Opening the Golden Door*

Super Bowl LX will go down as the worst ever played. That’s both before and after a halftime show that will be remembered long after the dismal game is forgotten.

Before the game, almost as an appetizer for halftime, Coco Jones delivered “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Long before Bad Bunny was mentioned as a headliner, the MAGA crowd started foaming at the mouth over a song that many African-Americans have called, “the Black National Anthem.” It’s actually a hymn that dates back about 120 years, calling for universal freedom, but the MAGA crowd is deaf to all that, instead linking it to the silent, peaceful protests made by NFL players ten years ago who knelt during the National Anthem, calling attention to the epidemic of shootings of African-Americans by police who were never held accountable. Jones’ rendition was stunningly sweet.

In sharp contrast, Green Day, punk rock as they may be, seemed to matter-of-factly announce the NFL’s opinion of ICE’s occupation of an NFL city by belting out “American Idiot” at the very start of the broadcast. The mood was soon calmed by the heartfelt patriotism of Brandi Carlile’s “America the Beautiful” and Charlie Puth’s National Anthem.

In the early years of Super Bowls, I, a hippie at the time, barely watched. In fact, I made it from 1970 to 1996 without owning a TV. In the ’80s when I began teaching, I slowly returned to American mainstream culture. While halftime shows were not yet the elaborate productions we now see, commercials were, and they premiered on what was already being called the “most American of holidays,” no matter that it is not a holiday. Gave me a lot to talk about in college freshman writing classes. Made teaching easy for weeks, which was about the same length of time friends chided me for taking so many notes during games I watched with them.

Before my teaching career came to an end, halftime shows seemed to transition from marching bands to celebrity singers and artists, and the late ’90s favored the Motown sound: Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, The Temptations, and more. The music of any Boomers’ youth, you might say, as it was for me. Years later, however, my musical tastes long for a repeat of Richard Petty & the Heartbreakers, who sizzled in 2008, but that’s past. And I must admit that the Rolling Stones & the Who bombed, if only because it was not their venue. Sir Paul and the Boss were better, but the special effects hardly suited them.

By the time of Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction,” none of the above mattered. At the turn of the century, the home team New England Patriots launched a dynasty, lately dormant but revived this year, that has reclaimed my inner sports fan. I don’t watch just their games, but every NFL and college playoff game that my basic cable subscription allows. There are a few teams I detest for odd reasons, and my eyes will not allow me to watch a game in which both teams are wearing orange and/or red, but I have little care for the outcome, only the action.

That’s why yesterday’s game was such a torturous waste of time. I’ve seen better action in the drain of my kitchen sink when it’s clogged. I suppose an extremist fan of defensive football hoping for a final score of 2-0, or maybe 4-2, might have enjoyed it, but excitement was limited to a few nice runs by a Seattle fullback and a few blocked passes by a New England safety.

Sustained excitement was to be found only in the halftime show. Couldn’t understand a word, but the symbols were impossible to miss. Quite like the 2021 film, In the Heights, Bad Bunny put the vitality of Puerto Rican culture on full display, and it was as joyful as the couple who really did get married as he danced by along the sugar cane set.

Announcers were cautious (who could blame them?): Yes, that’s a bodega common to Puerto Rico, but not a word about the workers on utility poles as a comment on the Republican Party’s indifference to the Puerto Rico grid after the hurricane. Nor did they note the young boy looking so much like the 5-year-old traumatized by Republican approved ICE agents in Minnesota and shipped off to Texas. And of course there was no mention of another development in that story within 24-hours of kickoff: The Republican Administration is now expediting the process to deport 5-year-old Liam Conejos Ramos and his family.

Though, musically, I might prefer the late Tom Petty, or Gloria Estefan, or Smokey Robinson, or U2, I am grateful that, from the wreckage of the worst sporting event since the New York Jets last played the Cleveland Browns, such a vibrant and undeniable message was delivered to an American public that needs to see and hear it, a counter weight to a Republican administration that continues to slander and smear it.

Just wish someone with a microphone during or after the game had mentioned that the Patriot’s best player in that sorry excuse for game, that safety I mentioned who blocked passes that appeared ticketed for touchdowns, has a last name ending with the letter Z.

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*From the Statue of Liberty (which appears in many commercials that air during football games:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Coco Jones’ performs the Black National Anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”
https://ch.headtopics.com/news/coco-jones-opens-super-bowl-2026-with-sublime-lift-every-79491693#google_vignette

Cooking on Planet Kitchen

A few nights back, I attended a talk on climate change, the extent of it, and how we might yet bail ourselves out from the inevitable disaster that awaits if we don’t change our wasteful ways.

Sponsoring the event was the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group that during any other period in American history would be viewed as non-partisan. That, they still are, except that the federal government is now run by an administration that is openly and aggressively anti-science. That leaves scientists no choice but to contradict the federal agencies that, under any other president, would have depended on them. By default, that allies them with the only nationally viable political party that has not turned itself into a cult of personality.

