It was 20 years ago yesterday that, as New York City sweltered under hot and humid temps in the 90s, that I entrenched myself in my apartment with the air-conditioning. Turned to the Yankee game where David Cone was pitching. It was Yogi Berra Day at Yankee Stadium and so they had Don Larsen, who threw the only perfect game in World Series history, toss out the ceremonial first pitch to Yogi. I thought, That’s nice.
So here’s what commenced. Cone would throw a perfect game. Meanwhile, ABC was airing the final round of the British Open where a relatively unknown Frenchman, Jean Van de Velde, took a three-shot lead into the 72nd and final hole of the tournament at Carnoustie. A French golfer had not won a major championship since 1907.
Now what?
What transpired was perfectly perfect and imperfect. On WPIX Cone was battling against the longest of odds to toss a perfecto, something that happens about once every seven years, statistically, in baseball. In Scotland Van de Velde, needing only a 6 double bogey on the final hole to win, was self-imploding. The juxtaposition of one man overcoming the odds to produce a once-in-a-lifetime performance and the other doing the exact opposite to produce the same result in an infamous fashion, was something I’ll never forget.
Moreover, that very afternoon I was also flipping to CNN for news on JFK, Jr., whose luggage was beginning to wash up on the shores of Martha’s Vineyard. A truly surreal day in front of the TV set.
Epstein-Behind-Bars Syndrome
On the same day in separate New York City courtrooms, Jeffrey Epstein is denied bail while El Chapo is sentenced to life in prison. Next year’s season of Lockup gonna be lit.
Feelin’ You, Aaron Boone
Every single newspaper editor and tv news director has had one of these moments pic.twitter.com/Ewkg9mFVDH
This is me to all the first-year servers at the Cookoutateria this summer. The Yankees swept a doubleheader from the Rays yesterday while the Mets lost in 16 in San Francisco after taking the lead in the top of the 16th. So it goes…
Badwater Falls
In Death Valley, Japanese runner Yoshihiko Ishikawa sets a course record in the notorious Badwater 135 Ultra, finishing in 21 hours and 33 minutes (the old record was 21 hours and 56 minutes). At the finish line he drops to his knees, partly from exhaustion and partly to propose to his girlfriend. She says yes.
Remote Patrol
Goodbye, Mr. Chips
10:15 p.m. TCM
Not to be confused with, Ahoy, Mr. Chips.
Robert Donat won a Best Actor Oscar in this film. Jimmy Stewart (Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, which airs at 8 p.m. tonight on TCM) deserved it. The Academy issued its first (of many) major makeup calls by giving Stewart the Best Actor statuette for The Philadelphia Story when his best friend, Henry Fonda, deserved it for The Grapes Of Wrath.
So last night we tuned in to the TCM to watch The Grapes Of Wrath, a 1940 John Ford film based on John Steinbeck’s 1939 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. It’s the story about a group of people who can no longer make a living on their land and are being forcibly evicted from it, so they migrate to a place where there is the promise of jobs only to be harassed by law enforcement officials, to be looked down upon by locals (“they live like animals”).
When it’s harvest time, these migrants are welcomed by farmers. At other times, they are literally met by roadblocks of citizens yelling at them to “go back where you came from!”
After the movie I thought I needed a little more depression than a story of The Great Depression could offer, so I tuned to the cable news where thousands of MAGA minions were reenacting the Nuremberg rallies, only in Greenville, N.C., chanting “Send Her Back!” as a smug and smirking President Trump egged them on.
Eighty years later, and nothing has changed.
Epstein-Barr Virus (Cont.)
The Attorney General may be the most dangerous man in America
Remember when we all used to think that the most dangerous man behind the curtain was Steve Bannon. Or Stephen Miller. Well, this morning a pair of court rulings will go a long way in determining whether that designation belongs to William Barr (I’d argue it already does).
First, in just an hour or two a judge will order documents unsealed that related to the Michael Cohen trial. It’s curious that the folks who wanted the documents to remain sealed was the prosecution, citing third-party “national” interests. The only nationally interested third party in Cohen’s lurid trial of hush money to Trump paramours is Donald Trump, so why did the prosecution suddenly get cold feet on this one? Could it be because the conviction took place BEFORE William Barr became attorney general but the ruling on whether or not these materials go public is now, five months after Barr took the gig (related: the Southern District of New York [SDNY] has failed to follow up on interview requests of Trump Organization employees for five months after first making such requests before Barr took office. Hmm).
