Media: Why America's turned on Chump's war on immigrants

NBC canceled FOUND May 9th.  That's the show about a crisis manager who has a team working under her that try to find missing people while she herself has kidnapped (and imprisoned) a man who kidnapped her years ago.  What was once considered Must TV has morphed into Sick F**k TV.

 

FADE IN

INT SQUAD CAR - DAY

Tension and energy fill the squad car as OFFICER NOLAN looks at DETECTIVE LOPEZ.  

NOLAN: Ready?

Lopez nods.  The two pull dark masks over their faces and throw open the doors of their squad car

EXT. TREE LINED STREET -- DAY

Nolan and Lopez run towards a 2024 blue Ford Crown Victoria.

INT. CROWN VICTORIA - DAY

MASON, 25, sits in parked car listening to music and finishing some french fries when a big thud is hear.

EXT. TREE LINED STREET - DAY

NOLAN: Roll down the window!!!

Nolan and Lopez stand beside the parked car yelling.

NOLAN:  Roll down the window!

Lopez looks at Nolan.  He nods.  He breaks the window with his gun, reaches inside and grabs Mason by the t-shirt collar.  Lopez reaches in and grabs Mason by the neck, joining Nolan in pulling a scared Mason out of the car.

MASON: What's going on!  What did I do?  

DETECTIVE HARPER runs over towards them as Nolan and Lopez hurl Mason to the ground.

LOPEZ:  Down!  Stay down!

MASON: Who are you?

NOLAN: Shut up!

Lopez begins tazing Mason while Nolan and Harper kick him.

Would you accept that scene on THE ROOKIE?

How about this on a STARSKY & HUTCH reboot?

 

INT - 1975 FORD GRAN TORINO - DAY

STARSKY scrolls through his cell phone while Hutch drums on the dashboard.

STARSKY:  These dating apps are wack.

HUTCH:  Ever think maybe it's you?

STARSKY: [Muttering] Maybe it's you, maybe it's you.

EXT - STREET - DAY

A FORD MINI-VAN drives slowly past Starsky's TORINO.  We see SULTAN in the driver's seat of the van.

INT - 1975 FORD GRAN TORINO - DAY

Hutch leans over and swats Starsky on the arm repeatedly.  Starsky shoots him a look and starts the car.

EXT - STREET - DAY

Starsky's car closely follows the mini-van as it turns off the street into a school parking lot.  

INT - MINI-VAN - DAY

Sulton drives slowly to the front of the school while talking to his five-year-old son DANNY in the back seat.

SULTON: So what you going to learn today?

DANNY: Everything!

SULTON: You're going to learn everything?

DANNY: Yep!

SULTON: Well if you learn everything today, why would you come back tomorrow?

DANNY: To teach!

Sulton and Danny laugh.

EXT - OUTSIDE SCHOOL - DAY

The mini-van comes to a stop and Starsky immediately brakes as well.

INT - MINI-VAN - DAY

Through the car windows, we see Starsky and Hutch running up alongside the mini-van but Sultan and Danny do not.

SULTAN: Okay, buddy, we're here. 

DANNY: Yea! 

SULTON: Yea! 

Starsky begins bangind on the door of the mini-van on the driver's side.

STARSKY: Get out!  Get out!

Danny looks around scared.  Sulton rolls down his window part-way.

SULTON: Can I help you?

STARSKY:  Out of the car!  Now! Out of the car!

Sulton: Who are you?

Starsky: I said out of the car, asshole!

Starsky begins hitting the driver door window with his gun until he breaks it while Danny screams.

HUTCH: Out of the car!  He said out of the car!

SULTON: It's okay, Danny.  It's okay.

Starsky pulls open the door and pulls Sulton out of the mini-van.  Sulton lands on the ground on his back.  Hutch and Starsky stand over him with guns drawn while Danny screams.

HUTCH: Shut up, brat!  I said shut up!

FEMALE PRINCIPAL comes running up.

FEMALE PRINCIPAL:  What is going on here?  I'm calling the police.

STARSKY: Ma'am, ma'am, we're going to need you to step back.

FEMALE PRINCIPAL: What are you doing to Mr. Rahi?  Mr. Rahi, are you okay?

Hutch walks over to the woman menacingly.

HUTCH: He told you to step back.  

Only now do Starsky and Hutch register that every child going to the school, as well as teachers and and some other parents have witnessed the assault on Sultan.

TV is bad.  It's not that bad yet.  We haven't gotten to the point where that would be acceptable. 

