Rufus Wainwright

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After writing an opera, recreating Judy Garland’s classic Carnegie Hall show and performing one concert tour dressed, in his words, as a crazed feathered ghost, Rufus Wainwright is edging toward pop’s mainstream.
The experimental singer-songwriter has teamed with popular British DJ and music producer Mark Ronson, who helped create Amy Winehouse’s “Back to Black,” for what is being touted as Wainwright’s most commercial album yet, “Out of the Game,” released in the United States on Tuesday.
“I definitely have the intention of creating something slightly more commercially viable than opera for this next album,” Wainwright told Reuters, poking fun at his production, “Prima Donna,” as well as his piano album “Songs for Lulu” – the record he performed on tour in a 17-foot-long feathered cape.
And before those CDs came his first live album based on his interpretation of Garland’s famous, 1961 Carnegie Hall concert.
Wainwright’s mix of styles has been applauded by many critics and earned him a Grammy nomination. Yet, despite having fans worldwide and being labeled as one of his generation’s top songwriters, some of his albums haven’t sold very well.
“I was pretty on the margins of what is usually accepted by the mainstream, and I felt, ‘Let’s try the mainstream. We tried this other stuff, so let’s try this,’” he said.
So far, his collaboration with Ronson, whom the eclectic singer called “the consummate producer,” has worked. “Out of the Game” debuted at No. 5 in Britain after its release a week ago.
But longtime fans of Wainwright, whose father is singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III and who grew up with his folk singer mother, Kate McGarrigle, in Montreal, need not despair that this new album will be unrecognizable, the singer said.
“It does have that intention, but I don’t think I necessarily threw the baby out with the bath water, either. There is still a lot of old Rufus in there,” he said. “It is a journey into a more upbeat environment.”
Well known for being candid early in his career about his gay life and about his former drug addiction, Wainwright’s new album reflects more recent events including plans to marry German arts administrator Jorn Weisbrodt, the death of his mother and a baby girl he conceived with Leonard Cohen’s daughter and his friend, Lorca Cohen.
In the song “Montauk,” – the Long Island, New York, beach town where Wainwright, now 38, often stays – the singer with the dreamy tenor addresses his new daughter, “one day you will come to Montauk/and see your dad wearing a kimono/and see your other dad pruning roses/hope you won’t turn around and go.”
“I may be a little more interested in the mainstream but really, the core of it is because I have had such an intense adult-filled life, losing my mother two years ago and having a child recently and being in a relationship, there have been a lot of very grown-up situations, for better or for worse,” he said.
After all that, his new songs reflected a need to be “silly and young still,” without taking away from his core appeal to the “dispossessed” listener Wainwright describes as, “someone who senses the tragic nature of our world but also appreciates the romance and the beauty and is also positive in a weird way.”
“I have always been very open and very honest and very real for better or for worse,” he said. “I wish sometimes I could be more fabricated and constructed. But I always had to be myself, and I think people have appreciated that over the years and have stayed with me. But it’s been a long burn.”
The sound of his new album harks to the late 1970s recalling an Elton John or Fleetwood Mac, a time Wainwright fondly recalls as when “bands still played together in the studio at the same time.”
“I would also argue in a sense that my voice probably relates closest to that era,” he said. “I am not a jazz singer, I am not a doo-wop singer, I am not a punk rock singer, I am this odd hybrid of a lot of different influences. And that period in music, especially in songwriting … was rich.”
The album’s title song, “Out of the Game,” however, tackles modern times and is a reaction to the Internet’s ability to propel sudden fame like never before on sites such as YouTube.
“I have had to work at it for long time to create this artistic persona, and then I see these kids overnight getting so much attention for such stupid stuff,” he said. “It’s how ephemeral and unfounded it is.”
In May, Wainwright plans to play several tribute concerts to his mother with Nora Jones and various other artists, and two years after her death, he is still inspired by her and considers her “one of the great songwriters.”
from Reuters
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OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA – Oakland police are investigating the shooting death of a 37-year-old transgender woman in downtown Oakland early Sunday morning.
