Dr. Ruth Westheimer has been to New York City’s Javits Center plenty of times. Most years, she goes there to give lectures and at the annual book festival BookExpo.
Yesterday, she visited yet again — this time, to receive her coronavirus vaccine.
After getting the jab, the sex therapist recorded an effusive video about the experience. She thanked the “young people” performing the vaccinations and deemed the operation “very well organized.”
Dr. Ruth has long been on the forefront of public health initiatives. Her radio show “Sexually Speaking,” which debuted in 1980, provided candid information on contraception and helped revolutionize public discussion of sex and sexuality. So it’s no surprise she’s encouraging others to get vaccinated now.
“I was a little scared, to tell the truth,” she admitted, before adding: “It’s nothing. I’ll be back here for the second shot in February.”
Dr. Ruth on coronavirus vaccination: ‘It’s Nothing’
Irene Katz Connelly is a staff writer at the Forward. You can contact her at connelly@forward.com. Follow her on Twitter at @katz_conn.
Dr. Ruth on coronavirus vaccination: ‘It’s Nothing’
Supermodel Karlie Kloss has maintained radio silence on her Trump family connections for four years. But as the president and his acolytes fall from favor in the wake of a violent riot at the U.S. Capitol, she wants you to know one thing: She was always trying to stop them.
Kloss, who married Jared Kushner’s younger brother, Joshua, in 2018, is known for making splashy declarations of her liberal bona fides: In the lead-up to the presidential election, she posted coy ballot selfies and posed in $700 boots emblazoned with the slogan “Vote.” At the same time, she has quietly declined to comment on the decidedly illiberal behavior of her in-laws.
But on Wednesday, that changed. As alt-right extremists stormed the Capitol, Kloss tweeted: “Accepting the results of a legitimate democratic election is patriotic. Refusing to do so and inciting violence is anti-American.”
Accepting the results of a legitimate democratic election is patriotic. Refusing to do so and inciting violence is anti-American.— Karlie Kloss (@karliekloss) January 7, 2021
The statement was much like the boilerplate condemnations issued by basically every public figure and entity, from Amy Schumer to Axe Body Spray. But it might have also been a subtle dig at Ivanka, who the same day posted (and then deleted) a tweet referring to the rioters as “American patriots.”
When one user responded that Kloss should pass along the message to her in-laws, the model quickly replied: “I’ve tried.”
The quip was the closest Kloss has come to copping to any disunion among the Kushners. But some questioned whether she’d “tried” hard enough.
On Instagram, the writer and internet personality Tavi Gevinson tore into Kloss, arguing she was merely trying to save face during the final, destructive days of the Trump era.
“What @karliekloss means to say is: I have no real interest in using my political power so much as maintaining a watery ‘feminist’ liberal brand while protecting my ties to the Trumps and Kushners,” Gevinson wrote, arguing that Kloss has had more than four years to make her opposition to the Trump administration’s policies explicit.
In the past, Kloss has appeared insulted when those around her have brought up her political connections. During an episode of “Project Runway,” on which she served as a celebrity judge, one contestant snarkily asked if she could wear a particular ensemble “to dinner with the Kushners.” He was immediately booted from the show while Kloss made a series of extremely shocked faces.
Kloss and Kushner’s more recent actions also suggest they’re not that interested in distancing themselves from the relatives they timidly criticize on social media. In December, the couple purchased a $23.5 million compound in Miami, in convenient proximity to Ivanka and Jared’s home.
It’s fun to pose in politically-conscious footwear, but it seems like Kloss draws the line at giving up any of the perks that come with marrying into an uber-wealthy American dynasty.
As Gevinson, continuing to ventriloquize Kloss, put it: “Now that you can rest assured I’m just like you, only rich: Buy my Adidas line.”
Dr. Ruth on coronavirus vaccination: ‘It’s Nothing’
Irene Katz Connelly is a staff writer at the Forward. You can contact her at connelly@forward.com. Follow her on Twitter at @katz_conn.
Karlie Kloss finally commented on her Kushner relatives
Ossoff and Kramer share a moment during a 2017 campaign event.
