A black woman has accused Delta Air Lines of discrimination after a flight attendant allegedly asked her to move to the back of a plane to make room for two white women.

Camille Henderson said she was sitting near row 15 window during a Feb. 3 flight from Atlanta to San Francisco when the women, who were sitting in the aisle and middle seats in the row next to her, said they had first-class tickets, ABC 7 reported.

“They felt like they were ticketed first-class seats, but they couldn’t provide the tickets,” Henderson told the news outlet, adding that the women continued the complaints for over an hour.

Henderson recorded part of the exchange between the women and a flight attendant.

“Unfortunately, my first-class seats are occupied,” one women is heard saying, according to a recording obtained by ABC 7.

“They are what?” another person is heard saying.

“They’re occupied,” the woman answered.

Henderson told the station that flight attendants then came up with a solution to give the women more space at her expense.

“Are you flying by yourself?” a person is heard asking Henderson, who replies that she is.

“There’s a seat back there in aisle 34. It’s an aisle seat,” the apparent attendant says.

Henderson, who said the crew did not ask the women to move, agreed reluctantly to go to the back row, according to the outlet.

“I don’t want to make it a race thing, but instead of asking the two white women that were seated next to me (to move), in an attempt to accommodate them, they basically made me have to move,” she told ABC 7.

“I just don’t know why I had to move because that was the seat that I paid for, that was my assigned seat,” she added. “As I’m walking back there it’s just humiliating. It’s like having the entire flight look at you and asking what’s going on.”

Henderson said she was unsatisfied with what a Delta customer service rep she finally reached on the phone told her.

“How were you humiliated for them to ask you to go to another seat?” the person can be heard asking in a recording she provided to the outlet — suggesting that there was no inconvenience since she was moved to another seat in economy.

“You’re basically saying there’s nothing that you can do?” she told the rep.

“No, not under these circumstances that I’m showing, ma’am,” the person was heard replying.

An airline spokesperson told ABC7 in a statement: “We are looking into this situation to better understand what happened.

“Delta has no tolerance for discrimination in any form and these allegations run counter to our deeply held values of respecting and honoring the diversity of our customers,” the rep added.

Henderson vowed to never fly Delta again.

“Me, as a black woman, I was displaced to make two white women comfortable. That doesn’t make any sense to me,” she told the outlet.

Earlier this week, fans of Taraji P. Henson rejoiced when news broke that the actress would be portraying the iconic sassy blues singer Shug Avery in Blitz Bazawule’s forthcoming film adaptation of The Color Purple. 

Source: Leon Bennett / Getty

Now the rest of the star-studded cast of the film which will be a musical has been revealed, thanks to Oprah Winfrey. 

While speaking to Vanity Fair, the inimitable talk show host, who also starred as “Sofia” in Steven Spielberg’s 1985 classic of the film, spilled the beans on the rest of the cast which will now include powerhouse singer Fantasia Taylor, Colman Domingo,  Danielle Brooks, Halle Bailey, Corey Hawkins, and Grammy-nominated star, H.E.R.

Winfrey told the publication that she personally “called up” Danielle Brooks to audition for the role of Sofia. Upon Brooks landing the part, the famous television producer said she grew emotional, knowing that her legendary character was in good hands.

 “I didn’t think it was going to be emotional for me, but it ended up being emotional for me too!” she exclaimed. “She so wanted it. I was listening to her when we had Blitz’s assistant on, who was apologizing, saying, “So sorry that you have to do yet another audition, but something was wrong with the previous tape.” And then she goes, “I would audition as many times as I needed to because this means that much to me.”

Winfrey continued:

“She thought she was going to do her final, final audition. Instead, I popped up on the screen and said, “Sofia, So-FEEE-AAHHHHH!! It’s your day!”

The Orange is The New Black alum recalled the exciting moment on her Instagram page.

Source: Robin L Marshall / Getty

“Firstly, Thank you God. Secondly, So beyond grateful to @oprah for trusting me with playing, once again, this powerhouse of a woman,” wrote Brooks. “She put her foot in that role and helped to change so many lives. I pray to do the same. The journey to getting to this moment was very humbling but I wouldn’t change it for the world!” she added.

Euphoria standout, Colman Domingo is set to take on the role of “Mister”- the abusive and menacing husband of the film’s central character “Celie.”

Source: Frazer Harrison / Getty

“I love Colman for many reasons, but also because of his prolific ability to embody any character. There’s a presence that he carries that reminded me so much of young Mister,” the 68-year-old media maven gushed. “You know, he could be Danny’s son. Just the other day I was going through the costumes for him. The hats, the vests, all that stuff. And I’m just really excited about him.”

Fantasia appeared as Celie on Broadway in 2007, blessing audience members with a stunning rendition of the musical’s classic hit “I’m Here.”