Is there still time for the prosecution to use an 11th-hour maneuver to block the release of these materials?
Second, also this morning, a New York judge will rule as to whether Jeffrey Epstein, owner of private jets and a fake Saudi passport, keeper of diamonds in his safe (and probably a false mustache), will be granted bail. If not, Epstein will likely never see another day of freedom the rest of his life. If so, you have to wonder why anyone would ever fail to receive bail and also just who got to the judge who granted it.
We’ll see.
McMillen And Life
Former NBA big man and United States senator congressman Tom McMillen has lived a remarkable life. At 6’11”, he’s likely the tallest person ever to be a Rhodes Scholar. Having scored 5,914 points in 11 NBA seasons, he’s the second-most prolific scorer in NBA history to have also served in Congress (answer: Bill Bradley).
McMillen checked Bill Walton in a one-point Maryland defeat to UCLA, the 76th consecutive win for the Bruins in their epic 88-game win streak. He made the cover of Sports Illustrated as a high schooler. And yet, after yesterday, he’s also going to be remembered as that tall, silver-haired man who was hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump at Mar-A-Lago in 1992. You gotta wonder how many phone calls his people have fielded in the past 24 hours, or how much CBS officials have beseeched his former Maryland teammate, Len Elmore (a CBS broadcaster), to put in a good word so that they can land an exclusive.
This Land Is Oland
The tiny but incredibly green island of Oland, off the northwest coast of Germany and just south of the nation’s shared border with Denmark, boasts 16 permanent residents. Besides having too few citizens to start a regulation soccer match, Oland also boasts Germany’s shortest lighthouse and its only such edifice with a thatched roof.
Related: Whenever the overall vapidness of cnn.com’s website leaves me drenched in depression, I remember that bbc.com exists and it always has more interesting stories.
Netflix And Sell?
We dumped our shares of Netflix (NFLX) about a year ago, once rumblings of bigger-shouldered media giants such as Disney and Amazon were looking into invading the streaming space. Yesterday Netflix (NFLX) announced after-the-bell earnings and while most of the numbers were solid, the company missed on its expected international subscriptions (actual, 2.8 million) by about 40 percent (expected, 4.8 million).
In after-hours trading, NFLX shares have plunged more than Eleven %, from $362 to $322. We’ve seen Stranger Things than this happen to Reed Hastings’ company and its stock price in the past, but you have to wonder whether all of the outside competition, plus the refusal of media conglomerates to continue to lease programming rights to former shows (Friends, The Office), is a two-front war that Netflix simply can’t win.
Remember: Once upon a time there was MySpace. And then Facebook invaded their space. And then there wasn’t a MySpace worth knowing. Same goes for Blackberry. Being first is great, but staying on top is never assured.
Music 101
This Year
When you host your own late-night show, you can ask the musical guest to play the song you want to hear and join them onstage (I’m looking at you, The Proclaimers). Founded by lead singer John Danielle in Claremont, Calif., in 1992, the Mountain Goats originally performed this song about a decade ago on The Colbert Report but it never made air. Last night Stephen made it up to them.
Remote Patrol
The Open
9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. The Golf Channel
Rory McIlroy, the greatest Irish golfer there ever has been—his four majors are the most of anyone born on the Emerald Isle—has already quadruple-bogeyed the first hole this morning at Royal Portrush. I’m thinking Roger Bennett has already equated it to Kings Landing going down in flames on an exterior set outside Belfast earlier this year.
I’m trying to imagine how many hours of footage unfortunate NBC production assistants had to wade through before finally discovering this. Meanwhile, the House of Representatives voted, in the first rebuke of a sitting president in more than a century, to condemn Trump’s words as “racist” by a vote of 240-187. Only four GOP members broke ranks.
Meanwhile, I truly hope someone at the Democratic National Committee reads this Op-Ed by Thomas Friedman in The New York Times. It’s exactly what I’ve been thinking for the past month and that is, The Dems are putting up such radical left candidates that they’re likely going to blow the 2020 election, too.