Jon Ossoff’s election to the United States Senate has already spawned several joking tweets about drastically raised expectations for Jewish children. After all, if a 33-year-old documentary filmmaker with virtually no political experience can win a paradigm-shifting election, why are the rest of us just sitting around watching “Bridgerton?”
As it turns out, Ossoff’s wife, Alisha Kramer, may be the real parent-pleaser.
She, after all, is the Jewish doctor in the family.
We may never know how Kramer feels about the teenagers relentlessly lusting after her husband on TikTok. But there’s plenty to learn about this newly-minted medical professional. Here’s your need-to-know rundown on Dr. Alisha Kramer:
It was a match made in high school — specifically, Paideia School in Atlanta, Georgia, which Ossoff and Kramer both attended. Since Kramer is three years younger than Ossoff, they most likely started dating when she was a freshman and he was a senior.
Like Ossoff, Kramer went to Georgetown, starting just a year before her boyfriend graduated and majoring in global health.
Did we mention she’s a doctor?
After two years working at a Washington, D.C. think tank, Kramer returned to her native Atlanta to start medical school at Emory University, where she’s currently an OB-GYN resident.
Even as a practicing doctor, she’s stayed active in the policy world. In 2019, Ossoff posted a picture of Kramer testifying before the Georgia State Senate in opposition to the state’s new restrictions on abortion.
“I think we can all agree that when any one of us go to our doctor we expect the privacy, respect and dignity of a confidential consultation,” Kramer said. “We do not expect politicians to presume to understand our medical needs better than we or our doctors do.”
During the campaign, in which health care and responses to the coronavirus pandemic have been topics of contention, she’s conducted online town halls alongside Ossoff — filming this one after finishing an overnight shift at the hospital.
Her husband loves kvelling over her career.
If, by now, you have failed to absorb the fact that Alisha Kramer is a doctor, Jon Ossoff is more than happy to remind you.
When Kramer appeared in a campaign ad about health care, Ossoff proudly captioned a social media post, “A message from Dr. Alisha Kramer, OBGYN. I’m her husband.”
And he frequently talks up her work on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic. “People always ask me how I’m doing,” he quipped during a Facebook livestream. “I’m like ‘I’m fine. Alisha is on her feet all night delivering babies.’”
They’ve also made significant choices around her career. In 2017, while Ossoff was contending for a seat in the House of Representatives, the couple lived not in Atlanta’s Sixth District, where he grew up and which he was running to represent. Instead, they lived in a different neighborhood from which Kramer could easily walk to medical school. The situation resulted in repeated attacks by Republican groups who used Ossoff’s living situation to portray him as a “carpetbagger.”
“It’s something I’ve been very transparent about,” Ossoff said at the time. “In fact, I’m proud to be supporting her career.”
In 2019, the National Republican Senatorial Committee created a misspelling-filled parody of Ossoff’s website that claimed he was “shamed into proposing” to Kramer.
They’re not the only ones who felt compelled to weigh in on the astonishing fact that the two dated for a long time. Rush Limbaugh hemmed and hawed over the situation in a 2017 broadcast before reluctantly concluding that “I don’t have a problem with it.”
On election night, she was at work.
While most of us spent Tuesday night basking in the dulcet tones of Steve Kornacki, Kramer was at the hospital, according to a Tweet from reporter Emily Murphy. She likely kept tabs on the results between patients. Because it’s 2021, and that’s what a political spouse does.
I’m told @ossoff is watching returns w/ his campaign team, but not his wife, Dr. Alisha Kramer. She is an OB-GYN and working an overnight shift, so she’ll have to get the news b/w patients. #gasen#gapol— Patricia Murphy (@1PatriciaMurphy) January 6, 2021
Dr. Ruth on coronavirus vaccination: ‘It’s Nothing’
Dr. Ruth on coronavirus vaccination: ‘It’s Nothing’
Dr. Ruth on coronavirus vaccination: ‘It’s Nothing’
Irene Katz Connelly is a staff writer at the Forward. You can contact her at connelly@forward.com. Follow her on Twitter at @katz_conn.
Just a man hanging out with his handmade coffee mugs.
These days, Instagram is a great place to go if you want to feel bad about the productive quarantine hobbies you don’t have.
