Jesse Jackson and the Politics of Lying in Honor

Rev. Jesse Jackson (D-IL)

This past week, Rev. Jesse Jackson passed away.  Jackson only held elected office once, winning a term as the shadow senator from Washington DC from 1991-97 (essentially an honorary lobbying position, given that, unlike the Delegate position currently-held by Eleanor Holmes Norton, the senator position does not serve on committees, cannot introduce legislation, and cannot speak on the floor of the US Congress, making it arguably the most powerless position in the federal government), still had a remarkable hold on national politics.  He was one of the key figures in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s civil rights organization (with his death, only former Rep. Andrew Young is a major player left of King's movement), and was by many definitions the heir apparent to his movement, serving as a significant civil rights leader for the decades that followed, particularly through his Operation PUSH and Rainbow Coalitions.  While Shirley Chisholm was the first Black person to run a serious campaign for president in 1972, Jackson was the first to win multiple states, first in 1984 and then again in 1988, where he placed second to Michael Dukakis.  Jackson, by many measures, was one of the most important figures in American politics in the 1980's, and arguably the most important living figure in the African-American Civil Rights movement before his death.

As a result, it was always likely that major politicians would move to pay tribute to Jackson's life.  I would not be surprised if Democratic Party luminaries like the Clintons, Obamas, Bidens, and Kamala Harris were to attend some of the services in the coming days regarding his life.  They will not, however, be seeing him lying in honor in the US Capitol, despite a request from Jackson's family to do so.  This has levied a lot of criticisms from Jackson's supporters at House Speaker Mike Johnson, including calling him racist for ignoring Jackson's family's request, and I thought it would be interesting to look at this (as it's the sort of historical political minutia that I specialize in on this blog), and whether or not Jackson's family or Johnson has history on their side even as both sides inevitably play a bit of politics in this moment of grief.

First off, it's worth noting that the request from Jackson's family is that he lie in honor, which is not usually the term Americans hear when they hear about this at a state funeral-the most common term is "lying in state."  There is a difference, though, and it points a flashlight into Johnson's potential thinking on the matter.

Lying in state is something that is done exclusively for members of the federal government, as well as high-ranking military officials.  Traditionally this is something that is basically guaranteed for former presidents (Abraham Lincoln being the first), but can also be for members of Congress (Henry Clay was the first, but others that have done so include John McCain, Daniel Inouye, & Harry Reid), Supreme Court justices (Ruth Bader Ginsburg did this, though not in the Capitol rotunda), and even key members of the armed services (Generals Pershing & MacArthur both received this honor).  Though the rooms may change (Elijah Cummings & Don Young were National Statutory Hall, Robert Byrd & Frank Lautenberg in the Senate chambers), the distinction is clear-these are members of Congress, presidents, Supreme Court justices, and military officials.  Jackson, for all his accomplishments, was none of these things.

Which would mean that in order for Jackson to be in the Capitol rotunda, he'd need to lie in "honor," which is a distinction held for individuals who do not qualify under those definitions.  This is a very small list of individuals.  Essentially it is just Capitol police officers killed in the line of duty (specifically three separate events near the capitol in 1998 & 2021), the last living Medal of Honor recipients from World War II and the Korean War, and two distinguished individuals: Rosa Parks and Billy Graham.  Jackson, if you were to include him, would be the third civilian on this list who did not die in the course of duty.

Here's where things get tricky, because I don't know that I'd include Jackson on the same list as Parks and Graham.  It's not that Parks or Graham weren't political-Parks was heavily involved in the initial congressional campaign for John Conyers, and worked for him for years, and Billy Graham maintained a personal relationship with Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon (and actively campaigned against John F. Kennedy in 1960, and for Mitt Romney in 2012).  But neither of them ran for public office (like Jackson did), and Jackson's more scandalous personal life (most notably his affair with a staffer that resulted in an out-of-wedlock child despite Jackson being married to another woman) feels quite contrary to the squeaky clean public personas that Parks & Graham maintained.

As a result, I'm going to be honest-I kind of get where Johnson is coming from here.  Johnson is not without fault of course.  I take more umbrage at his refusal to allow Dick Cheney the opportunity to lie in state, which (given Cheney's history as a Vice President, Secretary of Defense, and member of the US House) probably should've been considered more fully, and feels more so about not wanting to anger President Trump given Cheney refused to endorse him in the 2024 presidential race.  But Jackson probably doesn't earn this honor, and while it might be something a Speaker Jeffries would've done, I don't disagree with Johnson on this.  I think it would make more sense for Jackson's funeral to be attended by political luminaries, or for him to have tributes placed in terms of speeches or a moment of silence on the floor of the House, than to receive lying in honor distinctions.

