Tuesday, July 02, 2024

THE NEW YORKER's Zza Zza Zza Remnick thinks someone should retire

Aging socialite David Remnick, Zza Zza Zza to his closest friends, wanted to join a media cry: Joe Biden needs to step aside from the 2024 race for president.  

This led to THE DAILY BEAST's "Why I Told Biden to Quit, by New Yorker’s David Remnick: 'Breakthrough Moment'" by "media reporter" Corbin Bolies.  If you're not getting what a gasbag topic this is, grasp that THE DAILY BEAST has never offered "Why I supported and sold The Iraq War by NEW YORKER's David Remnick."  

 

Even CRAPAPEDIA makes time to note some of Zza  Zza Zza Remnick's support for the illegal war:

 

 In 2003, Remnick penned an editorial in The New Yorker in the lead-up to the Iraq War saying "the United States has been wrong, politically and morally, about Iraq more than once in the past... but... a return to a hollow pursuit of containment will be the most dangerous option of all."[17] In the months leading up to the war, the magazine also published several articles connecting Saddam Hussein to al-Qaida, often relying on unnamed sources, or simply the claims of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, as evidence. The magazine received some criticism for their journalism during this period.[18] The claims that Hussein and al-Qaida had a close operational relationship were false, as confirmed by numerous sources including a U.S military study in 2008.[19]

 


Nor has anyone ever pressed him on his non-stop lies as a 'journalist' -- a pattern began in high school when he would write various articles for the school paper under a long list of fake names.  Or for that matter how he justifies a yearly salary of over a million dollars as THE NEW YORKER struggles to stay afloat?

His salary has allowed him to buy a lot of expensive suits.  Sadly, the suits never fit and don't just swallow him, they also make him look like a model in a seventies TV commercial for the perfume Charlie.



Kind a now, kind of wow . . . if it was 1976.


Which brings up the other issue.   Zza Zza Zza Remnick used to get mileage out of gal-palling it with Sarah Jessica Parker but even she avoids him these days.  Shouldn't he be leaving the magazine?  He's lost his celebrity pals, he's run off readers, he'll be 66 this year and he's been editor since 1998. 


Instead of suggesting Joe Biden should step down, Zza Zza Zza Remnick should be planning his own graceful -- but very belated -- exit.


 

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

1summerread

 

As we did in 2021 and 2023, we're attempting to again increase book coverage in the community. After a review posts, we try to do a discussion with the reviewer.  This go round, we're talking with  Rebecca and Marcia about their  "Boze Hadleigh's Hollywood Lesbians: from Garbo to Foster" and "'hollywood lesbians: from garbo to foster' by boze hadleigh" So you both enjoyed the book.


Marcia: Yes.

Rebecca: Absolutely.

Marcia: In our summer read, we try to go for something fun and dishy that, if you were taking a vacation during summer on the coast, you'd carry with you to the beach.

Rebecca: Or poolside!  And we like to read books about the world we live in.  So many are in denial and they're just idiots.  What's her name, Jennifer Grant.  She's staring down sixty, claiming to be an actress -- ha ha, yeah right, it didn't happen, it's not happening -- and she goes around insisting Daddy wasn't gay.  The gayness was the best thing about Cary Grant.  You don't want us talking about his politics, trust me. Most of the media, including VANITY FAIR got to the reality about Cary Grant's sexuality decades ago.  But there's Jennifer rushing around lying constantly.  

Marcia: Boze's first book had an interview with Cary Grant.  Cary was a closet case.  In this one, he's looking at lesbians.  Boze is a journalist and he did interviews with many actresses and director Dorothy Azner.  The agreement was that the interviews couldn't be published until after their deaths -- or the parts about same-sex affairs couldn't be.  

Rebecca: So he interviews Nancy Kulp, Marjorie Main, Sandy Dennis, Patsy Kelly, Agnes Moorhead, Capucine, Judith Anderson and others.  He also writes about some that he didn't interview such as Jodie Foster and Greta Garbo.

Marcia: As i note in my review, the section on Jodie Foster was deeply depressing.  I had no idea she was such a conservative and so rejecting of humanity.  Her comments about what she'd do if she saw a wounded bird -- comments made in an interview with THE LOS ANGLES TIMES -- were horrifying. 

 Until the book, you had no idea how non-left her views were?

 

Marcia: No.  Boze made connections I missed.

