TV: A streaming pile of garbage

Some days the media seems little more than an ever expanding Garbage Island. And like The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the whole world's aware of that fact but chooses to look the other way.

 

 

We were reminded of that as AMAZON served up another trashing of facts regarding the lives of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.  Apparently, it was not enough to mangle the facts and outright lie in BEING THE RICARDOS, now get more garbage with LUCY & DESI begging the question what the hell did Lucille Ball ever do to Jeff Bezos?

The latest garbage is from Amy Poehler -- in fact, it's laughably billed as "An Amy Poehler Film."  After the tepid response to WINE COUNTRY, no one has been clamoring for another Amy Poehler film.  That she thinks this garbage qualifies as either a documentary or a film just reminds everyone of how stupid Poehler truly is.  

Amy wants you to believe in Lucy and Desi as lovers of all time and that what ended the marriage is that Desi drank and worked too hard.

As Lucille herself said on numerous occasions, what endedt he marriage was that Desi couldn't "keep his cock in his pants."  You'll never know that from the 'documentary.'  You'll never know, for example, that their last year of marriage was her sleeping in the main house and him sleeping in the cabana.  You'll never know how his cheating destroyed her trust in people and effected everything that followed.

Lucille Ball was not Lucy Ricardo and Desi Arnaz was not Ricky.  They were a TV couple onscreen.  They were a married couple off screen who had plenty of problems before they ever shot an episode of their famous sitcom.  His cheating is why she wanted the sitcom in the first place, to get him off the road so she could keep an eye on him.  Before the sitcom even started, she'd already called in a favor from Bob Hope who made Desi the bandleader on Hope's radio show for NBC to keep Desi off the road.  

These are facts and they are facts that Amy chooses to ignore reminding us of that awful appearance a decade ago on THE MAJORITY REPORT (AIR AMERICA RADIO) where she babbled on about Bully Boy Bush with no definitive remarks and couldn't condemn the Iraq War or say that it was wrong.  Current events, you understand, were just too difficult for her.  (They weren't too hard for her when she devoted an episode of her show PARKS AND RECREATION to attack Hugo Chavez.)  People who find facts challenging should never aspire to make a documentary.

Did Desi love Lucy?  If you're making a documentary about them today, you should explore that.  But you can't just say that they loved each other and you can't lie and say they broke up because he drank too much booze and he worked too many hours.  Lucille boozed and worked too, those were mutual habits they both shared.  The dividing point was his inability to be faithful to her.

Everyone watching Amy's garbage who knows anything about the two actors knows that Desi cheated.  The 2003 CBS TV movie LUCY didn't shy from the topic anymore than Lucy ever did.  It makes Amy uncomfortable?  Well then she doesn't need to make a documentary about a couple whose marriage breaks up because of cheating.  

Desi may very well have loved Lucille.  He married her.  He had two children with her.  But he had hundreds of women he slept with while he was married to Lucille.  

We're not slamming him for it.  We weren't married to him.  As an entertainer, he provided us with a lot of joy.  He was a TV pioneer who understood the medium better than anyone else in the 1950s and he changed everything as a result.

 

We have praised his work and his insight many, many times and, as long as we cover TV, we will continue to praise him.  

But we're not covering his marriage or how faithful he was.  Amy Poehler made the decision to do a documentary about his marriage to Lucille Ball.  She is required to cover it as a result.  

Instead, she's ignored facts and trashed the very real lives of two people. 

 

"With Lucy and Desi, Amy Poehler Gets to the Heart of a Marriage" insists THE NEW YORK TIMES.

 

Well that's the same paper that used lies to sell the illegal Iraq War.

But if a marriage was plagued by infidelity and if that is what ended it, then it's not a story of a marriage unless it includes those very public facts.

It's not much of a documentary at all.  People who are paid to write about it, who presumably watched it, write garbage like this:

 

 

They bought RKO, the largest independent movie studio in Hollywood, and renamed it Desilu, where they produced some of the most successful television series of the 20^th century, from the original “Star Trek” to “Mission: Impossible” and “The Andy Griffith Show.”

