Cartoons Sunday!

Plus: Monty Python's World Cup, and Gene Autry does Woody.

Jun 21, 2026

Yes, it’s still free to subscribe to this nearly daily newsletter! Greg Mitchell is the author of fourteen books and director of five films for PBS since 2022. In a previous life, he was a longtime editor at the legendary Crawdaddy.

We are in L.A. preparing for premiere of my Woody Guthrie film so a limited newsletter today. Here’s Monty Python’s own version of the World Club featuring teams of …famous philosophers.

Trump’s latest excuse for his reflecting pool fiasco:

Although multiple cameras line the mall and no one has offered any proof either of additional arrests or of vandalism, and although we have all been able to see workers dumping chemicals into the pool to kill the algae, Trump claimed that vandals “took some form of a knife or blade, and put a 250 foot long gash into the beautiful facade of what took so much work, competence, and money to build and complete. They also poured corrosive and destructive chemicals into the Pool.”
“The Reflecting Pool was never so beautiful as it was just one week ago, even going back to 1922 when it opened,” he wrote. “We are very proud of what we have done with this magnificent structure, and we will get it repaired, quickly, to an equal level of Beauty.”
Until his second term in office, Trump has always been protected from the fallout from his own actions, and it appears he has become accustomed to simply describing his fantasy world and expecting that others will agree they see it. If his “fix” for the reflecting pool failed, someone else must be responsible, and they must pay for it.

Music Pick

Since our premiere is at the Autry Museum here in L.A. let us note that the fairly famous Woody Guthrie song “Oklahoma Hills” was co-written by his cousin Jack—and made them both a few bucks when released as a hit single by Gene Autry and performed in one of his films: