title: Luc Montagnier

text: In November 1990, the Office of Scientific Integrity at the National Institutes of Health attempted to clear up the matter by commissioning a group at Roche to analyze archival samples established at the Pasteur Institute and the Laboratory of Tumor Cell Biology (LTCB) of the National Cancer Institute between 1983 and 1985. The group, led by American epidemiologist Sheng-Yung Chang, examined archival specimens and concluded in "Nature" in 1993 that the American sample in fact originated from the French lab.


title: Luc Montagnier

text: Chang determined that the French group's LAV was a virus from one patient that had contaminated a culture from another. On request, Montagnier's group had sent a sample of this culture to Gallo, not knowing it contained two viruses. It then contaminated the pooled culture on which Gallo was working.


title: Luc Montagnier

text: Before the 1993 publication of Chang's results, Gallo's lab was accused and initially found guilty of "minor misconduct" by the Office of Scientific Integrity in 1991, and then by the newly created Office of Research Integrity in 1992 for the misappropriation of a sample of HIV produced at the Pasteur Institute. The subsequent publication in 1993 of Chang's investigation cleared Gallo's lab of the charges, although his reputation had already been tainted by the accusations.


title: Luc Montagnier

text: Today it is agreed that Montagnier's group first isolated HIV, but Gallo's group is credited with discovering that the virus causes AIDS and with generating much of the science that made the discovery possible, including a technique previously developed by Gallo's lab for growing T cells in the laboratory. When Montagnier's group first published their discovery, they said HIV's role in causing AIDS "remains to be determined."


title: Luc Montagnier

text: The question of whether the true discoverers of the virus were French or American was more than a matter of prestige. A US government patent for the AIDS test, filed by the United States Department of Health and Human Services and based on what was claimed to be Gallo's identification of the virus, was at stake. In 1987, both governments attempted to end the dispute by arranging to split the prestige of the discovery and the proceeds from the patent 50–50, naming Montagnier and Gallo co-discoverers. The two scientists continued to dispute each other's claims until 1987.


title: Luc Montagnier

text: It was not until French President François Mitterrand and American President Ronald Reagan met in person that the major issues were ironed out. The scientific protagonists finally agreed to share credit for the discovery of HIV, and in 1986, both the French and the US names (LAV and HTLV-III) were dropped in favor of the new term "human immunodeficiency virus" (virus de l'immunodéficience humaine, abbreviated HIV or VIH) (Coffin, 1986). They concluded that the origin of the HIV-1 Lai/IIIB isolate discovered by Gallo was the same as that discovered by Montagnier (but not known by Montagnier to cause AIDS). This compromise allowed Montagnier and Gallo to end their feud and collaborate with each other again, writing a chronology that appeared in "Nature" that year.


title: Luc Montagnier

text: On 29 November 2002 issue of "Science", Gallo and Montagnier published a series of articles, one of which was co-written by both scientists, in which they acknowledged the pivotal roles that each had played in the discovery of HIV.


title: Luc Montagnier

text: In 1961, Montagnier married Dorothea Ackerman, and they had three children. He died in Neuilly-sur-Seine on 8 February 2022, at the age of 89.


title: Luc Montagnier

text: The 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Montagnier and Françoise Barré-Sinoussi for the discovery of HIV. They shared the Prize with Harald zur Hausen, who discovered that human papilloma viruses can cause cervical cancer. Montagnier said he was "surprised" that Robert Gallo was not also recognized by the Nobel Committee: "It was important to prove that HIV was the cause of AIDS, and Gallo had a very important role in that. I'm very sorry for Robert Gallo." According to Maria Masucci, a member of the Nobel Assembly, "there was no doubt as to who made the fundamental discoveries."


title: Luc Montagnier

text: Montagnier was the co-founder of the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention and co-directed the Program for International Viral Collaboration. He was the founder and a former president of the Houston-based World Foundation for Medical Research and Prevention. He received more than 20 major awards, including the National Order of Merit (Commander, 1986) and the Légion d'honneur (Knight: 1984; Officer: 1990; Commander: 1993; Grand Officer: 2009), He was a recipient of the Lasker Award and the Scheele Award (1986), the Louis-Jeantet Prize for medicine (1986), the Gairdner Award (1987), the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement (1987), King Faisal International Prize (1993) (known as the Arab Nobel Prize), and the Prince of Asturias Award (2000). He was also a member of the Académie Nationale de Médecine.


title: Luc Montagnier

text: In 2009, Montagnier published two independently made, controversial research studies, one of which was entitled "Electromagnetic Signals Are Produced by Aqueous Nanostructures Derived from Bacterial DNA Sequences." Jeff Reimers of the University of Sydney said that, if its conclusions are true, "these would be the most significant experiments performed in the past 90 years, demanding re-evaluation of the whole conceptual framework of modern chemistry". The paper concludes that diluted DNA from pathogenic bacterial and viral species is able to emit specific radio waves" and that "these radio waves [are] associated with 'nanostructures' in the solution that might be able to recreate the pathogen".


title: Luc Montagnier

text: They were published in a new journal of which he was chairman of the editorial board, allegedly detecting electromagnetic signals from bacterial DNA ("M. pirum" and "E. coli") in water that had been prepared using agitation and high dilutions, and similar research on electromagnetic detection of HIV RNA in the blood of AIDS patients treated by antiretroviral therapy.


title: Luc Montagnier

text: On 28 June 2010, Montagnier spoke at the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in Germany, "where 60 Nobel prize winners had gathered, along with 700 other scientists, to discuss the latest breakthroughs in medicine, chemistry and physics." He "stunned his colleagues ... when he presented a new method for detecting viral infections that bore close parallels to the basic tenets of homeopathy. Although fellow Nobel prize winners – who view homeopathy as quackery – were left openly shaking their heads, Montagnier's comments were rapidly embraced by homeopaths eager for greater credibility. Cristal Sumner, of the British Homeopathic Association, said Montagnier's work gave homeopathy 'a true scientific ethos'."


title: Luc Montagnier

text: When asked by Canada's CBC "Marketplace" program if his work was indeed a theoretical basis for homeopathy as homeopaths had claimed, Montagnier replied that one "cannot extrapolate it to the products used in homeopathy".


title: Luc Montagnier

text: The paper met with harsh criticism for not being peer-reviewed, and its claims unsubstantiated by modern mainstream conventions of physics and chemistry. No third party has replicated the findings as of March 2015. In response to Montagnier's statement that the generally unfavorable response is due to the "non-understanding or misunderstanding of the breakthrough findings", blogger Andy Lewis has written that he has found it difficult to assert what the paper "actually claims", saying: "The paper ... lacks any rigour. ... important experimental steps are described dismissively in a sentence and little attempt is made to describe the detail of the work". While homeopaths claim his research as support for homeopathy, many scientists have greeted it with scorn and harsh criticism.


title: Luc Montagnier

text: In a 24 December 2010 "Science" magazine interview entitled "French Nobelist Escapes ‘Intellectual Terror’ to Pursue Radical Ideas in China", he was questioned about his research and plans. In the interview he stated that Jacques Benveniste, whose controversial homeopathic work had been discredited, was "a modern Galileo". When asked if he was not "worried that your colleagues will think you have drifted into pseudo-science", he replied: "No, because it’s not pseudoscience. It’s not quackery. These are real phenomena which deserve further study." He also mentioned that his applications for funding had been turned down and that he was leaving his home country to set up shop in China so he could escape what he called the "intellectual terror" which he claimed had prevented others from publishing their results. He stated that China's Shanghai Jiao Tong University is more "open minded" to his research. There he was chairman of the editorial board of a new journal which published his research.


title: Luc Montagnier

text: Montagnier was also questioned on his beliefs about homeopathy, to which he replied: "I can’t say that homeopathy is right in everything. What I can say now is that the high dilutions are right. High dilutions of something are not nothing. They are water structures which mimic the original molecules. We find that with DNA, we cannot work at the extremely high dilutions used in homeopathy; we cannot go further than a 10 dilution, or we lose the signal. But even at 10, you can calculate that there is not a single molecule of DNA left. And yet we detect a signal."


title: Luc Montagnier

text: A 12 January 2011 "New Scientist" editorial described the controversial nature of the research, while also noting how many researchers "reacted with disbelief", with Gary Schuster comparing it to "pathological science." biologist PZ Myers also described it as "pathological science." He described the paper as "one of the more unprofessional write-ups I've ever run across", and criticized the publication process as having an "unbelievable turnaround" time: "another suspicious sign are the dates. This paper was submitted on 3 January 2009, revised on 5 January 2009, and accepted on 6 January 2009", leading him to ask: "Who reviewed this, the author's mother? Maybe someone even closer. Guess who the chairman of the editorial board is: Luc Montagnier."


title: Luc Montagnier

text: On 25 May 2012, he gave the keynote address at the 2012 conference for AutismOne, an anti-vaccination group. Similar to the controversy he aroused by extolling homeopathy, his latest group, Chronimed, claimed to have made a discovery for autistic children that was sharply criticized by scientist Steven Salzberg.


title: Luc Montagnier

text: In 2017, 106 academic scientists wrote an open letter "calling [Montagnier] to order". The letter read: "We, academics of medicine, cannot accept that one of our peers is using his Nobel prize [status] to spread dangerous health messages outside of his field of knowledge."


title: Luc Montagnier

text: For his defense of such anti-scientific views, Montagnier has been cited as an example of the phenomenon called Nobel disease.


title: Luc Montagnier

text: In 2020, Montagnier argued that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was man-made in a laboratory and that it might have been the result of an attempt to create a vaccine for HIV/AIDS. His allegation came after the United States had launched a probe into whether the virus came from a laboratory. According to Montagnier, the "presence of elements of HIV and germ of malaria in the genome of coronavirus is highly suspect and the characteristics of the virus could not have arisen naturally." Montagnier's conclusions were rejected as hasty by the scientific community, considering the gene sequences are common among similar organisms. There is no evidence that SARS-CoV-2 was genetically engineered.


title: Lee Young-ae

text: Lee Young-ae (born January 31, 1971) is a South Korean actress. She is known for her appearances in the Korean historical drama "Dae Jang Geum" (2003), and as a revenge seeking single mother in Park Chan-wook's crime thriller film "Sympathy for Lady Vengeance" (2005). For her performance in the film, she received Best Actress awards at the 38th Sitges Film Festival, 26th Blue Dragon Film Awards and 42nd Baeksang Arts Awards.