Granted, the Reagan Administration dismissed solar power and the electric car, favoring an economy that favored Republican donors. However, the debate was always open, and scientists were not publicly demonized as anti-American and “woke.” Moreover, medical and other scientific research funds were not slashed as they were last year. Back then, the label “conservative” and the concept of “conservation” were as compatible as the words themselves. It was the Nixon Administration, after all, that initiated the Environmental Protection Agency following a State of the Union Address that included this:

We have been too tolerant [i.e. careless] of our surroundings and too willing to leave it to others to clean up our environment. It is time for those who make massive demands on society to make some minimal demands on themselves.

Sounds like a call for regulation to me, and the early ’70s were noted by the UCS speaker as a hopeful time for environmentalists. Beaches at lakes across America were reopened for swimming, including Lake Erie that had been declared dead in what may have been network television’s first expose. Ugly orange-brown clouds disappeared from cities from New York to Denver and to the West Coast where Jimmy Buffett “spent four lonely days in a brown LA haze.”

Before us the other night, tracking the advances and set-backs of the environmental movement since the first “Earth Day” in 1970 was Erika Spanger, UCS’s Director of Strategic Climate Analytics. I knew her before she was born, and now there she is with slightly graying hair atop her tall, elegant posture, telling me and an audience more my age than hers about a crisis that her kids and my grandkids will be left to solve.

Amazing how she resembles both of her parents. Both friends of mine back at Salem State, they were likely in the gathering with me when that first Earth Day was observed in the year of her birth, as they were in various anti-war demonstrations. And it was likely the next summer that she was with several of us on a camping trip up by Mount Chocorua, carried along in a picnic basket as we moved between lake and campground. Her dad and I challenged each other to a race up a tree, the same tree, the two of us on opposite sides. Erika’s mom and my girlfriend looked up in horror, while between them the little face in the wicker basket grew smaller and smaller. Chuck and I didn’t stop until we remembered that we were already high.

The talk was as informative as it was sobering. She spoke of a 2030 deadline for a significant reduction in emissions, but that was already established when we still had ten years left to meet it. Little has happened to help the cause. To the contrary, the anti-science government of the USA has taken us out of the Paris Accords and gutted most all regulations of the energy industry. Now, she holds out hope for a strategy ironically called “overshoot,” but she realizes that we are stuck, for at least another year, with a government that will not shoot at all.*

My apologies for the lack of quotes, but the swoon of nostalgia didn’t allow me to take notes. Whitman famously wandered out of a talk on astronomy to behold the night sky’s stars; my mind wandered from a talk on our future to go living in the past. Not just Erika standing before me, but her uncle seated next to me, a ringer for his late-brother, and my cousin’s high school basketball coach at Pentucket High School where he also taught Earth Sciences. Could say that stewardship of the Earth runs in the Spanger family.

But I can offer a good idea of her talk by quoting last July’s entry in her UCS-endorsed blog, “The Equation,” in which she declares:

“If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen” loses its bite when the whole planet is the kitchen, and we’re just starting to cook. 

Yes, she’s one of those writers I’d much rather plagiarize than quote, but science, her long suit, is nowhere in my hand, so here’s the conclusion of her blog which serves as a fair summary of her talk last week, a conclusion titled, “If you can’t take the heat, organize the kitchen”:

What can we do? The list is long and—let’s be clear—needs to be part of a longer-term transformation of our society and economy. But there are things we can do today:

We’ll obviously need to get ourselves some worthy, qualified leaders first chance we get, lean hard into mitigating and building resilience to climate change, and do more, better, faster.

Ah, there’s that attempt at impartiality when it just isn’t possible to be impartial. Those who are undoing all of our climate agreements and regulations for clean air and water are on one side of the Congressional aisle. They call themselves “the Republican Party,” but they are far from anything that ever included Lincoln, Eisenhower, or either George Bush–nor are they a party, but a cult.

If by “worthy” and “qualified” she means those willing to consider the Green New Deal in whole or even in part, and if the verb “need to get” means candidates who have a chance to win elections, then that leaves the one remaining, viable, national party.

Am I not “impartial” enough to forecast what we need after we get through what will likely be yet another record-breaking hot summer? We’ll see. As Erika Spanger writes:

In the meantime, try to stay cool.

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*A Primer on “overshoot”:

A USA Today report from 2019 of school walkouts around the globe. This photo was taken in Vienna.
https://www.usatoday.com/picture-gallery/news/world/2019/03/15/friday-future-students-protest-global-warming-inaction/3178535002/

What More Do You Want?

And now it’s a video depicting the Obamas as apes. All of the outrage keeps piling on to that already expressed in condemnation of Trump. As if he alone is the entire malignant disease that inflicts us.

At what point do we direct it at those who continue to support him?

As my late-friend, a former college roommate during the Nixon years used to spit with indignation when there were new, glaring revelations about Watergate: What MORE do you want?

His question, of course, was directed at those who continued to support Nixon. Fifty years later, my impatience is directed as much toward liberals who say “We should talk to them” and “We need to respect their intelligence.” How intelligent is anyone who laughs at that video? Who supports ICE raids? Who says “Gulf of America”? Who thinks reporters–all of them women–should be called “piggy” or told they should “smile more” while asking questions about events that anyone watching has seen with their own eyes? Or that there’s nothing wrong with members of Team Trump–all of them women–wearing crosses around their necks while they justify murder and racism with obvious lies?

As far as the liberal appeasers are concerned, my inner-English teacher wants to just laugh at so many re-incarnations of Voltaire’s Pangloss. Or of the hopelessly naive American captain in Melville’s Benito Cerino who is “unwilling to be uncivil even in the face of incivility itself.”

And so the forces of evil itself play Captain Delano, just as they play a large enough swath of the American public to win elections for MAGA in the House and the Senate–if only because an even larger swath of the public can’t bother to pay attention and participate in a form of government that depends on their doing both. And then they complain when things are not to their liking. Am I supposed to “respect their intelligence” also?

I have more respect for an unflushed toilet than I have for liberals who still think this. And even less for anyone who still supports Trump’s Reign of Hate. In fact, due to the way the two-party system works, I would vote for the contents of that toilet before I’ll ever vote for another Republican on any level.

Harsh? Extreme? Unreasonable? How about this:

(Mostafa Bassim / Anadolu via Getty Images)

This is Aliya Rahman being ripped from her car by Republican-approved ICE thugs in Minneapolis. Below is a link to a video, just under seven minutes long, of her testimony at a congressional hearing. The hearing, at which the brothers of Renee Good also testified, was open to all members of congress. Not one Republican attended.

Before Sunday’s Super Bowl kickoff, I’ll be taking a knee when I hear “land of the free” and “home of the brave.” Seems to me we all should. Maybe it’s the Sixties in me that makes it impossible to go along with lies.

To anyone who objects, I have two requests: As for “the free,” please explain what just happened in Minneapolis. As for “the brave,” please explain the silence of Republican senators and representatives in the face of so much this past year. As for me, maybe it’s my addiction to history that makes it impossible to mistake appeasement for patriotism.

Of course, I know that no one will know when I do it. That’s why I’m telling you now, What more can I do?

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Seems prophetic a decade later:

Colin Kaepernick (center) became a controversial public figure by kneeling during the U.S. national anthem while he played for the San Francisco 49ers in 2016. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)

Rich with Peculiarities

If you love music, if you love art, if you crave a story of a community that unites in the face of adversity, you’ll want to see The Choral, a very British film set in a small mill town during World War I.

This prime time, end-of-year release stars Ralph Fiennes, the only recognizable name (to an American) in the cast. That may be one reason it had little chance of gaining any notice much less nominations for an Oscar. Instead of riding the wave of holiday attention, it was drowned out by other prime time releases with more well-known names, including another from the English countryside called Hamnet.

Fiennes plays a choral master brought to town when the one who held the job for years signs up to join the Army. He brings with him “peculiarities,” including having lived in Germany, which makes him suspect. As he has the choral preparing the St. Matthew Passion, a brick shatters the window. On it, a remark about “the Hun,” which the mill owner tries to reassure the conductor is not about him, but about Bach who wrote the piece.

Fiennes’ conductor laughs it off, “Given the quality of our singing, it could well be from a music critic.”

Before long, they drop Bach and turn to Sir Edward Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius. Good news when Elgar approves, but when they find they do not have the number of musicians required for the grandiose production, they downsize, and a string orchestra becomes a string trio. Ingeniously, they also adapt, and the old Gerontius becomes a wounded soldier, and an angel is recast as a nurse. And then Elgar shows up to see how things are going…

The film is rich with intrigue that only begins with German vs. English and Protestant vs. Catholic. With hints of what today is called post-traumatic-stress-disorder, it’s a test of what separation does to relationships. As one young man flippantly quips to his friend, a young postal carrier who at times brings bad news to young women, “One’s grief can be another’s opportunity.”

Rich also with subplots that are developed almost without dialogue, almost just as movement in the background, such as the grief-stricken wife of the mill owner who sees his role as to keep the town’s morale up. The Choral at times veers into mystery, dropping random clues, as when we overhear a singer tell another that the conductor is in the library daily, looking at the latest issue of the paper, always turning to the “Wartime Naval News.”

For comparison, The Choral is as spirited and rewarding and satisfying as so many Brit flicks that deliver both comedy and tragedy, reminding me of The Phanthom of the Open, Living, The Miracle Club, See How They Run, The Duke. And that’s just in the past five years.

Safe to say that, the characters we meet in all of these films have populated England for centuries. Otherwise, there would be no Hamnet or Hamlet.

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“The Hun,” followed home and pelted by pebbles from the hands of kids no doubt overhearing their parents’ gripes.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt31851518/

Bucks for a Bigger Bang

Five years ago, I came into an unexpected sum of money that, in my salad days, would have bought a reliable used car. In 2020, it might have covered the cost of a reasonably good set of tires.

‘Twas the Christmas season, and my various circles of friends were celebrating the holidays atop their celebrations of Joe Biden’s victory over the personification of self-interest.

Yes, that victory was reversed four years later, and that reversal prompts this memory as an introduction to what I’m about to propose in this little ditty that might also be headlined, “Donation Wise, Tax Foolish.”

