Maddie Oatman

Research Editor

Maddie worked as a travel guide in Argentina and a teacher at several educational nonprofits in San Francisco before joining Mother Jones. She’s written about media and the arts for The Rumpus. A proud Boulder native, she makes time for mountain climbing, stargazing, and telemark skiing.

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Three Burner Bands Worth Dusting Off

—By Maddie Oatman

| Mon Sep. 13, 2010 4:00 AM PDT

Burning Man musicians have it rough. There's the omnipresent threat of dust storms, the dehydrated and disoriented spectators, and the competition for a prime location on the playa. And unlike visual artists, who can vie for grants from the Black Rock Arts Foundation to fund their massive sculptures, Burning Man musicians don't get paid. "This festival won't even give us a free ticket, and our equipment is guaranteed to be destroyed," gripes Grey Filastine, a producer based in Barcelona, Spain, who has been performing at Burning Man since the mid-1990s.

But there's no shortage of bands at the 10-day event, known for all-night performances and subwoofers so loud they masticate the ear drums. (Things are getting better, notes Grey Filastine—see below. "There have been years where I just wanted to wear earplugs the entire week; those days are gone.") Heavy on electronica and light on instruments, the nightscape pulsates from competing DJs amid seas of twinkling glow sticks. Admittedly, I thought most of the DJs and producers sounded all the same, but these performers stood out:

[Read more in the Riff blog]

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Ellen Page's Greenest Day

The star of Juno, Whip It, and Inception talks permaculture, Bill McKibben, and her latest movie, Super.

—By Maddie Oatman

| Sat Sep. 11, 2010 3:00 AM PDT

You probably remember Ellen Page from her Oscar-nominated turn as the witty, pregnant, teenager-next-door in Juno. Or perhaps you watched her in this summer's mindwarping Inception as an adept architect of dreams. But if you want to find the 23-year-old Canadian actor in person, you're more likely to see Page strolling through a farmer's market in Nova Scotia than flitting through celebrity parties with her costars.

An environmentalist and activist, Page gets excited about permaculture, Bill McKibben, and ecovillages. She has narrated several issues-based documentaries, and recently appeared on CBC News to speak out against the use of a controversial biosolids being spread around her native Halifax.

Mother Jones spoke with Page recently about her green choices, her love of local squash, and her role as a psychotic sidekick in James Gunn's dark superhero comedy SUPER, which premiered Friday at the Toronto International Film Festival.

[Read the full article]

Taking Down Fox News

—By Maddie Oatman

| Wed Aug. 25, 2010 1:25 PM PDT

After Glenn Beck blamed Obama for harboring a "deep-seated hatred for white people" during a morning chat on Fox and Friends more than a year ago, ColorofChange.org's director James Rucker decided that enough was enough. "Beck's comments about the president perfectly captured what has been going on at the network for a long time," Rucker told reporter Alexander Zaitchik, who wrote about the incident in our July/August issue this year. Color of Change is an online civil rights group focused on strengthening the political voices of people of color. Under Rucker's direction, it successfully urged several advertisers, including Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and RadioShack, to pull their ads from Beck's show. But Rucker didn't exactly get the outcome he was hoping for. Fox News did nothing to reign Beck in: instead, he's been allowed to blather on with few boundaries ever since. "Nothing has essentially changed," says Rucker. So Color of Change has launched an even larger offensive: convincing local businesses to silence Fox News.

Rucker had been bothered by catching glimpses of figures like Beck on television in the gym or restaurants. True Fox devotees, who see the world through that lens, should be able to watch Fox in their own homes, says Rucker. "But no one else should be subject to that." The Turn Off Fox campaign, which launches today, wants to de-legitimize Fox in public places. The campaign provides anyone with a kit, including instructions on how to persuade store owners to become "Fox-free" and a flyer detailing why.

"Fox's race-baiting and fear mongering is more than just deceptive and offensive," reads the campaign literature. "It's bad for the country, it's dangerous, and it can result in violence." In a letter asking for signatures, Turn Off Fox makes a case for how Fox's divisive reporting has sparked recent acts of violence. For example, when a man open fired at highway cops on an Oakland freeway in July, he told them that he wanted to start a revolution, with planned bloodshed at the Tides Foundation in San Francisco. Tides is a little-known non-profit, argues Turn Off Fox, that Glenn Beck chose to demonize on his show. A report by Media Matters suggests that the trigger-happy man could have drawn inspiration from Beck's proselytizing, and the shooter's mother admitted that her son "watched the news on television and was upset by 'the way Congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items."

[Read more in the Riff blog]

A Gay Cadet's Sense of Honor

—By Maddie Oatman

| Tue Aug. 10, 2010 10:53 AM PDT

Katherine Miller, a junior at the US Military Academy at West Point, outed herself yesterday while also filing her resignation. In her letter to West Point administration, Miller writes that the current military policy of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT) had caused her to undermine her own integrity:

Specifically, I have created a heterosexual dating history to recite to fellow cadets when they inquire. I have endured sexual harassment for fear of being accused as a lesbian by rejecting or reporting these events. I have been coerced into ignoring derogatory comments towards homosexuals for fear of being alienated for my viewpoint. In short, I have lied to my classmates and compromised my integrity and my identity by adhering to existing military policy.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

"12th and Delaware" Shows Where Abortion War is Really Waged

—By Maddie Oatman

| Tue Aug. 3, 2010 1:30 PM PDT

The new documentary 12th and Delaware, which premiered last night on HBO, presents a fly-on-the wall view inside two organizations in Fort Pierce, Florida, that cater to pregnant women. Though across the street from one another, in political terms the offices might as well be on separate planets; the Woman's World clinic offers abortions, and the anti-abortion Pregnancy Care Center goes to great lengths to goad women out of them.

Directors Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing, who also created Jesus Camp, plant their film right in the middle of an issue that may be on the minds of politicians everywhere, but is not always an easy topic to broach in conversation."It's just a headache," Grady admits, referring to the film's subject matter. Even though 12th and Delaware cozies up to controversy, "in our opinion it's been hard to get media coverage for the film," remarks Grady, who explains that they had trouble getting traction in the TV review world.

[Read more in the Riff blog]