Media shocks (Ava and C.I.)

Last week was a series of shock -- far too many to cover in full.

 

But let's start off with a good shock: IRONHEART.   Chinaka Hodge deserves a standing ovation for creating a MARVEL TV show that has a female hero and is not a joke. 

 Jac Schaeffer, Jessica Gao and Bisha K. Ali should not only hang their heads in shame, they should be issuing public apologies for the garbage that they foisted off on audiences.  We're talking WANDAVISION, SHE-HULK ATTORNEY AT LAW and MS. MARVEL.  These were not superhero shows that sported strong female characters.  Instead it was giggle and laugh at the women and, in MS. MARVEL's case, at the girl.  These garbage shows had characters praised by The Water Cooler Set.  But audiences avoided them.  Liars try to pretend otherwise and note the interest in the shows and some big streaming debut.  They move on quickly so that they don't have to talk about the drop off after seeing the first episodes.  Yes, the programs were anticipated and then people saw them.

 

That garbage created a backlash  

 

IRONHEART is a first rate superhero series.  That shouldn't be such a shock.  It's been done many times before.  Even with a female superhero.  Melissa Rosenberg, for example, created compelling television as the show runner of JESSICA JONES.  Prior to that, Maurissa Tancharoen, Joss Whedon and Jed Whedon created complex roles for men and women on MARVEL AGENTS OF S*H*I*E*L*D.  MARVEL really only faltered in this century once they became part of DISNEY+.   With Chinaka Hodge creating such a strong show and Dominique Thorne being so perfect in the lead role, maybe this is a sign that (once again) MARVEL can showcase strong women instead of making fun of them?  

That would be a good shock.  However, last week was mainly bad shocks. 

For example, the Chump administration rounded the corner last week, swaying and rolling due to the bad shock absorbers, as Convicted Felon Donald Chump made threats.  What had the senile so upset?  Possibly the fact that his lies about what a great job he'd done on Iran were being questioned.  CNN had reported the truth of the US intel assessment which made clear that, at best, Iran's efforts were set back a few months. That assessment came from the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency and that really sent Chump on a rageathon.  It's a lie, it's wrong, it's criminal, CNN should fire correspondent Natasha Bertrand, it doesn't matter -- he was frothing at the mouth -- and it will be proven to be wrong when, he insisted, Israel releases its assessment.

You read that right.  

Here are his exact words, "Israel is doing a report on it now, I understand, and I was told that they said it was total obliteration. I believe it was total obliteration, and I believe they didn’t have a chance to get anything out because we acted fast."  Those were his exact words, the nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah  was apparently left implied.

The President of the United States actually insisted -- publicly -- that the US intel was no good but that the Israeli intel would back him up. 

Yeah, that's considered normal.

But that wasn't Chump's only strange remark on Wednesday.  

The dementia appeared to be 100% in charge when Chump declared -- of Iran's strike in response on a US base in Qatar,  "You saw that, where 14 missiles were shot at us the other day. And they were very nice. They gave us warning. They said, 'We’re going to shoot them.'  'Is one o’clock okay?' They said, 'It’s fine.'  And everybody was emptied off the base, so they couldn’t get hurt, except for the gunners. They call them the gunners. And out of 14 high-end missiles that were shot at the base in Qatar, all 14, as you know, were shot down by our equipment. Amazing stuff, amazing what they can do."

Those remarks should have resulted in a lot of coverage.  Go to any search engine and you'll find out that MSNBC covered the remarks as did MILITARY.COM.  Did any other news outlet write up the remarks?  Or was everyone doing their best not to upset nutso?

Konstantin Toropin (MILITARY.COM) noted, the remarks were not only strange, they didn't fit with the official story the White House has promoted:

 

On Wednesday, as he was about to depart from a NATO summit, President Donald Trump seemed to make a stunning admission: He gave Iran the green light to attack a U.S. military base in retaliation for his own strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites.

The Iranians "were very nice. They gave us warning," Trump told reporters. "They said, 'We're going to shoot 'em. Is one o'clock OK?' I said, 'It's fine,'" he added.

The casual, nonchalant tone of Trump's acceptance that Iran would attack U.S. forces at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar -- an assault that involved more than a dozen Iranian missiles -- was a sharp contrast to the message of steely-eyed professionalism and heroism that his top military adviser, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, offered to reporters the next day for what he said was likely the largest single use of the Patriot air defense system in U.S. history.

The press may have been too scared to print what Crazy said but Chump knew he'd gone too far.  So the next day, at the Pentagon, it was time for an 8:00 am press briefing with Mama's Boy Pete Hegseth.  Hegseth was so rushed, they didn't get to smooth out his foundation the way they've been doing at his personal hair and make up salon he had installed at the Pentagon leading to his psoriasis splotches being visible yet again.  

The little mama's boy got loud but with that nasal and childish voice, it only made him come off spoiled, entitled and, frankly, unhinged.

He was screaming at the press -- the same press that he was a part of mere months ago before Chump stupidly decided to nominate a drunk who once had rape charges filed against him for Secretary of Defense and idiots like Senator Joni Ernst voted to confirm Hegseth (what does it matter -- right, Joni -- we're all going to die). 

He wanted to give the press a word -- Well, he gave them 1589 words before he took a breath.  

Then he let Gen Dan Caine speak.  We covered that two-some as they made the Congressional rounds this month.  Caine plays sane while Hegseth plays like he just pooped his own diaper -- is he playing, right?  And the press briefing was one lie after another from Hegseth and a ton of projection.

He screamed at the press -- or maybe shrieked, he does have a rather high and girlish voice,  "And again, before I pass it to the chairman, because you, and I mean specifically you, the press, specifically you the press corps, because you cheer against Trump so hard, it's like in your DNA and in your blood to cheer against Trump because you want him not to be successful so bad, you have to cheer against the efficacy of these strikes."

Mama's Boy said that.  After we sat through one hearing after another where he repeatedly lied about former President Joe Biden, attacked former President Joe Biden and stole credit for what Joe Biden had done (including turning around recruitment numbers which Hegseth lies happened under Chump -- and he told that lie again at the start of the Thursday press briefing.)

