World
Wafa Al-Udaini, Palestinian Journalist, Told Story of Gaza That Was Full of Life
Before the answers to life’s questions fit in our pocket, you used to have to turn a dial. If you were lucky, Phil Donahue would be on, ready to guide you toward enlightenment. In a stroke of deluxe good fortune, Dr. Ruth Westheimer might have stopped by to be the enlightenment. He was the search engine. She was a trusted result.
Donahue hailed from Cleveland. The windshield glasses, increasingly snowy thatch of hair, marble eyes, occasional pair of suspenders and obvious geniality said “card catalog,” “manager of the ’79 Reds,” “Stage Manager in a Chevy Motors production of ‘Our Town.’” Dr. Ruth was Donahue’s antonym, a step stool to his straight ladder. She kept her hair in a butterscotch helmet, fancied a uniform of jacket-blouse-skirt and came to our aid, via Germany, with a voice of crinkled tissue paper. Not even eight years separated them, yet so boyish was he and so seasoned was she that he read as her grandson. (She maybe reached his armpit.) Together and apart, they were public servants, American utilities.
Donahue was a journalist. His forum was the talk show, but some new strain in which the main attraction bypassed celebrities. People — every kind of them — lined up to witness other people being human, to experience Donahue’s radical conduit of edification, identification, curiosity, shock, wonder, outrage, surprise and dispute, all visible in the show’s televisual jackpot: cutaways to us, reacting, taking it all in, nodding, gasping. When a celebrity made it to the “Donahue” stage — Bill Clinton, say, La Toya Jackson, the Judds — they were expected to be human, too, to be accountable for their own humanity. From 1967 to 1996, for more than 6,000 episodes, he permitted us to be accountable to ourselves.
What Donahue knew was that we — women especially — were eager, desperate, to be understood, to learn and learn and learn. We call his job “host” when, really, the way he did it, running that microphone throughout the audience, racing up, down, around, sticking it here then here then over here, was closer to “switchboard operator.” It was “hot dog vendor at Madison Square Garden.” The man got his steps in. He let us do more of the questioning than he did — he would just edit, interpret, clarify. Egalitarianism ruled. Articulation, too. And anybody who needed the mic usually got it.
The show was about both what was on our mind and what had never once crossed it. Atheism. Naziism. Colorism. Childbirth. Prison. Rapists. AIDS. Chippendales, Chernobyl, Cher. Name a fetish, Phil Donahue tried to get to its bottom, sometimes by trying it himself. (Let us never forget the episode when he made his entrance in a long skirt, blouse and pussy bow for one of the show’s many cross-dressing studies.) Now’s the time to add that “Donahue” was a morning talk show. In Philadelphia, he arrived every weekday at 9 a.m., which meant that, in the summers, I could learn about compulsive shopping or shifting gender roles from the same kitchen TV set as my grandmother.
Sex and sexuality were the show’s prime subjects. There was so much that needed confessing, correction, corroboration, an ear lent. For that, Donahue needed an expert. Many times, the expert was Dr. Ruth, a godsend who didn’t land in this country until she was in her late 20s and didn’t land on television until she was in her 50s. Ruth Westheimer arrived to us from Germany, where she started as Karola Ruth Siegel and strapped in as her life corkscrewed, as it mocked fiction. Her family most likely perished in the Auschwitz death camps after she was whisked to the safety of a Swiss children’s home, where she was expected to clean. The twists include sniper training for one of the military outfits that would become the Israel Defense Forces, maiming by cannonball on her 20th birthday, doing research at a Planned Parenthood in Harlem, single motherhood and three husbands. She earned her doctorate from Columbia University, in education, and spent her postdoc researching human sexuality. And because her timing was perfect, she emerged at the dawn of the 1980s, an affable vector of an era’s craze for gnomic sages (Zelda Rubinstein, Linda Hunt, Yoda), masterpiece branding and the nasty.
Hers was the age of Mapplethorpe and Madonna, of Prince, Skinemax and 2 Live Crew. On her radio and television shows, in a raft of books and a Playgirl column and through her promiscuous approach to talk-show appearances, she aimed to purge sex of shame, to promote sexual literacy. Her feline accent and jolly innuendo pitched, among other stuff, the Honda Prelude, Pepsi, Sling TV and Herbal Essences. (“Hey!” she offers to a young elevator passenger. “This is where we get off.”) The instructions for Dr. Ruth’s Game of Good Sex says it can be played by up to four couples; the board is vulval and includes stops at “Yeast Infection,” “Chauvinism” and “Goose Him.”
