On October 17, 2018, one year after Downie's death, a previously unreleased studio recording of the song "Wait So Long" was played on K-Rock.

(meta data) TITLE: Hear Previously Unreleased Tragically Hip Song 'Wait So Long' - K-ROCK 105.7

# Hear Previously Unreleased Tragically Hip Song 'Wait So Long'

On Wednesday, October 17, 2018, as the country remembered Gord Downie following the one year anniversary of his passing, we played a song from a special package that was delivered earlier in the month.

Sideshow had received a package with no sender information and really no information outside of a note and CD saying it contained never-before-heard Tragically Hip Material.

We played the song 'Wait So Long' a couple of times on the 17th as a part of Gord FM.

You won't find that audio here, but there is a live recording you can find below.

The song is also listed on the Hip's official list of 61 unreleased songs.

Since Gord Downie's passing, the band has said that they have recorded material they plan to share.

Guitarist Rob Baker told the Toronto Star that at the time of Downie's passing, the band was in the middle of recording an album and that they have a "double album's worth of unreleased material."

Filed under: Gord Downie, The Hip, The Tragically Hip

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History.:2018–present: Activity following Downie's death.

He stated "When I say The Tragically Hip doesn't exist as a performing unit anymore because a key member is gone, I think [fans] understand that. We wouldn't be The Hip without Gord [...] The Hip has played their last note." Baker also revealed that Downie had encouraged the group to audition replacement vocalists, but the other members did not seriously consider the idea. With the legalization of marijuana in Canada, the remaining band members became investment partners in Newstrike, a cannabis company which has named several of its products after Tragically Hip songs.
 In a July 2018 interview with the "Toronto Sun", Baker confirmed that at least three albums' worth of unreleased material was recorded with Downie before his death, but stated that the band had yet to decide how it would be released.
 On October 11, 2018, six days before the one-year anniversary of Downie's death, Fay and Baker joined Choir! Choir! Choir! at Yonge-Dundas Square for a live performance of the Tragically Hip's "Grace, Too".


K-Rock is a radio station in the band's hometown of Kingston.

(meta data) TITLE: Hear Previously Unreleased Tragically Hip Song 'Wait So Long' - K-ROCK 105.7

# Hear Previously Unreleased Tragically Hip Song 'Wait So Long'

On Wednesday, October 17, 2018, as the country remembered Gord Downie following the one year anniversary of his passing, we played a song from a special package that was delivered earlier in the month.

Sideshow had received a package with no sender information and really no information outside of a note and CD saying it contained never-before-heard Tragically Hip Material.

We played the song 'Wait So Long' a couple of times on the 17th as a part of Gord FM.

You won't find that audio here, but there is a live recording you can find below.

The song is also listed on the Hip's official list of 61 unreleased songs.

Since Gord Downie's passing, the band has said that they have recorded material they plan to share.

Guitarist Rob Baker told the Toronto Star that at the time of Downie's passing, the band was in the middle of recording an album and that they have a "double album's worth of unreleased material."

Filed under: Gord Downie, The Hip, The Tragically Hip

Your existing password has not been changed.

## We'll send you a link to create a new password.

Daily updates for Weather ,News, Sports, Entertainment.

Weekly updates for ongoing contests, and upcoming events.

Send me promotions ,surveys and info from K-Rock 105.7 and other Rogers brands.

Send me alerts ,event notifications and special deals or information from our carefully screened partners that may be of interest to me.

I understand that I can withdraw my consent at any time

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He stated "When I say The Tragically Hip doesn't exist as a performing unit anymore because a key member is gone, I think [fans] understand that. We wouldn't be The Hip without Gord [...] The Hip has played their last note." Baker also revealed that Downie had encouraged the group to audition replacement vocalists, but the other members did not seriously consider the idea. With the legalization of marijuana in Canada, the remaining band members became investment partners in Newstrike, a cannabis company which has named several of its products after Tragically Hip songs.
 In a July 2018 interview with the "Toronto Sun", Baker confirmed that at least three albums' worth of unreleased material was recorded with Downie before his death, but stated that the band had yet to decide how it would be released.
 On October 11, 2018, six days before the one-year anniversary of Downie's death, Fay and Baker joined Choir! Choir! Choir! at Yonge-Dundas Square for a live performance of the Tragically Hip's "Grace, Too". On October 17, 2018, one year after Downie's death, a previously unreleased studio recording of the song "Wait So Long" was played on K-Rock.


He was held without a sack in the first two weeks.

(meta data) TITLE: J.J. Watt has historic 3-sack day

On Sunday, J.J. Watt ended his sack drought with three sacks in the Texans 27-22 loss to the New York Giants.

The three-time AP Defensive Player of the Year also added four tackles for loss, four quarterback hits and one forced fumble in a historic performance.

#Texans DE @JJWatt became the 1st player in NFL history with at least 8 total tackles, 3.0 sacks, 4 tackles for loss, 4 quarterback hits & 1 forced fumble in 2 career games (Wk 15 of 2012 vs. IND).

Those totals have been reached three times in NFL history & Watt has done it twice pic.twitter.com/bynaLNdv9E

— Texans PR (@TexansPR) September 23, 2018

"I said I've been knocking the rust off since the first half of the first game, and it's been going little by little," Watt said.

"Obviously, hopefully continues that way.

It's good to finally end such a long drought, and do it in that type of way.

But like I said, personal stats don't matter at all in a loss."

The star defensive end, coming off back-to-back seasons cut short by injury, picked up his first sack of 2018 when he brought down Eli Manning in the second quarter of Sunday's game against the Giants.

Watt's strip sack resulted in a loss of six yards on third down for New York.

Watt, who had not recorded a sack since Week 2 of 2016 against Kansas City, also recorded five tackles (two solo), two quarterback hits and one forced fumble before halftime.

"He did a great job, and I think he was banged up during the game," head coach Bill O'Brien said.

He got the crowd going and he was – like I said since the beginning when he came back this year, he's been playing at a high level."

Watt sacked Manning for a loss of 10 yards in the third quarter and again for a loss of nine yards in the fourth quarter for his third sack of the game.

Sunday's performance was Watt's first multi-sack game since Week 17 of the 2015 season (3.0 vs. Jacksonville).

Since entering the league in 2011, Watt leads the NFL in multi-sack games (22), quarterback hits (225) and tackles for loss (142) through 91 games played.

Check out the best photos as the Houston Texans took on the New York Giants for Week 3 of the 2018 season.

### Texans sign free agent T Christian DiLauro

The Houston Texans made a roster move on Sunday.

### Vandermeer's View: Perplexing night in the Metroplex

The Texans need to shake off their 34-0 preseason loss quickly and completely.

### Rapid Reaction: Texans fall 34-0 in Dallas

The Houston Texans discussed their preseason loss to the Dallas Cowboys on Saturday night at AT&T Stadium.

RB Lamar Miller was hurt in Saturday night's preseason contest at Dallas.

Tickets iconAdd to calendar iconNFC icon

Watt returned from his injury in time for the season opener against the New England Patriots.


He collected three sacks and eight combined tackles in the Week 3 27-22 defeat against the New York Giants.

(meta data) TITLE: J.J. Watt has historic 3-sack day

On Sunday, J.J. Watt ended his sack drought with three sacks in the Texans 27-22 loss to the New York Giants.

The three-time AP Defensive Player of the Year also added four tackles for loss, four quarterback hits and one forced fumble in a historic performance.

#Texans DE @JJWatt became the 1st player in NFL history with at least 8 total tackles, 3.0 sacks, 4 tackles for loss, 4 quarterback hits & 1 forced fumble in 2 career games (Wk 15 of 2012 vs. IND).

Those totals have been reached three times in NFL history & Watt has done it twice pic.twitter.com/bynaLNdv9E

— Texans PR (@TexansPR) September 23, 2018

"I said I've been knocking the rust off since the first half of the first game, and it's been going little by little," Watt said.

"Obviously, hopefully continues that way.

It's good to finally end such a long drought, and do it in that type of way.

But like I said, personal stats don't matter at all in a loss."

The star defensive end, coming off back-to-back seasons cut short by injury, picked up his first sack of 2018 when he brought down Eli Manning in the second quarter of Sunday's game against the Giants.

Watt's strip sack resulted in a loss of six yards on third down for New York.

Watt, who had not recorded a sack since Week 2 of 2016 against Kansas City, also recorded five tackles (two solo), two quarterback hits and one forced fumble before halftime.

"He did a great job, and I think he was banged up during the game," head coach Bill O'Brien said.

He got the crowd going and he was – like I said since the beginning when he came back this year, he's been playing at a high level."

Watt sacked Manning for a loss of 10 yards in the third quarter and again for a loss of nine yards in the fourth quarter for his third sack of the game.

Sunday's performance was Watt's first multi-sack game since Week 17 of the 2015 season (3.0 vs. Jacksonville).

Since entering the league in 2011, Watt leads the NFL in multi-sack games (22), quarterback hits (225) and tackles for loss (142) through 91 games played.

Check out the best photos as the Houston Texans took on the New York Giants for Week 3 of the 2018 season.

### Texans sign free agent T Christian DiLauro

The Houston Texans made a roster move on Sunday.

### Vandermeer's View: Perplexing night in the Metroplex

The Texans need to shake off their 34-0 preseason loss quickly and completely.

### Rapid Reaction: Texans fall 34-0 in Dallas

The Houston Texans discussed their preseason loss to the Dallas Cowboys on Saturday night at AT&T Stadium.

RB Lamar Miller was hurt in Saturday night's preseason contest at Dallas.

