Those are the numbers as of this moment. When the bottom number surpasses the top number, Donald is gonna be angry. Oh, he’s already angry? We hear that he retweeted someone last night calling for Dr. Fauci to be fired. You may recall that we urged Dr. Fauci to quit two to three weeks ago. America will still listen to him. He can go sit in at Andrew Cuomo’s pressers. What’s up, doc? You are.
Also, the first sailor from the U.S.S. Roosevelt’s 500 or so who contracted coronavirus has died. Remember the ship’s commanding officer was fired —FIRED—for raising a stink about this a week or two ago.
By George, I Think He’s Got It*
*The judges will not accept “Good Mourning, America”
News out of Disney is that Good Morning, America co-host George Stephanopoulos has contracted the coronavirus, which is not surprising as his wife, Ali Wentworth (“No, you’re schmoopie!”, came down with it a week or two ago. Ali: “High fever. Horrific body aches. Heavy chest. I am quarantined from my family. This is pure misery… never been sicker.”
Down goes Ali!
Stephanopoulos is asymptomatic thus far. But if he passes it to Robin Roberts, we’re going to have a problem.
Saturday Night Home
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLiSbSBF2PQ
With an assist from Tom Hanks, hosting from his kitchen, and musical guest Chris Martin, SNL staged a show Saturday night. The cast members did so from their homes and America learned that… Colin Jost has been lifting.
Anyway, from what we saw Larry David‘s Bernie Sanders was spot-on again (David never got on air as a writer for the show in the early ’80s and now he’s its most indispensable male member) and Michael Che and Colin Jost had us laughing at the end of “Weekend Update” with the Joke Swap.
Bocelli: O Solo Mio
The world’s most famous opera singer (how many others can you name), AndreaBocelli, took solo to a heavenly level on Easter Sunday as he sang from inside an empty cathedral in Milan, the famed il Duomo. Bocelli, 61, sang to an empty cathedral, something he only ever does in rehearsal.
Sports Year 1872
Five schools compete in college football and you may get four of them but you’ll never get the fifth. Wanna try?
Yale Football
They are: Princeton, Rutgers, Columbia, Yale and… Stevens Tech. The last of which is located in Hoboken, N.J., and is still in existence though it does not play football. Yale, in its inaugural game and the first game played in the state of Connecticut, defeats Columbia 3-0. It is the Bulldogs’ only game of the season.
Young Tom Morris wins the British Open again.
In soccer, or “association football,” England and Scotland play the first official international match (the first actually took place in London in 1870 but was not recognized as such, more of a friendly, if you can call anything between England and Scotland that). Played in Glasgow, the match ends in a goalless draw, guaranteeing that Americans will mostly ignore the sport for the next 125 or so years.
Morty also played cricket
In London, Wanderers win the first FA Cup (noted Friday), defeating Royal Engineers 1-0 at Kennington Oval in London. Morton Betts scores the first goal and promptly marries a supermodel and buys a high-speed cigarette boat that he docks off the coast of Monte Carlo.
*****
Congrats to Susie B., who’s giddy about her AMZN stock this morning.
This week’s cover of Time features an Italian anesthesiologist. Here are men and women going to work each day not only trying to save lives but putting their own lives at risk by doing so. Is there anything more heroic?
The MSNBC prime-time crew has been doing a good job of featuring doctors and nurses this week. Spreading a little positive news. You can only bang the drum of what miserable and wretched persons the President and his sycophants are for so long, so good for them.
The Ideas That Won’t Survive The Coronavirus
It’s like this. When my old college pal Andre suggests a book or an article (or even an appetizer), I’m going to try it. His taste is that impeccable and his wisdom is unimpeachable. So Andre suggested to me overnight this Op-Ed from The New York Times, penned by Viet Thanh Nguyen who, yes, is American. He’s also the author of The Refugees, which Andre tells me is a fantastic book so add that to the reading list as soon as I finish the Vampire Academy series.