Wrong.  Wrong.  And wrong.

 

DESILU did not produce THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW.  DANNY THOMAS ENTERPRISES produced that with MAYBERRY ENTERPRISES and CBS.  Let's not erase the accomplishments of an early Lebanese-American TV pioneer.  The sitcom was filmed on  DESILU soundstages.  

If DESILU had produced THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW, Lucille would never have sold the studio.  DESILU had bled money since I LOVE LUCY went off the air.  THE LUCY SHOW and THE UNTOUCHABLES were their only big hits when Lucy and Desi ran DESILU.  Which brings us to the other two lies.  Lucille and Desi did not develop STAR TREK and MISSION IMPOSSIBLE.  Lucille had bought Desi out of the company in 1962.  Lucille was the one who supported STAR TREK and MISSION IMPOSSIBLE and MANNIX.  She did so in the final 12 months of running DESILU (Desi had been gone from DESILU for over five years by that point)  Those three shows were multi-season programs and had she found them two years earlier, it's doubtful she would have sold DESILU when she did.

Over and over, Amy offers bogus facts and confuses viewers.  That doesn't qualify as high praise for a documentary.  The only real purpose it is illuminating that, as we told you, Aaron Sorkin's BEING THE RICARDOS was nothing but lies regarding the press not covering Lucille during the attempt to label her a "Red" (multiple papers are shown carrying the story).

More garbage was to be found on HBO MAX with OUR FLAG MEANS DEATH -- a comedy series that is never all that funny and, when it is funny, it's not via the 13 regulars but with the recurring characters (played by Leslie Jones and Fred Armisen).That main cast?  Not talented and a real eye sore.  Which brings us to what NETFLIX left out on the curb for pick up: THE GUARDIANS OF JUSTICE.  It should have been called WHAT A LOAD OF UGLY.  And this is a series that Jane Seymour stars in so imagine how much worse it would be without her.  Ugly and unappealing.  That's what you're left with as one hero is on the phone with another and the male hero goes on and on about how lonely he is while anyone streaming screams back, "And pathetic!  Don't forget pathetic!"  When they talk of bringing comics to movies and television, you really aren't expecting CATHY and certainly not CATHY done in male drag.  

Adi Shankar's the creator (and director and . . .) of this garbage and he's apparently still paying the karmic debt -- and will be his whole life -- for his work on THE GREY and the purchase of four dead wolves to serve as props and two more to serve as food for the cast.  Shakir weaves his way through forms such as live action, animation and claymation demonstrating that, despite failing to master any one form, he has a bit of knowledge -- a tiny bit of knowledge -- of many.

 

AMAZON's THE BOYS PRESENTS: DIABOLICAL is not 100% garbage.  It's not 100% anything. The eight episode animated series may be gobbled up by devotees of the live action series THE BOYS or it may not be.  It  certainly won't reach out beyond that core group.  In the initial episode, it wants to be ITCHY AND SCRATCHY as done by THE SIMPSONS with a nod to TV FUN HOUSE.  That's more homage than Mel Brooks ever packed into a single project and it's too much for the series to pull off.  Each episode follows its own path and isn't connected to the others in any real way.  So, for example, if Awqwafina's tale of her talking poop doesn't delight you, one of the other seven episodes might.  Or might not.  The life lesson appears to be, when your friends treat you like s**t, take a s**t and make that your friend.  Regardless, nothing in this series is cohesive and, after you view all eight episodes, you'll realize how much time AMAZON wasted on a quirk when they should have been using the animated series to build the live action series up.

 

We could go on listing the garbage but let's instead wind down by noting two offerings you might want to catch.  

 

THE TOURIST (produced by BBC ONE and STAN) is a limited series airing on HBO MAX.  It's a thriller and it lives up to that name.  Jamie Dornan has never been more appealing or skilled than as the amnesiac Elliot Stanley who can't remember anything but knows someone is trying to kill him.  The entire cast is excellent but talent demands that Shalom Brune-Franklin especially be noted.  Jamie is a talented actor whose looks sometimes distract from that fact.  THE TOURIST continues his upward trajectory and is a solid follow up to last year's high points in drama (BELFAST) and comedy (BARB AND STAR GO TO VISTA DEL MAR).