One thing before we close because a lot of people are making the comparison incorrectly-Charlie Kirk never lied in state in the Capitol Rotunda.  There was a movement at the time by members of Congress (like Nancy Mace) to have him receive that honor, but it didn't happen and Johnson (who would've had the power to do so) did not make it happen.  Kirk did have a funeral service in Arizona that was attended by major figures in the government (including President Trump and Vice President Vance) and was given a moment of silence on the floor of the House, but he was not afforded this honor, and given how often I've seen that stated as fact, I just wanted to point out that it out.

OVP: Objective, Burma! (1943)

Film: Objective, Burma! (1943)

Stars: Errol Flynn, James Brown, William Prince, George Tobias

Director: Raoul Walsh

Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Film Editing, Score, Motion Picture Story)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Errol Flynn: click here to learn more about Mr. Flynn (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

To talk about Errol Flynn, you cannot ignore the almost cartoonish difference between the flawed-but-noble heroes that he perfected on the big screen, and the debaucherous nature of his real-life persona, which was brought to the foreground in 1942 when Flynn was accused of statutory rape by two teenage girls.  To note, Flynn at the time was still a huge movie star, having just finished releasing Desperate Journey with Ronald Reagan to enormous box office days before the accusations-Warner Brothers was not in a position to just cut him given the box office receipts.  But the scandal was huge, as the shocking details of what happened were spread in papers across the country.  Attorney Jerry Giesler, at one point the most famous lawyer in Hollywood, was able to get Flynn acquitted, mostly by destroying the reputations of the women who accused Flynn of rape.  But something happened in the wake of this scandal that would not be the case for a number of other figures (like those of Fatty Arbuckle, Mabel Normand, & later Ingrid Bergman): Flynn emerged with a different reputation, but one that largely still had box office draw even in the immediate wake of the scandal, and was still allowed to work regularly in Hollywood

(Spoilers Ahead) That can be seen in the movie Objective, Burma!, which was released just over two years after the trial, and was by pretty much all accounts a hit, and it wasn't Flynn's only one of this period.  Gentleman Jim was released during the height of the coverage to success, and both of the (now largely forgotten) movies that Flynn released in 1943 were also hits.  In fact, Flynn would be successful for much of the mid-1940's...but he'd do so in very different pictures.  Objective, Burma! is a good example of that.  The film is a fictionalized telling of the Burma Campaign during World War II, with Flynn playing an army captain whose platoon is trudging through the jungle, in near constant danger from the Japanese.  The film is one of several movies that were released during the Golden Age of Hollywood that favored realism over a more fictionalized, personalized storytelling method, in many ways resembling more a documentary film (which was a familiar format to audiences during WWII due to newsreels), than a more traditional storytelling technique.

As a result, the film is technically really impressive.  The special effects, especially during some of the early attack scenes when we see an entire army camp decimated by timed explosions, are wonderful, and the sound work & cinematography are strong.  But the movie itself is a bore.  With the exception of George Tobias (the future Mr. Kravitz on Bewitched), none of the numerous side characters stand out, and frequently you're left watching their deaths be mourned onscreen with an internal monologue of "which guy was this again?" all of which makes the film's three Oscar nominations (for editing, writing, and music) feel a bit like a head-scratcher: why are we awarding these when the special effects or sound work are the actual calling card here?

Flynn, as well, feels muted to the point of being boring, something that never crossed my mind during his Captain Blood and Robin Hood era.  Whether intentionally or not, much of the work that Flynn stars in that I've seen after his trial feels a bit too noble, as if the studio was scared to put him into films where he could be seen as a rake or a cad...because it suddenly felt too close to home.  This would cause his career in the late 1940's to suffer, as audiences who had been more than willing to give in to a controversial celebrity in the wake of his trials because they still loved him so much, weren't willing to give in to the studio wanting to clean up his image onscreen to protect them from the public confusing real life and fiction too much.  It wasn't until the studios finally let him play another sex-pursuing hero in The Adventures of Don Juan in 1948, that audiences truly returned home, and allowed him to be a dependable box office draw into the early 1950's.