So why are we treating it as acceptable on our streets, in our communities?

ICE agents want to be seen as heroes.  Heroes don't act out the scenes above.  But they took place on our streets in the United States.

Donald Chump is a convicted felon.  A crook.  And he doesn't have any respect for due process.  But while we need to call out the lack of due process once arrested, we also need to be calling out the procedures by which immigrants are being taken into custody.

When you are taken into custody in the United States, it generally works something like this: 1) An officer of some enforcement body utilizes probable cause -- a crime has taken place, is taking place or is about to commence.  2) If a crime has taken place, a warrant for someone's arrest has been obtained.  If a crime is taking place or is about to take place, an arrest does not require a warrant.  3) The officer must inform the suspect of their rights (basic Miranda Rights).  4) The arresting officer must use the minimum force required to carry out the arrest.  5) Would be where Due Process -- as most mean the term -- would kick in.  Appearing before someone in the judiciary, etc.

 

Why are we allowing Chump to destroy our procedures in place for decades in order to carry out cruelty.

 

And this is cruelty aimed at immigrants, yes.  But also at US citizens.  

 

THE ROOKIE scenario above?  

 

George Retes.  That's the name of the man this actually happened to.  In California.  And he's not an immigrant.  He's a US citizen and, in fact, an Iraq War veteran.  And when ICE began attacking him, they didn't listen and they didn't care.  Olga R. Rodriguez (AP) notes 

"It took two officers to nail my back and then one on my neck to arrest me even though my hands were already behind my back," Retes said.

[. . .]

Retes was taken to the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles, where he said he was put in a special cell on suicide watch and checked on each day after he became emotionally distraught over his ordeal and missing his 3-year-old daughter's birthday party Saturday.

He said federal agents never told him why he was arrested or allowed him to contact a lawyer or his family during his three-day detention. Authorities never let him shower or change clothes despite being covered in tear gas and pepper spray, Retes said, adding that his hands burned throughout the first night he spent in custody.

On Sunday, an officer had him sign a paper and walked him out of the detention center. He said he was told he faced no charges.

"They gave me nothing I could wrap my head around," Retes said, explaining that he was met with silence on his way out when he asked about being "locked up for three days with no reason and no charges."

 

 
George was on CBS EVENING NEWS yesterday talking about what he endured.

 

 

 

 Again, this was done to an American citizen.  No one should have that done to them.  This is not what we expect in the United States when it comes to someone being taken into custody.

 

You do not have the right to beat someone whose hands are behind their back.  You do not not need to be breaking windows.  You do not need to be terrorizing and you do not need to be hidden behind masks.

 

It is a very slippery slope.  You accept it from ICE, you better believe it's going to transfer over to the police.

 

The STARSKY & HUTCH scenario above?

 

We didn't make that up either.   Conrad Wilson  and Holly Bartholomew (OREGON PUBLIC BROADCASTING) reported last week:

Federal immigration officers arrested a 38-year-old Iranian man outside his child’s preschool in Beaverton on Tuesday, according to school and law enforcement officials.

The man was arrested by officers with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during morning dropoff at Guidepost Montessori School. The incident has deeply shaken the school community, which went into “soft lockdown to ensure the safety of all students and staff,” according to a message sent to parents.

OPB is not naming the man because his family was not immediately reachable and his immigration attorney did not return a request for comment.

The incident marks the first confirmed case of an immigration arrest at an Oregon school amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Historically, certain locations – including schools and houses of worship – have been largely off limits to immigration enforcement.

According to an ICE spokesperson, the man lawfully entered the United States in 2017, but overstayed his student visa.

Caroline Medeiros is an immigration attorney who is consulting with the family and the school. Medeiros’ child attends the same Montessori school. She said the man ICE arrested works as a chiropractor and she disputed the agency’s claim he was not in the U.S. lawfully.

“He married a U.S. citizen and his U.S. citizen wife filed a green card application for him,” Medeiros told OPB. “He attended his green card interview with his wife and they were just simply waiting for the green card to come through.”

He was dropping his child off at school.  This terrorist attack -- that's what ICE carried out -- terrorized the children present.  There is no excuse for that.  The kidnapping carried out traumatized a community.  That's outrageous.

 

 

Yesenia Amaro (OREGONIAN) notes of that arrest:

 

One of the latest immigration arrests in Oregon took place Tuesday outside a Beaverton preschool, and it appears to be the first in the state to have happened on school grounds.

