All We Are Saying is "Give Impeach a Chance"
All eyes on the Hill, but first check out our hot takes, plus tunes by the Stones and Talking Heads and a Billie Holiday tribute from new movie.
“Don and the Giant Impeach 2” (as Colbert puts it) launches today at 1 pm ET but we will avoid temptation to simply post Randy Newman’s “Guilty” right here—maybe later in the week. Meanwhile, not one but two cartoons from the great Mike Luckovich plus a real obscurity, the Talking “This Ain’t No Mudd Club” Heads in their early days playing live at….the Mudd Club! Plus: how famed photog Robert Frank went into “Exile” with Mick & Keith. Feel free to subscribe—it’s free!—or Comment or Share.
Politics & Media
Andy Borowitz forecasts first day of the impeachment trial with headline today at his New Yorker site: “Trump’s Lawyers Call for Dismissal of Trial on the Ground That They Will Never Collect Fees.” Full Seth Meyers take here.
The Daily Beast: Claudia Conway, troubled daughter of Kellyanne and George, to appear on new season of American Idol.
Final Super Bowl joke, from Jimmy Kimmel last night: “This was the first Super Bowl ever where I had to yell, ‘Be quiet — I’m trying to hear the poem!’”
On the heels of PBS re-airing it’s old Tulsa Massacre doc (which I previewed on the day it aired, this past Monday), comes word of a new film on the subject coming from Nat Geo, also to mark the sad 100th anniversary in June. Titled Red Summer, it’s from Dawn Porter, who last year gave us the excellent John Lewis: Good Trouble doc. More on this tomorrow.
Incredible and incredibly scary story broke last night:
Hackers remotely accessed the water treatment plant of a small Florida city last week and briefly changed the levels of lye in the drinking water, in the kind of critical infrastructure intrusion that cybersecurity experts have long warned about.
The attack in Oldsmar, a city of 15,000 people in the Tampa Bay area, was caught before it could inflict harm, Sheriff Bob Gualtieri of Pinellas County said at a news conference on Monday. He said the level of sodium hydroxide — the main ingredient in drain cleaner — was changed from 100 parts per million to 11,100 parts per million, dangerous levels that could have badly sickened residents if it had reached their homes.
“This is dangerous stuff,” Mr. Gualtieri said, urging managers of critical infrastructure systems, particularly in the Tampa area, to review and tighten their computer systems. “It’s a bad act. It’s a bad actor. It’s not just a little chlorine, or a little fluoride — you’re basically talking about lye.”
Across the nation, water plant operators, plus those at dams and oil and gas pipelines, have accelerated the transformation to digital systems that allow engineers and contractors to monitor temperature, pressure and chemical levels from remote work stations. But experts have warned that the same remote access can be exploited by hackers looking to exact harm.
Even apart from the little matter known as an impeachment trial, there have already been these major developments this week for Hill dwellers:
—After threatening to appeal the latest judge’s ruling, Rep. Anthony Brindisi of upstate NY yesterday finally conceded the last remaining undecided 2020 race. This was due to some of the worst local election flubs in recent history (we’re looking at you, Oneida County). It means his right-wing GOP candidate, Claudia Tenney will now be seated, further reducing the Dems’ miniscule margin in the House. Remember that the next time you are demanding—demanding!— that Pelosi surely can and must do something or other.
—John Fetterman, Pennsylvania’s massive and refreshing lieutenant governor, announced on Monday that he is running in 2022 for the Senate seat of retiring Republican Pat Toomey. Money is already rolling in from around the USA. One of his statements yesterday: “If you sincerely believe healthcare is a privilege, I’m sincerely begging you to vote for the other candidate.”
—Richard Shelby, horrid GOP senator from Alabama for what seems like forever—and bearer of more pork than Oscar Meyer— announced yesterday that he won’t run for re-election. Democrats have almost no chance for a pickup especially since it’s a midterm election which usually favors the party not in control of the White House. Or maybe we can get Jason Isbell to run.
—GOP congressman Ron Wright of Texas has died after battling Covid (he also suffered from cancer). This Freedom Caucus man was often pictured not wearing a mask and/or hanging out with the mask-challenged. May have been infected during the January 6 lockdown on the Hill, but that is not certain.
Okay, prose stylists, you’ve been waiting half your life for this: “The Case for Semi-Colons.” Virginia Woolf could not have said it better; no downside.
Another from Andy Borowitz: “Lou Dobbs has selected Rudy Giuliani to be the first guest of his new media venture, Lou Dobbs Total Landscaping. Dobbs said that his new show will offer ‘more freedom’ than his Fox Business show did, because there will be no cameras recording it.” By the way, OAN now courting Lou.
