock is one of one of our greatest stand-ups, a perfectionist whose material, once it appeared in a special, always displayed a meticulous sense of control. He lost it here, purposely, flashing anger as he insulted Smith, offering a theory of the case of what really happened at the Academy Awards after he made a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s hair, and in what will be the most controversial part of the set, laid much of the blame on her. This felt like comedy as revenge. Rock said he long loved Will Smith. “And now,” he added, pausing before referencing the new movie in which Smith plays an enslaved man, “I watch ‘Emancipation’ just to see him get whooped.”

    One of the reasons Netflix remains the leading stand-up platform has been its ability to create attention-getting events. No other streamer comes close. Through a combination of razzle dazzle and Rolodex spinning, the streaming service packaged this special more like a major sporting event than a special, a star-studded warm-up act to the Oscars next week.

    It began with an awkward preshow hosted by Ronny Chieng, who soldiered through by poking fun at the marketing around him. “We’re doing a comedy show on Saturday night — live,” he said, before sarcastically marveling at this “revolutionary” innovation. An all-star team of comics (Ali Wong, Leslie Jones, Jerry Seinfeld), actors (Matthew McConaughey) and music stars (Paul McCartney, Ice-T) hyped up the proceedings, featuring enough earnest tributes for a lifetime achievement award. As if this weren’t enough puffery, Netflix had the comedians Dana Carvey and David Spade host a panel of more celebrations posing as post-show analysis.

    This was unnecessary, since Netflix already had our attention by having Rock signed to do a special right after he was on the receiving end of one of the most notorious bad reviews of a joke in the history of television. Countless people weighed in on the slap, most recently the actor and comic Marlon Wayans, whose surprisingly empathetic new special, “God Loves Me,” is an entire hour about the incident from someone who knows all the participants. HBO Max releasing that in the last week was its own counterprogramming.

    Until now, Rock has said relatively little about the Oscars, telling a few jokes on tour, which invariably got reported in the press. I’m guessing part of the reason he wanted this special to air live was to hold onto an element of surprise. Rock famously said that he always believed a special should be special. And he has done so in previous shows by moving his comedy in a more personal direction. “Tamborine,” an artful, intimate production shot at the BAM Harvey theater, focused on his divorce. This one, shot in Baltimore, had a grander, more old-fashioned vibe, with reaction shots alternating with him pacing the stage in his signature commanding cadence.

    Dressed all in white, his T-shirt and jeans hanging loosely off a lanky frame, and wearing a shiny bracelet and necklace with the Prince symbol, Rock started slowly with familiar bits about easily bruised modern sensibilities, the hollowness of social media and woke signaling. He skewered the preening of companies like Lululemon that market their lack of racism while charging $100 for yoga pants. Most people, he says, would “prefer $20 racist yoga pants.”

    If there’s one consistent thread through Rock’s entire career, it’s following the money, how economics motivates even love and social issues. On abortion, he finds his way to the financial angle, advising women: “If you have to pay for your own abortion, you should have an abortion.”

    A commanding theater performer who sets up bits as well as anyone, Rock picked up momentum midway through, while always hinting at the Smith material to come, with a reoccurring refrain of poking fun at Snoop Dogg and Jay-Z before making clear it’s just for fun: “Last thing I need is another mad rapper.” Another running theme is his contempt for victimhood. His jokes about Meghan Markle are very funny, mocking her surprise that the royal family is racist, terming them its originators, the “Sugarhill Gang of racism.”

    On tour, his few jokes about Smith were once tied to his points about victimhood. But here, he follows one of his most polished and funny jokes, comparing the dating prospects of Jay-Z and Beyoncé if they weren’t stars but worked at Burger King, with a long, sustained section on the Oscars that closes the show. Here, he offers his theory on Will Smith, which is essentially that the slap was an act of displacement, shifting his anger from his wife cheating on him and broadcasting it onto Rock. The comic says his joke was never really the issue. “She hurt him way more than he hurt me,” Rock said, using his considerable powers of description to describe the humiliation of Smith in a manner that seemed designed to do it again.

