The guest on this week’s Al Franken podcast is Ben Smith is former Editor-in-Chief of Buzzfeed News and New York Times Columnist. He talks with Al about his new book Traffic, which is a sort of history of the online news media. (The subtitle of the book is “Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral.”)
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The other week when I searched for and found the video to post here of Liza Minnelli singing, “And the World Goes Round,” that Kander and Ebb wrote for the movie New York, New York, I saw another video that caught my eye in the right-hand YouTube "other videos" column. It was a 13-year-old Minnelli appearing on a 1960 TV show hosted by the gossip columnist Hedda Hopper – and she sings, “Over the Rainbow”! Of note, she was three years younger at the time than her mother was when she introduced the song. Here’s that video. By the way, though it says it runs “3:41,” that specific clip is only 2:15, and there’s more material after. And that other material is weird in its own way and worth sticking round for. It’s an adult Liza singing a reprise of the same song, but I’ll leave out what makes the occasion so offbeat and let that be a bit of a surprise. Around mid-day yesterday, Trump posted a statement on his social media platform where he wrote about how well his lawyers’ meeting went with the DOJ, and noted that “I did nothing wrong.”
Man, that did not age well! (I should add that it's my understanding of federal law that "I did nothing wrong" has the legal equivalence of acquittal. Unless I mis-read Google when doing a search about it...) Trump also wrote in that social media statement, wanting to make clear to everyone that he wasn't acting randomly on his own, but that his lawyers had advised him. The one, little, pesky thing he left out is that what his top, actually-expert lawyers – which included, y'know, the Attorney General of the United States, chief law official in the country – advised him was, “Oh, dear God, NO, there was NOT any election fraud. Do NOT do what you are talking about doing!!! Are you nuts?? Stop! Stop!” So, as the day dragged to a close and those on Indictment Watch yesterday were disappointed that there was no Trump D.C. indictment while were putting away their bowl of popcorn – all of a sudden we got this Mar-a-Lago twist! New charges against Trump in Florida, and a new co-conspirator defendant. As the expression goes -- Did not see that coming! All this causes new, big problems for Trump here. For starters, there are now two people involved with moving and hiding and destroying evidence, which makes the action harder to deny. Additionally, it’s one thing for Walt Nauta to not flip – he’s a Navy guy who was trained to follow his commander, and worked with Trump in the White House as his valet. Someone you can see agreeing to go down with the ship. Carlos de Oliveira, though, is a maintenance worker at a country club. Though he initially has turned down a cooperation offer, it’s hard to imagine -- other than believing Trump will win the general election and keep his word about “Many people say I will pardon you” -- that in the end he’ll be willing to go to prison for Trump – for moving boxes. And if so, if he does become a cooperating witness, it’s not unreasonable to at least consider that Nauta sees the hellacious writing on the prison wall, and does, too. We’ll see… And further, prosecutors have a great deal of new material that lays out everyone’s actions. Including the classified material that Trump saved at a reporter, and texts that are as specific as “The boss wanted the server deleted.” By the way, consider that one text alone, and how damning it is on so many levels. Not just this crime, but also how long Trump and his acolytes have been crying about Hilary Clinton and her server. Where is her server??!!, they have been shouting – ignoring that the server exists where it always did, and the FBI had a cloned copy of it. But now, here is Trump telling his staff to destroy his server. This is going to add a whole new perspective whenever anyone in TrumpWorld keeps wringing their hands about “servers.” There’s an added problem for Trump with this new material. As legal analyst Barbara McQuade noted, it’s not just that it provides evidence of moving and documents, and trying to delete surveillance video – but it undercuts Trump’s most-often repeated defense, that he had every right to the documents. After all, if you believe you have a right to the material, why would you go to such lengths to hide it and delete surveillance video of you doing so?! Moreover, today’s revelations also eliminates what has long been seen as the one defense had that could at least be plausibly argued – advice of counsel. For those to be valid, however, NYU law school professor – and former special counsel at the Department of Defense – says it requires a defendant making a full disclosure to his attorney – except Trump already told his lawyers that he had returned all classified material back to the government. On MSNBC, attorney Nik Ackerman – who helped prosecute Watergate – said that Special Counsel Jack Smith isn’t just putting together a case “beyond reasonable doubt,” but beyond any doubt. By the way, in fairness to newly-named co-conspirator Carlos De Oliveira, when he drained the pool at Mar-a-Lago, that flooded the room with surveillance video, it is my belief that he thought he was just following Trump's order to drain the swamp. Hey, that's probably as good as any defense he's going to get... And coming to an end of our Jane Horrocks Fest, I think the only way to properly end it is with her in Little Voice, which the previous “Five Minutes with…” interview I posted talks with her about, and I mentioned earlier. As I wrote, this is from a fascinating 1998 film, which she created initially on stage. Horrocks plays a painfully shy woman who largely hides from reality, but comes alive when she sings magnificently in the voices of other famous singers she learned from old records, like Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, Billie Holiday and others. And she does her own singing. The play was written by her then-partner of 21 years, playwright Jim Cartwright, who co-wrote the screen adaptation, in large part because he was aware that, beside being a wonderful actress, she had this singing ability. These two clips are all one scene, in which she makes her terrified debut, having been pushed there by her mother’s (Brenda Blethyn) sleazy boyfriend played by Michael Caine. The M.C. here is played by Jim Broadbent, and Ewan McGregor is also in the film (though not this scene). In this sequence, Horrocks, as Little Voice, starts with Shirley Bassey, and then in the next video Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich and British music hall legend Gracie Fields. And here is the continuation of the scene -- I don’t care about Hunter Biden’s legal troubles.