We loved it when Caine slipped an answer to the idiot Hegseth (Caine, "Sir, I think you could -- I'd say go out -- the IC should be able to help you answer that question." followed by Hegseth, "And so, again, I go back to the IC, whether it's Director Ratcliffe or ODNI Gabbard.") because it reminded us of the Congressional hearing this month where racist Hegseth couldn't call out the Nazis and Caine had to step in to reassure members of Congress that, yes, even this administration -- or at least some members of it -- grasped that Nazis were bad.

Mama's Boy Hegseth embarrassed himself non-stop and that included his nonsense about how three bomb drops constituted "the most complex and secretive military operations in history."

The country could not stop laughing.   Ahmad Austin Jr. (MEDIAITE) compiled some of the responses such as "Normandy? Hiroshima? Bin Laden Raid?" and "Move over D-Day!" and "So the turning point of the Civil War, the Battle of Gettysburg, with 175K soldiers fighting and 50K lives lost over 3 days, doesn't hold a candle to dropping a few dozen bombs from the air? Am I understanding this statement from the SoD?" among them. 

 

When you hear Hegseth lie and Chump lie, you wonder why?  They just keep repeating lies.  Why?

 

PBS viewers might have gotten an answer last week with the latest installment of AMERICAN MASTERS which featured a documentary entitled  HANNAH ARENDT: FACING TYRANNY.  It examined Arendt's work documenting that crimes of the Nazis and how they got support for their crimes.  Arendt noted that they lied and lied some more and knew they were lying but they were creating this lie that motivated and excused.  Did anyone really believe the lie or was just the excuse they needed, the 'noble lie' told to garner support for a genocide.

 

One part that especially stood out?  

 

This passage from Arendt:

 

Banality was a phenomenon that really couldn't be overlooked.  The more one listened to him, the more obvious it became that his inability to speak was closely connected with his inability to think    Namely  to think from the standpoint of someone else.  There's nothing deep about it, nothing demonic.  That's simply the reluctance ever to imagine what the other person is experiencing.  That is the banality of evil. 

 

 She's referring to the fact that the Nazis conducted a genocide and got away with it because of people who lacked empathy.  

 

And that's why the right-wing's been attacking empathy (see our "MEDIA: YOUR FRIENDS & NEIGHBORS and your non-friends too!" from April) because MAGA can't get it's way if people have empathy.  So they portray it as a bad thing.  They pretend to be Christians while attacking the very idea of empathy that Jesus Christ taught.  At THE ATLANTIC, Elizabeth Bruenig explained today:

 

Five years ago, Elon Musk told Joe Rogan during a podcast taping that “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy, the empathy exploit.” By that time, the idea that people in the West are too concerned with the pain of others to adequately advocate for their own best interests was already a well-established conservative idea. Instead of thinking and acting rationally, the theory goes, they’re moved to make emotional decisions that compromise their well-being and that of their home country. In this line of thought, empathetic approaches to politics favor liberal beliefs. An apparent opposition between thought and feeling has long vexed conservatives, leading the right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro to famously declare that “facts don’t care about your feelings.”

But the current ascendancy of this anti-empathy worldview, now a regular topic in right-wing social-media posts, articles, and books, might be less a reasonable point of argumentation and more a sort of coping mechanism for conservatives confronted with the outcomes of certain Trump-administration policies—such as the nightmarish tale of a 4-year-old American child battling cancer being deported to Honduras without any medication, or a woman in ICE custody losing her mid-term pregnancy after being denied medical treatment for days. That a conservative presented with these cases might feel betrayed by their own treacherous empathy makes sense; this degree of human suffering certainly ought to prompt an empathetic response, welcome or not. Even so, it also stands to reason that rather than shifting their opinions when confronted with the realities of their party’s positions, some conservatives might instead decide that distressing emotions provoked by such cases must be a kind of mirage or trick. This is both absurd—things that make us feel bad typically do so because they are bad—and spiritually hazardous.

This is certainly true for Christians, whose faith generally counsels taking others’ suffering seriously. That’s why the New York Times best seller published late last year by the conservative commentator Allie Beth Stuckey, Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion, is so troubling. In her treatise packaging right-wing anti-empathy ideas for Christians, Stuckey, a Fox News veteran who recently spoke at a conference hosted by the right-wing nonprofit Turning Point USA, contends that left wingers often manipulate well-meaning believers into adopting sinful argumentative and political positions by exploiting their natural religious tendency to care for others. Charlie Kirk, the Republican activist who runs Turning Point USA, said that Stuckey has demolished “the No. 1 psychological trick of the left” with her observation that liberals wield empathy against conservatives “by employing our language, our Bible verses, our concepts” and then perverting them “to morally extort us into adopting their position.” Taken at face value, the idea that Christians are sometimes persuaded into un-Christian behavior by strong emotions is fair, and nothing new: Suspicion of human passions is ancient, and a great deal of Christian preaching deals with the subject of subduing them. But Toxic Empathy is not a sermon. It is a political pamphlet advising Christians on how to argue better in political debates—a primer on being better conservatives, not better Christians. 

It's very distressing but people are standing up and speaking out.  

 

And with that in mind, last week actually contained one more shock.  Chump was threatening to sue various outlets -- one of which was THE NEW YORK TIMES.  In response to his ranting and raving, the paper's deputy general counsel David McGraw stated, "No retraction is needed.  No apology will be forthcoming.  We told the truth to the best of our ability.  We will continue to do so."

Contrast that response with the caving on the part of ABC NEWS and the expected caving on the part of Sheri Redstone on behalf of CBS NEWS and McGraw's stance is a very happy shock.

 

 

Books (Kat, Ruth, Marcia)

 

As we did in 2021 and 2023 and 2024, we're attempting to again increase book coverage in the community. This go round, we're talking with Kat, Ruth and Marcia.  Kat reviewed "Jeanine Basinger's THE MOVIE MUSICAL " while Ruth covered  "Alec Baldwin's NEVERTHELESS: A MEMOIR" and Marcia covered  "Here We Go Again My Life In Television -- Betty White." Marcia, let's start with you.  Tell us Betty and the book.

