In the city by Lake Erie, baseball’s best pitcher took on its most offensively potent lineup. This one got late early.
As a rust-colored sunset loomed behind, the announcers were just finishing saying that Shane Bieber had led all of baseball in Wins, Strikeouts and ERA (pitching’s triple crown) when D.J. LeMahieu, who led all of baseball in batting average (.364), stroked a patented opposite-field single to right. The next batter, Aaron Judge, took a Bieber fastball beyond the right-center field wall.
The Yanks would go on to win 12-3 in Cleveland. Elsewhere, Minnesota lost its 17th consecutive postseason game (“Not great, Bob”). Oakland and Tampa Bay also won. Today we have five games, beginning at 9 a.m. local time.
Disgrace Debate
Elsewhere in Cleveland…
Chris Wallace: "Are you willing, tonight, to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and to say that they need to stand down…"
Trump: "Proud Boys, stand back and stand by! But I'll tell you what, somebody's got to do something about antifa and the left." pic.twitter.com/4vrPocKzcu
Now, I will admit that I followed along on Twitter and at one point when I snuck into the kitchen I heard the president repeating the line “super predator” at Joe Biden and wondered how come, every time Donald Trump said it, Biden didn’t interrupt, “Women call you what?” Or why Biden did not invoke “Herman Cain” when Trump stated that there were no ill effects from the Tulsa rally. And I did see a clip of the now historic “stand back and stand by” moment.
As CNN’s Jake Tapper summarized, “Donald Trump has come to the realization that he can’t win and now he wants to take all of America down with him.” The United States: Donal Trump’s latest failed enterprise.
And to think @jemelehill took so much grief for calling the president a white supremacist…
In a sports environment in which NBA players wear “SAY HER NAME” and “BLACK LIVES MATTER” on their uniforms where their own surnames once were, taking no stand at all can be seen as being on the other side? Is that right? Or fair?
Clemson coach Dabo Swinney was asked about social justice messages on uniforms two nights ago and he gave a clumsy answer that reminded all of us the bubble in which he lives (it’s literally a practice bubble). Cabo said that he supports “common sense causes, not political organizations.”
We here at MH feel that it’s any program’s right not to use its uniforms as a platform for social protest, just as much as it is the program’s right to do so. Perhaps a better way to come at that would be if Dabo asked why Clemson doesn’t just put “BLM” on its helmets and change its uniforms to black all season? And if someone said, “Well, you don’t need to go that far” his reply should be, “The degree to which we’d go isn’t the point. The point is that you feel you have the right to dictate what we should do with our uniforms. Not having a ‘BLM’ sticker doesn’t mean we don’t support it. It means that we won’t use our football program as a bumper sticker.”
Here’s Louisville hoops coach Chris Mack calling out instate rival John Calipari and Kentucky for ducking their contest. It’s now on again.
RIP, Helen and Mac
Singers Helen Reddy and Mac Davis, both of whom appeared on The Mike Douglas Show in my youth, both passed away yesterday. Both, I believe, were 78.
Reddy’s iconic “I Am Woman” hit became an anthem for the feminist movement (“Yes, I am wise/But it’s wisdom born of pain/Yes, I’ve paid the price/But look how much I’ve gained“). Davis, a curly-haired country singer, sang “Baby, Baby, Don’t Get Hooked On Me” and also was pretty darn good as an NFL QB in North Dallas Forty.
Today: four MLB playoff games, all American League (best of three, all three games from the team with the better record’s home field, but they will alternate who bats last and again, no fans). The four games—Astros-Twins, White Sox-A’s, Jays-Rays, and Yanks-Indians—will be telecast on ABC, ESPN and TBS and by 3 p.m. EST at least two games will be taking place for the next five hours.
Tomorrow: Game 1 of the NBA Finals, Heat-Lakers. Did you see Goran Drajic starting in the NBA Finals five years ago?
Also: Le French Open et Le Tour de France simultane!
Later this week: The Preakness Stakes, college and NFL football.
Jimmy Chin’s Grand Experiment
A phenomenal piece in The New York Timesthat you must make time for. Climber Jimmy Chin (who won an Oscar for producing/directing Free Solo) found himself quarantined, at least from traveling abroad, this summer in his home of Wilson, Wyo. So he turned the Grand Tetons into his personal workout space, traversing an 18-mile crest ridge known as The Grand Traverse.
This piece demonstrates the potential of what on-line journalism is able to do that old print can just never come close to approaching.
