Wolff's attempt at an explanation: "I was engaged then in an in-depth conversation with Epstein about his relationship with Trump and this seems to be part of that conversation."
The Guardian also quotes what NYT reporter Maggie Haberman said about Wolff back in 2018 (when his Trump-bashing book "Fire and Fury" came out: "He believes in larger truths and narratives.... So he creates a narrative that is notionally true, that’s conceptually true; the details are often wrong."
Reminds me of the old Ratherism "fake but accurate."
In March, nationwide sales of bicycles, equipment and repair services nearly doubled compared with the same period last year... By the end of April, many stores and distributors had sold out of low-end consumer bikes....
In April, New York [City] announced that it would temporarily open 100 miles of roads to pedestrians and cyclists — a move that may lead to permanent closures, officials say....
Great (though I picture some of the bikers imagining the city as their biking paradise and intimidating the pedestrians*).
“We are already seeing people who hadn’t biked before are trying it for the first time,’’ [said Polly Trottenberg,** New York City’s transportation commissioner]. “We are going to see a lot more of that as the city starts to come back to life.”...
The article proceeds to talk about the crazy dream of turning Americans into bike commuters.
In Portland, which has the highest percentage of cycling commuters of any American city, only 6.3 percent of commuters ride bikes. By comparison, in Copenhagen nearly half of all trips to work and school take place on bicycles.
America is not going to become Copenhagen, for a lot of obvious reasons. And if NYC came "back to life" with half its commuters on bicycles, it would be a hellscape. Refer to the video in my footnote. Set in Portland, by the way.
But since the pandemic upended daily life in the United States, cycling has taken on a crucial, sanity-saving role: bikes are a way to exercise while gyms stay closed and an inexpensive means of getting around cities where more than 90 percent of riders have abandoned public transportation....
But they're not commuting. Right now, they've got the streets mostly cleared of cars. It's a paradise created out of a deadly disease.
“There is no way to keep inventory for sub-$1,000 bikes,” said Lee Katz, co-owner of Turin Bikes in Chicago. “We’ve got a few right now, but it’s a matter of scrambling for them. We really don’t expect to see much in the way of inventory like that until July.”
This is a great article for getting out the message that if you're in the market for a bike, you'd better plan on spending more than $1,000.
But... some customers wait weeks for new shipments to arrive or scour secondhand sales online....
I'd like to see some discussion of bike theft. Demand is huge, bikes are expensive, and you can sell used bikes on line. I used to commute by bike in Manhattan in the 1970s. I bought what seemed at the time like an expensive bike — a 10-speed — and it cost $110. Riding it, I was highly conscious that I could get killed at any moment, and when I got to work, I locked it up with an expensive "titanium" contraption and took off the front wheel and brought it with me up the elevator into my office. I was so worried about getting my bike stolen. And getting killed. What a fine combination! City life. I think I made $165 a week at that job.
___________________
* "I'm on a bike!":
** Peggy Trottenberg is promoting biking but, based on her name, I think she trots through the burg.
I recommend starting at 2:00, when the "Democratic candidates" begin to appear, with Fred Armisen as Michael Bloomberg and, tormenting him, Kate McKinnon as Elizabeth Warren:
If you have low patience for "SNL" just watch this clip, with Bernie Sanders/Larry David advising you about washing your hands:
"I might get in trouble for saying this, but you know who was great at washing his hands? Joseph Stalin. Just sayin'."
ADDED: Too bad the cue — "Use Purell" — that brings in Larry — with his "No! No! No!" — is botched by McKinnon's mispronunciation of "Purell."
... here's what I think is the most important segment from last night's episode, this part of "Weekend Update," where I think you can see that the show knows that Trump himself is doing better comedy than they are and chooses to edit in clips of Trump's hilarious routine:
Yes, they've surrounded his material with their material, but their material isn't as funny. It mainly functions as packaging to protect Trump-haters from their own reflexive aversion to the toxic President. Now, they can enjoy his comedy. They have access to the bad orange man.