title: Lee Young-ae

text: Lee made her debut as a model in 1991. After appearing in television commercials, she debuted as an actress in the 1993 drama "How's Your Husband?", which won her Best New Actress at the SBS Drama Awards.


title: Lee Young-ae

text: In 2000, she starred in the mystery thriller film "Joint Security Area", which became the highest-grossing Korean film at that time. She followed this with melodrama "Last Present", where she received acclaim for her performance as a young woman facing the realities of an early death.


title: Lee Young-ae

text: Lee reunited with director Hur Jin-ho to star in his next film "One Fine Spring Day", which won her Best Actress at the Busan Film Critics Awards.


title: Lee Young-ae

text: Lee came to prominence in South Korea after starring in the historical drama "Dae Jang Geum". It first aired from September 15, 2003 to March 23, 2004 on MBC, where it was the top program with an average viewership rating of 46.3% and a peak of 57.8%, making it the 10th highest rated Korean drama of all time. Lee won the Daesang (Grand Prize) award at the MBC Drama Awards, as well as the Top Excellence award. The show was then aired overseas in 91 countries and became exceptionally popular in Asia.


title: Lee Young-ae

text: The fame of "Dae Jang Geum" launched Lee into pan-Asia stardom as one of the biggest Hallyu stars. She has been invited to visit mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Japan.


title: Lee Young-ae

text: In 2006, for the first time in 12 years, NHK had to use the NHK Hall to host the NHK show due to her popularity; stamps featuring Lee were released in Japan.


title: Lee Young-ae

text: Lee then starred in the third installment in Park Chan-wook's "The Vengeance Trilogy", titled "Sympathy For Lady Vengeance". She was awarded Best Actress at the 2005 Blue Dragon Film Awards and 2006 Baeksang Art Awards for her performance in the film.


title: Lee Young-ae

text: In 2006, Lee was invited sit on the jury bench of the 56th Berlin International Film Festival, becoming the first Korean actress to be selected as a jury member of the international film festival.


title: Lee Young-ae

text: In 2007, she received the Medal of Culture Merit for her contribution to the Korean Wave from the South Korean government.


title: Lee Young-ae

text: In 2015, it was announced that Lee would be making her comeback to television in SBS historical series "Saimdang, Memoir of Colors". She would be playing dual roles as Shin Saimdang, a famed Joseon-era artist and calligrapher as well as a modern-day Korean history lecturer. The drama premiered in January 2017.


title: Lee Young-ae

text: In 2022, Lee was invited to be the jury member of the 27th Busan International Film Festival's "Actor of the Year Award".


title: Lee Young-ae

text: Besides her acting career, Lee has been involved with several charities. In 1997, she went to Ethiopia as a NGO Goodwill Ambassador. She went to Thar Desert in 1999 to do a TV show about people in India's lowest social caste. Later in 2001, she described these experiences in her autobiography “A Most Special Love” with partial English and donated the income from the sale of the book to charity.


title: Lee Young-ae

text: She was appointed a goodwill ambassador in 2004 by UNICEF and has since held several charity posts. She has made many donations to schools and hospitals, including Chosun First Middle School in Harbin and an elementary school in China that was later renamed Lee Young-Ae Elementary School. In 2012, she served as the celebrity spokesperson for the "Love Donation" project, hosted by the magazine Woman Chosun. She made a donation to build a school in Myanmar.


title: Lee Young-ae

text: In July 2014, Taiwanese media reported that Lee had privately assisted a pregnant Taiwanese woman vacationing with her husband in Seoul. The woman gave birth to a girl prematurely and the infant had several complications. Lee found out about the couple through her friend and decided to pay their medical bills of NT$4 million (US$134,000) because the infant required two surgeries and constant medical care after she was born. Lee was subsequently given an award by Taiwan's Chou Ta-Kuan Cultural and Educational Foundation. In 2016, she helped a Vietnamese girl who went to Korea to treat her brain tumor by donating 37 million won for the operation and other medical bills.


title: Lee Young-ae

text: In Sri Lanka, she is known as "Changumi" (), and her popularity there led to the creation of the Sujatha Diyani Scholarship Fund in 2014, when she donated US$100,000. The fund aims at providing financial assistance to female students from low-income families. Lee also became the first actress to join the "Chime for Change" campaign of Gucci to "raise funds and awareness for projects promoting education, health, and justice for girls and women" around the world.


title: Lee Young-ae

text: In 2015, Lee was appointed special envoy by the UNESCO Korean Commission. She promotes the commission's activities such as fundraising and a campaign to render educational support to underdeveloped countries.


title: Lee Young-ae

text: In March 2022, Lee donated 100 million won to Ukraine, which was damaged by the Russian invasion, along with a letter of consolation to the people of Ukraine.


title: Lee Young-ae

text: On May 1, 2022, Lee donated 100 million won to the Sowon Foundation Office in Yangpyeong City Gyeonggi-do Province to assist patients who have difficulty getting out of the house due to childhood cancer or rare diseases.


title: Lee Young-ae

text: On August 19, 2022, Lee donated to help those affected by the 2022 South Korean floods through the Korea Foundation for the Disabled.


title: Lee Young-ae

text: On November 3, 2022, Lee made a donation to help the victims of the Seoul Halloween crowd crush through donations to Korea Welfare Foundation for the Disabled.


title: Lee Young-ae

text: In 1991, Lee made her debut as a rookie model, became known through a TV commercial for Pacific Chemical's (now Amore Pacific) cosmetics brand "Mamonde". Her urban image with her raised hair and trench coat collar left a strong impression on viewers, and Lee Young-ae, who was studying "German Language and Literature" at Hanyang University at that moment, rose to stardom with the modifier "Oxygen Lady". At that time, "Mamonde" became the most successful brand in the history of Pacific Chemical. The product "Tropic Orange Makeup", which was released in March 1994, achieved a record of selling 1.5 million units in two months. Due to the popularity of Mamonde and Lee Young-ae, competitors also poured out advertisements with a similar concept in 1997. She had been the face of "Mamonde" for 10 years.


title: Lee Young-ae

text: Since 2007, Lee became the global ambassador of LG Household & Health Care’s super-premium beauty brand "The History of Whoo" until now.


title: Lee Young-ae

text: In July 2022, she was selected as the model for the new product "Lifening Beauty Collagen Ampoule" of the inner beauty brand "Lifening".


title: Lee Young-ae

text: In 2009, Lee married Jeong Ho-young, a Korean-American businessman who was twenty years older than her. On February 20, 2011, she gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl.


title: Bad Buddy

text: Bad Buddy (; , "Just a Friend, Friend") is a 2021 Thai romantic BL comedy-drama television series starring Korapat Kirdpan (Nanon) and Pawat Chittsawangdee (Ohm). Based from the novel "Behind The Scenes" by Afterday and -West-, it tells the story of two boys who came from warring, neighboring families and found themselves competing for almost everything, but developed romantic feelings for each other along the way.


title: Bad Buddy

text: Directed by Noppharnach Chaiwimol (Aof) and produced by GMMTV, this series is one of 16 television series of GMMTV for 2021 during their "GMMTV 2021: The New Decade Begins" event on 3 December 2020. It premiered on GMM25 on 29 October 2021, airing on every Friday at 20:30 (8:30 pm), while its full uncut version aired at 22:30 ICT (10:30 pm) on WeTV. It replaced the Friday slot of the "Fish upon the Sky" rerun on GMM25.


title: Bad Buddy

text: The rivalry of Pat (Pawat Chittsawangdee), a cheeky and impulsive guy, and Pran (Korapat Kirdpan), a neat and tidy perfectionist has been passed down from a previous generation. They are destined to be enemies to each other even before they were born. Their family runs a hardware business side by side, and their parents hate one another to the core. For this reason, both of them have become rivals in any kind of competition.


title: Bad Buddy

text: When an incident happens at the age of 12, their hatred begins to dissolve: Pat's little sister, Pa (Pattranite Limpatiyakorn), starts drowning in a pond. While Pat is still in a state of shock and fear, Pran immediately rushes into the water and saves Pa from drowning. Their relationship has changed since then. On the surface, they still appear to be enemies, but they no longer truly detest each other. In the tenth grade, they are assigned to be in the same music band and become closer. Pran's family finds out, and he is sent away to a boarding school.


title: Bad Buddy

text: Two years later, they are brought together once again. Pat is chosen to be the freshman class president of the Faculty of Engineering while Pran is the class president of the Faculty of Architecture, two faculties that has a historic rivalry as well. Pa quickly finds out and asks Pat not to do Pran any harm because he was the one who saved her life. Pat and Pran's friends have a series of physical fights, and are told they will suffer consequences if they fight again. Pat and Pran, the leaders of their friend groups, decide to coordinate to keep their friends from running into each other. As they coordinate, they become closer, and eventually fall in love. They begin dating, hiding it from all of their friends and family until they are caught and must deal with the consequences.


title: Bad Buddy

text: As of 15 November 2021, the series has become the No. 1 position on WeTV Thailand's most popular BL series rankings. It further become the most-streamed Thai television series and drama on 23 November 2021 and the most-watched title on the platform on 13 December 2021 after the release of Episode 7. Likewise, the series also made it to the Weekly Top 10 Most Watched Series of iWantTFC despite its exclusive availability in the Philippines. On the first rank release on 3 November 2021, the series' English-subtitled version reached Top 9. It consistently remained in the Top 10 throughout the weeks and as of 14 December 2021, few days after the release of Episode 7, the English-subtitled version reached Top 8 and the Filipino-dubbed version achieved Top 9.


title: Bad Buddy

text: Stories about Ink and Pa, a "yuri" couple in the series, have been made into an episode called "Zero Photography" of the miniseries "Magic of Zero", released on 11 August 2022, with Pansa Vosbein and Pattranite Limpatiyakorn reprising their roles of Ink and Pa.


title: Hal Sparks

text: Hal Harry Magee Sparks III (born September 25, 1969) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, musician, political commentator, television and radio host and television personality. He made contributions to VH1, hosting E!'s "Talk Soup", and played the roles of Michael Novotny on the American television series "Queer as Folk", Donald Davenport in "Lab Rats" and the voice of Tak in "Tak and the Power of Juju" television series and video games.


title: Hal Sparks

text: Sparks played Dungeons & Dragons every Sunday with a group of friends at the local library in Frankfort. At the age of 11, he became a "de-facto dungeon master" because none of his friends wanted to do the reading required to be a dungeon master.


title: Hal Sparks

text: When he was 14 years old, he moved to the Chicago area and enrolled at New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois, where he entered the theater department. Despite some initial opposition by his father, by 15 he began performing standup comedy and by 17 he won the title of "Chicago's Funniest Teenager" from a stand-up contest sponsored the "Chicago Sun-Times".