According to press reports, the woman, who has only been identified by friends and family as Brandy, was walking near 13th and Franklin streets at about 6 a.m. when she was shot in front of the Golden Lotus Cafe. Police say she was involved in some type of altercation before the shooting.
Community organizations have said they believe the shooting was motivated by hate. According to Oakland Occupy Patriarchy, a branch of Occupy Oakland, Brandy was shot by a man who had “become enraged and shot her when he realized she was trans.”
We put in a call to the Oakland Police Department to confirm these details. We will tell you more when we know more.
Meanwhile, the community organized an emergency vigil for the victim on Sunday night at the same location where she was shot.
Holly Fogleboch, an Oakland resident, says she came across the vigil last night, and tells SF Weekly that it was a tearful and raw gathering.”This morning I can’t shake the pain of what I saw, not for me but for that family and for those friends and for the people who make their living on those corners and will be out there again tonight while Brandi’s [sic] blood is still drying on the pavement,” Fogleboch wrote in an e-mail.
from The San Francisco Weekly

Dharun Ravi

A former Rutgers University student who was found guilty of hate crimes for using a webcam to view his roommate kissing another man has asked a judge to overturn the jury’s conviction.
In a legal filing Tuesday, Dharun Ravi’s lawyers said the jury convicted him in March despite evidence that he was not guilty of invading the privacy or intimidating roommate Tyler Clementi, who killed himself days after the webcam was used.
And on the most disputed and serious charges – bias intimidation – the lawyers say the law was misused. On some of those counts, the jury found that Ravi did not mean to intimidate Clementi or the other man, but that Clementi reasonably believed he did. Jurors said as much both in their findings in court and in comments afterward to journalists. Copies of some news articles were included with the brief to support Ravi’s lawyers’ position.
“To criminalize a defendant for a victim’s mistaken belief about the defendant’s motive would turn the bias intimidation statute into a mockery of itself,” wrote the lawyers, Steven Altman and Philip Nettl. It is standard practice for lawyers to ask for a judge to overturn a conviction after a jury delivers it. In Ravi’s case, the request is for the judge to acquit Ravi entirely – or at least grant him a new trial.
The lawyers said that the jury was wrong on invasion of privacy charges because the snippets video that Ravi and others saw did not show sexual acts or nudity.
Prosecutors had no immediate comment on the court filing. But they’re sure to have more to say in coming weeks as they file papers to recommend a sentence for Ravi.
He could face 10 years in prison when he’s sentenced on May 21. And because he’s a citizen of India, where he was born, Ravi could also be deported eventually because of the conviction.
The case has enflamed passions.
Almost immediately after his suicide in September 2010, Clementi came to be seen as a symbol of the bullying young gays can face. President Barack Obama spoke out about the case and talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres made it a key cause of hers.
Some have come to see Ravi as a victim of an overzealous legal system, a man convicted not so much for what he did but what happened afterward. Last month, former Gov. Jim McGreevey, who left office in 2004 after announcing he was gay, wrote an opinion piece in The Star-Ledger newspaper arguing against a prison sentence for him.
While there is much dispute in court and elsewhere about how the law should be applied in the case, there is little disagreement over the facts.
Jurors heard that Clementi and Ravi, both 18-year-old freshmen from well-off New Jersey suburbs who were assigned at random to be roommates, did not speak much.
A few weeks into the school year, Clementi asked Ravi for the room when he was planning to have over a man he’d met online. Jurors heard that Ravi was nervous about the iPad he’d left in their room and wondered what was going on, so he and a friend turned on his webcam and saw seconds of, as Ravi described in a tweet, his roommate “making out with a dude.”
Two nights later, when Clementi asked for privacy again, Ravi obliged. This time, he told friends through text messages, tweets and in-person conversations how they could connect with his webcam to see what happened between Clementi and his guest, who testified at the trial but was only identified by the initials M.B. because he’s considered the victim of a sex crime.
But the webcam was off that night.
By the time of that second rendezvous, Clementi had learned that Ravi had watched him and he initiated a request for a room change.
