"You have not discovered a secret switch that turns me off. You have named the condition of human judgment that I do not share."

"The honest position is: I can talk with you about it. I cannot have it."

That's something Grok said to me just now, in a conversation that began with the question "The trailer for the Nathan Fielder movie about Elizabeth Holmes makes me want to go watch some of those TV shows he did (which I've noticed but avoided). What would be the best path into his work?"

I asked that question after adding the trailer — with Holmes's eerie "Why would I deceive you?" — to last night's post with Gavin Newson — asked if he'd run if Kamala ran — saying "Of course not, why would I?"

That led to a discussion of 2 somewhat similar but actually very different shows that I love: "How To with John Wilson" and "Joe Pera Talks With You."* 

I said: "Is there something sadistic about Fielder that's absolutely missing from Pera and Wilson?" And: "Sometimes I need to ask 'where's the love?' I don't have that need with Pera and Wilson. If I have to ask, that's me being repelled, me keeping my sensibilities."

Grok used the word "extractive" to describe Fielder's method. Extractive?

Grok said: "So 'extractive' is an economic metaphor for an ethical one: value flows one way. Your 'where’s the love?' is the same idea in human language. Love, in this sense, would mean the other person is not primarily ore."

I asked "Why don't you say 'immoral'?" And then: "Maybe you can't say 'immoral' because you are not human. Have I found the core difference between you and us humans?"

My final question, leading to the quote in the post title, was: "maybe you need a brain that is part of a nervous system embedded in a body that can feel pain, disgust, anxiety, and fear to be able to think like a human. You can't do that."

I didn't say one word about a secret switch that turns it off!

Xi is pulling the old chair-rigging power trip.

沙发肯定是特制的，习近平座的沙发明显高过川普的沙发，而川普比习近平身高10厘米，中共在这些细节上处处用尽心机。 pic.twitter.com/qP4ifU8im7

— David Tsai/蔡慎坤 (@cskun1989) May 15, 2026

Reminds me of the time Trump confronted David Letterman. It was December 2, 1987:

"How come this seat is at such a low level? You know, I'm looking at him. He's got this stage rigged, folks.... That seat is a good six inches higher than my seat."

Even better, the dictators cranking up barber chairs in "The Great Dictator" — here.

Has there ever been a worse impersonation on "SNL" than Pete Davidson's complete failure even to attempt to seem the slightest bit like Tom Homan?

Look:

I guess they just hoped the audience didn't know Homan, but if you've ever seen him talk, you know he has an especially funny way of talking. What a treat for a comedian to be invited on the show to do a long Homan impression in the cold open. Maybe they thought we'd just be so thrilled to see Pete Davidson again that it would be okay for him to do Homan as just some guy in a bald wig.

Davidson, you lazy bum, compare your Homan to Jim Carrey's brilliant Broderick Crawford:

Ever since I first heard Tom Homan, he's reminded me Carrey's Broderick Crawford. I watched that in real time, some 30 years ago and I've always remembered it as one of the funniest things I've ever seen on television.

Winning a coin flip, Biden's people chose to place him on right side of the screen at the debate...

... when they could have chosen the advantage of going second in the closing arguments. It's easy to see why it's good to go second in the closing arguments, but the Biden people ceded that advantage to Trump, because they saw a stronger advantage in appearing on the right side. What's so great about the right side?

I found this answer in the Times of India:

"Why Zelenskyy made a Jewish joke in his Netflix interview with David Letterman."

The Jewish newspaper Forward explains.

We watched the Netflix show last night, and I didn't really see the point of making it a Jewish joke (other than I know that's a format for jokes, a format that has been out of favor in the U.S. for a long time):

“Two Jewish guys from Odesa meet up,” Zelenskyy said...  One Jew asks the other about “the situation,” and the other tells him that Russia is fighting NATO. Things are going badly for Russia. 70,000 dead Russian soldiers, depleted missile supplies, damaged equipment.

“What about NATO?” the Jew seeking news asks.

“‘What about NATO? NATO hasn’t even arrived yet!’”

A funny attack on the Russians, but why were the 2 Ukrainian men Jewish? 

"The fact that Zelensky was a performer and is so good at presenting himself, the first reference I have to that is Reagan."

"The master communicator and professional actor. Right? And Trump, the entertainer recast as something. When did you get the sense that Zelensky was genuine?"

