On this week’s ‘Not My Job’ segment of the NPR quiz show Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, the guest is Nathan Lane. There’s a guest host this week, comedian Tom Papa. He’s such an enthusiastic storyteller that it’s a treat hearing him talk about such things as, early in his career, doing singing telegrams. It’s a very fun interview – the only downside is that although you can hear him fine, he sounds like he’s standing in the back of a cavern. (Okay, one other downside – Tom Papa, being a comedian, tries to get his long quips in more often than ideal when you want to hear Nathan Lane being funny telling his stories.)
This the full Wait, Wait… broadcast, but you can jump directly to the “Not My Job” segment, it starts around the 18:00 mark.
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On this week’s Al Franken podcast, his guest is Michael Lewis, author of such books as Moneyball, The Big Short, The Blind Side, and Liar’s Poker, talks with Al about on why the U.S. COVID response was so…crappy. (Al’s word).
From the archives. The contestant this week is Rodger Reynolds from Ashland, Virginia. I got the hidden song almost immediately, and it's one of the least-hidden songs that Bruce Adolphe has done, so I suspect most people will get it. I have a feeling that the reason it's so poorly hidden is because it overlaps not a composer style, but an existing piece of music. Alas, as absolutely familiar and recognizable as that music is...I just couldn't name the composer whose style it was.
On this week’s episode of 3rd and Fairfax, the official podcast of the Writers Guild of America, the guest is creator-showrunner Saladin K. Patterson. He talks about reimagining The Wonder Years as a Black coming-of-age story set in the ’60s-era South.
Yesterday, I posted a 20-minute video of an interview with the great humorist James Thurber, the only video I’ve ever seen of him. In a social media exchange afterwards, I noted that our family had a couple of Thurber books, but what probably most pushed me to reading him was something else entirely. The classical music station WFMT has had a wonderful show every Saturday night for over 50 years, The Midnight Special, (which was created by its then-staff announcer Mike Nichols) which was folk music, comedy, Broadway and odds-and-ends. And they would periodically play selections from the 1960 stage revue, A Thurber Carnival, which was adaptations of a wide range of Thurber short stories. It had a great cast of character actors including Tom Ewell (who most famously starred in the movie The Seven Year Itch, opposite Marilyn Monroe), Peggy Cass, two of my faves Paul Ford and John McGiver, Alice Ghostley, and others. One of my favorite scenes from the show that The Midnight Special played a lot is also one of my favorite Thurber stories, “File and Forget,” a first-person story about a hellish time that Thurber supposedly had trying to correct with his publisher about a delivery problem of one of his books. On stage, the role of 'James Thurber' was played by Tom Ewell. Discussing this with a friend who grew up in New York, he said that he actually saw the show when it ran there. Lucky him. (By the way, as I noted yesterday, the real Thurber was a bit of a ham, and into the run it turned out that for a month the Broadway production had James Thurber himself play himself in that one scene! There was one particular challenge: Thurber was legally blind. Because of this, he couldn’t make the entrances and exits properly. What they did was build a sort of conveyor belt with a chair on it. Thurber simply sat in the chair and it would roll on and off the stage. I’ve tried to find video or even just audio of this for decades, but so far…alas, nothing. But it seems almost impossible, if not malpractice that no one with the production filmed it, or recorded it, even if just off the sound board. So, I live in hope.) Anyway, I thought that it was only proper to play “File and Forget” here. I’ve found a few video versions of it from small productions, but I’m going to go with this great truly cast here, even if audio only. They're just too good. And the whimsical background music is spot-on perfect. It is not surprising to see Republicans in full outrage mode over student loan debts being forgiven. Outrage over rich people getting to clear their debts. Outrage! Never mind that, in reality, few people will have all their debt forgiven, for most it's just part of what they owe. And never mind that 90% of the those who will get some loan forgiveness earn less than $75,000 a year. And never mind that Pell Grants being forgiven are specifically made to those who have financial need. And never mind that anyone who earns over $125,000 a year is not eligible to have any of their student loan forgiven. Further, what gets left out of this discussion is that the college loan debt that is being forgiven is money that recipients will be putting back into the economy. It's not like this debt forgiveness means money will be disappearing into thin air. It will actually be spent. After all, people in debt generally watch carefully