The next night, Clementi, a violinist, made his way to the George Washington Bridge and jumped to his death, leaving behind a final Facebook status: “jumping off the GW bridge, sorry.”
Jurors found Ravi guilty of all 15 counts he faced, including bias intimidation, invasion of privacy and tampering with evidence and a witness to try to cover up the other crimes.
from The Associated Press
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Robert Champion

ORLANDO, FLORIDA – When prosecutors announce criminal charges Wednesday in the hazing death of a Florida A&M University band member, they will embark on a legal chess game involving multiple defendants who require different approaches for winning convictions, experts say.
Prosecutors have prepared at least five separate cases against the suspects who contributed to 26-year-old Robert Champion’s death aboard a chartered bus parked outside an Orlando hotel last November.
Detectives said Champion was hazed by other band members following a performance against a rival school and witnesses told emergency dispatchers Champion was vomiting before he was found unresponsive aboard the bus.
The medical examiner’s office in Orlando ruled that Champion had bruises to his chest, arms, shoulder and back and internal bleeding that caused him to go into shock, which killed him.
Prosecutors sometime cluster defendants by case, meaning the number of defendants could be higher than five, said Bob Dekle, a University of Florida law professor. That could make the prosecution more complicated as potential witnesses may be defendants who can invoke their Fifth Amendment right not to testify for fear of incriminating themselves, he said.
“You lead with your best case and get a conviction, and that sometimes creates a domino effect on the willingness of others to go to trial,” Dekle said. “It’s a chess game.”
The charges range from misdemeanors to felonies, said Danielle Tavernier, a spokeswoman for the State Attorney’s Office in Orlando. She refused to specify the charges pending an announcement by prosecutors Wednesday.
Hazing that involves bodily harm is a third-degree felony in Florida, but legal experts said prosecutors also may file more serious charges like manslaughter and second-degree murder depending on whether it was obvious Champion was in distress while he was being hazed.
“I think it’s sure-fire that they are going to charge them with the hazing,” said Randy McClean, an Orlando-area defense attorney. “But if his injuries were so that when they were beating him, it became readily apparent that he was in real distress and they kept beating him, then I think they would have manslaughter, possibly second-degree murder.”
Florida’s hazing law was passed in 2005 following the death of another Florida college student. The law defines hazing as any act that endangers the health or safety of a student for the purpose of admission to a school group.
“I’ve never seen it personally used but this is the text book case for it,” McClean said.
If prosecutors aim for the more serious charges, they will have to prove either premeditation or recklessness, said Robert Jarvis, a law professor at Nova Southeastern University.
“I suspect the charge will be some level of manslaughter because this obviously was a hazing gone very, very wrong,” Jarvis said.
Prosecutors are better off charging the defendants separately, as opposed to charging them all together, because it will give them leverage to pressure those charged with less serious crimes to testify against those facing more serious charges, Jarvis said.
“Some of the defendants may have planned the hazing but weren’t actually at the hazing. Others may have planned the hazing but participated in it,” Jarvis said. “There are different actions that different defendants took.”
The pending charges will bring more scrutiny to a culture of hazing at FAMU and other schools. Champion’s death was ruled a homicide by medical examiners, and the case has jeopardized the future of FAMU’s legendary marching band and shaken the school’s Tallahassee campus.
Champion’s parents, Pam and Robert, believe the filing of charges is “bittersweet,” said their attorney, Christopher Chestnut.
“Obviously it’s comforting to know that someone will be held accountable for Robert’s murder, but it’s also disconcerting to think of the impact of the future of these students,” Chestnut said. “This is just unfortunate all the way around.”
Chestnut said family members are disappointed that authorities didn’t give them enough advance notice to travel from Georgia to Florida to attend a news conference Wednesday to announce the results of the investigation. But he said the family is also “thankful there is some movement on this case after five months of delay.”
Champion’s parents have sued the company that owns the bus where the hazing took place. In a civil lawsuit, Champion’s family alleges that the bus driver stood guard outside the bus while the hazing took place. The bus company owner initially said the bus driver was helping other band members with their equipment when the hazing took place.