Source: Jamie McCarthy / Getty

Now the R&B star will reprise her role for Bazawule’s version of The Color Purple. If you remember, Whoopi Goldberg starred as the resilient character in Spielberg’s 1985 classic.

“There is a rawness and a vulnerability to Fantasia. We all know she can sing, and she has to take on the song “I’m Here,” which is the anthem for women’s empowerment,” said Winfrey. “I think there’s no better time than this moment for it. It is an international battle cry for triumphing over adversity and empowering oneself and finding home within one’s self and one’s family. I think we’re gonna see a side of Fantasia that no one ever imagined.”

Halle Bailey has been priming her acting jobs in a number of films recently including Disney’s upcoming live-action version of The Little Mermaid.

Source: Frazier Harrison / Getty

Now we’ll get to see the “Ungodly Hour” hitmaker take on a more dramatic role as “Nettie”, Celie’s sister.

“She’s somebody whose presence you can feel in her absence—the memory of her, the feeling of her, the strength of her comes through, even when you’re only hearing her voice from her letters,” the OWN founder praised of Bailey’s theatrical prowess.

Additionally, The Walking Dead’s Corey Hawkins will star as Mister’s loving son “Harpo” and H.E.R. will portray, his second wife, “Squeak.”

Source: Kevin Winter / Getty

Source: Marcus Ingram / Getty

Wow oh wow, this cast is good, and in the words of the legendary Winfrey, “This ain’t your mama’s Color Purple.”

It will also be exciting to see what kind of twist Blitz Bazawule brings to the classic movie. You might be familiar with the director’s work on films such as The Burial of Kojo and Beyoncé’s melanated visual album Black is King. Winfrey will also help to produce the new film alongside screenwriter Scott Sanders.

Will you be watching when The Color Purple debuts? Tell us down below!

“I don’t share my traumas,” Gimena said. “I don’t show my alters either. I don’t have any videos up there that are just for the purpose of showing the video.”

“If I post videos of the darker information, if I talk about how scary it is, then there will be a lot of comments like, ‘Oh, you’re attention-seeking.’”

Her videos pop up while exploring popular tags like #dissociativeidentitydisorder or #didsystem, and while she’s a consistent contributor to TikTok’s DID community, she doesn’t like to consume other content from people with DID, which can be triggering for her.

Some corners of this community have been criticized, sometimes by other community members, for glamorizing the condition and experience of trauma. Accusations of flippancy when discussing and showcasing certain behaviors, such as “switching,” which is when an individual changes alters and can be triggered by stress, has fueled the ongoing debate as to whether TikTok is a safe place for folks with certain mental health conditions. Since switching is typically involuntary, some wonder how people on social media are able to film their switches to post. In a comment on the video linked above, Gimena said she films her episodes when she’s able to for safety, as recommended by a therapist.

But dissociative identity disorder can be extremely isolating, points out Aubry Bakker, PhD, a neuropsychologist who has extensive experience working with teens diagnosed with DID, and co-founder of wellness boutique MOVMNT. Participating in TikTok’s DID community can remedy some of that isolation, she said. And having filmed moments can help fill gaps in memory and help individuals get in touch with their identities.

While there isn’t a wealth of information about DID in adolescents, many young people on TikTok list DID as an identifier in their bio. Some indicate a diagnosis, others don’t. The rise in people on social media claiming to have systems has sparked controversy both on and off the platform, as “fakeclaiming,” or accusing an individual of faking their symptoms, runs rampant in comment sections and subreddit threads.

Eiza Wolfe is no stranger to this. As a 19-year-old who says she was professionally diagnosed with DID last year, she uses TikTok to make sense of the condition and share her experience through posting, mostly, lighthearted skits. Still, regardless of what she posts, her content has been reposted to fakeclaiming threads.

“But if I post videos of the darker information, if I talk about how scary it is, then there will be a lot of comments like, ‘Oh, you’re attention-seeking, you’re posting this because you want attention,’” Wolfe said. “So there’s just really no way to win.”

This is the dangerous dance being played out on social media. While many applaud the de-stigmatization of mental health conditions by increasing visibility, users who do open up about their symptoms continue to be met with intense criticism.

At one point, Wolfe says she posted her medical diagnosis documents with the hope of quelling threats of doxxing from internet trolls. She’s since deleted the post, but says the near-constant accusations of fakery targeted at her and other members of TikTok’s DID community are triggering.

No one should be pressured to present proof of their trauma or medical diagnosis, but still there are individuals on social media spreading misinformation about DID, which only adds to the confusion of those already questioning their mental health.

“Almost all of my 14-22-years-olds that I work with right now have self-diagnosed something using TikTok,” said New York-based psychologist Rebecca Semel, PhD. “When a client says, ‘I saw this TikTok…,’ I’m waiting with bated breath. Where are we going with this?” Semel caveats that TikTok can be helpful, calling it “an accessible platform” that “gives a lot of tools and strategies that are … not so far from what I would suggest.” But, she says it can also be a place where people gather mental health advice and information from unreliable sources.