Well, That IS Scary
How to make the top-rated haunted house in the U.S.A. even scarier? How about, MURDER?!?
At Erebus Haunted House in Detroit, a popular shriek palace, a dispute broke out between two men when one thought the other had cut in line. Both men (the victim was with his girlfriend) went back to their cars, apparently to retrieve sidearms. The suspect went all Kyle Rittenhouse on the victim (note to self: a haunted house named Rittenhouse), who was struck three times and, being the victim, died. He was 29.
I think it’s safe to say that we’ve all been cut in line (no backsies!) and we’ve all wanted to murder the person who perpetrated this crime. Just that most of us never do so. But I can feel the sentiment.
How’s This For a Haunted House?
Two fires, each 0% contained, raging in northern California. One of them, the Glass Fire (I don’t know who names fires; why isn’t it like hurricanes?) has destroyed wineries in Napa and Sonoma Counties, including the Chateau Boswell. Maybe they should call it the Wine Glass Fire?
Once again, it’s a good idea to opt out of 2020. Now even wine is going to be more expensive.
Trump Tax Travails
We have not waded far into the New York Times’ reporting of President Trump evading (not avoiding) income tax beyond the obvious bullet points of 1) did not pay income tax in 10 of the past 15 years, 2) paid only $750 in 2016 and 2017 and 3) earned $427 million from The Apprentice, directly and indirectly (and somehow squandered all of it).
And here’s the thing: Team Trump is betting that his sheep won’t read much of it, either. You wonder if Fox News has even acknowledged it.
I don't think the conservative take on @realDonaldTrump paying no taxes should be: BECAUSE HE'S SMART!
I've paid nearly 50% of my income in taxes, year after year, and any system that allows billionaires to pay ZERO is unspeakable corrupt.
I’m sorry, Ann, weren’t the latest tax revisions muscled through by a GOP-controlled House and Senate?
For us, the true crime is the tax code and the legislators who help create it. Taxes should be simple. The more complicated they get, it only enables those who have the means to have complicated forms of income and the accountants they can afford to hire. We’ll be mulling this as we head to one of our three jobs this morning, knowing that we’ll be paying more in taxes in 2020 than our “billionaire” president.
Why do Trumpers spend all day and night wheezing about being “Pay-tree-OTS” but then in the next breath say it’s cool to not pay your fair share of taxes? Hmm.
Like many Americans, we were surprised to discover that we paid more taxes in 2016 and 2017 ($750 each year) than “billionaire” Donald Trump did. Of course, the president retaliated against The New York Times‘ reporting by using his rubber stamp of disinformation: “It’s all ‘Fake News.'”
The headline: “TRUMP’S TAXES SHOW CHRONIC LOSSES AND YEARS OF TAX AVOIDANCE.”
Remember, these are the two most honest things President Trump has said in the past five years:
“I love the poorly educated.” (He really does. He loves that they’re poorly educated, the easier by which to con them.)
“Whatever you see and whatever you hear, do not believe it.” (That’s Roy Cohn-meets-George Orwell grade disinformation right there).
In the first few months after Donald Trump was installed in the White House, Rachel Maddow devoted plenty of time to the Russian financial connection to our 45th president. But, to be fair to TRMS, nearly every day brought a new White House scandal (Comey, Mueller, Ukraine, Cohen, Manaforte yada yada yada) that it was easier to drop the ball and move on to more pressing matters.
For us, though, this has always been the central story: Donald Trump was broke. Long before the election. The Russians approached him. And Trump approached Deutsche Bank. Trump found a way to have Deutsche Bank lend him money (when no other bank would) just as Deutsche Bank conveniently began open their vaults to an infusion of Russian assets. Wow, wonder how that happened?
The Russians have financially helped Trump, including overpaying mightily for some of his real estate, while Deutsche Bank has served as the conduit. His presidency has always been about paying Russia back. It’s the ultimate con: using the most powerful office in the world to avoid going to jail. It’s better than the best John Le Carre novel.
We are in the midst of it right now. Five years or a decade from now, when more people finally start talking, the story will become clear. And the truth is that even in the 2-thousand-teens, we all should have been listening to the words of Deep Throat: “Follow the money.”
Don’t Stop Disbelievin’
In a strange way, we admire Donald Trump. He has revealed himself to be opposite everything his followers care about (his Trump card? Racism. It’s the one thing he’s not disingenuous about) and yet they still support him as fervently as ever. The Devil could learn a thing or two from Donald Trump, and Donald Trump will have plenty of time to teach him (soon, we hope?).
A laundry list of things Trump’ers purport to care about:
–The Military (“suckers and losers”)
–Faith and Religion (read: Christianity). Everything about Trump is opposite of who Jesus Christ was, and that’s before we even delve into the three marriages, myriad episodes of adultery, the fact that he never attends church and that he literally doesn’t even know which end of the Bible is up. Does anyone wanna bet he couldn’t tell you the authors of the four gospels?
And we really don’t care whether or not someone attends church. But maybe follow the golden rule. Just once, just one day.
–Fiscal responsibility. Greatest deficit ever and at a time when the economy is supposedly booming. How’s that work? I’m always amused when my Republican friends spout their trickle down theory. Nothing has “trickled down” in 40 years. If it doesn’t trickle down in boom times, is it supposed to trickle down during a recession? I don’t think so.
–National Security. Again, 1,000 a day dead due to Covid and Russia basically knows the combination to our locker. You tell me.
Here’s really why people still like Trump. On Saturday I was at a Barro’s Pizza here in Devil’s Gulch, waiting for a pizza I ordered. Enjoying a cold Coors Light, watching the college football. An older man in a “Vietnam Veterans” hat approached me and asked why I was watching the game. I didn’t tell him I was working (“The Bubble Screen”) but just told him that I liked college football.
“Aren’t you a patriot?” he asked.
“I would say so,” I replied.
“I won’t watch that any more,” he lied to me. “I love my country.”
Now, it was all I could do not to congratulate him for finishing in second place in the Vietnam conflict, but this is one more example of a flimsy mind easily bent. And this is what Trump capitalizes on. Plus, you have to love the Fox bubble. It keeps people from him from ever having to learn what’s really going on. Did you know that if you only tune to Fox News you wouldn’t even be aware of the unbridled hypocrisy of Mitch McConnell’s Supreme Court maneuvering the past four-plus years? They never address it.
Before We Forget
We didn’t want to let the NBA Finals—Lakers versus Heat—commence without bowing in supplication to this fantastic move by Denver’s Jamal Murray (we look forward to seeing what the Nuggets do next season…all they need is a third piece, and to jettison any Plumlee who attempts to join the roster). It is redolent of MJ’s famous move against the Lakers in Game 2 of the 1991 NBA Finals, but it’s also worth noting that the two defenders he splits here are Dwight Howard and LeBron James. Howard was a three-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year and James is a five-time first-team All-Defensive team player.
Cirque du Soleil Audition
In case you missed this on Saturday, that’s Texas freshman tailback Bijan Robinson almost cracking his spinal cord in two. He was not seriously injured.
Thanks, all, for the kind words yesterday. I’d like to think that Notre Dame postponing Saturday’s game may have also contributed to my saturnine disposition.
Anyway, late last night I cheered myself the way I so often do: by re-watching clips of awards show monologues (Ricky Gervais at the Golden Globes never gets old). And lucky me, I found a couple featuring John Mulaney and Nick Kroll hosting the Independent Film Spirit Awards. These, I had never seen before and I share them with you.
So, you should know: When Mulaney was a freshman at Georgetown (not an independent spirit, both of his parents are alums), he signed up to be in an improv group. The senior who was in charge of the group was a kid named Nick Kroll. The rest is history.
I’ve interviewed Kroll and he readily acknowledges that Mulaney is a natural. There are good ballplayers and then there’s Willie Mays or Joe DiMaggio. They’re just built for it. Enjoy. I like the first one better, particularly the way they play off the chauvinistic “male gazing” at awards show red carpets when they tease Warren Beatty.
Girls Night Out
Of course, Mulaney and Kroll had a playbook to work from: a pair of ladies who preceded Mulaney (who was a writer) at SNL, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. It helps that they’re both incredibly funny and smart, but like Mulaney and Kroll, true friends. It shows here. This was the first of three consecutive times they hosted the Golden Globes. We can see, if the Globes has an in-house audience this winter, Mulaney (or Mulaney and Kroll) hosting.
Hush Hush
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_0YTX9Hqr8
We’ve been on a little bit of an Aimee Mann, who turned 60 earlier this month, kick lately. You think about it, she was criminally overlooked in the Eighties. Til Tuesday, the band she fronted, had this one major hit in 1984 and at the time there were a slew of women, frankly, who mirrored Mann’s New Wave punk look: Madonna, all of the Go Go’s, the lead singer from Missing Persons, etc.