 

HBO MAX also has the other strong offering: KIMI.  Yes, another movie about AI or voice controlled personal assistant, as some prefer to call them.  But this isn't 2020's SUPERINTELLIGENCE (which we loved) or 2019's JEXI (which was funny in spots).  It most obviously differs from those two in that it's not a comedy.  It's a thriller which finds director Steven Soderbergh tapping into the Alan J. Pakula vein.   Ever wonder what happens when you tell Siri or Alexa or whomever that the result wasn't helpful or when you stump them? Zoe Kravitz plays a woman whose job it is to resolve errors and she listens to what people asked or requested.  In doing so, she believes she hears a woman who is in danger.  This leads her down a very dark (and exciting) road.

Watching it, we were reminded that US President Joe Biden is using Ukraine to try to wipe away his impotency with regards to COVID-19 and that a lot of people, who should be smarter, are going along with it because they're tired of realizing how truly helpless they are.  How helpless they are and how -- as long as they count on crooked and corrupt politicians to rescue them -- helpless they will remain.  Computer science coined the phrase "garbage in, garbage out" -- who knew it would also be an apt description of our political system in the US?

 

 

Truest statement of the week

There is a tendancy on the left that's been exploited by the intelligence community where they exploit people's emotions and they exploit this need to feel good about being on the right and moral side -- which is a good thing: to want to be a good person.  But what happens is, it's not coming from a place of actually wanting to get to the bottom of the situation, to get to the truth.  It's coming from a place of wanting to feel self-righteous about this.  And so what happens is the intelligence community has been exploiting that.

 

-- Fiorella Isabelle on THE CONVO COUCH below.

 

 

Truest statement of the week II

From Hunter Biden’s laptop to influence peddling to financial dealings, the media has presented a fairly unified front dismissing allegations and blacking out coverage. As I previously wrote, the Biden family made an elephant disappear on stage and the media was invested in the trick. The media has largely allowed President Joe Biden to repeat without challenge that that his son did “nothing wrong”  . . .  despite many of us writing for years that what he did was very wrong indeed. Yet, it is becoming increasingly hard to spin out of this scandal as David Weiss, the U.S. attorney for the District of Delaware, continues to call people before a federal grand jury to testify on Hunter Biden.

For over two years, Weiss has been investigating tax and financial issues connected to Hunter Biden’s foreign dealings. Biden has engaged in some of the most open and raw influence peddling schemes in history. That itself is “wrong,” to use his father’s standard, but not necessarily criminal. The Biden family has long been accused of such influence peddling generating millions in windfall payments. Even diplomats complained that his actions during the Obama/Biden Administration were setting back anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine.

The problem is not that Hunter Biden allegedly shook down foreign countries and companies for millions. The problem is that he may not have reported or paid taxes on all of that largess.

Weiss is calling witnesses to testify on Hunter’s lavish lifestyle and spending habits, including a former stripper who Hunter impregnated. Lunden Roberts spent years fighting to get child support, even as Joe Biden was running for president. A court finally forced Hunter to support his child.

Also called was ex-girlfriend, lingerie entrepreneur Zoe Kestan. She testified for five hours on Tuesday, the New York Post reported. Kestan reportedly detailed how Hunter would withdraw thousands of dollars and spend wildly during their relationship.

What is striking about these witnesses is that they are the type of witnesses that poison both grand juries and trial juries against a defendant. Such lavish spending details were used by the Justice Department against figures like Paul Manafort. More importantly, the testimony appears directed at showing that Hunter had far greater income than reported. That is a curious effort if Biden has “come clean” on simple reporting errors for taxes.

 

 

Jonathan Turley, "Word to the Weiss: Why the Delaware U.S. Attorney is Still Calling People Before a Grand Jury on Hunter Biden" (JONATHANTURLEY.ORG).

 

 

A note to our readers

Hey --

Sunday night on the west coast still..