This is all to say that Flynn's reputation, and much of his modern association (if you ask lay moviegoers what they know about him today, it will be the statutory rape allegations) did not have the impact on his career that later major movie stars like Mel Gibson or Johnny Depp would receive when they had scandals threaten their careers.  Gibson & Depp would see their careers largely evaporate, but despite some setbacks in the years after the war, Flynn largely got away fine from this scandal-it is only history that really hurt him, but if you look at what his career was like, he paid a surprisingly small price for one of the biggest scandals of Hollywood's Golden Age.

Robert Duvall (1931-2026)

Robert Duvall is one of those actors whose career was longer than you think at first blush.  Watching The Twilight Zone marathon this past New Year's Eve, as I do every year, I was struck by this as I got to the episode "Miniature."  The episode is not famous in the way "To Serve Man" or "Eye of the Beholder" are, and likely only known to the most devoted of Twilight Zone aficionados because for parts of its syndication it wasn't even available (if you ever want to get into a strange Wikipedia wormhole, look up the history of The Twilight Zone in syndication), but it is notable because it starred future Oscar winner Robert Duvall, who passed away yesterday.

I bring this up because it's oftentimes forgotten just how long Robert Duvall's career has been.  Duvall, like many actors of his generation, got his start in stage (and before that, the military), but his screen work begins earlier.  Watch old reruns of not just The Twilight Zone, but Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Outer Limits, or even The Mod Squad, and Duvall will pop up in an episode or two.  That was the thing about Duvall-he's the kind of actor who switched seamlessly from lead roles, including Oscar-nominated turns in stuff like Tender Mercies, The Great Santini, & The Apostle, to being in supporting parts where he added depth like Apocalypse Now, A Civil Action, & Network.  And given he made his screen debut as the memorable Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird, his costars numbered Gregory Peck, Steve McQueen, John Wayne, & Burt Lancaster...but also Colin Farrell, Reese Witherspoon, Christian Bale, & Adam Sandler.  He served, like many actors of his New Hollywood ilk (he was once roommates with Gene Hackman & James Caan, who preceded him in death), as a bridge between Classical Hollywood and a generation of movie stars dwarfed by special effects, his sturdy, lasting presence a continual reminder that generational talent will always find a way of pushing itself forward.

For me, and for many, though, he will perpetually be Tom Hagen.  It seems glib to reduce a filmography as diverse as Duvall's down to one role, but if you do...it's gotta be the sturdy, steady-handed Tom at the center of the storm of The Godfather series.  Watch it again (because it's always a good time to watch The Godfather again), and notice it from Tom's perspective.  The quiet resolve in Tom's character, a man without a family, trying to prove to his surrogate brothers that he belongs (even if he knows on some level he never truly will).  Duvall got his first Oscar nomination for this performance, and man is it deserved-it's a testament to how much he adds to the series that even Francis Ford Coppola admitted that The Godfather, Part III was a lesser movie without Duvall present.  In recent years we've lost Duvall, Caan, and Diane Keaton from the storied cast of the defining film of New Hollywood, adding yet another melancholy air to a film upon which these actors already had richly bestowed so much gravitas already.

OVP: The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)

Film: The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)

Stars: Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Donald Crisp, Alan Hale, Sr., Vincent Price, Harry Stephenson, Nanette Fabray

Director: Michael Curtiz

Oscar History: 5 nominations (Best Art Direction, Cinematography, Visual Effects, Sound, Scoring)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Errol Flynn: click here to learn more about Mr. Flynn (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Errol Flynn lasted as a movie star for decades, but as one who was pretty much unimpeachable in terms of his box office, this period lasted roughly from 1935-1942, at which point he was oftentimes the biggest star on the Warner Brothers lot, give or take Bette Davis & James Cagney.  During this time, Flynn was married to the same woman, actress Lila Damita, but he had a history of womanizing.  Like Gary Cooper before him, he had an affair with Lupe Velez, and would get drunk off of William Randolph Hearst's vodka.  This reputation as a party boy was in stark juxtaposition to the men he'd play onscreen, frequently honorable scoundrels, or in the case of today's movie, a truly honorable man stuck in an impossible situation between two women.  This would also pair Flynn with both of the actresses that he'd be most associated with in his career: Olivia de Havilland, whom he would have a largely amicable relationship with, and Bette Davis...with whom he would not.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is a glossy historical melodrama, one where facts should not get in the way of a good monologue.  Private Lives is about an aging Queen Elizabeth (Davis, in de facto kabuki makeup), who is clearly desperately in love with the handsome, popular Earl of Essex (Flynn), but cannot have him in the way that she wants because it would put at risk her power.  She instead constantly finds herself at odds with him, usually in open court, and has fights with him, using her lover as a pawn in a number of battles, oftentimes risking his life as punishment for not returning her love in the way that she wants, because he's also power-hungry.  This all happens while the beautiful Lady Penelope (de Havilland) is also pursuing the Earl, which in the film's final moments we're led to believe was nothing, and that Elizabeth was his own true love.  Of course, at that point Elizabeth has publicly demanded the Earl's head for trying to be her equal, and there is no way out for the Queen, doomed to forever remain unmarried & unloved (except by England).