“Identifying a mental health condition as misdiagnosed as DID is hard to begin with, and social media is both making it better known, and creating room for more misunderstanding.”

Worldwide, experts are taking note. A study published over the summer identified “TikTok tics” as what researchers believe to be a mass sociogenic illness, or the spontaneous spread of behaviors or emotions through a cohesive group — in this case, young women. As tic and tourette syndrome content increased on TikTok, neurology clinics saw an increase in patients presenting tics, specifically during the COVID-19 pandemic. More interestingly, experts believe many of these tics are not performative. Doctors say the tics are very real, though they don’t necessarily indicate a patient has Tourette syndrome. Instead, it may be part of a functional neurological disorder, which is a type of condition that isn’t related to underlying disease. According to the Wall Street Journal, doctors recommend cognitive behavioral therapy and abstaining from TikTok as treatment. Donald Gilbert, a neurologist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center who specializes in pediatric movement disorders and Tourette syndrome, told the Wall Street Journal that anxiety and depression, which increased during the pandemic, can manifest through physical symptoms, and that doctors say the physical symptoms are often ones that patients have seen others perform before.

Only two Black head coaches left in NFL after Brian Flores firing

“It was an honor to represent the franchise and lead this group of men,” former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores said.

The Miami Dolphins announced Monday that head coach Brian Flores is out after three seasons with the franchise.

“The Miami Dolphins announced today that head coach Brian Flores has been relieved of his duties,” the team said in an official statement, ESPN reports. “Flores completed his third season as head coach with a 24-25 record.

Flores accepted the job as head coach in 2019, hours after helping the Patriots shut down the high-scoring Los Angeles Rams for a 13-3 victory in Super Bowl LIII.

“I want to thank the Miami Dolphins for the opportunity to be the head coach of this team for the last three seasons,” said Flores in a statement Monday. “It was an honor to represent the franchise and lead this group of men. I am grateful most of all for the players, coaches and support staff who gave everything they had on a daily basis to help us win games. They deserve the credit for any success on the field, and it was the honor of a lifetime for me to go to work with them everyday.” 

yeah this one makes no sense. https://t.co/VlRk3yAzN0

— Eric Ebron (@Ebron85)

“I have always believed that leadership is really about service, and I did my best to serve the players, the staff and the organization everyday. I believe in this team and will always value the relationships my family and I made here,” he continued.

In his own statement, Team owner Stephen Ross said: “I made a decision today to part ways with Brian Flores. After evaluating where we are as an organization and what we need going forward to improve, I determined that key dynamics of our football organization weren’t functioning at a level I want it to be and felt that this decision was in the best interest of the Miami Dolphins.

I believe we have a talented young roster in place and have the opportunity to be much better in 2022. I want to thank Brian for his hard work and wish him nothing but the best in the future.”

Wait… they are firing Flores because his relationship with Tua deteriorated while management openly tried to trade for Deshaun Watson all season? 🤔🤔🤔 https://t.co/U1PzADLGnK

— Patrick Allen (@RPatrickAllen)

More than 60% of NFL players are Black, and now that Flores has been relieved of his duties, there remain only two Black head coaches in the league, 66-year-old David Culley of the Houston Texans and Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin, the third longest-tenured coach in the NFL.  

When Tomlin was hired in 2007 there were six Black head coaches in the NFL. It’s a stark reminder of the NFL’s decades-old Rooney Rule, which requires teams to interview at least one minority candidate when filling head coach and general manager positions.

Many believe the NFL continues to make a mockery of the Rooney Rule by continuing to fail to address the league’s lack of diversity. 

“Clearly, we are not where we want to be on this level,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said in 2018. “We have a lot of work that’s gone into not only the Rooney Rule but our policies overall. It’s clear we need to change and do something different.”

“There’s no reason to expect we’re going to have a different outcome next year without those kinds of changes,” he added.

USA Today’s NFL Editor Doug Farrar tweeted, “In an NFL where well over 70% of the players are Black, there are now two Black head coaches. Two. 6.25% of the group. Keep that in mind as the league is shoving “Inspire Change” down your throats.”

In an NFL where well over 70% of the players are Black, there are now two Black head coaches.

Two.

6.25% of the group.

Keep that in mind as the league is shoving “Inspire Change” down your throats.

— Doug Farrar ✍ (@NFL_DougFarrar)

One Twitter user responded, “That is not by accident….AT ALL. And imagine getting fired with a winning record…how often does that happen…and when it does happen who does it happen to?….wild times. NFL “say one thing, do another.”

President Joe Biden has also commented on the lack of Black coaches in the NFL. During an interview that aired at halftime of the 2021 Super Bowl, theGrio previously reported. Biden said in part, “I don’t understand why they cannot find — because they exist, so many African American coaches that are qualified, that should be in the pros, in my view.”

