Today on the show, we'll start with a discussion about Clippers owner Donald Sterling's history of sexism. Then, the White House is set to announce guidelines for college campuses to combat sexual assault. Plus, Toyota's move from Torrance to Texas strikes a blow to Southern California, The New Yorker's cartoon editor talks about his life in comics, science might help streamline the airplane boarding process, plus much more.
White House to announce guidelines to combat college campus sexual assault
Later this morning Vice President Joe Biden will announce new guidelines for how colleges deal with the issue of sexual assault.
The document outlines legal obligations on the part of schools and urges them to conduct surveys to find out what the "climate" is on their campuses.
For more on this we're joined by Nirvi Shah, deputy managing editor for POLITICO.
Why isn't Donald Sterling's history of sexism getting more attention?
Donald Sterling's history of racism has been thrust into the spotlight since a taped conversation attributed to him were obtained by TMZ and Deadspin. But there are many allegations that show he also has a long history of sexism, too.
RELATED: NBA bans Clippers owner Donald Sterling, fines him $2.5M
A 2012 report by ESPN’s Peter Keating, Amanda Younger, and Alyssa Roenick, detailed just how little Sterling thinks of women. A 1996 lawsuit against Sterling by a female former employee alleges that he “touched her in ways that made her uncomfortable and asked her to visit friends of his for sex.”
In a 2003 lawsuit against a woman named Alexandra Castro, Sterling testified that he regularly paid Castro for sex and that, “When you pay a woman for sex, you are not together with her…You're paying her for a few moments to use her body for sex." There are also allegations that he's asked female employees to find him masseuses that are willing to give him sexual favors.
Though much of the most current controversy — for very good reason — is focused on the racism behind his comments to ex-girlfriend V. Stiviano, there is also a healthy dose of sexism there, too. Should we have a similar level of outrage at his treatment of women?
RELATED: Donald Sterling controversy exposes NAACP's donations bind
"I don't think any of us should be surprised that racism will trump sexism in almost any conversation in the media," said USA Today sports writer Christine Brennan on Take Two. "As a sports nation, we do not care as much about what happens to women as we do about what happens to men…and the reprehensible statements of an owner of one of the NBA teams."
Brennan cites Don Imus's calling the Rutgers women's basketball team "nappy headed hos" as the test case for where our outrage for sexism stands when racism is also a factor.
RELATED: Who is Donald Sterling? An FAQ on the Clippers owner's history, past lawsuits (updated)
"What became the focus? The racial aspect and not the latter part of that statement and even worse the denigrating comments for women," said Brennan. "That Don Imus situation was both things, racism and sexism…we focus almost exclusively as a nation on the racial part of that statement and that says it all..Women are second-class citizens in sports in a way that is still alarming in 2014."
Can science help streamline the airplane boarding process?
Have you ever been in line to board a plane an thought, "There's got to be a better way to do this"?
Luckily, there is. In fact, scientists have studied airline boarding, and they have solutions that for one reason or another the airlines haven't bothered with.
Eric Chemi, head of research for Bloomberg Businessweek and Bloomberg TV, wrote about this and joins the show to talk about the the best way to board.
Toyota's move leaves Southern California with huge loss
Toyota has called Southern California home for more than 60 years. The company that advertises itself with "Let's Go Places" is going to Texas.
RELATED: Toyota moving from Torrance to Texas; thousands of jobs affected
Yesterday, Toyota announced it's moving three thousand jobs from Torrance, to Plano, just outside of Dallas. Here to talk about the impact that the move will have on Southern California is Alan Ohnsman from Bloomberg.
Tuesday Reviewsday: Kelis, Sza and Asher Roth
It's time again for Tuesday Reviewsday, our weekly new music segment. This week, music supervisor Morgan Rhodes is back with music, including some Future Soul.
Artist: Kelis
Album: Food
Songs: "Hooch," "Jerk Ribs"
Out of Harlem, NY, you might remember her for her hit song "Milkshake," 11 years ago. Since then, she's released several projects across many genres pop, electronic and R&B, but this time she's said that she returned to music this time out of love and not obligation. I think 'Food' gives Kelis a great opportunity to attract a new audience, while offering core fans an inside look at her range as an artist — an artist who is a chameleon. Those that like rock infused soul and folk will love this album.
Artist: Asher Roth
Album: RetroHash
Songs: "Parties At The Disco," "Tangerine Girl"
About five years ago, Asher Roth released the song "College," to much fan fare among the MTV crowd. The reception however wasn't great among rap fans, who felt that his music lacked authenticity. Roth is back and he's reworked everything. He's now on an indie label, instead of Motown, he's no longer in college and he's stopped rapping about how much he loves college. His second full length album is less hip hop and more singing, with a bit of an experimental sound than his first album. It adds a bit more authenticity to his character in my opinion.
"Retro Hash" is not just an anagram, it feels like the theme of the album. It certainly has a laid back dreamy California vibe, very Red Hot Chili Peppers-esque and is an exploration of styles that ultimately I find very refreshing.