But, I’m sorry, Mann was the only one who literally could’ve walked off stage and directly into the pages of Vogue. She’s a timeless beauty. Saw her play in June of ’17. She was fantastic and still incandescently gorgeous but now looks more like a Malibu yoga teacher who probably eats twice a week at True Foods.
Aimee Mann always looked the way Madonna wished she could look—like a come-to-life version of Malcolm Garrett’s cover art from Duran Duran’s Rio album. And she wrote her own songs and even played the bass and guitar. My simple guess is that Mann never quite become as big as Madonna, or anywhere even close, because it was never her ambition to be.
Mann’s man would turn out to be Michael Penn, who had a hit with “No Myth” (a song that was absolute perfection and so not of its time) in 1989. They married eight years later. Yes, he is Sean Penn’s brother. And yes, Penn family get-togethers for years included Aimee Mann and Robin Wright. Holy smoke show.
The Gipper Got It
This is Ronald Reagan‘s—I’m sorry, Fox News viewers, “St. Reagan”—inaugural speech in January of 1980. You don’t have to listen long. Literally listen to the FIRST 90 SECONDS of this speech. If I were the DNC and Joe Biden’s campaign manager, I would buy ad time and simply play these 90 seconds on a loop.
OVER AND OVER AND OVER again.
I always liked Ronald Reagan, too. Not all Republicans are evil, avaricious fascists. And I’m pretty certain the Gipper was not, either. People worshipping both him and Trump should be ashamed of themselves.
And That’s, As A Bedecked Kate McKinnon Might Say, A Ginsburg
Gale Sayers
(Now THIS is what football is supposed to look like)
The Kansas Comet, Gale Sayers, has passed. His playing days were a little before our time, and all we really remembered about Sayers is that Billy Dee Williams played him in Brian’s Song (James Caan, who actually played collegiately at Michigan State, played the ill-fated Brian Piccolo)
Sayers, like the man who would succeed him in the Chicago Bears backfield, was an aesthetically pleasing back to watch run. He glided, as opposed to running people over. Even though he was a teammate of arguably the greatest, or at least most menacing, defensive player ever (Dick Butkus), or at least until Lawrence Taylor showed up, Sayers never appeared in a playoff game. The Bears were simply that awful.
Sayers, a Kansas alum, had a relatively brief NFL career (1965-1971). His best season came in 1966 when he led the NFL in rushing with 1,231 yards. He passed away on Monday at the age of 77 of complications from dementia, a likely result from his NFL career.
Honors: NFL Rookie of the Year, NFL Comeback Player of the Year in 1969 when he returned from a knee injury and led the NFL in rushing again, and also, Sayers was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame at the age of 34, still the youngest man ever to be so honored.
(Donald Trump surrounded by “suckers” and “losers”)
Gaslight District Of Columbia
Nobody is better at selling a lie with more vigor and persistence than Donald Trump. When asked on Wednesday if he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power, President Trump repeated his oft-used lie of the past few weeks that the election “is a scam,” “is a hoax” and that we have to “get rid of the ballots…and there won’t be a transfer of power.”
This would be ludicrous enough if the challenger were claiming, more than a month before the election, that the election is rigged. But this is the incumbent. You know who should have the authority to make sure that a presidential election is conducted fairly and above board? The President of the United States.
But this one doesn’t want a fair and above-board election because he sees the daily polls and he knows he’s losing. Big time. So five-plus weeks out from the election, Donald Trump is sowing the seeds of conspiracy that the election is rigged. Even though HE is the president.
Lovely.
Trump is going to keep repeating this lie until the election, playing the victim to his Fox & Friends friends even though he is the most powerful man in the world. His ultimate hope here? To get the election thrown into the Supreme Court, where he’ll have a 5-3, perhaps even 6-3 majority. He wants the nine Supreme Court justices to cast the ballots instead of 300 million or so Americans.
The President is asked to commit to a peaceful transfer of power and his answer falls incredibly short pic.twitter.com/y8XbL8ci9k
If Trump truly attempts this—and I believe he will, I believe that there is no way he’ll concede to Joe Biden…he as much said so today—then someone needs to take him out (to dinner). Someone needs to step up in the name of this great republic and take him out (to lunch). We are too great a nation to allow one corrupt family of charlatans take us down. Don’t let them take us down. Take him out (to breakfast).
Honestly, though, come back, Travis Bickle. All is forgiven
How’s That Water Feel Now, Señor Frog?
It’s September 25th.
