That Donald Trump sat on top of a criminal organization before becoming president was always obvious to anyone who cared to look. This fact was not lost on those he appointed to the highest positions in his administration, who took Trump’s contempt for the law, decency and accountability as license to behave the same way. The Trump administration, like the Trump Organization, was a rotting fish from head to toe.

Take, for example, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross. We now learn, late enough to do anything about it, of the Trump administration’s “unprecedented” interference in the 2020 census” as its members sought “to manipulate the tally for Republican political purposes. “. It was normal and easily predictable from the first moments of the Trump presidency. In Lying in State: Why Presidents Lie and Why Trump is Worse, I noted a few of the Trump cabinet members who submitted false documents for their confirmation hearings. Among them: “Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross also lied to Congress, promising to divest himself of nearly all of his assets as a condition of taking his job. He retained his interest in a myriad of companies, including one co-owned by the Chinese government, and another closely linked to members of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle. In a highly unusual move, the Office of Government Ethics refused to certify Ross’ financial disclosure because, according to the office, he could not be trusted.

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Tom Edsall quotes Brookings political scientist Thomas Mann, explaining, “Trump has transformed the Republican Party so that membership now precludes having ‘a sense of morality: honesty, empathy, respect for colleagues, wisdom, institutional loyalty, will to move the country forward. of party on existential questions, an openness to changing conditions. Alas, given the lack of outrage that Trump and the Republican march toward fascism have inspired, it can easily be said that this same lack of outrage characterizes a significant percentage of journalists as well.

For a fine-grained, all-encompassing overview of the mainstream media’s failures to hold our political system accountable at bay, here’s (to me, an interested) but thoughtful, in-depth analysis of what went wrong and continues to do wrong.

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Washington Post the experts did a good job recently to urge the mainstream media to stop treating “both sides” as equivalent in one way or another and to realize the danger that the contemporary Republican Party poses to the future of American democracy. Here, for example, Margaret Sullivan, Perry Bacon, Dana Milbank, Jennifer Rubin, Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman. But, yo, Posties, your newspaper has a big problem and, sad to say, it comes from inside the house!

In this Job profile of Fox host Greg Gutfeld, for example, we learn that: “He sees himself as the thug in a still closed bastion of scolding conservatism – the disruptive court jester, the madman” of “network success dominant” American news outlet. as “a searing critic of America’s racial reckoning”. Gutfeld’s “agitated and energetic combination of comedic jabs, spiced up with just enough analysis to be taken seriously by the faithful, makes him an especially potent foe for the left,” especially since he “turns every weeknight like a whirlwind of agreement and affirmation.” Gutfeld says he has “”a lot more in common with liberals in terms of creativity and music and all that”” and is “a fan of punk-rock and metal band who was thrilled to have been splattered with blood not too long ago during a performance by monster heavy-metal band GWAR.

This all makes no sense, of course – an attempt by the Job yearning for the Murdoch/Trump universe ignoring the obvious truths about a Fox host and his network, who is trying to undermine our democracy even as he helps kill countless people with his coronavirus lies. In these and other such lies, Gutfeld is all for it.

Along the same lines, Eric Boehlert poses a good, albeit ultimately unanswered, question: “How many people did Murdoch kill during the pandemic?” A good follow-up might ask how come we continue to treat both Murdoch and his underlings as part of the “news” media. Fox is not a “news network”. Information networks do not behave like this.

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In this Axios article on conservative cancel culture titled ‘Book Bans Are Back in Fashion’, the author writes: ‘Some progressive activists have sought to extract basic literary elements from school curricula on the grounds that, in the current context, they are perpetuating racist constructs or sexist”. Yet, no such example is provided and no link either. Literally every example is an example of right-wing censorship. The caption above the part of the article that discusses the alleged banning of leftist books is “Between the Lines”. A more honest charge would have been “Charge invented for the purpose of senseless Bothsidesism”.

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This Time the film review begins“Jean-Louis (Lafitte) is on a mission to find the source of his existence – or ‘the origin of the world’, to borrow from the film’s French title, ‘L’Origine du Monde’, an explicit reference to the painting of the 19th century artist Gustave Courbet’s female anatomy. But the Time link will take you to an article in The Guardian, which gives you the fascinating backstory of the painting, not the painting itself. We have no such fears here at Altercation. Here is the painting, which hangs in the Musée d’Orsay. And here is a link to a biography of Courbet written by the late feminist art historian Linda Nochlin, my mother’s cousin.

Odds and Ends: Editing Continuous Themes

I highly recommend the recently published beautiful novel Earth Cuckoo Cloud by Anthony Doerr, and you probably don’t need to hear that from me, but also the HBO series that just ended station eleven. There’s a lot to be said for both, but what I want to emphasize is that the plots of both revolve around the intense influence on individuals of a single book passed down from reader to reader over centuries. It’s a nice idea, and I guess it was true in the past. Both works are set in an imaginary future, and given the diminished role that books play in our culture today compared to when, say, I decided to start writing them 33 years and 12 Alterman books, a deeply moving book.

Continuing on my theme of sequels with no time limit, here are some tips: If you want to have a comedy piece published in the new yorkerI suggest you try to deploy the language of Hammett/Chandler-style detective fiction where it is otherwise unlikely to be found:

• And once again for Simon Rich in “The Big Nap” in 2021.

A word of warning: if you’re lucky enough to do it well enough to impress David Remnick, prepare to be edited out as well.

Again, along the same lines, I really appreciate Ed Sorel’s beautifully produced memoir, Abundantly illustrated. Here is Ed’s drawing “When Raymond Chandler went to work for Billy Wilder”.

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I interviewed Joan Didion in front of a live audience in 2001. It was a nightmare. Each answer she gave me was barely a sentence long. I ran out of questions after about ten minutes and struggled to get through the rest of the hour. Terry Gross is apparently much better at this game of interviews than I have ever been or ever will be, because this recently rerun series of interviews with Didion, especially the second one, is some of the most extraordinary talks that I have ever heard.

I was (rightly) mean about Mel Brooks’ recent memoir, but if you want to remind yourself of one of the many reasons why Mel mattered in the first place, here are some deleted scenes from a work of genius, Young Frankensteinfollowed by a decent documentary on the same subject.

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Here is a full set from a Dylan/Dead show from 1987 which only recently appeared on the interwebs. (And in the “really weird” department, here’s the concert pilot for a 1976 show by the Jerry Garcia Band.)

Plus, if you’ve never heard it, Joe Strummer and Johnny Cash sing Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song.”

And if you need a pick-me-up after all that, here’s the wonderful David Johansen Group with their animal mix: “We Gotta Get Out of This Place/Don’t Bring Me Down/It’s My Life”.

Also breaking, must credit, etc. : Jazz Fest is launched! (We hope …)

Finally, may the memory of Israel “Sy” Dresner, the “World’s Most Arrested Rabbi,” be a blessing to all who knew him and an inspiration to the rest of us.