For now, let us keep our attention on December 2020. At the time, while we were so relieved the country was rid of a never-ending embarrassment of a president, we were also faced with the prospect of a Republican-controlled senate.

That was left undecided by two US Senate elections that required run-offs. Both were in Georgia and scheduled for January 5. Republicans needed just one to retain control of the Senate, keeping Mitch McConnell as Senate President.

This would have paralyzed a Biden presidency. McConnell, who openly reveled in the nickname, “Grim Reaper,” had already stripped Obama of a Supreme Court appointment. That move paved the way for the repeal of Roe v. Wade and the 2024 ruling that, in effect, holds that a president, contrary to any honest reading of the US Constitution, is above the law.

There I was–a senior citizen in need of part-time employment–with an unexpected $500 in hand.

I have made a few political contributions along the way: Bill Bradley in the 2000 primaries; Kerry in 2004; Obama in 2008; Sanders in 2016, each for a meager $20 or $25. To be fair, I figure that I supplemented each by writing endorsements for all of them as far back as Walter Mondale in 1984 and Jerry Brown in 1988–including Gore and both Clintons who topped my preferred candidates in primaries. The local paper for which I write does circulate in New Hampshire, a swing state.

Pondering all of that, I asked that, rather than any gifts for me, friends and relatives donate to the Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock campaigns in Georgia. I then sent a $200 check to each, and spent a good chunk of the remaining $100 on beverages that might help me either celebrate the results or forget that the $500 ever existed. Both candidates won.

That helped, but Biden paralyzed himself by appointing a cadaver as Attorney General. In fear of political backlash, the Biden Administration did nothing to bring the planners of January 6 to justice until Republicans could whine that it was “too close” to the presidential election. It was cowardice wrapped in the rigor-mortis of procedure. And as Herman Melville observed of European revolutions in 1848 that neglected to hold overthrown parties to account:

Victory reverts to the vanquished.

And so it is that the personification of self-interest has re-taken the White House–demolishing some of it–while the Republican Party has re-taken both the Senate and the House. In just one year, they have slashed funding for every humanitarian interest that cannot be monetized for the benefit of their donors. All kinds of scientific research, especially medical, including the Affordable Care Act, top the list, followed by numerous programs for children living below the poverty line, for veterans, for victims of natural disasters.

Internationally, the Center for Global Development estimates that the Republican slashing of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has already resulted in over half a million deaths, most of them children who succumb to starvation while shiploads of food rot in their third-world ports.

Meanwhile, we are watching more and more television ads asking us to donate to charities that hope to meet those same needs. Question: Which is higher, the amount of federal funds that would be allocated by a Democratic Congress with a reasonable corporate tax-rate, or the amount of individual donations from those who can afford it and are so inclined while corporations skimp on taxes, report record profits, and dole out billions in bonuses for CEOs?

A loaded question? That’s only because the load is of plain, irrefutable truth.

This is not to be construed as a case against donating to charities. But it is a case that, in a time when a Republican-controlled Congress is slashing every cent it can from humanitarian needs, our donations will be better spent on candidates who will take Congress out of Republican hands.

In 2026, there are ten Senate seats considered closely contested–including that of Jon Ossoff in Georgia–as well as numerous House seats. The division is so close in both, that it would take just a few to flip them.

My admiration goes out to those who reach for the checkbook when they see an ad for malnourished children in Africa, or for children fighting cancer here in America, and I will continue to applaud them.

At the start of this mid-term election year, however, we would do better to stop being Donation Wise, Tax Foolish.

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Funny money accepted at par. These, plus a half dozen dollar coins, are all I have left of renfaire tip-money, and they will eventually all go as tips in restaurants–when I can again afford to go to a restaurant.

An Under the Radar Roundup

 “You are like a really nice apartment over a meth lab,” Robin Williams told Canadians in 2013. 

Since then, the meth lab has swelled with violence, chaos, confusion, and fear, all of it resisted and protested by mass demonstrations in the streets, statements in the press, lawsuits in the courts, prayers in houses of worship.

Last month America put it near Canada’s border with a paramilitary occupation of Minneapolis. Last week, a friend wondered if the city was chosen because of the state’s reputation for friendliness. “Minnesota Nice” may seem a corny expression, but there’s enough truth to it to adorn a t-shirt that’s been selling for at least 45 years since I wore one. Kelly green with print in a golden Comic Sans font. Those who saw Frances McDormand as Sheriff Margie in the 1996 film, Fargo, will know what it means.

Many have noted that “cruelty is the point” of an administration for which the only guiding principle appears to be “Might makes right.” If that’s the case, then it makes sense to terrorize the most peaceful, friendly, accommodating populations to impress the rest. And with crank declarations of turning Canada into our 51st state, it makes sense to put our Reign of Hate on Canada’s border.

Let’s see, what other states are on our northern border?

Buried under so much sensational news last week was a report of an agreement between Trump and Maine Sen. Susan Collins.

A deployment of ICE to Maine was announced and seemed to begin early last week. My cousin, who hails from the Lobster Coast, reported: “100 and counting arrested. 4 with records, all people of color.” It was a day or two later that Collins announced her “agreement.”

