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The enduring popularity of Elvis Presley's Graceland is a monument to his legacy
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- Elvis Presley's Graceland.
Paul Simon sang about going there to ease an aching heart in 1986 on a Grammy-winning album titled, well, "Graceland." A year later, Philadelphia punk band The Dead Milkmen wrote their own song about a trip to Graceland that was decidedly less reverent, with lyrics like, "Goin' to Graceland/It's gonna be fun/We'll get to see all Elvis's guns."
Maybe Graceland is all things to all people.
Elvis bought the large Classical revival home on about 14 acres of farmland in 1957, moving in with his mother, father and grandmother. Later came his wife Priscilla and then daughter Lisa Marie. From the beginning, the home was accessible to the public, right there on Highway 51 South, now known as Elvis Presley Boulevard. The distinctive wrought-iron gates decorated with musical notes and guitar players resembling Elvis are pretty much a giveaway.
Bruce Springsteen tells a story of jumping over the wall in the 1970s in hopes of meeting Elvis. He wasn't home at the time, but if he had been, he might have allowed the visit. Elvis was known to watch for fans on the security cameras and go down to the gates to sign autographs.
When Elvis died at Graceland in 1977, mourners lined up outside the walls in a spontaneous vigil. They came back the next year and the next. After the home was opened to tours in 1982, they were finally able to enter the gates and file past Elvis' grave.
Yes, Elvis is buried at Graceland -- right in the yard -- along with his parents, grandmother, daughter and grandson.
Today we take Graceland as a pilgrimage site for granted, but stepping back for a second it seems rather odd. The homes of most other celebrities aren't thronged by adoring fans, certainly not half a century after their deaths. Maybe it's the way Elvis' mythology is so entwined with his Memphis house?
"Such a strong association between a man and his home is unique and unprecedented in the 20th century" is the way a 2006 application for National Historic Landmark status put it. (Spoiler alert: They got it.)
Then there's the name: Graceland.
Although Elvis didn't name the house himself, it's hard to imagine his legacy would be the same if he had lived at "Presleyland," or that Paul Simon would have waxed poetic about going to "The Elvis Mansion."
As Simon so aptly put it: "I've reason to believe we all will be received in Graceland."
White House aide: Trump did not call for attacks on US cities but explained how he's preventing them
The White House clarified Donald Trump's comments at a Monday night rally, explaining that the president was not insinuating that he wanted Iran to attack U.S. cities but instead wants to prevent Tehran from having that capability.
White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said on social media Tuesday that the president's comments have been misunderstood and misrepresented in a "media freakout" that is "not rooted in reality."
Trump was discussing the Iran war and the resulting high gas prices that have become a midterm liability for Republicans during his remarks in Nebraska when he mentioned the possibility of an Iranian attack on U.S. soil.
"It's a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe," he said of the war and its economic fallout. "They can take out a city. Let 'em take out Los Angeles, let 'em take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay."
The commentary, including Trump's casual mention of the two California cities, was delivered in the familiar meandering style that he uses at campaign rallies, when he speaks for extended periods -- often an hour or more -- and is only occasionally following prepared remarks on a teleprompter.
Critics, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, seized on his statements. The governor, a Democrat who could run for president in 2028, called Trump "deranged and dangerous" for, in Newsom's framing, "saying our foreign enemies should 'take out' Los Angeles and San Diego."
Cheung, in his response Tuesday, said it was obvious that Trump was not calling for such an attack.
"The media freakout over President Trump's comments is not rooted in reality," he said. "He was clearly stating U.S. cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran hadn't been stopped. America is safer because of the President."
Cheung added that Iran "has no nuclear, no navy, no air force, and no money."
Christa Pike is conscious and speaking after Tennessee failed execution, her attorneys say
Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike is awake and speaking at a hospital, her lawyers said Tuesday, six days after the state's failed attempt to execute her by lethal injection left her unconscious and on a ventilator.
