White House: Trump to watch violent parody, ‘condemns it’
WASHINGTON — The White House says President Donald Trump has yet to watch a graphically violent parody video that depicts a likeness of him shooting and stabbing opponents and members of the news media, but based on what he’s heard, he “strongly condemns” it.
The parody was shown at a meeting of Trump supporters at his Miami resort.
The video portrays Trump’s critics and media members as parishioners in a church fleeing his gruesome rampage. The fake Trump strikes the late Sen. John McCain in the neck, hits and stabs TV personality Rosie O’Donnell in the face, lights Sen. Bernie Sanders’ head on fire and shoots or otherwise assaults people whose faces are replaced with news organization logos.
Trump’s face is superimposed on a killer’s body. Among the targets: former President Barack Obama, Black Lives Matter, Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters, Bill and Hillary Clinton and Rep. Adam Schiff, who as Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee is leading the impeachment inquiry of Trump.
White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham says in a tweet that Trump will see the video shortly and that, “based upon everything he has heard, he strongly condemns this video.”
3 EU nations say Brexit talks likely to go beyond summit
LONDON — Brexit divorce talks in Brussels are making such slow progress that three European Union nations predicted Monday the negotiations could spill beyond this week’s crucial Brexit summit.
Belying the need for speed across the Channel, Britain trotted out a horse-drawn carriage and a diamond-encrusted crown so the queen could read out the government’s post-Brexit plans to Parliament.
In terms of historical importance, the painstaking paragraph-by-paragraph talks at the EU’s glass-and-steel Berlaymont headquarters seriously outweighed the regal ritual in which an ermine-draped monarch delivered a speech on the priorities of a Conservative Party government that could be out of office within weeks.
Britain is scheduled to leave the EU on Oct. 31, and an EU summit on Thursday or Friday was long considered one of the last possible chances to approve a divorce agreement to accommodate that timeframe.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson insists the country will leave at the end of the month with or without a deal, something the queen reiterated Monday.
“My government’s priority has always been to secure the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union on the 31st of October,” the 93-year-old queen said in a speech to Parliament that was written for her by the government.
It remains to be seen whether Johnson will achieve that goal.
Ireland, Finland and Spain all said the Brexit negotiations could well go beyond this week and go right down to the wire at the end of the month.
Protests erupt as Spain convicts leading Catalan separatists
BARCELONA, Spain — Riot police engaged in a running battle with protesters outside Barcelona’s airport Monday after Spain’s Supreme Court convicted 12 separatist leaders of illegally promoting the wealthy Catalonia region’s independence and sentenced nine of them to prison.
Police fired foam bullets and used batons against the thousands of protesters who converged on Josep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat Airport after a pro-independence grassroots group put out the call. Protesters fought back by throwing objects, spraying dark clouds with fire extinguishers, and breaking windows.
Regional emergency service SEM said 53 people were treated for injuries at the airport. Spain’s airport operator, AENA, said at least 108 flights were canceled.
Police also clashed with angry crowds late Monday night in downtown Barcelona. They used batons, and sounds similar to the firing projectiles were heard.
Nine of the 12 Catalan politicians and activists were found guilty of sedition and given prison sentences of nine to 13 years. Four of them were additionally convicted of misuse of public funds.
Harold Bloom, author of ‘Anxiety of Influence,’ dies at 89
NEW YORK — Harold Bloom, the eminent critic and Yale professor whose seminal “The Anxiety of Influence” and melancholy regard for literature’s old masters made him a popular author and standard-bearer of Western civilization amid modern trends, died Monday at age 89.
Bloom’s wife, Jeanne, said that he had been failing health, although he continued to write books and was teaching as recently as last week. Yale says Bloom died at a New Haven, Connecticut, hospital.
Bloom wrote more than 20 books and prided himself on making scholarly topics accessible to the general reader. Although he frequently bemoaned the decline of literary standards, he was as well placed as a contemporary critic could hope to be. He appeared on best-seller lists with such works as “The Western Canon” and “The Book of J,” was a guest on “Good Morning America” and other programs and was a National Book Award finalist and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. A readers’ poll commissioned by the Modern Library ranked “The Western Canon” at No. 58 on a list of the 20th century’s best nonfiction English-language books.
His greatest legacy could well outlive his own name: the title of his breakthrough book, “The Anxiety of Influence.” Bloom argued that creativity was not a grateful bow to the past, but a Freudian wrestle in which artists denied and distorted their literary ancestors while producing work that revealed an unmistakable debt.
He was referring to poetry in his 1973 publication, but “anxiety of influence” has come to mean how artists of any kind respond to their inspirations. Bloom’s theory has been endlessly debated, parodied and challenged, including by Bloom. The book’s title has entered the culture in ways Bloom likely never imagined or desired, such as The New York Times headline that read “Jay-Z Confronts the Anxiety of Being Influential” or the Canadian rock band that named itself “Anxiety of Influence.”
