The Oklahoma City bombing nearly 22 years ago was an act of domestic terror by U.S. military veteran Timothy McVeigh and his accomplice, Terry Nichols. The bombing destroyed one third of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, killing 168 people and injuring 680 others. In his documentary, Oklahoma City, filmmaker Barak Goodman revisits the bombing as the first major domestic terrorist attack in the United States on April 19, 1995.

It was the number of civilians killed – especially the 15 children, four of them infants, crushed inside the building’s day care center – that made this terrorist attack by a massive fertilizer bomb so heinous for many Americans. Many films have recounted the story, but Goodman’s documentary treats the Oklahoma City bombing as a springboard to examine the roots of America’s ultra-right militia and to analyze the makeup of homegrown American terrorism.

History of suspicion

“It goes all the way back to the founding of the Republic,” the filmmaker told VOA. “The Republic was founded on the suspicion of government.” Goodman says many of these extreme separatists believe in white supremacy and in unregulated freedom to keep and bear arms so that they can protect themselves from outsiders and the government.

In the documentary, former militia member Kerry Noble explains the ideology. “The government is an enemy of the people, and in this war it’s an all or nothing. We’re either gonna win as the white race or we’re gonna lose.”  

Oklahoma City points to two events in the late 20th century that bolstered separatist ideologies: The Ruby Ridge incident on August 21, 1992, and the Waco siege in Waco, Texas, between February 28 and April 19, 1993. In both cases, federal and local government agents clashed with American separatists. The deadly incidents were fueled by the authorities’ demand to search the premises for illegal firearms.

The Waco siege was particularly deadly. The compound belonged to a group known as the Branch Davidians, led by David Koresh. When federal authorities sent in armed agents and armored vehicles to end the standoff, a fire engulfed the compound, killing 82 people, including David Koresh. Sixty-two of the victims were women and children.

Birth of an extremist

Timothy McVeigh, a Gulf War veteran disillusioned by the government during his tour in Iraq, was among those who went to witness the siege.  According to the documentary, McVeigh was radicalized by those events and by an extremist publication called The Turner Diaries.

“It’s a Talisman for the far right, even to this day, but especially back in the ’90s and ’80s it was the ‘Bible’ of this movement,” says Goodman. “It’s a novel about a small group of ‘patriots,’ ‘white patriots’ who retake the government from the Jews and blacks who have infiltrated it, essentially. It’s a racist creed and as I said, it is very poorly done. Intriguingly though, it describes the bombing of the FBI, the culmination of the novel, and it really lays out a recipe on how to build a bomb like this.”

That bomb is very similar to the one McVeigh used in Oklahoma City.

“McVeigh was deeply, deeply influenced by this book,” Goodman adds. “He sold it in gun shows, he quoted it, when he was arrested he had several pages of it in a folder beside him in a car. And it wasn’t just McVeigh, it was all through this movement. People were really exorcised, impassioned, inflamed by this novel.”

The documentary shows McVeigh obsessed with his guns and with the idea that the government was going to take them away. The film also points out that his exposure to the war in Iraq accelerated his feeling of mistrust of the U.S. government. 

“The way he put it made it sound he was emphatic towards the dead Iraqi soldiers that he killed. I really don’t think that’s the case,” says Barak Goodman. Instead, says the filmmaker, it was McVeigh’s mistrust of the U.S. government, how it had blundered into Iraq and his idea of the U.S. government as a bully, and McVeigh, says Goodman, hated bullies. The Ruby Ridge and Waco stand-offs reinforced that idea in his mind.

Homegrown extremism

According to the documentary, there are 500 militia organizations in the U.S. today. Goodman believes they are as radicalized as ever.  “Some of them have gotten rid of their camouflage outfits and put on suits and ties, but really the rhetoric has been virtually the same for 100 years or more. ‘It’s a whites-only country, it should be a whites-only country, the federal government is in the hands of Jews, blacks, it’s a conspiracy.’”

Goodman says it is a misconception to believe that this is a movement of white poor disenfranchised people. Certainly, he says, many are, but there also many professionals feeling a loss of entitlement, a loss of privilege and power. The filmmaker stresses that these people operate outside political parties and share a deep mistrust of the Washington political establishment.