Let's thank all who participated this edition which includes Dallas and the following:

The Third Estate Sunday Review's Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess and Ava,
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude,
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man,
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
Trina of Trina's Kitchen, Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ,
Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends,
Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts,
and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub.

And what did we come up with? 

 

• Truest statement of the week
• Truest statement of the week II
• Editorial: Wearily, they roll along
• TV: Cringe-worthy TV
• Ty's Corner
• Tweet of the week
• Stopping World War III !
• NAOMI (Marcia)
• SNL lets John Mulaney pretend his persona isn't over
• ENDGAME? (Marcia)
• SUPERMAN AND LOIS (Mike)
• Peacemaker season one finale (Trina)
• BIG SKY? (Betty)
• The Cleaning Lady (Rebecca)
• AMERICAN DAD (Kat)
• THE GOLDBERGS (Mike)
• This edition's playlist

 

Peace.

 

-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Editorial: Wearily, they roll along

US President Joe Biden is now a threat to the world as his actions risk all out world war.  He wants to bring Russians ''to their knees."  What did Russians do?

We'll come back to it.

But look how quickly they all rush to fold and do his bidden.  Less than 24 hours after observers noted that Canada was still allowing Russian flights to land, there is a quick push to end those flights.

Failed drug addict and cheating husband John Mulaney 'hosted' SNL last night because not many other outlets will have him -- his whole act was built around what a great guy and loving husband he was -- you know, back before he cheated his now ex-wife repeatedly?  He wasn't up to an opening monologue so they ended up doing government propaganda in support of war.

That passes for 'activism' and 'informed.'

The reality is that the so-called left in terms of little media and CODESTINK and the others really haven't done s**t since 2008.  Now they don't even know how to stand up if they wanted to and, judging by last Friday's DEMOCRACY NOW broadcast, they don't want to stand up.  

They're all eager to pimp war on Russia.

Why?

It's what the US government wants and has wanted since Barack Obama was in the White House.  This is a long plan coming to fruition and yet the corporate media -- and much of the 'independent' media -- wants to pretend like it started last week.

They're a bunch of liars and they have blood on their hands.

No to war -- it's that simple.

TV: Cringe-worthy TV

Was Springer this bad?  That's what we had to wonder last week as Sabby Sabs showed up to produce cringe-worthy TV.  If you're hoping for the piece where we eviscerate Sabby, this isn't it.

What do you cover?

If you're covering anything, you have to make determinations.  You have to stage your area.  You have to decide what's worth it to you.

For us?

We take a pass on many things.  

On critiquing our friends?  

No.  In fact, we've lost a friend -- and angered many more -- over what we've written here.  If we're covering it, we're covering it.  And there have been mistakes.  Like when we were covering an ABC drama and our friend, the show runner, called to tell us that we'd just outed an actor.  Huh?  We thought X number of actors on the show were out.  It was X-1 -- and some 'fans' think we can't do math!  We knew four were gay and we thought four were out but only three were out.  On that, we did go back in and change it by removing reference to 1 being gay.  Normally, we don't change what goes up here but having already been accused of outing Neil Patrick Harris (really?) and Wentworth Miller (maybe), we weren't in the mood to rack up more charges.

If we're covering you -- and you're a friend -- we're covering you.  And some friends who have asked us to cover their shows have lived to regret it. 

But we draw our lines and pick our fights and determine what we will cover and what we won't cover.

And PAM & TOMMY?

We took a hard pass.  

And we did so for a number of reasons.  First, why is anyone interested in a series about a sex tape?  We have no idea but one reason people would be encouraged to put time and effort into making this series and then airing it would be to discredit Pamela Anderson.  She has been a strong and vocal supporter of Julian Assange.

As the US government brings more pressure to bear on Julian (and The First Amendment), forgive us if we don't see altruism or mere profit as the primary motives for HULU's series.  

Another reason we took a pass?  Pamela doesn't want the series made.  