title: Hal Sparks

text: His first breakout role in a mainstream movie was in "Dude, Where's My Car?" (2000), as Zoltan, the bubble-wrapped leader of a clan of nerds obsessed with outer space. In a 2009 interview with We Are Movie Geeks, he confirmed he created the hand gesture in a "Z" formation. The "Z" hand gesture became the celebratory sign of choice among the members and fans of baseball's Pittsburgh Pirates, of whom Sparks is a fan, starting in 2012. On July 25, 2012, he threw out the first pitch during a Pirates/Cubs series at PNC Park.


title: Hal Sparks

text: Sparks has appeared in other films, including "" and "Spider-Man 2", where he had a cameo as the elevator passenger who enjoys an awkward moment with Spider-Man. He also appeared in the opening scene of the 2009 Mike Judge film "Extract", as one of the guitar salesmen scammed out of a guitar by the con-woman played by Mila Kunis.


title: Hal Sparks

text: In 2004, he starred as Deputy Dale in the independently produced "Lightning Bug", which was written and directed by Robert Hall, who was an original bandmate in Hal's hard rock band Zero 1.


title: Hal Sparks

text: Sparks had his screen debut on the television movie "Frog", starring Shelley Duvall, Elliott Gould, and Scott Grimes in 1987. While still in high school, he became the host of the short-run Saturday game show "Treasure Mall" in 1988, just months shy of his 19th birthday. Upon graduation, Sparks moved to Los Angeles and ten years later he was hired to host "Talk Soup" in 1999. He appeared as himself in the video "Beat It," the Michael Jackson cover, by Fall Out Boy, and voiced a cameo on "Robot Chicken".


title: Hal Sparks

text: Sparks had made appearances on various television programs from as early as 1994, when he played a long-haired skateboarder on the fourteenth episode of the first season of "". In 1995, he appeared in the "Gentle Horse" episode of "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman". From 2000 through 2006, he appeared in "Martial Law", "Frasier", "One on One", "", and "Las Vegas".


title: Hal Sparks

text: He went on to independently produce his first standup comedy DVD "Escape from Halcatraz" in 2008. Sparks is a regular guest on CNN's "Your $$$$$", "The Joy Behar Show" and "The View" when he's not hosting his own weekly progressive radio show. He's also participated in the Progressive Voices Cruise in 2009 and 2010.


title: Hal Sparks

text: Sparks had a leading role on the breakthrough Showtime television series, "Queer As Folk", an American adaptation of the UK series of the same name written by Russell T Davies. In 2007, Sparks became the voice of the lead character in the animated series for children, "Tak & the Power of Juju" for Nickelodeon, (Replacing Jason Marsden) which ran for twelve episodes between 2007 and 2008. In 2009, Sparks recorded his first Showtime comedy special "Charmageddon" in front of a standing-room-only crowd at the OC Pavilion in Santa Ana, California. The special aired in 2010, and was released on DVD.


title: Hal Sparks

text: Sparks played Nelson in the second season of "Fuller House" (Replacing Jason Marsden) He portrayed Donald Davenport in "Lab Rats". Donald is the older brother of Douglas Davenport (Jeremy Kent Jackson), the stepfather of Leo Dooley (Tyrel Jackson Williams), the husband of Tasha Davenport (Angel Parker) and the uncle and adopter of Adam, (Spencer Boldman), Bree (Kelli Berglund) and Chase (Billy Unger). In early 2012, the "Lab Rats" premiere received the highest ratings for original series for the network. Sparks continued portraying Davenport in the spin-off "". He provided the voice of the computer named "Mr. Q" on the U.S. television adaptation of "20Q", which aired on the Game Show Network (GSN) in 2009.


title: Hal Sparks

text: In 2006, Sparks competed for the charity Habitat for Humanity on the Fox celebrity competition "Celebrity Duets". He performed with such musical legends as Smokey Robinson, Gladys Knight, Wynonna Judd, Dennis DeYoung, Dee Snider and Sebastian Bach. He made it to the finale along with Lucy Lawless and Alfonso Ribeiro, and came in third in the series.


title: Hal Sparks

text: In 2007, Sparks was cast as the host for the WB reality series "Survival of the Richest", where wealthy young adults were paired with those young adults with massive debts to complete challenges together and work as a team. Also in 2007, Sparks joined Roseanne to judge Nick at Night's search for "America's Funniest Mom".


title: Hal Sparks

text: Sparks was a contestant on the 2008 VH1 celeb-reality series "Celebracadabra", where the celebrities vie to out-perform each other with magic they have learned from their experienced coaches. Other celebrity contestants competing included Ant, Lisa Ann Walter, Carnie Wilson, Christopher "Kid" Reid, Kimberly Wyatt, and C. Thomas Howell. Howell was the winner, with Sparks taking second place.


title: Hal Sparks

text: In 2009, Sparks recorded his first Showtime comedy special "Charmageddon" in front of a standing-room-only crowd at the OC Pavilion in Santa Ana, California. The special aired in 2010, and was released on DVD. Sparks became the United States' youngest game show emcee in 1988 when he hosted the short-lived, syndicated game show, "Treasure Mall". He also participated on GSN's "Extreme Dodgeball" as captain of the Chicago Hitmen team.


title: Hal Sparks

text: In 2019, Sparks appeared in the premiere episode of "Famously Afraid" on the Travel Channel, a series in which celebrities tell of their personal unusual encounters, to describe his experience with alien abduction.


title: Hal Sparks

text: Sparks was one of five celebrities to appear in the first episode of VH1's "Celebrity Paranormal Project". He has also been a regular commentator on several VH1 series, including the following:


title: Hal Sparks

text: Sparks appears as a regular guest and fill-in host on the national "Stephanie Miller Radio Show", providing three hours of commentary and humor on Wednesday mornings. The program is known as "Hump Days with Hal", and is broadcast weekly from his U-stream channel. Sparks has also appeared as guest host for Norman Goldman's Los Angeles-based show. Sparks broadcast hosting was also made available through Goldman's "Beyond the Norm" segments.


title: Hal Sparks

text: He continued this free "behind the scenes" U-stream show. In June 2010 he got his own radio program on WCPT (AM) as host of "The Hal Sparks Radio Program (megaworldwide)", which broadcasts between 11am and 1pm CST each Saturday.


title: Hal Sparks

text: In addition to acting, Sparks is also the lead singer and guitarist for a rock band, ZERO 1 (previously called The Hal Sparks Band). At the start, the band consisted of Hal himself, his friend Rob Hall on bass and Hal's cousin Miles Loretta on drums. Their self-titled debut album was released in December 2006 and produced by King's X's frontman DUg Pinnick. The album is available through iTunes and on Sparks' official website.


title: Hal Sparks

text: The band now has a new lineup consisting of Sparks (lead vocals and guitar), Brian Crow (guitar and backup vocals), Bumper Renga (bass and backup vocals) and Lance Tamanaha (drums and backup vocals). They signed with the record label "rocket science" and have a new album on the way called "The sacred nothing". Also expected to debut is the band's first video for the single "American Psycho," which was directed by Adrienne Wanyo and filmed on location at the Houdini Mansion.


title: Hal Sparks

text: Sparks was a contestant in the first season of "Celebrity Duets". He often joins the Los Angeles cover band Steel Panther to sing classic 80s metal tunes, such as the Skid Row hit "Youth Gone Wild".


title: Hal Sparks

text: In 2011 he joined Stephanie Miller and John Fugelsang for the successful "Sexy Liberal Comedy Tour" in various cities across the country. This tour topped more than a million dollars in ticket sales while raising money for local progressive causes. In 2012, Harry Sparks and Fugelsang began the "Politics, Sex and Religion Tour."


title: Hal Sparks

text: Sparks is an activist who regularly participates in charitable events for organizations like AIDS Walk, Farm Sanctuary, the Lilli Claire Foundation, Imagine a Cure and the Marijuana Policy Project. He is straight edge and claims never to have drunk, smoked or used recreational drugs.


title: Hal Sparks

text: While at Los Angeles International Airport in 2010, Sparks and an airline passenger used CPR on an unconscious, elderly man who had collapsed in the airport terminal.


title: Hal Sparks

text: In May 2011, Sparks announced he would become a father during a Ustream show on Father's Day. He debuted his son Camden Harrison Sparks at the 2011 AIDS Walk in Los Angeles.


title: Hal Sparks

text: Sparks has studied martial arts since the age of 8 years old and holds belts in Karate, Tae Kwon Do, and several forms of Kung Fu including Wushu.


title: Hal Sparks

text: In 2012, the Pittsburgh Pirates began using the iconic "Zoltan" hand gesture from "Dude, Where's My Car?" as a good luck symbol to turn around a 19-season losing streak. After a Twitter campaign to encourage the "real Zoltan" to appear at a game, Sparks flew to Pittsburgh on July 25, 2012, to throw out the honorary first pitch, and was on hand to see the Pirates win 3–2 over his hometown team, the Chicago Cubs. Despite picking up a cult following in Pittsburgh and helping the team contend in the playoff race well into September, the Pirates finished with a 79–83 record, extending their major North American professional sports record to 20 consecutive losing seasons.


title: Hal Sparks

text: Sparks is a Freemason, having been initiated on November 6, 2016, at Los Angeles Lodge No 42 F. & A. M.


title: Hal Sparks

text: Sparks is a vegan and does intermittent fasting. He lives in Chinatown, Los Angeles. He also does a political commentary talk show on the Chicago audio station 820 AM on Saturdays, which is uploaded on his YouTube channel. He also has a Twitch account.


title: Amide

text: In organic chemistry, an amide, also known as an organic amide or a carboxamide, is a compound with the general formula , where R, R', and R″ represent organic groups or hydrogen atoms. The amide group is called a peptide bond when it is part of the main chain of a protein, and an isopeptide bond when it occurs in a side chain, such as in the amino acids asparagine and glutamine. It can be viewed as a derivative of a carboxylic acid () with the hydroxyl group () replaced by an amine group (); or, equivalently, an acyl (alkanoyl) group () joined to an amine group.


title: Amide

text: Amides are qualified as primary, secondary, and tertiary according to whether the amine subgroup has the form , , or , where R and R' are groups other than hydrogen.


title: Amide

text: Amides are pervasive in nature and technology. Proteins and important plastics like Nylons, Aramid, Twaron, and Kevlar are polymers whose units are connected by amide groups (polyamides); these linkages are easily formed, confer structural rigidity, and resist hydrolysis. Amides include many other important biological compounds, as well as many drugs like paracetamol, penicillin and LSD. Low-molecular-weight amides, such as dimethylformamide, are common solvents.