Having read the piece, I must say (“must say” presages a statement in which I will give myself credit, seemingly reluctantly, but c’mon…) it parrots many of the thoughts expressed in this blog the past month. It induces me to harken back to yesterday’s CNBC “Halftime Report” interview with Chamath Palihapitiya, in which he also expressed similar thoughts on this topic. I remember Josh Brown disagreeing with him, saying it’s better to give money to large corporations, adding, “I don’t necessarily like it, but that’s the way it is.”
And in that moment I wanted to jump through the television screen and shake Josh, a wealthy Long Island boy with a head for numbers who probably has a second house in the Hamptons, at the very least a summer rental. I wanted to say, “You’re a guy with a daily platform nearly on ‘America’s Business Channel.’ If there’s something you honestly don’t like about America’s capitalist class structure and how it marginalizes all but the wealthy, who has a better opportunity than you do to stand up and say so?” But he didn’t.
Read the Op-Ed. Nguyen is correct.
Manhattan Melodrama
Sure, I can see it (he’s wearing the same jacket in Annie Hall, by the way)
So we watched about one hour of Woody Allen’s Manhattan last night before clicking it off because it was mostly not funny and also a cry for help. Allen’s character, Isaac Davis, is 42 and dating a 17 year-old. It’s not a perverse infatuation. They’re sleeping together. The character, played by Margaux iel Hemingway, is constantly telling Isaac (again, this is Woody Allen we’re talking about) how great he is in bed. Ewwww!
Meanwhile, Davis is cheating on her with Diane Keaton, whom we met because she’s the mistress of his best friend. We’re not exactly Puritans, but give us someone to root for, please.
The two moments we’ll remember that we liked: 1) When Woody’ character says, “I think people should mate for life… like pigeons or Catholics.”
2) The other, at a party at MOMA, the subject of Nazis organizing in New Jersey comes up. Allen, whose character is a writer, asks, “Has anybody read that Nazis are gonna march in New Jersey? Y’know, I read this in the newspaper. We should go down there, get some guys together, y’know, get some bricks and baseball bats and really explain things to them.“
A pedantic literary pal replies, “There is this devastating satirical piece on that on the Op Ed page of the Times, it is devastating.”
Allen/Davis: “Well, a satirical piece in the Times is one thing, but bricks and baseball bats really gets right to the point.“
Why H-O-R-S-E Will Be a B-O-R-E
If these two were competing, I’d watch
ESPN is planning a H-O-R-S-E competition between NBA stars in order to help us get our sports fix in this time of athletic famine. It’s better than nothing, I suppose, but not much.
Here’s how I succinctly try to explain the difference between competition and sport: Stand two people next to one another and have them each shoot at targets 30 yards away (like that early scene in Winchester ’73 for you film buffs). That’s a competition. Now take the same two people and have them stand 30 yards away and shoot at one another (like the climactic scene from Winchester ’73, involving the same two men). That’s sport.
SportsYear 1871
The year (almost) nothing happened. No college football games are played the entire season, the only year between 1869 and 2019 in which this happens (Will 2020 be a repeat of 1871?). The British Open does not take place due to a hosting controversy and the Harvard-Yale regatta is also called off. Mike McCoole, the American boxing champion, takes the year off as well.
The biggest sports news? The FA Cup is staged for the first time, with 15 clubs participating. The only club involved that presently exists under the same name in the Premier League is Crystal Palace. The tournament kicks off on November 11 and Wanderers (from London) will win it come March.
John, Ringo, Paul and George were the original social distance practitioners
We’re Number 2!
Overnight the United States surpassed 15,000 deaths and as of this moment has reached 15,634 deaths. We are now second behind only Italy (17,699) in deaths and, of course, number one worldwide in number of cases. Of course, no one knows for sure what the actual case and death totals are anywhere, in terms of accuracy.
But right now, we’re Number 2! Only five to six weeks removed from the infamous “When you have 15 people and, in a couple of weeks, it’s going down to close to zero.”
Give ‘Em Hell, Chamath
MH staff slept more than 11 hours last night (No, we’re not sick… or hung over… the new job is rather arduous and today’s our first day off in six) and so we woke up, on Pacific Time, to Chamath Palipitiya, a socially conscious rich guy investor (he’s worth $1.2 billion), as a guest on CNBC’s “Halftime Report.” In short, he was glorious and what was fascinating is how obtuse host Scott Wapner appeared to be.