 

Marcia: Betty White was an actress who did TV in the fifties and probably became more famous in the early 70s from game shows.  Then she did THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW and really became a TV actress and star.  She started playing Eunice's sister Ellen on THE CAROL BURNETT SHOW and when MAMA'S FAMILY spun off from that show, she continued to play Ellen on that and then, of course, came THE GOLDEN GIRLS.  Betty White was sunshine and fun.  I wanted to love this book.  I didn't. In 1995, Mary Tyler Moore wrote AFTER ALL and I felt like I learned more about Betty in that book then in this one supposedly written by Betty.  Betty and Mary were great friends and they couples dated.  They knew each other very well.  I didn't get that from the book.

 

"Supposedly written by Betty."

 

Marcia: I don't think Betty wrote it or dictated it.  There are too many problems with the book.  For example?  Desi Arnaz invented the multi-cam sitcom.  Betty's telling this story of I LOVE LUCY and her regional sitcom being done for a year side-by-side.  But she talks about how they were live.  I LOVE LUCY was not live.  It was filmed.  This is a part of TV history.  Lucy didn't want to go to NYC.  That meant a whole new way of putting a show together.  Desi came up with it.  The sitcom would be filmed, it would be multi-cam, etc.  If Betty wrote the book, I would assume, if her show's set was right next to I LOVE LUCY, she'd know that I LOVE LUCY was not a live show.  That happens over and over.  She or someone also writes about how Ken Barry began playing Mama's son on THE CAROL BURNETT SHOW.  No.  Not true.  Alan Alda -- among others -- played one of Mama's son on THE CAROL BURNETT SHOW.  Ken Barry never did a skit with Mama -- they were called The Family -- until the spin-off MAMA'S FAMILY.  There are way too many errors like that which make me think that Betty didn't really write the book or dictate it.

 

Ruth, you covered Alec Baldwin's memoir.

 

Ruth: I did.  I was a fan of the actor early on.  I can remember him on THE DOCTORS -- a daytime TV program.  And, in his book, he writes about that show and I was glad but I would have honestly enjoyed more about the people on the show.  I enjoyed the book but had wanted to bring this into the discussion.  He does Broadway, A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE as Stanley, and has to -- or feels he has to -- pump up and look good and this caused health problems.  I am very sad about that.  But am I remembering wrong or was his body not used throughout his career.

 

You mean on display?

 

Ruth: Yes.

 

In MARRIED TO THE MOB, as Michelle Pfeiffer's husband, we see him in his underwear and his body is featured in WORKING GIRL.  Prior to that, you've got photo shoots with magazines like US where his bare chested and posing with Lisa Hartman Black -- his KNOTS LANDING co-star.  Alec's a good looking man to this day but, yes, his body was on display in the early years.  

 

Ruth: I thought so.  Or hoped so, I was afraid I was remembering wrongly.  

 

Kat?

 

Kat: I read the worst book in the world.  Some musicals, per the author, aren't really musicals.  Depends on the mood she's in basically.  She doesn't see GREASE as a real musical.  Sometimes dancing is enough to be a musical -- SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER -- sometimes it's not -- FOOTLOOSE. Sometimes box office is so important, other times it's not.  She excuses racism throughout the book which was very offensive.  It fails to cover movie musicals in a linear fashion and instead jumps around all over.  

 

You'd asked us to bring up Barbra Streisand.

 

Kat: I had!  Thank you.  She doesn't seem to care for Barbra.  She lavishes Julie Andrews for two movie musicals and calls her a star of the genre.  Now I love THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE -- and despite the author's lie, the film was a hit.  The author hates it.  So why are we pretending Julie's a musical star only based on two films?  Barbra's attacked for everything and the author seems to confuse FUNNY GIRL with FUNNY LADY as she blathers on about how Barbra's personality is used in one.  Yes, it was.  In FUNNY GIRL.  That's why Barbra said when it was on Broadway that it was her life -- Barbra's -- it just happened to happen to Fanny Brice first.  And, sorry, Barbra was a bigger musical star than Julie Andrews.  YENTL, FUNNY GIRL, HELLO DOLLY, FUNNY LADY and ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER all made money.  Lots and lots of money.  She doesn't care for Streisand and that may have to do with the support Barbra's historically had from gay men because the writer of the book is a homophobe. 

 

So you don't recommend the book you read.

 

Kat: Not at all.

 

And Marcia?

 

Marcia: No.  It's a poorly written book and I don't believe Betty wrote it or dictated it.

 

Ruth?

 

Ruth: Mr. Baldwin's book was a pleasure to read.  His childhood, his college days, his move to NYC and then to California. I found it all fascinating and very well written. 

 

------------------------------

Previous book discussions:

 

"Books (Marcia, Isaiah, Ava and C.I.)" 

"Books (Trina, Stan, Ava and C.I.)"

"Books (Isaiah, Ava and C.I.)"

 

"Books (Jess, Ava and C.I.)"

"Books (Stan, Ava and C.I.)"

"Books (Trina, Ava and C.I.)"

"Books (Rebecca, Marcia, Ava and C.I.)"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You might be a Home Schooled idiot . . .

 . . . if you called your third grade teacher "Mommy."    

Best action films of the 2020s

 

25) SAYEN 

 

24) RED NOTICE 

 

23) CLASSIFIED

 

22) THE TAKEOVER

 

21) KIMI  

 

20)  THE PROSECUTOR 

 

19) CANARY BLACK 

 

18)  SHADOW FORCE  

 

17) LOU

 

16) ATLAS  

 

15) DIABLO

 

14) FREAKY TALES 

 

13) THE AMATEUR  

 

12) WOLFS  

 

11) FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH

 

10)  THE ACCOUNTANT 2

 

 

9)  THE MOTHER 

 

 

8)  THE UNION 

 

7)  CLEANER

 

6) HEART OF STONE

 

5) THE BEEKEEPER 

 

 

4) THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD 

 

3) SINNERS  

 

2)  THE GRAY MAN 

 

1) THE OLD GUARD

 

Book List

 

Book coverage continues in this community.  For earlier lists of books covered see 2021's  "Books," 2023's "Books" and 2024 "Book List"

Books reviewed in the community this year.

1) "bob hope should be a lesson" -- Rebecca reviews Richard Zoglin.  

