Gordon Haber

Many of us are feeling helpless and overwhelmed. It’s only natural, considering how the current administration is dismantling the federal government and throwing their support behind murderous dictators.

But we don’t have the luxury of admitting defeat. If want a return to responsible governance and the rule of law, we’ve got to find concrete ways to defeat Trump – or at least limit the damage.

I spent some time in the last few days looking for ideas. Here’s what I found. Please let me know what you think, and if you have ideas of your own. 

1. Primary Trump

“Democrats are on the receiving end of a bum rush. They need to think outside the box and get tough. Maybe a quiet pledge to make significant contributions to the reelection campaign of any Republican member of Congress who is primaried for voting against Trump? That might get some attention.”
James D. Zirin in The Hill

2. An American Arab Spring

“There is no substitute for a voter uprising that threatens politicians with losing their jobs. […] We need an American equivalent of the Arab Spring — an overwhelming and sustained demand for fundamental rights, good government, a healthy democracy and the rule of law. And because a stable democracy and stable climate go hand in hand, their restoration would be a fitting theme for a massive show of voter power on Earth Day this April in Washington.”
William S. Becker in The Hill

3. Take Your Congressman to Work Day

“Here’s an idea, guys, how about all these agencies where employees are being locked out, how about you send members of Congress with those employees to walk them into work, or just send members of Congress to go into the building and investigate what these people are doing, dare them to stop you because they can’t.”
Former GOP Congressman Adam Kinzinger on X

4. Pressure low-level staffers 

“It’s largely ineffective for protesters to focus […] on the government’s top decision-makers, such as the president and his political appointees. […] But virtually every government policy must be developed and implemented by people far below those appointees. These people — who swear an independent oath to protect the Constitution — can be affected by public influence, and as public servants, should be. Activism can help them understand issues, and empower them to speak up against illegal or unjust policies.”
Brendan Ballou, a former federal prosecutor, in Politico

5. Wreck his approval rating

“So here’s an idea: Go out and tell them about the bad shit Trump is doing, right now.”
Jonathan V. Last in The Bulwark

6. Work the procedural angles

“Slow the Senate. Lawmakers in the upper chamber of Congress don’t have a big red “stop everything” button—but the Democratic Senate minority can slow business as usual and dramatize its opposition.

Make congressional Republicans work for Democratic votes. When their votes are not just symbolic, Democrats should filibuster where they can, force Republicans to squirm for as many hours as possible, and extract a serious political price for standing down. 

Break the norms around congressional collegiality. It’s typically considered rude for one member of Congress to confront another in public. But these aren’t typical times.”
Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg of Indivisible in The Nation

7. Political mobilization and messaging

“Trump’s aggressive use of presidential power is not just a constitutional crisis, it is a political one. For those seeking to resist, this is too important to just be left to the courts; it must also involve America’s key political institutions.”
William Partlett in The Conversation

BONUS: 7 Ways to Rise Up Against Trumpism 2.0

“[…] people are fighting back with every tool at their disposal, from trainings and legal challenges to walkouts and strikes. Here is a non-comprehensive list of ways people across the United States are rising up against Trumpism.”
Sonali Kolhatar in Yes Magazine

“Stop sneezing on me.”

January 28, 2025. The Trump administration has frozen communications from several federal health agencies.

Even if they unfreeze communications, they will likely politicize the reporting of data on infectious diseases like bird flu, COVID, and HIV. This will make it difficult for journalists to report on these issues and for citizens to assess their own risks and make decisions accordingly.

In the interest of transparency, I’m assembling a list of city and municipal agencies that provide health data. Scroll to the bottom for other organizations, like the WHO. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of each site, and some sites are easier to use than others. You’re going to have to do some digging. But at least you have a place to start.

I’m adding to the list as time allows. There’s a contact form at the bottom if you have questions or a link to add.

Update 2/19/2025. The CDC Bird Flu site is back up.

Update 2/28/2025. The installment of RFK Jr as Secretary of Health and Human Services will likely have a disastrous effect on public health in the US and beyond—which makes data transparency even more urgent.