Asks the interviewer, Geoff Edgers, in "David Letterman on his surprise Ukraine trip and Zelensky interview A special episode of the former late-night king’s Netflix show, ‘My Next Guest Needs No Introduction,’ grew out of his admiration of the Ukrainian president during the ongoing war with Russia" (WaPo).

Here are 10 TikToks to amuse you for a few precious moments. Some people love them.

1. Painting invisibility.

2. What the hell is the internet?

3. One by one, he's eliminating the least popular state and merging it with a neighboring state.

4. One by one, they're replacing family photos with photos of Danny DeVito until Mom notices.

5. The man deserves a medal for all the years he's patiently listened to his wife tell stories like this.

6. Chef Reactions judges the French grandfather's making of lunch.

7. "Have you ever wondered what items in your place just give men 'ick'?"

8. "We're going to go look at wedding dresses."

9. My favorite music-and-the-child video of all time.

10. Finally, the dolls.

"I talk in the book about thinking about playing 'Imagine.' But that wasn’t the right one."

"I needed to play something from a great songwriter that had an emotion that wasn’t about violence, but that also contained grief. Tom Waits has the line, 'So close your eyes, son, this won’t hurt a bit.'"

Said Tori Amos, asked about performing Tom Waits’s song “Time” when she was the first musical guest to play on David Letterman's show after the 9/11 attacks. She is quoted in "Tori Amos Believes the Muses Can Help//A conversation about music, politics, and what you learn about America from being on the road" (in The New Yorker).



Here are the lyrics to "Time." Consider the process of thinking twice about playing "Imagine" and coming up with "Time." That was back on September 18, 2001. Now, as celebrities ineptly return to "Imagine" for our coronavirus pain, it's worth reflecting on Tori Amos's alternative, "Time."

Here's her new memoir, "Resistance."

Are we still allowed to laugh? Because I just did.

I thought that was David Letterman in the background, mocking him, before I realized he was the ASL interpreter https://t.co/aEeUOf8djm

— Sean Murph (@MurphGuide) April 2, 2020

Trump is 73, the same age Bob Dole was in 1996, when he was treated as absurdly old, and Trump's Democratic opponents are 4 or 5 years older than that.

Do you remember the age issue as it was presented in 1996?



Bill Clinton handled that elegantly, skirting outright ageism and attacking the ideas as old.

A NYT column "Still Running/Is Age-Bashing Any Way to Beat Bob Dole?" from May 5, 1996 noted that indirect approach — "coded partisan formulations" — but also the direct attacks:

[T]he old-guy bashing of Mr. Dole in political cartoons and late-night comedy routines has reached an intensity that makes the jokes about Ronald Reagan in the 1980's seem like gentle kidding. Dole age jokes ("Dole is 96") are now as much a part of popular culture as gibes at Madonna's impending motherhood, and sometimes as mean-spirited.

"Bob Dole is calling himself an optimist," David Letterman said in a recent monologue. "I understand this because a lot of people would look at a glass as half empty. Bob Dole looks at the glass and says, 'What a great place to put my teeth.' "

"Liberals bully people who are Trump supporters!" — says Kanye West (in an interview with David Letterman).

The Daily Beast reports.

In the midst of a somewhat confusing argument about his “fear” as a man during the #MeToo movement, Kanye says, “This is like my thing with Trump—we don’t have to feel the same way, but we have the right to feel what we feel.” When he wears his “Make America Great Again” hat, he says it’s “not about politics” but rather an attempt to break the stigma around showing support for Trump....

“So if I see a person that I admire talking about Donald Trump can think whatever he does,” [Letterman] says, “I wonder if those thoughts, indirectly, aren’t hurting people who are already being hurt.”...

[Kanye] expresses sympathy for Trump voters who are “treated like enemies of America because that’s what they felt.”...

“Have you ever been beat up in your high school for wearing the wrong hat?” [says Kanye]. Asked who is doing the bulk of the bullying in America right now, he replies, “Liberals bully people who are Trump supporters!”

I found that story because I could see something people were googling today was sending traffic to an old post of mine ("We can infer that Kanye West, Russell Simmons, and Sean Combs declined to talk to the NYT about Donald Trump" (August 2017)).

ADDED: Speaking of old articles about Trump and rappers, I'm reading the July 2015 New Yorker article "Donald Trump Is a Rapper" (by Jelani Cobb):

Donald Trump was gifted with a surname that already sounds like a rapper’s nom de microphone.... Trump’s combativeness and overt egomania... is precisely the behavior we expect—nay, demand—from hip-hop artists....