 

She ran off support in the industry when she spent years trying to make a film where she would play -- and redeem -- Nazi figure Leni Riefenstahl.  It was a film people didn't want to see.  And a film that the industry didn't want to see made.  It would have to note the Nazi's trip to American which began in New York and found the New York papers charmed with and her printing her praise of Hitler.  She was less well received on the west coast.  Among other things, The Hollywood Anti-Nazi League took out ads noting, "There is no room in Hollywood for Leni Reifenstahl.  In this moment when hundreds of thousands of our brethren await certain death, close your doors to all Nazi agents."  


Marcia: I was honestly not aware of that.


Yeah, she spent years trying to get that crap made.  Early on, she was seduced by the warped thinking of Nietzsche.  It's why she's often not much of an actress and why she's a lousy director in everything.  She over intellectualizes everything and that can really harm a performance.  It absolutely destroys film because a good film tells a story, it's not setting aside a story in an attempt  to be an intellectual exercise.  Rebecca?


Rebecca: I found Ann B. Davis repugnant.  She plays dumb in her interview at times then will talk about this or that -- especially other closeted actresses -- and when Boze wants to center on her own love life, she panics and just has to get off the phone, has to, has to.  She's a real bitch too.  I have no idea wht Robert Reed did to her -- if anything -- but her desire to promote his career ending when the sitcom THE BRADY BUNCH went off the air in 1974 is not only at odds with all the Brady revivals -- the TV films, the variety show, the 90s sitcom -- it's also at odds with the fact that no one in the cast got an Emmy nomination after the show was cancelled  -- except Robert Reed who got three Emmy nominations -- for MEDICAL CENTER, for RICH MAN POOR MAN and for ROOTS.  In fact, ROOTS was one of the biggest TV events of the 20th century.  Closeted Ann B. Davis obviously couldn't deal with reality.  But Patsy Kelly, Nancy Culp, Sandy Dennis, Judith Anderson, etc were great.  I really enjoyed the book and look forward to a time when books like this aren't necessary because actors and actresses no longer feel they have to be forced into the closet.  


Marcia?

Marica: Rebecca's right.  That would be a better world, a much better world.  This was a good summer read and the book will make you think.

 

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

Previous book discussions: 


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

"Books (Ruth, Jim, Ava and C.I.)"

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

 "Books (Kat, Ava and C.I.)"

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

"Book Talk (Stan, Ava and C.I.)"

"Book Talk (Dona, Ava and C.I.)"

"Book Talk (Ty, Ava and C.I.)

 "Book Talk (Mike, Ava and C.I.)"

"Book Talk (Stan, Rebecca, Ava and C.I.)"

"Book Talk (Mike, Ava and C.I.)"

"Book Talk (Ann, Marcia, Trina, Ava and C.I.)"

"Book Talk (Elaine, Ava and C.I.)"

 

 

I Know This Much Is True: We Are Cheese (Dona)

Trina regularly covers food at her site and Ann often grabs the topic at her site.  We do a TEST Test Kitchen feature here.  But that's not what this is.


Cheese, we all love cheese -- or most of us.


A toasted square sandwich cut into two triangle halves, showing a cross-section. There is a layer of melted cheese in the sandwich.


Growing up, my mom made the best grilled cheese sandwiches and then I got old enough to use the microwave.  At which point, after school grilled cheese sandwiches were whenever I wanted.  I'd make them for myself and my younger brother in the microwave.  I'd toast four slices of bread in the toaster.  Then I'd use a plate and put two pieces of toast down on it, drop two slices of cheese on -- one on each piece of toast -- and top each with the last two pieces of toast.  


I'd put them next to each other and not on top of each other.  Why?  The bottom slices would be moist.  No, I didn't like that but I wasn't going to give the bad one to my brother and I wasn't self-centered enough to grab the best one for myself.  So I'd make it that way so that we both got the same sandwich.


I'd put the plate in the microwave and cook for one minute.  That was enough.


And because it was easy to make and I could do it myself, I was excited and didn't really care or notice that the taste was less than what I'd become used to.


In the last month, I've learned another way to cook it.


I was on the phone with my mom and noting I wish I could grilled cheese like she did for my kids.  She reminded me that she made it in the skillet on the oven and that she used butter.  So I tried that, dropping butter in then putting two pieces of bread (non-toasted) in the skillet, topping each with a slice of cheese and then each with a second piece of bread.  After browning the bottom slice of bread, I add more butter and flip each sandwich over.  