There are millions upon millions of Americans who don’t like Trump. But that doesn’t mean the only alternative you give them is someone who doesn’t believe that illegal immigration is illegal, or that no one should have to spend a dime for college (while spending $200 a year for Netflix) other than their bar tab. It’s as if taking a road trip with one other person who tells you right off they refuse to listen to hip-hop and so you say, Okay, find another radio station and they insist on playing death metal.
Find some middle ground, Dems. Damn. How difficult is it?
In the past few weeks I’ve begun to think of the 2020 race as one big Aaron Sorkin play and I’ve wondered how Sorkin would resolve it. And I truly don’t think there’s a current character on the stage, at least not for the Dems, whom Sorkin would reveal as his winner (unless he was writing a tragedy and made it Trump).
I think Sorkin would reveal a worthy nominee, perhaps someone new or perhaps someone we already know, late in the third act. And it would likely be someone who was not onstage in Florida during the June debates.
All I know is that I grew up around a world of sports, and I came to believe in that ecosystem. I believe in the idea of everyone playing by the same rules and that you should succeed based on merit. Neither party seems to want to adhere to those very simple principles, as the GOP abandons the former and the Dems do not espouse the latter.
Is is really that difficult, Dems, to find someone who is both a better candidate than Trump yet isn’t the Oprah Solution (“You get a car, and you get a car, and you get a car!“…just because you happened to be in the audience)?
Quoting Friedman here:
Dear Democrats: This is not complicated! Just nominate a decent, sane person, one committed to reunifying the country and creating more good jobs, a person who can gain the support of the independents, moderate Republicans and suburban women who abandoned Donald Trump in the midterms and thus swung the House of Representatives to the Democrats and could do the same for the presidency.And that candidate can win!
46?
I’m beginning to think, and only because it WOULD work and he IS sane, that Tom Hanks should run for president.
Stroke Of Misfortune
At Sleepy Ridge Golf Course in Orem, Utah, a dad’s errant golf shot strikes his six year-old daughter in the base of the neck and kills her. She was seated in a golf cart on the cart path, so this was quite the errant shot. Of course this is tragic, but if you know golfers, this sounds like the set up to a million punch lines: Titleist? Maybe you should have used a different club? Did you still par the hole? Yes, but what did you shoot for the round?
K-K is Okay (at the WSOP)
We get confused, ESPN. The World Series of Poker’s Main Event used to conclude in mid-July. Then you ran nearly the entire tourney and July but saved the final table for November. Apparently now you’ve reverted to July again?
At some ungodly hour Hossain Ensan, 55, won the WSOP’s $10 million Main Event overnight with a hand that began with a pair of pocket kings. Ensan defeated Dario Sammartino in what had been their 100th hand heads-up and the 301st hand of the final table. In other words, they both wanted to get the hell out of there and go to sleep.
Ensan, who is German but was born in Iran, said as much: “I must go to sleep and wake up, and then maybe I know I have the bracelet.”
This year’s Main Event began with 8,659 players (each of whom paid a $10K buy-in), the second-largest field ever.
Rolling Stone Sells Out (Again)
It was more than a quarter-century ago that Rolling Stone gave Nirvana its first cover and the band’s lead singer, Kurt Cobain, wore a t-shirt to the shoot that read “Corporate Magazines Still Suck.” If you pick up the current issue of Rolling Stone, you’ll see that RS is not even trying to disguise that fact any more. Who got the cover, the front cover, of RS this month? A giant can of Coors Light.
Really.
In related news, my corner bodega has devoted one of its two walls to a floor-to-ceiling magazine rack for as long as I’ve lived here (which dates back to about the time that Nirvana RS came out). This week they tore down that wall to renovate the store and I feel fairly confident in saying that it’s not coming back. They may as well replace it with a case for new horseshoes or saddles.
Meanwhile, yes, Andy Staples officially left Sports Illustrated for TheAthletic this week. In the past year the mag has lost its top golf writer, Alan Shipnuck, its top horse racing (and Olympics) writer, Tim Layden, and now its college football guy.
It’s difficult to explain to anyone under, say, 35, but at the time that RS cover above came out, SI was the epicenter of prestige in sportswriting. It’s where everyone in the sportswriting business aspired to be, regardless of salary. No more.