Artist: Sza
Album: Z
Songs: "Sweet November," "Julia"
Sza, from New Jersey, made the grand leap from indie artist to being the only female artist signed to heavy hitter, Top Dawg Entertainment, the home of Kendrick Lamar, Schoolboy Q. She's part of the freshman class of indie artists who have been discovered and then sort of thrust into the mainstream, but have been able to maintain their independence creatively, stylistically. She also reflects the trend in soul to partner with an array of different genres, most recently with electronica. This album is gorgeous from start to finish. She's is one of the bright new faces to the alternative soul/future soul movement and this album proves that.
How TMZ's breaking news has changed the media landscape
When you hear the letters "TMZ", you make think of aggressive, paparazzi-style reports at the intersection of celebrities and scandal. However, over the years, they've also broken news that many mainstream outlets scrambled to get late or missed altogether.
Most recently, the website broke the Donald Sterling story and was the first to have the taped conversation allegedly between Sterling and V. Stiviano.
David Folkenflik is the media correspondent for NPR and joins us to discuss the history of the website and TV show, and TMZ's effect on the media landscape as a whole.
Sterling Controversy: Why do racist words have more impact than racist actions?
The controversy around Donald Sterling's alleged remarks has shed light on the business of professional sports and the media itself.
It's also sparked a lot of conversation about racism in this country. One of the people weighing in on that conversation is Mychal Denzel Smith. His latest post in The Nation looks at what he calls the "impolite racism" of Donald Sterling.
Interview Highlights:
Let's being with that phrase you use, "the impolite racism of Donald Sterling." Can you explain what you mean there?
"Donald Sterling said out loud the things that you're not allowed to say anymore with regards to race in America. He expressed a distaste for, I guess, his girlfriend being seeing with black men. Essentially we have gotten to a point in this country where that's unacceptable. The idea that you would blatantly discriminate against someone on the basis of the color of their skin is distasteful to people.
"There was study last year that most white people don't have black friends or any friends of color in general, because our social circles are just so separated, but the idea that you say that out loud, that you don't want to be around or want someone to be seen with black people is just an impolite thing to do. To me, what that does, is it obscures the deeper structural issues of racism that we have in this country.
It's kind of ironic. They say actions speak louder than words, but maybe this is not true when it comes to racism?
"Yes, we are more concerned simply because we don't want to upend the system that supports racism — that supports the continuance of white supremacy — because we don't want to admit to ourselves that that's who we are as a country. That's who we are as a nation, that's what our governing philosophy has been, that's what our economic structure was built on, that's what our political structure is built on, that's what our culture is built on; a sort of anti-blackness.
"We don't want to admit that because we don't want to be seen as bad people, and I think that's what we're most afraid of, is being seen as bad people no matter what the consequences of our economic and our political structures."
Do you think there are people out there, just as racist as Donald Sterling who are using the safe words so you don't see it?:
"Yeah, I think that the situation should kind of blow up the idea of the "black friend" making you safe. I mean, Donald Sterling was sleeping with a woman of mixed race, who was black and Mexican, and then makes comments like these. But then also just the fact that his housing discrimination settlement that he went through where he was discriminating on the basis of race against tenants in his apartment buildings on the basis of being either black or Hispanic.
"The way that he looks at the players on the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team, again, allegedly because we don't have confirmation that this is him on the tape, but allegedly that this is the way that he sees these black men who work for him...People that he, himself, is making their lives possible and I think that confluence between racism and capitalism is something worth exploring."
As you mentioned, Sterling has a bit of a track record. Why do you think of all his past actions, it wasn't until this instance that this story blew up.
"Because this is how we understand racism. As an American public, we understand when someone says something distrustingly racist; we get that. We can point to that and say this person is undeserving of the social capital that they have accrued because they are not a good person because they said these bad things, these mean things about people on the basis of race.
"And I think that we need these type of things to make ourselves feel better about ourselves and our complicity in a racist system. We can point to a Donald Sterling or a Cliven Bundy or a Paula Deen and get mad about the explicitly racist things that come out of their mouths, but we can't then reconcile that we allow people who hold these views to run our economy, run our politics and we haven't made that connection."
So what do we need to do then?
"I think we have to take these opportunities to shed light on this structure. If this is going to be what grabs the news headlines, this is what it's going to be that grabs people's attention, these are the opportunities that we have to take in order to get people to deepen their analysis of racism in America. So we just have to take these opportunities as they come and make sure that when we talk about it, we talk about the deeper structural issues."
Cell phone searches take center stage at Supreme Court
Tomorrow, the U.S. Supreme Court takes up a California case that could settle the question of whether police can search the contents of cell phones without a warrant.
For the California Report, Scott Shafer has the story.
California's only mailman who delivers by boat
The Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta looks and feels different than any other part of the state. There are over 1,000 miles of waterways, and nearly 60 islands. Even though a lot of these islands are connected by bridges, a lot of the people in the Delta are pretty isolated.
There’s a person in the eastern part of the Delta who’s a lifeline -- the only mailman in California who delivers by boat.
For the California Report, Lisa Morehouse has the story.