2) "Shattered Love: A Memoir" -- Marcia reviews Richard Chamberlain's insipid autobiography. 

3) "Help! My Apartment Has A Dining Room Cookbook: How to Have People Over Without Stressing Out" -- Trina reviews a cookbook.

4)  "Media: OWNED finds Eoin Higgins owned by bad journalism" -- Ava and C.I. take on Eoin Higgins bad book.

5) "Sly's awful books proves Questlove a liar" -- Stan reviews Sly Stone's memoir. 

6) "THE LIFE AND HARD TIMES OF HEIDI ABROMOWITZ (Jess)" -- Jess reviews a humor book by Joan Rivers.

7) "STAN LEE LIED: YOUR HANDY GUIDE TO EVERY LIE IN THE ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS" -- Isaiah reviews a book documenting truths. 

 

8) "Rachel Ray's Garbage in the Kitchen" -- Trina reviews Rachel Ray's RACHEL RAY'S 365: NO REPEATS.

 

9) "BLACK BAG (great film) and Spielberg book" -- Stan reviews Richard Schickel's  STEVEN SPIELBERG: A RETROSPECTIVE

 

10)   "Matteo Lane's Your Pasta Sucks: A 'Cookbook'" -- Trina reviews Matteo Lane's new book.

 

11) "Books, Shatner and more" -- Marcia reviews William Shatner's BOLDLY GO.

 

12) "BATMAN'S VILLAINS" -- Isaiah reviews a comic book collection.

 

13) "Jeanine Basinger's THE MOVIE MUSICAL " -- Kat reviews a book on movie musicals.

 

14)  "Alec Baldwin's NEVERTHELESS: A MEMOIR" -- Ruth covers Alec Baldwin's memoir. 

 

15)  "Here We Go Again My Life In Television -- Betty White" -- Marcia covers a memoir.

 

 

 

 

Media: Truth Molested Versus Truth Told

It was Sunday morning in Iran but Saturday night in the US when the Convicted Felon  Donald Chump's order to bomb Iran took place.  This was an act of war and he executed it without the Constitutionally required Congressional authorization and he also failed to inform them ahead of the bombing.  Three sites bombed in Iran with twelve 30,000 pound bunker buster bombs.

 

He says that the B-2 bomber planes were targeting nuclear sites.  He says that.  Others say Iran moved things from those sites long ago.  His intel is faulty, some say.  

 

It's Chump so we're talking about someone who's been booked repeatedly and charged with battering and abusing the truth.

 

Does truth matter?

 

Two documentaries gave answers last week.

 

AMERICAN MASTERS is a PBS program that we really wish they'd discontinue or at least rethink.

 

We've taken issue with the series many, many times before.  A friend -- who's read all of our criticism of the series -- argues that when people get thins wrong and we say they're lying, they're just mis-remembering. 

 

Janis Ian was the focus last week -- JANIS IAN: BREAKING SILENCES.  Singer-songwriter.  Responsible for classics like "At Seventeen" and "Stars."  We've covered Janis before which is why  we felt it was the best test for what our friend was saying.

 
Janis' memory is shot.  We covered that.  We covered how her autobiography didn't match reality.  We're not going to link to it, you know how to find the past pieces.  There's one where we especially documented where her timeline was off by over three years. 

 

Janis' big problem in the documentary was that she confessed to not being an artist.

We honestly like Janis.  We think she's written many classic songs and that includes "All Those Promises."  We think she's talented and smart.  We agree with her eearly lesson that you don't whore because if you whore, that's all you are.  

 

One thing, before this documentary, we did believe in was Janis was an artist

 

That's not the case.  Art is at least secondary to Janis.

 

She speaks of how, early on, she just wanted to be famous.  But despite her self-presentation and her insisting that stopped being the case early on, her comments make clear that she's confused stardom with art.

 

There are two struggles in her career per the documentary -- post-"Society's Child" and post-BETWEEN THE LINES. There's the third one that finds her in Nashville but that's not really addressed or presented as such.  The two presented really aren't about art  They're about commerce.

 

She seems to think that she would and could have been a star with "Society's Child" if it had been followed up correctly.  She was, according to her, the next Bob Dylan.  

 

And that's where we go sideways.  "Society's Child" is not a great song.  It's a White song, we'll give it that.  And we get that the NYC White crowd thought it was everything back in the sixties.  

 

We also get that all the little White girl in the song does is whine to her mother and tell the young Black male that she can't see him anymore.

 

It's as though people heard the song -- White people -- in 1965 and applauded her for it and have continued to just keep applauding without ever re-examining the song's lyrics:

 

One of these days I'm gonna stop my listening, gonna raise my head up high
One of these days I'm gonna raise my glistening wings and fly
But that day will have to wait for a while 

 

Sad. 

 

Her heroes were Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Joan Baez and Odetta but she never wrote like Dylan or Ochs.  She was the personal, not the political. "Society's Child" couldn't be followed up despite what she thinks.  Her writing was copycat.  She gets that on her vocals, noting she had to stop trying to sing like Joan or Odetta but she doesn't grasp that when it comes to her song writing.  Or if she does, she won't cop to it.

 

Her first crisis?  She had exhausted her creative juices.  The well had to be refilled and she had to stretch and grow. She did five albums that were basically a child make believing.  That's what they sounded like because that's what they were.  That's why VERVE dropped her after album four.  And VERVE rarely dropped anyone.  CAPITOL signed her for one album, her fifth album, and then dumped her.  She took a hiatus and came back three years later with STARS.  It was art and it was seen as such.  Then came AT SEVENTEEN her monster album.  Huge seller but, again, we'd grade it as actual art.

 

Would she?  Listen to her talk about AFTERTONES.  Her, not the producer Brooks Arthur, listen to her.  She should have worked on it more and not let it be released so soon.  Over and over, we hear that.  And why is that?

 

According to Janis, if she had worked on it more that would have made it sell more.

This is Janis' second best selling album. 

Art or commerce?

 

She's talking about commerce.

She's also deeply stupid.

A best selling album is about luck.  

 

It's about timing.