One last item. I remember a meeting early on in my time there when, as a branding idea, someone thought that since everyone always referred to it as “SI” that that is what the cover should read. But that idea was pushed back when it was noted that that’s also Spanish for “yes” and that it might confuse readers. Ha! Seriously, that was a concern. In the current climate that move might have been hailed as both genius and all-inclusive.
Not that it would have forestalled the inevitable. Call me when SI puts a giant Bud Light bottle on the cover and I’ll be the roadside Indian, a single tear running down my cheek.
We didn’t know whether to lead this morning with the “human-sized jellyfish” or with “meth gators,” but since the former have actually been captured on film, that made our decision for us.
Is it real? You betcha.
This is a barrel jellyfish and it was spotted beneath the surface of the English Channel last Saturday. Surprisingly, barrel jellies produce only a mild sting but we’d really like to meet the person who had to find out the hard way that that was the case.
The Squad
Meet Captains Marvel: freshmen Congresswomen Ayana Pressley (Mass.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), and Rashida Tlaib (Michigan). Yesterday afternoon they stood up to President Trump’s racist barrage of tweets (“Go back to the countries they came from…”) and hateful words (“If anyone is not happy here, they can leave”), and reminded anyone who would listen that this land is your land, but also that this land is my land.
The irony of Trump’s tweets on Sunday is that in suggesting these four women of color “who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world” should go back is that 75% of them were born here and are in fact already doing exactly what he recommends.
Personally, I’m glad the racism is finally out in the open (and that the GOP leadership showed its true colors by staying mum about it). Trump was asked yesterday if he regretted his Sunday tweet outburst and his reply was telling: “No, because a lot of people agree with me.”
“Alcaida”
The message there? We’re not explicitly racist; we don’t hate black or brown color. They just need to know their place. This is a white country.
Not only is that SO RACIST, but good luck standing in front of a massive wave and telling it to stop just because you don’t like how it changes your standing here. Go ask the Cherokee, Sioux and Navajo how that worked out for them.
John John Gone
It was 20 years ago that John F. Kennedy, Jr., his wife Carolyn Bessette, and her sister Lauren died in a plane crash off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. The trio were headed to a family wedding in Hyannisport in a small plane that John John was piloting. As day turned to night and the haze turned to pea soup, he lost his bearings and the plane plunged into the sea.
A tragic waste of three lives and a weekend in NYC we will never forget. John John did not have any official political standing, but it was almost as if he was NYC’s kid brother who everyone would look out. He was a regular guy who would go roller-blading in Central Park and who just happened to be the most handsome man in the city. He was…nice.
I’ve told this story before, but June 23, 1999, less than a month before his death. I’m in the hallway in the bowels of Madison Square Garden as Game 4 of the NBA Finals has just ended. We are told to stand against the wall so security can usher the VIPs past us. Three men walk past, so close that I can touch them: Woody Allen, Donald Trump and John John. The last was on crutches (he’d hurt his foot or ankle) and accidentally placed his crutch atop my foot as he limped past.
John John looked back and said, “Sorry” to me. Three weeks later, he was gone. He’d be 58 today and no doubt would have a lot to say about what was happening in his father’s old office right now, in the House where he spent the first three years of his life.
By the way, here’s how much the planet has changed in 20 years. No one learned of his death on Twitter or social media. You woke up (it was a Saturday morning when everyone found out) and if you were bored by what was on ESPN, you flipped over to CNN, where you were greeted by footage of the waters of the Long Island Sound on a sunny July day and the chyron at the bottom of the screen that read “JFK., Jr. Plane Missing.” And then you called up at least one person you knew and told them to “turn on CNN.”
That was social media just two decades ago.
Michael Kay Not Okay
Michael Kay talks for a living. Michael Kay talks… a lot. For roughly half the year Kay is the voice of the New York Yankees while also hosting a four-hour sports radio show on NYC’s local ESPN affiliate. Kay, 58, is very good at what he does but those vocal chords of his never get a rest.
Until now.