Tickets iconAdd to calendar iconNFC icon

Watt returned from his injury in time for the season opener against the New England Patriots. He was held without a sack in the first two weeks.


It was his first sacks since Week 2 of 2016.

(meta data) TITLE: J.J. Watt has historic 3-sack day

On Sunday, J.J. Watt ended his sack drought with three sacks in the Texans 27-22 loss to the New York Giants.

The three-time AP Defensive Player of the Year also added four tackles for loss, four quarterback hits and one forced fumble in a historic performance.

#Texans DE @JJWatt became the 1st player in NFL history with at least 8 total tackles, 3.0 sacks, 4 tackles for loss, 4 quarterback hits & 1 forced fumble in 2 career games (Wk 15 of 2012 vs. IND).

Those totals have been reached three times in NFL history & Watt has done it twice pic.twitter.com/bynaLNdv9E

— Texans PR (@TexansPR) September 23, 2018

"I said I've been knocking the rust off since the first half of the first game, and it's been going little by little," Watt said.

"Obviously, hopefully continues that way.

It's good to finally end such a long drought, and do it in that type of way.

But like I said, personal stats don't matter at all in a loss."

The star defensive end, coming off back-to-back seasons cut short by injury, picked up his first sack of 2018 when he brought down Eli Manning in the second quarter of Sunday's game against the Giants.

Watt's strip sack resulted in a loss of six yards on third down for New York.

Watt, who had not recorded a sack since Week 2 of 2016 against Kansas City, also recorded five tackles (two solo), two quarterback hits and one forced fumble before halftime.

"He did a great job, and I think he was banged up during the game," head coach Bill O'Brien said.

He got the crowd going and he was – like I said since the beginning when he came back this year, he's been playing at a high level."

Watt sacked Manning for a loss of 10 yards in the third quarter and again for a loss of nine yards in the fourth quarter for his third sack of the game.

Sunday's performance was Watt's first multi-sack game since Week 17 of the 2015 season (3.0 vs. Jacksonville).

Since entering the league in 2011, Watt leads the NFL in multi-sack games (22), quarterback hits (225) and tackles for loss (142) through 91 games played.

Check out the best photos as the Houston Texans took on the New York Giants for Week 3 of the 2018 season.

### Texans sign free agent T Christian DiLauro

The Houston Texans made a roster move on Sunday.

### Vandermeer's View: Perplexing night in the Metroplex

The Texans need to shake off their 34-0 preseason loss quickly and completely.

### Rapid Reaction: Texans fall 34-0 in Dallas

The Houston Texans discussed their preseason loss to the Dallas Cowboys on Saturday night at AT&T Stadium.

RB Lamar Miller was hurt in Saturday night's preseason contest at Dallas.

Tickets iconAdd to calendar iconNFC icon

Watt returned from his injury in time for the season opener against the New England Patriots. He was held without a sack in the first two weeks. He collected three sacks and eight combined tackles in the Week 3 27-22 defeat against the New York Giants.


"The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D'oh! of Homer" is not an official publication.

(meta data) TITLE: Word for Word/Deconstructing 'The Simpsons'; The Aristotelian Logic of Bart And Homer. Or Is It Platonic? - The New York Times

(meta data) PUBLISHED DATETIME: 2001-09-09

Skip to contentSkip to site indexWeek in ReviewLog InToday's PaperWeek in Review|Word for Word/Deconstructing 'The Simpsons'; The Aristotelian Logic of Bart And Homer.

# Word for Word/Deconstructing 'The Simpsons'; The Aristotelian Logic of Bart And Homer.

WHEN Fox Television and Matt Groening first introduced America to Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, Maggie and Santa's Little Helper on Dec. 17, 1989, few would have imagined the impact this lovably dysfunctional family from Springfield would have on popular culture.

''The Simpsons,'' with its clever writing and satirical attacks, has not only changed the way Americans view cartoons, but also the way they speak: the Oxford English Dictionary this year even added Homer's catch phrase ''D'oh'' (''expressing frustration at the realization that things have turned out badly or not as planned, or that one has just said or done something foolish'').

So it's no surprise that academia has turned its gaze to the phenomenon.

A new collection of essays called ''The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D'oh! of Homer'' (Open Court), edited by William Irwin, Mark T. Conard and Aeon J. Skoble, dissects the show's many cultural and political messages -- both liminal and subliminal.

Judge for yourself from the following excerpts.

Let's start with a look at the family patriarch, the subject of ''Homer and Aristotle,'' by Raja Halwani, assistant professor of philosophy at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago:

While he is not a paradigm of virtue, he certainly is not malicious.

The harshest reaction we can have towards him is pity.

There are at least two reasons for this.

The first reason is that Homer's upbringing leaves much to be desired.

To begin with, he grew up mostly in Springfield, a town whose inhabitants -- with the rare exception of Lisa -- have serious and severe character flaws, ranging from stupidity to malice, to being simply incompetent and clueless in the ways of the world (even Marge, who is a good candidate for being another exception to the inhabitants of Springfield, is very conventional and often lacks critical abilities). . . .

The second reason why our judgment of Homer's character is not harsh, even though he is not virtuous, is that he is not generally a malicious person.

He is selfish, he is a glutton, he is greedy and he can be quite dumb, but he is rarely one of those people who are envious of others and who wish them ill will.

It is true that he often acts with deliberate intent to harm some people, but we think that these people somehow are not worthy of better treatment.

Homer's wife isn't too shabby either, according to Gerald J. Erion of Medaille College in Buffalo and Joseph A. Zeccardi in an essay titled ''Marge's Moral Motivation'':

Marge typically follows the Aristotelian recipe for a happy, moral life, and with great success.

The good to which she looks in making her decisions (moral or otherwise) is the good of her family, and therefore herself.

She makes these decisions not because she hopes that they will be reciprocated, but because they are reciprocated by their very nature; what is good for them is good for her.

In Marge, we see that Aristotle's moral virtues can be successfully applied not just in the abstract, ivory towers of academia, but in the real, workaday cartoon world.

In ''Lisa and American Anti-Intellectualism,'' Aeon J. Skoble, visiting assistant professor of philosophy at the United States Military Academy at West Point, unravels the mixed messages of the Simpson's precocious older daughter:

American anti-intellectualism . . . is pervasive but not all encompassing.

As it does with many other aspects of modern society, ''The Simpsons'' often uses this theme as fodder for its satire.

In the Simpson family, only Lisa could really be described as an intellectual.

But her portrayal as such is not unequivocally flattering.

In contrast to her relentlessly ignorant father, she is often shown having the right answer to a problem or a more perceptive analysis of a situation. . . .

Although her wisdom is sometimes presented as valuable, other times it is presented as a case of being sanctimonious or condescending.

In Lisa's challenge to Springfield, the show calls attention to the cultural limitations of small-town America, but it also reminds us that intellectual disdain for the common man can be carried too far and that theory can all to easily lose touch with common sense.

Even the family's infant daughter comes up for scrutiny, in ''Why Maggie Matters: Sounds of Silence, East and West,'' by Eric Bronson of Berkeley College in New York City:

The infant, still too young to walk, protected her lollipop from falling into groping miserly hands.

After all, the gun did belong to Mr. Burns and only ended up in Maggie's hands due to his own carelessness.

Still, the two-part episode ends on an interrogative note.

Just what were the intentions of this young and seemingly innocent girl?

Could she knowingly commit such a crime?

The answers, or lack thereof, are less than comforting.

The camera zooms in on Maggie's mouth, her pacifier blocking any articulation or explanation as the credits begin to roll.

It seems as though we'll never know why Maggie shot the most powerful man in Springfield.

We'll never get the answers we want, unless of course, her stunted speech is actually all the answer we need. . . .

In ''Lisa's Wedding,'' Lisa glimpses into her future with the help of a carnival soothsayer.

She is about to be married to the man of her dreams, and at the wedding, Maggie, the grown teenager with the beautiful voice, is set to sing.

Just as she takes her first deep breath, however, Lisa calls off the wedding and Maggie symbolically closes her mouth.

Once again, family turmoil has drowned out her voice.

In a world of growing bureaucracy and information overload, we too run the danger of having our voices drowned out.

In the modern world, the great challenge of both the East and the West is figuring out how to critically respect each other's projects in a way that encourages all voices to be heard.

More than tolerant, we must be attentive.

Otherwise, more people, like Maggie Simpson, will feel left out of society and turn to more destructive means of communication.

Finally, there's Bart, who depending on one's point of view is either a superbrat or a Nietzschean superman.

From ''Thus Spake Bart: On Nietzsche and the Virtues of Being Bad,'' by Mark T. Conard:

You know the stories: he cut the head off the statue of Jebediah Springfield; he burned down the family Christmas tree; he shoplifted a copy of ''Bone storm''; he cheated on an I.Q. test and got himself placed in a genius school; he fooled the town into thinking there was a little boy trapped down a well, etc., etc., etc.

Bart Simpson isn't some lovable little scamp who always seems to find himself in trouble; he isn't a rebel with a heart of gold.

He's a wisecracking delinquent, a bad boy in bright blue pants, a spoiler, one of Satan's minions -- if you believe in that sort of thing.

You probably think it's his sister, Lisa, who's the virtuous one.

She's bright, talented, very logical, rational, sensitive.

She has principles: she fights injustice as she sees it; she's a vegetarian because she believes in animal rights; she stands up against greedy Mr. Burns's excesses; and she has love and compassion for her friends and family, and indeed for all those who are less fortunate

You'd probably say that she is the only admirable character on the show.

Well, let me tell you about another bad boy, the bad boy of philosophy (what -- you didn't think philosophy had bad boys?).

