John Oliver returned last night with the new season of his Last Week Tonight. After my recent move, my cable subscription changed -- since I was grandfathered in with my old Time-Warner subscription, and my new Spectrum account includes several premium channels at pretty much the same price. And this includes HBO which means I finally got to see Oliver's entire show for the first time, rather than just segments. I've long been a huge John Oliver fan -- no, seriously, a huge fan beyond the norm, even recommending him to a movie producer only six weeks after his first appearance as a "correspondent" on The Daily Show (going so far as having a friend who was a writer on the show put together a reel of Oliver's best work). So, this was a long-awaited treat. And happily, the show did not disappoint. It was quite wonderful. But at the center was his look at what will happen with the deadline for the official Brexit only weeks ago. It was deeply detailed and informative, highly entertaining, and (at its core, of course, this being a comedy show) incredibly funny. Side Note: The film project I recommended him for never ended up going forward, so it wasn't a case of him "rejected" by the producer. Just normal Hollywood Development Hell. So, the movie world's loss was HBO's gain.
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Earlier today, Nell Minow, my fellow co-head of the Apology Institute of America, sent me a Facebook posting about a profoundly weak non-apology from a British politician over a deeply racist comment she made. It's my turn to return the favor. This just in from the lawyers of Roger Stone who today submitted a court filing that apologized for his Instagram post today that trashed the ethics and threatened the life of the judge of his pending trial.
Looking through our AIA manual's guidelines for "Meaningful Apologies," I'm wondering how socially -- and legally -- substantive a one-sentence "Gee, I'm sorry" is when you've trashed and threatened the life of the sitting judge for your upcoming trial, and further how heartfelt when you have someone else say it for you... Especially since it doesn't even include the classic, "If I offended the judge..." or even "This isn't who I am" (which is particularly problematic since it is exactly who Roger Stone has spent a career trying to make clear in as public a way as possible that it is precisely who he is). Especially since you already have a gag order on you ordered for your past actions by this same judge. By the way, to be clear, being "legally substantive" is not generally a condition that Ms. Minow and I look to for grading the quality of an apology. But when an apology is offered for threatening the life of the judge for your upcoming trial (not to mention slamming her work and ethics), and your lawyers feel obligated to file a court brief in response, then the little-known and even-more rarely used "legal" codicil does kick in. Roger Stone did include his own two-sentence P.S. to his lawyers' filing, basically saying, "What they said," noting that he never meant to disrespect the court. Although it's impossible to read his original comments along with that photo as anything but total, sneering and unadorned disrespect. Usually, at a bare minimum, throwing oneself prostrate before the court to beg for mercy is considered a good place to start before even getting into what you're apologizing for and why. And secondly, having a letter from your doctor to support the explanation of your condition requiring the plea is pretty much thought to be highly-valuable to present to the judge, as well. A one-sentence "Gee, I'm sorry" from your lawyer and your own two-sentence, "Ditto, sort of," is the equivalent of putting paint on the debris of a Vegas casino after it's been imploded and saying, "Ah, there, it's back to its old self now!! All's well." And if you simply are so craven that you can't manage any of that or actually apologize in any way yourself, then trying "That wasn't me, your honor, but my evil twin" is probably better as apologies go than having someone else say "Gee, I'm sorry" for you.
Here's hoping that everyone here -- and everyone, period -- had a safe weekend surviving the National Emergency. Reports of hoards of non-white people gathering to cross the Mexican border have been pouring in from far-right wing blog sites. True, more reports have been pouring in than marauders but you can never be too prepared.
Also, the American National Red Cross says that its workers have been overloaded during the crisis, as the need for beds and shelter has been pushed to the maximum, especially since the housing they had been counting on is used up already by immigrant children. Crisis summits are underway with the organizers of the Burning Man and Coachella festivals to use their expertise in setting up tent cities on their grounds and in pockets across the country. On the positive side, food, clothing and medical supplies are being gathered by our Canadian neighbors and convoys have been arranged to bring them in to the needy here in the United States. (To be clear, these are "convoys," not "caravans." Caravans are bad, convoys good.) Happily, this effort should be successful because there is no outcry for border wall protection to the north, so the trucks, vans and bicycles will be able to trundle in with only a wave and "Howdy!" to greet them. Also, there are warehouses of material that never made it to Puerto Rico which is now available for real Americans. Lest anyone is concerned about our government standing on guard to protect us all during this most dangerous of National Emergencies, there is the heroic Lindsey Graham (R-C) -- when confronted with the fact of defense allocations would be diverted in Kentucky to the building of Trump's wall (or at least the very tiny few miles of Trump's wall that could be funded -- telling the public, “I would say it's better for the middle school kids in Kentucky to have a secure border...right now we've got a National Emergency on our hands.” Now, one might think this is a risky proposition since Kentucky ranks 45th on the list of most-educated states, and that that would appear to be far more of an emergency. But to be clear, Lindsey Graham can be cavalier about this because his state of South Carolina ranks higher than Kentucky and is 42nd out of 50 on the most-educated list. And lest anyone be concerned that Trump himself can't multi-task and keep his eye on what's important while vacationing at his country club to play golf and eat at the omelette bar, know that he's on top of everything when he sent out this tweet on Sunday --
So, there you have it. A Trump wall to keep us safe for ignorant school children and Trump-branded prisons to keep us safe from comedians. The contestant today is Brent Sverdloff from Rhinebeck, New York. I was able to get the hidden song pretty quickly, and I think most people will, too. As the for the composer style, it came down to two people -- very different from one another. It seemed a touch unlike one of them, so I went out on a limb and guessed the person I didn't know well specifically because the piece was more "moody" than I associate with the other composer. And was wrong. It was that other composer.
On this week's 3rd and Fairfax, the official podcast of the Writers Guild of America, the guest is screenwriter and multiple Oscar & WGA nominee, David Magee, who wrote Mary Poppins Returns, as well as such films as Life of Pi and Finding Neverland.
In honor of it being the NBA All-Star Weekend, the guest contestant on the 'Not My Job' segment of this week's NPR quiz show, Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me!, is Mike D'Antoni, head coach of the Houston Rockets of the NBA. The talk is largely about basketball -- but don't go rushing off, since he's a pretty open, amusing guy. And the quiz is a lot of fun.
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AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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