Albert Brooks on his old flick: “Taxi Driver came out 45 years ago today. And we still don't have an answer to ‘Are you talking to me?’"
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists asks today in a head: “Why Is America Getting A New $100 Billion Nuclear Weapon”:
America is building a new weapon of mass destruction, a nuclear missile the length of a bowling lane. It will be able to travel some 6,000 miles, carrying a warhead more than 20 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It will be able to kill hundreds of thousands of people in a single shot.
The US Air Force plans to order more than 600 of them.
Music
Mary Wilson, co-founder of a little group called The Supremes, has died at 76. My favorite Supremes song was their last release, and final #1, “Someday We’ll Be Together”—which was even used by some black activists, including Fred Hampton, as a we-must-come-together rallying anthem. In the video below you will see Mary and Cindy with Diana—but, I now learn, they did not sing on the record! It was meant to be Diana’s first single with other background vocalists (including Johnny Bristol, the co-writer) but Berry Gordy changed his mind at the last moment and released it as a Supremes farewell. Enjoy anyway…
Jim Weatherly, who wrote the Gladys Knight hit “Midnight Train to Georgia,” has also passed away. Fun fact: That song was originally titled “Midnight Plane to Houston” and it was inspired by a Farrah Fawcett flight to Houston.
As I continue to read The Magic Years, the upcoming memoir by Jonathan Taplin— former tour manager for Dylan and The Band, movie producer for Scorcese, and more—I keep finding episodes I want to at least mention in passing before pub date (early May). I’ve already done that twice. Now I’ve come to the incredible story of how he got Mick interested in letting the great retired ‘50s photog Robert Frank do the now-classic cover for Exile on Main Street. Next thing you know, Frank was hanging out with the boys in L.A. and then filming their next tour for his soon-banned Cocksucker Blues. Yeah, too much shooting up and groupie sex in that flick, but I recall seeing it later in the ‘70s in a kind of underground screening at the New School in NYC. You can find it complete in various forms at YouTube but for now, above, here’s some of Frank’s footage along with the band’s “Rocks Off” (Nicky Hopkins tinkling the ivories, I presume).
Film / TV
I’ve previewed the upcoming movie drama The United States vs. Billie Holiday but now it has gained a Golden Globe nod for this original song, with newcomer Andra Day singing. Good tune and video above.
Smithsonian Channel on February 22 to air doc Reclaiming History on Our Native Daughters “banjo supergroup,” which features Rhiannon Giddens, Amythyst Kiah, Leyla McCalla, and Allison Russell.
Jean-Claude Carrière has died at the age of 89. His list of writing credits is almost absurd: Belle de Jour, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Tin Drum, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, The Return of Martin Guerre, Diary of a Chambermaid, Danton, and etc. right down to the recent Julian Schnabel At Eternity’s Gate.
Have naturally had zero interest in Britney Spears since she emerged but the new Hulu/FX/NYT doc that launched Friday might be worth a look. It “is about Spears’ gradual loss of control over her narrative. Since 2008, the pop icon’s life decisions and finances have been under a conservatorship mostly controlled by her father, Jamie Spears. Over the years, Free Britney advocates have called for ending the conservatorship and allowing the singer to regain control over decisions about her own life. The documentary explains the conservatorship but then shifts its focus backward, tracing how Spears got to this point ― and in the process, how sexism and misogyny figured heavily in the media coverage of her.”
The Onion responds to the above with this brilliant head: Media Claims Britney Spears Well Enough To Be Released Back Into Their Sole Custody.
Books
There’s a new Stan Lee biography, reviewed here. Yet another hit on Lee here. He was, maybe, not so Marvelous.
Song Pick of the Day
No party, no disco, but very early Talking Heads version below and note the venue—even though David had proclaimed “This ain’t no Mudd Club.” This is just three years after I helped them pick their first publicity photo, but that’s another story….
Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books, including the bestseller The Tunnels (on escapes under the Berlin Wall), the current The Beginning or the End (on MGM’s wild atomic bomb movie), and The Campaign of the Century (on Upton Sinclair’s left-wing race for governor of California), which was recently picked by the Wall St. Journal as one of five greatest books ever about an election. For nearly all of the 1970s he was the #2 editor at the legendary Crawdaddy. Later he served as longtime editor of Editor & Publisher magazine. He recently co-produced a film about Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and now has written and directed his first feature, Atomic Cover-up, which will have its American premiere at a festival this spring.