 

That's something Janis doesn't understand still.  It's something Michael Jackson never understood.  Joni Mitchell gets it.  Your kids are going to get beat up in the playground and that's beyond your control.  Immediate reaction to THE HISSING OF SUMMER LAWNS -- both sales figures and contemporary reviews -- are not the final word on the artistic merits of an album.

 

It was shocking to us to find that Janis didn't grasp this. Again, we applaud Janis' art -- "In The Winter" -- we're just surprised she's more about the commerce.

 

But then came the lie as Janis was discussing taping an episode of THE SMOTHERS BROTHERS COMEDY HOUR (CBS) in November of 1967. 

Fortunately, not from Janis' mouth but, sadly, from Lily Tomlin's mouth, "Bill Cosby spoke out against her.  He said that she was probably a lesbian.  He said that to the press." 

 

We love Lily.

 

We don't like racism.

 

And that's what Lily's lie is: Racism.  

 

For the record, Lily wasn't at the taping of THE SMOTHERS BROTHERS COMEDY HOUR.  She wasn't even in the state of California at the time (she was in NYC).  

 

She didn't even know Janis at the time.

 

Now Bill Cosby's never been our favorite person.  We've been here 20 years covering the media and long before the scandals and charges of rape broke, we were very clear that we were not fans of Bill Cosby.  

 

The scandals have broken.

 

Apparently that means anyone can lie about Cosby now.  That he deserves no better because of the assaults against women.  

 

But the truth is the truth.  And it does matter.

 

And when two White women get together to lie about a Black man, then there's a problem.  And they should know that not only are their remarks racist but so is the context in which they make the remarks.

 

Again, Lily didn't witness a damn thing so for her to lie -- are we really going to say, "Oh, well her memory!!"?

 

We're not.  You can be pathetic and make excuses for racism, but we're not going to do that.

 

Bill Cosby is a pioneer and a criminal.  It's complex.  And lying about him doesn't make it any better.

 

How is it a lie?

 

When Janis included the story in her autobiography (page 68), she didn't name Bill Cosby.  

 

And she didn't get around to naming him until his name was complete dirt because of all the women coming forward saying he'd assaulted them.

 

So first off, there's that.

 

Second, read the book (not CRAPAPEDIA which gets it wrong and thinks this happened at a Smothers Brothers club performance):

 

Unfortunately, not everyone saw it that way.  My business advisors landed on me with both feet after I taped THE SMOTHERS BROTHERS COMEDY HOUR.  According to them, a very well-known television star had spied me asleep in Merka's lap during a break, and had proceeded to tell several industry people that I was obviously a lesbian and shouldn't be allowed on national television.

 

After women came forward to accuse Bill of assault in 2014 -- six years after her autobiography was published, Janis came forward with the name in the blind item -- the person she'd hinted about ("well-known television star had spied me" -- Bill was starring in the TV series I SPY at the time she taped her variety show appearance).  

 

Grasp that Janis didn't hear Bill's comments.  Her management -- which was bothered by rumors developing about Janis -- is who told her the story and who attached Bill's name to it.

 

So even Janis doesn't know that Bill's guilty of what she alleges happened.

 

But Lily, in her zeal to take down a Black man, does Janis one better.  He's no loner talking to "several industry people."  According to Lily, who wasn't there, wasn't even in the state when it happened, Bill went around, she now lies, "He said that to the press!"

 

Show us the report, Lily, show us any reporting in 1967 or 1968 where Bill Cosby was quoted about Janis possibly being a lesbian.  

 

There is none. 

 

If there had been, Janis wouldn't have run the tale as a blind item in her 2008 autobiography.  She would have instead named Bill Cosby and cited the outlet (or outlets) that published the stories.

 

Janis has always told this story, since 2008, as to mean that whomever the man was, he was trying to end her TV career and was telling TV execs.  

 

We love Lily, we do.  But when two White women tear into a Black man with lies, we're not going to be silent.

 

Bill may very well have done what Janis thinks he did -- thinks he did.  But not even Janis knows for sure.  And Lily outright lies to back up her friend Janis Ian.

 

What they're doing -- what PBS and AMERICAN MASTERS are letting them do -- is not that far from lynching a Black male because someone said he whistled at a White woman.

 

It's enough to make you lose all hope in documentaries.  

Fortunately, HBO started airing a strong, new documentary last week SURVIVING OHIO STATE. The documentary about the assault and abuse of male athletes at Ohio State for several decades is produced by  Eva Orner (who also directed), David Glasser, George Clooney, Grant Heslov, Joshua Rofe and Steven J. Berger.

 

Survivors talk on camera about how they were abused and assaulted by Dr Richard Strauss.  They talk about it and they talk about how wrestling coach Russ Hellickson and assistant coach Jim Jordan knew about the abuse and laughed at it and looked the other way.  Multiple players discuss how they went to Hellickson and asked him to stand with them as they went public and he said he would.  But Jim wouldn't.  Jim was now US House Rep Jim Jordan.  Suddenly, Russ wanted nothing to do with the men that he had hailed as his sons and Jim was too busy doing things like calling one of the accusers brothers up on the phone and begging him -- in tears -- to come forward and accuse his brother of lying in order to save Jim's reputation.  

 

Watching, we were reminded of a man who was the envy of a huge number of straight men at one point because of whom he was married to. The man who is still alive was a college athlete in another state in an earlier time and he was pimped out to men.  He even managed to turn it into a career starter.  And he was happy to do it because he says he's bi (he's gay).  He'll be dead soon and he'll die a disgrace (he's already disgraced himself once this year).  

 

He was able to get away with his act because of attitudes about gay people.  He didn't seem gay, right?  And athletes are big and strong.

 

Male.

 

Male athletes are meat.  That's the attitude.  They can endure anything. They can take being ripped off by universities that basically own their bodies for four years.  They can take this and that.  And nobody better ever complain because you're not supposed to think, you're supposed to be an animal -- on the field and off. 

"Our coaches knew," one survivor explains in the new documentary.   Another explains, "We had guys complaining about Dr. Strauss to Jim Jordan."

A female coach did take it seriously and did lodge complaints and concerns about what Strauss was doing with the young men.

 

What was he doing?