Hours after firing Flores on Monday, Ross shot down rumors that he is eying Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh to fill the vacancy. Ross is an alumnus of the university.

“I have no coach in mind at this point. We’re going to do a thorough review and interview process,” Ross said. “And Jim Harbaugh, I love Jim Harbaugh. He had the opportunity once before to come to the Miami Dolphins. But he’s at the University of Michigan. … That is my school I graduated from, and I’m very involved in it.”

Flores wasn’t the only head coach that was curbed on what has been dubbed Black Monday. The Denver Broncos canned coach Vic Fangio. The Chicago Bears parted ways with head coach Matt Nagy and general manager Ryan Pace. Additionally, Mike Zimmer was fired as head coach of the Minnesota Vikings, and Rick Spielman was released as general manager. 

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NEW YORK (AP) — Whoopi Goldberg was suspended for two weeks Tuesday as co-host of “The View” because of what the head of ABC News called her “wrong and hurtful comments” about Jews and the Holocaust.

“While Whoopi has apologized, I’ve asked her to take time to reflect and learn about the impact of her comments. The entire ABC News organization stands in solidarity with our Jewish colleagues, friends, family and communities,” ABC News President Kim Godwin said in a statement.

The suspension came a day after Goldberg’s comment during a discussion on “The View” that race was not a factor in the Holocaust. Goldberg apologized hours later and again on Tuesday’s morning episode, but the original remark drew condemnation from several prominent Jewish leaders.

“My words upset so many people, which was never my intention,” she said Tuesday morning. “I understand why now and for that I am deeply, deeply grateful because the information I got was really helpful and helped me understand some different things.”

Goldberg made her original comments during a discussion on the show Monday about a Tennessee school board’s banning of “Maus,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Nazi death camps during World War II. She said the Holocaust was “not about race … it’s about man’s inhumanity to other man.”

“I misspoke,” Goldberg said at the opening of Tuesday’s show.

The flare-up over Goldberg’s remarks this week highlighted the enduring complexity of some race-related issues, including the widespread but strongly contested notion that only people of color can be victims of racism.

“Effective immediately, I am suspending Whoopi Goldberg for two weeks for her wrong and hurtful comments,” Godwin said in her statement.

“The View” brought on Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League and author of “It Could Happen Here,” on Tuesday to discuss why her words had been hurtful.

“Jewish people at the moment are feeling besieged,” Greenblatt said.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, praised Goldberg for being outspoken over the years on social issues but said he struggled to understand her statement on the Holocaust.

“The only explanation that I have for it is that there is a new definition of racism that has been put out there in the public recently that defines racism exclusively as the targeting of people of color. And obviously history teaches us otherwise,” Cooper said.

“Everything about Nazi Germany and about the targeting of the Jews and about the Holocaust was about race and racism. That’s the unfortunate, unassailable historic fact,” he said.

Kenneth L. Marcus, chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, linked Goldberg’s remarks to broader misconceptions of the Holocaust, Jewish identity and antisemitism.

“In her error, she was reflecting a misunderstanding of Jewish identity that is both widespread and dangerous that is sometimes described as erasive antisemitism,” said Marcus, who is the author of ‘The Definition of Anti-Semitism.’

“It is the notion that Jews should be viewed only as being white, privileged oppressors,” he said. “It denies Jewish identity and involves a whitewashing of Jewish history.”

Marcus referred to the use of anti-Jewish stereotypes “about being powerful, controlling and sinister,” coupled with downplaying or denying antisemitism.

Jill Savitt, president and CEO of the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, offered a measured view of Goldberg’s comments.

“No one can get into Whoopi Goldberg’s head, … But I think what she’s trying to say is that the Holocaust is about hatred. It’s about inhumanity. It’s about what human beings will do to one another that is inhumane,” Savitt said.

Complex issues demand more than placing blame, she said.

“I think people are not as quick to give anybody the benefit of the doubt these days, which is a shame because in order to work through painful, complicated, difficult issues, especially painful histories,” Savitt said, “we could give each other a little more grace because people are going to make mistakes or they’re going to say things that offend.”

In Israel, being Jewish is rarely seen in racial terms, in part because of the country’s great diversity. Yet Jewish identity goes far beyond religion. Israelis typically refer to the “Jewish people” or “Jewish nation,” describing a group or civilization bound together by a shared history, culture, language and traditions and deep ties to Jewish communities overseas.

On “The View” Monday, Goldberg, who is Black, had expressed surprise that some Tennessee school board members were uncomfortable about nudity in “Maus.”

“I mean, it’s about the Holocaust, the killing of 6 million people, but that didn’t bother you?” she said. “If you’re going to do this, then let’s be truthful about it. Because the Holocaust isn’t about race. No, it’s not about race.”

She continued on that line despite pushback from some of her fellow panelists.