His name was Friedrich Nietzsche, and -- philosophically -- he's as bad as they come, honey.

He too was a kind of wisecracking philosophical delinquent.

-- hell, he wrote a book called ''The Antichrist''!

He seemed to hate everything, every ideal that most people love and hold dear to themselves -- more, he would tear down those ideals by cleverly showing how they were interconnected with things that those same people hate.

He rebuked religion, he laughed at pity.

He called Socrates a buffoon who got himself taken seriously. . . .

Now, while Nietzsche rejected and even laughed at the traditional ideal, the so-called ''good person,'' the compassionate, religiously virtuous person, he forged something of his own ideal: the free spirit; the person who rejects traditional morality, traditional virtues; the person who embraces the chaos of the world and gives style to his character.

Could it be that from a Nietzschean perspective we've been admiring the wrong character?

Might Lisa Simpson be part of what Nietzsche calls world-slandering weariness, decadence, slave morality, resentment?

Sure, it's fun to be bad, but might there be something healthy and life-affirming, something philosophically important about it?

Could Bart Simpson be, in the end, the Nietzschean ideal?

We are continually improving the quality of our text archives.

Please send feedback, error reports, and suggestions to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section 4, Page 7 of the National edition with the headline: Word for Word/Deconstructing 'The Simpsons'; The Aristotelian Logic of Bart And Homer.

Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

Reception and cultural influence.:Merchandising.

Alongside T-shirts, Bart has been included in various other "The Simpsons"-related merchandise, including air fresheners, baseball caps, bumper stickers, cardboard standups, refrigerator magnets, key rings, buttons, dolls, posters, figurines, clocks, soapstone carvings, Chia Pets, bowling balls and boxer shorts. "The Bart Book", a book about Bart's personality and attributes, was released in 2004. Other books include "Bart Simpson's Guide to Life".


"The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D'oh! of Homer" includes a chapter analyzing Bart's character.

(meta data) TITLE: Word for Word/Deconstructing 'The Simpsons'; The Aristotelian Logic of Bart And Homer. Or Is It Platonic? - The New York Times

(meta data) PUBLISHED DATETIME: 2001-09-09

Skip to contentSkip to site indexWeek in ReviewLog InToday's PaperWeek in Review|Word for Word/Deconstructing 'The Simpsons'; The Aristotelian Logic of Bart And Homer.

# Word for Word/Deconstructing 'The Simpsons'; The Aristotelian Logic of Bart And Homer.

WHEN Fox Television and Matt Groening first introduced America to Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, Maggie and Santa's Little Helper on Dec. 17, 1989, few would have imagined the impact this lovably dysfunctional family from Springfield would have on popular culture.

''The Simpsons,'' with its clever writing and satirical attacks, has not only changed the way Americans view cartoons, but also the way they speak: the Oxford English Dictionary this year even added Homer's catch phrase ''D'oh'' (''expressing frustration at the realization that things have turned out badly or not as planned, or that one has just said or done something foolish'').

So it's no surprise that academia has turned its gaze to the phenomenon.

A new collection of essays called ''The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D'oh! of Homer'' (Open Court), edited by William Irwin, Mark T. Conard and Aeon J. Skoble, dissects the show's many cultural and political messages -- both liminal and subliminal.

Judge for yourself from the following excerpts.

Let's start with a look at the family patriarch, the subject of ''Homer and Aristotle,'' by Raja Halwani, assistant professor of philosophy at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago:

While he is not a paradigm of virtue, he certainly is not malicious.

The harshest reaction we can have towards him is pity.

There are at least two reasons for this.

The first reason is that Homer's upbringing leaves much to be desired.

To begin with, he grew up mostly in Springfield, a town whose inhabitants -- with the rare exception of Lisa -- have serious and severe character flaws, ranging from stupidity to malice, to being simply incompetent and clueless in the ways of the world (even Marge, who is a good candidate for being another exception to the inhabitants of Springfield, is very conventional and often lacks critical abilities). . . .

The second reason why our judgment of Homer's character is not harsh, even though he is not virtuous, is that he is not generally a malicious person.

He is selfish, he is a glutton, he is greedy and he can be quite dumb, but he is rarely one of those people who are envious of others and who wish them ill will.

It is true that he often acts with deliberate intent to harm some people, but we think that these people somehow are not worthy of better treatment.

Homer's wife isn't too shabby either, according to Gerald J. Erion of Medaille College in Buffalo and Joseph A. Zeccardi in an essay titled ''Marge's Moral Motivation'':

Marge typically follows the Aristotelian recipe for a happy, moral life, and with great success.

The good to which she looks in making her decisions (moral or otherwise) is the good of her family, and therefore herself.

She makes these decisions not because she hopes that they will be reciprocated, but because they are reciprocated by their very nature; what is good for them is good for her.

In Marge, we see that Aristotle's moral virtues can be successfully applied not just in the abstract, ivory towers of academia, but in the real, workaday cartoon world.

In ''Lisa and American Anti-Intellectualism,'' Aeon J. Skoble, visiting assistant professor of philosophy at the United States Military Academy at West Point, unravels the mixed messages of the Simpson's precocious older daughter:

American anti-intellectualism . . . is pervasive but not all encompassing.

As it does with many other aspects of modern society, ''The Simpsons'' often uses this theme as fodder for its satire.

In the Simpson family, only Lisa could really be described as an intellectual.

But her portrayal as such is not unequivocally flattering.

In contrast to her relentlessly ignorant father, she is often shown having the right answer to a problem or a more perceptive analysis of a situation. . . .

Although her wisdom is sometimes presented as valuable, other times it is presented as a case of being sanctimonious or condescending.

In Lisa's challenge to Springfield, the show calls attention to the cultural limitations of small-town America, but it also reminds us that intellectual disdain for the common man can be carried too far and that theory can all to easily lose touch with common sense.

Even the family's infant daughter comes up for scrutiny, in ''Why Maggie Matters: Sounds of Silence, East and West,'' by Eric Bronson of Berkeley College in New York City:

The infant, still too young to walk, protected her lollipop from falling into groping miserly hands.

After all, the gun did belong to Mr. Burns and only ended up in Maggie's hands due to his own carelessness.

Still, the two-part episode ends on an interrogative note.

Just what were the intentions of this young and seemingly innocent girl?

Could she knowingly commit such a crime?

The answers, or lack thereof, are less than comforting.

The camera zooms in on Maggie's mouth, her pacifier blocking any articulation or explanation as the credits begin to roll.

It seems as though we'll never know why Maggie shot the most powerful man in Springfield.

We'll never get the answers we want, unless of course, her stunted speech is actually all the answer we need. . . .

In ''Lisa's Wedding,'' Lisa glimpses into her future with the help of a carnival soothsayer.

She is about to be married to the man of her dreams, and at the wedding, Maggie, the grown teenager with the beautiful voice, is set to sing.

Just as she takes her first deep breath, however, Lisa calls off the wedding and Maggie symbolically closes her mouth.

Once again, family turmoil has drowned out her voice.

In a world of growing bureaucracy and information overload, we too run the danger of having our voices drowned out.

In the modern world, the great challenge of both the East and the West is figuring out how to critically respect each other's projects in a way that encourages all voices to be heard.

More than tolerant, we must be attentive.

Otherwise, more people, like Maggie Simpson, will feel left out of society and turn to more destructive means of communication.

Finally, there's Bart, who depending on one's point of view is either a superbrat or a Nietzschean superman.

From ''Thus Spake Bart: On Nietzsche and the Virtues of Being Bad,'' by Mark T. Conard:

You know the stories: he cut the head off the statue of Jebediah Springfield; he burned down the family Christmas tree; he shoplifted a copy of ''Bone storm''; he cheated on an I.Q. test and got himself placed in a genius school; he fooled the town into thinking there was a little boy trapped down a well, etc., etc., etc.

Bart Simpson isn't some lovable little scamp who always seems to find himself in trouble; he isn't a rebel with a heart of gold.

He's a wisecracking delinquent, a bad boy in bright blue pants, a spoiler, one of Satan's minions -- if you believe in that sort of thing.

You probably think it's his sister, Lisa, who's the virtuous one.

She's bright, talented, very logical, rational, sensitive.

She has principles: she fights injustice as she sees it; she's a vegetarian because she believes in animal rights; she stands up against greedy Mr. Burns's excesses; and she has love and compassion for her friends and family, and indeed for all those who are less fortunate

You'd probably say that she is the only admirable character on the show.

Well, let me tell you about another bad boy, the bad boy of philosophy (what -- you didn't think philosophy had bad boys?).

His name was Friedrich Nietzsche, and -- philosophically -- he's as bad as they come, honey.

He too was a kind of wisecracking philosophical delinquent.

-- hell, he wrote a book called ''The Antichrist''!

He seemed to hate everything, every ideal that most people love and hold dear to themselves -- more, he would tear down those ideals by cleverly showing how they were interconnected with things that those same people hate.

He rebuked religion, he laughed at pity.

He called Socrates a buffoon who got himself taken seriously. . . .

Now, while Nietzsche rejected and even laughed at the traditional ideal, the so-called ''good person,'' the compassionate, religiously virtuous person, he forged something of his own ideal: the free spirit; the person who rejects traditional morality, traditional virtues; the person who embraces the chaos of the world and gives style to his character.

Could it be that from a Nietzschean perspective we've been admiring the wrong character?

Might Lisa Simpson be part of what Nietzsche calls world-slandering weariness, decadence, slave morality, resentment?

Sure, it's fun to be bad, but might there be something healthy and life-affirming, something philosophically important about it?