And it actually works.  However, two a skillet is rather slow and I lack the patience my mother had and has.  


Lesson learned: Do not use an air fryer.  


I thought that might make it quicker and I could fit two in my air fryer basket.  


Even buttering the outside of the bread did not help.  The bread was still dry, like toast, and flavorless, like toast.


Title of the piece is a riff on Wally Lamb -- his books I KNOW THIS MUCH IS TRUE and WE ARE WATER.




Book list

books

 

 

Books reviewed in the community this year.


1) "J Randy Taraborrelli's awful Beyonce book" -- Ann reviews a book on Beyonce.

 

2)  "Sheila Weller's Carrie Fisher: A Life On The Edge" -- Marcia reviews a puff piece bio.

 

3)   "Sheet Pan Fajita Shrimp in the Kitchen" -- Trina reviews a cookbook.

 

4) "Container Gardening (book review), Idiot of the Week, and Kylie Minogue performed at the Brit Awards" -- Mike covers a book on container gardening. 


5) "Type II Diabetes (books)" -- Stan reviews four books on diabetes.


6) "faye dunaway" -- Rebecca reviews a biography of Faye Dunaway.  

 

7)  "THE FIVE-INGREDIENT COOKBOOK FOR MEN" -- Mike reviews a cookbook. 

 

 

8)  "SILENT SISTERS: PROFILES OF THE SHORT LIVES OF KAREN CARPENTER, PATSY CLINE, CASS ELLIOT, RUBY ELZY, JANIS JOPLIN AND SELENA" -- Ty reviews a sketch book.

 

9) "THE LESSONS OF MAMA TEMBO (Dona)" -- Dona reviews a children's book.

 

10) "Michael Schulman's OSCAR WARS: A HISTORY OF HOLLYWOOD IN GOLD, SWEAT AND TEARS" -- Stan's book review. 

 

11) "Not Your China Doll: The Wild and Shimmering Life ..." -- Ann reviews a bad book about an early film star. 


12) "MY MAMA, CASS" -- Kat reviews a book by the daughter of Cass Elliot.  


13) "Media: The stupid return to target Target and a man writes a really dull, boring book" -- Ava and C.I. review A. Ashley Hoff's  WITH LOVE, MOMMIE DEAREST: THE MAKING OF AN UNINTENTIONAL CAMP CLASSIC.

 

14)  "THE DARK SIDE OF HOLLYWOOD (Ty)" -- Ty reviews a book about Charlie Chaplin, Lupe Velez and Jean Harlow.

 

15) "LADIES WHO PUNCH: THE EXPLOSIVE INSIDE STORY OF THE VIEW" -- Ruth reviews a book about ABC's long running gasbaggery. 

 

16)  "HOLLYWOOD CELEBRITIES: WHERE ARE THEY NOW? (Jim)" -- Jim covers a book that fails to deliver.

17) "Andrew McCarthy's BRAT" -- Kat reviews Andrew's bio.

 

18) "A really bad book gets reviewed -- plus Paul Rudnick, Diana Ross, Chase Rice, Sam Smith " -- Elaine reviews Tina Brown's  THE VANITY FAIR DIARIES.

 

19)  "Boze Hadleigh's Hollywood Lesbians: from Garbo to Foster" and "'hollywood lesbians: from garbo to foster' by boze hadleigh" -- Marcia and Rebecca do their annual summer read.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tweet of the week

 

Tweet of the week (humor)

 

This edition's playlist

diana cover 2

 

 

1) Diana Ross' THANK YOU.

 

2) Green Day's  'SAVIORS'

 

3) Beyonce's COWBOY CARTER.

 

4) Sarah Vaughan's IN THE LAND OF HI-FI.

 

5)  Sam Smith's IN THE LONELY HOUR DROWNING SHADOW EDITION.

 

6) Jonah Jones' JONAH JONES AT THE EMBERS.

 

 

7) Ben Harper's BOTH SIDES OF THE GUN.

 

 

8) Joni Mitchell's JONI MITCHELL ARCHIVES -- VOL. 3: THE ASYLUM YEARS (1972 - 1975).

 

9) Miles Davis' SKETCHES OF SPAIN. 

 

10)  Vacations' NO PLACE LIKE HOME. 



 

 

 

And the winner was . . . Joe Biden (Ava and C.I.)

And the winner was . . . Joe Biden (Ava and C.I.)