As I’ve delved into health data websites, my understanding of the field has improved. Wherever possible, I’m focusing on three areas:

• General repositories of health data
• Respiratory virus surveillance
• Avian flu information (aka “bird flu,” H5N1)

Alabama

• Alabama Public Health Data
• Viral Respiratory Diseases

Alaska

• Alaska Public Health Data Hub
• Alaska Respiratory Virus Snapshot

Arkansas

• Arkansas Department of Public Health Data Hub

Arizona

• ADHS Public Health Data Portal

California

• California Health and Human Services Open Data Portal
• California Respiratory Virus Report
• Los Angeles County public health data

Colorado

• Colorado Data and Statistics
• Denver is building a health data platform. Info here.

Connecticut

• CT Respiratory Viral Disease Surveillance

Delaware

• My Healthy Community

Florida

• Florida health data and statistics
• Florida Health Charts
• Florida Respiratory Illnesses

Georgia

• Georgia DPH Data and Statistics
• Georgia DPH Epidemiology

Hawaii

• Hawaii Disease Outbreak Control Division

Idaho

• Division of Public Health Population Health Data

Illinois

• Illinois Department of Public Health (404 error)
• Illinois Seasonal Respiratory Illness Dashboard
• Chicago Department of Public Health

Indiana

• Indiana Department of Health Data & Reports

Iowa

• Iowa Public Health Tracking Portal
• Iowa Influenza Surveillance

Kansas

• Kansas Influenza Surveillance (Includes H5N1.)
• Kansas Department of Public Health Data Dashboards (See the menu on the left for info about specific outbreaks)

Kentucky

• Kentucky Respiratory Viruses
• University of Louisville Kentucky State Data Center
• Kentucky Department for Public Health Data Portal

Louisiana

• Louisiana Department of Health Data explorer. (The first US death from avian flu was in Louisiana in January, 2025. Louisiana’s Respiratory Virus Dashboard is updated weekly.)

Maine

• Maine Center for Disease Control & Prevention Data and Reports
• Maine Health Data Organization (MHDO)

Maryland

• Maryland Department of Health Data, Information, and Plans (One of the more comprehensive sites. Includes info on avian influenza, mpox, respiratory viruses, measles and other infectious diseases.)

Massachusetts

• Community Health Data
• Public Health Data Warehouse (PHD)

Michigan

• Michigan Disease Surveillance System Weekly Report
• Michigan Agriculture & Rural Development Avian Influenza info (Only provides “detections,” no numbers)

Minnesota

• Viral Respiratory Illness in Minnesota (DATA & STATISTICS)
• Minnesota Public Health Data Access Portal

Missouri

• Missouri Influenza Surveillance
• Missouri DHSS Communicable Diseases (Informative but no data.)
• Missouri Health Data Reports

Montana

• Montana DPHHS COVID-19, Influenza, and RSV Dashboard

Nebraska

• Nebraska DHHS respiratory illness dashboard
• Douglas County Health Portal
• City of Lincoln Respiratory Illness Dashboard

Nevada

• Nevada DHHS Infectious Diseases Data Portal

New Hampshire

• New Hampshire DHHS Data Portal
• New Hampshire Influenza (Flu) Activity (For some reason, it’s a separate page from above.)

New Jersey

• NJ Statistics, Reports, & Publications
• New Jersey State Health Assessment Data

New Mexico

• New Mexico Viral Respiratory Infection Dashboard

New York

• New York City COVID-19 data
• New York State Department of Health Open Data
• Influenza Activity, Surveillance and Reports

North Carolina

• NCDHHS Respiratory Disease Surveillance Summary

North Dakota

• NDHHS Respiratory Illnesses and Prevention (Scroll down for weekly reports.)
• ND Department of Agriculture Avian Influenza Confirmations (Animals only.)

Ohio

• Ohio Seasonal Influenza Activity Report
• Ohio Health Data and Statistics
• Columbus Public Health Data and Reports

Oklahoma

• OK ViralView: Seasonal Respiratory Viruses
• Oklahoma Dept of Agriculture, Food and Forestry: Current Oklahoma Disease Alerts

Oregon

• Oregon Health Authority Data

Pennsylvania

• Pennsylvania Health Statistics
• Respiratory Virus Dashboard

Rhode Island

• HealthFacts RI Database
• Department of Environmental Management: H5N1 (Avian Influenza)
• Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) Surveillance Data

Puerto Rico

• Departamento de Salud / Department of Health BioData

South Carolina

• Public Health Data
• SC Respiratory Disease Dashboard
• Weekly Surveillance Reports

South Dakota

• Health Data and Reports
• COVID-19 Dashboard
• Influenza Dashboard
• Monthly Infectious Disease Dashboard
• Avian Flu Guidance

