by John Walters
A Medium Happy 55th birthday to Catherine Oxenberg….
Starting Five
The Last Don II
Huckster, showman, bloviator, serial swindler of OPM with bizarre hair…and Donald Trump. At yesterday’s rally in Cleveland, here’s what boxing promoter Don King had to say: “If you’re poor, you are a poor negro — I would use the n-word — but if you’re rich, you are a rich negro. If you are intelligent, intellectual, you are intellectual negro. If you are a dancing and sliding and gliding nigger– I mean negro — you are a dancing and sliding and gliding negro. You’re going to be a negro ’til you die.”
Later, at a Fox News town hall at an African-American church that was closed to journalists (suck on that irony for a moment), Trump was asked what he would do to curb crime in predominantly black areas, and he said he would consider using “stop-and-frisk” on a national basis. That’s no relation to “stop-and-Fisk,” where officers halt African-American youths and compel them to say hello to a retired American League catcher.
2. Citi Haul
Ender Inciarte’s catch was the final play of a three-game sweep by the Braves
*The judges will also accept “Ender’s Game”
The Mets headed into this week with an 80-69 record and the Atlanta Braves, who have the worst record in the National League, arriving at Citi Field for a three-game series. They were atop the N.L. wild-card standings. Now, on the first day of autumn, the Let’s Go’s are looking back ruefully at a three-game sweep by the Braves and are in a dead heat with both the St. Louis Cardinals and San Francisco Giants: all are 80-72 with 10 games remaining.
Last night Yoenis Cespedes came to the plate with the Mets trailing 4-3 in the bottom of the ninth. With two on and two out, he lined a shot to right center that looked as if it was headed out, but Ender Inciarte of the Braves robbed him with the catch above.
Oh, and ace Jacob deGrom is lost for the season.
3. Today’s Sermon
If you haven’t read it, here’s Drew Magary’s takedown of Trump voters in GQ yesterday. Now, as much as I enjoyed it in the moment, I think there’s a trend happening this week that will only benefit the GOP candidate. In just this week alone, Seth Meyers, Stephen Colbert and now Magary have unabashedly F-bombed the GOP candidate and/or his supporters in essays, written or oral, to their audiences.
It’s getting to that point of…what? Desperation? Vitriol? Hostility?
Allow me a tepid take here: The moment Trump won/Clinton lost the election was when, on national TV, Jeffrey Tambor proclaimed that he hoped “I will be the last cisgender to play a transgender” on TV. I mean, I live on the liberal UWS and I was sitting there thinking, “Cisgender? You mean, like, ‘man’?”
I mean, we get it: Diversity. Great. There’s just something a little off-putting about an entire nation being scolded about its obstinacy towards transgender folk when, honestly, most of us don’t know any. Tambor might as well have gotten up there and stumped for more almond milk at the Starbucks in Brentwood.
(While we’re at it, there’s something so obnoxious about the Malibu Liberals crowd: people who choose to live in an area that is at least 95% white and affluent telling the rest of us how to interact with one another across racial lines. It’s like when your Catholic priest gives classes on sexual relations in marriage.)
When you constantly scold the largest segment of the population (Caucasian) that everyone else’s lives matter, or that you’re not allowed to present a contrarian view in matters of race or sex based not on the view itself but simply because of your #WhitePrivilege, well, what do you think is going to happen? You’re going to get a lethal backlash. And the man who is reaping the rewards of that backlash is Donald Trump.
Do transgender people deserve to go to the bathroom where they feel comfortable? Of course. Does everyone deserve to be treated with respect, regardless of the color of their skin or religion or sexual orientation? Of course. There’s just this militancy to it all now that there didn’t used to be, and, you know, I really wish Norman Lear were still making sitcoms to show people how to be liberal while retaining a sense of humor about it all.
4. Between Two Ferns
I haven’t even seen this yet, either, but I figure it’s at least worth one of our five daily items, no?
5. The Afterlife
A close friend sent this yesterday. It’s from a play that he saw. Pretty self-explanatory:
Older people are exiting this life as if it were a movie… “I didn’t get it,” they are saying.
He says, “It didn’t seem to have any plot.”
“No.” she says, “it seemed like things just kept coming at me. Most of the time I was confused… and there was way too much sex and violence.”
“Violence anyway,” he says.
“It was not much for character development either; most of the time people were either shouting or mumbling. Then just when someone started to make sense and I got interested, they died. Then a whole lot of new characters came along and I couldn’t tell who was who.”
“The whole thing lacked subtlety.”
“Some of the scenery was nice.”
“Yes.”
They walk on in silence for a while. It is a summer night and they walk slowly, stopping now and then, as if they had no particular place to go. They walk past a streetlamp where some insects are hurling themselves at the light, and then on down the block, fading into the darkness.
She says, “I was never happy with the way I looked.”
“The lighting was bad and I was no good at dialogue,” he says.
“I would have liked to have been a little taller,” she says.
