July 7, 2016

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Today in Movie Culture: How Captain America Gets Drunk, the Best Jump Scares Ever and More

Here are a bunch of little bites to satisfy your hunger for movie culture:

Movie Science of the Day:

How much alcohol would Captain America have to get drunk? Kyle Hill tells us in the new episode of Because Science:

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Theme Song Cover of the Day:

If you don’t like the new Ghostbusters theme song, maybe you’d rather the reboot went with an a capella cover of the 1984 version like this:

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Cosplay of the Day:

Also the song parody of the day, here is a music video for some cosplayers’ Suicide Squad version of Arianna Grande’s “Dangerous Woman.” See more photos and info about the Harley Quinn cosplayer at Fashionably Geek.

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Vintage Image of the Day:

Vittorio De Sica, who was born on this day 115 years ago, directs actor Lamberto Maggiorani on the set of the neorealism classic Bicycle Thieves in 1948:

Video Essay of the Day:

Jacob T. Swinney showcases the voyeuristic cinematography of Carol in this brief video essay:

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Bad Film Analysis of the Day:

An alien from the future offers his take on Christopher Nolan’s Memento:

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Fan Art of the Day:

Some fans just like to dissect the movies, but an artist who goes by the tag NYCHOS likes to paint dissections of their characters, like the Yoda and Darth Vader seen below. See others at Geek Tyrant.

Movie Comparison of the Day:

Many critics are comparing The Secret Life of Pets to Toy Story. Well here are 24 reasons Finding Nemo is the same movie as Toy Story 2:

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Supercut of the Day:

Burger Fiction aims to scare you over and over and over with this compilation of the 40 greatest jump scares in movies:

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Classic Trailer of the Day:

Today is the 45th anniversary of Two-Lane Blacktop. Watch the original trailer for the movie, which is a part of the National Film Registry, below.

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and

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In Colombia, Preserving Songs That Tell Stories

Revelers take in the 2016 Vallenato Festival in Colombia.

Revelers take in the 2016 Vallenato Festival in Colombia. Betto Arcos for NPR hide caption

toggle caption Betto Arcos for NPR

Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez once said that One Hundred Years of Solitude was a 400-page Vallenato: a traditional music of Colombia’s Caribbean coast. The songs are mini-epics, filled with local characters and poetry. It’s a style that stretches back 200 years and is still thriving today.

At high noon in Valledupar, the capital of Vallenato, a traditional trio takes the stage. The occasion is the Vallenato Festival, which has been held in the city that gives the music its name for almost half a century. Its goal is to promote the traditional elements of the style, which is played on three instruments: caja, or drum, guacharaca, or scraper, and the diatonic accordion.

In addition to a competition, the festival includes daily concerts held in a 25,000-seat amphitheater. Among the headliners this year was superstar singer Carlos Vives, who helped popularize Vallenato around the world in the early 1990s.

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“For me, Vallenato is connected to the countryside, to the cattle rancher, to the farmer,” Vives says. “That’s Vallenato. And then there’s us, the new generation who have reinvented it. But when I talk about Vallenato, we have to remember the ‘minstrels.'”

The minstrels go back to the early 1800s, when troubadours traveled from town to town, singing songs about local and regional news.

“Back in the day, the news was spread through songs,” says Tomás Dario Gutiérrez, a Vallenato historian and composer. “News that today could be transmitted in a matter of seconds — for instance, an epidemic.”

In One Hundred Years of Solitude, one of the main characters learns of her mother’s death through a famous Vallenato accordionist named “Francisco el Hombre,” inspired by a real-life minstrel.

Gutiérrez says people may think García Márquez wrote about a fantasy world in his novel.

“No, no,” Gutierrez says. “He takes the history, the social and cultural reality of our people and runs it through the sieve of fantasy and creates that monumental work. Many times, the same phenomenon happens in Vallenato songs. For instance, the song called ‘The House in the Air’: ‘I’m going to make you a house in the air.’ It’s the same thing!”

The song tells the story of a man who wants to build a home for his daughter up in the air to protect her from unwanted suitors, so that only the one who can “reach that high” can win her hand.

