Adam Carolla asks simple questions on race and poverty, gets slammed for it

We have the right to free speech in the United States, but there are just some things you aren't supposed to talk about. Or question. Race is one of them. We're all supposed to pretend we don't notice if someone is black or white, or Hispanic, Asian, or Native American. With all the hush-hush on the topic, you'd think race was something we were supposed to be ashamed of. Why do we pretend it doesn't exist? Why are we all fooling ourselves? And why do we all jump on someone the moment they break the rules and dare ask questions about it? Isn't it getting a bit silly?

The latest person to step on the race landmine is Adam Carolla, podcaster and former co-host of Love Line and The Man Show. Carolla is now getting crucified after a recent podcast which featured guest Gavin Newsom, a former San Fransisco mayor. The incident began after Newsom started talking about poverty and mentioned the fact that many Blacks and Hispanics don't have access to checking accounts and ATMs. Carolla then asked what was wrong with them? What is it about Blacks and Hispanics that prevents them from having access to checking accounts like the rest of us do? Are they flawed? Newsom responded by saying that there were many reasons but he didn't want to get into a sociological discussion.

Listen to the exchange below:
If you listen to the rest of the exchange, you'll learn that Carolla's point is that those who do well are those whose focus is the family, a good education, and hard work, while those who don't are the opposite. There seems to be an almost unanimous view in the country that blacks are at the bottom rung still because of their origins in slavery. The argument is that they're still catching up as a result of that and we should all just be patient and sooner or later their school performance and employment rates will improve.

What goes against this argument is this: slavery was abolished in 1865, while the Japanese were put in internment camps in 1942 and Jews were killed by the millions in the 1940s as well. Are the Japanese still struggling the survive? Are Jews experiencing high unemployment and dropout rates? And whatever your reasoning happens to be for the state of affairs in the United States, what about for the rest of the world where conditions are different yet similar problems exist?

As you can see, there appear to be some holes in the status quo reasoning. Most people seem to realize that somewhere there is a fault in the logic, but anyone who dares to question it gets crucified in a heartbeat. We're not allowed to discuss race. We're not allowed to acknowledge discrepancies. Keep your head in the sand and hopefully it'll all work itself out. How's that been working out for us?

Dr. Bronner's Magic Peppermint Soap

We've just finished watching the documentary "Dr. Bronner's Magic Soapbox" streaming on Netflix. Ok we lied, we made it about halfway through. But that says more about our attention span than it does the movie, which was actually pretty interesting. Now we've seen this stuff in pharmacy chains like Walgreens and CVS before but never thought much of it and have yet to try it. But it turns out there's people who absolutely swear by this stuff - you'd think it was some sort of magic potion.

Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap was the creation of Emanuel Bronner, an immigrant from Germany whose parents were both killed in the Holocaust. He was reported to be somewhat insane and was even institutionalized at one point in the 1940s. He started making the soap in the first half of the 20th century which includes religious and philosophical writings on the outside label, something he referred to as the ABC's of morals and "All-One-God-Faith". We heard so much about how great this soap was in the film that we decided to see if we could find any reviews of the stuff online to find out if it was really that good. We turned to Youtube and it ended up being a great resource.

First up is blueottlisa, she has very good things to say about the peppermint soap but starts off asking why nobody warned her about the tingling. Hmmm so this soap causes a tingling sensation? We want to try it even more now! She continues to say that after washing her face with it she decided to use it in the shower: "if I thought the tingling on my eyes was bad...this thing tingles ALL. OVER. YOUR. BODY." She goes on to compare it to a boyfriend of hers who used to eat a lot of pepper and then go down on her. Ouch! Be careful ladies!

Next up we have 1SEXYTINA1, with a video entitled "PEPPERMINT SOAP... *** FOR WOMEN ONLY***"



ooooo we're on the edge of our seat already. I feel like a kid again watching a rated R movie late at night after everyone's gone to bed. It really had us wondering though, does this peppermint soap cause people to have orgasms or something? Is that the secret nobody's telling us? Are people getting off on this shit? Unfortunately it's the exact opposite, it'll make your junk feel like someone just poured hydrochloric acid up your urethra. 1SEXYTINA1 offers some great advice and her delivery is great, but the main takeaway here is this: Do not use much of this soap at a time at all. One tiny drop should last you a week, and you'll want to dilute it in water. If you try using this stuff like it's any other soap you might as well set your naughty bits on fire.

Lastly we have genipha4life who offers what she calls "a commercial for my favorite product in the whole wide world".




- Good reading material on the bottle
- You can wash many things with Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap: your hair, brush your teeth with it, your bathroom and your clothes
- Can use it to relax, by putting it on a warm towel to be placed on your forehead

Alright alright, we're convinced. First thing tomorrow we're going to go out and get us a bottle of this peppermint soap. I'll probably pass on the brushing your teeth part of it though, yuck.