Before President Donald Trump returned to office, federal authorities considered schools, churches, hospitals and courthouses to be sensitive locations and limited immigration authorities from making arrests there. The policy had been in place since 2011, with the Biden administration issuing its own guidance to further expand the protected areas.

 

We've got two choices here.  ICE carried out the raid and thought the man was a violent criminal is one choice.  If that's the case, they put an entire school at risk.  There was no need to arrest a violent criminal -- or even a suspected one -- on school property.  Chump doesn't get this but America's has had enough of students being killed in school shootings.

 

That Oregon incident?  It demands an immediate Congressional probe and we need to know who's signing off on these actions.  Who thought it was acceptable to pull that action off at a school?  That left every child there at risk of violence.

 

There's the also the second possibility: ICE knew this wasn't a violent criminal.

 

 

They like to lie -- especially Kristi Noem, Donald Chump and Tom Holman -- about the success they're having with these arrests.

 

But the figures don't back them up.  

 

The California operation that led to them beating Iraq War veteran George and holding him for three days?   Julie Watson, Amy Taxin and Olga R. Rodriguez (AP) note, "The government said four of the 361 arrested had prior criminal records, including convictions for rape and kidnapping."  The government says they nabbed 361 people.  And the government says four "had prior criminal records." 

 

 

 

 This is not about deporting violent criminals, this is about terrorizing immigrants and the American people and rewriting how people get arrested and what rights they have.  If Chump gets his way, the rights immigrants and Americans will have will be zero.

 

 

The ACLU offers this list regarding what to do when stopped by a police officer.

TV can be really sick.  There was never a reason for a TV show about Hannibal Lector to begin with.  Of course, there was no need for IN THESE TIMES to try to copy us either.  And there was no need for them to hire what was then said to be a feminist to try to copy us and outdo us.  Didn't work out too good for them.  Now their archives include praise for HANNIBAL and their feminist isn't who they presented.  We worded that as kindly as possible.  Reading her TV criticism, we didn't find her to be a feminist.

"A."  

We've always maintained -- for 20 years now -- that we offer a feminist critique -- not "the" critique.  Feminism is huge, wide, with many voices, some concurring, some at odds.  

But there are basics.  And that feminist did not meet the basics.  That feminist has now transitioned to male.  Men can be feminists.  But we don't see him as a feminist.  We see him as a pop culture critic who, from time to time, remembers that women do more than stand on the sidelines and serve dinner.  

When he showed up at IN THESE TIME, we knew about it because we got an e-mail from the magazine (shall we name the editor?  we have no trouble doing so) explaining to us that we were about to be shown how feminism is done and what feminism is about and we were going to be struggling to catch up.

It's strange to think about now.  But it was a strange e-mail even then.  

Hostile, yes, but much more than just that.

We weren't worried because we thought the writer would do a great job (we were wrong there) and we honestly feel that the more voices the better when it comes to feminism and that any other feminist writer (male or female) working to argue on behalf of female protagonists was great.

But IN THESE TIMES' new feminist critic didn't really like women and wasn't bothered when women were sidelined in TV shows.

Today, at SCREEN RANT and CINEMA BLEND, we see other questionable types writing bad commentary.  For example, praising JERICHO.  

We called that garbage show out immediately for the sidelining of women:

 

 

What's not murky, what's right there to see plainly on your TV screens, is that women do nothing and should do nothing. That message doesn't need to emerge, it's been at the forefront episode after episode where 'active' for the female characters has meant a 'damsel in distress' moment or two while we all wait for the men to arrive such as when ex-cons posed as cops and tormented a farmhouse.

Presumably, a nuclear aftermath produces a ton of dust and the women have all busied themselves with housework because, otherwise, we can't image what they do all day when not making cow eyes as they fret over the men of the town.

We think that's a really ugly message and hope that, should something like the show ever happen, women would embrace their inner Xenas and Gabrielles and come out fighting. Love her, hate her or be left indifferent, Hillary Clinton's running for president. Ditto the qualifer and note that Condi Rice is currently Secretary of State (and Anger as Wally and Cedric point out quite often). Ourselves, we'd love to see a guest spot by Gloria Steinem, Maxine Hong-Kingston or Robin Morgan where the women are gathered and questions about identity and wants and needs are explored. But, probably, such a scene would play out with Pamela Reed and the other women stalling throughout the attempted consciousness raising for the men to rescue them before any self-awareness set in.