The U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington responded to Goldberg with a tweet.

“Racism was central to Nazi ideology. Jews were not defined by religion, but by race. Nazi racist beliefs fueled genocide and mass murder,” it said.

That tweet also included a link to the museum’s online encyclopedia, which said the Nazis attributed negative stereotypes about Jews to a biologically determined racial heritage.

Savitt said while Jews are not a race, Nazis made Judaism a a race in their effort to create a racial hierarchy that “borrowed this, it should be said, from the American conversation about racial superiority and eugenics.”

On Twitter, there were several calls for Goldberg’s firing, where it appeared caught up in the familiar debates between left and right.

Greenblatt said the talk show, in the market for a new co-host following last summer’s departure of Meghan McCain, should consider hiring a Jewish woman to keep the issue of antisemitism in the forefront.

AP Television Writer Lynn Elber in Los Angeles, AP Writer Ron Harris in Atlanta and correspondent Luis Andres Henao in Princeton, N.J., contributed to this report.

Becki said she didn’t report the traumatic experience at the time because she felt guilty about the affair. In her mind, she deserved it. A few months later, Becki told Jerry and two lawyers about the incident. Becki said it also took her time to process that what happened could have been a form of assault. “I said no. Just because we had sex before does not mean he has a free ticket to my body.”

Granda and the Falwells hurtled toward a blowup. Months later, a lawyer representing Granda wrote a letter to Jerry’s attorney that stated Granda wanted Jerry to buy him out of the hostel for $2 million ($1.1 million in cash and $50,000 a year for 20 years, according to a letter Granda’s lawyer sent on October 15, 2019). Jerry refused. Granda’s attorney, Aaron Resnick, did not respond to a request for comment.

Granda’s emotional state deteriorated and he talked about suicide. Becki shared a text Granda sent around this time: “My life is absolutely ruined. When they find my lifeless body hanging in the woods, please make sure [my dog] Logan is returned to my family. Goodbye.”

In June 2020, Granda and Jerry reached the point of no return. “Since you’re okay with ruining my life, I am going to take the kamikaze route,” Granda texted Jerry. According to Jerry, Granda said he would tell people Jerry participated in the affair: “Revenge is coming soon.… I’m taking everyone down with me with my side of the story,” Granda texted. Becki worried Granda could release clips of the sex tapes she said she had shared with him.

“You should by now understand that I will not be extorted,” Jerry texted back. “I have always treated you fairly and been restrained in response to your threats because I did not wish to ruin your life. Going forward, stop contacting me and my family.”

With Granda threatening to go kamikaze, you would think Jerry would have kept a low profile. Instead, he spent 2020 brazenly courting controversy—as if he was trying to get fired. The year began with Jerry holding a bizarre press conference calling for rural portions of Virginia to secede and join West Virginia. In March, he tweeted a conspiracy theory that COVID-19 might be a North Korean bioweapon. When campuses across the country went into lockdown and sent students home that spring, Jerry kept Liberty open. But that was just a warm-up. Two days after George Floyd’s murder on Memorial Day, Jerry tweeted a photo of a face mask he printed with a racist photo from Virginia governor Ralph Northam’s medical school yearbook. It showed people posing in blackface and a KKK hood. Jerry tweeted he would only wear a mask that had “Governor Blackface” on it. Protests and violence erupted in Lynchburg, a city with a large Black population. Jerry refused to apologize, even after Black Liberty staffers, including the head of diversity retention as well as top football and basketball players, quit the school in protest. After nearly two weeks of chaos, Jerry grudgingly deleted the tweet.

But Jerry couldn’t break his destructive social media habit. On Sunday morning, August 2, Jerry was relaxing with Becki and Caroline at the farm when he announced he had posted a photo on Instagram and held the phone up. So much was wrong about the picture: Jerry had his pants unzipped and what looked like a rum and Coke in one hand, with his other arm wrapped around a pregnant woman with her shorts unzipped and stomach showing.

“During my freshman year, my buddy and I went to a convenience store and I drank a few beers. I thought, I’m the wild one.”

Becki and Caroline were mortified. “We were like, that’s terrible! Take it down!” Becki recalled. Jerry didn’t see the big deal. The photo was taken during a costume party aboard billionaire Rick Hendrick’s 160-foot yacht. He was dressed as the main character Julian from the Canadian sitcom Trailer Park Boys. The drink in his hand was the Blk brand mineral water he ordered off Amazon, and the woman was Becki’s assistant. Jerry deleted the photo. But it was too late. Someone had taken a screenshot, and the media was all over the controversy.

On August 7, the Liberty board of trustees put Jerry on indefinite leave. Jerry said he wanted to fight the decision but didn’t have the energy. Since that July, he had been suffering from shortness of breath, dizzy spells, and slurred speech. He said he was eventually diagnosed with pulmonary emboli, a form of blood clots in the lungs. He was hospitalized when his blood oxygen fell to 77 percent. “The lungs were blocked up with clots. The pressure in the right side of my heart was triple what it should have been, and it was swollen. I barely made it to the car when we went to the hospital,” Jerry said.