Texas

• Texas health data
• Texas Respiratory Illness Interactive Dashboard
• Houston Health Department Data and Reporting

Tennessee

• Tennessee Health Statistics
• Epidemiology and Surveillance Data

Utah

• Utah Public Health Indicator Based Information System (IBIS) 
• Data and reports (Includes links to disease-specific dashboards and reports.)
• Wildlife Avian Influenza Dashboard

Vermont

• Vermont Health Data
• Environmental Public Health Data Tracking
• Flu Activity and Surveillance
• Avian Influenza Wildlife Health Bulletin 

Virginia

• Virginia Department of Health Data Portal
• Respiratory Disease Data
• Avian Influenza Guidelines

Washington DC

• DC Data and Statistics (Overly complicated and doesn’t seem to have data on infectious diseases.)

Washington State

• Washington State Department of Health Data and Statistical Reports
• Communicable Disease Surveillance Data
• Bird Flu Update

West Virginia

• WV seems to have stopped publishing health data in 2020. However, it is possible to request health data here.
• Influenza data and surveillance seems to have ended in 2023.

Wisconsin

• Data and statistics
• Respiratory Illness Data Snapshot
• Wisconsin Avian Flu-Positive Premises

Wyoming

• Surveillance Program & Statistics (Don’t waste your time. The most recent Communicable Disease Surveillance Report is from 2020. Other statistics, like TB, haven’t been updated since 2023.)

Other organizations providing health data and statistics

American Medical Association (AMA)

• AMA bird flu (H5N1) resource center
• AMA YouTube channel

Canada

• Our neighbors to the north have a comprehensive health data infobase.
• See also Canada’s ongoing list of avian flu detections by province.

Center for Disease Control

• Enterprising citizen journalists have added CDC datasets to the Internet Archive.
• Journalist Jessica Valenti is posting the deleted CDC guidelines relating to reproductive rights.

City Health Dashboard

• The City Health Dashboard has data on over 40 measures of health and drivers of health for over 970 cities across the U.S.

FluTrackers.com

• A crowdsourced message board with sources from around the world.

Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME)

• An independent population health research organization based at the University of Washington School of Medicine.

University of Minnesota

• The bird flu tracker is a promising tool, but the interface isn’t user friendly, and the data stops at October, 2024.

USDA

• Detections of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza in Mammals

Public Health Experts

• Gregg Gonsalves is the Nation public health correspondent and an associate professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health.

World Health Organization

• WHO Data Hub
• WHO Global Health Observatory
• WHO Western Pacific region avian flu data (Scroll down for monthly and weekly updates)

World Organisation for Animal Health

• Avian flu situation reports

Get in touch…

This piece was published on the departed website Bookslut in April, 2010.

Titles are hard. You spend weeks or months or years on your work, and somewhere along the way you’re expected to encapsulate it in a few pithy words. It’s kind of draining, when you think about it. Maybe that’s why Mark Rothko used the word “untitled” so often — not because he wanted to leave interpretation to the viewer, but because he put so much effort into the art itself. After a long day of painting huge colored squares, who has the energy for titles? 

But I would posit that titles are hardest for filmmakers and writers. They need to suggest something with their titles. It’s a kind of marketing. Thus they can’t resort to Untitled (although I’m sure it’s been done), and Krzysztof Kieslowski cornered the market on colors and numbers.  

When I asked around, I found out that I was right. Amanda Church, a painter, told me that “a title can make or break a painting.” And Ruth Boerefijn, an installation artist, said that “sometimes a title comes to me out of the blue — and it is right.” Now, these remarks don’t suggest that titling is easy, but they were nowhere near as fraught or self-deprecating as the responses I got from the filmmakers and writers. Novelist Lauren Grodstein compared her “title sense” to her “sense of fashion — a little off, and not in a hip way.” And documentary filmmaker Robin Hessman referred to the process as “excruciating.”  

Considering all the agita, we might forgive those who take the easy way out — by using title templates or patterns. We might forgive some of them, anyway. Really there’s no excuse for using the most common pattern, Participling the Proper Noun, as exemplified by Searching for Bobby Fischer, Saving Private Ryan, Finding Nemo, Killing Zoe, and ten thousand other movie titles.  