In times of crisis, Jericho tells you, natural leaders emerge and that's based on something other than the ability to lead, it's based on whether or not you've got a Y chromosome. We don't buy into the belief that the dangling Y means extra intelligence or natural leadership but, come the nuclear aftermath, women should keep in mind that the heavily worshiped area, in this society, is also a very sensitive one. Aim the stiletto there as well. 

We wrote that back in 2007.  How very sad that a lengthy piece on JERICHO went up on a pop-culture site last week -- a site that fancies itself as being of the left -- and the writer praised the show without ever noting the sidelining of women. 

 

 

As we noted at the top, FOUND got cancelled in May -- after two unneeded seasons.  All we could think was, "Thank heaven."  We're not cruel -- or not completely cruel.  It's bad when people lose jobs.  But when you're main character is a kidnapper, we've got a problem with your priorities.  TV is ugly enough as it is.  As the slaughter in Gaza continues, we are saddened by the plight of the Palestinians and the apartheid system imposed by the government of Israel.  We don't blame or hate the Israeli people.  Well, that's our blanket statement.  As a general rule, no, we don't.

But there are some we do blame and dislike immensely.  They're certain Israeli creatives.  They do programs advancing torture.  And that's bad enough when you consider life in the region, but it's flat out disgusting when you grasp that garbage like 24 and HOMELAND and way too many other programs in the US are adaptations of Israeli torture porn. 

Torture is a sickness.  Racism is a sickness.  Attacks on empathy are sickness.  And the country can embrace Chump and his sickness or we can fight to be better than that and to try to be better than that.  The first step there is telling the hard truths about what we see with our own eyes.  And the reason the American people have turned on Chump's immigration 'plan' is because we're seeing how sick it is, how innocents are being targeted and families and communities torn apart. These are the truths we need to be telling and these are the truths we need to be sharing. 

 

 

Media: Reality slaps Chump upside the head

Democrats know all about herding cats but looks like Donald's finally learning about harnessing crazy. 

 

 

Convicted Felon Donald Chump lost the 2020 presidential election and that result led him further into the grip of insanity.  He attempted to violently overthrow the election and should have been either put in prison or faced the death penalty.  Instead, an unneeded sense of decorum and let's-just-put-it-behind-us allowed him to mingle in polite society where he nursed his wounds and enlarged his base among the criminally insane.   

 

 Thanks to grifters such as Glenneth Greenwald and Matt Taibbi, his first term was rewritten in real time.  Chump invented 'the deep state' -- a group that already existed according to the late Bill Moyers but was defined differently by Chump.  And Greenwala dn Taibbi and other grifters lied repeatedly to make him come off as a warrior against the deep state.

 

We have neither the time nor the interest to document in full what we've already spent years documenting.  So instead, we'll just pick one pet cause the three shared: Julian Assange. The grifters insisted Chump was going to pardon him and then Julian would finally be free of the UK legal system.  It was coming.  Chump was the real thing.

 

In the end, all that came was Greenwald, on the carpet as he licked the toes of a large man he paid to degrade him while both were high on meth.  

 

That drug usage -- something Taibbi knows all about -- also clouded their minds allowing them to make excuses for Chump leaving the White House without ever addressing Julian Assange.  The drugs also allowed them to refuse credit to President Joe Biden who, in the end, did not demand Assange be handed over to the US and face trial here for the 'crime' of journalism.

 

It was really something to watch the grifters celebrate Julian's release while failing to credit the Biden administration (or, specifically, Caroline Kennedy, the US Ambassador to Australia who put a lot of weight into getting Julian released).  

 

Chump was recruiting the crazy and grifters like Greenwald and Taibbi were helping him.  The crazier the theory Chump put out, the more insane the supporter he won.  The deep state was against him!  The deep state wanted to continue pedophilia!  The deep state ousted him because he was shutting down their pedophile rings!

 

If this nonsense is a shocker to you, you weren't paying attention.  

 

And you've got no real excuse.  Roseanne is a talented comedian and she's also bat s**t insane.  Her Tweets were not about racism.  They were about crazy.  You didn't grasp what was in front of you.  Because, depending upon the day of the week, she was a victim of child abuse, she's sensitive to others being abused.  And her Tweets were nothing but crazy about how Chump was saving the children!  Saving them!!!!

 

These lunatics believed this crap and even now most media won't tell you about that.  Even as Epstein has blown up, the media won't tell you that grifter outlets have spent years lying about Chump busting this pedophile ring and that pedophile ring and the government's after him for that reason and!!!!!