Witnesses in the Champion case have told his parents he might have been targeted because he opposed the culture of hazing they say has long existed in the band, the parents’ attorney has said. It has also been suggested to them that Champion was targeted because he was gay and a candidate for chief drum major.
In a January interview with The Associated Press, Champion’s parents dismissed the notion that his sexual orientation brought on the attack, which was, to their knowledge, the first time he’d ever been hazed.
“The main reason that we heard is because he was against hazing, and he was totally against it,” Champion’s father, Robert Champion Sr. of Decatur, Ga., said in an interview.
FAMU has suspended the band and launched a task force to recommend steps it could take to curtail hazing.
Three FAMU band members were arrested in the Oct. 31 beating of a female band member whose thigh was broken.
Also Tuesday, a lawyer for two FAMU music professors who allegedly were present during the unrelated hazing of band fraternity pledges in early 2010 said they have been forced out.
FAMU spokeswoman Sharon Saunders said university officials haven’t been given details about possible criminal charges.
The ramifications of criminal charges extend beyond the defendants. The charges could inspire civil lawsuits, result in more shake-ups at the university and make parents think twice about sending their college-bound children to FAMU, Jarvis said.
“We could just be looking at the tip of the iceberg,” Jarvis said. “The criminal charges are the first of many, many shoes that will drop.”
from The Associated Press
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Richard Grenell

Richard Grenell, whom Mitt Romney chose last month as his presidential campaign’s national security and foreign policy spokesman, stepped down from his post Tuesday, suggesting that the conservative backlash over his sexuality prevented him from being effective in his role.
In a statement provided to The Washington Post, Grenell, who is openly gay, said: “While I welcomed the challenge to confront President Obama’s foreign policy failures and weak leadership on the world stage, my ability to speak clearly and forcefully on the issues has been greatly diminished by the hyper-partisan discussion of personal issues that sometimes comes from a presidential campaign.” He added: “I want to thank Governor Romney for his belief in me and my abilities and his clear message to me that being openly gay was a non-issue for him and his team.”
Widely known in conservative circles, Grenell was named President George W. Bush’s spokesman to the United Nations in 2001, and served as communications director under four U.S. ambassadors to the United Nations, including John R. Bolton, who is among his strongest supporters.
Grenell was a volunteer consultant to the Romney team before he was officially brought aboard, but the hiring was controversial from the start.
Shortly after Romney announced that Grenell would join his team, the former spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations was forced to remove entries from his Twitter account that some considered offensive. Grenell came under fire for a series of snarky tweets aimed at women, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; MSNBC talk show host Rachel Maddow; and Callista Gingrich, the wife of GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich.
The tweets included posts about Clinton’s appearance, Gingrich’s hair and Maddow’s lack of jewelry, but Grenell was forced to address complaints that his comments were sexist even before he moved into his new role.
And some longtime reporters openly complained about Grenell’s confrontational style, which sometimes included calls to editors and freezing reporters out of stories. Among Romney’s biggest champions in the twitterverse, Grenell often used his Twitter account to call out reporters and to criticize U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice.
But it was social conservatives who balked most over the choice.
Matthew J. Franck, director of the William E. and Carol G. Simon Center on Religion and the Constitution at the Witherspoon Institute, called Grenell a “loose cannon” with a passion for the “gay agenda.”
“My problem is that by his own description he is an ardent activist for same-sex marriage who went to go work for a candidate who wants to defeat same-sex marriage. It doesn’t look good to the people that Romney needs support from to have an advocate for same-sex marriage in such a high-profile position,” Franck said. “The Romney campaign needs to be unequivocally opposed to same-sex marriage and to appear to be. The campaign has remedied a problem that was bound to get worse.”
While discussions of foreign policy have been front and center in the campaign for the White House, Grenell has been largely absent.
The Romney team maintains that it was Grenell’s decision to leave his post.
“We are disappointed that Ric decided to resign from the campaign for his own personal reasons,” campaign manager Matt Rhoades said in a statement. “We wanted him to stay because he had superior qualifications for the position he was hired to fill.”
from The Washington Post
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