    There’s a comic nastiness to Rock’s insults, some of which is studied, but other times appeared to be the product of his own bottled-up anger. In this special, Rock seemed more raw than usual, sloppier, cursing more often and less precisely. This was a side of him you hadn’t seen before. The way his fury became directed at Pinkett Smith makes you wonder if this was also a kind of displacement. Going back into the weeds of Oscar history, Rock traced his conflict with her and Smith to when he said she wanted Rock to quit as Oscar host in 2016 because Smith was not nominated for the movie “Concussion” (the title that he mangled).

    That her boycotting that year’s Oscars was part of a larger protest against the Academy for not nominating Black artists went unsaid, implying it was merely a pretext. Rock often establishes his arguments with the deftness and nuance of a skilled trial lawyer, but he’s not trying to give a fair, fleshed out version of events. He’s out for blood. There’s a coldness here that is bracing. Describing his jokes about Smith’s wife at the ceremony in 2016, he put it bluntly: “She started it. I finished it.” But, of course, as would become obvious years later, he didn’t.

    Did he finish it in this special? We’ll see, but I think we’re in for another cycle of discourse as we head into the Academy Awards next week.

    At one point, Rock said there are four ways people can get attention in our culture: “Showing your ass,” being infamous, being excellent or playing the victim. It’s a good list, but this special demonstrates a conspicuous omission: Nothing draws a crowd like a fight.

    A correction was made on March 6, 2023: An earlier version of this review misquoted part of Rock’s joke about high-priced yoga pants. He said most people would “prefer $20 racist yoga pants,” not $25.
    Jason Zinoman is a critic at large for The Times. As the paper’s first comedy critic, he has written the On Comedy column since 2011. @zinoman

    A version of this article appears in print on March 6, 2023, Section C, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Rock’s Revenge: Live and Imperfect

     

    ARTICLE URL
    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/05/arts/television/chris-rock-netflix.html

     