People, you will discover if you venture into this app for even one minute, are making their own lemon curd. They are expanding their consciousness through breathwork. They are knitting sweaters way less lumpy than the sweaters I knit and embroidering minuscule rolls of toilet paper onto genuinely adorable 2020 samplers. They are reading “The Power Broker.” (The whole thing!) They are doing all these things while simultaneously documenting their new pursuits with whimsically candid snapshots.
Lest you doubt the power and reach of this phenomenon, know that even Seth Rogen has been sucked in. Yes, Seth Rogen, the brains behind every stoner movie in the last decade. Yes, Seth Rogen, the living embodiment of male resistance to productive hobbies.
That same Seth Rogen, it turns out, is really into pottery. And, by the power vested in me by two semesters of high school ceramics, I declare he is very good at it.
Rogen took up this hobby for exactly the reasons you would expect — he needed a better ashtray to hold his blunts. “I’m always looking for a little place to rest my joints—a little bed,” he told Interview magazine. When he couldn’t find what he envisioned, he made it: a small cup for ashes soldered to a delicate trough on which half-smoked doobies can safely recline. “Right away, I really responded to smoking weed with the ashtrays that I had made, even though they were really sh—ty at first.”
Long before the pandemic began, ashtray arrangements began creeping into Rogen’s feed, supplemented by the occasional bud vase or bowl.
Things escalated after stay-at-home orders took effect. In mid-March, Rogen showed off a handmade soap dispenser. In April, he revealed he’d had a kiln installed in his house. (In case you were wondering, the kiln is named Brad Pitt, because “it gets hot as f—k.”). Now, his social media presence consists entirely of ceramic sake sets, ceramic pots housing thriving plants, and detailed videos of crackled ceramic glazes which (per Seth Rogen) are very difficult to achieve.
Even his obligatory voter turnout appeal back in November was ceramic-centered: A snapshot of a vase accompanied by the brag-slash-plea, “I made this. Please for the love of god vote.”
You might not want all of Seth Rogen’s creations, which range in aesthetic from finance-bro-with-more-money-than-taste to made-by-your-mom-who-almost-attended-Woodstock, in your living room. But, like the 79 people who signed this petition begging Seth Rogen to share his art with the world, you have to admit — he really knows what he’s doing.
And watching him learn has been weirdly fun. In part, that’s because there’s no temptation to compare. The knowledge that my college acquaintances have used their time to perfect their lattice pie crusts fills me with shame for my lackluster time management skills. Not so with Seth Rogen, a world-famous celebrity in possession of a Los Angeles compound and the power to summon famous ceramicists to his side at all times — of course he’s thriving in quarantine.
But it’s also ironically endearing to watch an actor who made his name mocking earnest endeavors of all kinds become the unlikely face of pandemic-era cottage industry. With every speckled jar he proudly thrusts at the camera, Seth Rogen seems less like his can’t-grow-up on-screen avatars and more like — well, a normal person who knows that in times of unprecedented anxiety, it can be helpful to get really, really into something.
“I find it more relaxing to actually create more things and find more outlets of expression,” Rogen told Interview. “That, to me, is more relaxing than just sitting around doing nothing — sometimes.”
Same here, Seth Rogen — sort of. I wish I could say I’ll go work on my knitting after filing this piece, but I’ll probably check Instagram first.
Dr. Ruth on coronavirus vaccination: ‘It’s Nothing’
Irene Katz Connelly is an editorial fellow at the Forward. You can contact her at connelly@forward.com. Follow her on Twitter at @katz_conn.
This week, my worst journalism stress dream came to life in the form of the now-infamous “Nancy Meyers Week.”
Conceptualized by Rachel Handler, a staff writer at New York Magazine’s arts and culture website, Vulture, “Nancy Meyers Week” was the site’s tribute to the Jewish director’s work in the form of eight (yes, eight!) glowing articles published in quick succession. Just after this delightful distraction from the coronavirus pandemic debuted, Meyers’ daughter Hallie Meyers-Shyer called out the series on Instagram, branding it a “sexist” insult to her mother’s work. Before the post went private, celebrities like Reese Witherspoon, Mindy Kaling and Chloe Fineman chimed in with approving emojis ranging from clapping hands to curled biceps.
Basically, an entire internet kerfuffle was born from one reporter’s failure to be sufficiently fawning.