 

"One of the wrestlers said, 'Dude, why does this guy have to constantly check our nuts, check our dicks."

 Another explains how Jim Jordan at one point says, "If he ever did that to me, I'd snap his neck like a stick of dry balsa wood." 

  

At other times, the future member of Congress downplayed it.  He told one wrestler, "It's Strauss.  You know what he does."

And this came in reply to the wrestler complaining that the team doctor was now in the locker room with the team, taking showers with the team, masturbating in the showers.  

He was allowed a locker in every male team's locker room.  He took several showers a day.  When he would shower, he wouldn't turn to the wall where the nozzle was, he'd put his back to the wall so he could study the young males.  As one survivor explains, "He's showering three times a day.  He's sporting erections.  He's masturbating."

And Jim Jordan and Russ Hellickson looked the other way.  They were supposed to protect the students.  They were legally obligated to protect them -- in loco parentis.  They failed.  And, years later, they won't grow the hell up and admit that they failed these men.

 

They always knew and they looked the other way.

 

A survivor explains he goes to Strauss and tells the doctor, "'My foot is sore.  My foot is sore.'  And the first thing he says to me is 'Drop your trousers'."  Another explains, "I got in there and showed him my bleeding ear and the first thing Dr Strauss said was, 'Drop your shorts'."

 

Documentaries, when they're truthful, can make a difference.  The Ohio State athletes never really had their day in the court of public opinion because this was the first case that really addressed how colleges and universities prey on young men.  They make millions off them but will dump them in a minute due to a sports' injury.  The survivors of Strauss talk about being on scholarships and how Strauss and his 'physicals' decided whether or not they played.  We're not used to seeing the college 'beasts' as potential victims.  They had that wall to break through with this scandal.  

 

Their stories are consistent and address what they witnessed and what they experienced.  

 

That's the great thing about truth -- it usually comes out.  Sometimes it comes out too late.  Sometimes, it's dismissed initially.  But it does usually come out and it slowly leaks into our national consciousness and national conversation.   

 

And some day -- maybe this week, maybe months or even years from now, we firmly believe that Saturday's unprovoked assault will be seen as the crime it truly was.  

 

Media: If MSNBC could just clone Rachel Maddow . . .

 . . . they could do away with their ratings problems.  But, sadly for the network, though Barbra Streisand may have cloned her dog Samantha twice in the last eight years, cloning humans is something that currently still just takes place on screen in films like MICKEY 17.

 

 

 

MSNBC, for those who don't know, is talk TV.  Every hour is pretty much a talk show hour.  Like CNN and FOX "NEWS," it bills itself as a "news network" but barring a huge disaster -- natural or human made -- they're not breaking from their talk show format.  

 

And then the thing about talk shows is that you've got to want to spend an hour with the host.  Oh sure, you hear a certain singer or comedian's going to be on a talk show, you tune in for that episode, but to watch a regular talk show, especially five days a week, you need a host people want to spend time with.

 

And spending time is MSNBC's biggest problem.  The left doesn't need marching orders and they're not hungry for that.  MSNBC regularly forgets that which is how Saturday they got Jen Pskai doing yet another MSNBC segment with  Zohran Kwame Mamdani.

 

Who? is the cry around the country since MSNBC is a national channel and not some over the air broadcast little station that reaches Queens and, on a good day, Brooklyn

Exactly.  

 

These are the candidates in the Democratic Party primary for NYC mayor:  Adrienne Adams, Michael Blake, Andrew Cuomo, Brad Lander,  Zohran Mamdani,  Zellnor Myrie,  Jessica Ramos,  Scott Stringer and Whitney Tilson.  Cuomo is also running as an Independent.  The Working Families Party does not plan to endorse at this time.  Their plan is to go with whomever wins the Democratic Party primary unless it's former New York Governor Cuomo -- in which case they will declare a candidate. The current mayor is Eric Adams and he is a Democrat but he's running as an independent due to numerous scandals and his recent save-your-own-ass relationship with Donald Chump who saw to it that criminal charges against Adam were dropped.  

 

Now there are other candidates but we're focusing on Democrats the primary will be June 24th (early voting has already started and, good news, this will be a ranked choice election).  The story of the Democratic Party primary is also a story of fools and whores -- you decide which -- like  Bill McKibben, Jane Fonda, Rashida I-Love-Donald-Trump Tlaib, Kai Penn, etc.  Why do we say that?  This is an election for the mayor of New York City.  The people listed -- and many others who have endorsed -- do not live in NYC and are not currently working in NYC  It really is none of their business.

 

And it's not MSNBC's business to endorse either. 

 

Kat observed Saturday: 

 

So anyway, we sat down on the couch and turned on the TV.  I'm not interested in MSNBC pimping a candidate for NYC, by the way.  I find that offensive and disgusting when they pull that s**t and pick whomever they want to favorite of the Democratic Party candidates running.  

Jen Psaki, you make it so easy for me not to watch you when you pull that s**t.  

 

To which Mike added:

 

Exactly.  That's why I've never been big on MSNBC.  Since the 2024 election, I've really grown to appreciate Rachel Maddow.  I've always loved Lawrence O'Donnell and Katie Phang.  I've started watching Stephanie Ruhle since the election and enjoy her.  

But I can't take this bulls**t of you're going to use a corporate network to try to influence a political primary by picking your personal favorite Democrat -- a Socialist, by the way, not a Democrat.

 

 Zohran Mamdan got yet another MSNBC segment last week on Monday  

 

 Yet another.  There may be nine candidates in the primary but only one gets invited on MSNBC repeatedly.  

 

This is what former US President Bill Clinton meant when he observed MSNBC was just another side of the coin to FOX "NEWS."

 

They're not informing you because they can never resist the temptation to order you, to propagandize you.  It's something the corporation should have put an end to long, long ago.

 

It's why so many of us on the left reject MSNBC.  

 

On the left, we value education, we value facts.  We're not watching to learn talking points or hear half the story.  

 

Unlike the fright-wing, we're actually educated people.  Many of us went to college, but all of us spent considerable time on our own educating ourselves and continue to spend that time doing so.  

 

MSNBC thinks we're zombies like FOX "NEWS" viewers and that we need our daily marching orders.  That's not only why so many of us don't tune in, it's also why it's so hard for most of us to consume more than one hour a day of MSNBC.  