We can’t blame it all on Hollywood. Martin Amis, who usually knows what he’s doing, has a nonfiction collection called Visiting Mrs. Nabokov. But the pattern does show the symbiotic relationship between screenplays and other forms of writing. Crossing Delancey and Driving Miss Daisy started out as a plays; Looking for Mr. Goodbar and Leaving Las Vegas were novels. The latest novel from one Elizabeth Aston is called Writing Jane Austen — a name with cachet in the movie business, to the point where Austen herself is a character in Becoming Jane, which (stay with me here) was based on the nonfiction book, Becoming Jane Austen.  

Two important points about Participling the Proper Noun. First, the participle is not a gerund, which is when a verb becomes a noun. (Trainspotting is a gerund; Being John Malkovich is not.) Second, with Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, there is at least one unimpeachable use of the pattern. I think it’s fair to say that this title arose from the play itself, not from an attempt to make it sound like a movie. And who cares, anyway? The play would still be good even if it were called Irritating Estragon. 

Of course this isn’t the only title pattern. Another (noticed by the astute Michael Schaub) is The Occupation’s Relative. In this case, the relative is usually the distaff spouse, as in The Zookeeper’s Wife, The Senator’s Wife, The Astronaut’s Wife, and so on. This convention, I think, is used to emphasize that we still see wives as mere appendages to their husbands — and husbands as defined by their professions. Interestingly, the occupations can become quite abstract, as with the novels The Kitchen God’s Wife and The Time Traveler’s Wife.

Regardless, The Occupation’s Relative is not limited to spouses. The Farmer’s Daughter is the title of a 1947 movie, a novel by Jim Harrison, and innumerable jokes about horny salesmen. With Senator’s Son, author Luke Larson drops the definite article, presumably following the elision of the Creedence song, Fortunate Son. Then there’s The Accordionist’s Son, by Bernardo Atxaga, who writes in his native Basque tongue. I’m guessing that the novel’s original title, Soinujolearen seme, translates directly into English, but my Euskera is rusty. 

A title pattern can define an entire career. Consider The Ludlum Protocol, named for the suspense novelist who awkwardly roped a proper noun to a noun, as in The Osterman Weekend, The Bourne Identity, and The Icarus Agenda. I suppose that the pattern sounded good to Ludlum. It also made his novels instantly recognizable on a paperback rack. But again, before we sneer, we should note that the Bourne movies were fun. And that when Ludlum did deviate from his own template, the results were not enticing. The Road to Omaha may be suspenseful, but it sure doesn’t sound like it. 

More recent patterns are looser, less grammatically stringent, perhaps as a reflection of uncertain times. One current literary pattern is The Lyrical Instruction Manual, wherein the title suggests a poet trying to explain something vital while doing bong hits: Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing,Eat When You Feel Sad, How to Be Alone, How to Leave Hialeah (which, Google informs me, is near Miami, so the best way to leave is via I-95).  

In a similar vein, there’s the We Are Vaguely Included pattern, which always uses a pronoun with an unspecified referent, and often an inclusive pronoun: Most of Us Are Here Against Our Will, Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever, Here Is Where We Meet, Things We Didn’t See Coming, Things You Should Know. (That last one hits a kind of duofecta, as it could also be classified under The Lyrical Instruction Manual.) 

We Are Vaguely Included seems to show the influence of Miranda July, who has demonstrated talent in numerous genres while consistently formulating vaguely inclusive titles. July has a performance piece, Things We Don’t Understand and Are Definitely Not Going to Talk About; a film, Me and You and Everyone We Know; and a story collection, No One Belongs Here More Than You. Just typing these titles makes me feel like I’m at an extremely cool party where everyone, at some point or another, mentions their therapist. 

Even more lyrical vagueness can be seen in the What Is Unspecific pattern, wherein a title seems to be referring to something concrete but probably isn’t: What We Are, What Becomes, What Was Lost, What We Keep, and, moving into Zen-koan territory, What is the What. Beyond that the only alternative is nonsense, like Tao Lin’s Eeeee Eee Eeee. Or maybe we’ve come full circle. It’s only a short step from the title of Joshua Ferris’s latest, The Unnamed, to no title at all, aka, Untitled.

Maybe it’s unfair to insinuate that writers use these patterns only to reflect a kind of hipster ontology, or out of sheer laziness. Certainly it’s unfair to present the issue completely unsympathetically. Most writers, myself included, know how difficult it can be to come up with an interesting, original title. So perhaps the answer is to find a way around the whole business by using only one-word titles, like the writer and performance artist Andrea Kleine. Or to be lucky, like author Peter Manseau, who says that for him titles are “the easiest part.” All I know is that I felt immense relief when I started writing journalism, where titles are the editor’s problem.