First, and I wish I had the entire video, he noted that the government would have done a much better job of stimulating the economy, not to mention helping more Americans, if it had, instead of handing out $2 trillion to large corporations so they could manage their balance sheets, instead looked at every American’s W-2 form and given each what would amount to their monthly income. Downtown Josh Brown, with whom we normally agree, countered that you just can’t go around handing people bags of money. Oh, but you can hand grain sacks full of money to corporations?
Then Wapner asked his put-you-on-the-spot question: “Do you think the airlines should be allowed to fail?”
Chamath: “Yes!”
Wapner: “Why? When it’s through no fault of their own?”
Chamath: “Because, first of all, when the airline fails it isn’t firing all of its employees. It goes through bankruptcy and those employees wind up having a bigger stake in the company. And second, because that’s the rules. (Let us replay that for the people in back: because that’s the rules. How come dyed-in-the-wool capitalists gets so upset when Fortune 500 companies are subject to the same trials that mom-and-pop stores are).”
Wapner: “Why should they go under when it’s through no fault of their own (He honestly asked this)?”
Chamath: “Look around. Look at today’s unemployment figures. Millions of Americans are going under through no fault of their own. They don’t know how they’re going to pay their bills or feed their families. Now look at who owns the airlines. It’s large private equity firms like Blackrock. So the airlines go under and you don’t get your summer in the Hamptons, so what (he actually said this and at that point I may have begun clapping and a happy tear may have escaped from my cheek)?”
There was more and if I can find the video, I’ll post it. Kudos to CNBC for giving such a progressive thinker (but of course, only because he’s rich was he allowed to be on) that much space to talk, but it’s truly disheartening to see what hypocrites some of these guys are. They say they’re for capitalism, but really what they’re for is the status quo.
We’ll post this now since it’s late and continue working on the blog because that is what we do, America…
The Upside of a Pandemic Catastrophe: A Rai Of Hope
Early on I said I was rooting for the coronavirus and in a bizarre way, I still am. Certainly the death toll is tragic, and there’s no escaping that. But look at some of the residual effects. In no particular order:
–Average Americans are finally recognizing that doctors and nurses are the real heroes, not the military. I’m not at all against someone serving this country, but I’d grown past nauseous seeing ESPN and others glorify these “reunited at sporting events” moments for service members who’ve come home from abroad in nations where WE, the USA, initiated the engagement. WTF? Seeing New Yorkers clap and cheer every evening at 7 p.m. to honor health care workers is a sign that people are beginning to get their priorities in place (that and parents at last beginning to see just how woefully underpaid teachers are for watching their kids six hours each day).
–The air is cleaner in major cities.
–Animals are getting a better chance. I saw this video of cats and dogs being able to roam through an aquarium the other day and thought it was the coolest thing ever.
–Donald Trump is, daily, being exposed for the fraud and miscreant that he is. The virus doesn’t have a political agenda, but its numbers are stark and real. The MAGA cult will continue to attempt to absolve him from blame, but there’s no getting around it. A man and a cult who think that money and whiteness can overwhelm any problem or adversary are being brought to their knees. Intelligence matters. Truth matters. Science matters. God bless this pandemic for exposing that.
–The goodness in most people is coming out and being exposed. Last night Lawrence O’Donnell showed a video posted by a young anesthesiologist, Dr.Ajit Rai, who graduated from UCLA a year or two ago. He was working in Los Angeles but had done some residency work in New York City only a year ago. Dr. Rai was so overwhelmed by what he was seeing in Manhattan that he obtained a leave of absence from his residency at a Los Angeles hospital, bought a one-way ticket to New York (“flying into the inferno,” he called it), and got put on staff at his old hospital in New York City to be part of the fight. He said that the hardest part of this was telling his parents what he was doing.
To a lot of Red State America, this young man might not look “American.” But what Dr. Rai is doing is the most American thing you can possibly do.