title: Amide

text: In the usual nomenclature, one adds the term "amide" to the stem of the parent acid's name. For instance, the amide derived from acetic acid is named acetamide (CHCONH). IUPAC recommends ethanamide, but this and related formal names are rarely encountered. When the amide is derived from a primary or secondary amine, the substituents on nitrogen are indicated first in the name. Thus, the amide formed from dimethylamine and acetic acid is "N","N"-dimethylacetamide (CHCONMe, where Me = CH). Usually even this name is simplified to dimethylacetamide. Cyclic amides are called lactams; they are necessarily secondary or tertiary amides.


title: Amide

text: Amides are prevalent throughout the natural and engineered world. Most biological macromolecules consist of peptides linked together through amide bonds; some man-made polymers adopt the same strategy.


title: Amide

text: The lone pair of electrons on the nitrogen atom is delocalized into the carbonyl group, thus forming a partial double bond between nitrogen and carbon. In fact the O, C and N atoms have molecular orbitals occupied by delocalized electrons, forming a conjugated system. Consequently, the three bonds of the nitrogen in amides is not pyramidal (as in the amines) but planar. This planar restriction prevents rotations about the N linkage and thus has important consequences for the mechanical properties of bulk material of such molecules, and also for the configurational properties of macromolecules built by such bonds. The inability to rotate distinguishes amide groups from ester groups which allow rotation and thus create more flexible bulk material.


title: Amide

text: It is estimated that for acetamide, structure A makes a 62% contribution to the structure, while structure B makes a 28% contribution. (These figures do not sum to 100% because there are additional less-important resonance forms that are not depicted above). There is also a hydrogen bond present between the active groups hydrogen and nitrogen atoms. Resonance is largely prevented in the very strained quinuclidone.


title: Amide

text: Compared to amines, amides are very weak bases. While the conjugate acid of an amine has a p"K" of about 9.5, the conjugate acid of an amide has a p"K" around −0.5. Therefore, amides don't have as clearly noticeable acid–base properties in water. This relative lack of basicity is explained by the withdrawing of electrons from the amine by the carbonyl. On the other hand, amides are much stronger bases than carboxylic acids, esters, aldehydes, and ketones (their conjugate acids' p"K"s are between −6 and −10).


title: Amide

text: The proton of a primary or secondary amide does not dissociate readily under normal conditions; its p"K" is usually well above 15. Conversely, under extremely acidic conditions, the carbonyl oxygen can become protonated with a p"K" of roughly −1. It is not only because of the positive charge on the nitrogen, but also because of the negative charge on the oxygen gained through resonance.


title: Amide

text: Because of the greater electronegativity of oxygen, the carbonyl (C=O) is a stronger dipole than the N–C dipole. The presence of a C=O dipole and, to a lesser extent a N–C dipole, allows amides to act as H-bond acceptors. In primary and secondary amides, the presence of N–H dipoles allows amides to function as H-bond donors as well. Thus amides can participate in hydrogen bonding with water and other protic solvents; the oxygen atom can accept hydrogen bonds from water and the N–H hydrogen atoms can donate H-bonds. As a result of interactions such as these, the water solubility of amides is greater than that of corresponding hydrocarbons. These hydrogen bonds are also have an important role in the secondary structure of proteins.


title: Amide

text: The solubilities of amides and esters are roughly comparable. Typically amides are less soluble than comparable amines and carboxylic acids since these compounds can both donate and accept hydrogen bonds. Tertiary amides, with the important exception of "N","N"-dimethylformamide, exhibit low solubility in water.


title: Amide

text: The presence of the amide group –C(=O)N– is generally easily established, at least in small molecules. It can be distinguished from nitro and cyano groups in IR spectra. Amides exhibit a moderately intense "ν" band near 1650 cm. By H NMR spectroscopy, CONHR signals occur at low fields. In X-ray crystallography, the C(=O)N center together with the three immediately adjacent atoms characteristically define a plane.


title: Amide

text: Amides undergo many chemical reactions, although they are less reactive than esters. Amides hydrolyse in hot alkali as well as in strong acidic conditions. Acidic conditions yield the carboxylic acid and the ammonium ion while basic hydrolysis yield the carboxylate ion and ammonia. The protonation of the initially generated amine under acidic conditions and the deprotonation of the initially generated carboxylic acid under basic conditions render these processes non-catalytic and irreversible. Amides are also versatile precursors to many other functional groups. Electrophiles react with the carbonyl oxygen. This step often precedes hydrolysis, which is catalyzed by both Brønsted acids and Lewis acids. Enzymes, e.g. peptidases and artificial catalysts, are known to accelerate the hydrolysis reactions.


title: Amide

text: Amides can be prepared by coupling carboxylic acid with an amine. The direct reaction generally requires high temperatures to drive off the water:


title: Amide

text: Many methods involve "activating" the carboxylic acid by converting it to a better electrophile; such as esters, acid chlorides (Schotten-Baumann reaction), or anhydrides (Lumière–Barbier method).


title: Amide

text: A variety of reagents, e.g. Tris(2,2,2-trifluoroethyl) borate have been developed for specialized applications.


title: Amide

text: The reaction proceed by one dehydrogenation of the alcohol to the aldehyde followed by formation of a hemiaminal, which undergoes a second dehydrogenation to the amide. Elimination of water in the hemiaminal to the imine is not observed.


title: Amide

text: Transamidation is typically very slow, but it is accelerated with Lewis acid and organometallic catalysts:


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Dorothy Leigh Sayers (; 13 June 1893 – 17 December 1957) was an English crime writer and poet. She was also a student of classical and modern languages.


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: She is best known for her mysteries, a series of novels and short stories set between the First and Second World Wars that feature English aristocrat and amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. As a crime writer during the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", Sayers was considered one of its four "Queens of Crime", alongside Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh.


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Sayers is also known for her plays, literary criticism, and essays. She considered her translation of Dante's "Divine Comedy" to be her best work. Sayers's obituarist, writing in "The New York Times" in 1957, noted that many critics at the time regarded her mystery "The Nine Tailors" as her finest literary achievement.


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Sayers, an only child, was born on 13 June 1893 at the Headmaster's House on Brewer Street in Oxford. She was the daughter of Helen Mary Leigh and her husband, the Rev. Henry Sayers. Her mother was a daughter of Frederick Leigh, a solicitor whose family roots were in the landed gentry in the Isle of Wight, and had been born at "The Chestnuts", Millbrook, Hampshire. Her father, originally from Littlehampton, West Sussex, was a chaplain of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, and headmaster of Christ Church Cathedral School.


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: When Sayers was six, her father started teaching her Latin. She grew up in the tiny village of Bluntisham in Huntingdonshire after her father was given the living there as rector of Bluntisham-"cum"-Earith. The church graveyard next to the elegant Regency-style rectory features the surnames of several characters from her mystery "The Nine Tailors". She was inspired by her father's restoration of the Bluntisham church bells in 1910. The nearby River Great Ouse and the Fens invite comparison with the book's vivid description of a massive flood around the village.


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: From 1909 Sayers was educated at the Godolphin School, a boarding school in Salisbury. Her father later moved to the living of Christchurch, in Cambridgeshire.


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: In 1912, Sayers received the Gilchrist Scholarship for Modern Languages to Somerville College, Oxford where she studied modern languages and medieval literature and was taught by Mildred Pope. She graduated with first-class honours in 1915. Women were not awarded degrees at that time, but Sayers was among the first to receive a degree when the position changed a few years later; in 1920 she graduated as an MA. Her experience of Oxford academic life eventually inspired her penultimate Peter Wimsey novel, "Gaudy Night".


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Sayers's first book of poetry was published in 1916 as "OP. I" by Blackwell Publishing in Oxford. Her second book of poems, "Catholic Tales and Christian Songs", was published in 1918, also by Blackwell. Later, Sayers worked for Blackwell's and then as a teacher in several locations, including Normandy, France. She also published a number of poems in the "Oxford Magazine". In 1920 Sayers contributed two poems, one of them a love poem named "Veronica" to the first and only issue of "The Quorum", the UK's first homosexual magazine.


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: In the early 1920s she worked for the publisher Victor Gollancz. One of the writers she dealt with was A. M. Burrage, who knew her husband and with whom she corresponded on friendly terms.


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Sayers's longest employment was from 1922 to 1931 as a copywriter at S.H. Benson's advertising agency, located at International Buildings, Kingsway, London. A colleague of hers at the agency was Albert Henry Ross (1881–1950) who is better known by his literary pseudonym Frank Morison. He wrote the best-selling Christian apologetics book "Who Moved the Stone?" which explored the historicity of the trial, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. Sayers later relied on his book when she composed the trial scene of Jesus in her play "The Man Born to Be King".


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: As an advertiser, Sayers's collaboration with artist John Gilroy resulted in "The Mustard Club" for Colman's Mustard and the Guinness "Zoo" advertisements, variations of which still appear today. One example was the Toucan, his bill arching under a glass of Guinness, with Sayers's jingle:


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Sayers is also credited with coining the slogan "It pays to advertise!" She used the advertising industry as the setting of "Murder Must Advertise", where she describes the role of truth in advertising:


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Sayers began working out the plot of her first novel some time in 1920–21. The seeds of the plot for "Whose Body?" can be seen in a letter that Sayers wrote on 22 January 1921:


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Lord Peter Wimsey featured in eleven novels and two sets of short stories. Sayers once commented that Lord Peter was a mixture of Fred Astaire and Bertie Wooster. Sayers introduced the character of detective novelist Harriet Vane in "Strong Poison". She remarked more than once that she had developed the "husky voiced, dark-eyed" Harriet to put an end to Lord Peter via matrimony. But in the course of writing "Gaudy Night", Sayers imbued Lord Peter and Harriet with so much life that she was never able, as she put it, to "see Lord Peter exit the stage".


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: She co-wrote with Robert Eustace one murder mystery that did not feature Wimsey, "The Documents in the Case", and wrote a portion of three other mysteries with several members of the Detection Club.


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Sayers's detective stories explored the trauma of World War I veterans in "The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club", discussed the ethics of advertising in "Murder Must Advertise", and advocated women's education (then a controversial subject) and role in society in "Gaudy Night". In "Gaudy Night", Miss Barton writes a book attacking the Nazi doctrine of Kinder, Küche, Kirche, which restricted women's roles to family activities, and in many ways the novel can be read as an attack on Nazi social doctrine. It has been described as "the first feminist mystery novel." Sayers's Christian and academic experiences are themes in her detective series.