Jerry said he was in a diminished state when a Reuters reporter named Aram Roston emailed to say Granda had given an on-the-record interview. Granda was alleging Jerry liked to watch Granda and Becki have sex, did Jerry have a comment? Borrowing a page from Trump’s playbook, Jerry wanted to preempt Granda’s story with one of his own, but he was too weak to go on television. On August 23, he sent a statement to the Washington Examiner. It acknowledged Granda and Becki’s affair but claimed Granda fabricated wild accusations about Jerry’s involvement as part of an extortion plot.

Before publication, Jerry and Becki sat their kids down. “We never told them until the day before it was about to hit,” Becki recalled. “I didn’t want my kids to know. You know, how embarrassing is that?”

A day later, Jerry says a member of Liberty’s board called Jerry and said if he didn’t step down, he would be fired. Jerry resigned.

Since his resignation, Jerry has been locked in a bitter feud with Liberty. The board fired Jerry’s son Trey and barred Jerry and Becki from setting foot on campus, even though their daughter is a senior and Jerry’s parents are buried there. Two days after Jerry’s resignation, an anonymous former Liberty student and friend of Trey’s told Politico that Becki had performed oral sex on him at the Falwell’s home in 2008 when he was 22. Becki denied the allegation to me, calling it “so ridiculous.” In April 2021, the board sued Jerry for $40 million to claw back his eight-figure severance package. The trustees said Jerry committed fraud when he negotiated a lucrative new contract in 2019 without telling the university he was being extorted by Granda—information the trustees said they were entitled to before they renewed Jerry’s multimillion-dollar deal. The lawsuit included accounts of Jerry and Becki’s booze-filled nights in Miami clubs and alleged Jerry showed up at Liberty when he “smelled of alcohol.” Jerry and Becki denied the allegations. “The lawsuit was my worst day,” Becki said. “I just remember crying all day long. It was our own people coming after us.”

Jerry said the board held him to an unfair standard. Jerry’s reasoning is that he was a university president, not a pastor. His brother, Jonathan, who preached every Sunday at their father’s church, was the pious one. “Liberty never had any rules for whether the president or any staff member could drink alcohol,” Jerry said, sounding like the lawyer he was trained to be. I told him the argument sounded like an extreme case of rationalization given that he was the leader of a school that fines female students for wearing a dress more than two inches above the knee. But Jerry said the current leadership has also broken rules—and that some school leaders drank alcohol. “I couldn’t believe the board was shocked about that,” Jerry said. The suit is ongoing.

Getting rid of Jerry didn’t stanch Liberty’s image crisis. In August, 12 women filed a federal class-action lawsuit alleging the university violated Title IX law by discriminating against women who made allegations of sexual assault and harassment. According to the suit, which is proceeding, Liberty staff discouraged victims from reporting abuse and fined some for violating Liberty’s “commitment to Biblical principles of purity and abstinence.” Jerry’s successor, Jerry Prevo, released a statement calling the allegations “troubling” and added: “Liberty University will not tolerate Title IX violations, sexual abuse or sexual assault in any form at any time.” In October, Scott Lamb, Liberty’s former senior vice president for communications, sued Liberty in federal court, claiming he was fired after raising red flags about the way the university responded to sexual assault allegations. Prevo called Lamb’s allegations false in a statement. His suit is in progress.

In exile, Jerry and Becki’s grievances festered, like Trump’s after his election loss. It’s no accident, Jerry said, that forces marshaled against him in the heat of the 2020 presidential campaign. He pointed out that Granda was advised by Kurt Bardella, at the time a PR adviser for the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. “They wanted to get Jerry out of the picture for the election cycle because he got credited for bringing all the evangelicals around,” Becki said.

Jerry also suspected that Franklin Graham, son of the late Billy Graham, used the scandal to expand the Graham family’s influence over Liberty. Franklin Graham’s son Will was named vice chairman of Liberty’s board. Prevo is also a Graham ally. Jerry said Franklin Graham had also once told him that he wanted to start a Billy Graham University, but it didn’t get off the ground. In September 2020, Jerry and Franklin got into an argument over who should get credit for Liberty’s success. “I said, ‘My dad built the foundation, but I built the house. And Franklin got furious. He said, ‘You didn’t build it!’ You should have heard the jealousy in Franklin’s voice,” Jerry recalled. According to Jerry, Franklin Graham told him his future in the Christian world is over. “He said, ‘You’ll never be anything in evangelical circles again.’ ” Graham, through a spokesperson, declined to comment.