 

 Chump lumbered back into the White House in January.  Weeks later, Pam Bondi was telling the world that the Epstein client list was on her desk, waiting for her to peruse and release it.  She also invited grifters that she called social influencers.  

 

Our corporate media let it stop at that:  social influencers.  

 

No, these are the crazies who distributed the poisoned Kool-Aid regularly.  They are the ones who told gullible Americans over and over for years that the US government was part of a global pedophile ring and only Chump was objecting to it.  

 

The attack on trans women and others falls into that.  Every lie of "protect the girls" led to eye rolls among rational people who grasped trans girls are not a threat to non-trans girls but for his enraged and deluded base, it was coded -- he'll take on the trans just like he's taken on the pedophiles.  

 

Since everyone doesn't watch TRUE CRIME or DATELINE, let's go to WIKIPEDIA for this overview of Jeffrey Epstein:

 

In 2005, police in Palm Beach, Florida, began investigating Epstein after a parent reported that he had sexually abused her 14-year-old daughter. Federal officials identified 36 girls, some as young as 14 years old, whom Epstein had allegedly sexually abused.^[9] Epstein pleaded guilty and was convicted in 2008 by a Florida state court of procuring a child for prostitution and of soliciting a prostitute.^[10] He was convicted of only these two crimes as part of a controversial plea deal, and served almost 13 months in custody but with extensive work release.^[11]

Epstein was arrested again on July 6, 2019, on federal charges for the sex trafficking of minors in Florida and New York.^[12][13] He died in his jail cell on August 10, 2019.^[14] The medical examiner ruled that his death was a suicide by hanging.^[15] Epstein's lawyers have disputed the ruling, and there has been significant public skepticism about the true cause of his death, resulting in numerous conspiracy theories.^[16][17] The Federal Bureau of Investigation stated in 2025 that it would release video evidence supporting the conclusion that Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide in his jail cell;^[18] however, when the DOJ released the footage in July 2025, one minute of footage was missing,^[19] and the video was found to have been modified despite the FBI’s claim that it was raw.^[20]

Since Epstein's death precluded the possibility of pursuing criminal charges against him, a judge dismissed all criminal charges on August 29, 2019. Epstein had a decades-long association with the British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, who recruited young girls for him,^[21] leading to her 2021 conviction on U.S. federal charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy for helping him procure girls, including a 14-year-old, for child sexual abuse and prostitution.^[22][23][24]

 

So Jeffrey Epstein trafficked girls and women (with Ghislaine's help).  And, while out of the White House, Chump insisted a cover up too place, that Epstein was murdered and did not commit suicide, that a global conspiracy was behind it -- he insisted so many things but it boils down to Mighty Chump was going to save us all 'whether they wanted to be saved or not' as he declared at his Marvin Gardens Nazi rally. 

 

Now no one wants to deal with crazy.  We don't want to deal with crazy.  There's enough in the real world without having to carry every other burden.  But the media didn't deal with it and if they had it might not have made a difference.

 

These were crazy people begging to be lied to.  They were easy marks because they wanted so desperately to be conned that they were easily tricked.

 

Had the media dealt with every day for a full month, it might have made some headway among the Make America Insane Again crowd.

 

The media could have easily pointed out the obvious.

 

Chump is lying, you know that because this happened under him in 2019.  If he was telling the truth, he could have addressed it while president (January 2017 through January 2020).  This happened on his watch. The media could have pointed out that Chump and Epstein were neighbors, that the two men were friends. 

 

They didn't.  And if you were counting on YOUTUBE to help, you were out of luck  What you got from the 'left' on YOUTUBE tended to be praise for grifter Glenneth Greenwald -- praise from Krystal Ball, praise from THE VANGUARD boyz.  He was putting out lies, but they didn't care.  They probably still won't call him out.

 

Last week was quite the week for Chump.

 

He claimed that Secretary of Defense Losse Lips Hegseth had -- for a third time -- cut off weapons to Ukraine without informing Chump.  The flood that hit Texas on a Friday resulted in Kristi Noem yammering in front of the cameras the following Saturday but waiting three days before releasing the needed funds to start rescue efforts.  Thursday, Gabe Cohen and Michael Williams (CNN) reported:

 

As monstrous floodwaters surged across central Texas late last week, officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency leapt into action, preparing to deploy critical search and rescue teams and life-saving resources, like they have in countless past disasters.

But almost instantly, FEMA ran into bureaucratic obstacles, four officials inside the agency told CNN.