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Sayers also wrote eleven short stories about Montague Egg, a wine and spirits salesman who solves mysteries. Six of these appear in her collection "Hangman's Holiday" (1933), the remaining five in "In the Teeth of the Evidence" (1939).


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Sayers herself considered her translation of Dante's "Divine Comedy" to be her best work. "Hell" appeared in 1949, as one of the then-recently introduced series of Penguin Classics. "Purgatory" followed in 1955. The third volume ("Paradise") was unfinished at her death, and was completed by Barbara Reynolds in 1962.


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Sayers's translation preserves the original Italian terza rima rhyme scheme. The line usually rendered "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here" turns, in the Sayers translation, into "Lay down all hope, you who go in by me," so that her "go in by me" rhymes with "made to be" two lines earlier, and "unsearchably" two lines before that. The Italian reads "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate", and both the traditional rendering and Sayers's translation add to the source text in an effort to preserve the original length: "here" is added in the traditional, and "by me" in Sayers. Also, the addition of "by me" draws from the previous lines of the canto: "Per me si va ne la città dolente;/ per me si va ne l'etterno dolore;/ per me si va tra la perduta gente." (Longfellow: "Through me the way is to the city dolent;/ through me the way is to the eternal dole;/ through me the way is to the people lost.") Umberto Eco, in his book "Mouse or Rat?" suggests that, of the various English translations, Sayers "does the best in at least partially preserving the hendecasyllables and the rhyme."


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Sayers's translation of the "Divine Comedy" includes extensive notes at the end of each canto, explaining the theological meaning of what she calls "a great Christian allegory." Her translation has remained popular: in spite of publishing new translations by Mark Musa and Robin Kirkpatrick, as of 2009 Penguin Books was still publishing the Sayers edition.


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: In the introduction to her translation of "The Song of Roland", Sayers expressed an outspoken feeling of attraction and love for: "... That new-washed world of clear sun and glittering colour which we call the Middle Age (as though it were middle-aged) but which has perhaps a better right than the blown rose of the Renaissance to be called the Age of Re-birth". She praised "Roland" for being a purely Christian myth, in contrast to such epics as "Beowulf" in which she found a strong pagan content.


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: She shared an enthusiasm for Dante's work with the novelist, poet, playwright and lay-theologian Charles Williams (1886-1945) and she contributed an essay about "The Divine Comedy" to the memorial volume "Essays Presented to Charles Williams".


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Sayers's religious book "The Mind of the Maker" (1941) explores at length the analogy between a human creator (especially a writer of novels and plays) and the doctrine of the Trinity in creation. She suggests that any human creation of significance involves the Idea, the Energy (roughly: the process of writing and that actual 'incarnation' as a material object), and the Power (roughly: the process of reading and hearing and the effect that it has on the audience). She draws analogies between this "trinity" and the theological Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The book contains examples drawn from her own experiences as a writer, as well as criticisms of writers who exhibit, in her view, an inadequate balance of Idea, Energy, and Power. She strongly defends the view that literary creatures have a nature of their own, vehemently replying to a well-wisher who wanted Wimsey to "end up a convinced Christian". "From what I know of him, nothing is more unlikely ... Peter is not the Ideal Man".


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: "Creed or Chaos?" is a restatement of basic historical Christian doctrine, based on the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed, similar to but somewhat more densely written than C. S. Lewis' "Mere Christianity". Both sought to explain the central doctrines of Christianity, clearly and concisely, to those who had encountered them in distorted or watered-down forms, on the grounds that, if you are going to criticise something, you had best know what it is first.


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Her influential essay "The Lost Tools of Learning" has been used by many schools in the US as a basis for the classical education movement, reviving the medieval trivium subjects (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) as tools to enable the analysis and mastery of every other subject. Sayers also wrote three volumes of commentaries about Dante, religious essays, and several plays, of which "The Man Born to Be King" may be the best known. "The Just Vengeance", written for the 1946 Lichfield Festival and the 750th anniversary of Lichfield Cathedral, was produced in the cathedral with Elizabeth, the Queen Mother in the audience.


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: The religious works of Sayers did so well at presenting the orthodox Anglican position that, in 1943, the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, offered her a Lambeth doctorate in divinity, which she declined, explaining that “I have only served Divinity, as it were, accidentally, coming to it as a writer rather than as a Christian person.” They had an extensive correspondence, in which Temple tried to persuade her to accept a DD, and Sayers said she would see no problem about accepting a doctorate of letters. Temple concluded that he would mention this to others. In 1950, Sayers accepted an honorary degree of D. Litt. from the University of Durham.


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Sayers refused to be identified as a feminist stating, "I am afraid—that I was not sure I wanted to 'identify myself,' as the phrase goes, with feminism, and that the time for 'feminism,' in the old-fashioned sense of the word, had gone past." However, that did not prevent her from grappling with inequalities brought about from gender discrimination and responding to issues on women's rights. In her essay, "Are Women Human?", an address she gave to a Women's Society in 1938, she writes in clarifying what feminism should be, considering how assertions such as, "a woman is as good as a man" or the tendency to "copy what men do", may in fact subvert the point an advocate of women's rights would want to prove in the first place. In the essay she concludes with this:


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Indeed, it is my experience that both men and women are fundamentally human, and that there is very little mystery about either sex, except the exasperating mysteriousness of human beings in general...If you wish to preserve a free democracy, you must base it—not on classes and categories, for this will land you in the totalitarian State, where no one may act or think except as the member of a category. You must base it upon the individual Tom, Dick and Harry, on the individual Jack and Jill—in fact, upon you and me.Rather than discriminating between the differences of genders she believed that it is the recognition of our shared humanity as individual human beings upon which equality should be built.


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Sayers continues to elaborate on the same argument in her other essay "The Human-Not-Quite-Human" in which she satirises existing gender stereotypes by flipping them around.


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: "Gaudy Night" has been described as "the first feminist mystery novel." It is a novel that extensively discusses feminist positions. Sayers distanced herself from feminist political labels, and preferred to be considered "simply human". Crystal Downing notes that Sayers "refused to call herself a feminist, believing in practicing women's rights more than in preaching them."


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Nevertheless, a number of scholars have identified her as a feminist. Susan Haack calls her an "old-fashioned, humanistic, individualistic feminist." Mo Moulton argues that Sayers "was not born a feminist; she became one, through bitter suffering and the stark realization of the precariousness of her position in a world which denied female sexuality in all sorts of ways."


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: The poet W. H. Auden and the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein were notable critics of her novels. A savage attack on Sayers's writing ability came from the American critic Edmund Wilson, in a well-known 1945 article in "The New Yorker" called "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?" He briefly writes about her novel "The Nine Tailors", saying "I declare that it seems to me one of the dullest books I have ever encountered in any field." Wilson continues "I had often heard people say that Dorothy Sayers wrote well ... but, really, she does not write very well: it is simply that she is more consciously literary than most of the other detective-story writers and that she thus attracts attention in a field which is mostly on a sub-literary level."


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: The academic critic Q. D. Leavis criticises Sayers in more specific terms in a review of "Gaudy Night" and "Busman's Honeymoon", published in the critical journal "Scrutiny," saying her fiction is "popular and romantic while pretending to realism." Leavis argues that Sayers presents academic life as "sound and sincere because it is scholarly," a place of "invulnerable standards of taste charging the charmed atmosphere". But, Leavis says, this is unrealistic: "If such a world ever existed, and I should be surprised to hear as much, it does no longer, and to give substance to a lie or to perpetuate a dead myth is to do no one any service really." Leavis comments that "only best-seller novelists could have such illusions about human nature."


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: The critic Sean Latham has defended Sayers, arguing that Wilson and Leavis simply objected to a detective story writer having pretensions beyond what they saw as her role of popular culture "hack". Latham says that, in their eyes, "Sayers' primary crime lay in her attempt to transform the detective novel into something other than an ephemeral bit of popular culture".


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Lord Peter Wimsey, Sayers's heroic detective, has been criticised as too perfect; over time, the various talents that he displays grow too numerous for some readers to swallow. Edmund Wilson expressed his distaste for Wimsey in his criticism of "The Nine Tailors": "There was also a dreadful stock English nobleman of the casual and debonair kind, with the embarrassing name of Lord Peter Wimsey, and, although he was the focal character in the novel ... I had to skip a good deal of him, too."


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: The character Harriet Vane, featured in four novels, has been criticised as a mere stand-in for the author. Many of the themes and settings of Sayers's novels, particularly those involving Vane, seem to reflect Sayers's own concerns and experiences. Vane, like Sayers, was educated at Oxford (unusual for a woman at the time) and is a mystery writer. Vane initially meets Wimsey when she is tried for poisoning her lover ("Strong Poison"); he immediately falls for her and insists on participating in the defence preparations for her retrial; but she rejects him. In "Have His Carcase", she collaborates with Wimsey to solve a murder but still rejects his proposals of marriage. She eventually accepts ("Gaudy Night") and marries him ("Busman's Honeymoon").


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Biographers of Sayers have disagreed as to whether Sayers was anti-Semitic. In "Sayers: A Biography", James Brabazon argues that she was. This conclusion is supported by Carolyn G. Heilbrun in "Dorothy L. Sayers: Biography Between the Lines", who agrees with his assessment of anti-Semitism, but dissents from the excuses that he made for it.


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Robert Kuhn McGregor and Ethan Lewis argue in "Conundrums for the Long Week-End" that Sayers was not anti-Semitic but used popular British stereotypes of class and ethnicity. In 1936, a translator wanted "to soften the thrusts against the Jews" in "Whose Body?"; Sayers, surprised, replied that the only characters "treated in a favourable light were the Jews!"


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: In the American Jewish publication "Moment", opinion editor Amy E. Schwartz reviews Sayer's varying Jewish references and opines these offer an opportunity to determine which "questionable comments about Jews are seriously bad, which are bad but forgivable, which are dangerous and in need of denunciation and which are essentially trivial and best ignored." She sees Sayers as providing an incentive to re-examine the "present moment’s tendency to take instant and maximum offense at any questionable reference to anybody."


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: In 1920 Sayers entered into a passionate though unconsummated romance with Jewish Russian émigré and Imagist poet John Cournos, who moved in London literary circles with Ezra Pound and his contemporaries. Sayers did not consummate her relationship with him unmarried, due to her religious beliefs.