Up until the late 1800s, Vallenato was played on indigenous Colombian flutes called gaitas. When the accordion came to Colombia from Germany in the mid-1800s, it became the primary voice playing four distinct “airs” or rhythms: paseo, merengue, son and puya.

Last December, UNESCO declared Vallenato “intangible heritage, in need of safeguarding.” Efraín Quintero, vice-president of the Vallenato Legend Foundation, says that acknowledgment brings with it a big responsibility.

“To promote and support music that does not stray from the melodic and literary structures of traditional Vallenato,” Quintero says. “That said, I’m a firm believer that we have to evolve, we can’t restrict or stigmatize new musicians. We just have to make sure that they have all the necessary elements of traditional music and, based on that, create new work.”

The Camilo Molina Trio performing at the 2016 Vallenato Festival.

The Camilo Molina Trio performing at the 2016 Vallenato Festival. Betto Arcos for NPR hide caption

toggle caption Betto Arcos for NPR

The Vallenato Festival recognized accordionist Emiliano Zuleta and his brother, singer Poncho Zuleta, for their efforts to preserve the music.

“We must follow the rules and parameters of traditional Vallenato, to conserve its essence,” Zuleta says. “That’s the work we do and the recommendation we make to new generations, so they don’t distort the truth about Vallenato.”

Carlos Vives agrees. It’s important to continue recording Vallenato and to encourage younger musicians.

“It’s also important that minstrels continue to thrive, like Emiliano Zuleta, the elder, or Luis Enrique Martinez or Carlos Huertas,” Vives says. “Composers that were born free of the recording industry — who were not born to make records, but to carry messages from town to town.”

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'Unbroken Brain' Explains Why 'Tough' Treatment Doesn't Help Drug Addicts

A man trapped inside a pill.

Taylor Callery/Ikon Images/Getty Images

Tough love, interventions and 12-step programs are some of the most common methods of treating drug addiction, but journalist Maia Szalavitz says they’re often counterproductive.

“We have this idea that if we are just cruel enough and mean enough and tough enough to people with addiction, that they will suddenly wake up and stop, and that is not the case,” she tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross.

Szalavitz is the author of Unbroken Brain, a book that challenges traditional notions of addiction and treatment. Her work is based on research and experience; she was addicted to cocaine and heroin from the age of 17 until she was 23.

Szalavitz is a proponent of “harm reduction” programs that take a nonpunitive approach to helping addicts and “treat people with addiction like human beings.” In her own case, she says that getting “some kind of hope that I could change” enabled her to get the help she needed.


Interview Highlights

On her criticism of 12-step programs

I think that 12-step programs are fabulous self help. I think they can be absolutely wonderful as support groups. My issue with 12-step programs is that 80 percent of addiction treatment in this country consists primarily of indoctrinating people into 12-step programs, and no other medical care in the United States is like that. The data shows that cognitive behavioral therapy and motivational enhancement therapy are equally effective, and they have none of the issues around surrendering to a higher power, or prayer or confession.

I think that one of the problems with the primary 12-step approach that we’ve seen in addiction treatment is that because the 12 steps involve moral issues, it makes people think that addiction is a sin and not a disease. The only treatment in medicine that involves prayer, restitution and confession is for addiction. That fact makes people think that addiction is a sin, rather than a medical problem. I think that if we want to destigmatize addiction, we need to get the 12 steps out of professional treatment and put them where they belong — as self-help.

On the efficacy of maintenance treatment

Buprenorphine and methadone are the two most effective treatments that we have for opioid addiction, and that is when they are taken indefinitely and possibly for a lifetime. So these medications are opioids themselves. They each have slightly different properties … but what they do is they allow you to function completely normally. You can drive. You can love. You can work. You can do everything that anybody else does. …

The way they are able to do that is because if you take an opioid in a regular steady dose every day at the same time and the dose is adjusted right for you, you will not experience any intoxication. The way people with addiction experience intoxication is that they take more and more and more, they take it irregularly, the dosing pattern is completely different. But if you do take it in a steady-state way — which is what happens when you are given it at a clinic every day at the same time — you then have a tolerance to opioids which will protect you if you relapse, and will mean that the death rate from overdose in people who are in maintenance is 50 to 70 percent lower than the death rate for people who are using other methods of treatment, and that includes all of the abstinence treatments.

