In an episode of Call My Agent, the French TV series streaming on Netflix, Andréa, who is gay, winds up having angry, hot sex with a man she detests and who has bought the talent agency at which she is a partner.
Letter From Point, Texas
“Do they even know we exist?”
That was the question Sarah asked me as we spoke on her front porch in the small town of Point, Texas earlier this week.
Biden on the Union Drive at Amazon
Click here to hear President Biden speak on the organizing drive at Amazon’s Alabama facility.
The Canadian News Service Elmoudjahweb has provided a useful explainer spelling out why Biden avoided mentioning Amazon in his statement. Per Professor Joseph A. McCartin, the Executive Director of Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor…
True Vines (& a Secret History of Our Time)
Americans aren’t known for their sense of history, but Delegate Stacey Plaskett made the past present during the trial of Trump when she invoked UA Flight 93. Plaskett recalled how she’d been working as a staffer in the Capitol twenty years ago on 9/11 when passengers on UA 93 sacrificed themselves to stop a terrorist attack on the building. Her memory let her roll with those patriots’ “love of country, duty, honor, all the things that America means” as she linked Trump and MAGA mobsters at the Capitol with mass murderers who saw our country as the Great Satan.
Last Thoughts on Trump
In his last days in office, Donald Trump reportedly ordered his dwindling circle of attendants never to mention Richard Nixon’s name in his presence. We can guess the reason: Nixon means failure. Even people who know nothing about politics know that. But even if Trump and Nixon ended up in roughly the same place—political oblivion—the roads they took to that destination could not have been more different.
Insurrection to Inauguration: Reflections on Violence & Healing
By Thomas Beller, Kristi Coulter, Benj DeMott, Richard Goldstein, George Held, Bob Ingram, Vida Johnson, Charles Keil, Greil Marcus, Dennis Myers, Zuzu Myers, Nathan Osborne, David Quigley, Budd Shenkin, Laurie Stone, William Svelmoe, & Peter H. Wood.
The Caning of Charles Sumner in the U.S. Senate: White Supremacist Violence in Pen and Pixels
Peter H. Wood and Harlan J. Gradin place the attack on the Capitol in an American historical context…
Boston Massacre Energy (in Russia)
The kicker…
After the Pandemic
We’ll share lipstick and buffet brunches,
nights dancing in empty swimming pools,
Drake on the playlist –Baby, come closer—
our hair coiffed at last, but now falling,
falling and frizzing around our bare faces.
We’ll rhumba and shout, a joyous aerosol,
the vapor of here we all are,
the jumble and heat of you can’t
get us now. It will be a miracle
if we don’t undress
or queue up at kissing booths
or board a cruise for Marrakesh.
Off the Wall
“Is that a fucking thumbtack?” Fritz said to the Skeleton-and-Roses poster behind me. Some of us regulars from the café were zooming. “It ought to be behind glass. In a vault.”
Too Black, Too Strong: Henry Aaron R.I.P.
I am a third-generation baseball player. My grandfather, Robert McInnis, was an outfielder and catcher who barnstormed with Negro League players.
The Louisville Syndicate (Excerpts from William Klein’s Documentary on Muhammad Ali)
One Night in Miami sent your editor back to William Klein’s 1964 documentary, Cassius the Great (which Klein would go on to re-edit later with new footage as Muhammad Ali, The Greatest). The following bits from the movie are way less than a perfect compaction, but the opening scene, which limns the Louisville syndicate that once “owned” Ali, is for the Ages. B.D. (H/T Jeff Kreines)
Click Read More to see on a bigger screen.
Tweet Storm (& Whiskey Rebels): Terry Bouton’s Twitter Report on the D.C. Riot
History professor Terry Bouton’s eye-witness tweets on the storming of the Capitol—unrolled below—caught the essence of the event. (Bouton’s report reminded your editor of the indelible account of a Klan assault on a Civil Rights demonstration in St. Augustine, Florida written by Lawrence Goodwyn who was Bouton’s teacher.) Bouton’s twenty-two tweets have turned his own world upside down: “This has been one of the strangest times in my life. I went from 61 twitter followers to 28.6k in less than a week…” Yesterday he posted a letter (in five tweets) to the insurrectionists, comparing them to “Whiskey Rebels” of 1794. His history lesson for our traitors is attached as an addendum to his tweets from the capitol.
Insurrection Snapshots
Words aren’t swords, or bombs,
gunpowder, guns, dragons.
Not a scaffold with a waiting noose.
Words aren’t religion, airplanes,
torn-out panic buttons,
flagpoles or fire extinguishers.
Not a zip tie. Not a wick.
Just the flame.
The Storming of the Capitol
Now that the dust has settled, all too literally, on the events at the Capitol on Wednesday, I wanted to share a few thoughts on what it was like to be there, what it means to the country, and where we go from here.
Light Of Day: D.C. Riot & de Maistre’s Heirs
The climax of the Youtube video below, which documents the shooting of Ashli Babbitt by U.S. Capitol police during the insurrection at the Capitol on Wednesday, is beyond chilling. There’s the stunned look on the late Ms. Babbitt’s face as she lies on her back — her arms up like she’s a prisoner of forever. Then comes the cruelty of fellow rioters/voyeurs who shine their lights in her face, out to capture the moment when she’s done…But there’s more to the video than its End (which has been shown on network tv and at the Times website). The rest adds shadows to the distinguished thing on Ms. Babbitt’s blankening face.
Click to watch here