Politics roundup: Kanye goes to the White House

Kanye West makes a trip to the White House, but no one is sure what to make of it. Plus, Kavanaugh, Haley, and Facebook make the news this week.

Kavanaugh confirmed to the Supreme Court

There’s hope, and then there’s reality. On Saturday, Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court of the United States. On Sunday, he began moving into his new chambers, after weeks of dramatic hearings and high tensions.

Kavanaugh, who was accused of sexual assault by multiple women, faced increased scrutiny both by the Senate Judiciary Committee and the public at large. Dr. Christine Blasey Ford delivered testimony during his hearings that detailed an alleged assault on her by Kavanaugh, when both were in high school. Nonetheless, neither Ford’s testimony nor the groundswell of public sentiment against Kavanaugh did much to delay his new position as a Supreme Court Justice. Republican politicians were set on confirming him, and with a majority in Congress, it was practically done before it started.

Kavanaugh will now stay on the Supreme Court until the end of his professional career, as Justices are granted lifetime appointments. What that remaining career will look like remains uncertain. With his conservative values and sometimes unclear judicial record, supporters and opponents alike are preparing for battle.

Haley leaving the United Nations

This Tuesday, United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley announced her resignation, effective at the end of this year.

The news came as a surprise, as much as political resignations within the United States remain a surprise anymore. Though Haley was one of the rare officials who had held a steady position since the beginning of the administration.

Haley sometimes clashed with the White House, especially when her more globalist views ran up against the President’s domestic, nationalist policies. Yes, she also pushed for hardline action against North Korea and was a prominent critic of the Iran nuclear agreement. Still, amongst the other figures of the presidential administration, Haley was often singled out as one of the dubiously-effective “adults”.

Whether or not that’s true, Haley is currently a significant figure, especially as the United States’ foreign policy shifts in a more conservative direction. Her political future remains clouded, though she claims that she will not challenge the current President for the White House in 2020.

Kanye goes to the White House

On Thursday, the President and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, met with musician Kanye West. The meeting follows months of vocal support for the White House and right-wing causes by West, surprising many. According to sources quoted in The New York Times, West wanted to use his time with the pair to discuss criminal justice reform and manufacturing jobs in Chicago. West’s representatives confirmed the meeting.

There is a long and sometimes sordid history of celebrities and the White House. These include the bizarre time Elvis dropped in on President Nixon to lend his support to anti-drug and anti-Communist efforts, to the meeting earlier this year between the President and West’s wife, Kim Kardashian West.

West’s visit, however, may go down as one of the stranger ones in recent history. Even if he did substantially discuss the criminal justice system with Kushner and the President, West overshadowed any accomplishment with his rambling in the midst of the Oval Office and subsequent overblown description of events. He referred to the President’s path as a “hero’s journey”. West also focused in on the masculinity he feels is lacking in African-American communities, a kind of power embodied by a MAGA hat that, in his words, “made me feel like Superman”.

Facebook removes over 800 political spam accounts

Late this week, Facebook announced that it had deleted hundreds of accounts that it deemed to be spewing political spam. The move prompted outcry and further discussions on the social media giant’s role in political discourse.

Of the more than 800 pages and accounts removed from its site, Facebook named only five. Some claim to be legitimate political activists and not clickbait factories, as Facebook claims. Pages were shut down because they had, according to the company “consistently broken our rules against spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior.”

This is the most recent development in what has become a long and increasingly anxiety-ridden question: what role does social media play in modern politics? It is certainly a larger role than Facebook’s founders could have predicted in 2004, when the platform first launched.

CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has even recently testified in front of Congress, concerning his company’s tangled role in the 2016 elections. And that’s nothing to say of concerns about data breaches as they relate to Facebook and politics, as in the Cambridge Analytica scandal earlier this year.

Is this move a step in the right direction for Facebook? The company has certainly faced substantial criticism over its freewheeling approach to spam accounts, especially considering that some could have influenced voters with false political information. Or, as some claim, is it a case of over-meddling and suppressing free speech? Either way, this is an ongoing saga that will not leave our news feeds any time soon.

And, finally, your palate cleanser

Sometimes, after an especially bad news week, you need the intellectual equivalent of a fancy pastry. That is, a topic that is generally sweet and inoffensive, but with enough of a bite to make it interesting. So, let’s look at wedding dresses.

As you may suspect, wedding dresses haven’t always been the high stakes affair that many modern nuptials make it out to be. A standard bride even a few decades ago would have worn her best dress, perhaps specially bought or made for the occasion. Still, it wouldn’t have been a big affair, as some of the more modern gowns might have you believe. This wonderfully exhaustive post from JSTOR Daily gives the lowdown on wedding dress history through time and many different cultures.

Then again, as in many historical tales, it’s the rich people that get remembered. Specifically, it’s their big, bold, and occasionally ridiculous dresses of royals and the ultra rich that go own in history. If that’s what you’re looking for, Harpers Bazaar has a slideshow of what they believe are the most iconic wedding dresses in history. Vogue also presented its own list, available for comparison here.

While you’re at it, take a look at the history of bridesmaid dresses at Racked, including some truly ugly creations. At least they weren’t all bad.