  16. @Chevdove my pleasure if I helped. owned by a company called https://www.bytedance.com/ but they are chinese and privately owned. yes, Tik Tok is the usa version of what bytedance first created in china, a short video platform. Yes, tiktok realized what twitter did, people in modernity actually love to post short messages, not long ones, in all formats. The engineering challenge is allowing for a seemingly seamless short video collection. it requires a lot of computers and storage houses to make this work globally. Well, functionally their is no functional difference between any online media platform, twitter/youtube/tiktok/facebook all have the same goal, to get more users to use their platform. The only difference is in identity, all the major social media platforms are based in the usa , except for tiktok. In terms of attracting users, the question is the tactic they use. Twitter goes for short post, which focus on sensationalism and thus sharing. Youtube likes long videos where you can share films/documentaries, long media content. Facebook wants to be a place for it all. tiktok is short videos, sensationalism based. The internet isn't a lot, really. You may be surprised what isn't being done because little is financially profitable. The internet itself needed militaristic power, the natural resources for the underwater cable lines, the various personal devices, the data storage and server hubs all around earth to give the illusion of instant connection, came from countries that are known to be manipulated or exploited by outsiders since the 1800s . I think, I can be wrong, the source of the overwhelm is the advertising usage of the internet. It is the biggest commercial break you ever saw.
  17. @Troy viability, a thing that lives. PEace or violence are always viable. and I quote myself I stated that black people in the usa used and had great levels of unity, used and lived by nonviolence , and achieved, reached. I didn't say nonviolence was inviable. I said nonviolence has limits. But violence has limits to. This is why the empire where the sun never set, had a setting sun. Violence has limits. When you use the word viable I think of the word safe. Tulsa's black community was nonviolent/unified but nonviolence can't protect anybody as they learned the most blunt way. And in the same way, violence is never safe. Violence always breeds pain or death more than anything else. But it also can breed levels of joy or freedom. tHis is why the only black populace in the american continent, from canada to argentina, to reach the highest levels of freedom was for a short time in haiti. They used violence, very unsafe, many haitians died, far more than europeans, but the win was something no other black peoples in the american continent ever had or have now. short sighted thugs... the roman empire lasted for 2,000 years the founding fathers of the usa , white men, started a global empire that is currently dominating humanity, itself led by white men, that you live in, whose wealth comes entirely from violent acts. the british empire made english the common language in humanity short sighted dumb thugs... if that is the way you see it, fair enough I didn't say violence or nonviolence held black people back. I said nonviolence has limits. All strategies have limits. As Frederick Douglass said unstraightly the Black community in the usa is doing exactly what he led it to do, to be part of a collective individualism. Most black people in the usa didn't want it then, most black people in the usa don't seem to comprehend it now. The USA Frederick Douglass wanted to be, which is why frederick douglass opposed black people being unified in all black towns in the usa nonviolently ala exodusters, is about individual ability, not collective. Frederick Douglass loved Black unity but he saw human unity as more important and the inevitable destination of a composite nation. And a main tenet to that path is non violence as a tactic. Black people in the usa are not being held back as much as they are on a path that will not provide what many of them think in terms of the black community. The white man will admit that the black community is only second to whites in all financial categories and considering the white communities wealth comes from violence and the black community is nonviolent, well, that will remain the way for the foreseeable future, but that isn't negative, if the goal is to be a country of many races. yes it is, but functionality is the debate, not unity. And the black community is functioning well, in the nonviolent context that it has positioned itself in. @ProfD I clearly am a bad writer as you or troy prove. and that is unfortunate for me. If you read my words you would had realized that I didn't suggest impotency on the part of the black community in the usa. The question is, does the black film industry in the usa need movie theaters? I Argue the black community didn't need movie theaters. Why must the black film industry have to work as the white one ? Again, OScar Micheaux to nollywood prove black people have been making movies over one hundred years. The issue isn't making movies or needing movie theaters. The issue is accepting the financial weakness of a community that has never used violent means for wealth in any grand way in the last one hundred and fifty years. I Argue, Black people's film industry shows viewing films in the home is the market , not in a theater. So, how many black customers buy black films to show in the home? how many black people had projectors or systems to view films. That is what the industrial review says, not mirroring the white film industry. I didn't say violence was needed to pool financial resources, I said certain goals will not be reached absent the use of violence. That is not the same thing but as I said , I am unfortunately a bad writer. Like nonviolence, violence is for any time or any place. THe question is, can one live with the sequences, pro or con, of either. Black people , don't know if most or minor, but definitely of a large percentage in the usa, are frightened of the consequence of violence , a well earned fear, but nonviolence has limits. and as I told troy so does violence. nothing grants you everything, nothing. The questions are what can you live with or what do you truly want or what path are you truly going toward.
  18. @ProfD YEs but if you look at the history of black film from mischeaux to nollywood , black cinema has financed its own visions for over 100 years. But while the black community has written/directed/financed out own films , we do not have the power to dictate advertising or movie theaters. That requires a level of power that all black people know we didn't and don't have and the reasons have nothing to do with laziness or lack of ownership but our historic rivalry with the white community everywhere in humanity. There is limit to the nonviolent approach. And Black people who don't believe non violence has limits do the village a great disservice because it does. The Black community in the USA had an era of negro leagues where most owners were black, had and have historic black colleges- though most were never mostly financed by black people, have independent movie producers. But, Black people can't blame ourselves for not having the wealth of whites when black people know white wealth comes from the thing many black people keep uttering we shouldn't do, and that is violence. Black people want to have full control you have to have violence and all the potential pain or suffering as well as potential success or happiness that comes from violence. Black people have done nonviolently what we can but nonviolence has limits. And history proves me right.
  19. Tiber De Grayson by daniel williams and vince white.jpg

    Title: Tiber De Grayson 
    Artist: daniel williams and vince white < http://thepowerverse.com/

     

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