Kay recently saw a specialist in Boston who advised that he have vocal cord surgery. He’ll be out about a month. It’s funny that in this season where so many Yankee All-Stars (Judge, Stanton, Severino, Gregorius, Betances, even Sanchez) have been on the IL that both of their vaunted and long-time play-by-play men, Kay and John Sterling, have also missed time.
Meanwhile, last night Rays catcher Travis D’Arnaud had one of the best nights anyone has had in the new Yankee Stadium, hitting three home runs as Tampa Bay beat the Yanks, 5-4. D’arnaud, who hit a walk-off home run against New York less than two weeks ago, hit a go-ahead three-run shot on a 3-2 count with two outs in the night against Aroldis Chapman with Tampa Bay trailing 4-2. It was the first loss the Yanks had suffered when leading after eight innings in FIFTY games this season.
Summer of 51
We’ve been meaning to discuss the Facebook-fueled movement to storm the notoriously secret Area 51 in Nevada. Ordinarily people head to Nevada in the summertime for Burning Man, but apparently that’s not enough any more.
We had the opportunity to drive through a lot of Nevada last summer and we will tell you this: outside of Las Vegas and Reno, it is vast and it is empty. Emp-tee. It’s a state that, outside of those two metropolises, probably has more whorehouses than McDonald’s. Seriously.
If you want to hide anything super-secret from the American public, the Nevada wilderness is the perfect place to do so. We came to a T intersection after driving about 50 miles on one lonesome stretch of highway and wanted to turn left until we saw a sign that warned, “Next fuel stop, 163 miles.” So that made our decision for us.
We’re all in favor of the storming, by the way. What ever could the government be keeping from us? Would it really rock humanity’s foundations that much?
Music 101
Love (Can Make You Happy)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4A9Fffo-jM
In the spring of 1969 an unknown vocal group from Florida by the name of Mercy released this tune and it shot all the way to No. 2 on the Billboard charts. All that kept it from reaching No. 1 was a little quartet from Liverpool who had a little success with a tune called “Get Back.” You listen to this song and you wonder if The Association shouldn’t sue for royalties simply because Mercy pilfered their overall vibe.
Remote Patrol
Destination Moon
8 p.m. TCM
The year was 1950 when this sci-fi film about a mission to the moon was released. Like that could ever happen. It won an Oscar for special effects and not a few experts call this the most important sci-fi film of the decade (sorry, Ed Wood).
With a career-defining triumph at Wimbledon over Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic serves notice that when it’s all over, he very well may retire with the most Grand Slam championships. Djokovic, 32, became the first man since 1948 at Wimbledon to overcome a championship point—the greatest men’s champion of all time, thus far, Federer, had two against him—and recover to win it all at the All England.
The Serbian server wins his 16th Grand Slam in the longest Wimbledon final ever: 7-6, 1-6, 7-6, 4-6, 13-12 (7-3), a match that took 4 hours and 57 minutes. Federer, 37, has 20; Nadal, 33, has 18. All three men have at least one Grand Slam titles in all four of the Grand Slam events. This is tennis’ holy trinity.
Woody’s Wimbledon Weekend
Worth noting: Our little restaurant had an overwhelming majority of Federer fans, as we guess most did in the U.S.A. It’s not that folks don’t like Novak, but that Federer is so good and so gracious. He was humorous and respectful in defeat, and he’ll always be NUMBER ONE in the hearts of most tennis fans, both casual and intense.
Monaco Mile Miracle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmAaHwEZS8M
It had been 23 years since someone had broken the women’s mile record so, yeah, Sifan Hassan‘s 4:12.33 in Monaco on Friday night is kind of a big deal. Hassan, of the Netherlands and coached by Alberto Salazar (uh oh!), ran a 2:08 first half, which means she did a negative split, running a 2:04 over the last two laps. More impressively, there was nobody giving her any type of challenge on the last lap. No one to push her.
Salazar has been openly accused by some big names in track (Kara Goucher, Dathan Ritzenhein) of blood doping his runners. It’s a noteworthy record; we just may never know, as with so many track feats of the past 40 years, whether or not it’s legit.
Angels In The Outfield—And Infield
Friday evening’s Mariners-Angels game, the first one in Anaheim since the death of Angel pitcher Tyler Skaggs, may compel you to rethink your religious convictions. Or lack thereof.