For the uninitiated: Nancy Meyers is the woman behind an astonishing number of cinematic staples in the genre of “feel-good comedies about rich white people.” Her work includes “The Parent Trap,” “It’s Complicated,” “Something’s Gotta Give” and “The Holiday.” All of these gems take place in a too-good-to-be-true cinematic universe anchored by common WASP-y elements, from blonde divorcée protagonists to all-white outfits that actually work and tasteful interiors ripped from the pages of a Pottery Barn catalogue. But they’re also rife with nods to Jewish culture: neurotic husbands, mere acquaintances partaking in intimate discussions about sex, “casual” family dinners that produce multiple rounds of leftovers.
It’s that fictive world of lunchtime martinis and enormous granite countertops to which Handler paid tribute in the form of a “taxonomy” of Meyers’ films. The taxonomy awarded points to each film for common Meyers tropes like “woman weeps loudly to comic effect,” “room full of white couches” or “reference to ‘decorating the study in mushroom.’”
And it was the taxonomy to which Meyers-Shyer objected.
On Instagram, Meyers-Shyer argued that by focusing on seemingly frivolous aspects of Meyers’ films, the taxonomy reduced “a woman’s entire body of work to themes that entirely miss the point.” She also pointed out her mother’s trailblazer status when it comes to positive portrayals of professional women in mainstream film, saying that she “paved the way for stories about women defying society’s expectations.” And she accused Handler of “degrading successful women.”
redpilling myself by reading all the yas queen comments on the most deranged instagram post i have ever read in my life about @rachel_handler’s objectively GLOWING nancy meyers ranking. this is a pro-sexism account now pic.twitter.com/iegY6up8Jy— rebecca jennings (@rebexxxxa) December 16, 2020
On a more personal note, she also took umbrage at Handler’s remarks on “Home Again,” a 2017 film that Meyers produced and Meyers-Shyer directed. Handler wrote that Meyers-Shyer “technically directed” the film, seemingly reserving the real credit for her mother.
“I am not for the taking simply because my parents are filmmakers,” Meyers-Shyer replied loftily.
Let’s put aside Meyers-Shyer’s apparent belief that no one should ever mention the fact that she makes films in exactly the same vein as her mother. (“Home Again” stars Reese Witherspoon as a wealthy white woman in the midst of a messy divorce who enjoys vocally weeping in her pristine kitchen.) Let’s also put aside the claim that Meyers invented feminist filmmaking. Even in the dark days of the 1980s, people were making meaningful films about women, including ones who were neither wealthy, professional, or white — think “The Color Purple” or “The Joy Luck Club.” Those issues aside, the defensive post raised an interesting question: Does Meyers-Shyer actually like her mother’s work?
Meyers’ films are completely aspirational and far from representational. But they do something notably feminist in asking us to respect, as professionals and people, women who do things like weep loudly, decorate studies in “mushroom” and divorce their husbands messily — in other words, all the stuff women are told not to do, lest they appear too girly, too frivolous, too weak. Meyers’ most significant contribution to cinema comes through characters like Elizabeth James of “The Parent Trap,” played by Natasha Richardson, who is both totally feminine and totally in control.
We should absolutely pay tribute to the transgressive nature of those choices. But to do that, we have to embrace the behavior of Meyers’ characters, from their love of white wine to their propensity to fall into pools. Retroactively pretending her protagonists spent their time uttering feminist slogans and exercising wisdom and restraint in romance does nothing but undermine the strength of Meyers’ work, and the challenge it offers to conventional depictions of “strong” women.
Meyers-Shyer’s embarrassment suggests that she doesn’t actually take her mother’s films all that seriously. Insisting that their protagonists are feminist “despite” crying too much and wearing way too many fabulous coats, she leans into precisely the stereotypes that Meyers’ films dispute.
Luckily, there’s a cure for this. We prescribe several leisurely viewings of “It’s Complicated.”
Dr. Ruth on coronavirus vaccination: ‘It’s Nothing’
Dr. Ruth on coronavirus vaccination: ‘It’s Nothing’
Irene Katz Connelly is an editorial fellow at the Forward. You can contact her at connelly@forward.com. Follow her on Twitter at @katz_conn.