But Goodman cautions these extremists are not de facto terrorists. He says it takes a confluence of opportunity and a warped personality, often a lone individual, to commit a terrorist act of a scale such as the Oklahoma City bombing.

“McVeigh was a shock to most people in the FBI. It would be less of a shock today. But it’s very hard to prevent these things. One of the takeaways from our film and audiences who have seen it have been amazed at how really easy it was to do this. It cost about $6000, it was one guy, reading some literature,” says the filmmaker.

Goodman says in a politically polarized America, the possibility for future domestic terrorist attacks is high. 

“If you talk to people from the Southern Law Poverty Center, which tracks these groups, they are pounding on the wall, they are ringing the bell, they are saying, ‘This is an ongoing threat, it’s threat level midnight, it’s rising, it’s whatever the highest color is on the chart,’” he says.

The SPLC reports, “the number of hate groups in the United States rose for a second year in a row in 2016 as the radical right was energized by the candidacy of Donald Trump.” “The most dramatic growth,” it states, “was the near-tripling of anti-Muslim hate groups – from 34 in 2015 to 101 last year.” Also, a wave of bomb threats and vandalism has rattled Jewish institutions around the country, but especially in the South.  “Right now, minorities feel particularly threatened,” says the Oklahoma City filmmaker.

“There is a very big difference between even hard gun rights activists and terrorists. I want to make that clear,” says Goodman. “I would take issue with the idea that they have infiltrated the administration. But it is a little galling to see the really mono focus on terrorists from abroad, terrorists influenced by ideas from abroad, whatever those ideas might be, and not on any real discussion about home-grown terrorism which has always been with us and which is not going away and which is actually — if you look at the numbers of the incidents — rivaling or exceeding those by that other group,” he adds.

Goodman hopes his film, Oklahoma City, will call attention to this rising threat and contribute to the conversation on the inherent dangers of domestic terrorism.
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Actor Alec Baldwin said that his impersonation of U.S. President Donald Trump on NBC’s sketch show “Saturday Night Live” has revived his “dead” comedy career after he wrapped up sitcom “30 Rock” in 2012.

“I didn’t realize in the comedy terms that I was dead,” Baldwin told Reuters on Monday when asked if he felt he was entering a new era with his comedy.

“Maybe I was in a coma … now I’m waking up from a coma and now I’m ready to do some comedy.”

The actor was promoting his latest film, DreamWorks’ animated comedy “The Boss Baby,” out in theaters on March 31, in which he voices a suit-wearing baby manager of a corporation for babies who is adopted by a family to undertake a covert mission.

It has been nearly five years since Baldwin, 58, concluded his six-year tenure as the charming corporate boss Jack Donaghy in NBC’s quirky comedy series “30 Rock.”

Since then, he has appeared in a handful of movies in supporting roles, but the actor saw a new surge in popularity when he took over as Trump on “Saturday Night Live” (SNL) last October, ahead of November’s U.S. presidential elections.

Baldwin quipped that his comedy career “did die” but that “I’m being reincarnated. As Trump! Oh God!”

Viewer ratings have soared for “Saturday Night Live” since Baldwin started portraying Trump in a series of skits mocking the billionaire reality TV star-turned-politician as a dim-witted commander-in-chief with a short attention span, an oversized-ego and a Twitter addiction.

Trump criticized the NBC show in December, calling it “totally unwatchable” and a “hit-job.”

Asked whether he felt playing the president took a toll on him, Baldwin said the challenge of the role was that it would “delight some people and offend other people.”

“A large plurality of the country voted for Trump as president, and I think many of them are people that are not fond of the way Trump is treated, not just by ‘Saturday Night Live’ but the comedy cosmos in general,” he said.

“I think for me playing Trump has been, it’s been a fun experience because it’s like going home when I do SNL.”

 
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Pop star George Michael died from natural causes, according to a British coroner.

Specifically, the singer died of “dilated cardiomyopathy with myocarditis and fatty liver,” according to Darren Salter senior coroner for Oxfordshire, where Michael died last Christmas at the age of 53.

The heart conditions named interfere with the heart’s ability to pump blood and cause inflammation of the heart muscle.

Since Michael died of natural causes, there will be no investigation.