 

1trump




CNN's Jake Tapper and Dana Bash acted as moderators for the debate between US President Joe Biden and morbidly obese Convicted Felon Donald Trump held tonight at a CNN studio in Atlanta, Georgia. 


As the debate took place, various interests weighed in.  Professional liar Tara Reade, for example, Tweeted repeatedly for her boy Convicted Felon Donald Trump.  This is his audience, please note, overweight fat heads who "defect" (her term) to Russia. 

Why?

Because you have to be crazy to support Donald Trump.  


He's a liar who just makes s**t up.  He opens his loud mouth and his fantasies whirl round and round but never land on Terra Firma -- they just float along on the fumes of hot air pouring out of his own mouth.


Crazies love it.

Glynneth Greenwald, for example, has been scared senseless since the Ed Snowden days and that's why he hides out in Brazil.  We're not really sure that we need to hear thoughts from cowards who don't even live in this country.


They're crazy.


Michael Hastings died.  


Some of us think, "Oh, how awful."  That's what those of us who are sane think.


The crazies?  They go off and form The Proud Boys.


Why has no one talked about that?  How these crazies against Joe Biden and for Donald Trump were raised on the most extreme conspiracies.  And a lot of them got air time from crazy Megyn Kelly (including Sgt Joe who was one of her big go-tos).  Or they're the other disgraced reporter that no one will hire who Tweeted today about a "children's book" that is destroying the country!!!  Hey, crazy, go back to South Africa, we don't want you here and that book is not in any children's library because it's not a children's book and before the disgraced reported posted about it on Twitter, SNOPES had already fact-checked the lie two days prior.


These psychos vested themselves in Trump to take on the death of Michael Hastings and Pizzagate and the decision to leave the gold standard and the murder of Seth Rich and . . . 


Grasp that that's what we're dealing with.

You're kidding yourself if you can't accept that.

These crazies, these Glenn Greewalds and Sgt Joe Biggses and Alex Joneses need a daddy because they're scared and Donald and his big MOOBS came along to nurse them.

Now Seth Rich may have been murdered by the DNC.  We have no idea.  Who knows what'll emerge ten years from now?  But while we can say we don't know, these other people claiming the DNC murdered him don't know anything either.  They're adamant that these things happened and since they see Barack Obama's era as the one in which it all took place, they've turned on the Democrats.


That is what fuels the crazy of MAGA.  That and their hatred for women, African-Americans (on Elon Musk's Twitter, MAGA just uses the n-word over and over) and LGBTQ+ people.


They have taken all of these crazy conspiracies -- Barack and the CIA killed Michael, Hillary Clinton was picking off children to screw via Pizzagate, the DNC murdered Seth Rich -- and they add to it. Jews are in charge of space lasers?   Marjorie Taylor Greene is not just their spokesperson, she's their patron saint.


Donald Trump came along promising to clean the swamp -- the undefined swamp -- and all the crazies were on board with that.


He didn't do it.  

But they're crazy and they don't care.  

We all remember, right, Glynneth Greenwald making excuses for why Donald couldn't pardon Julian?  They told themselves that Julian Assange would be free thanks to Donald Trump.  Then Donald left office and Julian remained imprisoned and sought by the US government.  So liars like Glynneth had to spin and whore.

That's what they do.

They can't deal with reality.  When we encounter someone like that, we write them off, regardless of what political side they are on.  The Katie Halpers, for example, will bring on John Nichols so he can do his crazy ass b.s.  We don't care that he's 'left,' we care that he lied that Hillary was going to seize the nomination at the 2004 Democratic Party convention and Wesley Clark was only in the race to allow that to happen.  We care that when AP reported Barack Obama's team was telling Canada not to worry about his NAFTA critiques, that he didn't mean it and wouldn't, if elected, stand by it -- we care that John Nichols then went around saying that it was really Hillary's team talking to Canada, not Barack's,  and that he had the facts and he'd be publishing it shortly.  Naturally, no such article ever emerged. (See our "TV: Goodman and Rose 'honoring' bad TV past" from March 2008 if you're new to this.)  He made both of those claims on DEMOCRACY NOW!, by the way, and should never, ever be invited on any show again. We could go on with more crazy from John Nichols but we'll stop it there.


We don't have time for crazy.  As two who dedicated significant time to calling out the Iraq War and going all over the country to do so, we were too rooted in reality to have the luxury of crazy.


But for those who are feeling life is somehow off and they're personally being persecuted so they need someone to blame and someone to hate, well that's the gift MAGA provides them with.