Every week, every day, except Sunday, Rick Stelzriede pulls out from a marina on King Island near Stockton. He takes his 21-foot aluminum boat about 60 miles, visiting marinas and designated docks. At most stops, he just slows his boat as it approaches a pier with a mail box, picks up and drops off mail, then flips up the red metal flag.
“Everybody out here that I deliver mail to, most all of them have something to do with the river, whether they’re farming, whether they live out here on boats. They may be caretaking an island,” Stelzriede says.
Others run marinas or sport-fishing businesses or restaurants. They might work in the region’s abundant natural gas fields. In the summer, there’s an influx of people harvesting crops or working in packing sheds.
“My mail will change because migrant workers will come up,” Stelzriede says. “I’ll get mail from Mexico or wherever they’re from. I’ve got a guy on Mandeville Island from Peru. He’s a sheepherder out there, and he routinely receives CDs of family photos.”
Living in the Delta – where there are 57 islands and over 1,000 miles of waterways – just requires people to do things differently than in most of the Bay Area. That’s really clear as we approach a stop where more than 30 people get their mail, even though there’s no mailbox.
It’s a small bridge, and Stelzriede points out an attached safety cage where bridge tender Ramon Gonzalez is doing maintenance work. He spots Stelzriede, and they call out to each other in Spanish.
Gonzalez climbs out of the cage and up the side of the bridge to fetch a bucket. Stelzriede labors to keep his boat in one place while reaching for the bucket Gonzalez lowers, filled with outgoing mail. The whole exchange takes just a few minutes, with the two men in synch.
The water’s choppy as we head out to a large body of water called Frank’s Tract. We see Mt. Diablo to the left and Antioch to the right, but just barely. The water’s rough enough that Stelzriede turns on his windshield wipers in order to see clearly. This time of year, Stelzriede navigates through soupy fog and around dangerous obstacles in the water, and he’s got to keep an eye out for what appear to be as many as 12 super-sized bales of hay.
He explains that they’re actually duck blinds, spaces that hunters pull their boats into for easy access to the Delta’s waterfowl. In the summer Stelzriede keeps an eye out for boaters racing or pulling water skiers. In the spring he gets his most unusual packages: He’s delivered plants, pheasants, even swans.
When he drops off mail at the home of an 82-year-old friend who lives on an island the size of a suburban house lot, I tell him the Delta reminds me of parts of the California desert, where some people go to drop out of society, to get lost. Stelzriede agrees.
“Absolutely,” he says. “When I came back out here in ’96, that’s why I came out, just to get lost. I had divorced, and went through that change, just had to get away from it all.”
I ask why this is a good place for such a transition.
“For me it was all about cleaning up,” he says. “I had been on prescription pain medication for years and years, and for me, I lost my family, house, shut my business down, lost everything.”
He moved to the Delta and realized life can be simple.
“The beavers get along with the otters, the otters get along with the muskrats, birds get along, everyone seems to co-exist really well,” he says. “Why can’t it be that way everywhere? So I just took it upon myself to fix me.”
In 2006, he started helping out an elderly friend who had the mail route, then took it over full time.
“Well, I’m out here forever now,” Stelzriede says as we head back into the marina at King Island. “I’ll never leave this place. To me, this is about as close to God as you can get.”
Should nonprofits and charities more thoroughly vet their donors?
The Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP says it is officially rescinding the lifetime achievement award it planned to give to LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling.
Jenkins said the organization would return donations Sterling made to the NAACP, but stopped short of asking Sterling to return the first lifetime achievement award he received in from the organization five years ago.
The controversy has raised questions about how nonprofit organizations vet their donors, and why the NAACP would have accepted money from Sterling, since this is not the first time he's been accused of racial discrimination.
Joining us now is Rick Cohen, National Correspondent with Nonprofit Quarterly.
'How About Never': New Yorker cartoon editor on his life in comics
More than 1 million people read The New Yorker magazine for the insightful articles, cultural listings, film reviews and ... the cartoons. Those magnificent, funny, sometimes bawdy, often confounding cartoons.
The New Yorker has published 78,000 of them since its inception, and more than 14,000 of those were published under current cartoon editor, Bob Mankoff.
He's written a new memoir, "How About Never—Is Never Good For You?: My Life in Cartoons," and he joined Take Two's Alex Cohen about his new book and his career with The New Yorker.
One secret he shared is that if you don't understand a cartoon, it may be because it's designed that way.
"Sometimes people don't get it because there's actually nothing to get," says Mankoff. "All cartoons don't have closure. Some cartoons are just being silly, and the house of humor has many rooms and we try to fill as many in the New Yorker as possible."
Mankoff also sifts through anywhere between 500 to 1,000 submissions every week for each issue of the magazine. And to get your own cartoon published, you don't necessarily have to be a great illustrator, just have a sense of wit, and luck.
"Anybody who's a professional understands that that's what the deal is," he says. "I'm part mentor, I'm part psychologist, but overall I'm the cartoon editor."
Mankoff talks more with artist Shepard Fairey on Tuesday, April 29th at 7:30p at the LA Theatre Center. Tickets are available HERE.