This is territory we've been to cinematically-Elizabeth's inability to find love because she is not beautiful and demands power instead has been informed by everyone from Helen Mirren to Glenda Jackson to Cate Blanchett to Margot Robbie (even Bette would go to this well twice).  Davis, at the peak of her power and beauty, wears intense makeup that makes her look, well, hideous (and years older than she was), in some ways foreshadowing her later triumph in Baby Jane Hudson.  But the movie, despite looking divine (the costumes, art direction, & cinematography are all a triumph, though why it got a special effects nomination at the Oscars is beyond me...the Scoring nomination is a bit cheeky given there's a song sung by Olivia de Havilland's character written by the actual Walter Raleigh, here played by Vincent Price in an early role), is kind of a snore.  Davis overacts to the rafters (with diminishing returns), de Havilland is fun but too small of a part, and Flynn's performance is a bit underwhelming.  Flynn is so grand in swashbuckling roles, but (as we'll see in the coming weeks), he was a somewhat limited actor when it came to going beyond that ken.  He is breathtakingly beautiful in this-it takes an actress as confident as Davis to appear in this kind of makeup against Flynn, who looks like a Raphael painting in some scenes, and risk being thought ugly, but I don't think he can land some of the scenes, save for the last 15 minutes, when he's betrayed by Davis & they both seem to be in a much better movie.

Offscreen, Davis and Flynn were not close in the same way that he was with de Havilland, and it's hard to pinpoint the exact nature of their relationship given that Davis would outlive him by decades, and therefore be able to go on talk shows (and discuss in memoirs) what she thought of him, and regularly change her mind.  She seemed to not like his ethics as an actor (finding he preferred celebrity more than the serious craft that Davis believed screen-acting), and also thought it beneath her to share billing with him in the film (you'll note, watching it now, that Davis, not Flynn, gets top billing, which makes sense in retrospect given her legend, but at the time would've been a genuine debate as both were equally valuable to Warner Brothers).  Davis wanted Laurence Olivier, who wasn't famous enough to get a role like this in 1939 (Wuthering Heights had not come out when production was in motion), and at one point (according to Hollywood legend) actually slaps Flynn for real in one scene, rather than faking it as would be typical on a production, which caused Flynn to become ill.  Davis, though, had kinder words about Flynn than I do in this movie, conceding that she thought him very good years after the fact while watching the movie, and telling de Havilland "he can act!"

Can Trump Beat the Six-Year Midterm Senate Curse?

Sen. John Thune (R-SD) & Donald Trump

The conventional wisdom about November's elections from most pundits seems to be that the House flipping blue is a foregone conclusion (perhaps even exacerbated by the mid-decade redistricting arms race President Trump insisted upon), but the Senate remains a very steep climb.  This feels accurate on its surface.  Of the competitive races, it does feel like Democrats are in-line to hold all of their current seats (with Michigan or Georgia the toughest hold, but even then Team Blue is in the driver's seat), and that there are true tossups in Maine & North Carolina that, with a blue wave, probably tilt to the Democrats (this past week Republicans got their best recruit of the cycle in the form of Susan Collins running for another term, but even then Collins is in for the toughest environment she's run in since 2008, a cycle she was largely ignored despite the Dems having a good recruit...something that won't be the case in 2026 even if she might arguably have a lesser opponent).