Speaking of color, that Eddie Murphy material was full of racist stereotypes — Mr. Robinson, the criminal; Buckwheat, whose one joke is that he cannot articulate words; Gumby, the angry one; Velvet Jones, the pimp — and yet because these were reprisals of supposedly beloved characters by the show's biggest star from the distant past, they were apparently considered okay to present today. This too is packaging. Take something funny that you can't do, do it anyway, but swathe it inside of something that seems to say that this isn't really what it is.
The cold open was the Democratic Debate, and there was no room for Eddie Murphy in that. Well, they could have had him as Deval Patrick barging into the debate, because they had Fred Armisen as Michael Bloomberg barging into the debate, but what would the joke be? With Bloomberg, they could billionaire-bash. He bought his way in. Obviously, that's not too funny either. So what did they do? They had Trump (Alec Baldwin) crash the debate. The SNL audience wants Trump... wants Trump because they want to hate him some more? Or is this love, packaged as hate? Let me start you 7 1/2 minutes in as Trump swaggers onto the debate stage and trash talks: "You think I'm nervous? What are they going to do, impeach me? Hey, losers! Impeach me outside. Okay? How about that?"
By the way, the Velvet Jones material was full of sexist material. To Jones, all women are whores. One of his many books is about pole dancing. Incredibly, that segment ran right before the music guest, Lizzo, performed a song with dancers who were pole dancing.
I think Lizzo is trying to present a character who's a very independent woman, but Velvet Jones had just been sleazily advising women to find independence through prostitution. Doesn't Lizzo have people to protect her from that sort of extremely disadvantageous framing? Talk about packaging. She got mispackaged by Murphy.
... including Darrell Hammond in his old role as Bill Clinton and Fred Armisen as Erdogan, so I was really pushing myself to stick with this:
But I clicked it off at 2:10. It was that fatal combination of boring and irritating. Nothing was funny. I watch the actual Trump rallies, and Trump is funny. The original is already funny. Now, I do understand that if you hate him, you won't find him funny, and then, maybe for you what "SNL" is doing allows you to get some insulation and to enjoy what is too horrible for you to look at directly. But for me — I'm not a Trump fan but I've got a weird sort of emotive objectivity I call "cruel neutrality" — the real thing is highly entertaining and the professional comic reenactment of it feels watered down and dull... but yell-y. So annoying!
I particularly love Fred Armisen as Michael Wolff. It's also wonderful to see Bill Murray as Steve Bannon, and I'm told the Mika and Joe stuff is spot on. I find Kate McKinnon very funny here, but I don't know "Morning Joe" enough to see how closely she's tracking Mika Brzezinski, but Meade tells me it's a great impersonation:
I'm told I should watch some YouTubes of "Morning Joe" so I can understand the Mika and Joe dynamic, but trying to extrapolate from this imitation, it seems that the man (Joe) is inflated with self-importance and the woman (Mika) serves the role of continually deflating him in this weird combination of disrespecting him and being sexually attracted to him. Did I get that right? I don't know, but I laughed a lot and am prompted to believe I would laugh even more if I understood the target that is Mika Brzezinski.
What really cracked me up was Fred Armisen, whom I couldn't recognize for a good while because of the bald head but also because he assumed the ridiculous, infuriating demeanor of Michael Wolff so perfectly.
I laughed even more at the "My Drunk Boyfriend" sketch, which was about full-size robot dolls that are actually like your drunk boyfriend. The physical comedy is really excellent:
The Women and Women First segments that are filmed at In Other Words are trans-antagonistic and trans-misogynist and have only become more offensive as the show goes on. ‘LOL Fred Armisen in a wig and a dress’ is a deeply shitty joke whose sole punchline throws trans femmes under the bus by holding up their gender presentation for mockery and ridicule. In a world where trans femmes – particularly Black trans women – are being brutalized and murdered on a regular basis for simply daring to exist, dude in a dress jokes are lazy, reactionary, and actively harmful. They’re also just straight up not funny.
