How media organizations decide what to censor, why an all-female ticket gives voters pause, LGBT student discrimination on the campuses of private, religious colleges.
Images of tragedy: Who decides how much the public gets to see?
Two days after a deadly attack on Turkey's largest airport, there has been no claim of responsibility, but Turkish officials believe it is the work of Islamic State.
Forty-two people died, and hundreds were injured when three gunmen, strapped with explosives, opened fire. The men later blew themselves up.
Since then, grainy footage of one of the suicide bombers has surfaced. Some outlets have run the clip in its entirety, but others have held back.
Who decides what we see and hear in the media? And what impact do images and sounds have on the way we understand a tragedy?
Take Two put that question to Mike Ananny. He's a professor of communication and journalism based at the USC Annenberg
Press the blue play button above to hear the interview.
Did San Diego's bid to keep the Chargers just run out of juice?
The San Diego Chargers want a new football stadium.
They've proposed one be built downtown right next to the convention center -- and of course it costs money
Cue an initiative on the November ballot calling for tax increases to help pay for the new building.
They just need a simple majority of voters to say yes.
Slight snag in that plan now, thanks to a decision in the state Supreme Court
David Garrick has been writing about this for the San Diego Union Tribune. He told Take Two's A Martinez that this decision has led to a lot of pessimism that the Chargers are going to stick around in San Diego.
The Ride: Sisters Centennial Ride recreates 1916 female cross-country motorcycle trip
It was long before women had the right to vote — a time when the dress code was decidedly buttoned up and skirts made headlines for showing ankle.
The year was 1916. Woodrow Wilson was president. Actor Gregory Peck was still in diapers. Norman Rockwell had just scored his first cover for The Saturday Evening Post.
And a pair of sisters named Adeline and Agusta Van Buren were about to make history in an era when women rarely did. The Van Buren sisters, as they came to be known, were up to something radical — something they hoped would change public perception about women’s capabilities.
They rode motorcycles. All the way across the United States. On their own bikes. By themselves.
That may not seem like a big deal today, but a century ago it was groundbreaking. Not only because the roads back then were unpaved, but because the two sisters were an itty bitty five feet tall, 100 pounds and change and riding some of the biggest motorcycles of their day.
“They were a couple of pretty neat New York women,” said Alisa Clickenger, who plans to recreate the Van Burens’ ride 100 years to the day since the sisters took off from New York on their Indian Power Plus motorcycles.
She’s calling it the Sisters’ Centennial Ride, and it starts July 4th.
One hundred women are expected to take off on the recreated route along the Lincoln Highway from New York to Omaha, Nebraska, and Colorado’s 14,000-foot Pike’s Peak on their way to San Francisco. The Van Buren sisters took 58 days to ride 3,300 miles — about twice as long as they initially estimated. The Centennial sisters will cover the same ground in just 19 riding days in far more favorable conditions we now take for granted.
Like asphalt.
When the Van Burens crossed the country, “the main thoroughfares between the towns were carved by cars with very skinny wheels or motorcycles, so it was often a choice of the lesser of two evils,” Clickenger said. “Is it easier to go in the mud or is it easier to go in the rut?”
The advantage to choosing the rut? It’s not as far of a fall when you wipe out.
“They were riding, and they were so exhausted that they would fall asleep and tip over on the motorcycle and that would wake them up,” Clickenger said of the Van Burens. “They’d get the motorcycle upright again and start riding again.”
Of course, there were other problems.
Every modern motorcycling woman agrees. It’s a lot easier to straddle a bike in pants — or jodphurs, as the Van Buren sisters wore, with knee-high leather boots and long coats to protect themselves from the elements as they straddled 400-pound bikes laden with banners that read “Coast to Coast” and luggage packed onto their handlebars and rear fenders.
Law enforcement, unfortunately, didn’t appreciate their unconventionality.
“It was still a post Victorian era,” Clickenger said. “Women were expected to be in dresses and comport themselves in a certain way and the Van Buren sisters were … arrested for wearing men’s clothing several times during their journey.”
Shocking as it is in this day of transgender restrooms to think that lady pants could get a person arrested, it’s even more shocking that a pair of petite sisters could take on such a physically grueling journey without their bikes, or themselves, breaking down. But they were physically prepared.
Long before Youtube or television or even radio, the Van Buren sisters occupied themselves with sports. They were avid tennis players who also canoed and ran and swam and rowed and skated and rode horses, until they discovered motorcycles that could travel at a fast-for-their-era 70 mph — at which point that became their favorite activity.
Adeline and Agusta, or Addie and Gussie, as they were known back in the day, were 20something New York City society girls with quite the pedigree. They were descendants of Martin Van Buren, the long-forgotten eighth president of the United States.
Just as President Van Buren bucked the trends of his era — he was an abolitionist decades before President Lincoln — so too were the Van Buren sisters. One was a librarian, the other a schoolteacher. Both were early feminists and members of something called the Preparedness Movement.