Music 101
You Light Up My Life
Today is Debby Boone’s 60th birthday. In 1977, with both disco and punk roaring all over the place, this saccharine ballad (from a film of the same name that you never want to see, trust me) hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts and, like a low-pressure system that won’t leave the vicinity and keeps everything humid and sticky, remained there for ten freaking weeks! That was a record at the time. This may help you understand why “The Pina Colada Song (Escape)” was a hit in the same decade. Debby is Pat Boone’s daughter, which makes her kind of the Robin Thicke of the Seventies without all the twerking.
Remote Patrol
Texans at Patriots
8:25 p.m. CBS
Watt’s App
I don’t even much like the NFL and I’d watch this game (if I weren’t moonlighting at mixologist gig). J.J. Watt and a distinct possibility of Gronk on the same field? Plus Jadeveon Clowney and Will Fuller? C’mon, now. Both the Texans and Pats are 2-0 as the latter will likely start third-string QB Jacoby Brissett. Houston’s 3rd-string QB is either Tom Savage or Brandon Weeden, FYI.
Re “stop and frisk” – put a check mark by yet another constitutional right (here the Fourth Amendment right to be free of unlawful search and seizure) that Trump is willing to toss aside as if it were nothing. “Stop and frisk” is a long-accepted tenet of criminal law which states that only when a law enforcement officer reasonably suspects that a crime has been or is about to be committed can he stop the suspect, and then, if the officer reasonably suspects the person is armed and dangerous, he can conduct brief pat-down of the person’s outer clothing. Trump’s idea, apparently, is to allow any officer to conduct the pat-down at any time for any or no reason.
It can never happen, of course, short of a constitutional amendment of the Fourth Amendment; the real problem is that Trump suggested it at all, revealing either a complete disregard for the Bill of Rights or lack of knowledge of a basic legal principle, or both. Not to mention that in this era of extremely heightened tension between the police and minorities, he blithely suggested a stunning increase in police power that would no doubt be used disproportionately against minorities.
By the way, the GOP’s basic tenet that government should intrude on personal freedoms as little as possible is largely abandoned when it comes to “law and order.” Government can’t be trusted with anything, except police power, apparently. There, any criticism of police abuse of authority is viewed as anti-American.
Disagree with your re-take on Magery’s article. Are the recent anti-Trump pieces a bit over-the-top? Perhaps. From exasperation/disgust/& just the pure incredulity that this human PIECE OF SHIT is the PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE. Of THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA! Land of Jefferson, Washington, Adams, Franklin, Lincoln, TR, FDR! It’s like finding out Hitler is being given the “20th Century Humanitarian Award”. It just CAN’T be true!
My problem is WHERE WERE THE MEDIA WHEN THIS NIGHTMARE STARTED? Why didn’t they expose that sociopath EARLY? And keep it coming, day after day? If our country’s future will be determined by the likes of Trump’s “supporters”, then all hope is lost. The dream that is AMERICA will have died. A hundred years from now, there will be a “special section” on Amazon (go AMZN, go, whoo-hoo!, sorry, personal glee unleashed) bursting with all the “books” detailing & analyzing the “Rise & Fall of America”. It will look inevitable, as things always do in hindsight. And the folks of 2116 will guffaw & exclaim “HOW could they have been SO stupid?!”
But unlike yourself, I have NOT given up all hope. Perhaps because I just CAN NOT accept that this country is totally populated by idiots.
I do agree with you about the “backlash”. It’s been building for years & all one had to do was scroll thru the comment section of almost any website to see the growing anger. However, while the anger was once directed at the widening economic gulf in this country, it has transformed into a “racial divide” in just these last few years. Why is that? Any guesses? Hmmmmmmm? WAKE UP, PEOPLE! You’re being manipulated! By the best that MONEY can buy.
Oh, gawd, Susie B.
One, I have not “given up.”
Two, the media were there all day, every day, telling you to clean your room. After awhile people stopped listening to the nagging. Don’t blame the media on this one. That’s so freaking lazy. The media has been there every single step of the way, including yesterday. What you’re failing to understand is that a large segment of the population has tuned truth and facts out. And I think I did a decent job, especially considering what you all pay me to do this, explaining why.
Have a nice day.
JW
I disagree. The majority of the media was NOT “there”. They did what I did – didn’t take him seriously & ignored/ignored/ignored the threat of such a Presidency until far too late.
And two, perhaps you are not reading your own words but YOU have become increasingly negative toward the possibility of HRC winning the election. YOU are one of the few people I read every day & because I RESPECT YOU SO MUCH, I notice what you write. And while YOU wrote about Trump with clarity from the beginning, you were NOT the majority of your “tribe”.
And for pete sake, WE’RE ON THE SAME SIDE! The side of sanity.
I’m back. You tweeted earlier that summer is over, so no more dancing in the streets. Well, BELAY that order! I have a 22-bagger in AMZN! Whoo-hoo! WHOO-HOOOOOO! I’m DANCIN’!
You may think it’s obnoxious for me to gloat. Well, 3 of my investments went bankrupt this year. All have been “sold” & altogether netted less than a train ticket to NYC. You may not think a ($7000) loss is a big deal, but it’s pret-tee damn nauseating for me. Thankfully, I have AMZN to break my fall. 🙂 (And 2 of my 3 picks this year are doing ‘alright’ – AMBA & SWKS : up 43% & 21% since I bought, damn stock market won’t get ME to cry uncle!).