Welcome to RantCrush Top 5, where we take you through today’s top five controversial stories in the world of law and policy. Who’s ranting and raving right now? Check it out below:

Trump’s Ultimatum: Approve the New Health Bill or We’ll Stick with Obamacare

Donald Trump yesterday posed an ultimatum for House Republicans–approve the new healthcare bill, or he will leave Obamacare in place as it is. The vote on the new American Health Care Act was supposed to take place yesterday but was delayed, as too many Republicans had said they would vote against the bill. In a closed-door meeting last night, Trump said he wants the House to vote on the bill this afternoon whether it has enough votes to pass or not–he’s apparently tired of negotiating. If the bill doesn’t pass, Trump said he would move on to other issues, despite touting an Obamacare repeal as a priority throughout his campaign.

The president and VP Mike Pence held a meeting with the extremely conservative House Freedom Caucus yesterday afternoon to discuss the bill. A photo from the meeting circulated on social media and was heavily slammed. One of the main topics of conversation was whether to get rid of essential health benefits regulations, which require insurance plans to cover pregnancy and maternity services. But…notice anything missing from this photo?

Here’s the picture of the leaders negotiating away birth control, maternity care & abortion. Notice anything? #ProtectOurCare

(h/t @Emmya2) pic.twitter.com/X1dYUSa7nO

— Planned Parenthood (@PPact) March 23, 2017

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post RantCrush Top 5: March 24, 2017 appeared first on Law Street.

Season four of “The Mindy Project” featured Mindy Lahiri battling her traditional fiancé (Danny Castellano) to continue working as an OBGYN rather than becoming a stay at home mother. In the United States, stay at home mothers are still far more common than stay at home fathers–so the couples’ fight, although fictional, reflected our national gender expectations.

In the second-to-last episode Mindy finally says the things to Danny that had probably come to the wealthy, New York doctor’s mind the minute she had first heard of his desire for her to give up her career and her new fertility clinic.

Here is an excerpt from the climactic argument:

Danny: Oh, yeah, right, right, your career.  You’re too busy getting half of Manhattan knocked up, and Leo, he’s just out there by himself alone, playing pat-a-cake against a wall while his Mom’s working?…
Mindy: Every time that you disagree with something that I do, it’s a referendum on my character. If I want to go to work, it means I’m a bad mother. If I want to have a second glass of wine, it means I’m out of control.…In your eyes every single thing I do is more evidence that I’m a bad person.
Danny: You’re not a bad person. You want me to help you make good decisions, don’t you?
Mindy: Yeah, I thought I made good decisions, and now you’re just making all the decisions for me.
Danny: So what, if it’s the right decision?…You are an amazing mom…Why not do it again?
Mindy: I’m also a good doctor. I don’t want to have to give up any more to have more kids.
Danny: That’s selfish.

And don’t worry, the fight does not end there. Mindy makes clear, in no uncertain terms, that her desire to keep her career, which she has invested at least 11 years of her life just to be trained in, does not make her selfish. At last she stands up for herself. After Danny’s season-long agonizingly belittling utterances, to the mother of his child, Mindy’s rational, valid points are more than welcome. She even throws in some impressive diction (i.e. “referendum”). But the one thing Mindy doesn’t say to her partner is: Why don’t you be the stay at home parent?

The season finale takes viewers back to Mindy and Danny’s introduction. Mindy is able to perform a difficult delivery that Danny had scheduled as a C-section. The plot suggests Mindy is the better doctor because she performed a difficult maneuver so the patient could have her preferred natural birth plan, instead of Danny’s preferred C-section plan. So, from a logistical stand point, why should the better doctor stop working just because she is a mother?

Working moms are nothing new to American television or American reality. In 2012, 29 percent of mothers, with underage children, stayed at home and did not work. Meaning that, in the United States, working mothers are the norm. But despite the power of those numbers, 51 percent of participants in a 2013 Pew Research Center survey said children were better off if they had mothers who stayed at home rather than worked, while only 8 percent said the same about fathers.

So, in 2015, is it too radical to suggest, on television or in reality, that the man occupy the domestic sphere? Too radical for even Mindy to utter? Apparently so.

Ruby Hutson-Ellenberg

Ruby Hutson-Ellenberg is a 2016 Hunter College graduate, where she majored in English with a concentration in Creative Writing. As a native New Yorker, Ruby loves going to the theater and writing plays, which have been particularly well received by her parents. Contact Ruby at staff@LawStreetMedia.com

The post What’s Wrong With a Mr. Mom? “The Mindy Project” Explores the Working Mom’s Conundrum appeared first on Law Street.

With the success of recent television shows like ABC’s “How to Get Away with Murder” and “Black-ish,” many in the industry are starting to reevaluate their positions on race in television. The “old guard” of television often said that the American people wouldn’t watch a television show that heavily featured characters who weren’t white — often relegating anyone who doesn’t fit into that box to a life of being the sidekick, or worse yet, losing all sense of identity and being whitewashed.

Characters on television shows need to be interesting, developed, and sympathetic. The diversity of a character does not only fall in ethnic background, but it is certainly a way to give that character a deeper history. Still — as someone who regularly watches television it is clear that on-screen diversity on screen is growing, especially when you consider shows like “Scandal”, “Glee”, “Grey’s Anatomy,” and “Orange is the New Black”. It is pretty much expected now for a show to have one character who doesn’t fall into the cis-gendered straight white category.

And we are noticing — think back to all of the press and negative coverage that “Girls” received (and still receives) because of its lack of ethnic diversity. But “Girls” is just one in a long line of history.