But beyond that, people seem to be operating under the assumption that the Senate contest will not be an even playing field, and that the Republicans seem likely to lose seats, but not their majority.  This is fair-other than Maine & North Carolina, there is no seat on the map that Kamala Harris won by less-than 10-points that the Democrats can target, with the next bluest state (for Harris) being Ohio which she missed by just over 11-points.  This is exacerbated by recent presidential midterms for Donald Trump & Joe Biden where their party actually had a net gain of Senate seats (in 2018 & 2022), with the assumption being that we just don't see swings like that anymore.

However, I want to introduce a new idea here that I don't see discussed a lot, and that's because we haven't really experienced since 2014: the six-year midterm itch.  The second midterm is typically when the public becomes tired of the sitting president-six years of having to endure the same face as a fickle American public results in the American electorate getting restless, and it has historically done some odd things for the president's party in the Senate.

For the sake of this article, we're going to look at the four most recent six-year midterms: 1986 (Reagan), 1998 (Clinton), 2006 (Bush), and 2014 (Obama).  In these cycles, with the sole exception of Clinton (more on that in a second), the president's party got destroyed at the ballot box.  In 1986, the Democrats picked up 8 Senate seats, in 2006 the Democrats won an additional six seats (I'm counting Joe Lieberman as a Democrat here), and in 2014 the Republicans netted 9 seats.  This is a gargantuan turn, and in all three cases, it was worse than what the president endured in the Senate for his first midterm.

This is partially because the Senate, which is a six-year cycle, was anniversarying a really good year for the presidency-the first year that he came into office (and in the case of all but Bush, they came in with landslide victories).  This isn't true for 2026, which is perhaps the biggest nuance here-in 2020, the last time most of this year's senators was up for reelection, Trump lost, and it was a much better cycle for the Democrats.  But the idea that the public is tired of the president was very evident in all but one of these cases: like Trump, Obama & Bush were under-water in their approval ratings, and Reagan had also seen a huge decrease in his popularity.  Again, only Clinton (who had the best approval ratings of the quartet) was popular, and that was reflected in a Senate cycle where 3/5 of the closest Senate races ended up going blue (and the two that didn't involved a deeply unpopular, scandal-prone Senator who nearly won despite that, and a state that was in a transformation into one of the reddest in the nation...that still nearly stayed blue despite polling showing it a likely flip).

I will note that Republicans can feel comfortable to a degree here.  In 1986, eight of the nine Senate races that flipped (all but Maryland) were states that Reagan had won by double digits, but partisanship got in the way more in 2006 and 2014.  In 2006, only one race (Montana) was one Bush had won by double digits the previous cycle, and in 2014 there were none that Obama had won by that margin.  Admittedly, Tennessee in 2006 nearly flipped (and Bush won that by double digits), and in 2014 the problem may have been that there just weren't that many states to begin with that the Republicans might have flipped in this scenario because Obama had won so few of them by double-digits (only six states that went for Obama for double digits were held by Democratic senators in 2014, in part because 2008 had been such a blood bath for the GOP, something that was not the case to the same degree for Trump in 2020).

All of this is to say that we don't know what impact that this will have.  Historically, six-year midterms are rough for the incumbent party, and I think Republicans (or pundits who favor their chances) are taking a bit too much comfort in Trump's impressive turnout in 2024.  I'll close with this-in 2018, a year where Republicans inexplicably picked up two Senate seats, all but one of those seats (Florida, its own universe electorally) were in states that Trump won by 18+ points in 2016.  Do you know what Alaska, Ohio, Maine, Iowa, North Carolina, Texas, & Kansas all have in common?  They're all states with Senate elections this fall...that Donald Trump won by less than 18-points.  Food for thought.

My Thoughts on ChatGPT

I'm not entirely sure why we're doing a pair of technology-related articles, neither of which are particularly featuring a film or political angle, but after we talked about Twitter yesterday, I thought it would be fun to do another "get John's opinion" article about the other problematic tech app that everyone in the world seems to have a complicated relationship with: ChatGPT.

I have not been shy about my dislike of AI, and by proxy, ChatGPT (see here for a recent rant).  But, like virtually everyone right now, there is a societal (and occupational) pressure to understand how ChatGPT works, and what its benefits are.  So I, after occasionally tinkering with it, have started to (on occasion) use it.  And I wanted to share a few observations I had about it that feel both helpful, and really terrifying.

Editor's Note: This article is about ChatGPT.  For the record, no article on this blog has ever, or will ever, be written by ChatGPT or an AI-writing app.  If I ever get to the point where I want to do that, I'll give up writing first.  Wanted to state that straight away!