So maintenance is a really important treatment option for people with opioid addiction. It should be the standard of care. No one should ever be denied access to it. Unfortunately, we have this idea that if you take methadone or buprenorphine, you are just substituting one addiction for another.

On using harm reduction instead of tough love to help addicts

We do know from looking at the data that if you are kind and supportive and empathetic — if you do things like provide clean needles, provide opportunities for people to reverse overdose, provide safe injecting spaces — those things do not prolong addiction. And if tough love was the answer, and the idea was you shouldn’t enable addiction, if that theory was correct, those things should all prolong addiction, and the exact opposite is true. When you go into a needle exchange, one of the most amazing things is people are just treated with dignity and respect. And when you’re an active drug user, when you are injecting, everybody crosses the street to avoid you. And here you’re just seen as a person who deserves to live, and you deserve a chance. And it’s that that gives people hope. And it’s that that shortens the period of addiction.

Maia Szalavitz is a journalist who has been covering addiction and drug related issues for nearly 30 years. She writes a column for Vice and has been a health reporter and columnist for Time magazine.

Maia Szalavitz is a journalist who has been covering addiction and drug related issues for nearly 30 years. She writes a column for Vice and has been a health reporter and columnist for Time magazine. Ash Fox/St. Martin’s Press hide caption

toggle caption Ash Fox/St. Martin’s Press

On not serving any time in prison after being caught with 2.5 kilos of cocaine when she was 20 years old

I have to say that being white and being female and being a person who was at an Ivy League school and being privileged in many other ways had an enormous amount to do with … why I was not incarcerated and why I’m not in prison now. I think our laws are completely and utterly racist. They were founded in racism, and they are enforced in a thoroughly biased manner. I was extraordinarily lucky to have an attorney and a judge that saw that I was getting better, and that allowed me to avoid that.

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FACT CHECK: Clinton's Speech On Trump And Atlantic City, Annotated

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks in front of the shuttered Trump Plaza casino on the boardwalk of Atlantic City, N.J., on Wednesday.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks in front of the shuttered Trump Plaza casino on the boardwalk of Atlantic City, N.J., on Wednesday. The Washington Post/Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption The Washington Post/Getty Images

Hillary Clinton spoke in Atlantic City, N.J. Wednesday, calling for more jobs in the city and blasting Donald Trump’s business record in the area.

NPR’s politics team has annotated Clinton’s speech below. Portions we commented on are highlighted, followed by analysis, context and fact check in italics.

The speech follows:

That was really great. Thank you so very much.

I’ll tell you there’s no place like Atlantic City. I mean just think, the history, the boardwalk, saltwater taffy — it’s no wonder that families come back year after year.

And I am so grateful to Marty Rosenberg, a native of Atlantic City, being here today to share his story. I’m also grateful to the thousands of workers, who work here to make this city what it is.

Atlantic City is more than a vacation spot. It’s your livelihoods. It’s how you support your families. Now, this city has its share of big names on big buildings. But you and I know it was built by small businesses and the people who work to make it happen here. As a daughter of a small-business man, whose hard work sent me to college, I have a special place in my heart for the contractors, the craftsmen and the shopkeepers who built this city and keep it going.

Now, it is no secret that Atlantic City has gone through some tough times.

[The city has seen a substantial decline in tourism in recent years. here. Sarah McCammon]

But the people of A.C. are determined to turn things around. You’ve got a city council and a mayor working hand in hand. And if your governor would start doing his job instead of — instead of following Donald Trump around holding his coat, maybe we could really get New Jersey’s economy moving again.

Now, here in Atlantic City and across America, we’ve got to create more good-paying jobs with good wages. We’ve got to make the economy work for everyone, everywhere, not just those at the top in some places.

And that is just one reason why this election is so important.

And as the people of Atlantic City know better than anyone — Donald Trump cannot do the job for American workers and businesses.

Now let’s just look at this for a minute. Donald Trump says he’s qualified to be president because of his business record. Now, three weeks ago, he said, and I quote, “I’m going to do for the country what I did for my business.”

You know when he says things like that, he’s probably hoping nobody will check up on what he has said. Because what he did for his businesses — and his workers — is nothing to brag about. In fact, it’s shameful. And every single voter in America needs to know about it — so we don’t let him do to our country what he did to his businesses.

