Cartoons Christmas! And Dylan Gets the Willie

Plus: Trump mocks Colbert, Good Night and Bad Luck for '60 Minutes," Chris Nolan's "Odyssey."

Greg Mitchell has authored more than a dozen books (see most of them here) and directed four recent PBS films, including the current “The Atomic Bowl.” Subscribing to this newsletter is still FREE—so if you want to help fund, maybe purchase one of those books, thanks. Or recommend this Substack to a friend!

Merry Christmas posting from the President, and it’s still early! Don’t expect any “good will to men.”

And from Stephen Miller:

Stephen Miller Cites Children of Immigrants as a Problem

Meanwhile, “60 Minutes” scandal still ripening

Luckovich:

Goris:

Ross Barkan, New York magazine:

Weiss has demonstrated, repeatedly, that her professed commitment to free speech and heterodox thought is mostly nonexistent once money, power, or her own political obsessions become part of the equation…Weiss is now in a very lonely place: operating a major news outlet that is attempting to placate a president few Americans, beyond hard-core Republicans, now like. Maybe she knows how to make CBS great again. More likely, though, is that she’s finally found a challenge she can’t really meet. She’s out of ideas.hman

Ohman:

Blitt:

Former Republican Steve Schmidt:

Bari Weiss is a cynical, corrupt and deeply unserious character who is partisan, frivolous and incompetent. There hasn’t been a ship’s captain with more water over their head since John Smith on the morning of April 15, 1912.

On the other hand, The New Yorker with major profile of Willie Nelson this week. Bob Dylan sings his praises:

How can you make sense of him? How would you define the indefinable or the unfathomable? What is there to say? Ancient Viking Soul? Master Builder of the Impossible? Patron poet of people who never quite fit in and don’t much care to? Moonshine Philosopher? Tumbleweed singer with a PhD? Red Bandana troubadour, braids like twin ropes lassoing eternity? What do you say about a guy who plays an old, battered guitar that he treats like it’s the last loyal dog in the universe?

Cowboy apparition, writes songs with holes that you can crawl through to escape from something. Voice like a warm porchlight left on for wanderers who kissed goodbye too soon or stayed too long. I guess you can say all that. But it really doesn’t tell you a lot or explain anything about Willie. Personally, speaking I’ve always known him to be kind, generous, tolerant and understanding of human feebleness, a benefactor, a father and a friend. He’s like the invisible air. He’s high and low. He’s in harmony with nature. And that’s what makes him Willie.

Willie’s cover of Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Paper” for Christmas:

Oh, first full trailer for Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” dropped yesterday:

Here’s an amazing but true Christmas offering: During that holiday season in 1945, an elite U.S. military team, which had been shooting film in Nagasaki off and on for a few weeks, documenting its atomic catastrophe, happened to be in the vicinity of the ruins of the Urakami Cathedral—the center of the largest Christian community in Asia, over which the plutonium bomb had exploded, dooming at least 10,000 Catholics to death. The director of the project, Lt. Daniel McGovern heard voices and arrived with his small crew to find survivors of the bombing singing “Silent Night” in the cathedral’s ruin, and managed to capture it, and it’s included in my current film streaming via PBS “The Atomic Bowl.” Here:

This, and other footage shot by McGovern and his team in the weeks before and after, would be hidden by the U.S. for decades, later the focus of my previous “Atomic Cover-up” book and film.

More Christmas songs:

I posted Woody’s own version of his “1913 Massacre” awhile back, but here’s Arlo’s take. The tragic deaths of over 70 (59 of them kids) in Calumet, Mich., after a murderous screaming of “Fire!”, happened on this day in, yes, 1913.

John Prine wishes you “All the Best,” here in live version.

From Tunes to Toons

Luckovich:

Anderson:

Photo Finish

Our kitty, Zoe, deals with Santa. Sorry, kids.