Could Bart Simpson be, in the end, the Nietzschean ideal?

We are continually improving the quality of our text archives.

Please send feedback, error reports, and suggestions to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section 4, Page 7 of the National edition with the headline: Word for Word/Deconstructing 'The Simpsons'; The Aristotelian Logic of Bart And Homer.

Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

Alongside T-shirts, Bart has been included in various other "The Simpsons"-related merchandise, including air fresheners, baseball caps, bumper stickers, cardboard standups, refrigerator magnets, key rings, buttons, dolls, posters, figurines, clocks, soapstone carvings, Chia Pets, bowling balls and boxer shorts. "The Bart Book", a book about Bart's personality and attributes, was released in 2004. Other books include "Bart Simpson's Guide to Life". "The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D'oh! of Homer" is not an official publication.


"The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D'oh! of Homer" comparing him to the "Nietzschean ideal".

(meta data) TITLE: Word for Word/Deconstructing 'The Simpsons'; The Aristotelian Logic of Bart And Homer. Or Is It Platonic? - The New York Times

(meta data) PUBLISHED DATETIME: 2001-09-09

Skip to contentSkip to site indexWeek in ReviewLog InToday's PaperWeek in Review|Word for Word/Deconstructing 'The Simpsons'; The Aristotelian Logic of Bart And Homer.

# Word for Word/Deconstructing 'The Simpsons'; The Aristotelian Logic of Bart And Homer.

WHEN Fox Television and Matt Groening first introduced America to Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, Maggie and Santa's Little Helper on Dec. 17, 1989, few would have imagined the impact this lovably dysfunctional family from Springfield would have on popular culture.

''The Simpsons,'' with its clever writing and satirical attacks, has not only changed the way Americans view cartoons, but also the way they speak: the Oxford English Dictionary this year even added Homer's catch phrase ''D'oh'' (''expressing frustration at the realization that things have turned out badly or not as planned, or that one has just said or done something foolish'').

So it's no surprise that academia has turned its gaze to the phenomenon.

A new collection of essays called ''The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D'oh! of Homer'' (Open Court), edited by William Irwin, Mark T. Conard and Aeon J. Skoble, dissects the show's many cultural and political messages -- both liminal and subliminal.

Judge for yourself from the following excerpts.

Let's start with a look at the family patriarch, the subject of ''Homer and Aristotle,'' by Raja Halwani, assistant professor of philosophy at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago:

While he is not a paradigm of virtue, he certainly is not malicious.

The harshest reaction we can have towards him is pity.

There are at least two reasons for this.

The first reason is that Homer's upbringing leaves much to be desired.

To begin with, he grew up mostly in Springfield, a town whose inhabitants -- with the rare exception of Lisa -- have serious and severe character flaws, ranging from stupidity to malice, to being simply incompetent and clueless in the ways of the world (even Marge, who is a good candidate for being another exception to the inhabitants of Springfield, is very conventional and often lacks critical abilities). . . .

The second reason why our judgment of Homer's character is not harsh, even though he is not virtuous, is that he is not generally a malicious person.

He is selfish, he is a glutton, he is greedy and he can be quite dumb, but he is rarely one of those people who are envious of others and who wish them ill will.

It is true that he often acts with deliberate intent to harm some people, but we think that these people somehow are not worthy of better treatment.

Homer's wife isn't too shabby either, according to Gerald J. Erion of Medaille College in Buffalo and Joseph A. Zeccardi in an essay titled ''Marge's Moral Motivation'':

Marge typically follows the Aristotelian recipe for a happy, moral life, and with great success.

The good to which she looks in making her decisions (moral or otherwise) is the good of her family, and therefore herself.

She makes these decisions not because she hopes that they will be reciprocated, but because they are reciprocated by their very nature; what is good for them is good for her.

In Marge, we see that Aristotle's moral virtues can be successfully applied not just in the abstract, ivory towers of academia, but in the real, workaday cartoon world.

In ''Lisa and American Anti-Intellectualism,'' Aeon J. Skoble, visiting assistant professor of philosophy at the United States Military Academy at West Point, unravels the mixed messages of the Simpson's precocious older daughter:

American anti-intellectualism . . . is pervasive but not all encompassing.

As it does with many other aspects of modern society, ''The Simpsons'' often uses this theme as fodder for its satire.

In the Simpson family, only Lisa could really be described as an intellectual.

But her portrayal as such is not unequivocally flattering.

In contrast to her relentlessly ignorant father, she is often shown having the right answer to a problem or a more perceptive analysis of a situation. . . .

Although her wisdom is sometimes presented as valuable, other times it is presented as a case of being sanctimonious or condescending.

In Lisa's challenge to Springfield, the show calls attention to the cultural limitations of small-town America, but it also reminds us that intellectual disdain for the common man can be carried too far and that theory can all to easily lose touch with common sense.

Even the family's infant daughter comes up for scrutiny, in ''Why Maggie Matters: Sounds of Silence, East and West,'' by Eric Bronson of Berkeley College in New York City:

The infant, still too young to walk, protected her lollipop from falling into groping miserly hands.

After all, the gun did belong to Mr. Burns and only ended up in Maggie's hands due to his own carelessness.

Still, the two-part episode ends on an interrogative note.

Just what were the intentions of this young and seemingly innocent girl?

Could she knowingly commit such a crime?

The answers, or lack thereof, are less than comforting.

The camera zooms in on Maggie's mouth, her pacifier blocking any articulation or explanation as the credits begin to roll.

It seems as though we'll never know why Maggie shot the most powerful man in Springfield.

We'll never get the answers we want, unless of course, her stunted speech is actually all the answer we need. . . .

In ''Lisa's Wedding,'' Lisa glimpses into her future with the help of a carnival soothsayer.

She is about to be married to the man of her dreams, and at the wedding, Maggie, the grown teenager with the beautiful voice, is set to sing.

Just as she takes her first deep breath, however, Lisa calls off the wedding and Maggie symbolically closes her mouth.

Once again, family turmoil has drowned out her voice.

In a world of growing bureaucracy and information overload, we too run the danger of having our voices drowned out.

In the modern world, the great challenge of both the East and the West is figuring out how to critically respect each other's projects in a way that encourages all voices to be heard.

More than tolerant, we must be attentive.

Otherwise, more people, like Maggie Simpson, will feel left out of society and turn to more destructive means of communication.

Finally, there's Bart, who depending on one's point of view is either a superbrat or a Nietzschean superman.

From ''Thus Spake Bart: On Nietzsche and the Virtues of Being Bad,'' by Mark T. Conard:

You know the stories: he cut the head off the statue of Jebediah Springfield; he burned down the family Christmas tree; he shoplifted a copy of ''Bone storm''; he cheated on an I.Q. test and got himself placed in a genius school; he fooled the town into thinking there was a little boy trapped down a well, etc., etc., etc.

Bart Simpson isn't some lovable little scamp who always seems to find himself in trouble; he isn't a rebel with a heart of gold.

He's a wisecracking delinquent, a bad boy in bright blue pants, a spoiler, one of Satan's minions -- if you believe in that sort of thing.

You probably think it's his sister, Lisa, who's the virtuous one.

She's bright, talented, very logical, rational, sensitive.

She has principles: she fights injustice as she sees it; she's a vegetarian because she believes in animal rights; she stands up against greedy Mr. Burns's excesses; and she has love and compassion for her friends and family, and indeed for all those who are less fortunate

You'd probably say that she is the only admirable character on the show.

Well, let me tell you about another bad boy, the bad boy of philosophy (what -- you didn't think philosophy had bad boys?).

His name was Friedrich Nietzsche, and -- philosophically -- he's as bad as they come, honey.

He too was a kind of wisecracking philosophical delinquent.

-- hell, he wrote a book called ''The Antichrist''!

He seemed to hate everything, every ideal that most people love and hold dear to themselves -- more, he would tear down those ideals by cleverly showing how they were interconnected with things that those same people hate.

He rebuked religion, he laughed at pity.

He called Socrates a buffoon who got himself taken seriously. . . .

Now, while Nietzsche rejected and even laughed at the traditional ideal, the so-called ''good person,'' the compassionate, religiously virtuous person, he forged something of his own ideal: the free spirit; the person who rejects traditional morality, traditional virtues; the person who embraces the chaos of the world and gives style to his character.

Could it be that from a Nietzschean perspective we've been admiring the wrong character?

Might Lisa Simpson be part of what Nietzsche calls world-slandering weariness, decadence, slave morality, resentment?

Sure, it's fun to be bad, but might there be something healthy and life-affirming, something philosophically important about it?

Could Bart Simpson be, in the end, the Nietzschean ideal?

We are continually improving the quality of our text archives.

Please send feedback, error reports, and suggestions to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section 4, Page 7 of the National edition with the headline: Word for Word/Deconstructing 'The Simpsons'; The Aristotelian Logic of Bart And Homer.

Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

Alongside T-shirts, Bart has been included in various other "The Simpsons"-related merchandise, including air fresheners, baseball caps, bumper stickers, cardboard standups, refrigerator magnets, key rings, buttons, dolls, posters, figurines, clocks, soapstone carvings, Chia Pets, bowling balls and boxer shorts. "The Bart Book", a book about Bart's personality and attributes, was released in 2004. Other books include "Bart Simpson's Guide to Life". "The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D'oh! of Homer" is not an official publication. "The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D'oh! of Homer" includes a chapter analyzing Bart's character.


(meta data) TITLE: An interview with Jonathan Kemp about his debut novel London Triptych

You are here: Polari Magazine / Interviews / An interview with Jonathan Kemp

304 pages • Myriad Editions • August 19, 2010

One of the first things that strikes me on meeting Jonathan Kemp the person is also one of the first things that struck me on reading Jonathan Kemp the writer.

