Still free to subscribe to this nearly daily newsletter! Greg Mitchell is author of fourteen books and director of five films for PBS since 2022. His latest film “Woody Guthrie and The Ghost of Tom Joad Today” is now streaming via PBS.
This is an Andy Borowitz jokey but feels all too real:
WASHINGTON—Donald J. Trump lashed out at critics of his aide Natalie Harp after she shared screenshots of the nuclear codes on her Instagram account on Tuesday.
Harp alarmed national security experts when they saw her Instagram post, which featured a clearly legible image of the nuclear codes adorned with heart and smiley-face emojis. “Despite what the fake news says, Natalie is doing an amazing job,” Trump said. “That one post got millions of likes, from places like Russia, China, and Iran.”
Variety:
Mark Ruffalo is being defended by more than 170 Jewish entertainment figures in a new open letter rejecting Paramount’s claim that Ruffalo fueled “antisemitic tropes”: “The time is over for spurious charges of antisemitism to be trotted out, this time in the defense of war, oligarchy, and AI domination. That tired playbook has run its course. We stand proudly with Mark Ruffalo, and with all decent people who are bravely rising and speaking truth to power.” Supporters include Hannah Einbinder, Joel Coen, Todd Haynes, Ilana Glazer, Tony Kushner, Emma Seligman, Jane Schoenbrun and Wallace Shawn.
Some things never change:
Gary Glitter, the British glam rock singer whose music is still regularly played at U.S. sports events, pleaded not guilty at a London court on Wednesday to four counts of indecently assaulting a girl more than four decades ago.
Rebecca Solnit:
Do people still say a car was “sold for parts”? Because the US is being sold for parts or just handed over to the oligarchy. It’s a fire sale, a bankruptcy auction, it’s a planned dismantling of everything from its military to its institutions of higher education to its scientific research to its public lands.
And while the threat to sell off part of Yosemite national park is about a quarter-mile parcel on the park’s edge, Yosemite is a crown jewel in the national park system and, arguably, the world’s first national park.
To let any bit of it be sold off for the benefit of a corporation’s planned development on the park’s western border would compromise the inviolability of national parks and sacrifice public good for the sake of private profit. This is of course the ongoing agenda of the Trump administration.
My film on socialist author Upton Sinclair's race for governor of California in 1934--when he swept the Dem primary leading one of the great mass movements--returns to PBS stations and streaming on Oct. 1. To defeat him, GOPers, business leaders and Hollywood invented most of the much-lamented techniques of the modern political campaign, and with the first attack ads on the screen courtesy of…Irving Thalberg. Watch Preview here.
Music Picks
There’s a new Jesse Welles protest tune, “Nerd Reich” that covers about….everything.
Since we started doing September songs yesterday, here’s Rosanne Cash with the song she did so movingly with her dad, “September When It Comes.”
From Tunes to Toons
Ann Telnaes:
Ohman:
Bramhall:
Brodner:
de Adder:
Luckovich on Georgia candidate:
Bennett:
Duginski:
Photo Finish
“Oyster Mushrooms Before Harvesting”
Cartoonists speak the truth when other media fail us. Jesse Wells is perfect for this time.
Great mushroom picture, although I could have mistaken it for tRUMP’s brain!