Omitted from her announcement was that she, a Republican, is up for reelection this year, and Mainiacs are as skeptical of Republicans as of Democrats. It’s other US senator is Angus King, an Independent. Subsequently, reports from up north tell us that Collins is already boasting that she is the candidate “who will keep ICE out of Maine.”

An agreement? While Minnesota has been the target of terror, Maine is now hostage to it. In effect, the Maine electorate being told to reelect this senator who will approve of ICE anywhere else Trump wants to send it–and, oh, by the way, keep the seat Republican–or he will inflict the Reign of Hate on Portland, Bangor, and any other city with sizable minority populations. That’s not an agreement. That’s a concession.

That the two had a phone call at all was surprising. Collins was one of the few Republican votes to convict during Trump’s second impeachment, perhaps thinking it meant redemption for voting to acquit the first time around. She explained that first vote with a chuckle: “Oh, I think he learned his lesson.”

Wrong again, Susan. He doesn’t learn lessons. He gives them. And you have no clue how well you “learned” the one he just gave you.

Next door in New Hampshire, an Episcopal bishop, in response to murders in Minnesota and the surge of ICE in New England, instructed the clergy to write their wills and get their affairs in order.

Speaking of clueless Republican officials, did you know that when Kristi Noem was governor of South Dakota, she oversaw a state-wide anti-drug campaign. The slogan, which she liked to say with relish:

“Meth. We’re on it.”

Looks more like she’s on botox and lip-filler to me, but what do I know?

Further west and north of these “Lower 48” is another development buried in last week’s sensational news. For all the noise about making Canada the 51st state, envoys for America’s Reign of Hate trekked to Calgary for talks with leaders of a right-wing separatist movement in the Rocky Mountain Province of Alberta.

Most Canadians in the know say that it is a fringe movement that has no chance of winning provincial elections. But, as we’ve learned here in the States, there are other ways to undermine democracy. Asked about the meeting with Americans in Alberta, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney expressed his belief that Trump would “respect Canadian sovereignty.”

What the expletive deleted! I know that the guy made a brave, noble, eloquent speech at the international conference in Davos, Switzerland, but how can he possibly think that Trump is even capable of respecting anything? Is he channeling Clueless Collins or Cowgirl Noem?

Coming back east and sharp-turning south, federal agents raided the Fulton County election offices in Atlanta. If that’s an injury to the US Constitution clause that leaves the administration of elections to the states, then the added insult was the presence of Secretary of the Dept. of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. Reports of Gabbard’s travels and meetings over the last ten years have made many wonder if she was handpicked for Trump’s cabinet by Vladimir Putin, but news outlets are still wondering why the head of DNI would oversee a DoJ operation.

Remember the call to Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger asking for 11,780 votes? If you can’t get them, purge them!

Meanwhile, Att’y General Pam Bondi generously offered Minnesota Gov. Tim Waltz a deal to withdraw ICE from Minneapolis. In return, Waltz would turn over the city’s voting registration lists to what, if we are to be honest, is now the Dept. of Injustice. Nor is it mere coincidence that, every four years since I started keeping track over 30 years ago, Minnesota has the highest percentage of eligible voters turning out for presidential elections.

Do you see the pattern here? Walz did. And so, like Raffensperger and unlike Collins, he said no.

Chances are it will come into full view following today’s expiration of “Temporary Protection Status” for Haitians living in the USA, many of whom are nurses or therapists working in health services, including home care for the elderly. What if TPS is used as leverage against other states to obtain voter rolls? Will Gov. Maura Healy risk the collapse of Massachusetts’ health services and say no?

How about the governor of Ohio where a sizable Haitian population already been accused by Trump of eating cats and dogs? A hotly contested race for a US Senate seat this year makes Ohio a prime target for anyone seeking voter registration roles. The governor is Republican.

And that’s the news from the Meth Lab called America where the chaos is such that we may need more room, and there’s a very nice apartment upstairs.

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Looks like I’m not alone with this theory.
https://www.fox5dc.com/news/meth-were-on-it-people-have-mixed-feelings-about-south-dakotas-new-anti-drug-campaign

Ode to a Mar-a-LaGhoul

Maybe it’s my Catholic up-bringing that makes the ever snarling White House Press Secretary so offensive, always wearing a cross suspended from a necklace as if those asking questions were vampires trying to distort truth rather than reveal it.

Maybe I’m just embarrassed that she graduated from the same Catholic high school, albeit 47 years after I did. As consolation, Central Catholic also gave us Jonathan Lemire, the reporter who in 2018 posed the question in Helsinki which led to Trump’s revelation that he found Vladimir Putin more credible than American intelligence sources.

Or maybe the before-and-after photos have made me snap. Why does anyone that young–and, frankly, that naturally attractive–pump up her face to resemble yet another Mar-a-LaGhoul? With Loomer, Noem, Bondi, Guilfoyle and Melania, Team Trump already had five faces filled with more plastic than a landfill.