As CNN has previously reported, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — whose department oversees FEMA — recently enacted a sweeping rule aimed at cutting spending: Every contract and grant over $100,000 now requires her personal sign-off before any funds can be released.

For FEMA, where disaster response costs routinely soar into the billions as the agency contracts with on-the-ground crews, officials say that threshold is essentially “pennies,” requiring sign-off for relatively small expenditures.

In essence, they say the order has stripped the agency of much of its autonomy at the very moment its help is needed most.

“We were operating under a clear set of guidance: lean forward, be prepared, anticipate what the state needs, and be ready to deliver it,” a longtime FEMA official told CNN. “That is not as clear of an intent for us at the moment.”

For example, as central Texas towns were submerged in rising waters, FEMA officials realized they couldn’t pre-position Urban Search and Rescue crews from a network of teams stationed regionally across the country.

In the past, FEMA would have swiftly staged these teams, which are specifically trained for situations including catastrophic floods, closer to a disaster zone in anticipation of urgent requests, multiple agency sources told CNN.

But even as Texas rescue crews raced to save lives, FEMA officials realized they needed Noem’s approval before sending those additional assets. Noem didn’t authorize FEMA’s deployment of Urban Search and Rescue teams until Monday, more than 72 hours after the flooding began, multiple sources told CNN.

 Today, William Vaillancourt (THE DAILY BEAST) reports:

 

The Federal Emergency Management Agency didn’t answer thousands of phone calls after the Texas floods last week because it had fired call center contractors.

Records obtained by The New York Times show that FEMA laid off contractors the night of July 5, when flood waters were receding but still high, and when damage assessment was taking place. It took Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem until Thursday—five days later—to renew the contractors’ contracts.  

After taking office, Noem created a policy where she must personally approve expenses totaling $100,000 or more. 

The contrast in two-way communication between July 5 and the following days is stark. Before the contracts at four call center companies expired that night, FEMA answered 3,018 of 3,027 calls. 

On July 6, however, it answered only 846 of 2,363 calls. Data from July 7 shows an even worse level of responsiveness: 2,613 of 16,419 calls.

 

 Ariana Baio (INDEPENDENT)  reported, "Noem eventually approved FEMA’s request on Monday, nearly three days after the initial flooding occurred, sources told CNN."  Ruth pointed out, "Monday.  She was grandstanding in front of cameras last Saturday talking about the flood.  She was posting INSTAGRAM photos Sunday, showing off that artificial rat's nest she calls hair.  As a general rule, Cabinet secretaries should never look as though they could walk onto the set of a REAL HOUSEWIVES taping and be mistaken for a performer on the show." 

 

They failed -- Chump and Noem failed.  As well as the acting chief of FEMA David Richardson that no one can apparently find since the flood.  129 confirmed deaths, a Chump failure. 

 

But while that failure resulted in deaths, what really rocked Chump world last week was the Epstein client list.   US Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that there was no Epstein client list.  She then insisted people misunderstood her February public statements that the list was on her desk and waiting for her vetting before being released.  

 

She and the administration thought that was the end of it.

 

But all hell broke loose. 

 

Having harnessed the crazy to get back into the White House, Chump was shocked to learn that they wouldn't just let the Epstein matter go.  

 

In Tuesday's Cabinet meeting, the press asked about Epstein and Chump thundered -- "Are we still talking about that guy!" --  tried to distract -- "This guy has been talked about for years, we have Texas, we have this [referring to the Ukraine war], and people are still talking about this creep?”

 

Too bad for Chump, that wasn't the end of it.  The crazy outside the administration was enraged and, turns out, two crazies in the administration weren't taking the news any better.  Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino and FBI Director Kash Patel made a lot of money grifting online over the Epstein files and claiming a global pedophile ring existed that Chump would expose and dismantle if re-elected.  He got re-elected and the two men were not happy about sudden assertion that there was no "there" there  In a meeting with Bondi and White House Chief of Staff Susan Wiles  on Wednesday, tempers exploded.  Based on this came the statements and whispers that Bongino was considering quitting.  And CBS NEWS notes, "Bongino did not show up to work on Friday, according to the sources."

  

Chump tried playing Rodney King on social media with a version of can't-we-all-get-along and it didn't bury the anger from his one-time followers as MEIDASTOUCH NEWS noted today.

 

 

 

Democrats?  We are silly and foolish enough to think we can herd cats.  However, we're not insane and believe we can harness crazy.  That's Chump.  He thought he could harness crazy to get back in the White House and he thought he could stoke it and control it.  

