The other day, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) posted the following "outrage" from his account on Twitter – Now, first things first, just to get the blatantly obvious out of the way: No, Target does not do any of that. It would be just a truly horrible business plan, and if that they did that, they would likely go bankrupt and would be sued by their shareholders. But you probably figured that out already. There are two possibilities here. 1) Tom Cotton actually, truly believes this, in which case he’s a maniacally lost conspiratorialist who has no business being a United States senator with responsibility for helping make laws. Or 2) he’s just pandering to his fascist GOP base which is wildly xenopobhic, conspiratorial and went around to Target stores trashing displays and threatening employees. I believe that #2 is the most likely choice here. It should be noted that one thing (of many) that Tom Cotton (R-AR) leaves out in his threat as a U.S. senator to Target is that there are also consequences for a national business that panders to fascists and ignores everyone else. Indeed, a business that only pursues business centered on the beliefs of what today’s GOP base wants – a base that promoted the Insurrection to overthrow the government and which still believes the 2020 election was “rigged,” follows and thinks JFK, Jr. is coming back to life to run on a ticket with Trump is not going to be in operation very long. Such a local business might do well deep in the heart of Tom Cotton’s Arkansas, but it wants to have a successful national presence, companies recognize that there is actually a world of diverse people and opinions out there, much as fascists wish wasn’t the case. Another thing that Tom Cotton seems to overlook is how really poorly public smears against a corporation like this worked for Fox “News” against Dominion Voting Systems. I have no idea if Target has had meetings to discussing whether or not to sue Tom Cotton, unless he ratchets his smears up a notch. But given that the account he tweeted under was a personal one and not his official Senate government account, and therefore not protected, he might want to put his attorney on speed dial, just in case. This, of course, isn’t just about a tweet Tom Cotton decide to send out and smear a national corporation in order to pander to his extreme-right, intolerant base. It’s become standard practice in the GOP, and it’s transcended hypocrisy. Hypocrisy has almost lost all meaning in today’s Republican. Consider that amid all the extreme-right hand-wringing and “outrage” over things like which books to burn, and what clothes someone wears when reading supervised storytime books to children, and anything they don’t like being “woke’ and how most anything liberal means it’s “grooming for pedophilia,” what the Tom Cottons and Republican leadership and GOP extreme base conveniently overlook are stories like the one last week that the Chicago Tribune published about a State of Illinois report finding that between 1950 and 2019, at least 1,997 children were sexually abused by Catholic cleric and religious brothers, four times the number that the Church itself had previously reported. And that’s just in one state. We didn’t see any Tom Cotton or GOP leadership or far-right hand-wringing and “outrage” for actual sexual abuse of children when that report was just released. Further, there was no “outrage” by Cotton and the fascist GOP right when Rolling Stone published a story about about Charlie Kirk's far-right Turning Point USA organization actually teaming up with a registered sex offender who had been convicted of attempted “coercion and enticement” of a minor. (Kirk, you may recall, is the popular GOP activist who I wrote about a few weeks ago here after he said that gun massacres were basically worth it since they helped protect the Second Amendment.) Silence on the far-right and in Cotton Land. Crickets. Actual, convicted sexual abuse of children. Because those are on-brand for the Republican Party today. Those are the base. But oh, my, when Target sold colorful shirts and “woke” blouses. Weeping, “outrage” and literal violence trashing displays and threatening employees. Cries of "satanism" by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR). Speaking of which -- With things like this tweet from Cotton attacking Target for what it sells. And Ron DeSantis changing laws in Florida to attack Disney for criticizing a bill, Republican attacks on M&M for a piece of cartoon candy they introduced, and on Mr. Potato Head for selling two products in one box, and against Bud Light for how it markets its beer, and the de facto Republican Party leader Trump saying that the party should push for default which would bring about financial disaster, I wouldn’t be surprised if Big Business has started to take note that today's GOP claiming that the party is good for business is not your daddy's GOP. Nor good for America.
