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In a desperate effort to save his job, Michigan's Republican Governor Rick Snyder has released a flood of emails in an attempt to exonerate himself from his criminal negligence that lead to the mas...
Some 294 pages of emails were released to the public. The first problem that journalists ran into was the fact that some of the most important emails were heavily redacted, which immediately squashed any hopes that the Snyder administration would be open and honest about exactly how the decision to switch the water supply of Flint, Michigan, to the notoriously polluted Flint River, in the hopes of saving some $5 million dollars and pad one of the giant holes that Snyder’s corporate handouts and tax giveaways blew in their state budget.
The more disturbing revelation was confirmation that the Snyder administration was dismissive and belittling to the mountain of complaints that residents filed after discovering their water had turned a disturbing brackish brown, and that even after evidence began mounting, they refused to act to rectify the situation until it was far too late, playing off their concerns as “initial hiccups” and dismissing them for being overly concerned with “aesthetics.” When the city’s water plant found traces of “coliform and fecal coliform bacterium,” they simply began adding chlorine to the water. They also refused to take any responsibility for their actions, as this email from Snyder’s Chief of Staff indicates:
“I can’t figure out why the state is responsible except that [State Treasurer] Dillon did make the ultimate decision so we’re not able to avoid the subject.”
The emails insinuate that the frightened residents were in fact politically motivated, describing them as an “anti-everything” group that wanted to use the health of their children as a “political football.” There was no action taken after a nearby General Motors factory stopped using Flint’s water because it was corroding the metal in their cars; not after a hospital stopped using the water because it was damaging their instruments, nor after a university stopped for the same reason. How anyone could consider water that was literally damaging metal be safe for consumption by humans?
The final nail in Snyder’s coffin should be this email from an Environmental Protection Agency expert, Miguel Del Toral, which shows that “the state was testing the water in a way that could profoundly understate the lead levels.” Not only were they fully aware of the dangers presented by the water, the Snyder administration attempted to cover up the scandal by misrepresenting the data.
This is exactly what I was talking about, this whole “cursed role”
thing surrounding The Joker, all of it stemming from Heath’s death. I
see posts like this every day in the Heath tag and there’s a few things
I’d like to get off my chest.
Heath writing the infamous Joker
journal is a prime example of method acting, nothing more, nothing less.
In an interview not too long before Heath’s death, he told Empire magazine
“I sat around in a hotel room in London for about a month, locked
myself away, formed a little diary and experimented with voices — it was
important to try to find a somewhat iconic voice and laugh.” It wasn’t
about him being consumed by the role, it was more about him establishing
his own interpretation of an already established and iconic character.
Heath isn’t the only actor to utilize method acting in order to submerse
himself into a role. No one questioned Daniel Day-Lewis’s mental
stability after living as Abraham Lincoln for the entire duration of filming or
insisting on only eating meat he killed himself for Last of the
Mohicans.
People like to use what Jack Nicholson said to a paparazzi
as a credible source. He said it in passing and probably facetiously.
If he was really serious, would he have laughed about it? And just as an
aside, why the hell would Heath go to Nicholson for advice about the
role anyway? He never once stated that Nicholson was an inspiration for
the role in any way. If anything, he’d want to distance himself from an
already established portrayal of The Joker.
Everybody forgets
Heath went on to do The Imaginarium of Doctor Panassus after The Dark
Knight. Filming for The Dark Knight had been completed months before his
death and he was already on to other roles and bigger opportunities. He
wasn’t stuck on the character, he had moved on.
The Joker role
didn’t drive Heath crazy. It seems reductive to say what happened to
Heath happened because of the character. What happened was an
unfortunate accident, not the result of being tormented by this so
called “insanity” after portraying The Joker. The medications Heath was
taking were for conditions that had been around long before he was The
Joker and for illnesses after the role. It sucks that he is plagued with
“suicide” over his name just because it’s more fitting to the media.
The media is pushing the idea of this cursed role as a selling point.
This is obviously a publicity stunt released to get everyone worked up
about how “dark” Leto’s Joker is going to be. It’s tasteless how people
are comparing this to Heath’s death when they are not related. I can’t
believe people continue to perpetuate this myth over the real
explanation. The treatment towards Leto’s portrayal would not be happening without the Heath “cautionary tale” bullshit preceding it.
Jared Leto is not being haunted by this role, he’s just being an asshole.