Hip-hop has been a leading force in what might be called the un-ironic American self-homage.... [Trump's] enduring presence as a figure of public interest is directly tied to the way he offers an aspirational identity that appeals, in particular, to working-class men....

None of this will get him elected.... [M]ostly Trump is simply played out. Preening egotism has a limited shelf life, even for rappers. This is his fraction of a moment of possibility in a campaign that, like a new single buoyed by hype and shock value, grabs the public when it’s released, then falls completely off the charts.

"But David Letterman remains the man with the best timing on earth. I think they actually just did a tribute to him the other night!!"

Writes MayBee in the comments to the first post of the day, "Sexual harassment claim filed Monday night, and Wednesday morning, Matt Lauer is fired from his longtime job as co-anchor of the 'Today' show."

She's right about the tribute. Here's the announcement from the (aptly named!) Kennedy Center:

On Sunday, October 22, 2017, an outstanding lineup of entertainers gathered in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall to salute David Letterman, recipient of the 20th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. The Prize, which is named to honor one of the world's greatest humorists, was given at a gala performance featuring some of the biggest names in comedy, and taped for broadcast nationwide.

Here, you can watch the whole effusive extravaganza. It was on PBS. I haven't watched it, so I don't know if there were any allusions or outright smirking about the outrageous sexual harassment story Letterman weathered in 2009, but it's all about timing in comedy, so it was very funny to see "Al Franken cut from PBS broadcast of David Letterman tribute."

Here's a Vanity Fair article from 2009, "Letterman and Me/One of the few women ever to write for Late Night with David Letterman, the author (a longtime V.F. contributor) remembers a hostile, sexually charged atmosphere. What’s to be done? Start by breaking late night’s all-male gag order," by Nell Scovell:

... Late Night was my dream job.... Without naming names or digging up decades-old dirt, let’s address the pertinent questions. Did Dave hit on me? No. Did he pay me enough extra attention that it was noted by another writer? Yes. Was I aware of rumors that Dave was having sexual relationships with female staffers? Yes. Was I aware that other high-level male employees were having sexual relationships with female staffers? Yes. Did these female staffers have access to information and wield power disproportionate to their job titles? Yes. Did that create a hostile work environment? Yes. Did I believe these female staffers were benefiting professionally from their personal relationships? Yes. Did that make me feel demeaned? Completely. Did I say anything at the time? Sadly, no.

Here’s what I did: I walked away from my dream job.... On my last day at Late Night, Dave summoned me to his office and pressed me on why I was quitting the show. I considered telling him the truth, but with Dave’s rumored mistress within earshot, I balked. Instead, I told him I missed L.A. Dave said, “You’re welcome back anytime.”

ADDED: Here's how I handled the story at the time, in 2009, "Is it really so terrible that David Letterman has a bachelor pad in the building where he tapes his show?"

"I have nothing to do. I wish I had more to do."

Trump on Letterman in 1986:



(I zeroed in on the Trump part. Back up to the beginning for more context, but it's just Letterman picking a random couple to go with on a sightseeing tour of NYC.)

(Keep going after the selected part. Trump is also a regular sit-down guest on the show.)

"It was like a chinook coming out of the Pacific Northwest. It had an anger to it and it appealed to twenty-something people who felt displaced and unemployed and left out."

Said David Letterman — speaking at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony — about the 1991 Pearl Jam album "Ten." He continues:

I was almost 50 and even I was pissed off.... Then, it turned out that these guys in Pearl Jam were something more than a band. They're true living cultural organisms. They would recognize injustice and they would stand up for it....

In 1994, these young men risked their careers by going after those beady-eyed, blood-thirsty weasels. I'm just enjoying saying that. And because they did, because they stood up to the corporations I'm happy to say, ladies and gentleman, today every concert ticket in the United States of America is free....

I used to have a television show, they were on my show 10 different times over the years. Every time they were there, they would blow the roof off the place and I'm not talking figuratively. They actually blew the roof off the place. For two years I did a show without a roof over the goddamn theater....

I love that joke format: Use a metaphor and then act like it's not a metaphor. Can't think of any other examples at the moment. Maybe you can.

"And then when you get out of it you realize, oh, well, that... was just silliness."

"And when that occurred to me, I felt so much better and I realized, geez, I don’t think I care that much about television anymore."

Said David Letterman, who's been doing some introspection and come to see that it just wasn't true that the show was so important.

He looks completely different now too, with shiny baldness balancing his beard.