Still, one must consider some of the most popular television shows in the last two decades. These shows, the ones that get the push from the individual stations and the media, are still white. “Seinfeld,” “Friends,” “Will & Grace,” “How I Met Your Mother,” and “Sex and the City” were all the most popular shows when they were airing, and they all featured white friends in New York City.

But why is this still happening when, according to Nielsen, white people don’t even make up the majority of the viewing audience?

“It’s not only that the African-American audience watches more TV, but it’s substantially more — two hours over other groups,” Ron Simon, head curator at the Paley Center for Media, told theGrio in an interview. “It’s known in the industry, but it certainly hasn’t gotten the attention I think that it deserves.”

Race and Watching Habits

Race is a social construct — that is the first thing we need to realize if we are going to discuss race at all. It is a way to categorize people into neat groups.

Except those groups aren’t so neat anymore.

Here are some pretty startling statistics about race and television in the United States:

This is a problem. When you look at the statistics, stations like Mundo, which focuses on the Latino community, or BET, which focuses on the black community, sometimes overtake shows on mainstream networks that are fledgling. According to the report, African Americans watch 37 percent more television than other demographics, which means that they are watching shows that don’t always represent them in the best light. Or worse — they are watching shows that don’t represent them at all.

Whitewashing

Whitewashing happens when an actor or actress is completely stripped of his or her ethnic qualities and either declared or assumed white by the writers and viewers of the show. Whitewashing is a dangerous happenstance because it not only eliminates the ethnic identity of the actors, but it also impacts the fans of the show. As we become more and more connected to our television shows through social media, and we know more and more about the actors, it seems harmful to completely remove their cultures. However, what about the people who don’t follow the actors and know their backstories — they simply never realize that they are watching someone who isn’t just white.

“Vaguely Eurasian”

One of the better shows on television when it comes to portraying diversity is Fox’s “Glee.” The show has been groundbreaking (though sometimes problematic) in giving light to all different types of characters. There’s no doubt that Kurt Hummel will go down as one of the revolutionary LGBT characters on television. But what about his boyfriend? Darren Criss, the actor who plays Blaine Anderson, is half Irish from his father and Filipino from his mother. Early in his tenure on the show, he is referred to as “Vaguely-Eurasian” by another character. Vaguely-Eurasian. It seems like a slap in the face because Darren Criss is clearly part Filipino. He has almond eyes with extravagant lashes, medium gold toned skin, and thick black curls. Many just assumed his character had the same history that he did.

Until the next season, when they cast Matt Bomer as his brother. Matt Bomer is a fantastic actor, but he is English mixed with Welsh, Scottish, and German. Now this wouldn’t be a problem if the show had given context for his family, but they haven’t. One cannot assume that there was a remarriage or they are step brothers. They are called brothers in canon, so that is what the viewer must take them to be. Could it possibly be that Fox didn’t want to push the boundaries by showing a couple that was gay AND two different races? Not so fast — another couple on the show, Brittany and Santana, fit that bill. So why whitewash Blaine Anderson? Is it because Darren Criss could pass as white? Is it because Darren Criss is the heartthrob of the show, and the heartthrob couldn’t possibly be anything other than white? Is it a push from Fox? Or are they not whitewashing him, just not talking about it? Glee isn’t the only show that does it, and it isn’t always a problem. But there is the question: why did they choose to whitewash him on a show where diversity is celebrated?

Awards and the Changing Times

The Emmy Awards are always a point of contention for viewers of television shows. The same complaints always arise during nominations — “why wasn’t [insert name here] nominated?” or, “Wow! [insert name here] was snubbed!”

One of the biggest snubs of the 2014 Emmys was of sitcom actress Mindy Kaling.

Kaling was a surefire nomination for her show “The Mindy Project” because she had been tapped to announce the nominees. When it came time to announce the category she was supposed to be nominated in, her name was nowhere to be found.

Is this a case of racism on television, or were there just more worthy nominees?

While we can’t get into the mind of the voters it is important to note that there has been only one non-white woman who has won an Emmy for acting in a leading comedic role: America Ferrera as Ugly Betty.

In fact, 2013 was the first time ever an African American woman won an Emmy for Best Actress in a Drama: Kerry Washington for “Scandal.”

Why don’t we have more diversity on TV?

Could the lack of diversity on television be caused by a lack of diversity among its writers? That is certainly a possibility. Shonda Rhimes is one of the only black female writers to get a television show of her own, and she now has three: “Grey’s Anatomy”, “Scandal,” and “How to Get Away With Murder” – all of which have strong, diverse characters.

So what are we to do to encourage more representation on television? Part of it is up to the viewer: demand it. Don’t watch shows that feature people of color in supporting roles that are degrading. Tweet about it to the companies, the actors, and the writers. Support shows that do provide a realistic depiction of diversity.

We need to also encourage more children of color to go into the arts, whether it be acting, writing, or directing.

The steps aren’t going to happen overnight, sadly, and the momentum is shifting — we just need to continue pushing.

Resources

Primary 

Critical Media Project

Center for Media Literacy: Does TV Shape Ethnic Images?

Additional

Salon: Whitewashed TV Isn’t Just Racist. It’s Boring! 

The New York Times: Minorities in Movies and Television

Grio: Nielsen Report Confirms Blacks Watch More TV Than Any Other Group

Hollywood Reporter: The Emmy’s Rocky Race Relations

Lee & Low Books: Where’s the Diversity? A Look at the Emmy Awards and TV 

San Jose Mercury News: Fall TV 2014: Diversity, is all the Rage–Finally

Noel Diem

Law Street contributor Noel Diem is an editor and aspiring author based in Reading, Pennsylvania. She is an alum of Albright College where she studied English and Secondary Education. In her spare time she enjoys traveling, theater, fashion, and literature. Contact Noel at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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