Now, that is why I’m here today. We’re standing in front of the old Trump Plaza Casino and Hotel. Donald Trump once predicted, “It will be the biggest hit yet.” Now it’s abandoned. You can just make out the word “TRUMP” where it used to be written in flashy lights. He had the letters taken down a few years ago.

[The letters were taken down in 2014 after Trump successfully sued to remove his name from the casino. — Sarah McCammon]

But his presence remains. And not far from here is the old Trump Marina Hotel Casino. A few years ago, it was sold at a huge loss.

Just down the boardwalk is the Trump Taj Mahal. Donald once called it the “Eighth Wonder of the World.” It filed for bankruptcy in 2009. Things got so bad, the new management canceled workers’ health insurance and pensions. And now those workers are on strike and we should all support them in getting a fair deal.

Now ask yourself: According to the Donald, isn’t he supposed to be some kind of amazing businessman? So it’s fair to ask, since he is applying for a job, what in the world happened here?

Now, his excuse for all this failure is that Atlantic City just went downhill — that it’s not his fault.

But don’t believe it. His businesses were failing long before the rest of the town was struggling.

[The Washington Post built a timeline analyzing Atlantic City’s economic challenges alongside Trump’s business woes and found a complicated relationship between the two. The newspaper found that Trump “took risks in a shaky economy” and ultimately used bankruptcy to avoid personal liability. — Sarah McCammon]

In fact, other businesses here did worse because Donald Trump acted so irresponsibly. He calls himself the “King of Debt,” and he earned that title right here in A.C. His bad decisions hurt the whole city.

And here’s what he did.

He intentionally ran up huge amounts of debt on his companies — hundreds of millions of dollars. He borrowed at high interest rates — even after promising regulators that he wouldn’t. What came next? He defaulted on those loans. Didn’t pay them back. And in the end, he bankrupted his companies — not once, not twice, but four times.

[Trump, like some other Atlantic City casino owners, resorted to bankruptcy for several of his casinos after running up unsustainable levels of debt. — Sarah McCammon]

And here’s what he said about one of those bankruptcies: “I figured,” he said, “it was the bank’s problem, not mine. What the hell did I care?”

I’m guessing many of you have had debt at some point — student loans, mortgages, credit cards. You couldn’t just tell the bank that you didn’t feel like paying, could you?

[Personal and Chapter 11 corporate bankruptcies aren’t entirely comparable, as this 2009 NPR piece explains. Personal bankruptcy often results in discharging debt — it’s a declaration that the filer has nothing left to pay (one aside here: discharging student debt via personal bankruptcy is phenomenally difficult). Chapter 11 bankruptcy, meanwhile, is about restructuring debt but keeping the business going. As many outlets have pointed out, it can be considered a good business decision. However, for example, the Washington Post reported earlier this year that financial experts have questioned whether the Taj Mahal bankruptcy was indeed a “fantastic deal.” — Danielle Kurtzleben]

And here’s an important thing about how Donald Trump operates. He doesn’t default and go bankrupt as a last resort. He does it over and over again on purpose — even though he knows he will leave others empty-handed while he keeps the plane, the helicopter, the penthouse.

He convinced other people that his Atlantic City properties were a great investment, so they would put in their own hard-earned money. But he always rigged it so he got paid, no matter how his companies performed. When this casino collapsed because of how badly he managed it, hundreds of people lost their jobs; shareholders were wiped out; lenders lost money; contractors — many of them small businesses — took heavy losses. And many themselves went bust.

But Donald Trump? He walked away with millions.

[Trump’s response to accusations that he ran his companies into the ground through reckless borrowing has been that he hadgreat timingand simply used bankruptcy law to his advantage, as business owners often do. — Sarah McCammon]


And here’s what he says about the whole experience — he actually brags about it: “Atlantic City was a very good cash cow for me for a long time. … The money I took out of there was incredible.”

Think about it — the money he took out of here.

That says everything you need to know about Donald Trump. It’s not about what he can build. It’s about how much he can take.

You know, he did it again just this morning. He went on Twitter and said, “I made a lot of money in Atlantic City and left.” Well, he got rich and got out, and he thinks that’s something to be proud of.