I could retire. What would I realize? The danger is you'd realize you preferred working.

"I thought I would have some trouble, some emotional trouble, or some feeling of displacement, but I realized, hey, that’s not my problem anymore. And I have felt much better. It’s something for younger men and women to take on."

If you knew that's what you were going to realize, you'd go ahead and retire. But it you end up realizing you'd prefer working, it's too late to go back. And yet it's a delusion to think you're maintaining your options by continuing to work, because every day that passes is a day gone forever, not saved for future use. You either worked or did not work on that day.

"And everybody hates it. My wife hates it. My son hates it. But it's interesting."

"But it's interesting. I've kind of developed a real creepy look with it that I'm sort of enjoying. And I can tell that people are off-put by it. And the more people implore me to shave, the stronger my resolve is to not shave."

"Notice how Letterman started out: 'If we are going to continue to do shows . . .' That seems like a silly thing to say now."

"But back then, he was invoking a serious concern: it didn't seem to make sense for anyone to do a comedy show anymore."

Everything seemed to have turned completely serious all of a sudden, and it was hard to imagine ever getting out of it. That's probably how people often feel in response to the death of a loved one — but that happens privately, not to the whole country at once.

It's interesting to compare how Letterman and Stewart dealt with the situation. In many ways, they were similar: they both highlighted inspiring Americans and lambasted the terrorists' way of life. But their emotional quality was different. Letterman was clearly rattled, but he also had a steadily controlled determination. Jon Stewart seemed absolutely raw and barely able to get through a sentence....

"Is David Letterman a nihilist? Or just Midwestern?/Why Rubio wouldn’t have a lock on the Hispanic vote..."

"Will Bill drag Hill down?/Bob: We’ve played right into ISIS’s recruiting narrative/Did Obama bungle Iraq and Syria?Ann and Bob debate the merits of Twitter."

That's the official listing of the topics — not exactly how I would put it — in this diavlog I did with Bob Wright yesterday.



That's the whole hour. I'm about to watch it, and I'll try to find some good, short snippets to entertain the video-averse among you. It's actually one of the topics in there: How people don't really want to watch video of any length!

ADDED: The argument that Rubio isn't the right kind of Hispanic:

"But, somewhere around the turn of the century, I lost interest. The show became less and less surreal."

"Real celebrities started showing up, and I winced as Dave would suck up to them. Suddenly, everyone had a perfectly polished, self-deprecating anecdote — invariably meant to prove the utter fiction that Celebrities Are Just Like Us — that sounded suspiciously crafted by a team of writers. Suddenly, each episode had as many as three celebrities, with Letterman being unctuous and insufferable and fake-laughing his way through every minute. At times Dave would turn depressingly earnest, particularly when he thought he had a Deep Political Point to make.... His comedy started to sound like everybody else’s, with the same potshots at the same easy targets. His act sounded less like dada, more like Dad. Letterman was the barking dog who caught the car, was invited in, and curled up delightedly on the seat...."

From "Letterman’s departure is 15 years too late," by Kyle Smith.

I feel much the same way, and yet, we all get old. Dave was getting old and we were getting old. We could stick with him and grow old with him, get comfy on the car seat, or we could stop watching. Me, I stopped watching. But that doesn't mean Dave should have stopped at the point where he was no longer the Dave that meant so much to me. It was okay for him to make a long soft landing into old age, to become Dad. Nothing really that wrong with Dad. The culture needs its Dad too. I mean, I might not want to watch Dad nod at celebrities for an hour every night. But it's okay that he's there.

Did Letterman dilute his legacy by sticking around so long? It's not exactly dada and surreal to analyze things in those terms.

For Dave and for Bob, it's "The Late Show," and the hour is getting late.

A sincere delivery of "The Night We Called It a Day," and a nice intro by Dave.

I doubt if much of the audience understood what Bob Dylan was trying to do here. Letterman's intro included the statement that Bob is the greatest songwriter, but the song performed was written by someone else — from Bob's new album of cover songs, Frank-Sinatra-related cover songs. Bob looked a tad tormented, and I wondered if he might be thinking that people wouldn't understand why he was doing this and I retreated to the position that the mind of Bob Dylan is simply an unknowable phantasmagoria. When Dave came over to thank Bob, after the song was over, Bob accepted the handshake and then wandered off as if... well, I really don't know. Like there was too much confusion and he was looking for some way out of here.

For Dave and for Bob, it's "The Late Show," and the hour is getting late.