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Cournos disdained monogamy and marriage, did not want children and was dedicated to free love. He also considered crime writing, which Sayers had started, to be low brow, though he assisted her with aspects of publication. Within two years their relationship had broken up when he insisted on consummation with birth control. Returning to New York, he soon married a crime writer who had two children. This left Sayers embittered that he had not held to his own principles, feeling that he had been testing her, pushing her to sacrifice her own beliefs in submission to his own. He later confessed that he would have happily married Sayers if she had submitted to his sexual demands. After a period of heated correspondence, they concluded with more amicable missives after she met her future husband.


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Her experiences with Cournos formed the basis for her character of Harriet Vane. Cournos is fictionalised as Philip Boyes in the novel "Strong Poison", though she did not add intimate details from their affair. Cournos reflected upon the relationship in his novel "The Devil is an English Gentleman" (1932) and included many private details from the affair, adding whole sections from Sayers's private letters.


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: In 1923 she had a rebound relationship with former Denstone College pupil and part-time car salesman William "Bill" White whom she presented to her parents. She had met him when he moved into the flat above hers in 24 Great James Street in December 1922. Only when she discovered her pregnancy in June 1923, White admitted to already being married. What happened next could have been from one of Sayers's fictional works: White told his wife Beatrice about the pregnancy the following morning and asked her for help with the birth. Mrs White agreed to meet Sayers in London. Together they went to White's flat (he was then living off Theobalds Road) and found him with another woman. Sayers: "He's like a child in a power house, starting off machinery regardless of results. No woman on earth could hold him". In exchange for the promise never to see White again, Mrs White invited Sayers to a guest house in her home town of Southbourne, Dorset, during the last stages of pregnancy and arranged for her own brother, Dr Murray Wilson, to attend the birth at Tuckton Lodge, a nursing-home in Ilford Lane, Southbourne. On 3 January 1924, at the age of 30, Sayers secretly gave birth to an illegitimate son, John Anthony (later surnamed Fleming). John Anthony, "Tony", was given into care with her aunt and cousin, Amy and Ivy Amy Shrimpton, and passed off as her nephew to family and friends. Details of these circumstances were revealed in a letter from Mrs White to her daughter Valerie, Tony's half-sister, in 1958 after Sayers's death.


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Tony was raised by the Shrimptons and was sent to a good boarding school. In 1935 he was legally adopted by Sayers and her then husband "Mac" Fleming. While still not revealing her identity as his mother, Sayers was constantly in contact with her son, provided him with good education and they maintained a close relationship. John Anthony suspected Sayers's maternity since his youth but had proof only when he obtained his birth certificate applying for a passport. It is not known if he ever spoke to Sayers about the fact. Much to Sayers's pride, Tony won a scholarship to Balliol College – the same Oxford college Sayers had chosen for Wimsey.


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: After publishing her first two detective novels, Sayers married Captain Oswald Atherton "Mac" Fleming, a Scottish journalist whose professional name was "Atherton Fleming". The wedding took place on 13 April 1926 at Holborn Register Office, London. Fleming was divorced with two daughters.


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Sayers and Fleming lived in the small flat at 24 Great James Street in Bloomsbury that Sayers maintained for the rest of her life. Fleming worked as an author and journalist and Sayers as an advertising copywriter and author. Over time, Fleming's health worsened, largely due to his First World War service, and as a result he became unable to work.


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Fleming died on 9 June 1950, at Sunnyside Cottage (now 24 Newland Street), Witham, Essex, after a decade of severe illnesses.


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Sayers died suddenly of a coronary thrombosis on 17 December 1957 at the same place, aged 64. Fleming's ashes were scattered in the churchyard at Biggar in Lanarkshire, centre of the Fleming ancestral lands. Sayers's remains were cremated and her ashes buried beneath the tower of St Anne's Church, Soho, London, where she had been a churchwarden for many years. Upon her death it was publicly revealed that her nephew, John Anthony, was her son; he was the sole beneficiary under his mother's will.


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Sayer's son, John Anthony died on 26 November 1984 at age 60, in St. Francis's Hospital, Miami Beach, Florida. He had been married twice, having two children from his first marriage. In 1991 his half-sister Valerie White, unaware that he had died, wrote him a letter explaining his parents' story.


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Sayers was part of "The Mutual Admiration Society (MAS)", a literary society of undergraduate women during her studies in Somerville College, Oxford, one of Oxford's first two women's colleges. The MAS was formed by Sayers in 1912 along with two other Somerville students, Amphilis Middlemore and Charis Ursula Barnett as a women's writing community to read and critique each other's works. Sayers named the group "Mutual Admiration Society", remarking, "if we didn't give ourselves that title, the rest of College would." Prescott comments that, "The name was meant to be humorous, meant to soften its closed status, making its existence tolerable, even attractive, among students ... the MAS, by its very name, threw the ball back to those who looked upon women students at Oxford with hidden disdain or trepidation, aiming, with subtlety, that name toward male dominated Oxford."


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Together, the MAS made one unique volume of written work, titled "The Blue Moon". This contained six pieces, three of which were poems written by Sayers. Sayer's short story "Who Calls the Tune?" was also included.


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Such a community allowed its female members within the largely male oriented environment of Oxford to have a literary haven where they could provide each other with literary, social, professional, and personal support. Their influences on one another extended throughout their academic and personal lives and they continued to remain in contact for decades after their Oxford days through letters and visits to one another.


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Including Sayers, there are a total of 9 documented members: Dorothy L. Sayers, Amphilis Middlemore, Charis Ursula Barnett, Muriel Jaeger, Margaret Amy Chubb, Marjorie Maud Barber, Muriel St. Clare Byrne, Dorothy Hanbury Rowe, and Catherine Hope Godfrey. Prescott observes that this small society of undergraduate students in Oxford would come to produce "vibrant women, prolific authors, theatrical figures, social activists, teachers, and scholars in their own right" and that, "the women of the MAS shaped their lives, individually and collectively, as a testament to strength of purpose, not only with respect to their gender, but as fully invested members of humanity."


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Sayers was a friend of C. S. Lewis and several of the other Inklings. On some occasions Sayers joined Lewis at meetings of the Socratic Club. Lewis said he read "The Man Born to Be King" every Easter, but he said he was unable to appreciate detective stories. J. R. R. Tolkien read some of the Wimsey novels but scorned the later ones, such as "Gaudy Night".


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Sayer's friendship with C. S. Lewis first began with a fan letter she had written in admiration of his Christian apologetic novel, "The Screwtape Letters." Lewis later recounted, "[Sayers] was the first person of importance who ever wrote me a fan letter." He expressed his reciprocal admiration in a responding letter, calling her "The Man Born to be King" a complete success, and continued to read the play cycle every Holy Week thereafter. Their ongoing correspondence discussed their writing and academic interests, providing one another with criticisms, suggestions, and encouragement. Carol and Philip Zaleski note, “Sayers had much in common with Lewis and Tolkien’s circle, including a love of orthodox Christianity, traditional verse, popular fiction, and debate.”


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Though the two became friends under the circumstance of shared academic and theological interests, they had their disagreements regarding the movement towards the ordination of women in the Church of England. Lewis, in opposition to the movement, had written to Sayers in request that she would also speak up against it. However Sayers, unable to see any theological reason against such an ordination, declined, writing back in a letter, "I fear you would find me rather an uneasy ally."


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Sayers comments on Lewis's views of women in another letter, stating, "I do admit that he is apt to write shocking nonsense about women and marriage. (That, however, is not because he is a bad theologian but because he is a rather frightened bachelor.)”


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Sayers was greatly influenced by G. K. Chesterton, fellow detective fiction novelist, essayist, critic, among other things, commenting that, "I think, in some ways, G.K.’s books have become more a part of my mental make-up than those of any writer you could name.” She was familiar with Chesterton through his writings during her adolescent years and had attended his lectures in Oxford during her studies in Somerville. The two only became acquainted with one another as friends in 1917 when Sayers, a published author, approached Chesterton as mutual professionals.


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: In the preface to Chesterton's play, "The Surprise", Sayers writes,To the young people of my generation, G.K.C. was a kind of Christian liberator. Like a beneficent bomb, he blew out of the Church a quantity of stained glass of a very poor period, and let in the gusts of fresh air in which the dead leaves of doctrine danced with all the energy and indecorum of Our Lady’s Tumbler.


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Sayers, along with Chesterton, was a founder member of the Detection Club, a group for British mystery writers. Chesterton was elected its first president (1930–1936) and Sayers its third (1949–1957).


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Some of the dialogue spoken by character Harriet Vane reveals Sayers poking fun at the mystery genre, even while adhering to various conventions.


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Sayers's work was frequently parodied by her contemporaries. E. C. Bentley, the author of the early modern detective novel "Trent's Last Case", wrote a parody entitled "Greedy Night" (1938).


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Sayers was a founder and early president of the Detection Club, an eclectic group of practitioners of the art of the detective novel in the so-called golden age, for whom she constructed an idiosyncratic induction ritual. The Club still exists and, according to P. D. James who was a long-standing member, continued to use the ritual. In Sayers's day it was the custom of the members to publish collaborative detective novels, usually writing one chapter each without prior consultation. These works have not held the market, and have only rarely been in print since their first publication.


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Sayers house at Christ Church Cathedral School is named after her. Sayers Classical Academy in Louisville, Kentucky, is named after her.