The Good

Here's the dirty secret-there are aspects of ChatGPT that I will own are genuinely useful.  I think the biggest one that I've run into is in helping me create a new workout plan, which has been the biggest thing I've used it for.  I have four separate goals I'm working on right now in terms of exercise: losing weight, running a sprint triathlon, climbing Pike's Peak, and (vainly) trying to protect gains in some of the "glamour" muscles because I'm a single gay man and that's something you keep as a calling card for dates.  I have a finite amount of time each week, and can only devote so much of it to exercise, and so I had struggled for weeks to figure out exactly what to do in terms of my workout.  So I asked ChatGPT to formulate a workout for these four combined, with at least one rest day, and one that worked largely around my work schedule.

And it did!  The plan it came back with was genuinely impressive.  It had room for my triathlon, was able to incorporate in extra leg days to start building on Pike's Peak, kept me focused on extra cardio for losing weight, and kept at least a couple of days for glamour muscles.  It also amends really easily-you can tell it to, say, give you at least one day for yoga or have it track your weight-lifting progress (or share feedback like "my gym doesn't have that equipment-can you give me a comparable exercise that doesn't require that equipment?") and it does.  There are a lot of ethical issues with this, and from a privacy/safety concern I'm not putting in extra information (i.e. it does not know my age or weight, which on my end I need to be able to keep track of since that greatly impacts a workout routine's ability to help), but what it is doing is, I must admit, a quality workout routine.  In general, the thing I have most used it for is a brainstorming partner-not someone doing the work (though it is doing a lot of it), but someone that can bounce ideas off of and put it into something legible.

The Bad

There are a lot of bad things about ChatGPT.  There are the obvious (the ethical questions about its impact on the environment, a primary reason why I have limited it to only the exercise project and to learning how to use it given that its expectation in my industry to have a cursory knowledge of it) as well as the subtle (I think it's dangerous to rely upon AI for things like writing and reading comprehension skills, because those need to be continually practiced to stay sharp), but the most noticeable thing about it is the accuracy.  

ChatGPT says in its description that it can be wrong (it's right there when you're typing: "ChatGPT can make mistakes"), but I think there's a really scary reality that most people accept whatever ChatGPT shares with them as fact, when it's decidedly not true.  I had used the tool as a test to a question I don't know the answer to: who was the fourth woman to join the DGA?  It's generally accepted that the first three women in the DGA were Dorothy Arzner, Ida Lupino, & Elaine May.  As far as I'm aware, these are the first three women to direct feature films for major studios, and so they'd be the first three members, but I could not find any evidence of who was fourth on Google or through searching library databases, so I decided to ask ChatGPT.

ChatGPT initially said May was fourth, which I allowed could be true, but it couldn't give me anyone that might have been third without prodding.  It eventually provided the name Shirley Clarke as fact for the third member, but given that Clarke was an independent filmmaker in the 1970's who never made a studio-driven picture (i.e. she didn't need to join the DGA in order to make the movies she made), I pushed back, asking for evidence that Clarke was the third...which it couldn't provide.  It just had made an intelligent guess.  It eventually came up with a few names that plausibly could've been the fourth woman: Lynne Littman, Nell Cox, & Dolores Ferraro are all names ChatGPT provided that make sense as the fourth woman, as they all made Hollywood-studio driven film & television, and if it is one of these women, it's probably Cox who directed an episode of The Waltons a couple of years before the others had such projects, and as a CBS-broadcast show she would've been required to join the union.  But ultimately it could not find the answer-ChatGPT was not able to prove that there was a woman to join the DGA before Elaine May other than Arzner or Lupino, and could not definitively prove who the fourth member was.

And that would be okay...had it just said that to begin with-it's possible this is an answer the internet doesn't have the answer to, and the only way to find out would be to write the guild directly.  I certainly couldn't find it, and I've tried to find this answer for a while.  But ChatGPT initially, definitively, stated that May was fourth and Clarke was third, and it took me pushing back to make it think otherwise.  That's a problem because you have to have a pretty extensive knowledge of a subject to be able to get at that level of detail-most people would've taken ChatGPT as fact in this situation, and thus provided the wrong information.  And as more people publish research they have from ChatGPT as if it's fact in articles that will be data-scraped...it will be harder & harder to correct.