That's why the fight at this point is over basic terms and facts.  Those of us who are not paranoid and deluded --  convinced that only the killing of women wanting abortions and gays wanting rights and immigrants wanting jobs will save the country -- have to be ready to speak to the truth.


Again, it may turn out that Seth Rich was murdered by the DNC.  It may not.  But the facts we should all be able to agree on right now is that there's no proof to that claim.


There are basic ground rules and when we're not establishing them, we're giving Donald the go-ahead to lie and lie bigger, to lie and lie more.



Donald pursed his lips repeatedly while tilting his head this way and that as though he thought he were a super model.  Instead, he just emphasized wrinkles and looked odd -- odder than usual in fact.

The make up was a little better.  It's only taken him, what, eight years to make it look nearly human.  So if you're ready to give him eight years, he can almost adapt.  Almost but not quite. 

And there's still the issue of the curling iron.  That's right, children, Donald Trump uses a curling iron.  

He's a bottle blond, we should all know that. 78-year-old men are not naturally sassy blonds (a point we've made for over a decade with regards to Robert Redford).  But, watching the debate and his modified hair do, we had to make some calls.  Yes, our 78-year-old Donald had his curled for the debate.  They curled the hair under on top and then brushed it out and they curled it back on the sides.  That's what America needs in the White House: An elderly man obsessed with his hair.


He was also someone suddenly interested in "legal scholars."

Every "legal scholar" -- he repeatedly insisted -- wanted ROE V WADE overturned.  

No, that's not true.

But more to the point, legal scholars aren't the group largely effected by abortion.  Women, some of whom are legal scholars, are effected.  It has a direct impact on our lives and we -- the majority of us -- did not want ROE V WADE overturned.  

If people listened -- the ones not so far gone that they can't truly hear -- they would have grasped that fact and grasped that, in a 90 minute debate, Donald couldn't address women. 

He just lies and, yes, women grasp it.  

We grasp that abortion is a medical procedure.  We grasp that Donald bragging about this state doing this and this state doing that is not something to brag about.  Our healthcare options and resources should not be dictated by the state we live in.  Supposedly, we're all Americans and all Americans should have the right to determine their own health care.

Asked how he was going to address the addiction crisis in the US, Donald ignored reality to run again to the border. 

"The drugs pouring across the border," Donald whined at one point.  

What was he talking about?  

The biggest drug problem in the US in the last 20 years has been the opioid epidemic --  the drugs being pimped by the Sackler family.  OxyContin.  That drug put $10 billion dollars into their pockets.  They made it, they pimped it, they hooked people on it.  They didn't make it to number one on FORBES 2015 richest families list by making the world a better place, 




Joe started off slow but grew stronger as the debate went along and he found himself in the strange position of being the only one onstage that believed in America.

"We're the most admired country of the world," he countered at one point and added, "No one thinks we're a wimp.  No one wants to screw around with us."

He made comments like, "It's because of the American people, they're capable of anything."

And there was Donald trashing the country, saying we were this and we were that and blah blah blah.

"This idea that we're some failing country.  I never heard a president talk like this before," Joe declared sounding shocked -- as well he should have been.



1trumpy




 

It was 90 minutes of Grumpy Trumpy versus Joe who had a better vision of the country and the people in it.  It was the uplift of Biden versus the crankiness of Trump -- "because you're such a whiner," as Joe told him.

But Joe really won the exchange in the last minutes of the debate when Dana Bash noted the concern of some Americans that Donald would not accept the outcome of the 2024 election.  She asked him to pledge tonight that he would accept the results of the election "regardless of who wins?"  After he spoke for a bit, she reminded, "The question was will you accept the results of this election regardless of who wins?"  A third time she put the same question to him, "The question was: Will you accept the results of this election regardless of who wins?"  A fourth time Dana Bash pressed for a response, "President Trump, the question was will you accept the results of the election -- yes or no please?"

And it was a "yes" or a "no" question.  


Yet in approximately five minutes -- twelve seconds shy of five minutes,  Donald Trump could not answer the question.  Would not answer the question.  And, in the end, that actually did answer the question.


 -- Ava and C.I.


(Don't be surprised if this appears word for word in tomorrow's snapshot -- we had to write this, we had to roundtable the topic for the gina & krista round-robin and we're going to focus on the war aspect for our round-robin column -- that a lot for a Thursday night.)

 

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