Those were “the folks that thought the U.S. should be prepared in case we went and joined World War I,” Clickenger said. “The preparedness people thought we better get prepared and what better way to show the U.S. government that women can help with this effort than for us to ride our motorcycles across the country to show them that we are capable dispatch riders.”
“Woman can if she will,” Gussie was known to say. And what she and Addie hoped to will into existence was winning women the right to carry messages via motorcycle to the front lines of WWI in Europe.
Despite their cross-country motorcycling success, the U.S. government rejected their applications to be military dispatch riders. Adding insult to injury, the sisters’ successful trip was attributed to the competence of their Indian motorcycles, not the tenacity of the Van Burens themselves. The sisters were otherwise derided by the mainstream press for having taken a “vacation” and wearing “nifty” uniforms.
Oh well. Adeline went on to be a lawyer. Agusta a pilot who flew with Amelia Earhart’s group, the Ninety-Nines, which helped establish commercial air travel.
Still, the Van Burens were precursors to the many privileges women enjoy today.
“The Van Buren ladies were women of principle,” Clickenger said. “The real takeaway from their trip is that when you put your mind to it, you can change the world, because look now 100 years later. Women do serve in the military. We can vote. We do on a regular basis ride motorcycles across the country.”
And 100 of them will do just that starting July 4, for the Sisters’ Centennial Ride recreating the Van Buren sisters’ historic journey.
Women on the Presidential ballot
Most would assume that because Hillary Clinton is the presumptive Democratic nominee, she's immune to the challenges encountered by other female politicians, but is that assumption true?
And what about featuring Senator Elizabeth Warren as her running mate ... would the notion of an all female-ticket gives some voters pause?
We talk about it with Adrienne Kimmell, Executive Director of the Barbara Lee Family Foundation. The organization is devoted to advancing women's equality and representation in American politics.
Gun control, homelessness, the ballot measure deadline
On this week's State of Affairs, California lawmakers take up gun control bills, media coverage of homelessness in CA, and the final day for ballot measures to qualify for the November ballot.
Joining Take Two to discuss:
- Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, Professor of the Practice of Public Policy Communication at USC's Sol Price School of Public Policy
- Ben Adler, Capital Public Radio's Capitol Bureau Chief
Myth of 'classless' America debunked in 'White Trash'
America is a country where anything is possible. Or at least, that's supposed to be the case.
Our national identity is linked to a "bootstrap mentality" and the promise of upward mobility. In the land of opportunity, class barriers don't exist, or can be overcome by hard work. But a new book seeks to dispel the myth of a "classless" America, and shine a light on the invisible hierarchies that have always been a part of the country's social fabric.
Nancy Isenberg is the author of "White Trash: The 400-year untold history of class in America." She joined host Libby Denkmann with more.
To listen to the full interview, click on the blue audio player above.
Faith-based colleges take stand against an LGBT rights bill
Faith-based colleges could be put to the test under a proposed bill in the California legislature.
Senate bill 1146 would protect LGBT students on college campuses from discrimination.
"California has established strong protections for the LGBTQ community," said author Sen. Ricardo Lara, "and private universities should not be able to use faith as an excuse to discriminate and avoid complying with state laws. No university should have a license to discriminate."
But several colleges with religious affiliations have come out against the measure, saying the law would undermine the religious teachings that are at the heart of their campuses
Take Two talks with President Jon Wallace of Azuza Pacific University to understand his opposition.
Trans activists wish Caitlyn Jenner didn't represent them
If the transgender rights movement has a figurehead, it's definitely Caitlyn Jenner because of her visibility and the media wave that followed her coming out.
But some trans people wish she would step off her pedestal.
Since Jenner announced she would transition, there's been an unease among the very trans people she set out to help because of her conservative politics.
More recently, Jenner caught heat for an interview with Stat News where she said:
"Everybody looks at the Democrats as being better with these issues. But Trump seems to be very much for women. He seems very much behind the LGBT community because of what happened in North Carolina with the bathroom issue. He backed the LGBT community."
The reaction from trans activists was immediate.
Caitlyn Jenner is the last person who should be representing the transgender community. The VERY LAST. I thank...
— K. Sasha Mowen (@PrncessODrkness)
Caitlyn Jenner is the last person who should be representing the transgender community. The VERY LAST. I thank... https://t.co/GyKTJFq377
— Sasha, the Princess of Darkness (she/her/badass) (@PrncessODrkness) June 29, 2016
Take Two looks at the trans community's uneasy relationship with Caitlyn Jenner, and if only liberal-leaning trans people are acceptable role models.
Bamby Salcedo, founder of the TransLatina Coalition, joins the show.
Lab Notes: Crowd wisdom, spiky critters and more
Fire up your bunsen burners and throw on your lab coat - it's time for some science. Today, on Lab notes, our regular look at science in the news, we're talking about:
- The wisdom of crowds
- Spiky critters
- Subway mosquitos.
Joining us as always is Sanden Totten, KPCC's Senior Science reporter.
To hear the full segment, click the blue play button above.