We knew Aretha Franklin.  Some of her family were very public that they were behind (supported) Jennifer Hudson's film but were opposed to the mini-series Cynthia Erivo made.  We planned to pass on both in terms of reviewing.  Then we ended up seeing RESPECT and needed to review it.  How to make us review your product?  Lie.  Lie and fool people and we'll be outraged and cover it.  Jennifer gave a strong performance in a hideous movie.  It had no real point -- drama and three act structures apparently escaped everyone working on the film.  But what angered us was the stupidity in pimping the lie that AMAZING GRACE was Aretha's best selling album.  It was not.  "Double platinum!!!!!"  That doesn't mean two million copies of AMAZING GRACE were sold.  Two million were not sold.  Up until the 1990s, the 1972 album was only at gold status.  That means half-a-million copies . . . if . . . it's a single disc album.  AMAZING GRACE is a double-disc album and so the 'double platinum' on a double disc album just means it sold a million copies.  Every now and then a multi-disc set will come out and the industry will use it to educate on this fact but few seem to pay attention even then.  WHO'S ZOOMIN' WHO and THE VERY BEST OF ARETHA FRANKLIN VOL. 1 have both sold as much (and probably more) than AMAZING GRACE.  The lie tells the story the filmmakers want -- Aretha back in church!!! Men do love that, don't they, look at the abomination Stephen Spielberg made of THE COLOR PURPLE by doing just that to Shug.  But it's not reality.

And it's not reality that the album was a gospel music album either.  The film RESPECT doesn't clue the audience in on that.  Another lie.  Aretha was a great singer.  People paid for her singing.  Her singing.  Not for tracks she didn't sing on and AMAZING GRACE features many tracks without Aretha.  Another thing, a music experience usually can't recover from spoken word interludes, another problem for AMAZING GRACE.  She's goes on to do the same thing in 1987 with ONE LORD, ONE FAITH, ONE BAPTISM.  Had adult Aretha ever wanted to record an actual gospel music album, it might have sold very well.  But we don't know how it would have sold because she never recorded an album which was nothing but gospel music.

RESPECT piled one lie on after another and still managed to be boring as hell. 

Not long ago, we bumped into one of Aretha's relatives -- not any of the children who objected to season three of GENIUS where Cynthia Ervio played Aretha -- and her positive praise for GENIUS led us to check it out.  It offered actual drama and it presented Aretha as a real person.  We enjoyed it.

But just as we tried to respect the children of Aretha's feelings, we try to respect Pamela's feelings.  Why was the mini-series made?  

We talked before about how it could be used to ha-ha Pamela and to dismiss her statements of support for Julian.  But why on another level?

Meaning, why does this need to be made?  Was there some great outcry for a behind-the-scenes on the sex tape?  

Nope.  It wasn't needed and it wasn't really wanted.  And it is a part of Pamela's personal life.  We're not saying it shouldn't be made.  We're the last to ever say that.  But we are saying that it hurts someone's feeling, it's no work of art (as the ads make clear, as the giggles of the penile prosthetic make clear) and there was no historical point to it.  

So we ignored it and focused on other things that we felt were worthy of praise, or important, or worth noting (to praise or to call out).

This past week, Sabby focused on Nick Brana.

And it was cringe worthy viewing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the end of the long interview, Nick went off screen (replacing himself for a moment with an avatar) and (we assume) cried.  

Our hearts went out to him.

Sabby had been asking if rumors meant that the Movement for a People's Party would be better off without him as national chair?

Nick started the political party.  And he tried to answer Sabby's question -- after a great many tough ones had already come before -- but was clearly struggling not to cry.  

It was hard to watch.  We had to put it on pause for a moment.

Sabby -- unlike the five women noted at the end of last week's piece -- actually believes in something beyond the corporate duopoly.  So this topic matters to her immensely.  But as she spoke about state level and members being represented, honestly, we did recall that it was the week before where she had a Green Party member on and was saying that Jesse Ventura should have been the party's presidential nominee.  What is it about YOUTUBE personalities that they keep insisting that someone who would not run for the nomination of a political party should be gifted with it?  How is that democracy?  And having argued that position on a previous show, how did that jibe with some of the questions she was now asking of Nick.

It came off, honestly, like badgering.