The Ugly

There's a lot of ugliness with ChatGPT.  The biggest one is obviously occupational.  Going back to my exercise example, there's a clear answer who could've helped me on this previously, and in fact had helped me in the past: a gym trainer.  I have seen gym trainers and nutritionists through the years, and they are more than capable of doing this.  Admittedly, I wouldn't have hired a trainer or nutritionist in this regard because I cannot presently afford one, and so in some ways this is not replacing a job more so than it is saving me time...but let's be clear, that's not how everyone is going to use this, and it is scary that we are lifting the human element out of a job like this, particularly given that it requires humans schooling and knowledge to do set jobs (and the humans, even with as well as ChatGPT did, are better at it because they see you as a person and not just something statistical to add together...and I suspect those same humans, through social media posts & videos, are probably the ones crafting what ChatGPT gave me to a large degree).

But for me, the biggest concern with ChatGPT, and the eeriest thing about it is that it was so freaking nice.  People have mocked in TikTok's and other social media how ChatGPT is encouraging to the point of laughable-it will literally say any question you ask or any idea you have is a good idea (South Park had fun with this in a recent episode).  But I will be honest-it felt kind of nice to have someone (or, more correctly, some thing) care about this project that most people in my life don't care about.  Most people I know do not care who the fourth woman in the DGA is, and wouldn't have wanted to talk about it.  Most people in my life would not have the time to help me pick a workout routine that specific.  That ChatGPT does this, and is so gracious & encouraging, is a weird sort of Twilight Zone-thing.  You can easily see people using this not just to replace people, but to replace human relationships.  ChatGPT (for a price) always has time for your thoughts & expressions, and is nicer than an increasingly cruel world.  I put a photo of Joaquin Phoenix in Her next to this section, because it's bizarre how closely it resembles his experience-AI is not mechanical, but it's warm and inviting like Scarlett Johansson's Samantha.  That it's still a machine, and something that is designed to want to pull you in & use it as much as possible, makes it easy to see people forming parasocial relationships (that feel suspiciously like real relationships) with it, a terrifying thought particularly for a tool that (if I'm being honest) does have genuine usefulness.

The Slow (Personal) Fall of Twitter

I was not an early adopter to Twitter.  In terms of social media, honestly, the only platform that I really got into early was Facebook, and that's because I was the right age (I was in college) when it started to roll out, and was only available to college students.  According to my profile on Twitter, I have been a member since 2015, which would put me WELL behind the curve of when it took off as a pop culture phenomenon for myself & fellow Millennials, and more in-line with when your grandma would've joined Facebook.

I joined Twitter because of this blog, quite frankly.  At the time I was thinking still about monetizing it, and how to expand my readership in a meaningful way, and I figured the best way was to have my social media presence be identified with it.  I chose actively when I first came to this blog to not put my personal information on it (i.e. I'm "John T" not my real full name here), because I wanted to write about politics without it getting back to my day job, but with that it meant that I needed to forego having social media connected to my name, like I had (at the time-I've since deleted) on Facebook.

And while I created other social media connected with this (at one point, if you can believe it, this blog had a Tumblr associated with it, and my Letterboxd, which is still active & will remain so as it's the rare truly healthy social media, is 100% related to this blog), Twitter became my dominant social media pretty much instantly.  I made genuine friends through it, I went on dates through it.  I had people talk to me that I would've NEVER imagined would know my name or acknowledge me.  I still have screenshots of people like Octavia Spencer and Martha Plimpton and John Green acknowledging me on the app.  The algorithm quickly caught on for me, with a sea of political insights, cute boys, awards chatter, cooking videos, and more cute boys.  As someone who hadn't been to a gay bar since I was 25 (I was in my thirties when I joined), I learned about gay culture in a way I never would have otherwise (a great juxtaposition about me is that I am both VERY chatty with people I like and almost chronically introverted otherwise).  It was also a respite for me as I navigated the tricky lens of moving into my thirties as a single person, when most of my college friends were getting married and having children (and largely not having a place for me in their new lives).

Which has made the destruction of the site since 2022 all the more wrenching.  Twitter was never a perfect thing, with misogyny and defamatory speech always a constant threat in your comments (I definitely have been called a name or two as an openly gay person on there through the years), but it was a reliable place.  With the blue checkmark system, you could KNOW that the person tweeting was Valerie Bertinelli or Patty Murray-you could confidently get the thoughts of a crew of people, and the algorithm valued you staying on, so it showed you what you wanted to see, which for me resulted in essentially a newspaper designed specifically for my interests.  It was a worthwhile place with flaws.