Pike, 50, survived two doses of pentobarbital as executioners attempted to put her to death last Wednesday for the 1995 beating and stabbing death of classmate Colleen Slemmer. The lethal injection drug didn't kill her, but her lawyers said her arms were left burned and blistered, and she was taken to Vanderbilt University Medical Center for treatment.
Her survival raises further questions about her medical and legal future. Her attorneys said her prognosis remains unclear and that she faces a long recovery.
"Against all odds, Christa Pike is conscious, speaking, and continues to receive critical medical care," attorneys for Pike said in a statement. "Despite the severe damage she endured to her arms, she is still handcuffed and shackled to the bed. Her recovery is medically unprecedented."
Her attorneys said they are grateful for the first responders and the medical team at the hospital "who treated Christa like a human and have provided exceptional care to her."
As recently as Sunday, Pike's attorneys said she had remained unconscious and on a ventilator.
Dr. Joel Zivot, a professor of anesthesiology and surgery in Atlanta who consulted as an expert for Pike's legal team, said the development "bodes well for a good recovery." But, he added, it could be weeks or months before anyone knows exactly what her recovery might look like, and whether her competency could be restored to a level that might enable the state to try again to execute her.
"She's still in the ICU," he said. "She has recovered to a certain degree that she's able to be off a ventilator and able to speak, but in no way would I announce her free of further serious risk. There's still a lot of bad things that can happen here, even when everyone is doing their job well."
A spokesperson for the Tennessee Department of Correction said she could provide no information other than that Pike remained hospitalized Tuesday.
Scientist who hunts mysterious ghost particles in the Antarctic ice wins Nobel Prize for physics
STOCKHOLM (AP) -- Belgian-born scientist Francis Halzen won the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for his efforts to demystify a rare group of neutrinos, tiny cosmic particles that researchers believe offer clues to how the universe evolved.
Halzen said he had been told he was among the favorites for the prize since he first published about cosmic neutrinos in 2013. In any given year, he thought he had a 1 in 20 chance to win a Nobel.
"And I just had to live long enough, so here I am," the 82-year-old told The Associated Press in an interview in Turin, Italy.
Halzen, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the U.S., said the research was a huge collaborative effort. He was working on a new research proposal when the Nobel Physics Committee called.
"I hope that this prize will help getting it approved," he told the committee by phone from Italy, in a call broadcast at the news conference announcing the winner. The comment elicited chuckles from the audience.
Neutrinos are tiny cosmic particles with no electric charge and extraordinarily small mass, making them difficult to detect. Yet they are everywhere: They spew from stars like the sun, and trillions zip through our bodies every second.
Scientists cannot glimpse the mysterious ghost particles zooming around on their own, so they measure what happens when the particles collide with other bits of matter. Neutrinos bump into other particles only rarely, so scientists build large detectors to improve their odds of catching collisions.
Halzen had the idea to turn the vast Antarctic ice into such a detector. The Nobel committee said his work was instrumental to the construction of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica, which glimpsed the first high-energy neutrinos from faraway galaxies.
California couple arrested on child abuse charges in horrifying surrogacy probe
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A wealthy couple in suburban Los Angeles recruited women across the country to serve as surrogates, promising them that they were just looking for another child to grow their family.
Instead, prosecutors say, the couple used several surrogates at the same time, amassed a brood of 21 children -- some as young as 2 months -- and raised them in a "house of horrors" where they suffered daily beatings at the hands of cruel nannies as the couple watched and laughed from a network of surveillance cameras.
Guojun Xuan, 66, and Silvia Zhang, 39, were arrested Tuesday at their home in Arcadia, a city about 13 miles (20 kilometers) northeast of downtown Los Angeles.
The couple face several counts of child abuse as well as conspiracy to commit child abuse, accessory after the fact and dissuading a witness, according to Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman.
"This case is unprecedented. It is horrific," he said during a morning news conference. "The physical abuse, beating and punishment that these very young children received is despicable."
