We visited Madame Tussauds Orlando earlier this month and learned that Madonna might not be the best celebrity advocate for years of lockdowns, mask orders, and school closures: “It’s better to live one year as a tiger, than one hundred as a sheep.”
This inspired a search that turned up “Madonna’s Instagram account flagged for spreading misinformation” (BBC, July 2020):
Pop star Madonna has been censured by Instagram after sharing a video about a coronavirus conspiracy theory to her 15 million followers.
In her post, the singer claimed a vaccine for Covid-19 had already been found, but was being hidden to “let the rich get richer”.
Instagram blurred out the video with a caption saying: “False Information”.
It also directed users to a page debunking the claims in the video, noting there is no coronavirus vaccine.
Facebook and Twitter had previously removed the video, flagging it as misinformation; while Donald Trump Jr. was banned from tweeting for 12 hours as a penalty for sharing the clip.
What about the absurd “vaccine for Covid-19 had already been found” claim? From December 2020, “We Had the Vaccine the Whole Time” (New York Magazine):
You may be surprised to learn that of the trio of long-awaited coronavirus vaccines, the most promising, Moderna’s mRNA-1273, which reported a 94.5 percent efficacy rate on November 16, had been designed by January 13.
And the “let the rich get richer” calumny against Science? From October 2021, “The richest Americans became 40% richer during the pandemic” (Guardian):
The 400 richest Americans added $4.5tn to their wealth last year, a 40% rise, even as the pandemic shuttered large parts of the US, according to Forbes magazine’s latest tally of the country’s richest people.
“World’s richest become wealthier during Covid pandemic as inequality grows” (NBC, January 2021):
Almost every country in the world is likely to see an increase in inequality because of the pandemic, according to a new report.
“Wealth of world’s 10 richest men doubled in pandemic, Oxfam says” (BBC, January 2022):
Danny Sriskandarajah, Oxfam GB’s chief executive, said the charity timed the report each year to coincide with Davos to attract the attention of economic, business and political elites.
“This year, what’s happening is off the scale,” he said. “There’s been a new billionaire created almost every day during this pandemic, meanwhile 99% of the world’s population are worse off because of lockdowns, lower international trade, less international tourism, and as a result of that, 160 million more people have been pushed into poverty.”
“Something is deeply flawed with our economic system,” he added.
Separately, on the subject of inequality, Madame Tussauds invites visitors to compare their achievements to some Americans who were selected at random:
(Elvis, Oprah, and Dan Marino)
Regarding the rich trying to become richer, here’s child support plaintiff Angeline Jolie and the cash source that she has been tapping:
The best part of visiting Madame Tussauds was hearing our 8-year-old ask, after seeing a realistic sculpture of the King of Pop, “Was Michael Jackson a boy or a girl?”
Guess identifying as a woman wasn’t enough to make madonna immune to the KGB. Interestingly, Michael Jackson was married twice, but he preferred younger women, much younger.
I’m glad you included the NY Mag. Intelligencer link because about 1.5 months later, everyone who reads the Boston Globe (the only ‘real’ newspaper in Boston that isn’t right-wing fishwrap) knew (paywalled):
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/03/02/business/ceos-two-massachusetts-biotechs-are-meeting-with-trump-coronavirus/
“Stephane Bancel, chief executive of Cambridge-based Moderna, and Daniel Menichella, chief executive of CureVac, which has operations in Germany and Boston, met for almost 90 minutes with Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, and members of the White House coronavirus task force, Menichella said. The CEOs of other drug makers working on vaccines also participated.”
…
“Pence told reporters after the meeting that he was “grateful for these leaders of the nation’s top pharmaceutical companies to come in and speak to us about the development of vaccines but **also the development of therapeutic medications that can be available in the short term.**”
…
“Among the other chief executives invited to the meeting were the heads of GlaxoSmithKline and Inovio Pharmaceuticals.”
**emphasis mine**
It looks like they had a lot of high level Supers Mart (S-Mart) people in that 90 minute meeting to map out a schedule, get their stories straight, and most importantly work on those all-important “therapeutics medications that can be available in the short term.”
I’d love to have been a fly on the wall. We’re only beginning to see the “therapeutics” rolling out. It looks like they all got that timeline totally wrong, hoping to capitalize on therapeutics, perhaps first? Instead we got Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine, both of which did tremendous damage to Trump. HE started talking about HCQ on March 19th from what I can tell, just about two weeks after the meeting mentioned in the Boston Globe.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2020/05/22/all-the-times-trump-promoted-hydroxychloroquine/?sh=4cac4e374643
I wonder if any of the Illustrious Potentate Executives dropped HCQ to rattle around in Trump’s mind for a couple of weeks until he just couldn’t take it any more and blurted it out, just to make Fauci mad? – “BUT STRICTLY, MR. PRESIDENT, OFF THE RECORD HERE because it ain’t FDA approved and we don’t have anything better yet. We have to protect our processes, not talk about unapproved therapies.”
Fascinating stuff. And amazing how it was all “handled.”
It’s too bad you didn’t get a close-up shot of the wristwatch Brad Pitt’s replica is wearing. Madame Tussaud’s has a reputation for attempting accuracy down to the last detail, and I know that Brad Pitt is an avid watch collector/enthusiast in both in his movie roles and in real life.
https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/fashion/article/brad-pitt-watch-collection
Here is one of my favorite watchmaking/repair YouTubers refurbishing the very cool Citizen “Bullhead” that Pitt wore in “Once upon a time in Hollywood.” It is a 23-jewel automatic (meaning it self-winds) chronograph with an unconventional location for the “pushers” – at the top of the bezel instead of the sides. Red Dead Restoration does a beautiful job on this badly abused and nonfunctional timepiece which sold for approx. $137 back in the 1970s. This is apparently THE watch Pitt wore in the movie.
If you want to see just the before/after click here, and then rewind the video to, er, “watch” the process.
https://youtu.be/wvOT1rQEUqw?t=1239
Does Madame Tussaud’s have any descriptions of the clothing and accessories chosen for their replicas?
Alex: No clothing descriptions in the placards that I remember or that I photographed. Just inspiring quotes, e.g., “Be yourself always, there’s no one Better!” from Selena Gomez and “The most alluring thing a woman can have is confidence” from Beyoncé
(see https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2022/03/limits-women-confidence-workplace-inequality/626562/
Whatever the problems faced by women or girls, the implied diagnosis offered is typically the same: She just needs to believe in herself. (We use women to include all who identify as such, including trans and gender-nonconforming individuals.) Inequality in the workplace? Female employees need to lean in. Eating disorders and poor body image? Girls’ empowerment programs are the solution. Parenting problems? Let’s make moms feel more self-assured so they can raise confident kids. Sex life in a rut? Well, loving yourself is “the new sexy!” Each of these messages reframes features of our unequal society as individual problems; according to confidence culture, we need to change women, not the world.)
Being a loser and nobody? Have a sex change and whola you are a winner and on the front page. Lia Thomas: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/we-should-be-celebrating-lia-thomas-we-did-jackie-robinson-ncna1292521
from the link, “Athletic performance is influenced by a number of factors, including hormones, but also other things like coaching and training, psychological makeup of an athlete, access to resources and equipment, among others. Attempts to ban or limit the participation of trans athletes are not based on science.
if you are not for men in blond wigs and red lipstick competing in women’s (they/zir) sports you are “against the science”