It was a very tough year for all of us, what with the continuing political, social, and epidemiological upheavals. Here is what I managed to get off my desk anyway:

Fiction

• My short story, Winter Break, 1986, about family responsibility and the pickle business, was published in Scud.
• The First Hard Fight, a short story about the Korean War, was in Cagibi.
• I did a residency at Craigardan in the beautiful Adirondacks working on my Untitled Korean War Novel™. (Pic above was my workspace.)

Journalism

• I did some reporting for Healthline on one happy outcome of the pandemic—fathers getting more time with their children.
• I wrote an opinion piece for The Forward contextualizing JK Rowling’s goblins as a trope in British literature (we’re all tired of the word “trope,” but here I think it’s valid).

So while the above output may seem small, I’m giving myself a “W” for 2022 in that I managed to publish while working full-time and being (mostly) present for my family and pushing forward on a novel draft after promising myself I’d never try another book-length manuscript again.

Hoping we all have an easier time, in writing and in life, in 2023.

Author’s note: this story was originally published in a print-only journal, Newtown Literary.

I

They’ve got the whole regiment lined up at the Port of Tacoma, 22 July, 1950. Fifteen hundred men shouldering weapons and duffels, numbers chalked on their helmets, shuffling toward the General Darby. Hesh looks up in awe: the troopship is a horizontal skyscraper, the hull flaring upward to lifeboats, smokestacks, gangways strung like umbilical cords to the pier. He can’t get over the size of the ship, thinking, I’m going to Korea in this fucking thing.

Read the rest of this entry »

Note: I pitched this piece to a few places and was met with silence. Rather than keep pitching and get paid somewhere between zero and and $50, I decided to post it here. Let me know what you think. —GH

Late in 2020, I noticed among female friends and colleagues a certain desperation creeping into their online messaging. There was fear about the upcoming presidential election, but also exhaustion, real exhaustion, mental and physical depletion from parenting and housework and their job (if they still had one). They were wondering when it would all end and how much more they could take. They were crying in their cars, or gaining weight, or screaming at their kids, or drinking too much, or all of the above.

These crises de coeur, by the way, were almost exclusively from straight married women. Which made me wonder: Where were the dads? Why aren’t they complaining?

Read the rest of this entry »

When a certain very famous and very horrible person got sick, a lot of people celebrated, and then a lot of other people said that celebration was inappropriate. 

Some fellow Jews, however, counterclaimed that it is perfectly appropriate to wish suffering upon horrible people. 

I wasn’t sure if that was correct, at least from a Jewish perspective. There are so many misapprehensions about Judaism, even among Jews themselves. 

I mean, we do have a holiday, Purim, when we celebrate the hanging of Haman, the guy who tried to kill all the Jews in Persia. (See Esther. The book, not some lady named Esther.)

There is also the Song of the Sea, שירת הים, which the Jews sang after the Egyptian Army drowned in the Red Sea (Exodus 15:1-18), followed by Miriam’s pithier song:

Sing to the LORD, for He has triumphed gloriously
Horse and driver He has hurled into the sea.

Sounds celebratory to me! 

However, from the dim recesses of my memory, I recalled a discussion from Hebrew school of a passage from Talmud, Megillah 10b. Rabbi Yochanan claims that the when the Egyptians drowned, the angels wanted to sing. But God admonished them:

The work of My hands drowning at sea, and you say songs?

Meaning that the Egyptians were God’s creation as well, and it was inappropriate to celebrate their destruction. 

So the angels celebrated and were admonished. The Hebrews celebrated and were not. And the Torah is full of admonishment—cross the line, and God has no problem striking you with sickness or killing you outright. In the Torah, if God doesn’t want you singing, you’d know. You’d be a chalk outline. 

Okay, so it is permissible, for human beings at least, to celebrate the sufferings of horrible people. But the question was if it is appropriate.

Meaning: Is it a good idea? Does it set the right example for our peers? Our children? What impression does it create of us?

I am not asking the latter question out of fear. Some folks are going to hate us no matter what we say or do. But that doesn’t release us from the responsibility of thinking about what we say or do.

