Monday Morning Sure Looks Fine

Tucker Carlson for President? John Oliver says: No. Plus music from John Prine, Ray Charles, Richard & Linda Thompson and Lightnin' Hopkins.

My college team is a Cinderella in the NCAA b-ball brackets, so let’s take that as a good omen for the rest of this month… Plus here’s the link for Saturday’s Joni Mitchell profile here with 15 songs/videos. Onward…and maybe consider subscribing, it’s still free!

News & Politics

Today’s laff, which could be from The Onion but actually hails from London’s Daily Mail, claims that Meghan Markle is now “networking among senior Democrats with a view to building a campaign and fundraising teams for a tilt at the US Presidency.”

Now two Covid headlines actually from The Onion: “Senator Can’t Believe It’s Already Been a Year Since He Boosted His Stock Portfolio With Classified Covid Information.” “Biden Announces Americans Will Be Able To Do What They Did at Christmas by July 4.”

Minari just made history as first Asian-American produced, directed and cast film to be nominated for an Oscar as Best Picture. Very few surprises inh other nods. One of my “best films” of 2020, Collective, got nominations for both documentary and foreign film.

Lot of talk on Sunday shows about Tucker Carlson as a Trump heir apparent and 2024 candidate. Brian Stelter of CNN last night:

Is that a compliment or a condemnation? Depends on your POV. But the similarities between the two men are striking. Every weekday, Carlson throws bombs, makes online memes, offends millions of people, delights millions of others, taps into White male rage and resentment, stokes distrust of Big Tech and the media, coarsens the public discourse, never apologizes for anything and -- perhaps most importantly -- sets the GOP's agenda.

Sounds like a recently retired president, right? Carlson starts fires, stirs outrage, and stokes Fox's ratings, all with Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch's encouragement.

John Oliver then did a full segment on Tucker for his HBO show, claiming that he is a misogynist, a white supremacist and a troll. Included was a clip of one of Carlson’s first TV appearances claiming that there was too much talk about race. Then there was the time Carlson lost a bunch of advertisers after declaring that immigrants made our country “poorer and dirtier and more divided,” and then later whined that he was the victim of a smear campaign. Here’s the full Oliver segment last night:

Rep. Primila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the House Progressive Caucus, applauds Biden for a “bold and transformative and progressive” agenda while noting: “Where candidate Joe Biden started is different from where President Joe Biden started.” On the other hand, Politico’s “Playbook” newsletter warns this morning: “With a humanitarian crisis growing — read this CBS story for the latest — progressives are losing their patience over how long it’s taking Biden to undo Trump-era policies and implement a more humane system he campaigned on. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) told Playbook over the weekend she’ll lead a group Monday to press the administration to stop housing migrants in local prison and jail facilities where allegations of misconduct, abuse, rape and medical neglect remain rampant.”

The Senate will finally vote on Deb Haaland’s nomination as Interior secretary at 5:30 p.m.

NY Times exposes how law enforcement pretty much ignored the national Proud Boys threat until too late.

My old friend Margaret Sullivan at Wash Post: “Online harassment of female journalists is real, and it’s increasingly hard to endure.”

CNN on “Train Ridin’ Biden” still going home to Delaware a lot: “His home has been equipped with secure communications equipment and facilities.…He still has errands to run in town, like having his foot examined by his orthopedist.”

Georgia still on our minds, via NY Times:

In 2022, the Peach State’s race for governor is likely to include perhaps the Democratic Party’s leading champion of voting rights, Stacey Abrams, in a replay of the 2018 grudge match between her and Gov. Brian Kemp, the Republican incumbent. One of the two Democrats who won their races in January, Senator Raphael Warnock, will also have to turn around and defend his seat next year in a race that Republicans are already eyeing as they seek to reclaim the chamber. Several local and national Republicans — including Mr. Trump — have tried to recruit the former University of Georgia football legend Herschel Walker to run for the seat, which could lend another wrinkle to the state’s political story, as if it needed one.