On “Donahue,” she is direct, explicit, dispelling, humorous, clear, common-sensical, serious, vivid. A professional therapist. It was Donahue who handled the comedy. On one visit in 1987, a caller needs advice about a husband who cheats because he wants to have sex more often than she does. Dr. Ruth tells Donahue that if the caller wants to keep the marriage, and her husband wants to do it all the time, “then what she should do is to masturbate him. And it’s all right for him to masturbate himself also a few times.” The audience is hear-a-pin-drop rapt or maybe just squirmy. So Donahue reaches into his parochial-school-student war chest and pulls out the joke about the teacher who tells third-grade boys, “Don’t play with yourself, or you’ll go blind.” And Donahue raises his hand like a kid at the back of the classroom and asks, “Can I do it till I need glasses?” Westheimer giggles, maybe noticing the large pair on Donahue’s face. This was that day’s cold open.
They were children of salesmen, these two; his father was in the furniture business, hers sold what people in the garment industry call notions. They inherited a salesman’s facility for people and packaging. When a “Donahue” audience member asks Westheimer whether her own husband believes she practices what she preaches, she says this is why she never brings him anywhere. “He would tell you and Phil: ‘Do not listen to her. It’s all talk,’” which cracks the audience up.
But consider what she talked about — and consider how she said it. My favorite Dr. Ruth word was “pleasure.” From a German mouth, the word conveys what it lacks with an American tongue: sensual unfurling. She vowed to speak about sex to mass audiences using the proper terminology. Damn the euphemisms. People waited as long as a year and a half for tickets to “Donahue” so they could damn them, too. But of everything Westheimer pitched, of all the terms she precisely used, pleasure was her most cogent product, a gift she believed we could give to others, a gift she swore we owed ourselves.
I miss the talk show that Donahue reinvented. I miss the way Dr. Ruth talked about sex. It’s fitting somehow that this antidogmatic-yet-priestly Irish Catholic man would, on occasion, join forces with a carnal, lucky-to-be-alive Jew to urge the exploration of our bodies while demonstrating respect, civility, reciprocation. They believed in us, that we were all interesting, that we could be trustworthy panelists in the discourse of being alive. Trauma, triviality, tubal ligation: Let’s talk about it! Fear doesn’t seem to have occurred to them. Or if it did, it was never a deterrent. Boldly they went. — And with her encouragement, boldly we came.
Wesley Morris is a critic at large for The New York Times and a staff writer for the magazine.
A projectile launched into Israel from Yemen overnight into Saturday struck Tel Aviv, resulting in mild injuries to 16 people, according to Israeli officials.
Israel’s military said after sirens sounded in central Israel that the projectile landed in Tel Aviv’s southern Jaffa area following failed attempts to intercept.
“Following the sirens that sounded a short while ago in central Israel, one projectile launched from Yemen was identified and unsuccessful interception attempts were made,” the military said on Telegram.
ISRAELI AIRSTRIKES TARGET YEMEN’S HOUTHI-CONTROLLED CAPITAL OF SANAA, PORT CITY OF HODEIDA
Israeli emergency services work at the scene of a missile strike that, according to Israel’s military, was launched from Yemen and landed in Jaffa, south of Tel Aviv, Israel, December 21, 2024. (Reuters)
Iranian-backed Houthi rebels have repeatedly launched missile attacks from Yemen against Israel since the war in Gaza began in October of last year, but the incident overnight represents a rare instance in which Israel failed to intercept.
Israel has retaliated by striking multiple targets in areas in Yemen controlled by the Houthis.
HAMAS’ GAZA DEATH TOLL QUESTIONED AS NEW REPORT SAYS ITS LED TO ‘WIDESPREAD INACCURACIES AND DISTORTION’
People gather at the scene of a missile strike that, according to Israel’s military, was launched from Yemen and landed in Jaffa, south of Tel Aviv, Israel, December 21, 2024. (Reuters)
“A short time ago, reports were received of a weapon falling in one of the settlements within the Tel Aviv district,” Israeli police said Saturday.
On Thursday, the Israeli military said it intercepted a missile launched from Yemen, with shrapnel resulting in extensive damage to a school near Tel Aviv.
A 50-year-old man was arrested at the scene of the attack in Magdeburg on Friday evening, but as of Saturday, the reason behind his actions remained unclear.