Jane Says
Yesterday CNBC’s Jane Wells reported from a berry farm in Camarillo, Calif. (above is NOT that farm), about 60 miles northwest of L.A., I’m estimating. In a 2-minute report Wells touched on a number of things that could have all been turned into a John Steinbeck novel (or perhaps already have):
–First, she noted that the farmers are losing money because Americans are no longer dining out and simply not spending as much on food. They’re wondering if the government can’t step in and buy the food and donate it to food banks, which makes me ask, Why can’t the farmers just donate it to food banks? Oh, yeah, cuz they don’t want to lose money. So, welfare under another name, but at least they didn’t simply have their hands out.”
–Wells also noted that most, if not all of the workers, are there under special work visas (she never used the terms “Mexicans,” “Central Americans” or “Illegals) and would not normally be permitted to do so under this administration. In other words, they’re rapists, drug dealers and murderers until America has a job for them to do. Wells, who is nothing if not smart and shrewd, did point out that Hey, doesn’t America have this massive unemployment problem and aren’t these jobs that need doing but then just as quickly noted that the average American will make more in a week off his or her unemployment check than he or she will doing this back-breaking field labor. Funny how that goes.
–Finally, Jane brought up one final, ominous point. These workers are violating social distance rules constantly and are housed in dormitories. What happens when one of them tests positive? What she didn’t need to add is that none of them will because the moment someone gets sick they’ll simply be sent away or back across the border. As foreign workers go, Rudy Gobert gets tested. Carlos in the strawberry field does not.
TCM Has A Major Woody
Keaton and Allen, beneath the 59th Street Bridge, feelin’ groovy…
Tonight on TCM a Woody Allen double feature in prime time. First, at 8 p.m. EDT, it’s Annie Hall, his 1977 classic that won Best Picture at the Oscars. It’s the only comedy I can think of that won Best Picture and it’s undoubtedly Allen’s best picture or, as Roger Ebert noted, “everyone’s favorite Woody Allen film.”
Then at 10 p.m. it’s Manhattan, which is a sequel of sorts in spirit, though the characters have changed. Once again you get Allen and Diane Keaton, but also a young and captivating but cold Meryl Streep (buffs will note it’s one of two Streep films from this year in which she plays a Manhattan wife who leaves her Jewish husband) and an ingenue, Margeaux Hemingway, who serves as a harbinger to Allen’s real-life previsions to come, i.e., having sex with underage girls (a lot of that going on with Upper East Side millionaires and billionaires it seems).
The real star of Manhattan, shot entirely in black-and-white, is the city island itself. It’s never looked lovelier onscreen and yes, always looks better in black and white and gray.
Just this morning I’ve seen that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is going to donate $1 billion to COVID-19 relief and that Dell founder Michael Dell is going to donate $100 million for the same cause. Hey, that’s great, but let’s assess a few things:
–If these two men can afford to donate that much, they’re not exactly digging into the bottoms of their pockets for this loot. Even if Dorsey is donating one-third of his net worth, and that’s incredibly generous (if you ignore the tax break he’s yielding from this), but he still has $2 billion more to get by on.
–Second, let’s look at the number of employees Twitter and Dell have, respectively, and then do a little long division. Twitter has roughly 5,000 employees. So, and I know this is overly simplistic, but if Dorsey had simply been putting that type of money into his employees’ pockets annually and not his own, he could give every single employee of his a $200,000 bonus. Imagine that. Imagine the type of work force, in terms of talent, you could assemble, if you treated your employees that well. Imagine how loyal they’d be.
As for Dell, he has far more employees and his contribution is one-tenth that of Dorsey’s, so his donation parceled out to each of them would only be $700 or so.
But here’s the larger point. The men at the very top of the food chain are stock-piling funds while scores of people who work for them are stuck in the middle class at best. And then something like this happens and they donate a huge chunk of cash and CNBC hails them as heroic. What I’d like to know is how come they weren’t paying their employees better and stimulating the economy the entire time as opposed to sitting on top of a mountain of cash?
True, Dorsey and Dell created businesses, created thousands of jobs, and for that they deserve credit. I’m just wondering what possesses men to be THAT rich when so many people working for them are still involved in class struggle. I hereby promise that when MH Industries is a a major conglomerate that we’ll pay executive assistant Susie B. at least $200,000 per year and even throw in free MH merchandise.
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