Guess what?  Interviews don't have to be soft balls.  Sabby may be playing devil's advocate in either of the two instances we've cited or in only one or in none.

She's allowed to define her style just as much as she's allowed to define her scope.

Equally true, she took the issues at play seriously.  What Mikea was wrongly praised for pretending to do with Joe Biden regarding Tara Reade's charges, Sabby actually did.

Nick was accused of inappropriate behavior.

 

Charges like that need to be taken seriously and praise to Sabby for doing that.

However, with Tara, she came forward.  

In fact, Tara's still coming forward and was on HARD LENS MEDIA last week speaking with Kit Cabello and Daniel Luepker.

She has a funny idea of what constitutes a truth-teller.  In her HLM media appearance, she finally talked about what we've been talking about since April of 2020 -- how Time's Out put a media hit out on her.  And she wants you to know Ryan Grim's a truth teller.  Funny, though, we never heard this from Ryan, now did we?

We noted what was going on.  Ryan knew what we were noting.  A friend spoke to him about it and multiple people contacted him via e-mail and Twitter but he wasn't interested, now was he?

Tara seems like a good person but she doesn't have a clue.  

 

Every time we watch an interview with her, all we hear is Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman in BATMAN RETURNS saying, "You make it so easy, don't you?  Always waiting for some Batman to save you."  

Because that's her and that's, sadly, far too many women who've survived victimization.

She needs Ryan to be a hero so she can feel okay.  It's some crap about playing a damsel in distress.  She should have long ago berated him for so many things -- including failing to follow up on the claims that her position as a legal expert in trials was being challenged. 

We do like Tara, we just wish she wasn't so damn stupid.  That also involves her hero worship of Rose McGowan.  We like Rose.  We do not mistake her for a functioning human being nor do we play into that game.  To not know Rose is hurting is to be willfully blind.

To not know that Tara is damaged is to buy into her lie that she's smart and she knows what's going on and always has.

Tara, just stop pretending.  

Life will a lot easier for you if you stop pretending.

Your notions of politics are still in the same limited range that they were before you came out about Joe Biden assaulting you.  The 'solutions' you offer in interviews are nonsense and the sort of b.s. conventional wisdom that serves no one.   We'd rather you admit you have no answer about something than repeatedly mouthing tired cliches that you attempt to pass off as insight.

You're in pain.  Talk about the pain.  Don't try to pretty it up or to put a band aid on it.  What was done to you has been done to others (women and men) and it will be done to others.  If you really want to be of service, help people by talking about this.  People who speak out get attacked  Acknowledge that and speak to it.  That's so much more important than how you think we can change the world, one vote at a time.  

 

Back to Nick.

 

Sabby compared what's going on there with Tara Reade.  And we understand there are many reasons to make that comparison.  Chief among them?  She's trying to do a job.  Mika wasn't.  Mika acted tough but had no follow ups.

 

Nick was being accused of some bad things.  Sabby felt the need to make clear that she was there to ask questions, real ones.  Hard ones.  

 

But the accuser isn't Tara.

 

Tara came forward.  She stepped out in public.  She was attacked and smeared for it.  And she needs to talk about that -- seriously and in depth so that others know what to expect and what to be prepared to combat.  We're still the only ones who noted that unlike NPR, PBS, THE NEW YORK TIMES, MSNBC, et al, CSPAN actually put the issues regarding Tara charges to a survivor's advocate.  

 

Nick's accuser hasn't come forward.  

 

Unless, the accuser is Jordan Chariton in drag, the accuser remains hidden.

 

Bob Dylan's been accused of assaulting a young girl back in the sixties.  The story makes no sense and we're less inclined to believe it because the woman hides behind a lawyer.  Supposedly, she wants some form of justice.  But apparently wants it without gaining it in public.  We don't believe her.

 

We're not Tara Reade, we don't mouth slogans like 'believe all women.'  Anyone can lie, gender has nothing to do with it.  

 

The woman in question, the one accusing Nick, has elected not to come forward.  She wants to make charges from the darkness, in hiding.  At some point, the charge was rape.  At some point, it was something else.  