At least five people, including a toddler, have been killed and dozens injured after a car ploughed into a crowd at a busy outdoor Christmas market in Magdeburg, a city in eastern Germany.
Authorities are describing the incident as a “deliberate attack.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser are at the scene of the attack in Magdeburg. Faeser has confirmed that federal police are actively supporting the investigation into the tragedy.
World
SZA Finally Releases Long-Delayed ‘Lana’ Album, Featuring Kendrick Lamar, Lil Yachty and Benny Blanco
SZA‘s long-awaited the deluxe edition of her Grammy-winning 2022 album “SOS,” which is titled “Lana,” has finally arrived. The album has been through a long series of false alarms — it seemed imminent back in February, when she released the song “Saturn” — and bears artwork similar to the insect-and-forest imagery featured during her tours last summer, but it’s finally here. Variety‘s full review of the album will appear this weekend.
The album features Kendrick Lamar on the track “30 for 30” (SZA appears on two songs on his recent “GNX” album) and production from Lil Yachty and Benny Blanco on one song each. Her collaborators on the other songs are largely “SOS” producers and writers like Michael Uzowuru, ThankGod4Cody, Rob Bisel, Carter Lang and others.
She previewed the album with a video for the song “Drive,” featuring Ben Stiller, on Thursday night. “Lana”‘s full tracklist appears below:
1 No More Hiding – produced by Michael Uzowuru
2 What Do I Do – produced by Benny Blanco, Carter Lang and ThankGod4Cody
3 30 for 30 feat. Kendrick Lamar – produced by J White
4 Diamond Boy (DTM) – produced by Carter, Scum, Solomonophonic, Declan and Michael Uzowuru
5 BMF – produced by Carter Lang, Blake Slatkin, Omer Fedi
6 Scorsese Baby Daddy – produced by Michael Uzowuru and Tyler Johnson
7 Love Me 4 Me – produced by Rob Bisel, Carter Lang and Nick Lee
8 Chill Baby – produced by Lil Yachty, Sad Pony, Cade, Calvin Dickinson, iseeyou and Julian Fried
9 My Turn – produced by ThankGod4Cody, Rob Bisel
10 Crybaby – produced by ThankGod4Cody, Carter Lang and Declan
11 Kitchen – produced by ThankGod4Cody
12 Get Behind Me (interlude) – produced by Michael Uzowuru
13 Drive – produced by ThankGod4Cody and Billy Lemon
14 Another Life – produced by Michael Uzowuru and Dylan Wiggins
15 Saturn – produced by Carter Lang, Rob Bisel, Solomonophonic and Monsune
SZA’s forthcoming stadium tour with Kendrick Lamar presents a prime opportunity to release new material — she’s been touring behind “SOS” since it was released two years ago.
The latest round of teasers began a week ago, on the two-year anniversary of “SOS,” with a short video trailer that included a snippet of one of the album’s tracks. The video depicts SZA in a nature setting, pulling down her baggy camo pants to pee by a creek. She looks directly into the camera before taking a tissue out of her pocket to wipe herself up as the words “Lana” appear across the screen. She lyrics to the song go, “You know we got a real history/That’s the reason I can’t choose me/You know that dick been good to me/You make it hard for me to choose me.”
While SZA has been talking about a deluxe edition of “SOS” since that album’s release, she explained the album and its to Variety in August of last year: “[‘Lana’] is outtakes [from ‘SOS’] and new stuff, too — I added a couple of songs. It’s like a whole new project. It’s called ‘Lana’ — my name but, it’s the first tattoo that I ever got, when I was 13. It was 10 bucks a letter and I only had 40, so that that became my nickname for no reason. ‘Lana’ is really just the B-side of SOS.”
The album seemed imminent in February when she released “Saturn,” but just a few weeks later, SZA became frustrated by fans leaking songs and posted that she would be “starting ‘Lana’ from scratch” because “y’all leaked three songs from the deluxe.” She continued, “At this point, y’all can keep the throwaways and leaks. I’ll be starting ‘Lana’ from scratch. Do not ask me about it again,” adding a few minutes later, “I’ll round up the leaks y’all already got and u can have those. Seems like a fair deal. ENJOY.” That tweet was deleted shortly afterward. In a subsequent series of tweets, she said the deluxe edition of SOS will now feature “the leaks and outtakes” and “Lana” will be its own album. “Lana deserves more time and music no one’s ever heard before,” she wrote. However, she seems to have reverted to her previous plan.
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