No Images? Click here 11 APRILRaid rageFBI raids on the office, home and hotel room of President Trump's attorney Michael Cohen have brought Special Counsel Robert Mueller closer to the White House than ever before. Mueller is reported to have referred the investigation of Cohen to the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York – a Trump appointee. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who was also handpicked by Trump, personally signed off on the raid. The Washington Post reports that federal prosecutors investigating Cohen are seeking records related to two women who received payments in 2016 after alleging affairs with Trump years before. Cohen was also named deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee a year ago. Trump called the investigation "an attack on our nation" and when asked if he was considering firing Mueller on Monday, he responded: “I think it’s a disgrace what’s going on. We’ll see what happens. Many people have said, ‘You should fire him.’” Senate Republican leaders have sharply warned Trump not to fire Mueller. Earlier Tuesday, press secretary Sarah Sanders said publicly that Trump believes he has the power to do so. Amidst the latest scandal, the president has cancelled a planned trip to Latin America on Friday, citing the current crisis in Syria. NEWS WRAPSouth Pacific power play
President Trump, I’m speaking to you directly. Do not take the same mistake that President Obama had made. The action that you had taken... to take out the air base there, that was important, that was strong — that was a very strong message. What we need to do right now is to take out Assad’s air force. If we ground all of his air force, he won’t have the capability to attack Syrians by the air anymore. The Syrian American Council's Bassam Rifai ANALYSISAmerica's original modern family returns for the Trump eraRodney Taveira When the first season of Roseanne aired across 1988–89 it was called, by some critics, “slob comedy”. Variety declared that the Conners were “appalling TV role models” in its review of the first episode. Taking stock of the reactions she triggered, Roseanne Barr, writing in The New York Times, said she’d become “a sort of postfeminist mud pie in the eye to the Super Mom Syndrome”. Previous television mothers and their families had a homely glamour. I Love Lucy! told us what to do with respect to Lucille Ball. (By the way, the premise of this show isn’t “Lucy wants to get into show business” but “Lucy wants to get out of the house!”) The adventures of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet never ventured far from their lovely SoCal home. And before she got her eponymous show where she was a single, career woman, Mary Tyler Moore lived in a lovely home in New Rochelle, New York, second fiddle in The Dick Van Dyke Show. Roseanne Barr, during her career as a stand-up comedian, skewered this vision of American motherhood and femininity in her Domestic Goddess routine: “Oh hi. It’s a thrill to be out of the house… I have three kids and I’ve been married for fourteen years so I breed well in captivity.” She was crass and vulgar. She let it all hang out, appearing in a bikini onstage. In Roseanne, she fights with her boss (George Clooney with a rather Trumpian haircut—plus sideburns) to knock off early for a parent-teacher conference about her daughter Darlene, who has been barking like a dog. Unpaid bills accumulated on the Conner family fridge as both Roseanne and her husband Dan scramble for overtime and through odd jobs. The Conners were not and are not the Cosbys, the Seavers, the Keatons, and definitely not the Cleavers. While they were and are a kind of Modern Family (Roseanne organised her boss’s gay wedding; her mother comes out; she and her mother debate aborting a fifth-season pregnancy), the Conners more easily fit into that recent category cum proud camp of the culture wars: the Deplorables. But using “slob comedy” and “deplorables” in a strictly pejorative sense obscures the history of the television medium and the complexity of the supposed sides, and it exaggerates the special or marginal status of the world of Roseanne. Roseanne Conner is a contemporary, female version of Archie Bunker from All in The Family, who himself is a version of Ralph Kramden, played by Jackie Gleason on The Honeymooners. Gleason, abandoned by his father when he was nine and living in Bushwick, Brooklyn, during the Great Depression, famously kept the set of The Honeymooners dilapidated, delivering curtains sent by a fan to dress the kitchen windows to a nearby children’s hospital. Archie Bunker, the loudmouth, bigoted blue-collar worker was supposed to be the voice of prejudiced patriarchy against which the 1970s social movements were agitating, but instead he came to be loved in a case of misidentification by the audience (“Archie Bunker for President!” declared bumper stickers) and the producers. By casting herself as a Trump voter in the reboot, Roseanne positions herself as the arch debunker of liberal Hollywood, scandalising the progressively pious mainstream, speaking her mind, giving voice to those who don’t hear themselves in national media conversations. Did President Trump, then, steal her routine? She’s played off and muddied the distinction between her personal life, her slapdash politics, and her media profile. She ran her vituperative 2012 presidential campaign on Twitter. Her crotch-grabbing rendition of the “Star Spangled Banner” outraged the nation but it didn’t end her career — Roseanne ran for eight more years. That’s a two-term presidency. DIARYThe week ahead
EVENTViolent crime in the United States: Focus, prevention and legitimacyFollowing the recent March for Our Lives, gun violence is front and centre in America’s law and order debate. Join us at our upcoming event in collaboration with the National Network for Safe Communities looking at how cities implement strategies to reduce violence, improve public safety and minimise arrest and incarceration. Can certain interventions improve relationships between law enforcement and the communities it serves? Professor David Kennedy is the Director of the US National Network for Safe Communities at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York and Rachel Locke is its Director of International Interventions. They’ll join the United States Studies Centre’s senior lecturer in American politics, Dr David Smith, to discuss how an integrated strategy that narrows in on the specific drivers of violence can keep communities safe, lower homicides and address drug markets. Experience shared will come primarily from cities in the United States, but some examples from other countries will also be included. DATE & TIME LOCATION COST Manage your email preferences | Forward this email to a friend United States Studies Centre |