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On this week’s ‘Not My Job’ segment of the NPR quiz show Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, the guest is Sam Waterston. His conversation with guest host Karen Chee is charming and fun, helped by his ease not taking himself seriously. Ms. Chee – who is a comedian and Emmy-winning writer – is quick-witted and pretty funny, though clearly nervous, and unless she is making a joke at one point (which doesn’t seem the case for how she follows up…) makes a major gaffe from her lack of knowledge of Shakespeare, her youth and her knowledge of Disney animated movies. If it is an intended joke, it’s a hilarious one – but I don’t think it’s meant as a joke.
This the full Wait, Wait… broadcast, but you can jump directly to the “Not My Job” segment, it starts around the 18:15 mark. O joy! Big congrats to Northwestern women for winning the lacrosse national championship over Boston College, 18-6. It's their 8th title in 18 years under coach Kelly Amonte Hiller. The team was led by the nation's leading scorer Izzy Scane (one of my favorite sports names) with 4 goals -- and 99 for the season! That's her below on the right side, #27. Northwestern doesn't get to celebrate too many national championships -- except for women's lacrosse. So, it's a cause of major Wildcat celebration. And just because she deserves it, here's a nice 2-minute video on the "Scane Train" from when Northwestern beat Denver the day before to make it into the finals. (They'd been down 4-2 and then went on an amazing 13-1 run.) And yes, that's her pounding the ground after scoring yet another goal and then being knocked down. Yesterday, when embedding the latest Naked Lunch podcast -- in which hosts Phil Rosenthal and David Wild talk about both being in the Writers Guild, their time walking on the current picket line and how their careers in writing got them to this point -- I mentioned that this especially resonated with me because I'd met Rosenthal during the 2007-8 WGA strike in the picket line at Fox Studios. As I noted, Everybody Loves Raymond was on the air at the time, and one of the several columns I was writing for the WGA website was called "E-mail Interviews." I would email a set of core questions about writing to the person being interviewed -- occasionally expanding with a few questions more specific to the writer. (My reasoning for keeping the questions largely the same was that 1) it was about the process of writing, and those basic questions didn't change, 2) it wasn't the questions that were important, but rather how each individual writer answered about how they wrote. And perhaps more importantly, 3) being on the editorial board for the then-new WGA website, I wanted to build content and so was writing three columns, all of which were volunteer, and it just made things oh-so much easier...) The writers could then respond at their own pace when they had the time, and send their answers back along with a page from one of their scripts, ideally with edit notes written on it, and a photo. What I recall is how gracious Phil was when asked to participate, despite having been accosted on the picket line, and also how entertaining his E-mail Interview answers were. Both qualities that subsequently became apparent in his documentary series, Somebody Feed Phil on Netflix. (For the record, it began life on PBS as I'll Have What Phil's Having.) I've tracked down the interview, and here it is. Originally posted in 2008, as best as I can recall. E-mail Interview with Phil Rosenthal Edited by Robert J. Elisberg Phil Rosenthal is the creator and executive producer of the series, Everyone Loves Raymond. He began his career as a staff writer on the series, A Family for Joe, which starred Robert Mitchum (a show for which Rosenthal self-effacingly quotes NBC president Brandon Tartikoff saying, “It should be cut up into guitar picks".) He followed this with Baby Talk and The Man in the Family, both created/developed by ed. weinberger. Alan Kirschenbaum's Down the Shore came next, followed by three seasons on Coach. In addition to his TV work, Rosenthal was also director and co-writer of the now-famous "The Final Days" comedy short film which starred President Bill Clinton, made for the 2000 White House Correspondent's dinner. It can be seen online here. >WGA: Were there any movies, TV shows or books that first got you interested in writing? PR: My earliest influences were The Honeymooners and The Jackie Gleason Show. Gleason and Art Carney got me interested in comedy at about age 4, and I wanted to do what they did. That was the same year Mary Poppins came out, and I wanted to marry Julie Andrews. When I was 15, I saw Jaws and was knocked out by the power a movie could have. Other sitcoms I loved growing up were Dick Van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore, All In The Family, The Odd Couple, Taxi, and Soap. I was acting in Neil Simon plays from age 14, and when I saw Woody Allen's Love and Death at 16, I wanted to be him. When I saw Annie Hall the next year, and saw all the trouble he had with women, I realized I was him. >WGA: When you write, how do you generally work? PR: When writing alone, I like bed. I've got a Mac Powerbook, and one of those little desktops-over-a-beanbag things from restoration hardware. >WGA: Is there a specific time you prefer to write? PR: I feel a little less like an old man in the morning. >WGA: Do you have any specific kind of music playing or prefer silence? PR: Quiet is nice. >WGA: Are you a good procrastinator? PR: The best. I'm the world's laziest workaholic. >WGA: What sort of characters interest you? PR: Believable ones. I love outrageous characters, but I still want to believe we're on earth. >WGA: What about stories? PR: The same. And a good structure. Nothing substitutes for a good beginning, middle and end. And it should maybe be about something that someone gives a shit about. >WGA: How do you work through parts of a script where you hit a roadblock in the story? PR: I would love to know of some tricks. If you have the luxury of time, forget about it for today, or this week, even. go get something to eat and see a movie. If it's got to be done today, what else can you do? I find that if I just start putting something, anything down, it helps. Because then at least you're working off of something instead of nothing. And nobody needs to see the first something. >WGA: What are the additional challenges (or advantages, for that matter) in doing a television show based on the life and works of the star of your show? PR: In first talking to Ray (Romano), he told me about his life, just in the way of getting to know someone. But, the more he told me about his actual life, the more I realized that this was the show. And what I didn't know about the personalities of his family, I filled in with my own. but obviously it was a blessing that Ray had such a screwed up life. >WGA: What is your best experience as a writer? PR: Working with my friends on "Raymond". We laugh like idiots every single day. I'm in love with them. >WGA: Was there any particular writer who acted as a sort of mentor to you? PR: My mentor in sitcoms was actually younger than me – Alan Kirschenbaum. We went to high school together, were in the school plays together. He became a writer first, and then, while I was a struggling actor, he showed up at my apartment in NY during the writers strike of '88 with one of those new fancy "word processors" (about the size of an oven), and we wrote a screenplay. The following year, I moved out to L.A., hooked up with a writing partner (Oliver Goldstick), and Alan taught me the basic, essential structure of a sitcom in about 15 minutes over a terrible seafood lunch. The best advice we ever got was from ed. weinberger, who said, "do the show you want to do, because in the end, they're gonna cancel you anyway". >WGA: Why do you write? PR: Because I couldn't stomach being an actor. From the archives. The contestant this week is Betty Oram from Brooklyn, New York. I could hear the hidden song, and aspects of it were familiar, but not enough I thought for me to get it. I only had one guess – and to my great surprise, I was right. To my equal surprise, I’m amazed that the contestant didn’t get it even after composer-pianist Bruce Adolphe played the song straight out with no embellishment for the third time around…and she even knew the title, and said it, yet still couldn’t place it as the song – and it’s a pretty famous song for its, well, I’ll say “era,” without giving anything away. As for the composer style, it’s one of those eras where there are about three of four composers who, to me, sound similar, so I made a guess, and was wrong.
We have a slightly different episode of the Naked Lunch podcast, hosted by Phil Rosenthal and David Wild. As they note, "With the Writers Guild of America on strike, Phil and David -- who've both been on the picket lines -- discuss how they each eventually became TV writers and longtime members of the WGA. Phil traces his journey from starting out as a 'failed actor' in New York, while David talks about starting out as a journalist and editor at 'Rolling Stone' magazine.
It's a very fun, interesting episode. But also, with Phil talking about being on the WGA picket line, it reminds me of when I met the good fellow. It was in 2008...on the Writers Guild picket line. (It was at the Fox Studios.) At the time, Everybody Loves Raymond was on the air, and I was writing a few columns for the Writers Guild website, one of which was "E-mail Interviews." I would send questions to the writer, who at their own pace would send back their responses, along with a photo and a page from one of their scripts, ideally with edit notes written on it. What I recall is how gracious Phil was when asked to participate, having been accosted on the picket line, and also how more detailed his E-mail Interview answers were than most people. And how entertaining it was. I've tracked down the interview, and unless scheduling changes, will post it tomorrow. For now, since I can't embed the Naked Lunch podcast, you can listen to it by clicking here. |
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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