He didn’t just take advantage of investors. He took advantage of working people as well.

Donald Trump has been involved in more than 3,500 lawsuits over the past 30 years. That’s one every three days, give or take. And today’s Wednesday, so he’s due for another one.

Now here in Atlantic City, you may know about Vera Coking, the widow whose house on Columbia Place — right over there — Donald tried to seize it through eminent domain and turn it into a parking lot for limousines. Thankfully, he lost that fight.

[Here’s the back story on Vera Coking. — Sarah McCammon]

But there were thousands more.

[USA Today found records of more than 3,500 legal filings by Trump and his companies over the past 30 years. — Sarah McCammon]

And many of those lawsuits were filed by ordinary Americans who worked for Donald Trump and never got paid. Painters, waiters, plumbers — people who needed the money they earned, and didn’t get it — not because Donald Trump couldn’t pay, but because he wouldn’t pay. Hundreds of liens have been filed against him by contractors, going back decades. And they all tell the same story: I worked for him, I did my job, he wouldn’t pay me what he owed me. One person after another after another.

We just heard from Marty Rosenberg. His company was called Atlantic Plate Glass. They were hired to do a big job for the Trump Taj Mahal. They worked really hard on it. But at some point, Donald Trump just stopped paying. In the end, he owed Marty’s company nearly half a million dollars for the work they did under the agreement they made. Marty’s business barely survived.

He did the same thing to a kitchen equipment company, a cabinetmaker, a music store owner. He owed $3.9 million to a company that supplied marble for his properties. That business had to shut down, and eventually, the owner had to file for personal bankruptcy: the cost of doing business with Donald Trump. Now, Donald Trump doesn’t think going bankrupt is a big deal — but it’s devastating if you’re someone who plays by the rules.

I thought a lot about my dad in the last weeks as I’ve learned more about Donald Trump’s business behavior.

My dad was a small-business man. If his customers had done to him what Trump did to these companies, he wouldn’t have made it, either.

So this is personal for me. And it’s personal for a lot of people.

It’s not ancient history. If he’s elected president, it’s our future and the future of hardworking people across America.

Because I want you to understand [that] what he did here in Atlantic City is exactly what he will do if he wins in November.

Step 1: Give a huge tax cut to millionaires like himself. Step 2: Add trillions to our national debt. Step 3: He suggested we could just default on our national debt — like he defaulted on his business debt.

It is the same scam, over and over again.

And make no mistake — he’s not asking for forgiveness. He’s just hoping we forget.

The people he’s trying to convince to vote for him now are the same people he’s been exploiting for years: working people, small-business people, trying to support their families.

And you know, this seems to be his one move. He makes over-the-top promises, and says if people trust him, put their faith in him — he’ll deliver for them. He’ll make them wildly successful. Then everything falls apart, people get hurt and Donald gets paid.

Remember that, the next time you see him on TV, talking about how America will win big if we elect him president.

Those promises he’s making at his rallies? They’re the same promises he made to his customers at Trump University. Now they’re suing him for fraud.

They’re the same promises he made about another scheme called Trump Institute. The New York Times reports that the lessons it sold for thousands of dollars apiece were plagiarized from somebody else.

They’re the same promises he made to his customers at Trump Condos in Baja California. You should hear these people’s stories. They handed over their savings. Then their calls stopped getting answered. The condos were never built, and they never got their money back.

The Newark Star-Ledger says he — and I quote — “excels at ripping people off.” They wrote — again I quote — “As a result of his narcissistic, destructive risk-taking with other people’s money, his casinos posted huge losses while others thrived.”

[Here is the editorial from the Star-Ledger editorial board where that first phrase appeared, and here is the second one. — Danielle Kurtzleben]

And remember, remember what he promised: “I’m going to do for the country what I did for my business.”

Well, we should believe him — and make sure he never has the chance to bankrupt America the way he bankrupted his businesses.

So I just want you to take all this information and tell everybody you can. Because people need to make an informed choice. So when Trump says he is for working men and women of America, but Trump Furniture is made in Turkey instead of Lakewood, N.J., that matters. Trump Suits were made in Mexico, instead of Ashland, Pa. Trump Lamps are made in China, not Altoona, Pa.