Unable to discern any credible reason why or how Karoline Leavitt devolved into what she now is, I must doff my cap to her and pay tribute. And what better tribute is there than song? With apologies to Neil Diamond, here it is, set to the tune of “Sweet Caroline,” though it might be more in tune with the title “Song Sung Red”–everybody knows one:

Sour Karoline

Where it began
I can’t begin to know when
But then I heard it growin’ loud
Was it term one?
She may have still been in high school
Hoping to make her family proud

[Pre-Chorus]
Reeee…
…Publican
Striking out
Joining Truuuump, Fooling youuuuuuuu

[Chorus]
Sour Karoline (Lie! Lie! Lie!)
Lying like you knock on wood (On wood! On wood! On wood!)
I’ve been inclined
To believe lies were not good
But now I

[Verse 2]
Look at ICE
And it don’t seem so certain
That this is still the land of the free
But Karoline’s cross
Shows it’s all holly holy
Home of the brave, we must agree

[Pre-Chorus]
Threaten
Pointing weapons
Shove to the ground
Beat the craaaaaap out of youuuuuuuuuu

[Chorus]
Sour Karoline (Lie! Lie! Lie!)
Lying like you knock on wood (Onward! Onward! Onward!)
Christian soldiers
Once believed lies were not good
But now it’s yes, yes

[Instrumental Break]

(Segue into National Anthem as played by Jimi Hendrix, then back into chorus)

[Chorus]
Sour Karoline (Lie! Lie! Lie!)
Lying like you knock on wood (On wood! On wood! On wood!)

Sour Karoline (Lie! Lie! Lie!)
Christian soldiers march onward (Onward! Onward! Onward!)

[Fade]

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For the original lyrics, click this:

https://genius.com/Neil-diamond-sweet-caroline-lyrics

L2R: 2022 & 2025.
https://nbatitlechase.com/2025/04/02/photo-karoline-leavitt-before-and-after-getting-nose-job-at-plastic-surgeon/

Possible Oscars & a Docujoke

Quite a delightful surprise to see Kate Hudson nominated for the Best Actress Oscar.

I’ve seen very few of her films, but I am relieved to see Song Sung Blue gain at least one nod. The Academy tends to dismiss feel-good features when awarding its statues, and what could be more feel-good than “Sweet Caroline”? But there’s a lot more to Song Sung Blue than Neil Diamond. Listen to the lesser known songs–some tracked for the film’s most intimate scenes–and you’ll find there’s a lot more to Neil Diamond than “Neil Diamond.” Moreover, put Neil Diamond aside, and the film has a lot to say about musicians trying to make a living–in this case two who combined to form a tribute band and a few who joined it.

That may be a second reason I should recuse myself from making picks. I haven’t seen Sinners with its 16 nominations, most ever in the history of the awards. Nor have I seen four others nominated for best film, which makes for half the field of ten. Of the five I have seen, I could make a strong case for both Hamnet and Sentimental Value. Marty Supreme not so much, and Bugonia not at all.

Of the five, One Battle After Another is the one most relevant to 2026, the one with the most urgent message. A comedy so dark and undeniably real that it dares you to laugh, it’s the one I’m most inclined to favor. I would certainly like to hear acceptance speeches from those who made it, but for all I know, the others may be just as willing to speak against America’s current War against the Arts as Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn. Those two and Benicio del Toro all have nominations–DiCaprio and Penn were funny, but del Toro was beyond hilarious.

As for Kate Hudson’s chances, she’s contending with Jessie Buckley in Hamnet and Renata Reinsva in Sentimental Value. I could make strong cases for all three. Buckley has the advantage of being at the center of Hamnet‘s finale, which might make the Academy consider adding an Oscar for Best Single Scene. However, I haven’t seen If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, and since I found Bugonia about as watchable as Fox “News,” I’ll neither pick nor predict a winner.

Speaking of the unwatchable, I wonder if it is mere coincidence that the so-called documentary, Melania, is released the very week that Oscar nominations are announced. Reviews make it sound like a worthy rival to Blair Witch Project for the most vacuous, pointless slop ever put on a screen, most all of them as brutal as Karoline Leavitt’s treatment of the White House press corps. Which reminds me that my next project will be a spoof of a Neil Diamond song I’ll rename: “Sour Karoline.” (…Lie! Lie! Lie! Lying never felt so good! So good! So good! So good!)

The predictions of failure at the box office, however, proved wrong, as the MAGA faithful packed cinemas, buying up tickets as willingly as they purchase $400 Trump sneakers, $200 Trump bibles, $99 Trump trading cards, and on and on. Can the MAGA crowd sustain these grosses for a film that the Hollywood Reporter calls “an unabashed, fly-on-the-gilded-wall fawn job”? 

From what I’ve gleaned, the Epstein “associate”-turned-First Lady comes off about as warm and charming as her “I don’t care do U?” jacket and her Boris & Natasha hat. Even more damning are the memes proclaiming, “If syphilis was a movie…” or the mock–but very truthful–advertisements proclaiming: “She’s in the pedo-files!” Not only is she in the Epstein files, so too is a photo of Melania director Brett Ratner cozying up with one of Epstein’s trafficked girls. Bet you didn’t know that MAGA prefers movies over government files.