Michael had a long history of drug and alcohol abuse.

Born Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou, he once played music on the London underground train system before forming Wham! with Andrew Ridgeley in 1981.

Michael enjoyed immense popularity early in his career as a member of Wham! with hits such as “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” and “Careless Whisper.”

As a solo artist, he developed into a more serious singer and songwriter, lauded by critics for his tremendous vocal range. Some of his solo hits included “Father Figure” and “Freedom.”

In 2011, Michael postponed a series of concerts after being hospitalized with pneumonia. He later said it had been “touch and go” as to whether he lived.

Michael disclosed he was gay in 1998 after being arrested in a public toilet in Beverly Hills, California for engaging in a lewd act.
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For generations, the circus meant big entertainment – elephants, lion tamers, dancing bears, high-wire acts. But times, and tastes, have changed. In May, after nearly a century and a half, the Ringling Brothers/Barnum and Bailey Circus – “the greatest show on earth” – will close.

But circuses are alive and well, largely without the ringmasters and exotic animals. Instead, they use a combination of music, amazing acrobatics and story-telling to transfix their audiences.

“Circus artists have been producing new and incredible circus acts and apparatuses and shows that have an artistic context and theatrical storylines, or well-drawn characters,” Adam Woolley notes. “And this has been happening around the world for the past 10, 15 years or so.”

Woolley runs Circus Now, a non-profit organization which supports and promotes contemporary circus arts, which combine traditional circus skills, like acrobatics, juggling and trapeze, with theatrical techniques to tell a story.

 

Cutting-edge entertainment

Here in the U.S., smaller traditional troupes, like the Kelly Miller Circus, still pitch their tents across the country.  But Woolley says there are more experimental companies that are pushing the art form, and those are the ones Circus Now works with.  

“Audiences or families who might not be interested to go see, you know, some very avant garde modern dance, will still go see the circus.  You know, people who would prefer to watch movies or television than go see a play, will probably still come see the circus.”

Circus Now’s festival in New York this month featured the Race Horse Company from Finland. Acrobat Rauli Kosonen formed it with a couple of other performers nine years ago, because he says there’s something unique about circus.

“I think it’s really pure art form, in the sense that you can really feel the risks – there’s a lot of risks, so you can get a lot of adrenaline, while you watch it, if there is kind of tricks that make your heart bounce.  Because it’s real.  They can see if they make a mistake, they might get hurt.  So, I guess that’s always been why circus is appealing.  It reminds us that, uh, we’re humans.”  

And Kosonen – whose specialty is trampoline – has the broken bones to prove it. 

“Well, I had three operations,” he admits, adding ruefully, “it’s part of the job; sometimes you don’t get lucky.”  

New York’s Only Child Aerial Theatre also performed during the festival. Kendall Ridleigh, one of the troupe’s founders, says they shy away from calling themselves a circus.

“Just because there is the implication that the skills or the spectacle is sort of paramount, rather than the narrative.  And we really have tried to keep the narrative the most important element and have the skills really drive and support the narrative.”

In a former factory in Brooklyn, Only Child is rehearsing its latest show, Asylum.  It’s set in a mental institution in the 1970s.  There’s a story, but there’s no spoken dialogue, says co-founder Nicki Miller.

“We would describe it as a theater piece that includes a lot of aerial work, dance, some recorded music, some live music and overhead projection and shadow.  So, the story is told, rather than through dialogue, through the conversation of those theatrical vocabularies, instead,” Miller said. 

So, even as the performers do aerial tricks, they’re dressed like mental patients, doctors and nurses, says Rileigh. There are no sparkles or spandex. But, they’re still doing stuff high off the ground…without a net.  

A big tent for big stories

Circus Now’s Adam Woolley says contemporary circus companies, even with their different skill sets and artistic approaches, all fall under what can only be called the “big tent” of what circus can be.  

He says they share the belief that with lots of practice and hard work, they can accomplish the impossible.

“That’s the core idea that everyone in circus believes in and everyone in circus tries to impart to the audiences – that ‘I have dedicated my life to this seven minutes of performance and honed my skill to the place where  I’m going to accomplish something in front of you now that you did not think could be done.’” 

And that’s what still thrills audiences.
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