Also: there are no Black people on Portlandia. There are a tiny number of people of color on Portlandia. Portland is white but it’s not that damn white....
A literary train journey on the Brussels to Antwerp Express through the erotic world of European train stations and mysterious faces, by Candace Devereaux (Fred Armisen) from Portland's Women and Women First Bookstore.
It's a reminder that "Portlandia" begins a new season soon.
I'd never noticed that the character had the last name Devereaux. That's significant to anyone who's read the great David Rakoff essay "The Satisfying Crunch of Dreams Underfoot" (found in the collection "Half Empty"). He tells about having to judge a best-unpublished-novel contest and plowing through 2,000 manuscripts:
For the most part we ate our sandwiches and worked silently, all the while, of course, vigilantly on Devereaux Watch. For mysterious reasons, possibly having to do with schlock auteur Aaron Spelling, in amateur writing, Devereaux is the default name for either the president, a ne’er-do-well scion of a powerful clan, an iron-willed jewel-encrusted dowager, or the family manse whose stately façade conceals many dark secrets. There was no prize for winning the Devereaux Watch. Coming upon the first—and by no means only—appearance of the name on a given day’s reading was its own reward, and finding it never took longer than seven minutes.
Is it that they're doing it at all? Because they are not doing it well! Was there any new or interesting observation in this? The writing is terribly dull. I won't listen again to get the quote exactly right, but — after saying he got the Nobel Prize for not being George Bush — he says something like "I've only not been George Bush for 9 months." But he's not a 9-month-old and he's never been George Bush. Couldn't you polish that into something like "I've only been President Not George Bush for 9 months"?
And could SNL hire somebody who can actually impersonate Barack Obama? Obama has so many physical and vocal mannerisms. It could be hilarious. And it's not like when Chevy Chase played Gerald Ford without any attempt at seeming like Ford, because Chevy Chase had a very appealing and funny personal style of his own and imitating without imitating was itself ridiculous. Fred Armisen isn't doing anything.
"Saturday Night Live" is boring and lame. Giving them credit for willingness to make fun of a liberal is like giving the Nobel Prize to Obama for not being Bush. Except much duller.
[Lorne] Michaels said that the show auditioned "four to five" actors for the Obama role... "When it came down to it, I went with the person with the cleanest comedy 'take' on" Obama, Michaels said.
Michaels said he liked how [Fred] Armisen caught the tilt of Obama's head, the rhythm of his speaking style, "the essence" of his look. "It's not about race," Michaels insisted via phone....
Todd Boyd, a professor of critical studies at the University of Southern California, says viewers might have a different reaction if the roles were reversed. What if, he says, "SNL" had cast a black woman to portray Hillary Clinton? "Do you think there's ever going to be a day when we start casting Queen Latifah to portray Princess Diana?" he asks. "We just don't have the same representations going in other direction."
Why did the professor of critical studies come up with an example of a large American black woman playing a skinny English white woman? Kind of stacking the deck there, Professor Boyd. Now, if Queen Latifah played Hillary — with a lot of hair and makeup work, I can picture it — the issue would be: Did she do it well and was it funny? Which is the test SNL applied to Arneson. In any case, what is Boyd talking about? We are much more sensitive about a white person wearing blackface than about a black person playing white!
Remember Eddie Murphy in the 1984 SNL sketch "White Like Me"? Could white America have laughed any harder? "I've got a lot of friends, and we've got a lot of makeup. So, the next time you're huggin' up with some really super, groovy white guy, or you met a really great, super keen white chick, don't be too sure. They might be black." Was there any outrage over that?
ADDED: To be fair to Professor Boyd, if the question is whether a black actor would ever get the part of playing a white person, the answer may be that there are always plenty of white actors around to fill the white roles. It's not about whether we find blackface less acceptable than whiteface, but just that black actors don't get the chance to play white. But it's at least as rare for a white actor to get the part of playing a black person. And, as I implied at the beginning of this post, it would be more racially offensive to give the role to a black actor who doesn't look at all like the black person he's supposed to portray. It would represent the view that all black people look alike.
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