It's difficult these days to find a comment that you find so galling it makes your teeth hurt. When you have racists tweets like Trump's about Rep. Elijah Cummings and "The Squad," for instance, you have a pretty high bar to get over. But for some reason -- perhaps because of how callous his words word and so thoughtless from someone, egregious as he can be, who we expect to know better -- this from Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is teeth-aching bad to me. But that's what makes the response Steve Singiser, a contributing editor of Daily Kos, one that I like so much for its direct, pointed and spot-on correct bluntness.
Forgetting for the moment that Rep. Ilhan Omar is from Somalia and knows it FAR better than Rand Paul does -- I would suggest that he visit Somalia because when he returns he might appreciate the plight of poor and desperate people more who are in need of help from their government.
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At this point, I would never say that “At last, Trump has crossed the line and gone too far!!” He’s crossed it too many time and has shown no limit to how far he’ll go. But every once in a while he goes SO far SO egregiously that it seems to jog people to push him to another level. And the sense I get is that latest racist attack on a minority member of Congress – and one that’s so virulent in its racist language and against a respected, long-established member this time in Rep. Elijah Cummings – appears to be one of those “crossed the line and gone too far” moments that prompted a more vocal reaction than usual. A tweet from Sen. Jeff Merkley is just one small example. He wrote -- "Donald Trump is a disgrace to this country. Donald Trump is racist. Donald Trump doesn’t care about you or your family or your community. Donald Trump is a con man, and he only cares about Donald Trump." And there was also Sen. Chris Murphy who said he was now going to stop following Trump's Twitter account, adding how shocked he was that he was even saying that. It's not that people are putting more weight on the racist slam against Rep. Cummings than against the young women of "The Squad." It's that that first series of racist attacks was the "set up," and (horrible as it was) one that we almost expected against young, first-term, minority women. It wasn't as expected against a male, 25-year veteran of the House. I also think that as visceral as the reaction has been to Trump over this, and would be under any condition, it wouldn't have been quite as powerful had not the previous racist attack been made against "The Squad" which also seemed to unite Democrats. And even offend independents and some Republicans. All the pieces fit together. But there always does seem to be a point where Trump not so much doesn't "finally go too far this time and cross the line" but has overflowed the cup and so there's no more room for him on "this level," and he's moved to another level. Charlottesville was one of those moments that moved to another level. His defense of separating migrant families in cages was another. No doubt you've seen it, but this commentary on CNN by host Victor Blackwell is part of that moving of Trump to another level. We tend to be inured by tweets that admonish us that "Everyone needs to watch this." Everyone doesn't need to watch this. But it's one of the few such videos that is powerful and thoughtful enough to bear such attention.
From the archives, the contestants on today's Piano Puzzler are Beau Smith Pacheco from Addleboro, Massachusetts. For the longest time, I had hard time picking out the hidden song, though I thought I heard a couple possibilities. But a long ways in, it finally became absolutely clear, and I knew I had it right. As for the composer style, it danced between several possibilities...all of which were wrong. But the composer is very popular -- and one of my favorites. I just didn't think he wrote anything like this. One quibble -- not about the contest, but the discussion afterwards. The contestants didn't know the hidden song at all, though it's famous with several reasons why its pedigree should have helped -- yet neither host Fred Child or pianist Bruce Adolphe explained any of them. They only gave the name of the song. Not its larger context or perhaps who else famously recorded it, or maybe where it's from. (Sorry, I don't want to say more to give it away for those playing along.) At which point, if they had, the contestants might have said, "Ooohhhhh! Okay!! NOW I know what it is."
For those of you who didn't get nearly enough of listening to David Mandel yesterday, apparently this is The David Mandel Tour Month, because not only was he the guest on Al Franken's podcast, but Mandel is also the guest on this week's 3rd & Fairfax, the official podcast of the Writers Guild of America. As we learned from Al Franken, if you were taking notes you know that he was the showrunner on the HBO series Veep, and also wrote for Saturday Night Live, Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm. We get a bit more into his career here today, but in any regard I suppose that one good deed deserves another...
The guest contestant on this week's 'Not My Job' segment of the NPR quiz show Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me! is novelist Jennifer Weiner. The particularly-fun part of the interview with host Peter Sagal is when she discusses telling her mother that her first novel (which was semi-autobiographical) was being published and that its title was Good in Bed. The quiz is also one of the funniest they've had for a very specific, odd reason.
On this week's Al Franken podcast, the show has a political background but is really pretty much entertainment based. The guest is David Mandel, the showrunner of the TV series, Veep. Here's what the Franken folks want to tell you about the episode --
"Veep show runner, David Mandel discusses Veep and what the hell it is that a show runner does. Why Trump’s election made a dark, cynical show even darker and more cynical. Also, how David owes his entire career to Al – a career that includes writing and producing for Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Veep, all shows that Al had nothing to do with. In his opening monologue Al calls the 2020 presidential election “the second most important election in our lifetime.” The most important being... |
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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