Prosecutors were seeking $100 million bail for the couple because of the serious nature of the charges and because they are flight risks, Hochman said. They were scheduled to be arraigned at the Pasadena courthouse later in the day.
Fifteen children were removed from the opulent home last year after an allegation of abuse, and another six living elsewhere were also located. They ranged in age from 2 months to 13 years, with most between 1 and 3. Police believe Zhang gave birth to one or two of the children, while the rest were carried and delivered by surrogates.
Hochman said the couple set up an agency, Mark Surrogacy, that they operated from home and used to hire surrogates throughout the U.S. But prosecutors said the couple misled the women, telling some that they could not conceive and others that they only had one child and wanted one more to complete their family.
"The house could only be described as a house of horrors for these incredible young children," Hochman said.
Arkansas campaign ad sparks conservative backlash for portraying lazy welfare recipient as white
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) -- A new video from Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders was standard issue Republican messaging for promoting her state's stricter rules for people on Medicaid. No more could able-bodied people lounge around while receiving taxpayer-funded healthcare, she said -- they needed to work.
But the decision to portray an unemployed moocher as a young, white, cheeseball-chomping gamer named Brad upset some conservative commentators last week. Five decades after Ronald Reagan popularized the "welfare queen" trope about people living luxuriously while not working, they wanted to know why the video wasn't featuring a Black woman instead.
"Republicans don't have the balls to do this ad with 'Shaniqua' as the villain," posted Matt Walsh, a conservative writer. "Even though that would actually be an accurate portrayal of the problem at hand."
Sean Davis, co-founder of the Federalist website, wrote that "our government has systematically discriminated against white men for decades now, and yet now has the audacity to dishonestly mock young white men as welfare queens."
Never mind that the video was about Medicaid, not welfare, or that most Medicaid recipients in Arkansas are white. The outrage was a reminder of how old tropes are "chronically accessible" images in some voters' minds, said Ange-Marie Hancock, author of "The Politics of Disgust and the Public Identity of the 'Welfare Queen.'"
She thinks the Arkansas video was supposed to appeal to older voters living with unemployed adult children. But conservatives could only focus on race, Hancock said, because the idea of a Black welfare abuser has worked for them for decades.
"The longer race and gendered history really points to ideas that African Americans are lazy, they don't do the right thing," she said.
The debate that streaked across social media was the latest example of how conservatives have recently wrestled with racist views. Last month, a Texas political candidate named Bo French posted a picture of nonwhite students cheering at a University of Texas football game, saying "the problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined." Some Republicans denounced French's post, while it was embraced by those who fear the country's changing demographics.
Axe from 'The Shining' and other props from Stanley Kubrick's archive up for auction
LONDON (AP) -- The axe wielded by Jack Nicholson in the horror film "The Shining" and a prop infant that appeared in the final scene of "2001: A Space Odyssey" are among items for sale in an auction of director Stanley Kubrick's personal archive, auction house Bonhams said Tuesday.
Other highlights include Kubrick's director's chair, the matching blue dresses worn by the twin girls in "The Shining," costumes used in "Eyes Wide Shut" and Kubrick's annotated scripts for several of his films, Bonhams said.
"We are proud to be able to share with you some of the items from this unique collection, which we hope will find new homes and be cherished until it is time to pass them on to the next generation of film lovers," the director's stepdaughter, Katherina Kubrick, said in a statement.
The star item is the original "Star Child" prop, which appears as a glowing fetus in the final scene of "2001: A Space Odyssey." Bonhams said that it's expected to fetch up to 800,000 pounds ($1.06 million).
The axe in "The Shining" -- used by Jack Nicholson as he delivered his famous line "Here's Johnny!" -- is estimated to sell for 30,000 to 50,000 pounds ($39,851 to $66,410).
The auction will take place in London in February, and will be preceded by a free public exhibition.