There is a deceptively relaxed quality to his writing that is disarming, bewitching and, to be honest, more than a little sexy.

I was pulled instantly into the three distinct stories, the three similar worlds, of London Triptych.

There is the London of the 1890s, and the rent boy Jack Rose; the London of the late 1990s, and the male escort David; and the London of the 1950s, and the painter Colin Read.

The three stories explore a subculture and an underworld that is hidden from the everyday, yet whilst they are historically and socially distinct tales each one echoes a universal experience.

As a writer, Jonathan is somewhat akin to the Pied Piper if only because there is something magical you cannot help but follow.

Talking to him about the book, and about the act of writing, I have precisely the same feeling about the person.

Jonathan teaches Creative Writing and Comparative Literature at Birkbeck, and London Triptych is his first novel.

"I attempted to get two early novels out in the '90s," he tells me.

"I moved to London with the intention of taking the world by storm, as all writers do.

The first novel I wrote I sent to only one publisher who didn't take it.

Rather than being thick-skinned and persisting I put it in a drawer and started on another one.

And that one was almost published by a company that went under.

The second they were going to bring it out they went bankrupt.

It was a very small press called Paper Drum.

It was rejected by Serpent's Tail so again I didn't persist.

"At that time I got waylaid as I was living with an actor.

From about '94 to '98 we ran a theatre company.

The plays were performed in little venues.

We did the same play in the basement at Central Station.

It just got bigger and bigger and after three one-man shows we did a two-hander, and then the next three or four plays had a cast of about five people in them.

Ultimately none of us were making any money so it fizzled out.

I also started this book, and it went through different manifestations."

London Triptych started out as a short story called 'Pornocracy', which told the tale of Jack Rose, one of the boys who testified against Oscar Wilde in 1895.

I asked how that story then developed into a novel.

Wilde has fascinated me ever since I discovered him as a teenager.

But there is little known or written about the boys.

I thought it would be interesting to reverse the story and make Wilde a bit player in Jack's life.

When I finished the story I started to think about how it could become a novel by having three narrators and exploring three areas of gay history.

It made sense to have one story in the '50s because that was characteristically a period of great secrecy in which you were risking everything.

There was constant harassment from the police, and potential imprisonment.

I wanted the character of Colin to be an artist because of the themes of representation in the book, and the link with the painter in The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Then it made sense to jump forward another fifty years.

It was only later that I thought of linking the stories."

London Triptych is such a confident, assured book in which the three stories follow clear and comparable paths that I found this surprising.

Yet the confidence has to come from the writer first.

This is something that, as a teacher, Jonathan tries to impress on his students.

"When things occurred I knew which character was speaking to me," he says of the process in which the book was pieced together.

I often say to my students that if you stumble across an interesting character you should stick with them and listen to them.

It sounds crazy, because the idea of the author as a god who is constructing things is a dominant one, but I think it helps to be passive in relation to characters and stories and let the things come to us rather than actively fixing it all together.

Throughout London Triptych the painter Colin is building toward his first major work, his own London Triptych.

It feels so right when his story comes together and this painting is revealed that I ask Jonathan if he always had this conclusion in mind.

The book was originally going to be called Feasting with Panthers, which is a phrase that Wilde used about the boys he used to hang out with.

And I still have a reference to that at the end.

My agent didn't like the title, and when I did a search I found that there were two books in the last ten years that had that title.

I wanted London in there, and the title triptych reflected the three stories, so I decided at the last minute to have Colin working on his own triptych."

This may sound like an accident, and yet it is far more like evolution by natural selection.

It is one of the reasons that the book is so immediate, and the narrative so genuine.

This is almost the opposite of what I expected when I first read the blurb.

Isn't this ground so well trodden as to have become sodden marshland?

I only read on because the writer Clayton Littlewood recommended it and I trust his judgement.

All that said, I had put these questions on hold by the end of the first page, and dismissed them altogether by the end of the first instalment from each of the three narrators.

I was not alone in my reaction to this disarming, bewitching quality to the writing.

The book had generated such a buzz within weeks of its publication that Gay's the Word bookshop had to fit in two readings on an evening when one was originally scheduled.

I talked about the book to the manager, Jim McSweeney, and we agreed that it was the best gay fiction we'd read since Neil Bartlett's Skin Lane.

London Triptych is on the shortlist for The Green Carnation Prize, an award for gay men's fiction and memoir that, coincidentally, also makes its debut this year.

And that circles back to Oscar Wilde again.

The green carnation was a secret signal to others of a similar persuasion and the title of an 1894 novel in which Wilde appeared thinly disguised.

As someone who finds The Picture of Doran Gray overrated, and Wilde generally quite tiresome, I ask Jonathan what it is about the man and his work that continues to fascinate educated gay men.

"I think that what Wilde represents, or came to represent, was the model of modern homosexuality," he begins.

"I think the hold he has is that we see someone in the middle of what is characteristically a rather dull and conformist age, the Victorian age, deliberately being against the norm in a very brave way.

In a similar way to Crisp we see him as a pioneer.

As gay men we like the idea of self-invention.

How many of us have moved to the city and reinvented ourselves according to how we would like to be?

I think Wilde is our glorious leader in that sense."

Then it is more his life than his writing?

Famously he said I put my talent into my writing and my genius into my life.

The writing is sublime and it is pitching itself against the norm.

Everyone else was writing heavy, verbose works, and he wrote slim books that were ornate and poetical and refused to be sucked into the realist machinery of Victorian fiction."

Then he adds, "Of course, he was gloriously funny, which goes a long way."

I remain unconvinced about Wilde, whom I find to be too much about the shiny surface, too much about the art of deflection.

And so I return the idea of the writer listening to the voices of the characters if only because I was taken with how Jack's voice stands clear and honest against Wilde's self-important monologues.

It is a loaded question, consequently, but I ask Jonathan if he has a favourite of the three voices.

"It's hard to say because I became really fond of all three of them.

It's interesting to hear which characters other people like.

There are some who really can't stand Jack and others who think he is the most adorable.

A friend of mine didn't like Jack because of what he did to Wilde.

I liked Jack because it was refreshing and liberating to write in a voice that pre-exists all the moral and psychological and social structures that pen in desire in the 20th century.

He comes from a class that is just going to do and he finds a way of doing.

And it's arguably his proximity to Wilde that corrupts him, and makes him reflective, and that reflection makes him do what he did."

In the midst of all the ideas, and the emotional life of the characters in London Triptych, is a fair amount of sex.

"It was very important to me that it was if not sexy then at least sexual.

And sexual in a very different way, one that wasn't necessarily pornographic.

We compartmentalise genres so easily, so problematically, and I think it's a shame."

He pauses and then adds, "Anyway, you can't have a novel about male prostitution and not have sex in it.

It was important to get it right and I was concerned about it because either it would be totally unpublishable or it would be pigeon-holed as 'that dirty book'."

London Triptych is one of those rare cases in which that balance works and does not feel spurious or forced.

It is sexy rather than just having sex in it.

For the reading at Gay's the Word, Jonathan chose one segment from each narrative.

For Jack he read a graphic scene in which Wilde takes him to an orgy.

It is, of course, nothing less than Dionysian.

When we're talking about this element of the book he says, laughing, "I'm waiting for someone to say, 'I had the best wank when I was reading your book'."

There is something of a mischievous turn to the conversation at this point, and as we are talking about the character David, Jonathan adds that no one has yet asked what he thought they'd ask about him.

"Whether his story is autobiographical, whether I'd dabbled in prostitution."

"I have an answer prepared," he says with a smile.

Tags: gay fiction, green carnation prize, jonathan kemp, london triptych, neil bartlett, oscar wilde

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© Copyright - Polari Magazine - Wordpress Theme by Kriesi.at

Jonathan Kemp (born 1967) is an English writer. He has published two novels, "London Triptych" and "Ghosting", as well as one short-story collection, "Twentysix", to date.
 He won the Authors' Club First Novel Award in 2011 for "London Triptych". The book was republished in North America by Arsenal Pulp Press in 2013.


Kemp teaches creative writing, literature and queer theory at Birkbeck, University of London.

(meta data) TITLE: An interview with Jonathan Kemp about his debut novel London Triptych

You are here: Polari Magazine / Interviews / An interview with Jonathan Kemp

304 pages • Myriad Editions • August 19, 2010

One of the first things that strikes me on meeting Jonathan Kemp the person is also one of the first things that struck me on reading Jonathan Kemp the writer.

There is a deceptively relaxed quality to his writing that is disarming, bewitching and, to be honest, more than a little sexy.

I was pulled instantly into the three distinct stories, the three similar worlds, of London Triptych.

There is the London of the 1890s, and the rent boy Jack Rose; the London of the late 1990s, and the male escort David; and the London of the 1950s, and the painter Colin Read.

The three stories explore a subculture and an underworld that is hidden from the everyday, yet whilst they are historically and socially distinct tales each one echoes a universal experience.

As a writer, Jonathan is somewhat akin to the Pied Piper if only because there is something magical you cannot help but follow.

Talking to him about the book, and about the act of writing, I have precisely the same feeling about the person.

Jonathan teaches Creative Writing and Comparative Literature at Birkbeck, and London Triptych is his first novel.

"I attempted to get two early novels out in the '90s," he tells me.

"I moved to London with the intention of taking the world by storm, as all writers do.

The first novel I wrote I sent to only one publisher who didn't take it.

Rather than being thick-skinned and persisting I put it in a drawer and started on another one.