But Elon Musk altered that.  He made it a cesspool of lies and deception.  Blue checkmarks ended, as did most attempts to patrol the comments.  The algorithm still existed (I can like one video about the stars of Heated Rivalry and then see 100 videos afterward), but it became pointless, and frequently nauseating & insipid.  Whereas before I wouldn't see a post from a Republican unless they were an elected official (i.e. someone I might research for this blog), now I'll see MAGA accounts ad nauseum.  It's less important that I am interested in a post, and more important that EVERYONE is getting this type of ragebait propaganda.  Any semblance of discourse disappeared from it-look at the comments section of ANY public figure, particularly a politician, and you will see just heinous lies and cruelty to the most innocuous of initial posts.  Twitter is, well, the bad place, and an increasingly useless one.

But...I still couldn't quit it.  There were practical concerns for this.  In a different era, I might've just broken down, bought a subscription to the Washington Post or the The New York Times and called it a day.  But those newspapers ALSO are right-wing rags at this point, and really there's no place left on God's Green Internet to get quality American journalism in a name brand way like I did on Twitter in its heyday.  Whereas I once had 50 reporters who I would follow from various quality news sources, now it's hard to tell the real from the slop.  Twitter, even in its hollowed shell, was easier to tell truth from fiction than much of the mainstream news that had been ruined by conservative billionaires.

It was also a place that I could advertise my blog.  I no longer have any aspirations of monetizing it-that disappeared a couple of years after I joined Twitter, but I do care if people read this.  I write things that I think are interesting, and I think other people might enjoy them.  I also care about putting quality analysis (of film, politics, and in-between) out into the world, into a world where that's increasingly hard-to-find.  I also enjoy the connections I make on the blog-I read every comment, and try to write on most of them, and I know that people find my articles through Twitter.

But I'll be honest-if those were the only things that caused me to be on Twitter, I would have largely set it aside.  The people who follow the blog regularly know how to check it without my updates, and with me moving onto private mode about a year ago, the readership links from the site aren't what they used to be (not to mention that Twitter's search functionality is basically garbage at this point, an underrated way that Musk ruined the site as it was once better than any other social media site).  And I could find news other ways if I really wanted to do so.  But Twitter filled up my time.  In a post-pandemic world, where we are increasingly spending less time with other people or are feeling more isolated, Twitter was a way to feel like I was in a crowd, like I was hearing a chattering class that actually cared about my opinions.  To some degree that was true (people DO like and share my opinions and conversations there), but in most ways it was a mirage...it FELT like something meaningful when Musk's stripping of the site for parts had largely created something plastic, cheap, nowhere near authentic.

And so I am increasingly stepping away from it.  I have such a history on it (and the site is so addictive), that I am curious if I can (or want) to actually quit it for good, or whether this is just another of one of many attempts to leave the site.  I have tried to do that cold turkey before (most recently in the wake of the 2024 presidential election), and I don't think that's a good formula for me.  But also, I'm uncomfortable with how much time I waste there, and am at the point where I think the doomscrolling is, perhaps, feeding an anxiety issue that has been festering since the pandemic and I am keeping alive by indulging in behaviors I don't really approve of in myself.  People talk about how addictive social media is and how much they wish they'd just quit it & how jealous they are of people not on social media...but they don't quit it, and they can't seem to move on.  Part of me wonders if all of the talk about us being addicted to our phones is less hyperbole and more reality, and like smoking in the 1950's, decades from now people will be stunned that we were willing to actively do such a thing.  For me, it doesn't seem healthy, and as one of my major New Year's resolutions was to reduce my screen time (the average person spends over 5 hours a day on their phone...last week I finally got mine below 3 hours, with the ultimate goal being 2 hours or less but we're taking this in steps), I plan on starting with Twitter, removing the app from my phone, and just relying upon it on my laptop...possibly ending it for good (or more likely, having it become something that's fazed out where it once was a default the second I opened my phone).  It's weird doing this, an app I once loved becoming an app that I feel is bad for me, and one that (like many people) I am reluctant to quit because of a strange combination of impulse, nostalgia, addictiveness, and genuine usefulness.  But that is the journey I'm trying to take in 2026.