by John Walters
Starting Five
1. Flake News, Fake News, Fox News and The Post
The Washington Post made Senator Jeff Flake’s (R-Arizona) Tuesday speech very easy to digest right here, but one line stands out for me: “It bears noting that so fraught with malice was the phrase ‘enemy of the people,’ [used by Donald Trump last year in reference to the press] that even Nikita Khrushchev forbade its use, telling the Soviet Communist Party that the phrase had been introduced by Stalin for the purpose of “annihilating such individuals.”
Of course Fox News shredded Flake for using that line, telling its viewers that Flake compared Trump to Stalin and noting that the latter was responsible for the deaths of 20 million people. That’s what’s known as a straw man argument.
Meanwhile, Trump “handed out” his Fake News awards via Twitter the following night. After singling out CNN and a few others, he did his media-tailored version of “and some of them, I assume, are good people,” by noting that there were “many great reporters I respect,” (all of whom work at Fox, one assumes).
The Supreme Court voted in favor of the 1st Amendment, 6-3
Meanwhile, last night I saw The Post, in which a thin-skinned president gets so upset with a newspaper printing the truth that he bans them from being inside the White House, only to have that same newspaper end his presidency two years later. There’s a line in the film, tossed in as an aside near the end, in which someone says, “If a president can’t keep secrets, how can he effectively govern?”
George Orwell said it best, and Flake referenced this lien in his speech, ““The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.”
2. Sea Ya Later
According to NASA, which is not known as a liberal faction, the five warmest years on record (since we started recording stats, which are for losers, in 1880) have all taken place since 1880. Warm years mean melting ice, which mean higher sea levels, which means bad news for the Bangladeshi island of Kutubdia, which may soon no longer exist.
3. President Rump
At 239 pounds (listed), Donald Trump is the third-heaviest president in U.S. history behind (and there’s a lot of it) William Howard Taft and Grover Cleveland (who was president twice). Taft, who served from 1909-1913 weighed as much as 340 pounds, though he did go on a diet in office and lost 60 pounds. He died at the age of 72.
Cleveland, who served from 1885-1889 and 1893-1897 (he is our 22nd and 24th president), weighed in the 240-280 range. He died at the age of 71.
Taft, as both prez and then later Chief Justice, was likely closer to a stable genius
Trump is 71 and will turn 72 in June, on Flag Day. He supplants as the third-heaviest president in U.S. history a man named Bill Clinton.
Taft was a pretty impressive dude, by the way, as he was also Chief Justice of the Supreme Court after leaving the White House. He is the only man ever to hold both jobs.
4. Stats Are For Losers
Allen could be one of the few people who’s ever worn brown in both college in the NFL as the primary uniform color
Yes, but if the Cleveland Browns are not losers, Mr. Kiper, then who is. Yesterday Mel Kiper, Jr., fueled the quietest of sports days by proclaiming Wyoming quarterback Josh Allen his No. 1 overall pick in his first (of a few) 2018 NFL Mock Drafts.
Responding to skepticism on ESPN’s SportsCenter, Kiper said, “Stats are for losers; the guy won,” before placing Allen ahead of Josh Rosen, Sam Darnold, Baker Mayfield, Lamar Jackson and Mason Rudolph (QBs all).
The Cowboys did go 16-11 in Allen’s two seasons as a starter, which is better than the 6-18 they want the previous two years. Then again, all the dudes named there had superior numbers than Allen last year and all except Rosen won more.
Allen’s size is mouth-wateringly appealing for NFL GMs—6’5″, 240—but last season he had the exact same TD/INT numbers (16 and 6) as Notre Dame’s Brandon Wimbush and against far inferior competition. Will he now be drafted by the Browns to supplant the dude Wimbush succeeded, DeShone Kizer?
5. Tennys, Anyone?
At the Australian Open, unseeded American Tennys Sandgren took down 2016 U.S. Open champ Stan Wawrinka in straight sets to advance to the Round of 32. As his Wikipedia page states, “Although Tennys Sandgren is a tennis player from Tennessee, he is actually named after his great-grandfather who did not play tennis and was not from Tennessee.”
Music 101
Der Kommisar
Peak New Wave? For this early ’80s high school punk, it was 1982-83, when this song hit the top of the charts in six European and Asian countries as performed by Falco (above), then was covered in English by After The Fire and went to No. 5 in the USA.
A Word, Please
Avuncular (adj)
Relating to an uncle
The Post may not be the best movie of 2018, but it is likely THE MOVIE of 2018. It has the two biggest movie stars in the world, Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks, is directed by Steven Spielberg, and addresses two issues that dominate the present day: the efforts of an imperious presidency to squelch the free press, and the struggle of women to be treated as worthy of respect by powerful men.
The movie worked for me. I don’t think it quite captures the context of the Pentagon Papers case, which was the intense pain and national “divider” that was Vietnam in the early 70s. And of course the New York Times and Daniel Ellsberg himself were much bigger players in the case itself than was the Washington Post. But the movie tells the story in a compelling way, and the acting was generally top-notch. More importantly, it lays out the crucial importance of the media as a check on governmental power, at a time that the country desperately needs to hear it.
Newspapers and the media were never more highly regarded than they were in the years after Watergate, and young people flowed into journalism in part because they viewed the job as a form of public service. If that were to happen again post-Trump, we would be better off as a nation, and for that reason alone I hope The Post gets a wide audience. If the movie convinces even a handful of our best and brightest to choose journalism over Wall Street or law school, that would be a very good thing.
Well said, Wally.