Not to worry, all may not be lost. My friend Kurt Kaletka in his history-rich and linguistically playful blog, “Truth or Better,” proposes that Melania might “have some worth” in the years ahead:

I can see Rocky Horror-type screenings of it, where the boys come dressed in suits and super-long red ties, blond wigs and orange makeup plastered almost entirely on their faces. The girls can show up with makeup and prosthetics to recreate the Mar-a-Lago Face phenomenon. You can go with other Trump White House characters, too! Use ghastly white face paint to copy Stephen Miller’s cadaverous look! Dress up like a Kristi Noem-style buckarette! Or copy the style of your favorite January 6 rioter!*

Kaletka obviously does not work in a cinema. Nor did I when Rocky Horror was released in 1975. But from the time I was hired in 1998, I did hear the Screening Room’s owners still bemoaning the mess they had to clean up every night of its run. After 23 years, they could laugh a bit, but the anger was still there.**

Let my friend make his appeal to the cineplexes with their high-powered cleaning machines. I’d rather watch Kate Hudson. Come to think of it, back in 2000 when still a new face, she had a moment in Dr. T and the Women that is as memorable as any I’ve ever seen. When her ringtone sounds during an exercise class, the annoyed instructor motions for her to leave the room. Hudson’s character holds up phone and announces, “It’s an emergency.” Far from any urgency, she says it as if talking about a napkin falling to the floor.

Yes, a three-word line, but at that moment I realized that cellphones had already turned “emergency” into the biggest one-word joke in the history of language. The Academy may also want to consider adding an Oscar for Best Single Word.

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*For Kurt Kaletka’s entire case for Melania Horror Picture Show, go to:

https://trueorbetter.blogspot.com/

**True story: About 2/3rds into a showing of Rocky Horror in Portland, Maine, some fifty years ago, a projectionist stopped the film to ask the audience to stop throwing things at the screen. Screens are delicate, easily stained, torturous to clean, and quite expensive to replace. He turned up the lights, but before he could get down from the booth and into the hall, the audience simply thought that the film was over. They were getting up, smiling, laughing, and ready to hit the nearby bars. He held his tongue and let them leave, which is exactly what I’d have done.

Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson as “Lightning & Thunder” in Song Sung Blue:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt30343021/

Treats of Minneapolis

Bruce Springsteen’s just released “Streets of Minnesota” appears to be galvanizing for most every friend I have. For me the song is nostalgic. In a previous life, Minneapolis was my weekend getaway of choice.

These were the Carter years when our vice-president was a low-key, affable Minnesotan, and when A Prairie Home Companion began airing every Saturday night across the river in St. Paul. I was across the state’s western border in Dakota–first South, then North, then South again–listening in, always eager to trek to the Twin Cities. Back then, hitchhiking was easy. All that flat farmland and everyone going some distance. Your thumb was an offer of someone to talk to. And I enjoyed making shaded cardboard signs with the “l” in “Mpls” turned into an arrow pointing ahead on US. 14.

Minneapolis was a cultural wonderland: As You Like It, Measure for Measure, Twelfth Night, and an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice at the Guthrie, Jean-Pierre Rampal and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra at Orchestra Hall, Jethro Tull in some civic arena, the Flamin Os with their South Dakota keyboardist who got us in as their roadies, Schmitt Music Company with a sheet for Maurice Ravel’s “Gaspard de la Nuit” blown up as a mural on its brick wall facing a parking lot, the Twins versus the White Sox at the old Metrodome, a speech at the university by Eugene McCarthy, and how many dinners and Hamm’s lagers at Estaban’s down on Nicollet, or was it Hennipen?

And then there was the time that three rather young women mistook me for Cat Stevens in a lounge at the Minneapolis Airport as I awaited a connection to home to Bismarck. Back then, I had long black hair, a pony tail, and I traveled with a dulcimer which, in its case, seen at certain angles, is easily mistaken for a guitar. Next day I would learn that he played Orchestra Hall that very night. Since then, I’ve spent four decades wishing I told them that I was instead of that I wasn’t.

Leaving a performance of Measure for Measure, a busload of South Dakota State English majors, grad students, and faculty walked past the Post Office building that filled a block. Past 11:00 pm, postal workers were in the streets to receive tax filings from motorists needing to beat the deadline. Handed out the car windows, no need to park, just keep the line moving.

Leaving Orchestra Hall after hearing Rampal, two of us–and I think everyone else–could sense that something had gone wrong while we were all mesmerized by one of history’s finest flautists–a man who 40 years earlier was part of the French resistance. We heard it as we stepped out into the January night: Hubert Humphrey had died after a long bout with cancer in a hospital just around the corner. The feeling was palpable. Even the few cars that rolled by seemed to be in the sorrowful pace of a funeral.

Humphrey was actually a native of Huron, South Dakota, but he attended the U. of Minnesota and made an impression on the Democrat Farm Labor Party. Not long out of college, he was Minneapolis’ mayor who gained a national reputation when he sided with Civil Rights leaders against landlords and businesses that preferred segregation. While other American cities suffered unrest from Black soldiers returning from Europe, Minneapolis became a model of fairness. That propelled Humphrey into the senate, the vice-presidency, and to a presidential nomination.