Yes, the Angels, each and every last one of them wearing a Skaggs 45 jersey, scored 7 runs in the first inning and 13 runs in the game. Skaggs’ birthday was July 13, or 7/13. Yes, two Angel pitchers combined to throw a no-hitter in the 13-0 win. And for us, most eerie of all, the last time a combined no-hitter had been thrown in the big leagues in the state of California was July 13, 1991: the very date Skaggs was born, in California.
And of course, what’s the name of this team? The Angels. I can see your halo (halo, halo)/I can see your halo (halo, halo)/ I can see your halo (halo, halo)/Oooh ooh ooh.
Prognosis Negative!
One of the hidden treasures of being a rabid Turner Classic Movies fan is being exposed to a pop culture nugget you never knew existed. On Friday night we were watching Dark Victory, from 1939, because 1) we’re not cool, 2) we’d never seen it and 3) it stars both Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart, both of whom are without argument Top 3 all-time movie stars in their respective genders (note: there’s a kiss between them late in the film that is totally awkward, though the plot kind of calls for it to be…there are few Hollywood kisses, though, that have ever had that kind of star power behind them…Gable and Leigh; Tracy and Hepburn; Grant and Kelly come to mind).
Anyway, we digress. The key turning point in the film happens when Davis, playing a young New York socialite who has had brain surgery and believes she is fully healed, discovers her medical file (she has fallen in love with her surgeon and they are planning to move to Vermont, hence his office is askew). As you’ll see from the clip above, two words are heavily emphasized in this scene: “Prognosis Negative.”
As any Seinfeld fan knows, Prognosis Negative was one of the many made-up films that the gang went to see during the course of the series (e.g. Rochelle, Rochelle; The Muted Heart; and of course, Death Blow). We have no idea if Larry David is enough of an old movies fan to have seen Dark Victory, but you have to wonder. Watching this scene from the vantage point of being a Seinfeld fanatic who only knew of the term from the sitcom, I felt almost as if I were being punked. Your thoughts?
“Go Back!”
Yes, it’s getting tiresome chronicling the president’s always boorish and often outright racist behavior. And yes, you have to wonder just how much of that tweet was motivated by a desire to get “Jeffrey Epstein” out of the top of most news scrolls. But here it was on Sunday morning:
….and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how….
Of course, three of the four Congresswomen to whom Trump is referring, all of whom are darker-skinned than the typical MAGA fan, were born in the United States. They are the 2019 version of “the Mexican judge.”
The irony, for us, is that Trump’s family is from Germany. There hasn’t been another country in the past 100 years that has been more “totally broken” than Germany. Why didn’t Fred Trump go back and “fix” Deutschland in the 1930s?
We will say this for President Trump, and any president in the recent past and going forward: The southern border is a no-win issue. As ugly as Trump’s tactics have been—the cages and facilities and familial separations are part of the strategy to deter border crossings—it’s just as distasteful to listen to Democrats bemoan this “constitutional crisis” and that constitutional crisis and this law and that law that the GOP no longer obeys, but when it comes to illegal immigration all of a sudden they get a virulent case of the feels.
You can have empathy and compassion for anyone wanting to come to America to have a better life. You can, at the same time, respect the laws and have even more empathy (at least I do) for those who are attempting to do so legally. And I write this as someone who every single day works with people of Latin descent who have come to this country using each of those avenues. These are my friends. I don’t blame a single one of them for doing what they have done. But I also recognize that it’s not legal and we’re supposedly a nation of laws.
So which way do you want to have it, Dems?
Last thing: What a day yesterday might have been if ICE decided to raid those businesses or those homes (many in the Hamptons, Westchester and Fairfield Counties) where illegal immigrants are paid off the books and apprehended not the migrants but their employers who are knowingly fertilizing this situation. Isn’t it always a better nab to catch the drug dealer than the casual pothead? So how come you don’t go after the people paying the undocumented workers off the books? If your aim is really to stem the tide of illegal immigration, as opposed to turning brown people into an easy mark for undereducated, lower-middle class white folk for political gain, then cut off the source of their income….by putting rich white people in jail for employing them.
Of course that’ll never happen. Because it’s not really about that. It’s about finding someone else to blame.
