JEFF CARTER ON SUITS AND TIES. I have several nice Canali suits I got at a big half-price sale at Saks about 10 years ago, and like Jeff, I seldom wear them. I traditionally wear a suit and tie for the first day of classes (though not this year when an HVAC problem made it 85 or so in my classroom; they’re lucky I didn’t come in shorts and a tank top). Also for some speaking events, and for funerals, which sadly happen more often than when I was younger. It’s too bad, as I like a nice suit. But I wear sport coats a lot.
Archive for 2018
January 13, 2018
SHOT: ANTI-TRUMP PROTESTS LEAD TRUMP TO CANCEL VISIT.
Chaser: London Mayor Sadiq Khan disrupted by pro-Trump demonstrators calling for ‘citizens arrest.’ It used to be only lefties doing these things.
OPEN THREAD: Hang out and have fun!
SCARY TALES: I’m In Hawaii And Just Got The Scariest Alert Of My Life. Here’s What I Did Next. Closing shutters and filling water jugs sounds pretty practical.
There’s also video of the TV with the alert blaring.
Related: ‘We huddled in the bathtub’: How those in Hawaii reacted to missile threat.
I, PENCIL REVISITED: Inside One Of America’s Last Pencil Factories. The photos are lovely.
THE INSTA-WIFE: The Middle Breaks Gender Stereotypes.
AT AMAZON, save in Sports and Outdoors.
STILL RELEVANT: The Unexpected Return of Duck and Cover. Honestly, I think this was one of my best magazine pieces. And certainly it had legs. . .
DON SURBER: Men Are Expendable.
The top two jobs in workplace deaths — timber and fishing — don’t pay much. Outside of airline pilots (and there were no commercial aviation deaths last year), I don’t see many high-paying jobs on the list.
But Merline is on to something. Men take risks. They start companies and become billionaires. Women marry billionaires. Or are their daughters. Oh sure, there’s Oprah. But the five richest women in the world — Alice Walton, Jacqueline Mars, Maria Franca Fissolo, Susanne Klatten, and Laurene Powell Jobs — are either widows or daughters.
The notion that men and women are the same is silly. We have the same rights, of course, but our biological functions are different.
Read the whole thing.
FAST TIMES AT HUGO CHAVEZ HIGH: Sean Penn: ‘Shithole’ Comments Make Donald Trump ‘An Enemy of Mankind.’
Flashback: Watch Sean Penn Gush Over Hugo Chavez. “From notorious drug kingpin El Chapo to Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, the list of tyrannical figures inscribed in Penn’s diary of love really makes one question whether the mediocre actor has suffered a frontal lobe injury that would impair his ability to engage in moral reasoning. Nowhere is Penn’s moral deficiency more apparent than in his friendship with the late Hugo Chavez.”
FROM THE HOME OFFICE IN THE EYE OF PERVNADO: Why isn’t David Letterman being caught up on the #TimesUp dragnet?
After [Louis CK’s] exploits were detailed in a New York Times piece, Netflix stepped in to “protect” us viewers from having to see his visage again; his (terrific) F/X show was pulled from the streaming service. Even more galling, Louie’s then-forthcoming movie was pulled from distribution. (And by the way, how unfair was that decision to Edie Falco, Charlie Day, John Malkovich, and others who co-starred in the flick?)
Adding to the mystery is that we can’t point to the usual bugaboo—politics and ideology—to explain the disparate treatment. Louie and Letterman are comfortably on the bien pensant left. Yet one comes in for censure, while the other is celebrated.
I’m not necessarily saying that Letterman should be banished from polite company—or even Obama’s company. But the mystery of why some people get a #metoo pass, and others don’t, is intensely interesting.
Read the whole thing.
Earlier: Letterman, Obama, Michael Wolff, and the Wages of Postmodernism.
CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Pa. regulators reverse course; Medical marijuana won’t stop patient gun purchases.
THIS IS CNN: President Trump has no dog and CNN is on it.
Wait until the network discovers the former president’s nourishing relationship with man’s best friend…
SHE’S A STAND-UP GAL: John Podhoretz on the nostalgic marvels of Amazon’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
On religiously Jewish matters, Sherman-Palladino makes dozens of stupid errors large and small, which usually ruins things like this for me. But on culturally Jewish matters, she’s letter perfect.