No one knew it the time, nor would it be known for another 15 years, but also at that hospital to spend an afternoon reminiscing with Humphrey was Richard Nixon who flew in from California when he heard his former rival had taken a turn for the worse. Their battles were over. It was a time to heal, a time to die. No mention of it in the 48-page pull-out section of the Minneapolis Star & Tribune that I bought as a souvenir for my father the next day, but they had prepared in advance, just as the city had prepared in advance.

Minneapolis was then as it is now, unified.

In a life even more previous, I was a student at Salem State eager to attend every anti-war demonstration, including Mayday in 1971 in DC where I was one of 14,000 protesters arrested for blocking traffic. These were the Johnson and Nixon years when protests were almost exclusively attended by young people fueled, not by any lust for confrontation, but by music.

Several songs served as anthems, starting with The Chambers Brothers’ “Time Has Come Today” and the Young Rascals’ “People Got to Be Free,” as diverse as Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Goin’ On?” and Jefferson Airplane’s “Volunteers,” and as piercing as Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth.” What a field day for the heat…

Most compelling of all was Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “Ohio,” often called by the last line of the chorus that is repeated as a one-line refrain as the song fades out, “Four dead in Ohio.” The reference is to the National Guard shootings at Kent State on May 4, 1970.

Difference between this and the other songs I just mentioned is that it dramatizes a specific incident. So, too, is “Streets of Minneapolis” a response to state-sponsored murder. From CSNY’s “tin soldiers and Nixon” to “King Trump’s private army,” from “Soldiers are cutting us down” to “Here in our home, they killed and and roamed,” Springsteen has given us a full-blooded anthem, combining defiance with hope and turning the tables of patriotism away from those who only mouth the words of our National Anthem toward those willing to give it life:

Against smoke and rubber bullets
In the dawn’s early light
Citizens stood for justice
Their voices ringing through the night

All he needed to counter the glaring lie of “domestic terrorist” was to state the glaring truth of “federal thugs.” And as always from Springsteen, an irresistible beat gives it an attitude that could not be more potent.

Personally, I could thank The Boss for this trip down memory lane. (Or is it LaSalle Ave?) Best of all, his anthem reassures me that Minneapolis is now as it was then, unified.

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https://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM3FX0_Schmitt_Music_Mural_Minneapolis_MN

E Pluribus Resistance

Earlier today I received an email from the fellow who organizes events in Ipswich, including the No Kings rallies which I often attend on Saturdays. He added an item that struck a chord:

WBZ-CBS is airing commercials for ICE, threatening immigrants. I saw this while watching the news tonight and immediately contacted a friend who had worked at the station.They said to contact the Station Manager, Chris Ruggeri to complain. His email is cpruggeri@cbs.com. Phone 617-746-7140.

I’ve been seeing these for weeks during football games, college and pro, on various stations. I even mused at the idea of joining, grabbing the $50K signing bonus, then quitting to use that bonus to help defeat Republican candidates for the US House and Senate. Turns out, as my friend Woonsocket let me know, those bonuses are to given only after five years of terrorizing service, by which time, the gig will be up, and the masked suckers who joined will go empty-handed.

Then came the double-homicide in Minneapolis, soon followed by a name, a position, and an edress. Within seconds I zapped off this under the subject line, “In the Service of Hate”:

To Station Manager Chris Ruggeri:  What is it like to profit from a terror campaign that has just murdered two people in cold blood?  Will you show the videos of those murders with the commercials?  What’s it like to be in the service of hate? Jack Garvey  Plum Island

In just as little if not less time, my inbox had this:

Thank you for taking the time to contact us and share your feedback.

We understand that viewers sometimes have questions or concerns about national CBS News programming. While we value hearing from our audience, our local station does not produce or control the editorial content of CBS News’ national broadcasts.

To ensure your comments are reviewed by the appropriate team, we encourage you to direct any feedback regarding national CBS News programming to the CBS News Ombudsman at the link below:

https://ombudsman.cbsnews.com/

Thank you again for reaching out and for watching CBS.

Sincerely, Your CBS Boston team

Passing the buck with a form letter! I may have been in triple digits on the Celsius Scale. Oh, I’ll contact the CBS ombudsman, but not without adding my response to the “CBS Boston team”:

Does the name Pontius Pilate ring a bell? Or are you playing Lady Macbeth? Speak now or plead for mercy at Nuremberg… Jack

This drew no response, automated or otherwise. Now that at least four hours have passed, I might even wonder if I’ve been reported to Trump’s heavily-financed-by-taxpayers goon squad as a domestic terrorist?

Surely, my two emails today were more combative and insulting than anything they heard from Renee Good or Alex Pretti. And, look, I have something in my hand that, when I click it, even before I click it, could accurately be called a threat, not just to ICE, but to the Reign of Hate that has unleashed it on us.

At least I hope it’s a threat. Why else would I spend any time with it?

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https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/08/02/ice-recruiting-signing-bonus-incentives-immigration-officers/85478464007/