We’re less than 40 days away from the election and possibly, the advent to the darkest period of American history since the Civil War. I understand that there are plenty of people who prefer Donald Trump’s America: one where blacks and Mexicans know their place, where women aren’t “nasty” and never have abortions (unless their GOP politicians’ mistresses), where your stock-market portfolio sees big gains and where stupid things like trees and wildlife and national parks don’t get in the way of capitalism.
Of course, the price these people are willing to pay for Making America Great Again is democracy. And once you turn off the spigot, it’s going to be very difficult to turn back on. And as long as your side is in power, you won’t have a problem with that. But karma’s a bitch. And your kids, or grandkids, will pay a dire price.
In The Atlantic, writer Barton Gellman’s piece “This Is How Democracy Comes To An End” points out that while it has always been assumed that the person who wins the popular vote in a state will get the electors from that state, there is no constitutional mandate for that. State legislators have always assigned electors consistent with who wins the popular vote, but that is a formality. Not a requirement.
In battleground states such as Pennsylvania or Michigan where legislatures are majority Republican, they could simply bypass this tradition and assign Republican electors. Even if Biden captures more votes. The game is rigged all right, Mr. Trump. And you’re the one rigging it.
What is shocking, I find, is that otherwise nice and sane people (I know) have no problem with any of this. They buy Trump’s line that the Democrats have a conspiracy planned (if so, why didn’t they employ it when a Democrat was in the White House and Hillary was running for president?), which in their minds makes it okay for Trump to toss out the concept of an election decided by ballots.
They’re willing to throw away a central premise of America in order to “save America.” It’s the Patriot Act all over again (once again, a tip of the cap to you, Mr. Bin Laden…your plan worked better than you ever could have possibly conceived, and all in less than two decades).
There are no adults in the room. At least not any in power. Who is going to step up to Trump when he swindles America just as he’s swindled everyone else who ever dealt with him? Chris Hayes? Don Lemon? Nope.
The good news is that Donald Trump will die some day (hopefully sooner rather than later). The bad news is that it may be too late.
Breonna Taylor
And on top of that, we’ve got this? My lord. I haven’t followed the Breonna Taylor tragedy that closely, but here’s what I do not understand: Why did Louisville police fell the need to use a no-knock warrant in the middle of the night when no one’s life was in imminent danger? And how were they so incompetent to not even have the suspect inside the apartment they were breaking in to?
Here’s what I know: If Buford P. Cracker was exercising his first Amendment rights against po po invading his home, they’d be erecting a statue to him. Especially if his honey-blonde wife with the Double-D’s had been martyred. Hell, they’d make her a saint.
But of course the po po would knock politely at the apartment door of Mr. Cracker, now wouldn’t they?
**** Man, this has been a week and it’s not even over yet. In the past 7 days RBG has died, another great injustice to black people has been carried out, and now the president is saying that the only fair election is one that he wins. If you know Trump (the way we New Yorkers do), this does not surprise you. Maybe, like me, you’re only surprised that so many of your fellow Americans are eager to whore out this nation’s integrity for four more years of white supremacy.
It feels as if America is headed for a divorce. Maybe these differences are irreconcilable. What the past four to five years have shown this writer is that racism is so deeply embedded in so many Americans, and that these people were just waiting for their “savior” to come around and tell them that it was okay again to be racist, to have one standard for white folks (mostly men) and another for everyone else. An offshoot: so many white women that I personally know have, in their adoration of Trump, demonstrated to me that at the end of the day give them a white guy in a suit and they’ll go along with just about anything he says or does.
We really don’t like one another. We are polarized. And how are we going to fix this? Are White Rash Trumpers suddenly going to concede that everyone should play by the same rules? Are black people going to return to saying only either “yes’m, boss” and “no suh, boss?” I don’t think so.
Having spent my life in sports, here’s what I’m hoping: that every prominent black athlete in America (and any white athletes who want to join them) stop playing for “our” entertainment if Trump hijacks this election. NBA stars, go play in Europe or China or Australia. NFL stars, every last one of you drop out of the league. Start your own league and don’t tell me Woke ESPN wouldn’t come along for the ride and televise your games. You get a TV contract and the 70% of the NFL’s current personnel and where will men like Jerry Jones and Robert Kraft be then?
Mostly, though, I’d love to see sports disappear. And I’d love to see music acts refuse to play. As long as Trump is in office, if he steals this election, let America get by with only country music and golf. See how much fun that is.
I’m done for today and I’m not even sure I’m returning tomorrow.