Jerry said that being on the receiving end of evangelicals’ moral opprobrium has fundamentally turned him away from the movement. He believes in Christ, he said, but not the church. “Nothing in history has done more to turn people away from Christianity than organized religion,” he said. “The religious elite has got this idea that somehow their sins aren’t as bad as everyone else’s,” Jerry said. Listening to Jerry, it made me think he convinced himself Liberty wasn’t the fundamentalist school that it is. “He would tell reporters that we don’t mind if gay and lesbians come here. I would tell him, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ ” recalled Lamb.

“Attention without feeling,” Mary Oliver observed in her magnificent memoir of love and loss, “is only a report.” In Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses (public library) — an extraordinary celebration of smallness and the grandeur of life, as humble yet surprisingly magical as its subject — botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer extends an uncommon and infectious invitation to drink in the vibrancy of life at all scales and attend to our world with befitting vibrancy of feeling.

One of the world’s foremost bryologists, Kimmerer is a scientist blessed with the rare privilege of belonging to a long lineage of storytellers — her family comes from the Bear Clan of the Potawatomi. There is a special commonality between her heritage and her scientific training — a profound respect for all life forms, whatever their size — coupled with a special talent for rendering that respect contagious, which places her prose in the same taxon as Mary Oliver and Annie Dillard and Thoreau. Indeed, if Thoreau was a poet and philosopher who became a de facto naturalist by the sheer force of poetic observation, despite having no formal training in science, Kimmerer is a formally trained scientist whose powers of poetic observation and contemplative reflection render her a de facto poet and philosopher. (So bewitching is her book, in fact, that it inspired Elizabeth Gilbert’s beautiful novel The Signature of All Things, which is how I first became aware of Kimmerer’s mossy masterwork.)

Mosses, to be sure, are scientifically impressive beyond measure — the amphibians of vegetation, they were among the first plants to emerge from the ocean and conquer the land; they number some 22,000 species, whose tremendous range of size parallels the height disparity between a blueberry bush and a redwood; they inhabit nearly every ecosystem on earth and grow in places as diverse as the branch of an oak and the back of a beetle. But beyond their scientific notoriety, mosses possess a kind of lyrical splendor that Kimmerer unravels with enchanting elegance — splendor that has to do with what these tiny organisms teach us about the art of seeing.

She uses the experience of flying — an experience so common we’ve come to take its miraculousness for granted — to illustrate our all too human solipsism:

Between takeoff and landing, we are each in suspended animation, a pause between chapters of our lives. When we stare out the window into the sun’s glare, the landscape is only a flat projection with mountain ranges reduced to wrinkles in the continental skin. Oblivious to our passage overhead, other stories are unfolding beneath us. Blackberries ripen in the August sun; a woman packs a suitcase and hesitates at her doorway; a letter is opened and the most surprising photograph slides from between the pages. But we are moving too fast and we are too far away; all the stories escape us, except our own.

We, of course, need not rise to the skies in order to fall into the chronic patterns of our myopia and miss most of what is going on around us — we do this even in the familiar microcosm of a city block. Kimmerer considers how our growing powers of technologically aided observation have contributed to our diminished attentiveness:

We poor myopic humans, with neither the raptor’s gift of long-distance acuity, nor the talents of a housefly for panoramic vision. However, with our big brains, we are at least aware of the limits of our vision. With a degree of humility rare in our species, we acknowledge there is much we can’t see, and so contrive remarkable ways to observe the world. Infrared satellite imagery, optical telescopes, and the Hubble space telescope bring vastness within our visual sphere. Electron microscopes let us wander the remote universe of our own cells. But at the middle scale, that of the unaided eye, our senses seem to be strangely dulled. With sophisticated technology, we strive to see what is beyond us, but are often blind to the myriad sparkling facets that lie so close at hand. We think we’re seeing when we’ve only scratched the surface. Our acuity at this middle scale seems diminished, not by any failing of the eyes, but by the willingness of the mind. Has the power of our devices led us to distrust our unaided eyes? Or have we become dismissive of what takes no technology but only time and patience to perceive? Attentiveness alone can rival the most powerful magnifying lens.

But the rewards of attentiveness can’t be forced into manifesting — rather, they are surrendered to. In a sentiment that calls to mind Rebecca Solnit’s spectacular essay on how we find ourselves by getting lost, Kimmerer writes:

A Cheyenne elder of my acquaintance once told me that the best way to find something is not to go looking for it. This is a hard concept for a scientist. But he said to watch out of the corner of your eye, open to possibility, and what you seek will be revealed. The revelation of suddenly seeing what I was blind to only moments before is a sublime experience for me. I can revisit those moments and still feel the surge of expansion. The boundaries between my world and the world of another being get pushed back with sudden clarity an experience both humbling and joyful.

Mosses and other small beings issue an invitation to dwell for a time right at the limits of ordinary perception. All it requires of us is attentiveness. Look in a certain way and a whole new world can be revealed.

