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Here's who Trump should've pardoned instead of a bully who mocked the Parkland victims.

Out of all the people Trump could pardon, Dinesh D'Souza is a terrible choice.

The conservative writer has become a pariah across the political spectrum. To many he is best known for a series of incredibly offensive tweets in the aftermath of the Parkland school shootings.

In the wake of those comments, even the highly partisan Conservative Political Action Committee dropped him from their roster of speakers, calling his actions "indefensible."

Once seen as a promising young intellectual, D'Souza has become a lightning rod for controversy over the years. For instance, he wrote and narrated documentaries on President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton that critics said were loaded with conspiracy theories and light on facts.

He also pleaded guilty to making illegal financial contributions to a U.S. Senate campaign in 2012, the crime for which Trump has now officially pardoned him.

The announcement was met with near-universal scorn from both sides of the political aisle and members of the media.

The announcement comes one day after a White House visit on prison reform.

There was no shortage of jokes about Kim Kardashian West's visit to the White House on May 30. But she was there to discuss the very legitimate issue of prison reform, a subject that has surprisingly gained bipartisan support in recent years. Just this May, the Republican-led Congress passed a prison reform bill that is now in front of the U.S. Senate.

If Trump had wanted to make a big splash, he could have announced a pardon for Alice Marie Johnson, who was reportedly a central focus on Kardashian West's pitch to the president. Johnson is a 63-year-old grandmother currently serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for a non-violent drug offense.

As one of Johnson's lawyers, Brittany Barnett, said, "The message to the president is that Alice Johnson, the 21 years she has been in prison, represents a punishment that more than pays her debt to society and that to keep her prison the rest of her life is morally and economically unjustifiable."

Trump himself has signaled support for prison reform, saying that the newest bill should "restore the rule of law, keep dangerous criminals off our street, and help inmates get a second chance on life."

And a great way for him to put meaning behind such statements would be to pardon people like Johnson.

The presidential pardon is a powerful tool. Now is a great time to use it for real justice.

It's not unusual for presidents to be criticized for their presidential pardons: Nearly every president in modern history has been dinged for their sometimes questionable choices in the administration of selective mercy.

With the growing pressure to do something about prison reform, Trump could make a bold, bipartisan statement by pardoning incarcerated individuals like Johnson, who have faced punishments that greatly exceed their crimes.

It's hard to not be outraged by D'Souza's pardon.

But as long as Trump's feeling generous, perhaps enough political pressure could result in acts of mercy we can all feel good about.

Pop Culture

Guy who sounds remarkably like Michael Jackson gets 27 million views on first TikTok video

Holy moly that voice.

Constru-centro/Wikimedia Commons

Brandon Conway sounds remarkably like Michael Jackson when he sings.

When Michael Jackson died 13 years ago, the pop music world lost a legend. However markedly mysterious and controversial his personal life was, his contributions to music will go down in history as some of the most influential of all time.

Part of what made him such a beloved singer was the uniqueness of his voice. From the time he was a young child singing lead for The Jackson 5, his high-pitched vocals stood out. Hearing him sing live was impressive, his pitch-perfect performances always entertaining.

No one could ever really be compared to MJ, or so we thought. Out of the blue, a guy showed up on TikTok recently with a casual performance that sounds so much like the King of Pop it's blowing people away.

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Pop Culture

Little girl sings Selena's ‘Como La Flor’ and wows the late singer's widower

'It's good to see someone like her, who will be the next Selena in so many ways.'

www.flickr.com

Little girl sings Selena's "Como La Flor."

Selena Quintanilla Pérez is so well-known that she's best recognized simply as "Selena," the same way people refer to Madonna.

Nearly 30 years after her untimely death, parents are passing the music of Selena onto their children and creating a new generation of fans. And in the age of social media, that means the new waves of fans are creating videos singing the icon's hits. In a video clip uploaded to Instagram and TikTok, 10-year-old Mariapaula Mazon gets up on stage to belt out "Como La Flor."

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selena
Internet

Viral video of high schoolers in 1989 triggers a deluge of Gen X memories

With a hair band power ballad to boot.

@asliceofhistory/Twitter

1989 video brings back strong memories for Gen Xers who came of age in the '80s.

It was the year we saw violence in Tiananmen Square and the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. The year we got Meg Ryan in "When Harry Met Sally" and Michael Keaton in Tim Burton's "Batman." The year "Seinfeld" and "The Simpsons" debuted on TV, with no clue as to how successful they would become. The year that gave us New Kids on the Block and Paula Abdul while Madonna and Janet Jackson were enjoying their heyday.

The jeans were pegged, the shoulders were padded and the hair was feathered and huge. It was 1989—the peak of Gen X youth coming of age.

A viral video of a group of high school students sitting at their desks in 1989—undoubtedly filmed by some geeky kid in the AV club who probably went on to found an internet startup—has gone viral across social media, tapping straight into Gen X's memory banks. For those of us who were in high school at the time, it's like hopping into a time machine.

The show "Stranger Things" has given young folks of today a pretty good glimpse of that era, but if you want to see exactly what the late '80s looked like for real, here it is:

Oh so many mullets. And the Skid Row soundtrack is just the icing on this nostalgia cake. (Hair band power ballads were ubiquitous, kids.)

I swear I went to high school with every person in this video. Like, I couldn't have scripted a more perfect representation of my classmates (which is funny considering that this video came from Paramus High School in New Jersey and I went to high school on the opposite side of the country).

Comments have poured in on Reddit from both Gen Xers who lived through this era and those who have questions.

First, the confirmations:

"Can confirm. I was a freshman that year, and not only did everyone look exactly like this (Metallica shirt included), I also looked like this. 😱😅"

"I graduated in ‘89, and while I didn’t go to this school, I know every person in this room."

"It's like I can virtually smell the AquaNet and WhiteRain hairspray from here...."

"I remember every time you went to the bathroom you were hit with a wall of hairspray and when the wind blew you looked like you had wings."

Then the observations about how differently we responded to cameras back then.

"Also look how uncomfortable our generation was in front of the camera! I mean I still am! To see kids now immediately pose as soon as a phone is pointed at them is insanity to me 🤣"

"Born in 84 and growing up in the late 80’s and 90’s, it’s hard to explain to younger people that video cameras weren’t everywhere and you didn’t count on seeing yourself in what was being filmed. You just smiled and went on with your life."

Which, of course, led to some inevitable "ah the good old days" laments:

"Life was better before the Internet. There, I said it."

"Not a single cell phone to be seen. Oh the freedom."

"It's so nice to be reminded what life was like before cell phones absorbed and isolated social gatherings."

But perhaps the most common response was how old those teens looked.

"Why do they all look like they're in their 30's?"

"Everyone in this video is simultaneously 17 and 49 years old."

"Now we know why they always use 30 y/o actors in high school movies."

As some people pointed out, there is an explanation for why they look old to us. It has more to do with how we interpret the fashion than how old they actually look.

Ah, what a fun little trip down memory lane for those of us who lived it. (Let's just all agree to never bring back those hairstyles, though, k?)

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