If he wants to make America great again, maybe he should start by actually making things in America again.

[The Washington Post has documented multiple Trump products that are manufactured overseas. — Sarah McCammon]

That’s not all. Donald Trump actually stood on a debate stage and said Americans’ wages are too high.

He wants to get rid of the federal minimum wage.

[Trump’s stated views on minimum wage have shifted during the campaign. In November, he said he believed U.S. wages were too high. Then in May, on Meet the Press, he said he thought $7.25 per hour was too low of a wage to live on. When host Chuck Todd pressed him on whether there should be a federally set minimum wage, Trump said, “No, I’d rather have the states go out and do what they have to do.” — Danielle Kurtzleben]

His campaign said, let’s sell off America’s assets. Where do we start, the Statue of Liberty? These bad ideas just keep coming.

And he wants to wipe out the tough rules we put on big banks after the financial crisis. He’d rig the economy for Wall Street all over again. So we shouldn’t be surprised. Of course he’d be for protecting a system where the rich and powerful stick it to everybody else. He got rich playing by those rules and he wants to keep it that way.

He says he’s a businessman, and this is what businessmen do.

Well, as CNN has pointed out, no major company in America has filed Chapter 11 more often in the last 30 years than Trump’s casinos.

[Here’s that CNN report. — Sarah McCammon]

So no — this is not normal behavior.

Now look, there are companies in America — men and women who care about their workers and the people they do business with, and want to build something that lasts. They’re decent. They’re honest. Some might even make fine presidents. They would never dream of acting like Donald Trump.

In America, we don’t begrudge people being successful — that’s part of the American dream — but not if they get rich by destroying other people in the process.

So let’s just make sure we don’t put a person like this with his empty promises and his lifetime of selfishness in a position to destroy our lives.

This isn’t about Democrats versus Republicans. This goes far beyond that. Donald Trump is temperamentally unfit to be president of the United States.

So we can’t let him roll the dice with our children’s futures.

We need to write a new chapter in the American dream — and it sure cannot be Chapter 11.

So let’s prove that this fall.

We believe in an America that values hard work, treats people with dignity, works to raise your wages, not lower them.

We believe in an America where small businesses are respected, not scammed. I have a plan to make sure big businesses can’t stiff suppliers and contractors like Donald’s been doing for years.

On this beautiful day in this historic city, we believe in an America where people of all religions and races get an equal shot, and our economy works for everyone, not just those at the top.

So let’s carry that message all across America. Let’s fight hard and win in November. And then let’s get to work delivering results for the American people. We are stronger together. Thank you all so much.

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At The U.S. Olympic Trials, Mixed Opinions About Russian Doping Scandal

Gold medal winner Yuriy Bilonogof of Ukraine (right), wraps his arm around silver medal winner Adam Nelson of the U.S. on the podium for the shot put at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. However, Bilonogof was stripped of his gold in 2012 following a failed steroid test. Nelson was named the winner and honored at a ceremony on July 1 at the U.S. Olympic Trials in Eugene, Ore.

Gold medal winner Yuriy Bilonogof of Ukraine (right), wraps his arm around silver medal winner Adam Nelson of the U.S. on the podium for the shot put at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. However, Bilonogof was stripped of his gold in 2012 following a failed steroid test. Nelson was named the winner and honored at a ceremony on July 1 at the U.S. Olympic Trials in Eugene, Ore. Eric Feferberg/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption Eric Feferberg/AFP/Getty Images

The Olympics are less than a month away, and there’s still no final decision on whether some Russian track and field athletes will be allowed to compete in Rio. Russia has appealed a ban imposed after evidence of wide-ranging, state-sponsored doping. The Court of Arbitration for Sport is expected to decide by July 21 whether individual Russian track and field athletes can compete.

This case, and the larger question of doping, is a hot topic of discussion at the U.S. Olympic Trials in track and field trials currently underway in Eugene, Ore. In fact, it was impossible to ignore.

On the first day of the trials, July 1, shot putter Adam Nelson was honored with an unusual gold medal ceremony.