And the show is anchored by one of the best small-screen comic female performances I’ve ever seen. How Rachel Brosnahan, a 26-year-old Gentile from the Chicago suburbs best known for playing a hooker on House of Cards, came to embody an educated, midcentury Upper West Sider in voice, accent, word, and gait with such eerie perfection—I’ve known Miriam Maisels all my life, and she’s all of them rolled into one—is a thrilling mystery. Amy Sherman-Palladino wrote Rachel Brosnahan the part of a lifetime, and Brosnahan returned the favor by making The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel an unending delight. I want to live inside the show. I suspect you will too.
Between Mrs. Maisel, the Grand Tour (their megabucks reboot of the BBC’s Top Gear car show), and the Man in the High Castle, Amazon is making some extremely high quality television — even if they apparently don’t make money on it directly.
TO BE FAIR, SHE’S MUCH BETTER LOOKING THAN SGT. SCHULTZ: ‘I had no idea’: Katie Couric breaks her silence over Matt Lauer sexual assault claims a month after he was fired by Today and insists her 2012 comment that he ‘pinched her a** a lot’ was ‘just a joke.’
Andrew Lack, the network’s chairman, has insisted he was unaware of any alleged misconduct.
Both he and Couric were present alongside Jeff Zucker at a 2008 roast of Lauer where the jokes were obscene in their sexual graphicness.
There were repeated references to a sexual relationship between Couric and Lauer at the roast.
When it was her turn to speak, Couric made an explicit joke about Lauer performing oral sex on his ousted co-host Ann Curry.
The event was described by attendees as ‘three hours of d*** jokes’. It was so rude Joe Scarborough, the MSNBC host of Morning Joe, said he walked out early because he could not stand to hear more about Lauer ‘pushing himself on people’ and ‘having sex with employees’.
Lauer himself joked at it that he had had sex with Couric.
All of the Today staff who have spoken out since Lauer’s firing are unanimous in their shock over the claims of predatoriness.
And apparently their knowledge of Lauer’s button on his desk to lock the door of his office.
Having faked news at least once before, why should she believed now?
Elsewhere in NBC’s news division, “Chris Matthews joked about putting a ‘Bill Cosby pill’ in Hillary’s water.”
LEFTIES ARE FINE WITH SHAMING, SO LONG AS IT’S FOR THE RIGHT THINGS: Megyn Kelly Hit For Fat Shaming, But Shaming Smokers Works Well – Expert.
WHEN ON THE BEACH BECOMES A DOCUMENTARY:
One resident uploaded a video to Twitter saying, “I love you all, but I’m playing golf… the last thing I’m going to do.” He added, “If you’re watching this video, that means I didn’t make it because of the missile that’s coming towards Hawaii.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5iJlVm6IOI
Stanley Kramer and Nevil Shute, call your office.
THE VIEW, WHERE EVERY DAY IS GROUNDHOG DAY: ‘The View’ Whines ‘Dictator’ Trump ‘At War’ With Media, ‘Actively Trying to Kill Press Off!’
Flashbacks:
● Rosie O’Donnell, 9/11 Truther: ‘First Time’ That Fire Melted Steel.
● Whoopi Goldberg: Was the moon landing a hoax?
As with ESPN, The View another fine product by the Walt Disney Company, whose programming choices remind us daily that we have the worst elites in American history, to coin an Insta-phrase.
The state Public Utilities Commission’s decision to close Diablo Canyon would mark the end of more than a half-century of nuclear power generation in the state and could serve as a blueprint for closing other U.S. nuclear facilities.
* * * * * * * *
To replace the lost nuclear power, PG&E plans to expand energy efficiency, its use of renewable energy, and energy storage that would exceed current state mandates. California’s landmark 2015 energy law requires that power companies procure 50 percent of their electricity from renewable sources, such as solar or wind, by 2030.
I wonder if this cause California to import additional power from elsewhere, given its history of “Potemkin environmentalism.”
TO BE FAIR, IT WASN’T A DRILL, IT WAS A FUCKUP: ‘This Is Not a Drill.’ Hawaii Just Sent Out an Incoming Missile Alert. It Was a Mistake. It must have been awfully disconcerting to have this pop up on people’s phones, and it took nearly 40 minutes to send out the message that it was a mistake.
Sounds like the planned FCC reboot of the wireless alert system can’t come too soon.
UPDATE: It’s all explained here.
ANOTHER UPDATE: “Possible hack?”