Music

We reported as far back as January that ace Brit songwriter/guitarist Richard Thompson was coming out with a memoir this spring, Beeswing (title of one of his tunes), but now The Guardian has a full preview and interview. “RT,” as he is known, talks about the trouble (which led to tears) in getting down on paper for the first time the horror of the 1969 van crash that killed his girlfriend and the Fairport drummer, and its aftermath. He would leave the group within two years, form the heralded partnership with wife Linda for the next decade (see the stunning song above, “A Heart Needs a Home”) and then solo—after their acrimonious breakup—since about 1983. The book, sadly, leaves off in 1975, but he explains why. He lived in California for many years, now lives in Montclair, NJ, and is still a practicing Muslim.

The progression of Thompson’s swinging 60s adventures in Beeswing often feels Forrest Gump-like. Here he is…watching Yoko Ono’s performance art as John Lennon wanders around. He sneaks a look at Joni Mitchell’s lyrics notebook, walks in on Keith Richards overdubbing “Sympathy for the Devil,” and writes tenderly of Nick Drake. He recalls hearing tracks from Drake’s last album, Pink Moon, early on, and being disturbed by their pain; his subsequent death shook Thompson badly.

So did Sandy Denny’s in 1978, his old bandmate in Fairport Convention. Her gorgeous vocals lifted Thompson’s stunning early compositions, like Unhalfbricking’s opener Genesis Hall, and Meet on the Ledge, a song about the passing of time. Denny’s empathy and sensitivity in her own artistry meant she had a “missing layer of skin,” Thompson writes. Alcoholism and mental health issues unravelled her in the years before her death. He went to pay his respects to her at the morgue after she died. “I did not get the sense that she was at peace,” he notes.

Linda Thompson, one of my Facebook friends, read the Guardian piece and commented there: “Lovely article about Richard and his book today. He’s had a rich life, and a stunning career. I am especially gratified that after all this time, the press still says wonderful things about the songs and my singing and the playing on the work we did. What a tribute. That time was unique. Young love, big highs and lows, the best material, and the records are pretty bloody good, and done in five minutes or so.

“To make music that is loved and bought 50 years later is a surprise and a thrill. I do wish royalties still existed. Ha.”

Born on this day in 1912: Texas blues guitarist and singer Sam “Lightnin” Hopkins, a major influence on many singers and guitarists, including Jimi Hendrix. His distinctive fingerstyle technique often included playing, in effect, rhythm, lead, bass and percussion at the same time. R.E.M. recorded the song “Lightnin' Hopkins” for their 1987 album Document. He died in 1982 at the age of 69. It is said that he recorded as many as 800 songs in a long career. Note to Josh Charles, this one’s for you, made familiar to rock audiences by Van Morrison and Them back in the mid-1960s:

This week in 1955, Ray Charles landed a surprising #2 single on the rhythm & blues charts with the Atlantic single “I Got A Woman,” sometimes considered the first song to be labelled "soul”—called from the start a blend of gospel and R&B.

Film

Trailer for six-part HBO series on Q Anon starting this coming Sunday.

UPDATE: My first film, Atomic Cover-up, has been selected by the major Cinequest Film Festival for its U.S. premiere. The festival page for film now has the trailer and link for tickets at just $3.99 for viewing any time between March 20-30, so you can buy now even if not sure when you might watch, and thanks.

Books

New Yorker with an important look at “A Kansas Bookshop’s Fight with Amazon Is About More Than the Price of Books.” The owner of the Raven bookstore in Lawrence exposes all the ways that giant Amazon is hurting American downtowns.

Song Pick of the Day

Not that it got much attention, but John Prine did win two Grammys last night, in the “Roots” category, including for this, his final song.

Greg Mitchell’s film, Atomic Cover-up, will have its American premiere at the Cinequest Film festival March 20-30. Go here to read more, watch trailer, buy tix. He 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. 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.