Big Lies and Fact-Checkers

The usual hot political takes, cartoons and film previews, plus a new HD clip from The Band, early Lucinda Williams, and Neil Young updates "Ohio" on Kent State anniversary.

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News & Politics

The Onion: “Private Equity Firm Heartbroken After Realizing No AOL Employees Left To Fire.”

Jimmy Kimmel: “According to a new ABC News poll, Americans are more hopeful about the future than they have been in 15 years. Of course, the poll was conducted before we found out Elon Musk is hosting Saturday Night Live so we’ll see if it holds up.”

Andy Borowitz claims: “Thousands of Presidential Fact Checkers Laid Off in Biden’s First Hundred Days.”

John Oliver on Tucker Carlson: "It is genuinely weird to see someone hosting a show on a supposed news network and ending every sentence with a question mark—especially when answers to most of those questions are out there for anyone who cares to know..."

When Gates swung open: From longtime journo/author Megan Stack today, “Sometimes there’s that one small detail about a famous person that sticks with you for years and for me it’s been that Bill Gates negotiated into his marriage the right to take an annual beach house weekend with his ex-girlfriend.”

Liar, poke her: Liz Cheney, who might be about to lose her GOP leadership position, tweeted yesterday, “The 2020 presidential election was not stolen. Anyone who claims it was is spreading THE BIG LIE, turning their back on the rule of law, and poisoning our democratic system.” (Trump had just declared, “The Fraudulent Presidential Election of 2020 will be, from this day forth, known as THE BIG LIE!”) Now she just needs to admit her dad's BIG LIE which led to invasion of Iraq and hundreds of thousands (mainly civilians) dead.

And now the Wash Post on the BIG LIE: “Nearly six months after Trump lost to Biden, rejection of the 2020 election results has increasingly become an unofficial litmus test for acceptance in the Republican Party. In January, 147 GOP lawmakers — eight senators and 139 House members — voted in support of objections to the election results, and since then, Republicans from Congress to statehouses to local party organizations have fervently embraced the falsehood….Local officials, too, are facing censure and threats — in states from Iowa to Michigan to Missouri — for publicly accepting the election results.”

Charlie Pierce at Esquire comments on the above:

It appears that the cult driving modern conservatism—and the Republican Party, which is its outward manifestation—has finally developed its infallible litmus test for its initiates. The cult is still based on monomaniacal loyalty to a vulgar talking yam, but now it has an article of faith through which that loyalty can be demonstrated.

These are the people who become, say, school board members, who later become state legislators, who later get elected to Congress or, at the very least, they pick the people who do. And right now, in many places, accepting the verified results of the last presidential election means you don’t get invited to the county committee’s monthly bean supper—or to the next Inaugural Ball, for all that. Which means that the ultimate test of your partisan loyalty is the depth of your allegiance to a fantasy….

It’s really time for the elite political media to accept this as a given. There is no question worthy of being asked of Republican politicians except “Do you accept the results of the 2020 election?” It is the issue that touches all the others. We allow ourselves only two political parties and, if one of them is permanently delusional, the whole system goes out of balance.

Facebook nears Trump ban decision: The Oversight Board will announce its decision on the case concerning former US President Trump on its website on May 5, 2021 at approximately 9:00 a.m. EDT.

From Steve Brodner at his Substack:

Do You Live in a Political Bubble? Enter your address and see the political affiliation of 1000 people living closest to you.

Apple turnover? Politico calls it The Epic court battle that could upend Apple’s future: “Apple is about to face off in court against the biggest threat to its $2 trillion tech empire — not the governments of the U.S. or Europe, but a video game company based in the town of Cary, N.C. Epic Games, the maker of the popular video game Fortnite, has captured the attention of regulators in Washington and Brussels with an antitrust lawsuit that could upend how the iPhone-maker does business. The federal civil trial starting Monday in Oakland focuses on Apple’s control over its App Store — the only way app developers can reach the world’s 1.5 billion iPhone or iPad users.”

Columbus Dispatch: “On the same day a distracted driving bill was introduced, state Sen. Andrew Brenner participated in a government video meeting—while driving.”

The next generation of COVID vaccines "could come as a pill or a nasal spray and be easier to store and transport," the Wall Street Journal reports.

Music

Sullivan travels: “With the entire catalogue of The Ed Sullivan Show recently added to streaming platforms, fans can watch performances that were previously only available as low-resolution bootlegs. Rolling Stone reports: The series’ YouTube channel has clips that include Ike & Tina Turner, Elvis Presley, the Beatles—and below, The Band, from November 2, 1969, a full clip of “Up On Cripple Creek” (until now, it was only available as a 30-second preview). I saw them do this live in Buffalo the same week….

Shocker from Lucinda Williams: She had a stroke last November. Now, at age 68, walks with cane and can’t play guitar. “I feel good and positive about playing again. We’ve got some shows scheduled with Jason Isbell for late July and we’re planning on doing those,” Williams says. “I don’t know if I’ll stand up and sing or I’ll sit down like an old blues person. But we’ll figure it out.” Claims she is still “singing my ass off.” Here in 1989 the first song I ever heard from her:

Film/Tv

I previewed Alex Gibney’s HBO two-parter on the Opioid crisis, starting next Monday, some time ago but now here’s a Variety rave. (Alex is also a chief adviser on my new Atomic Cover-up doc.) “Gibney is our most avid and deep-drilling documentary muckraker, and his message is that the opioid crisis didn’t just happen. It was orchestrated.” Among much else: “The movie shows us how Rudy Giuliani, once he left office, became a pitchman/hatchet man for Purdue, using his prestige as ‘America’s Mayor’ to lend the company credibility.”

Song Pick of the Day

We mark the 51nd anniversary of Kent State massacre—yes, I helped shut down my college in 1970—but is there any fresh way to present CSNY’s “Ohio”? Maybe this: from 2018, Neil Young with Promise of the Real.

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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. His new film, Atomic Cover-up, just had its world premiere and is drawing extraordinary acclaim. 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.Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.