Okay, that's pretty much it for today's article. That’s the core of what I have to say. If you have a busy day, you can stop now. That’s it. We’ll see you back here later, I hope. Have a nice day. For anyone still here, just to be clear I’m not insensitive to Hunter Biden’s troubles – but they’re Hunter Biden’s. He’s a private citizen. Yes, of course, his dad is President of the United States. But Hunter Biden isn’t the U.S. President. He isn’t even in his father’s Administration in any official capacity, even just as an advisor – like Ivanka Trump was. Or her husband Jared Kushner. (As such, that’s why when she got 34 trademarks from China for free, and he got $2 billion from Saudi, those were – and are – issues of public concern.) He doesn't even have an intern job to get coffee and Danish for the White House staff. Hunter Biden is just the son of the President. So, I wish Hunter Biden well dealing with his drug issues of the past. And his legal issues. But all of those legal issues are his alone. And those legal issues have been investigated for five years. And after five years, the U.S. Attorney investigating the case, appointed by Trump and given full authority by the Department of Justice, has determined what charges are appropriate...and that can be proven. And zero of them include Joe Biden. After five years of investigation. Further, John Durham -- the Special Counsel appointed by Trump’s Justice Department to investigate All Things Biden – investigated All Things Biden for four years and found zero to charge President Biden with. (In fact, after his entire investigation, he only charged two people, and lost both cases.) If there was anything to find that Joe Biden did even remotely illegal, John Durham would have found it. He found nothing. Hunter Biden is a private citizen. I don’t care about his legal troubles. And Republicans who do their best to insist that they care about Hunter Biden’s legal troubles are blissfully unconcerned with the daughter and son-in-law of Trump getting 34 trademarks from China for free and $2 billion from Saudi Arabia – and unconcerned with Trump himself getting indicted for espionage and stealing classified document, and getting indicted for fraud, and being found liable for sexual assault (or, as the trial judge noted, the equivalent of rape), or on the verge of being indicted for election fraud, on the verge of being indicted for attempting to overthrow the government. So, y’know, their insistence on “caring” about the legal troubles of Hunter Biden, a private citizen, has to be seen in that full perspective. And is whimsical at best, and fascist at worst. The best that Republicans have been able to offer against Joe Biden (who, of course, this is all about) after four years of investigation of Joe Biden and five years of private citizen Hunter Biden is a whistleblower who is a foreign agent for China, arms dealer for Iran, who is under indictment by the Department of Justice and is on the run, and the Republicans can’t even find. I could say a lot more, but my first sentence said everything important. The rest is just filler. So, I think that's enough. I don’t care about Hunter Biden’s legal troubles. After a slight delay, we return to our Jane Horrocks Fest with two more videos. Today we have the first of those. had mentioned that she’s best-known to American audiences (and perhaps best-loved to British audiences) as the utterly dim-witted assistant Bubble on the series, Absolutely Fabulous. And in the “Five Minutes with…” interview I posted, the host asked her about ever repeating the character. So, I thought it was only appropriate to post this loopy, seven-minute “Best of, part 2” video montage of the beloved, but totally mindless character. As you'll see, this is about as far from the dystopian version of 'Sally Bowles' that she played in Cabaret as one can get. |
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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