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: Minor planet 3627 Sayers is named after her. The asteroid was discovered by Luboš Kohoutek, but the name suggested by Brian G. Marsden with whom Sayers consulted extensively during the last year of her life in her attempt to rehabilitate the Roman poet Lucan.


title: Dorothy L. Sayers

text: In 2022, Sayers was officially added to the Episcopal Church liturgical calendar with a feast day on 17 December.


title: Jake Hager

text: Donald Jacob Hager Jr. (born March 24, 1982) is an American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist, currently signed to All Elite Wrestling (AEW) under the ring name Jake Hager, where he is a member of the Jericho Appreciation Society stable. Hager is also known for his time in WWE under the ring name Jack Swagger, where he was a former world champion. As a mixed martial artist, he is currently signed to Bellator MMA where he competes in the heavyweight division.


title: Jake Hager

text: Hager attended the University of Oklahoma as a two-sport athlete, participating in both football and wrestling. He switched to wrestling full-time in his sophomore year, and in 2006, set the record for most pins in a season with 30 as an All-American. Following a try-out, Hager signed a WWE contract in mid 2006 where he performed as "Jack Swagger". During his time with WWE, he became a two-time world champion, having held the WWE's World Heavyweight Championship and the ECW Championship once each and a one-time United States Champion. He left the company in 2017 after he decided to pursue a professional mixed martial arts (MMA) career.


title: Jake Hager

text: In 2017, Hager signed with Bellator MMA. He had his first professional fight on January 26, 2019 against J.W. Kiser at Bellator 214, where he won via arm-triangle choke in the first round. In his second fight with the promotion, he faced T.J. Jones on May 11, 2019 at Bellator 221, where he again won via arm-triangle choke in the first round. He is currently undefeated with a record of 3–0 (1). As a wrestler, he kept working with various promotions before signing with AEW in 2019, including in "Lucha Underground" as Jake Strong, where he was the final Lucha Underground Champion.


title: Jake Hager

text: Hager started wrestling at the age of five. He wrestled in high school with Danny Hodge's grandson and remains good friends with Hodge as he grew up living two blocks away from him in Perry, Oklahoma.


title: Jake Hager

text: The University of Oklahoma recruited Hager as a two-sport athlete in football and wrestling. He was the second-string defensive tackle behind eventual National Football League players Tommie Harris and Dusty Dvoracek. He stopped playing football and concentrated fully on wrestling his sophomore year. During his junior year, he was introduced to Jim Ross, who was World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE)'s Head of Talent Relations at the time, through former OU defensive tackle Dusty Dvoracek, Hager's close friend and college roommate. Ross encouraged Hager to contact him after graduating to see about a career in professional wrestling. At the 2005 NCAA Division I championships, he lost to University of Pennsylvania's Matt Feast in the second round, and did not place. As a senior in 2006, Hager had a seventh-place finish in the NCAA championships and also defeated the future national champion, Dustin Fox from Northwestern University. Hager was named an All-American at season's end while setting the Oklahoma record for most pins in a single season with 30.


title: Jake Hager

text: In 2006, Hager graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a Bachelor's degree in finance. Following his graduation, he was going to work with a firm in Dallas, Texas, but signed with WWE after they offered a contract the day he was scheduled to start.


title: Jake Hager

text: In 2006, Hager had a WWE tryout in Deep South Wrestling (DSW), and in September 2006, under his real name, he made his in-ring debut for DSW, defeating Antonio Mestre in a dark match.


title: Jake Hager

text: He competed mainly in dark matches before being moved to Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW) in January 2007. He debuted for the promotion by defeating Atlas DaBone, and in the following months began a feud with K.C. James. Hager began teaming with a multitude of opponents to feud with James and his tag team partner Cassidy James. During his time in the developmental territories he appeared as a security guard during a brawl between John Cena and Umaga on "Raw".


title: Jake Hager

text: In August 2007, Hager was reassigned to Florida Championship Wrestling (FCW), where he began a feud with TJ Wilson. On February 15, 2008, at the Florida State Fair in Tampa, Florida, Hager and Ted DiBiase Jr. were the final two men remaining in a 23-man battle royal to determine the two contenders for the FCW Florida Heavyweight Championship. Hager then defeated DiBiase to become champion. On March 22, 2008, Hager went against the FCW Southern Heavyweight Champion Heath Miller in New Port Richey, Florida to determine the true Heavyweight Champion. Both championships were on the line, and Hager defeated Miller to become the undisputed heavyweight champion in FCW. He later defended the championship against Miller, TJ Wilson, James Curtis, and Gabe Tuft.


title: Jake Hager

text: During this time, Hager had a gimmick of having an undefeated streak in FCW. His first loss came in the form of a "Raw" dark match, at the TV taping on August 18, 2008, when he lost to William Regal. He also lost to D'Lo Brown in a dark match, before defeating Jamie Noble in a dark match prior to a "SmackDown" taping on August 29. He then lost the FCW Florida Heavyweight Championship to Sheamus O'Shaunessy on September 18, after debuting for the ECW brand.


title: Jake Hager

text: On September 9, 2008, Hager made his debut on the ECW brand under the ring name Jack Swagger, winning a match against a local competitor. He immediately established himself as a heel by starting a feud with Tommy Dreamer. He attacked Dreamer on the September 23 episode of "ECW" when Dreamer attempted to stop Swagger from attacking Chase Stevens. He later defeated Dreamer in a normal match and an "Amateur Wrestling Challenge" competition. After weeks of feuding, their rivalry ended in November in an Extreme Rules match, which Swagger won.


title: Jake Hager

text: He then sought to challenge Matt Hardy for the ECW Championship and was named the #1 contender on the December 30 episode of "ECW". On the January 13, 2009 episode of "ECW", Swagger defeated Hardy to win his first title in WWE, the ECW Championship. His undefeated streak in singles competition ended on the February 3 episode of "ECW" when he lost to Finlay in a non-title match. After successfully defending his title against Hardy at the Royal Rumble and Finlay at No Way Out, Swagger began a feud with the returning Christian, who he lost the ECW Championship at Backlash, ending his reign at 104 days. He attempted to regain the title against Christian at Judgment Day and in a triple threat hardcore match at Extreme Rules also involving Dreamer but was unsuccessful in both attempts. His attempt to win the ECW Championship at The Bash in an ECW Championship Scramble also failed.


title: Jake Hager

text: On June 29, 2009, Swagger was traded to the Raw brand, making his debut as part of a three-on-one gauntlet match against WWE Champion Randy Orton, in which he got himself purposely counted out in order to make an impression on Orton. On the July 13 episode of "Raw", he won his first match on the brand by defeating Montel Vontavious Porter (MVP). He then feuded with MVP for several weeks, culminating at SummerSlam, in a match that MVP won. After his short feud with MVP ended, Swagger began pursuing the United States Championship. He had a title match on September 21 against Kofi Kingston but lost the match by countout after stealing the championship belt and leaving the arena with it but Kingston later took it back while Swagger was in a physical confrontation with The Miz. Swagger made another unsuccessful attempt at the title at Hell in a Cell in a triple threat match against Kingston and The Miz. At the Royal Rumble, Swagger entered at number 26 in the Royal Rumble match, but was later eliminated by Kofi Kingston.


title: Jake Hager

text: On the March 1, 2010, episode of "Raw", Swagger defeated Santino Marella to qualify for the Money in the Bank ladder match at WrestleMania XXVI, where he won, earning a contract for any WWE world championship over the following year. On the first episode of "Raw" following WrestleMania, Swagger tried to cash in his Money in the Bank contract against the WWE Champion John Cena, but changed his mind when he realized that Cena was not incapacitated enough to be defeated easily. As the match had never started, Swagger retained the contract for use at a future date.


title: Jake Hager

text: Swagger cashed in the contract during the "SmackDown" taping on April 2, 2010, after then World Heavyweight Champion Chris Jericho had been speared by Edge. Swagger went on to defeat Jericho to win the World Heavyweight Championship for the first time and subsequently joined the SmackDown brand. Following his championship win, Swagger began to develop a more serious persona: previously he had been known for doing pushups and beating his chest during his ring entrance. He successfully defended the title against Edge and Jericho in a triple threat match on the April 16 episode of "SmackDown" and against Randy Orton in an Extreme Rules match at Extreme Rules. At Over the Limit, Swagger retained the title against Big Show by intentionally disqualifying himself. At Fatal 4-Way, Swagger lost the championship to Rey Mysterio in a fatal four-way match also involving CM Punk and The Big Show, ending his world championship reign at 79 days. Following the Fatal 4-Way pay-per-view, Swagger began attacking Mysterio in the lead up to his rematch at the Money in the Bank pay-per-view in July, however he failed to regain the championship, ending their short feud and Swagger's main event status began to fade away. But this match received critical acclaim as one of the best matches that year.


title: Jake Hager

text: In late 2010, Swagger began being accompanied to the ring by his mascot, the Swagger Soaring Eagle, who was portrayed by Chavo Guerrero. At , Swagger competed in a triple threat ladder match for the Intercontinental Championship against Kofi Kingston and champion Dolph Ziggler, in which Ziggler retained.


title: Jake Hager

text: On the February 28 episode of "Raw", Swagger was announced as Michael Cole's trainer for his match at WrestleMania XXVII against Jerry Lawler. On the March 28 episode of "Raw", Swagger faced Lawler in a singles match, which he won by disqualification after Lawler attacked him with a steel chair. At WrestleMania, Swagger receive a Stone Cold Stunner from the guest referee, Stone Cold Steve Austin when attempting to withdraw Cole from the match. Cole went on to win the match via disqualification. On April 26, Swagger was drafted to the Raw brand as part of the 2011 supplemental draft. At Extreme Rules, Swagger teamed with Cole to defeat Jerry Lawler and Jim Ross in a Country Whipping match. Swagger ended his partnership with Cole on the May 16 episode of "Raw", after Cole insulted him.


title: Jake Hager

text: Beginning on May 23, Swagger feuded with Evan Bourne, with both men trading victories on several episodes of "Raw". At Capitol Punishment, Bourne defeated Swagger to end the feud. Swagger competed in his second Money in the Bank ladder match at the Money in the Bank pay-per-view, however he was unsuccessful as the match was won by Alberto Del Rio.


title: Jake Hager

text: On the August 15 episode of "Raw", after defeating Alex Riley, Swagger suggested to Vickie Guerrero that she should manage multiple clients, in the vein of managers like Bobby Heenan and Freddie Blassie. The following week, Swagger had a "tryout" match, but was distracted by Guerrero arguing with Dolph Ziggler at ringside, and lost the match. Swagger and Ziggler continued to fight over Guerrero for the next few weeks, which led to a match being for Ziggler's United States Championship at Night of Champions, also involving Riley and John Morrison. At Night of Champions, Swagger was unsuccessful in winning the title as Ziggler retained. On the September 19 episode of "Raw", Guerrero agreed to manage Swagger. As a result, Swagger and Ziggler formed an alliance, with Swagger helping Ziggler retain his championship. At both the Hell in a Cell and Vengeance pay-per-views, Swagger and Ziggler unsuccessfully challenged Air Boom (Evan Bourne and Kofi Kingston) for the WWE Tag Team Championship.