 

The network provides conditioning and socialization and marching orders and talking points, but it's not real big on actual facts and information.

 

Rachel Maddow is the MSNBC star and when she returned to nightly shows Monday through Friday during Chump's first 100 days of his second term, ratings soared.

 

She's now back on Mondays only (her choice, not the network's) and ratings are, in many ways, worse than they were before the election.

 

That has to do with the nature of the network, yes.  For every Rachel and Lawrence O'Donnell who can make a strong arguments, there are so many lazy whores.  

 

Worse than lazy, they're just unappealing.

 

We've bit our tongue on Jen Psaki who was wrongly given Rachel's time slot.  

 

We've done that because she became very hesitant (and useless) once she assumed Rachel's time slot on every night but Monday.  We know Jen's getting notes constantly to be this or be that or do this or do that.  We know that's happening because of what we hear.  But we also know it because of what we see on screen.  Since taking over those nights, Jen has shrunk, not expanded.  

 

Last week was her worst week ever on MSNBC.  And that started long before Saturday night when she was back to pimping MSNBC's clubhouse candidate for NYC mayor.

 

She's trying to stand out -- good for her -- but failing in skits like let-me-pretend-I'm-still-White-House-spokesperson.  She pretends to answer the questions Propaganda Pig Karoline Leavitt ignores at press briefings.  

 

Are we supposed to be laughing?  Because we're not.

 

It should be funny or at least sharp.

 

But there she is getting meeker and meeker each time she does it.  Her low energy is like a sad barista at Starbucks greeting you with, "We're all out of oat milk."

 

Either up the energy and get an actual POV (point of view) for the segment or drop it.  Currently, it goes nowhere. It makes for the worst segment of far too many of Jen's shows currently.

 

We don't have time or space to outline all the things Jen needs to be doing -- and, again, we're aware that she's hearing feedback from countless consultants already.  

 

But one thing she needs to do is book better guests.

 

Last week, our mouths dropped in horror as she did a segment on artificial information and digital data and blah blah.

 

Our mouths dropped because of the freak show guest.

 

One of us (C.I.) has known Ronan Farrow his whole life.  

WHAT THE F**K HAS HE DONE TO HIS FACE?

 

That's all caps because the whole world should be yelling it.  His face looks like an overstuffed pillow and his addiction to altering his looks now surpasses that of Michael Jackson -- and don't get us started on those eyebrows.  Not since serial plagiarist Gerald Posner have we seen someone associated with the news industry work so hard to destroy their face with so much bad plastic surgery. 

 

TV is a visual medium.  That alone should prevent Ronan Farrow from ever being brought on as a guest again.  

 

But there are other reasons as well including that Ronan already bombed with MSNBC viewers a long, long time ago.

 

Did no one learn from 2014?  That's when Ronan bombed on MSNBC -- when more people were watching THE GOLDEN GIRLS repeats on HALLMARK than watching RONAN FARROW DAILY -- and awful, awful show -- see our  "TV: Another idiot for the idiot box" from March 2014.  A ton of money was spent promoting that show and no one could stand to watch it.  That was due to Ronan and we explained that and his personal habits/problems/ticks that resulted from his childhood (and his mother) and rendered him too odd for TV.  

 

Maybe if he'd stayed with Jon Lovett, he could have addressed those problems.  But Ronan didn't want to deal and screwed up the only real thing he ever had in his personal life just like he screwed up his chance at TV fame.

 

Keep the weirdo away.  People don't need to look at that face before bedtime -- no one wants nightmares.

 

They want facts.

 

Rachel turned a talk show monologue into just that with her own show.  Lawrence was doing that before she got her own show.  Talk shows need openings and need monologues.  But they need to be delivered with confidence.  

 

Confidence is where MSNBC continues to struggle.

 

Joy Reid had it.  And she had ratings and praise.  Coming off an award, MSNBC cancels her.  They have three strange people now filling her slot.  It's not working and it never will.  MORNING JOE (a problem all its own) could recreate early in the evening.  But when Joe Scarborough is on the set, he is the star of the show.  His opinion's the one everyone goes to.  With Joy's replacement show, you have three hosts that aren't that attractive or charismatic and the show's all over the place because the hosts are all over the place.  A show has to have a POV.  Joy provided one.  The ratings have crashed in the weeks since she was fired.

 

A smart network would have snapped her back up within a month, would've called her on the phone and said, "We made a huge mistake and we're adult enough to say that.  Let's negotiate your return."

Along with getting rid of Joy, they got rid of Alex Wagner and Katie Phang.  They also delivered audiences.  People could watch them and feel they were being informed.  

 

That's not happening with most of the line up currently.

 

Why in the world, looking at the ratings, does Chris Hayes still have his time slot?

 

We're not saying fire Chris, we're saying his rating are bad.  Move him to an earlier time slot and put Ari Melber in Chris' current slot and you've got building blocks for a winning prime time line up. 

 

Ari is delivering and those ratings are because he's strong on air.  Do the execs not see that?  An hour of Ari delivers a POV and a strong on camera presence.  Ari -- Rachel substitute -- Lawrence O'Donnell -- Stephanie Ruhle could be a strong evening of programming that won over viewers.

 

Chris is too laid back.  Comfortable?  Snooze worthy.  He's not aggressive enough for prime time and should be moved to an afternoon slot.  

 

Another who should be moved?  Nicole Wallace.  She's got a POV, she wins viewers yet, in terms of time slots, she's stuck in Siberia. 

 

How do the MSNBC suits watch their own network -- they do watch, right? -- and not see that Ari, Nicole and Jonathan Capehart are TV talk show stars.  They have the presence, they have the command.   

 

Building the network around strong hosts and grasping that viewers want facts and information not marching orders would allow MSNBC to finally become a network the country needs.  Such a development would qualify as civic duty and actual journalism.  

 

 

Media: Lulu would explode Hegseth's head

We don't often rush to recommend a TV program because we know someone's going to hate it, but when that someone is vile and disgusting  and prone to making pronouncements (as he did today) like, "DEI is dead," we can't wait to recommend something that will blow his mind. 