And that one was almost published by a company that went under.

The second they were going to bring it out they went bankrupt.

It was a very small press called Paper Drum.

It was rejected by Serpent's Tail so again I didn't persist.

"At that time I got waylaid as I was living with an actor.

From about '94 to '98 we ran a theatre company.

The plays were performed in little venues.

We did the same play in the basement at Central Station.

It just got bigger and bigger and after three one-man shows we did a two-hander, and then the next three or four plays had a cast of about five people in them.

Ultimately none of us were making any money so it fizzled out.

I also started this book, and it went through different manifestations."

London Triptych started out as a short story called 'Pornocracy', which told the tale of Jack Rose, one of the boys who testified against Oscar Wilde in 1895.

I asked how that story then developed into a novel.

Wilde has fascinated me ever since I discovered him as a teenager.

But there is little known or written about the boys.

I thought it would be interesting to reverse the story and make Wilde a bit player in Jack's life.

When I finished the story I started to think about how it could become a novel by having three narrators and exploring three areas of gay history.

It made sense to have one story in the '50s because that was characteristically a period of great secrecy in which you were risking everything.

There was constant harassment from the police, and potential imprisonment.

I wanted the character of Colin to be an artist because of the themes of representation in the book, and the link with the painter in The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Then it made sense to jump forward another fifty years.

It was only later that I thought of linking the stories."

London Triptych is such a confident, assured book in which the three stories follow clear and comparable paths that I found this surprising.

Yet the confidence has to come from the writer first.

This is something that, as a teacher, Jonathan tries to impress on his students.

"When things occurred I knew which character was speaking to me," he says of the process in which the book was pieced together.

I often say to my students that if you stumble across an interesting character you should stick with them and listen to them.

It sounds crazy, because the idea of the author as a god who is constructing things is a dominant one, but I think it helps to be passive in relation to characters and stories and let the things come to us rather than actively fixing it all together.

Throughout London Triptych the painter Colin is building toward his first major work, his own London Triptych.

It feels so right when his story comes together and this painting is revealed that I ask Jonathan if he always had this conclusion in mind.

The book was originally going to be called Feasting with Panthers, which is a phrase that Wilde used about the boys he used to hang out with.

And I still have a reference to that at the end.

My agent didn't like the title, and when I did a search I found that there were two books in the last ten years that had that title.

I wanted London in there, and the title triptych reflected the three stories, so I decided at the last minute to have Colin working on his own triptych."

This may sound like an accident, and yet it is far more like evolution by natural selection.

It is one of the reasons that the book is so immediate, and the narrative so genuine.

This is almost the opposite of what I expected when I first read the blurb.

Isn't this ground so well trodden as to have become sodden marshland?

I only read on because the writer Clayton Littlewood recommended it and I trust his judgement.

All that said, I had put these questions on hold by the end of the first page, and dismissed them altogether by the end of the first instalment from each of the three narrators.

I was not alone in my reaction to this disarming, bewitching quality to the writing.

The book had generated such a buzz within weeks of its publication that Gay's the Word bookshop had to fit in two readings on an evening when one was originally scheduled.

I talked about the book to the manager, Jim McSweeney, and we agreed that it was the best gay fiction we'd read since Neil Bartlett's Skin Lane.

London Triptych is on the shortlist for The Green Carnation Prize, an award for gay men's fiction and memoir that, coincidentally, also makes its debut this year.

And that circles back to Oscar Wilde again.

The green carnation was a secret signal to others of a similar persuasion and the title of an 1894 novel in which Wilde appeared thinly disguised.

As someone who finds The Picture of Doran Gray overrated, and Wilde generally quite tiresome, I ask Jonathan what it is about the man and his work that continues to fascinate educated gay men.

"I think that what Wilde represents, or came to represent, was the model of modern homosexuality," he begins.

"I think the hold he has is that we see someone in the middle of what is characteristically a rather dull and conformist age, the Victorian age, deliberately being against the norm in a very brave way.

In a similar way to Crisp we see him as a pioneer.

As gay men we like the idea of self-invention.

How many of us have moved to the city and reinvented ourselves according to how we would like to be?

I think Wilde is our glorious leader in that sense."

Then it is more his life than his writing?

Famously he said I put my talent into my writing and my genius into my life.

The writing is sublime and it is pitching itself against the norm.

Everyone else was writing heavy, verbose works, and he wrote slim books that were ornate and poetical and refused to be sucked into the realist machinery of Victorian fiction."

Then he adds, "Of course, he was gloriously funny, which goes a long way."

I remain unconvinced about Wilde, whom I find to be too much about the shiny surface, too much about the art of deflection.

And so I return the idea of the writer listening to the voices of the characters if only because I was taken with how Jack's voice stands clear and honest against Wilde's self-important monologues.

It is a loaded question, consequently, but I ask Jonathan if he has a favourite of the three voices.

"It's hard to say because I became really fond of all three of them.

It's interesting to hear which characters other people like.

There are some who really can't stand Jack and others who think he is the most adorable.

A friend of mine didn't like Jack because of what he did to Wilde.

I liked Jack because it was refreshing and liberating to write in a voice that pre-exists all the moral and psychological and social structures that pen in desire in the 20th century.

He comes from a class that is just going to do and he finds a way of doing.

And it's arguably his proximity to Wilde that corrupts him, and makes him reflective, and that reflection makes him do what he did."

In the midst of all the ideas, and the emotional life of the characters in London Triptych, is a fair amount of sex.

"It was very important to me that it was if not sexy then at least sexual.

And sexual in a very different way, one that wasn't necessarily pornographic.

We compartmentalise genres so easily, so problematically, and I think it's a shame."

He pauses and then adds, "Anyway, you can't have a novel about male prostitution and not have sex in it.

It was important to get it right and I was concerned about it because either it would be totally unpublishable or it would be pigeon-holed as 'that dirty book'."

London Triptych is one of those rare cases in which that balance works and does not feel spurious or forced.

It is sexy rather than just having sex in it.

For the reading at Gay's the Word, Jonathan chose one segment from each narrative.

For Jack he read a graphic scene in which Wilde takes him to an orgy.

It is, of course, nothing less than Dionysian.

When we're talking about this element of the book he says, laughing, "I'm waiting for someone to say, 'I had the best wank when I was reading your book'."

There is something of a mischievous turn to the conversation at this point, and as we are talking about the character David, Jonathan adds that no one has yet asked what he thought they'd ask about him.

"Whether his story is autobiographical, whether I'd dabbled in prostitution."

"I have an answer prepared," he says with a smile.

Tags: gay fiction, green carnation prize, jonathan kemp, london triptych, neil bartlett, oscar wilde

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Jonathan Kemp (born 1967) is an English writer. He has published two novels, "London Triptych" and "Ghosting", as well as one short-story collection, "Twentysix", to date.
 He won the Authors' Club First Novel Award in 2011 for "London Triptych". The book was republished in North America by Arsenal Pulp Press in 2013. Kemp is originally from Manchester.


In early April, Oklahoma became the second state to strike.

(meta data) TITLE: "Desperate for a Solution," Oklahoma Teachers Threaten to Strike

TheIntercept_Photo: Mike Simons/Tulsa World/APPhoto: Mike Simons/Tulsa World/AP

# Teacher Unrest Spreads to Oklahoma, Where Educators Are "Desperate for a Solution"

Rachel M. CohenRachel M. CohenMarch 6 2018, 6:33 p.m.

Photo: Mike Simons/Tulsa World/APPhoto: Mike Simons/Tulsa World/AP

Last summer, Teresa Dank, a third-grade teacher in Tulsa, Oklahoma, gained national attention after she began panhandling to raise money for her classroom.

Like many other teachers in a state with some of the lowest education spending in the country, Dank was at her wit's end.

Her frustration came to a head two weeks ago, following yet another failed legislative attempt to increase teacher pay.

And so she started an online petition, asking for signatures from those who would support a walkout by teachers.

Soon another Oklahoma teacher named Alberto Morejon launched a Facebook group to mobilize fellow educators for a walkout, quickly drawing tens of thousands of members.

The increasing momentum for a strike in Oklahoma comes as a strike by West Virginia teachers entered its ninth consecutive school day on Tuesday.

State lawmakers, hoping to bring the strike to an end, reached a deal on Tuesday morning to raise all state employee salaries by 5 percent.

Oklahoma's 42,000 teachers make even less than their West Virginian counterparts; in 2016, the average Oklahoma teacher earned $45,276, a salary lower than that of teachers in every state except Mississippi.

With no pay increases for Sooner State teachers in a decade, educators have been leaving for greener pastures, moving to neighboring states like Arkansas, New Mexico, Kansas, and Texas.

Last May, Shawn Sheehan, Oklahoma's 2016 Teacher of the Year, announced that he would be moving to Texas for more financial stability.

Per-pupil spending in Oklahoma stands at $8,075, among the lowest in the country.

As it so often goes, when times are tough for teachers, times are also tough for students.

Per-pupil spending in Oklahoma stands at $8,075, among the lowest in the country and lower than all of Oklahoma's neighboring states.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities puts Oklahoma's cuts to general education funding since the recession as the highest in the nation, with 28 percent of the state's per-pupil funding cut over the last decade.

Things have gotten so bad that nearly 100 school districts across the state hold classes just four days a week to save money.

Strikes by Oklahoma school employees are technically illegal, but educators have found a legal work-around.

If school districts shut down, then that's a work stoppage that doesn't involve teachers walking off the job.

Many superintendents across the state have already come out in support of closing down schools if the teachers decide to move forward with their strike.