Such a ceremony is normally is a happy occasion, but this was bittersweet. Nelson smiled as he stood above the crowd in a stadium end zone, a victory wreath on top of his head, to receive an Olympic medal he should have been given way back in 2004.

Adam Nelson reacts during the men's shot put final July 1 at the U.S. Olympic Trials for track and field in Eugene, Ore. Nelson, 40, finished seventh and failed in a bid to make his fourth Olympic team.

Adam Nelson reacts during the men’s shot put final July 1 at the U.S. Olympic Trials for track and field in Eugene, Ore. Nelson, 40, finished seventh and failed in a bid to make his fourth Olympic team. Matt Slocum/AP hide caption

toggle caption Matt Slocum/AP

Nelson was given the silver then. But in 2012, the gold medalist in the 2004 Games, Ukranian Yuriy Bilonoh, tested positive for banned anabolic steroids in a re-test of his urine sample from 2004. (Samples are sometimes frozen and retested years later as technology gets more sophisticated.)

Bilonoh was stripped of the gold and Nelson was named the retroactive winner of the 2004 competition. In what had to be one of the most underwhelming Olympic victory moments ever, the medal was hand-delivered to Nelson in a food court at the Atlanta airport.

Track officials in Eugene thought Nelson deserved better. So did the thousands of fans who cheered Nelson last week at Hayward Field.

Mixed Opinions

Fans demonstrated more mixed feelings the next day, when Justin Gatlin, America’s best sprinter, blazed down the track in 9.80 seconds to win the 100 meters on Sunday. It was the best time in the world this year, and it earned Gatlin a spot on the Olympic team.

But along with the excitement on the track, there was a quiet protest in the stands. Over the weekend, about 30 people at Hayward Field wore T-shirts bearing the slogan “Runners Against Doping.”

The action targeted Gatlin, as well as fellow sprinter Tyson Gay, who tried but didn’t qualify for the 100 meters. Both men have served doping suspensions. Gatlin, 34, was suspended twice, testing positive in 2001 and 2006.

There’s still a debate within track and field whether or not Gatlin cheated. Gatlin has claimed there were valid reasons behind his positive tests that had nothing to do with performance enhancement.

Gatlin was willing to talk about the Russian scandal. He was asked whether Russian athletes, if they prove they’re clean, should be able to go to Rio even though the Russian Track Federation is banned.

“You gotta think about ‘fair is fair,'” he said. “If an athlete has come and he’s been tested or she’s been tested, and they’ve passed the test, I don’t think they should be, y’know, basically prosecuted or make a statement with other people who’ve done wrong.”

Oiselle, the women’s apparel company that organized the T-shirt protest, sponsors distance runner Stephanie Bruce. She’s more skeptical of Russian athletes who claim innocence.

“How long have you been running in a culture like [in Russia] and you don’t know that it’s going on? And you haven’t come forward?” Bruce says. “Like you’re totally oblivious that coaches or organizations [are involved in illegal doping] … so that seems strange to me.”

Justin Gatlin celebrates victory in the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic Trials for track and field. Gatlin has been suspended twice for failing doping tests, once in 2001 and again in 2006.

Justin Gatlin celebrates victory in the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic Trials for track and field. Gatlin has been suspended twice for failing doping tests, once in 2001 and again in 2006. Andy Lyons/Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption Andy Lyons/Getty Images

‘It Sends A Mixed Message’

Adam Nelson, the man unfairly denied a shot put gold medal back in 2004, takes the hardest line.

“I think it kind of undermines the decision [to ban Russia],” Nelson said, referring to the possibility that some Russian track and field athletes may be allowed to go to Rio.

“I’m an ‘athletes’ rights’ person, so I want to give them every opportunity to compete,” he added. “But the reality is, you make a ban on a country and then you allow the athletes to compete, it sends a mixed message.”

Nelson wasn’t in Eugene just for his medal ceremony.

At age 40, he came out of retirement and attempted to make his fourth Olympic team. But there was another motivation as well: anger about the Russian doping scandal.

“When I hear about corruption to the scale that was going on at that point, this is only one instance that we found out about,” he said. “How many times did it happen before that we didn’t find out?”

Nelson finished seventh in the shot put, and only the top three finishers made the team. But he still took home a well-deserved gold medal, even if it was 12 years late in coming.

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