Nor am I wagging any fingers. Because I feel great that this horrible person is ill. I want to break out the timbrels and sing like Miriam.

So here is my conclusion. It is likely appropriate to celebrate the defeat of an enemy army. It is likely inappropriate, if not necessarily sinful, to celebrate when a person gets ill.

I, however, am not a big enough person to live up to my own conclusion. Make of that, and of me, what you will. 

A client asked me for the main things to keep in mind when “translating” documents. So here’s an (ongoing) list.

Titles

• US English titles capitalize all words except articles and prepositions: Sense and Sensibility
• British titles are not capitalized: Sense and sensibility
• But don’t forget to capitalize proper nouns in UK titles: The death of Ivan Ilych

Quotation marks

• In the US, it’s double quotation marks:
  “Hey, that’s my sweater,” Fred said.
• Single quotation marks across the pond:
  ‘Oi, that’s me jumper,’ Nigel said.

Spelling

Everybody knows about adding the “u” — Americans have colors; Britons have colour. In a lot of latinate words, also, the American “z” becomes an “s” — organized to organised, etc. There is a great list here. But really the best thing is once the doc is finished, change the language in spellcheck to whichever English you’re using. It’s saved my ass (arse) more than once.

Certain words to look out for

• While in the US, whilst in the UK.
• P.S. in the US, PS in the UK (nice article on postscripts here).
• Some other ones you likely already know:
  US elevator, UK lift
  US eggplant, UK aubergine
  US TV, UK telly

Grammar quirks

• In British English, collective nouns take plural (“Arsenal are…”)
• When speaking of possessions, Americans tend to use got when Britons may use have got:
  “I got a dog,” Murray said.
  ‘I have got a dog,’ Nigel said.

When writing fiction…

Or drama or screenplays, I strongly recommend having a native read your work. It drives me nuts when British writers have an America say, “I reckon…” when they mean “I suppose.” I was lucky enough to have this novella I wrote about an American in England copyedited by an Englishman, and he saved me from some clunkers.

When you work in the arts, you’re always second-guessing yourself, wishing you produced more, earned more, etc. That’s why at the end of the year I like to look back at what I accomplished. Because while usually it’s less than what I wanted, it’s often more than I had thought.

I realize that for many this practice smacks of attention-seeking or bragging, to which I say, “You’re goddamn right.”

Fiction. This year, I was lucky enough to receive a Queens Arts Fund grant, which helped me move forward on my novel-in-progress about the Korean War. I was very lucky indeed to have a residency at South Korea’s Toji Cultural Center (pic above), where I met some wonderful people and ate copious quantities of kimchi and tiny anchovies.

Religion Writing. I interviewed Arthur Jones, the Nazi candidate for Congress, for the Jewish Chronicle. I tried to wrap my head around Christian support for Trump and the high Jewish voter turnout for Religion Dispatches. I wrote about the dangers of ethno-nationalism, the Shared Sacred Sites exhibit and the Holocaust in Italy for the Forward. I reviewed Hulu’s Waco miniseries for Religion & Politics.

Teaching. Still having a blast teaching and doing some curriculum development at the School of the New York Times.

Dutch Kills Press. This year we published a print version of Jason Antoon’s wonderful collection of short fiction, The Cursed Frog and Other Stories.

If you’re still reading this post, wishing you all the best for 2019. Heck, I wish you all the best even if you’re not still reading. If there is anything you want to share about your own accomplishments in 2018, I’m all ears.

1. Freedom House rates Singapore as “partly free” and its press as “not free.” Given that Nick’s family enjoys a leading role in Singaporean business affairs, is it reasonable to assume that the Young family is complicit with an authoritarian government?
2. Given the conspicuous overconsumption of fossils fuels—via multiple helicopters, an Audi R8, a shipping vessel, and the like—is it fair to say that Crazy Rich Asians are not concerned about the dangers of global warming to the island nation of Singapore?
3. About 10% of the population of Singapore is of South Asian origin. And yet the only South Asians in the movie seem to be either valets are bodyguards. Is this because they are not “crazy rich?”
4. “Rainbow sheep” cousin Oliver is gay. And yet same-sex sexual activity in Singapore is illegal, even between consenting adults. Is Oliver’s effusiveness merely a cover for his sadness and fear?
5. Thousands of foreign workers in Singapore have been paid less than promised, or not paid at all. Why does this not seem to be an issue for Rachel, an economist?