Teachers point to a four-day strike from nearly three decades ago, when more than half of Oklahoma educators stayed home from school.

This successful 1990 protest prompted the legislature to raise teacher pay, institute class-size limits, and expand kindergarten offerings.

"Nothing else has worked over the last two to three years, so at this point teachers, parents, and community members are desperate for a solution," said Amber England, a longtime Oklahoma education advocate.

"This is what they're thinking is the last resort.

They don't want to do it, but they really don't feel like they have any other option."

### Why Aren't Teachers Getting a Raise?

Educators were optimistic that things were going to change in 2016.

The Republican-controlled legislature promised it'd pass a teacher pay increase, but in the end they failed to get anything done.

Later that same year, a high-profile ballot initiative went before voters to increase the state sales tax by 1 percent, to give all teachers a $5,000 pay increase.

But that measure also ended up failing miserably, garnering just over 40 percent of the vote.

Republicans in the state opposed taxes going up, and many Democrats also opposed the measure because a sales tax would have hit the poor the hardest.

In 2017, the legislature promised yet again to pass a teacher pay raise, adjourning in the end with nothing to show for it.

A measure to raise teacher and state employee salaries funded by a tax on cigarettes, motor vehicle fuel, and beer failed 54-44 in October.

"Time after time, there's just been terrible cuts, broken promises, and no legislative action or leadership," England told The Intercept.

Just like in Kansas, Oklahoma's leaders have been slashing taxes, finding that this then leaves them with less money to fund basic government services.

Aside from reducing income taxes for its wealthiest citizens in 2013, Oklahoma legislators voted in 2014 to extend major oil industry tax cuts that were set to expire in 2015.

The drilling tax, known as the "gross production tax," or GPT, had been set at 7 percent in the 1970s, but in the early 1990s, when horizontal drilling first came on the scene, the then-Democratic controlled legislature reduced it down to 1 percent, to help encourage experimentation with the new technology.

Mickey Thompson, who worked as the president of Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association between 1991 and 2005, told The Intercept that the GPT reduction was important back then because horizontal drilling was "really new, untested, unproven, and expensive."

Thompson helped push for the tax reduction in the '90s, but today has become one of the state's most vocal advocates for raising it back up to 7 percent, because, he said, by now everyone knows that horizontal drilling easily pays for itself.

"These cuts were never supposed to be permanent," Thompson said.

The GPT was supposed to return back to 7 percent in 2015, but Republicans instead made the tax cuts permanent at 2 percent, a notably lower rate than other oil-producing states.

Following all the legislative failures and the ballot measure failure, a group of influential business leaders in Oklahoma got together in December to formulate a last-ditch effort to push something through.

The elite bipartisan coalition, dubbed Step Up Oklahoma, unveiled their proposals in January, advocating modest revenue hikes on GPT, motor fuel, cigarettes, and eliminating a few income tax deductions.

Hailed as a grand compromise, the Step Up plan would have generated enough revenue to give all teachers a $5,000 pay raise.

All five of Oklahoma's former living governors endorsed the plan, as did the state's teachers union.

But when legislators voted on the package in mid-February, it too failed, with 17 Democrats and 18 Republicans voting against the measure.

Some Republicans argued this was Oklahoma's last real shot at reaching a compromise this year, but other Democrats said they don't buy that this is the best deal they could reach.

Rep. Forrest Bennett, a first-term Democrat representing Oklahoma City, was among those who voted against the Step Up plan.

"There was a hell of a lot of pressure on us to pass it, and I've gotten a lot of shit for voting no, but this package was pretty flawed from the start," he told The Intercept.

Bennett noted that aside from teacher pay increases, the Step Up deal contained a number of regressive taxes and pushed only for doubling the GPT up to 4 percent.

In October, a new nonprofit, Restore Oklahoma Now, formed to push for a 2018 ballot measure that would hike the GPT back up to 7 percent and direct the majority of new revenue to schools and teachers.

That effort is being led by Thompson, the former OIPA president.

"We felt we needed to get GPT to at least 5 percent," Bennett explained.

"We were being dictated to by this private business owner group, and as long as that 7 percent ballot initiative is looming, we think we will have more opportunities to push for alternatives."

England, who had been helping the Oklahoma Education Association mobilize support for the Step Up plan, emphasized that it's been increasingly difficult to reach any sort of bipartisan agreement.

"Compromise is not the politically correct position anymore," she told The Intercept.

For many teachers, the legislature's failure to pass the Step Up plan was the last straw.

Dank launched her petition a week after the failed vote, capitalizing on the frustration of thousands of teachers whose classrooms have been underfunded for far too long.

Different dates are floating around for a potential strike.

One scenario is to strike on April 2, the same time that students are scheduled to take their mandatory standardized tests.

Failing to take those tests could mean Oklahoma sacrifices millions of dollars in federal funds.

Organizers are calling this the "nuclear option."

Another possibility is to shut down schools the week following spring break, which would be the week before standardized testing.

The Oklahoma Education Association plans to hold a press conference Thursday afternoon to unveil a "detailed revenue package and a statewide closure strategy."

NewsOK, a local news outlet, reported that nearly 80 percent of respondents to an online survey administered by the Oklahoma Educators Association voiced support for school closures to force lawmakers to increase educational investments.

Thompson, the leader behind the GPT ballot initiative, worries a teacher walkout will damage public support for educators in the state.

"I think a majority of teachers understand what we're trying to do [with our initiative], but their morale is very low, and they are beyond frustrated," he said.

He acknowledges, though, that his concerns "are falling on deaf ears" and that "teachers are ready to try anything."

For his part, Thompson thinks the ballot initiative he's leading stands a better shot at passage than the failed 2016 penny tax.

"Teachers have gone two more years without a pay raise, and the public has been talking about it for all this time now," he said.

"There is just more public support for a teacher raise than two years ago."

"Teachers have gone two more years without a pay raise, and the public has been talking about it for all this time now."

Thompson also thinks the fact that his proposed ballot initiative would raise revenue without raising taxes on everyone else will help secure its passage.

"Conservatives don't want to raise state sales tax, liberals don't want a regressive tax, but our deal is not a sales tax — it's a tax on the oil and gas industry, trying to take away their sweetheart deal that was passed 20 years ago," he said.

Their ballot initiative isn't a done deal yet, though; they haven't even begun collecting the necessary 123,000 signatures.

Last week, they defended their ballot initiative at Oklahoma's Supreme Court, and now they're waiting for the court's approval to move forward.

"The court can take as long as they please to give us a decision on whether we're valid or whether we're kicked to the curb," Thompson explained.

"We're not officially a ballot initiative until we get their approval, but we're feeling confident."

Democrats remain convinced that all the mounting pressure will create more opportunities for lawmakers to push forward alternative revenue packages this legislative season.

Bennett said the threat of a 7 percent GPT ballot initiative, a statewide teacher walkout, and a potential blue wave for Democrats across the country in November, will help keep pressure up in the legislature.

"The Step Up coalition made people feel like their deal was the last shot, but it's not," he said.

"What they did do was engage a lot of people, and now a lot more are really frustrated and are paying attention."

Top photo: Students at Edison Preparatory School stage a walkout to protest the lack of funding for teachers at the school in Tulsa, Okla., Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2018.

Before you go on about your day, ask yourself: How likely is it that the story you just read would have been produced by a different news outlet if The Intercept hadn't done it?

Consider what the world of media would look like without The Intercept.

Who would hold party elites accountable to the values they proclaim to have?

How many covert wars, miscarriages of justice, and dystopian technologies would remain hidden if our reporters weren't on the beat?

The kind of reporting we do is essential to democracy, but it is not easy, cheap, or profitable.

The Intercept is an independent nonprofit news outlet.

We don't have ads, so we depend on our members — 24,000 and counting — to help us hold the powerful to account.

Joining is simple and doesn't need to cost a lot: You can become a sustaining member for as little as $3 or $5 a month.

That's all it takes to support the journalism you rely on.

Rachel M. Cohen[email protected]theintercept.com@rmc031

Weekly editor's picksBreaking stories and exclusives2020 election coverage

2018–19 education workers' strikes in the United States

Discussions of a strike in West Virginia began in early 2018. In the first week of February, teachers staged "walk-ins" at schools and some protested at the West Virginia Capitol. The strike proved successful, and inspired those in other states to strike as well.


This was the first time a teacher's strike was held in the state since 1990.

(meta data) TITLE: "Desperate for a Solution," Oklahoma Teachers Threaten to Strike

TheIntercept_Photo: Mike Simons/Tulsa World/APPhoto: Mike Simons/Tulsa World/AP

# Teacher Unrest Spreads to Oklahoma, Where Educators Are "Desperate for a Solution"

Rachel M. CohenRachel M. CohenMarch 6 2018, 6:33 p.m.

Photo: Mike Simons/Tulsa World/APPhoto: Mike Simons/Tulsa World/AP

Last summer, Teresa Dank, a third-grade teacher in Tulsa, Oklahoma, gained national attention after she began panhandling to raise money for her classroom.

Like many other teachers in a state with some of the lowest education spending in the country, Dank was at her wit's end.

Her frustration came to a head two weeks ago, following yet another failed legislative attempt to increase teacher pay.

And so she started an online petition, asking for signatures from those who would support a walkout by teachers.

Soon another Oklahoma teacher named Alberto Morejon launched a Facebook group to mobilize fellow educators for a walkout, quickly drawing tens of thousands of members.

The increasing momentum for a strike in Oklahoma comes as a strike by West Virginia teachers entered its ninth consecutive school day on Tuesday.

State lawmakers, hoping to bring the strike to an end, reached a deal on Tuesday morning to raise all state employee salaries by 5 percent.