 

While it's true that he uncorked the crazy, he's unable to shove it back into the bottle.  These things never end well.  

 

 

   

Media: Zohran Mamdani needs to stop playing catch up and go on the offense

The media image of Zohran Mamdani has never been about Zohran Mamdani.  Assorted YOUTUBERS took marching orders from Democratic Socialists of America.  There were other DSAers running to be the Democratic Party's candidate for NYC mayor -- the very qualified Brad Lander among them -- but the party leaders -- or big mouths -- wanted Zohran.

You'll need to ask them why?

 

 

It was cute, recently, watching an MSNBCer on air last week try to state that he didn't care one way or the other re: Zohran and was just reporting.  To his credit, he hadn't (mis)used MSNBC broadcast time to pimp Zohran but so many had, so many MSNBCers had used their posts to promote Zohran during the primary that they're all tarred and feathered as guilty in the minds of most paying actual attention.

Right after the primary, when he was the presumed winner, Jen Psaki, for example, had him on her bad program and she fluffed and made a complete idiot out of herself.  Was she trying to come off like she had a crush on him?  We thought she was happy with her husband Greg.

But what we identified even more was MSNBCers were doing what they'd done back in 2014, they were playing Norman Maine as they acted out A STAR IS BORN.  

In 2014, they did that with Wendy Davis.  For a few weeks, Wendy looked like she might be the next governor of Texas.  And then MSNBC and others got a hold of her -- or her image -- and turned into a star, a media star, someone who gets airtime and press and make overs and --  Well anything and everything that a politician doesn't need.

 

You don't vote for a star, you vote for someone who's going to work for you.  

Some people are that stupid -- that's how you get all the media work to turn Wendy Davis into a celebrity.  Some people are even more stupid.  George HW Bush, for example, would be an example of more stupid.  Dan Quayle, despite Poppy Bush's being bowled over by Quayle's alleged good looks, had no political future.  Being on the ticket with Poppy was supposed to be some form of debutante coming out ball for Quayle.  The ball ended way too soon for Dan because when Bush bowed out of elected office, that it was for Quayle as well.

So that would be the more stupid.

The 'just stupid'?  They try to create political stars without realizing what they're doing.

As a general rule, a political star is always going to fail on the Democratic Party side.  As a group, the left really doesn't get taken in for the most part.  

The exception would be 2008 with Barack Obama but, remember, a lot of that was wives-of.  A NEWSWEEK wife, for example, really put the magazine in place.  

It's really something to reflect on how bad the pre-primary coverage was; however, it is especially appalling to watch the post-primary coverage.

They do realize this is an important race, right?

Not for NYC.  NYC survived Rudy G, they can survive anything. Doubt us?  Their current mayor is a crook who cut a deal with The Convicted Felon in the Oval Office. And still NYC thrives.

But this is important because of DSA's hopes and dreams.  

They really believe that they have a shot, in 2028, at the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is who they're betting on.

It's a strange bet if you dig deep.  

AOC was first elected to Congress in 2018 when she won 78.1% of the vote.  She was re-elected (applause) in 2020 with 71.6% of the vote (huh?).  Then came 2022 and she won re-election with . . . 70.6% of the vote.  And last November, she again won re-election but her percentage of the vote fell to 68.9%.  In each election, she's won so far; however, her percentage of voters has shrunk with each election as well -- from the high of 78.1% down to 68.9%.  Does that really say: AOC On The Rise?

(For the record, if AOC is the party's presidential nominee, we'll be voting for her.  We'll be voting for whomever the nominee is.)

Far beyond AOC herself -- like some voters, the DSA has soured on her with the passing of time, especially the Kshama Sawant segment of DSA which can't stop ripping AOC apart online -- the DSA sees 2028 as their moment.  They've never had a moment before.  Never come close.  But hooking onto AOC's charisma (and AOC does have charisma, probably the most since Barack in 2008), they know, is going to deliver them a moment, deliver them power, finally allow them to take over the Democratic Party from within, and possibly even cleary up their combination skin.

Are those starry eyed dreams preventing them from grasping how important Zohran is?  

AOC's path to the nomination gets a whole lot harder if Zohran can't seal the deal.  If NYC can't elect a Socialist as mayor, many observers will see that as evidence that the country cannot either.  And as they jawbone about this over and over, it would become a self-fulfilling promise.

"We can fight that!" screams the DSA.  To which we reply: When have you ever gotten the media right?

