Greg Mitchell has authored 14 books and directed four PBS films since 2022. His latest, “The Atomic Bowl: Football at Ground Zero—and Nuclear Peril Today” has been airing over PBS stations and now streaming for free (key links to watch now and more here). A companion book is available, and you can read more or order here.. And subscribing to this newsletter is still somehow FREE.
Don’t miss important and terrific John Oliver segment last night on Bari Weiss and her takeover of CBS News.
Happy holiday, or is it? With Trump’s latest proclamation hailing Columbus as the greatest Christian American hero ever who brought to this new world only riches after landing in the Bahamas, historian Heather Cox Richardson reminds us today:
When Columbus and his sailors “discovered” the “New World,” they brought with them both ideologies and germs that would decimate the peoples living there. Estimates of the number of Native people living in North America and South America in 1490 vary widely, but there were at least as many as 50 million, and possibly as many as 100 million. In the next 200 years, displacement, enslavement, war, and especially disease would kill about 90% of those native peoples. Most historians see the destruction of America’s Indigenous peoples as the brutal triumph of European white men over those they perceived to be inferior.
Amy Poehler’s Pam Bondi on SNL the other night was pretty good but the script fairly weak, but Tiny Fey as Kristi Noem kind of saved the day:
With all the tribures already out there for a couple of days, no further words needed here about Diane Keaton\but I will add one small personal thing, that she was one the seven celeb inviters for our 10th anniversary party for Crawdaddy in 1976, and showed up at the Public Theater in NYC to help us celebrate (and listen to Bruce play live).
Earlier that year, our writer, Diane Giddis, asked Keaton about filming The Godfather: “It’s a picture about men,” she replied, “and you’re a woman in it, and not only are you a woman, you’re an outcast woman—a WASP—and you don’t fit in.”
After nearly three decades, the MSNBC network is divorcing from NBCUniversal, being spun off into a new company called Versant. As part of the separation, MSNBC must shed its NBC names and rebrand entirely. In just a few weeks, it will be known as MS NOW, now short for (they tell us) “My Source for News, Opinion, and the World.”
Another from the great new Jeff Tweedy triple-album, live earlier this month, with one of his sons wailing a chorus. It opens with Jeff forced to attend his future (and still) wife’s prom but “Forever Never Ends.”
And another one of those Playing for Change videos from around the globe, this one playing and singing maybe the greatest blues song ever, Robert Johnson’s “Crossroads.” No devil in sight though.
From Tunes to Toons
Ann Telnaes:
Photo Finish
Continuing new feature, from my camera, let me know what ya think. For Columbus Day: Cemetery at Taos Pueblo with remains of church blasted by U.S. military back in mid-1850s.
Just read Susan below and I beg to differ. "They thought they were doing a good thing?" Holy Shit. That doesn't excuse it in any way and of course we should condemn the past and condemn the hell out of it every day. That doesn't mean we can't learn from it, it actually reminds us to do so. So Trump and Miller and the rest of them think they are "doing the right thing?" If I wasn't handicapped, I would be at the march on the 18th, like I marched against the Viet Nam war in 1968 when I was 17. I hope that since you live in DC that you will march for me, I'll be there in spirit. I thank you in advance.
Forgive the contrarian view: but I really think we have to look at these events in context, not from our current sensibilities. The conquistadors were brutal, yes, and at the time serving the crown and god. They thought they were doing a good thing, and frankly treated their own countrymen with not much more compassion. (cf the Spanish Inquisition). They wanted rare materials not unlike the imperialists of the past 250 years. Or today. Condemning the past serves no purpose. Learning from it is what may make for better humans and civilizations. Genocide, slavery, oppression and exploitation are horrible and heartbreaking no matter who does it. Humans are cruel and xenophobic. Knowledge and understanding of the past will help us to do/be better (hopefully) in the future.