Oklahoma's 42,000 teachers make even less than their West Virginian counterparts; in 2016, the average Oklahoma teacher earned $45,276, a salary lower than that of teachers in every state except Mississippi.

With no pay increases for Sooner State teachers in a decade, educators have been leaving for greener pastures, moving to neighboring states like Arkansas, New Mexico, Kansas, and Texas.

Last May, Shawn Sheehan, Oklahoma's 2016 Teacher of the Year, announced that he would be moving to Texas for more financial stability.

Per-pupil spending in Oklahoma stands at $8,075, among the lowest in the country.

As it so often goes, when times are tough for teachers, times are also tough for students.

Per-pupil spending in Oklahoma stands at $8,075, among the lowest in the country and lower than all of Oklahoma's neighboring states.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities puts Oklahoma's cuts to general education funding since the recession as the highest in the nation, with 28 percent of the state's per-pupil funding cut over the last decade.

Things have gotten so bad that nearly 100 school districts across the state hold classes just four days a week to save money.

Strikes by Oklahoma school employees are technically illegal, but educators have found a legal work-around.

If school districts shut down, then that's a work stoppage that doesn't involve teachers walking off the job.

Many superintendents across the state have already come out in support of closing down schools if the teachers decide to move forward with their strike.

Teachers point to a four-day strike from nearly three decades ago, when more than half of Oklahoma educators stayed home from school.

This successful 1990 protest prompted the legislature to raise teacher pay, institute class-size limits, and expand kindergarten offerings.

"Nothing else has worked over the last two to three years, so at this point teachers, parents, and community members are desperate for a solution," said Amber England, a longtime Oklahoma education advocate.

"This is what they're thinking is the last resort.

They don't want to do it, but they really don't feel like they have any other option."

### Why Aren't Teachers Getting a Raise?

Educators were optimistic that things were going to change in 2016.

The Republican-controlled legislature promised it'd pass a teacher pay increase, but in the end they failed to get anything done.

Later that same year, a high-profile ballot initiative went before voters to increase the state sales tax by 1 percent, to give all teachers a $5,000 pay increase.

But that measure also ended up failing miserably, garnering just over 40 percent of the vote.

Republicans in the state opposed taxes going up, and many Democrats also opposed the measure because a sales tax would have hit the poor the hardest.

In 2017, the legislature promised yet again to pass a teacher pay raise, adjourning in the end with nothing to show for it.

A measure to raise teacher and state employee salaries funded by a tax on cigarettes, motor vehicle fuel, and beer failed 54-44 in October.

"Time after time, there's just been terrible cuts, broken promises, and no legislative action or leadership," England told The Intercept.

Just like in Kansas, Oklahoma's leaders have been slashing taxes, finding that this then leaves them with less money to fund basic government services.

Aside from reducing income taxes for its wealthiest citizens in 2013, Oklahoma legislators voted in 2014 to extend major oil industry tax cuts that were set to expire in 2015.

The drilling tax, known as the "gross production tax," or GPT, had been set at 7 percent in the 1970s, but in the early 1990s, when horizontal drilling first came on the scene, the then-Democratic controlled legislature reduced it down to 1 percent, to help encourage experimentation with the new technology.

Mickey Thompson, who worked as the president of Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association between 1991 and 2005, told The Intercept that the GPT reduction was important back then because horizontal drilling was "really new, untested, unproven, and expensive."

Thompson helped push for the tax reduction in the '90s, but today has become one of the state's most vocal advocates for raising it back up to 7 percent, because, he said, by now everyone knows that horizontal drilling easily pays for itself.

"These cuts were never supposed to be permanent," Thompson said.

The GPT was supposed to return back to 7 percent in 2015, but Republicans instead made the tax cuts permanent at 2 percent, a notably lower rate than other oil-producing states.

Following all the legislative failures and the ballot measure failure, a group of influential business leaders in Oklahoma got together in December to formulate a last-ditch effort to push something through.

The elite bipartisan coalition, dubbed Step Up Oklahoma, unveiled their proposals in January, advocating modest revenue hikes on GPT, motor fuel, cigarettes, and eliminating a few income tax deductions.

Hailed as a grand compromise, the Step Up plan would have generated enough revenue to give all teachers a $5,000 pay raise.

All five of Oklahoma's former living governors endorsed the plan, as did the state's teachers union.

But when legislators voted on the package in mid-February, it too failed, with 17 Democrats and 18 Republicans voting against the measure.

Some Republicans argued this was Oklahoma's last real shot at reaching a compromise this year, but other Democrats said they don't buy that this is the best deal they could reach.

Rep. Forrest Bennett, a first-term Democrat representing Oklahoma City, was among those who voted against the Step Up plan.

"There was a hell of a lot of pressure on us to pass it, and I've gotten a lot of shit for voting no, but this package was pretty flawed from the start," he told The Intercept.

Bennett noted that aside from teacher pay increases, the Step Up deal contained a number of regressive taxes and pushed only for doubling the GPT up to 4 percent.

In October, a new nonprofit, Restore Oklahoma Now, formed to push for a 2018 ballot measure that would hike the GPT back up to 7 percent and direct the majority of new revenue to schools and teachers.

That effort is being led by Thompson, the former OIPA president.

"We felt we needed to get GPT to at least 5 percent," Bennett explained.

"We were being dictated to by this private business owner group, and as long as that 7 percent ballot initiative is looming, we think we will have more opportunities to push for alternatives."

England, who had been helping the Oklahoma Education Association mobilize support for the Step Up plan, emphasized that it's been increasingly difficult to reach any sort of bipartisan agreement.

"Compromise is not the politically correct position anymore," she told The Intercept.

For many teachers, the legislature's failure to pass the Step Up plan was the last straw.

Dank launched her petition a week after the failed vote, capitalizing on the frustration of thousands of teachers whose classrooms have been underfunded for far too long.

Different dates are floating around for a potential strike.

One scenario is to strike on April 2, the same time that students are scheduled to take their mandatory standardized tests.

Failing to take those tests could mean Oklahoma sacrifices millions of dollars in federal funds.

Organizers are calling this the "nuclear option."

Another possibility is to shut down schools the week following spring break, which would be the week before standardized testing.

The Oklahoma Education Association plans to hold a press conference Thursday afternoon to unveil a "detailed revenue package and a statewide closure strategy."

NewsOK, a local news outlet, reported that nearly 80 percent of respondents to an online survey administered by the Oklahoma Educators Association voiced support for school closures to force lawmakers to increase educational investments.

Thompson, the leader behind the GPT ballot initiative, worries a teacher walkout will damage public support for educators in the state.

"I think a majority of teachers understand what we're trying to do [with our initiative], but their morale is very low, and they are beyond frustrated," he said.

He acknowledges, though, that his concerns "are falling on deaf ears" and that "teachers are ready to try anything."

For his part, Thompson thinks the ballot initiative he's leading stands a better shot at passage than the failed 2016 penny tax.

"Teachers have gone two more years without a pay raise, and the public has been talking about it for all this time now," he said.

"There is just more public support for a teacher raise than two years ago."

"Teachers have gone two more years without a pay raise, and the public has been talking about it for all this time now."

Thompson also thinks the fact that his proposed ballot initiative would raise revenue without raising taxes on everyone else will help secure its passage.

"Conservatives don't want to raise state sales tax, liberals don't want a regressive tax, but our deal is not a sales tax — it's a tax on the oil and gas industry, trying to take away their sweetheart deal that was passed 20 years ago," he said.

Their ballot initiative isn't a done deal yet, though; they haven't even begun collecting the necessary 123,000 signatures.

Last week, they defended their ballot initiative at Oklahoma's Supreme Court, and now they're waiting for the court's approval to move forward.

"The court can take as long as they please to give us a decision on whether we're valid or whether we're kicked to the curb," Thompson explained.

"We're not officially a ballot initiative until we get their approval, but we're feeling confident."

Democrats remain convinced that all the mounting pressure will create more opportunities for lawmakers to push forward alternative revenue packages this legislative season.

Bennett said the threat of a 7 percent GPT ballot initiative, a statewide teacher walkout, and a potential blue wave for Democrats across the country in November, will help keep pressure up in the legislature.

"The Step Up coalition made people feel like their deal was the last shot, but it's not," he said.

"What they did do was engage a lot of people, and now a lot more are really frustrated and are paying attention."

Top photo: Students at Edison Preparatory School stage a walkout to protest the lack of funding for teachers at the school in Tulsa, Okla., Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2018.

Before you go on about your day, ask yourself: How likely is it that the story you just read would have been produced by a different news outlet if The Intercept hadn't done it?

Consider what the world of media would look like without The Intercept.

Who would hold party elites accountable to the values they proclaim to have?

How many covert wars, miscarriages of justice, and dystopian technologies would remain hidden if our reporters weren't on the beat?

The kind of reporting we do is essential to democracy, but it is not easy, cheap, or profitable.

The Intercept is an independent nonprofit news outlet.

We don't have ads, so we depend on our members — 24,000 and counting — to help us hold the powerful to account.

Joining is simple and doesn't need to cost a lot: You can become a sustaining member for as little as $3 or $5 a month.

That's all it takes to support the journalism you rely on.

Rachel M. Cohen[email protected]theintercept.com@rmc031

Weekly editor's picksBreaking stories and exclusives2020 election coverage

Discussions of a strike in West Virginia began in early 2018. In the first week of February, teachers staged "walk-ins" at schools and some protested at the West Virginia Capitol. The strike proved successful, and inspired those in other states to strike as well. In early April, Oklahoma became the second state to strike.