Black Swan Coverup: Sarah Lane Did All The Work

Black Swan was one of the biggest box office success stories in 2010 (budget $13 million, gross revenue $281 million), which recently earned star Natalie Portman the Academy Award for "Best Actress in a Leading Role" at the Oscars. During her acceptance speech, a shaken Portman thanked just about everyone, from Luc Besson who gave her her first job to "Closer" director Mike Nichols to her parents. But there's one person that contributed to her latest success who was off her list and seems all but forgotten: ballerina dancer Sarah Lane. And it's not just Natalie Portman that has seem to forgotten all about Sarah Lane, there appears to be an effort by the producers and others who worked on Black Swan to downplay Lane's work on the film as well.

Who's Sarah Lane? Lane is a professional dancer and was Portman's body double for the difficult dancing scenes in Black Swan. And not just for a couple moves here and there, according to Lane she did at least 95% of the ballerina dancing that is seen in the film. And that's where there seems to be some discrepancy, as both the producer and Portman's choreographer (also her fiancé) have made a concerted effort to minimize and downplay Lane's contributions.

From insidemovies.ew.com:

Choreographer Benjamin Millepied said Lane’s work in the film was far less significant. “There are articles now talking about her dance double [American Ballet Theatre dancer Sarah Lane] that are making it sound like [Lane] did a lot of the work, but really, she just did the footwork, and the fouettés, and one diagonal [phrase] in the studio,” he said. “Honestly, 85 percent of that movie is Natalie.”
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Lane also says that Black Swan producer Ari Handel specifically told her not to talk about her work to the press, even though she claims there was no such stipulation in her contract.
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Lane is barely seen in promotional materials for the movie, including a VFX reel posted by studio Fox Searchlight that appears to show all the digital alterations made to key dance sequences.

We can understand a body double not exactly getting the same amount of spotlight as the main star, but you'd think in "behind the scenes" footage showing doing the digital alterations putting Portman's face on Lane's body they would at least give her a little credit. And we simply don't believe the producers when they say Lane's work was minimal. The reason why they want to downplay Lane's contribution is it goes against the narrative they had built up about how Portman went from non-dancer to ballerina dancer in just a year, how she worked so hard and this is her best performance, how they used this narrative to sell the movie in the first place, and finally it's the reason Portman received her Oscar. In showbiz there's a big difference between what actually happens behind the scenes and the story that gets put out to the public, and whenever the truth happens to leak out every now and then it's not surprising to see the powers that be try to squash it as quickly as possible.

Some people have said: look she signed up to be a body double, she got paid. The end. Body doubles know going in they aren't going to be seen as the star. To an extent we do agree with that and understand, but the concerted effort to downplay all the work she put in to making it a great film, just as much effort as the actors and actresses did, is simply not necessary and comes off as unprofessional. Give credit where credit is due, and when your film turns out to be as big as a success as this one has, you should be even more appreciative of the effort and talent that went into helping it become that success.

I do worry though that this may hurt Sarah Lane if she expects to get any future body double work, as she may be seen as becoming a trouble maker after a film is released. But hopefully she'll be able to work with future producers and make it clear in her contract that she gets proper credit but also doesn't later come out downplaying the star.

Reid, Schumer, Lautenberg, and Udall: Eat a Dick

With all of the world's problems solved, our representatives in congress have turned their focus to issues that really matter to us here at People Liking People, like legislating smartphone apps. Lately there's been a ruckus about certain controversial apps for the BlackBerry, Google's Android, and Apple's iPhone. There was the one that claimed to help homosexual men deal with their gayness and guide them back to hetero (dubbed the gay cure app), and now there's one that displays where DUI checkpoints are on a map, presumably so one can avoid them. Apple did eventually pull the gay cure app, and RMI pulled the DUI checkpoint app from their Blackberry.

Whether or not you agree with these individual company decisions, at the end of the day that's their call and they have every right to do that. What we do have a problem with is when elected representatives start trying to dictate what they deem acceptable or not acceptable. It's simply not the government's role, and they have more than enough on their plate as it is without having to meddle in company decisions like this.

The following U.S. Congressmen sent letters to Google, RIM, and Apple in an attempt to bully them into removing the DUI checkpoint app: Harry Reid (D-NV), Charles E. Schumer (D-NY), Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Tom Udall (D-NM). People need to be aware of these ass clowns that seem to have their priorities ass backwards. And notice they're all democrats? Aren't the democrats the ones that aren't supposed to care what we do in our personal lives? I thought it was the republicans that were always trying to legislate morality. So now who are we supposed to count on to stay the fuck out of our business and take care of the real issues that matter?

We're sure that these congressmen are trying to use the "think of the children" excuse and "if we just save 1 life then it's worth it" well guess what? Getting rid of this app won't do a damn thing. It won't save any lives, it won't make anyone safer, it really won't do anything except for the beginning of allowing the government to step in and be the approval agency for what apps are acceptable and what aren't. As if we didn't have enough of this already. Reid, Schumer, Lautenberg, and Udall ought to be ashamed of themselves. We'd like to think they could be voted out next election, but that's probably being extremely naive.