by John Walters
Starting Five
And the horse you rode in on….
No, Moore*
*The judges will also accept “The Doug Jones Industrial Complex”
In the most surprising result involving an Alabama underdog since Troy beat LSU earlier this autumn, Democrat Doug Jones defeated serially accused pedophile and slavery nostalgiast Roy Moore for the vacant Alabama senate seat. Jones captured 96% of the black vote and he got over 68% of the vote in the county that has Huntsville, a.k.a. Rocket City, a.k.a. where a high number of educated whites live.
Overall, Jones won 49.9% to 48.4%, and even though that’s not close enough to mandate a recount, Moore has yet to concede.
Think about this. If every write-in vote for Nick Saban (or others: Charles Barkley? Gus Malzahn? Deez Nuts?) had gone to Moore, he might’ve won.
This, by the way, is what you’re up against…
I can’t emphasize enough today how epic this @jaketapper clip is.
I’ve watched it like 29 times pic.twitter.com/VBYKgYncgi
— Jason Howerton (@jason_howerton) December 13, 2017
2. Congrats, Donald, You ARE Uniting US
Senator Kristin Gillibrand (Dem-New York); Trump hasn’t even come up with a demeaning nickname for her yet
This from USA Today’s editorial board yesterday, a column that was titled ” Will Trump’s Lows Ever Hit Rock Bottom?” (this from Foggy Bottom).
Lightweight Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a total flunky for Chuck Schumer and someone who would come to my office “begging” for campaign contributions not so long ago (and would do anything for them), is now in the ring fighting against Trump. Very disloyal to Bill & Crooked-USED!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2017
A president who would all but call Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand a whore is not fit to clean the toilets in the Barack Obama Presidential Library or to shine the shoes of George W. Bush.
This isn’t about the policy differences we have with all presidents or our disappointment in some of their decisions. Obama and Bush both failed in many ways. They broke promises and told untruths, but the basic decency of each man was never in doubt.
Donald Trump, the man, on the other hand, is uniquely awful. His sickening behavior is corrosive to the enterprise of a shared governance based on common values and the consent of the governed.
3. The Cars In The Hall
We’ll overlook Bon Jovi’s being named to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (about five good songs, tops, and a great hairdo) and focus instead on The Cars and Dire Straits finally getting their moment. The Boston-area New Wave band faded a little too soon, but their eponymous debut album is a classic (kinda like The Strokes’ first album) as is the follow-up, Candy-O. One of the few bands who had two lead singers, Ric Ocasek and Benjamin Orr, who split the duties.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnybirLa4xY
Also inducted: The Moody Blues and Nina Simone. Maybe next year, Journey.
4. Football Is Causing SI To Suffer Long-Term Memory Loss?
This weeks cover of Sports Illustrated….
And here’s an SI cover from 25 years ago…
To be fair, it was true then and it’s true now. We just didn’t know what CTE was back then. Instead, Letterman would just have former Colts defensive tackle Art Donovan on the show and we’d see what nuts looked like close-up.
Then again, we still have three weeks of the regular season left to play
By the way, of the four players SI put on its regional NFL Preview covers last August—Tom Brady, J.J. Watt, Aaron Rodgers and David Johnson—two suffered season-ending injuries, one missed more than half the season and has just been cleared to play this morning, and one is Tom Brady because Tom Brady defies all probability.
5. Tibia Not Tibia*
*The judges will also accept “My Foot Left” and “The Agony Of The Feet”
We began today with a pedophile and we end with the Ped-o-Files. Last week on Vancouver Island on the south western Canadian coast, a man walking his dog found a dismembered foot in a black sneaker. What makes this odd is that it was the 13th foot to wash up onshore in British Columbia in the past 10 years. Where are the rest of these people? Why are feet so buoyant? Can we write a Netflix script for this before you do?
Music 101
Take On Me
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5z7cYSbsFU
If you don’t know Lake Street Dive, you’re in for a treat here as this jazzy ensemble covers the 1984 classic from A-Ha. LSD met as students at the New England Conservatory of Music a little over a dozen years ago and took their name from a street that anyone who has lived in Minneapolis, home town of their trumpeter, knows well. The vocalist is Rachael Price, and she has the chops.
Remote Patrol
The Newspaperman: The Life and Times of Ben Bradlee
HBO Now/HBO Go
Bradlee, Jackie, Bradlee’s second wife, Tony, and JFK (who was having an affair with Tony’s sister).
Polio survivor. Harvard grad. Naval World War II hero. Foreign correspondent. Close bud of JFK. Lion of Newsweek and then the Washington Post, where he shepherded coverage of both the Pentagon Papers and Watergate. Ben Bradlee WAS the most interesting man in the world living in one of the most interesting times in American history. This is a fascinating doc with amazing interviews featuring former colleagues such as Tom Brokaw, David Remnick and Sally Quinn.