 

Sabby wanted receipts and we thought that honestly derailed her interview.

She knew he didn't have them.  He couldn't have them.  Sabby's asking the accused to provide proof of innocence and that's now how our system works.  She was also asking for him to back up this or that statement and he referred to others that she should be speaking to.  He hadn't brought along witnesses.  It was all very frustrating to watch.  

As for her question about whether he should resign?

No.

He shouldn't resign.  If he feels he's innocent -- and he currently is -- then why should he step down?

We encourage every woman and every man who has been assaulted to step forward.  But we do know some who step forward are not telling the truth.

We also know that every one accused has a right to defend themselves.  And should.  Also true, Sabby (again) has the right to do any interview she wants and to do it any way she wants.

So did David Letterman.  When people hear of the moment Cher was on his show for the first time and revealed that she had avoided him because she thought he was an ass, they think ha-ha and don't get what Cher's talking about because so much time has gone by.  He was an ass to Cher and others because of rudeness to guests -- mainly women.  There was the time Nastaja Kinski was reduced to tears, for example.  She was not fluent in English and she did not know what Dave was talking about or why he was making fun of her but, by the end of the interview, she certainly was aware that he was mocking her in front of an audience.  Valerie Perrine shows up and is an amusing guest that the studio audience loves.  She leaves the studio and is shocked when later on she watches the broadcast and discovers that after she left, she was dubbed "The Divine Perrine" in a mocking manner as Dave and another guest trashed her.  It was this sort of thing -- mocking people who weren't fluent in English and mocking someone after they were out of the studio -- that led to the image of Dave being an "ass."

Sabby can be whatever she wants but she should be prepared that right now people could consider her a bit of an ass.

After her questions and the way she presented them have made her guest cry, she then goes after his father.  In what world?  If you want to be an ass, that's the way you do it.  And don't pretend that you're doing journalism because you waited until the very end of the interview to bring up his father.

We're often called bitches for what we write here.  We're fine with that.  We can live with it.  This is how we want to do what we do here.  We're just wondering if "ass" is how Sabby wants to be seen.

But mainly, we're troubled by the segment that caused tears.  Specifically, we're bothered by the question of Nick stepping down.  If Nick's innocent -- and Sabby goes to great pains to insist that she knows nothing of guilt or innocence -- why should he step down?  What message does that send -- both in this case and in subsequent ones?  As it stands now, Nick appears to be the victim so what is served by his stepping down due to a false smear that was told in order to . . . force him out?

That just don't make sense and may be the most cringe-worthy moment of the entire interview.

 

Ty's Corner

As I spent the weekend looking at NETFLIX's self-reported top ten and noting that Tyler Perry's A MADEA HOMECOMING has been number one since Friday, I was reminded that the apparently hugely popular DON'T LOOK UP barely stayed in the top ten.  

Here's DEADLINE (via YAHOO NEWS) on Jennifer Lopez' MARRY ME:

Anecdotally, the studio has said that Marry Me, which cost an inexpensive $23M, was the No. 1 title on Peacock on both Friday and Saturday, though it provided no figures to support that claim. We hear that there were “ingestion” problems when it came to Samba TV monitoring smart TV viewership for the movie over the weekend. That usually means that the studio doesn’t want the streaming numbers out there.

Where was that same skepticism -- needed skepticism -- when DEADLINE was just parroting the claims NETFLIX made regarding DON'T LOOK UP?  

OZARK has been in the top ten for weeks now on NETFLIX.  If that top ten is accurate -- if -- then a lot more people in North America have watched OZARK than ever watched the crap-ass DON'T LOOK UP.

It's time for people to be rightly skeptical of the claims NETFLIX makes when campaigning for Oscar nominations.

 

Tweet of the week

Margaret Kimberley on the Chicken Little of The Commentariat, Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon

 Ukraine has support in congress, the corporate media and with academics like Ms. St. Julian-Varnon. I have never seen so much propaganda created on behalf of one country in my life. They lit up the empire state building in blue and yellow FFS. What is she talking about?