Margaret Sullivan, for example, is now at THE GUARDIAN.  She's a columnist.  She was a public editor at THE NEW YORK TIMES.  It was not a good fit for her or the paper and they did away with the public editor a year after she left the paper.  We all need to keep that in mind when reading her latest column "Is the New York Times trying to wreck Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral bid?"

The editorial board of THE NEW YORK TIMES did not support Zohran in the primary.  That's needed information.  However, has Margaret forgotten the wall between editorial-opinion and actual reporting?  Is she saying that it's gone at THE TIMES?

That would require concrete and there's nothing concrete about her nonsense post ('column') for THE GUARDIAN that would be an embarrassment if it showed up in a high school newspaper. Sullivan typed:

 

A recent New York Times news story immediately drew fire from readers – and for very good reason.

Headlined “Mamdani Identified as Asian and African American on College Application,” the article centered on Zohran Mamdani, the candidate for New York City mayor who drew national attention recently with his stunning win in the Democratic primary election.

Its gist was that as a high school senior in New York City, Mamdani – who was born in Uganda and is of Indian descent – checked a couple of different boxes about race when applying for admission to Columbia University.

So what, you might ask. Why is this even a story, you might also ask.

 

No, Margaret, we wouldn't ask that because we're not as stupid as you are.

He is not Black.  

Yes, that matters.

Senator Elizabeth Warren wrongly claimed to be of Native American heritage.  When corrected on that, she stated her family had believed that and that is what she was told as a child.  "Pocahontas" is the main name people use to mock her -- to this day, to mock her.  They mocked her with it in 2020 when she ran in the Democratic Party's presidential primary.  

Did you miss that, Margaret? 

Rachel Dolezal -- did you miss her too?  The woman who pretended to be Black?  When she was outed as White, she lost everything.

He's not Black.

It's cute the way Margaret lies and whores -- cute and embarrassing, that column was beneath her -- to try to act as though an 18 year old isn't an adult.  "High school senior"!  It's a pity she couldn't use "intern," right, to harken back to an earlier media effort to play someone as younger than they actually were.

He was 18 years old and he knew he wasn't Black.  He lied and he lied to take advantage of race in a college admission.  He wanted into Columbia -- infamous to this day for the "Scottish African-American" professor (if you don't know her, you don't know Columbia).  

More to the point, Margaret, it wasn't that long ago.  He's only 33 today.  That was 15 years ago.

Again, he was an adult.  Again, he lied.

Elizabeth Warren probably didn't lie but she's crucified to this day.  They say she lied, they say she lied in order to get advantages in eductation and employment.

But Margaret wants you to believe that it doesn't matter that Zohran lied?

Not only does it matter but it also goes to a non-inquisitive press that this issue only came out after the primary.

Back to Jen Psaki, she wasted MSNBC's time and Zohran's time with her giddy segment that should have instead drilled down on what Zorhan stood for.

That was the moment.  

She blew it.  She blew it as a journalist and she blew it as a supporter of Zohran.

People wanted to know who he was.  This was the real roll out.  And Jen didn't do journalism and she wasn't even effective as a campaign surrogate.

When Jen should have been serious and focused and talking policy, the media narrative was already being created:  Zohran eats strangely.  Zohran is not Christian.  Zohran . . .

Day after day that pops up in the media and is amplified non-stop.

And idiots in the media and the DSA don't know what the hell to do.

We're not trying to tank Zohran, we are trying to tell the people supporting him that you need to do better.

At this point, he is different.  At this point, you're wasting time arguing that he's not different.

And you're wasting time thinking you can sell him as conventional. 

Suppose all you ever had for breakfast was onion rolls. Then one day, in walks a bagel! You'd say, 'Ugh, what's that?' Until you tried it! That's my problem == I'm a bagel on a plate full of onion rolls.

Does no one recognize that?  FUNNY GIRL was not only a Broadway success in its original run, it was also a success in its recent revival.  It was a huge film, in fact, it was the number one box office hit of 1968.  The musical regularly airs on TCM.  (We're ignoring the four albums -- all of which charted -- because the bagel monologue is not on any of them.)  

 

Suppose all you ever had for breakfast was onion rolls. Then one day, in walks a bagel! You'd say, 'Ugh, what's that?' Until you tried it! That's my problem -- I'm a bagel on a plate full of onion rolls.

 

Zohran supporters, you've waited too late to control the image created.  He can't be normalized.  

But if you'd leave your limited perceptions, you'd grasp that different it is okay, that different can stand out and that sometimes people want different more than anything else.

That might be his path to victory. 

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.)"