title: Jake Hager

text: On the January 16, 2012, episode of "Raw", Swagger won the United States Championship for the first time by defeating Zack Ryder. At Elimination Chamber, Swagger successfully defended his title against Justin Gabriel. On the February 27 episode of "Raw", Swagger and Ziggler unsuccessfully challenged Primo & Epico for the WWE Tag Team Championship in a triple threat tag team match, also involving Kofi Kingston and R-Truth. On the March 5 episode of "Raw", Swagger lost the United States Championship to Santino Marella, ending his reign at 49 days. On the following episode of "SmackDown", Swagger failed to regain the United States Championship in a steel cage match, after Marella escaped through the cage door. On the March 19 episode of "Raw", Swagger was announced as a member of Team Johnny at WrestleMania XXVIII, a match Team Johnny won. On the April 2 episode of "Raw", Swagger and Ziggler unsuccessfully challenged Marella for the United States Championship in a triple threat match. In May, Swagger and Ziggler unsuccessfully challenged Kofi Kingston and R-Truth for WWE Tag Team Championship, first at Over the Limit and second on the May 28 episode of "Raw". On the June 11 episode of "Raw", Swagger and Ziggler competed in a fatal four-way elimination match for a number one contenders spot to the World Heavyweight Championship; however, he was eliminated after Ziggler pinned him. The following week, Guerrero, finally tired of the bickering between Swagger and Ziggler, arranged for a match between them; Ziggler won the match, thus ending their partnership, and also ended his clientele association with Vickie Guerrero.


title: Jake Hager

text: On the June 25 episode of "Raw", Swagger once again unsuccessfully challenged Santino Marella for the United States Championship. Following this loss, Swagger went on a three-month losing streak against the likes of Tyson Kidd, Sheamus, Brodus Clay, and Ryback. After again losing to Sheamus on the September 3 episode of "Raw", Swagger told Raw General Manager AJ Lee he would take "extended time off".


title: Jake Hager

text: On the February 1, 2013, episode of "SmackDown", Swagger returned, and demanded that SmackDown General Manager Booker T put him in the Elimination Chamber match at Elimination Chamber. Later on that night, Swagger made his in-ring return by defeating Kofi Kingston. On the February 11 episode of "Raw", Swagger debuted a new manager, Zeb Colter, a self-proclaimed great American hero who strongly advocated anti-immigration beliefs; Swagger's character was influenced by Colter to display similar traits. That same episode, Swagger defeated Zack Ryder to qualify for the Elimination Chamber match that would determine the number one contender for the World Heavyweight Championship which he also won after last eliminating Randy Orton.


title: Jake Hager

text: On February 19, Fox News and various conservative commentators including Glenn Beck claimed that Swagger and Colter's characters were a mockery of the Tea Party movement meant to "demonize" the Tea Party. WWE responded to the criticism by stating that they were incorporating "current events into [their] storylines" to "create compelling and relevant content for [their] audience" and that "this storyline in no way represents WWE's political point of view". WWE followed by having Swagger and Colter break character during a video to invite Beck to appear on "Raw" while justifying that the storyline was designed to elicit a crowd response for the protagonist, Alberto Del Rio, and the antagonists, Swagger and Colter, while remaining within a PG rating, unlike several high-rated scripted dramas that use murder and rape in their storylines. Beck rejected the invitation. On the March 18 episode of "Raw", Swagger broke the ankle of Del Rio's ring announcer Ricardo Rodriguez after Rodriguez tried to save Del Rio from Swagger's vicious assault.


title: Jake Hager

text: On April 7 at WrestleMania 29, Swagger unsuccessfully challenged Del Rio for the World Heavyweight Championship. The following night on "Raw", Swagger and Zeb Colter were defeated by Del Rio in a Two-on-one handicap match after forcing Swagger to submit to the "Cross Armbreaker". Immediately following, Dolph Ziggler cashed in his Money in the Bank briefcase on Del Rio to become the new World Heavyweight Champion. Swagger would then feud with both Del Rio and Ziggler over the World Heavyweight Championship, with Swagger defeating Ziggler in a non-title match the following week and Del Rio attacking him afterwards. Swagger was originally booked to face Ziggler and Del Rio in three-way ladder match for the World Heavyweight Championship at Extreme Rules, however, Ziggler would suffer a legitimate concussion at a "SmackDown" taping due to a kick from Swagger, thus removing their match from the card. As a result of Ziggler's injury, Swagger instead would be booked to face Del Rio in a number one contender I Quit match at the pay-per-view on May 19, which Del Rio won. In June, Swagger took a leave absence to undergo surgery on his hand, which sidelined him for the remainder of the month.


title: Jake Hager

text: Swagger returned on the July 1 episode of "Raw", accompanying Zeb Colter's new client Antonio Cesaro to his match with Cody Rhodes. At the Money in the Bank pay-per-view, Swagger and Cesaro competed in the World Heavyweight Championship Money in the Bank ladder match, but were both unsuccessful as the match was won by Damien Sandow. The following night on "Raw", Swagger and Cesaro, now billed as The Real Americans, teamed together for the first time, but ended up being defeated by The Usos. During the Night of Champions pre-show, the Real Americans competed in a number one contender Tag Team Turmoil match for the WWE Tag Team Championship, in which they were the last team eliminated by The Prime Time Players (Darren Young and Titus O'Neil). Simultaneously, the Real Americans began a feud with the returning Santino Marella after he defeated both of them in singles competition. On October 6 at Battleground, the Real Americans defeated Marella and The Great Khali in a tag team match. The Real Americans moved onto feuding with Los Matadores, culminating in a tag team match on October 27 at Hell in a Cell, which Los Matadores won. The following night on "Raw", The Real Americans defeated WWE Tag Team Champions Cody Rhodes and Goldust in a non-title match. At Survivor Series, Swagger teamed with Cesaro, Roman Reigns, Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins in a 5 on 5 traditional Survivor Series tag team match in which their team was victorious over Rey Mysterio, Cody Rhodes, Goldust and The Usos' team. At they also challenged for the WWE Tag Team Championship again in a losing effort in a fatal four-way match also involving RybAxel and the team of Big Show and Rey Mysterio. Swagger would enter the 2014 Royal Rumble match at entrant #7 but was eliminated by Kevin Nash. On the February 14 episode of "SmackDown", Swagger became the #1 Contender for the Intercontinental Championship after winning a Fatal 4-Way match, defeating Kofi Kingston, Rey Mysterio and Mark Henry. However, Swagger would advance to Elimination Chamber, where he would face the current Intercontinental Champion, Big E, and would lose the match.


title: Jake Hager

text: During the pre-show of WrestleMania XXX, the Real Americans were the final team eliminated during a fatal-four-way match for the WWE Tag Team Championship. Swagger blamed Cesaro for the loss and put Cesaro in the Patriot Lock before Colter demanded that the duo shake hands. Cesaro instead retaliated with a Cesaro Swing on Swagger. Later during the pay-per-view, Cesaro was a surprise entrant in the André the Giant Memorial Battle Royal, which he won by last eliminating Big Show by body slamming him out of the ring, which mirrored Hulk Hogan's momentous body slam of André. Swagger retaliated by attacking Cesaro on the following "Raw" and then destroying the trophy, thus ending the stable.


title: Jake Hager

text: Following the dissolution of their team, Swagger would feud with Cesaro, with Rob Van Dam also being drawn into the feud, with the three competing in a triple threat elimination match at Extreme Rules, which Cesaro won. On the May 5 episode of "Raw", Swagger and Zeb Colter would begin to rant about the foreign superstars in WWE, before being interrupted by the debuting Adam Rose. Over the next month, Swagger would lose matches due to Rose causing a distraction by appearing at ringside with his "Rosebuds". This would lead to a match on the June 2 episode of "Raw", where Swagger would be defeated by Rose. At the Money in the Bank pay-per-view, Swagger would compete in the Money in the Bank ladder match, which was won by Seth Rollins.


title: Jake Hager

text: On the June 30 episode of "Raw", Swagger turned face for the first time in WWE, after he and Colter would confront Rusev and Lana about them disrespecting America. This would lead to a number of matches between the two, with Swagger being defeated by Rusev at both Battleground and SummerSlam. On the December 1 episode of "Raw", Swagger would find Colter assaulted backstage, with Rusev later admitting to the attack. At , Swagger would challenge Rusev for the United States Championship, in a losing effort and ending their feud.


title: Jake Hager

text: Following his match with Rusev at TLC, Swagger began to appear on television less frequently. At Royal Rumble, Swagger competed in the 2015 Royal Rumble match, lasting a while before he was eliminated by Big Show. At WrestleMania 31, Swagger participated in the 2nd Annual André the Giant Memorial Battle Royal, in which he was again eliminated by Big Show. Swagger appeared on the November 2 episode of "Raw", encountering his former manager Zeb Colter, only to be interrupted by Alberto Del Rio, Colter's new client. This started a feud between the two, which culminated at with Swagger challenging Del Rio for the WWE United States Championship in a Chairs match, which Del Rio won. At the 2015 Tribute to the Troops event, Swagger defeated Rusev by submission in a "Boot Camp" match.


title: Jake Hager

text: On January 24, 2016, at Royal Rumble, during the kick-off show, Swagger teamed with Mark Henry in a winning effort against the teams of Darren Young and Damien Sandow, The Dudley Boyz and The Ascension. As a result of the win, Swagger qualified for the Royal Rumble match itself during the main show; entering as the 24th entrant, only to be quickly eliminated by Brock Lesnar lasting only 16 seconds. At Roadblock, Swagger would be defeated by Chris Jericho. At WrestleMania 32, Swagger would compete in the Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royal, which was won by Baron Corbin. On the June 6 episode of "Raw", Swagger faced long-time rival Rusev in Swagger's home state of Oklahoma in a losing effort via count-out. After the match, Swagger attacked Rusev before leading the crowd in a "We the People" chant. On the July 4 episode of "Raw", Swagger was part of the main-event, where he teamed with "Team USA", which consisted of himself, Big Show, Kane, Apollo Crews, Mark Henry, Zack Ryder and the Dudley Boyz, in a 16-man elimination tag team match, in which their team was victorious over "The Multinational Alliance", which consisted of Kevin Owens, Chris Jericho, Sami Zayn, Cesaro, Sheamus, Alberto Del Rio and the Lucha Dragons (Kalisto and Sin Cara).


title: Jake Hager

text: In the 2016 WWE draft, Swagger was drafted to the "Raw" brand. On the September 12 episode of "Raw", Swagger faced Jinder Mahal in a losing effort. After the match, Tom Phillips revealed to Swagger that his ""Raw" contract" expired soon, in which Swagger ignored Phillips and walked away. The following night, he switched brands on "SmackDown", interrupting Baron Corbin and stating that he has signed exclusively to the brand. Swagger defeated Corbin on the October 4 episode of "SmackDown" after the referee thought he submitted when he was actually trying to reach the bottom rope. Corbin would then defeat Swagger twice, at the No Mercy pay-per-view and again on the October 18 episode of "SmackDown", ending the feud, this would be Swagger's last televised match in WWE.