 

 

There's never been a worse Secretary of Defense than Pete Hegseth.  This was anticipated.  It wasn't just the fact that he paid off a woman and made her sign an NDA, it wasn't just his firing from one job after another, it wasn't just that he had no supervisory experience, it was those things and so much more combined.  And the Senate realized it.  That's why Miss Sassy JD Vance had to strut into the chamber swinging that fat ass behind him and deliver a tie-breaking vote as Vice President.  No, that doesn't happen with Cabinet nominees.  

 

Attending the  House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense hearing today, we were shocked by so much.  First off, Pete was a TV personality, yes.  And we knew he put in a make up salon at the Pentagon so he can primp and preen.  But we've rarely seen any Cabinet member -- male or female -- in any administration wear so much make up.

 

On the plus side, he had taken a make up tip one of us had recommended:

 

Hegseth is the disaster that never ends which is only a surprise if you never grasped that he had no training for the job of Secretary of Defense.  No wonder he needed to install a beauty salon near his office so he can be camera ready in an instant.  Camera ready is all the TV personality has really ever done.  And hate to be the one to point it out but if you're spending all that money on hair and make up, whomever is doing that make up needs to stop covering the Psoriasis patches on Hegseth's skin.  Use a foundation to cover the entire face because all you're doing is making the patches stand out more by piling make up on them and not the surrounding areas.

 

They did cover the entire face with a foundation.  The Psoriasis patches still shone through.  As did the little herpes sore he had above his right lip.  Up close, you notice just how greasy hair looks and have to wonder if, as he's admitted publicly that he never washes his hands, he also never washes that greasy rat's nest on top of his head?  We marveled over how the right eye brow always shot up higher on his head -- did he practice that as a young child while watching Vivian Leigh in GONE WITH THE WIND? -- while he smiled and frowned with the left side of his mouth -- off balance like one of those yokels who takes a pull from the beer bottle out of the side of his mouth.  

 

Is he hopped up on drugs or does Little Petey Hegseth just need to pee-pee?  

 

We wondered that because he had a very hard time sitting still when speaking.  He would bounce up and down in his chair and weave side to side when speaking.  

 

Early in the hearing, US House Rep Rosa DeLauro noted that military readiness is holistic and includes so much including education.  If it seemed that reality flew right over Hegseth's head, it's because he's not educated.  Educated people may stumble over their words but they don't say the wrong words and then have to stop to find the right word because the words are right there on the paper that they're staring at as they read.  "Include" never reads like "improve" to someone with an actual education.  They never have to stop, if they have basic reading skills, the way Hegseth did repeatedly in his opening statement, to go back and correct a word.  

 

A typical sentence from Hegseth in the hearing -- whether speaking off the top of his head or reading aloud from the paper before him -- would be, "How do we gets hands in -- how do we get systems,  platforms, future capabilities in the hands of war fighters."

 

President John F. Kennedy may have sought the best and the brightest for his Cabinet but Convicted Felon Donald Chump clearly went instead with the worst and the weakest. 

 

And Hegseth is weak, very, very weak. 

 

And we know LULU IS A RHINOCEROS would explode his head.

 

Allison Flom and Jason Flom (the two are daughter and father) are the authors of the popular children's book which has been turned into a film for APPLE+ TV.  The 2018 book is about Lulu who sees herself -- in her mind, in the mirror -- as a rhinoceros but others don't seem to.  

That's who she is, it's what her identity is.  

 

At one point in this musical cartoon, Lulu sings:

 

When somebody looks at me

Like I should fit their expectations visually

They get so busy judging me 

They never get to know me

I know what I need  

 

 Acceptance.  That's the message.  We all need acceptance.  

 

But some, like Hegseth and the ridiculous and hateful US House Rep Mario Rafael Díaz-Balart can't handle it.  So they attack others for who they are.

 

These type of people make life, in the words of Lulu, "much harder than I expected but at least I made a friend."  And she does, she makes friends and they support her.  

 

Again, she makes friends.

 

Hegseth merely repels.   Steve Benen (MADDOW REPORT) notes:

 

Donald Trump sat down with The Atlantic in April, and when the discussion turned to his beleaguered defense secretary, the president offered support — in an awkwardly worded way. “I think he’s gonna get it together,” Trump said about Pete Hegseth.

That might yet be true, but the hapless Pentagon chief apparently hasn’t gotten it together just yet. NBC News reported:

 Among the secretary’s many problems at the Pentagon in his early months was widespread personnel turmoil inside the building, especially in the aftermath of the Signal chat scandal, leaving Hegseth without, among other things, a chief of staff. In late April, the Defense Department moved some officials around in the hopes of bolstering Hegseth’s leadership team, but vacancies remained.

As NBC News’ report noted, these positions have traditionally been seen as “prestigious” and “typically attract multiple qualified candidates,” but “at least three people have already turned down potential roles under Hegseth.”

  

Seems hothead Hegseth still can't do the job he was appointed to.  And seems like the reason for that falls squarely on his shoulders.  Ashleigh Fields (THE HILL) notes:

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) slammed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Monday as hundreds of Marines and thousands of National Guard members were sent to Los Angeles to quell protests.

Newsom said Hegseth’s “a joke, everybody knows it, [he’s] so in over his head, what an embarrassment,” in an interview with Brian Tyler Cohen, a progressive YouTube host.

“That’s this guy’s weakness — masquerading his strength. … I don’t even know he masquerades his strength.”

 

Is Pete Hegseth good at giving head?

 

We ask because he couldn't stop bobbing his head up and down when speaking, he forever looked like he was sucking a cock. 

 

DEI is dead?

 

The lady doth protest too much.

 

Lulu doesn't protest.  Lulu accepts who she is and finds friends who accept her.

 

Imagine being Pete Hegseth.  A grown man who attacks LGBTQ+ people.  A grown man who wears make up in public and attacks LGBTQ+ people.  A grown man who wears make up in public, had them build a beauty salon for him at the Pentagon and attacks LGBTQ+ people.  

 

Yeah, his head would explode if he came across the delightful LULU IS A RHINOCEROS because he can't accept acceptance, he's too busy hating himself and projecting it out on others.