A true pioneer Baba Wawa passed away yesterday at the age of 93. When I was young I thought of her as one of the hosts of the Today Show and one of the only female broadcast journalists in the early days. It was only later that I came to realize that she was a particularly talented interviewer who took no prisoners. One example: She ended her inspiring career by inventing a new daytime TV genre of women talking about politics and current events in a freewheeling round table format at The View. It makes me happy that she lived such a long and accomplished life. RIP Baba. Update: I had never seen this until today. What a send-off.
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A real activist on what it’s like to deal with Dr. Anthony Fauci There are many, many things that offend me about the cretinous conspiracy theories and braindead rightwing assault on reason and decency. It’s actually a bit overwhelming. But the attack on Dr. Fauci ranks at the top of my list. I don’t worship the guy by any means and totally understand that he’s made some wrong calls during his long career. But he’s a scientist and therefore changes his mind as new information is discovered. That’s just how it works and those of us who have even a rudimentary, elementary understanding of the scientific method know that. Peter Staley writes in the NY Times: I guess he’s used to being called every name in the book. But as this tribute makes clear, he always listened to his critics and did what he could to accommodate their demands. I don’t think he’d ever be able to do that with the right wing that’s now calling for him to be locked up. And that’s because they have no idea why they are saying it except to blame him for the virus which is simply a lie.
If you can find a reflection The U.S. Department of Justice and Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis may ultimately judge Donald Trump by the content of his character as expressed in federal and state crimes. Failing at that, perhaps history will judge him by the company he keeps. Trump simply applied gold leaf to his tinpot. Business Insider: Ennemi du peuple was used to refer to those who disagreed with the new French government during the “Reign of Terror,” a period during which thousands of revolutionairies were executed by guillotine. Jose Diaz, Secretary of the Spanish Communist Party (Report to Central Committee, 1937): “The main enemy of the people in the rearguard are the Trotskyists: they are the bitterest enemies of our cause, the direct agents of Franco in our ranks.” Joseph Goebbels (1941): If someone wears the Jewish star, he is an enemy of the people.
You made it through another year If you have gone from cheering the arrival of the New Year to being thankful you survived the last, join the club. Yet many, including the proprietress here, have considered the unexpected accomplishments of the Biden administration this last year. Digby wrote on Friday that she did not see Dark Brandon coming: I think some of this success, paradoxically, is because Joe Biden is our oldest president, not in spite of that fact. There’s a certain YOLO quality to many people his age which he seems to have channeled into a willingness to take calculated risks that have largely paid off. Dark Brandon’s seen it all — he doesn’t scare easily. Biden reminds audiences, repeatedly and forcefully, “It’s never been a good bet to bet against America!” Even among progressive activists (including this one), Biden’s unabashed America boosterism is sometimes cringe-inducing. While glass-half-empty cynics, the nihilists, the MAGAs, the QAnon cultists, and the fascism-curious gnaw like Teredo worms at the nation’s pilings, Biden is still betting on America. Unashamedly fighting the shameless.
In this month’s edition of Artlink: In Public/Inside is an article I’ve written about ceramic artist Vladimir Tichy, and the large-scale ceramic murals he made in the 1970s and 80s. Regular readers of this blog would know that I keep an eye on the remaining city Tichy murals – on York Street, Foveaux Street, and […]
Late on a rainy night, the lights of the Richmond Regent cinema reflect on the wet road in front of it like moonlight on water. The lights are on in the lobby and in the upper-storey windows, but the building has a dramatic, shadowy presence, befitting the drama that happens on the screens within. The […]
Dave Weigel’s take on the best achievements in campaigning is one of the more interesting year-end pieces I’ve read. He spends all his time on the trail and I suspect he knows what he’s talking about: Best U.S. Senate campaign: John Fetterman in Pennsylvania. Did he get an assist when Donald Trump lifted Mehmet Oz to win the GOP primary? Obviously. Did a decade-plus of ad campaigns, TED Talks, and media profiles of the 6’8’’ mayor of a left-for-dead town help him? Yes, but that wasn’t luck, and he’d already run for Senate and lost before, in 2016. This year’s Fetterman campaign excelled at everything, convincing Democratic primary voters that a candidate Republicans would call “socialist” was electable, then pummeling Oz while its own candidate recovered from a stroke. The best Fetterman gimmicks — like his constant Twitter trolling of Oz, largely for his living until recently in New Jersey — probably wouldn’t work for other candidates, which was the point.
Happy New Year Hippos! Dispatch from Cincinnati: Stop what you’re doing right now and look at these stinking cute pictures of Fritz, the baby brother of the celebrated Cincinnati Zoo hippopotamus Fiona, stealing the show with his toothy grin. “Fritz showing us his smile… and new teeth coming in!” the zoo tweeted this week. Fritz, who was born Aug. 3, did appear to be smiling as he propelled himself around the 70,000-gallon pool at Hippo Cove. Twitter users couldn’t get enough of Fritz’s broad smile. “I’d lay my life on the line for Fritz,” one user tweeted. “Not to be dramatic,” another user said, “but I would die for Fritz,” Fritz, who weighed 330 pounds at a recent weigh-in, is a bouncing baby boy in the most literal sense. Hippos don’t swim, exactly, but use their powerful legs to propel themselves through water. They spend a lot of time bouncing off the walls and bottoms of pools, according to a piece in The Atlantic written when Fiona was just a wee thing. And tiny she was at birth. Born six weeks prematurely on Jan.
Dick Wolf Presents Law & Order SVU Factory Seconds, Pro Sports Rape Scandal 15-36
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NINE INCH SMAILS
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