what they buy and cut their purchases to basic needs. Once those debts are lessened or gone, more money is then available to make those purchases that have been put off. But never mind all that, because above all, the cries of "Is this fair to people who paid off their student loans?" ring out across the land. Fairness! The burning issue conservatives have long embraced as a foundation of their beliefs. Being fair to the have-nots as much as to the haves. Indeed. Is this fair not just to those in need, but is it fair to everyone? That's the important question to ask. Is it fair?! After all - Is it fair to slaves who died in slavery when Lincoln freed the slaves who were still alive? Is it fair to prisoners who served out their sentences when felons get pardoned? Is it fair to people who died of hunger to create government programs that provide food to those starving? Is it fair to people who fell down sinkholes and died to rescue others who irresponsibly weren't looking where they were going and fell into holes? Some people think that when there is a wrong committed, it's a good thing to correct that wrong and not continue it perpetually. Mind you, we never hear conservatives ask if it's fair to small businesses who've gone bankrupt when major industries in trouble get government subsidies. And let's be clear about something we all know. Government always has programs that only benefit some group -- veterans, children, the elderly, home buyers, the disabled, specific industries, the wealthy through the largest tax cuts at the upper end and on and on. That's how government works, we know that. We know that we each individually do not benefit from every government program. Republicans may want to outrage you by thinking you should personally benefit from every government program. But we all really do understand that that is not how government works or is supposed to work. And that it's the totality of all those individual programs together which is what benefits the country. Yet Republicans and the radical far right cry out in moral fury at forgiving some college loan debts, and say that when you have a loan debt, you must pay it back. In fact, the GOP Judiciary Committee sent out a tweet that said -- -- which is pretty pointed and specific and blunt.
The problem, though, is that...well, when you say things like this, reality still exists to show you for the galling hypocrite you are. And Republicans were a wee bit less pointed, specific and blunt -- period -- when hundreds of billions in loans were paid as part of the federal paycheck protection program (PPP) and later forgiven. And among those loans forgiven were - Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA): $183,504 Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO): $233,305 Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL): $2.3 million Catholic Church: $3.5 billion Joel Osteen: $4.4 million Tom Brady: $960,855 And not a single, freaking peep out of the GOP House Judiciary Committee. Period. (It's even better than this. The White House got fed up, and so they sent out half a dozen tweets replying to hypocritical Republicans trying to slam loan forgiveness and noted how much huge amount of money each received in PPP loan forgiveness. You can see them here.) For that matter, while railing hypocritically against forgiving debt, Republicans are just fine with the U.S. bankruptcy code that lets most debts be forgiven -though not student loans. Which means, of course, that a business can act irresponsibly, build up huge debt and have those be wiped away, but not a kid who borrowed money to responsibly go to school and improve himself and society. By the way, while I don't think the Bible should be used as a reason to justify a secular law, I do think it's valid to quote the Bible to those who always quote the Bible to insist how the government should act. So, it's worth noting the Gospel of Matthew 6:12: "And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." And in case you're trying to place that even more directly, it comes from The Lord's Prayer. To be clear, I completely understand why Republicans and the far right are crying "socialism" over loan forgiveness. I understand, too, that this once again shows that they don't actually know what socialism actually is, which has absolutely nothing to do with debt forgiveness. (It's about government owning the means of production, industry and distribution, but why quibble with reality?) And I understand why conservatives hate loan forgiveness to help middle class - but love subsidies for industries like Big Oil, Big Pharma and Big Ag, along with bailouts for the automobile industry. And I understand, too, that the middle class will get this is the GOP, who voted near-unanimously against the COVID relief act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and putting a cap on the price of insulin and other measures to help the middle class, which is never a great look when two months away from mid-term elections. |
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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