Learning to see mosses is more like listening than looking. A cursory glance will not do it. Starting to hear a faraway voice or catch a nuance in the quiet subtext of a conversation requires attentiveness, a filtering of all the noise, to catch the music. Mosses are not elevator music; they are the intertwined threads of a Beethoven quartet.

Echoing Richard Feynman’s iconic monologue on knowledge and mystery, Kimmerer adds:

Knowing the fractal geometry of an individual snowflake makes the winter landscape even more of a marvel. Knowing the mosses enriches our knowing of the world.

This knowing, at its most intimate, is a function of naming — for words are how we come to know meanings. Kimmerer considers this delicate dialogue between a thing’s essence and its name:

Having words for these forms makes the differences between them so much more obvious. With words at your disposal, you can see more clearly. Finding the words is another step in learning to see.

Having the words also creates an intimacy with the plant that speaks of careful observation.

Intimacy gives us a different way of seeing, when visual acuity is not enough.

The remarkable diversity of moss varieties known and named only adds to the potentiality for intimacy with the world at all scales. But among this vast multiplicity of mosses is one particular species inhabiting the small caves carved by glaciers into the lakeshore, which alone embodies immense wisdom about the mystery and meaning of life. Kimmerer writes:

Schistostega pennata, the Goblins’ Gold, is unlike any other moss. It is a paragon of minimalism, simple in means, rich in ends. So simple you might not recognize it as a moss at all. The more typical mosses on the bank outside spread themselves to meet the sun. Such robust leaves and shoots, though tiny, require a substantial amount of solar energy to build and maintain. They are costly in solar currency. Some mosses need full sun to survive, others favor the diffuse light of clouds, while Schistostega lives on the clouds’ silver lining alone.

This singular species subsists solely on the light reflections emanating from the lake’s surface, which provide one-tenth of one percent of the solar energy that direct sunlight does. And yet in this unlikely habitat, Schistostega has emerged as a most miraculous jewel of life:

The shimmering presence of Schistostega is created entirely by the weft of nearly invisible threads crisscrossing the surface of the moist soil. It glows in the dark, or rather it glitters in the half light of places which scarcely feel the sun.

Each filament is a strand of individual cells strung together like beads shimmering on a string. The walls of each cell are angled, forming interior facets like a cut diamond. It is these facets which cause Schistostega to sparkle like the tiny lights of a far-away city. These beautifully angled walls capture traces of light and focus it inward, where a single large chloroplast awaits the gathering beam of light. Packed with chlorophyll ad membranes of exquisite complexity, the chloroplast converts the light energy into a stream of flowing electrons. This is the electricity of photosynthesis, turning sun into sugar, spinning straw into gold.

But more than a biological marvel, Schistostega presents a parable of patience and its bountiful rewards — an allegory for meeting the world not with grandiose entitlement but with boundless generosity of spirit; for taking whatever it has to offer and giving back an infinity more. Kimmerer writes:

Rain on the outside, fire on the inside. I feel a kinship with this being whose cold light is so different from my own. It asks very little from the world and yet glitters in response.

Timing is everything. Just for a moment, in the pause before the earth rotates again into night, the cave is flooded with light. The near-nothingness of Schistostega erupts in a shower of sparkles, like green glitter spilled on the rug at Christmas… And then, within minutes, it’s gone. All its needs are met in an ephemeral moment at the end of the day when the sun aligns with the mouth of the cave… Each shoot is shaped like a feather, flat and delicate. The soft blue green fronds stand up like a glad of translucent ferns, tracking the path of the sun. It is so little. And yet it is enough.

This tiny moss is a master of “the patient gleaming of light” — and what is the greatest feat of the human spirit, the measure of a life well lived, if not a “patient gleaming of light”? Annie Dillard knew this when she wrote: “I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam.” And Carl Jung knew it when he insisted that “the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.” The humble, generous Schistostega illuminates the darkness of mere being into blazing awe at the miracle of life itself — a reminder that our existence on this unremarkable rock orbiting an unremarkable star is a glorious cosmic accident, the acute awareness of which calls to mind poet Mark Strand’s memorable words: “It’s such a lucky accident, having been born, that we’re almost obliged to pay attention.”

To pay attention, indeed, is the ultimate celebration of this accidental miracle of life. Kimmerer captures this with exuberant elegance:

The combination of circumstances which allows it to exist at all are so implausible that the Schistostega is rendered much more precious than gold. Goblins’ or otherwise. Not only does its presence depend on the coincidence of the cave’s angle to the sun, but if the hills on the western shore were any higher the sun would set before reaching the cave… Its life and ours exist only because of a myriad of synchronicities that bring us to this particular place at this particular moment. In return for such a gift, the only sane response is to glitter in reply.

Gathering Moss is a glittering read in its entirety. Complement it with Annie Dillard on the art of seeing and the two ways of looking.