Motley Cruz

The snake on the plane returns to outrage and mockery. Plus: Smokey Robinson & Linda Ronstadt, Billie Holiday & Louis Armstrong, and a Texas tribute with everyone from Sheryl Crow to Jeff Bridges.

News/Politics

Trevor Noah: “I get that Ted Cruz is tired. The man deserves a break after trying so hard to overthrow the government, but this is not the time, Ted!”

Now, I believe it’s time to go back to focusing on Cruz’s incitement of a deadly insurrection. But first he deserves more of the following. The hashtags wrote themselves: “Flyin Ted.” “Fled Cruz.” “Teddy Bared.”

John Fugelsang: “Look folks, Ted Cruz was only crossing the border to give his kids a better life.” Peter Sagal: “After significant negative reaction on social media, the Perseverance Rover announced it had only gone to Mars to escort its daughters and will be returning on the next rocket.” Pam Mandel: Fly me to Cancun / And let me play among the stars / Let me order guac while people / Freeze inside their cars.

Trevor Noah again: “Seriously, Ted Cruz blaming his daughters for this is just gross. Being a good father means putting them on a bus, not throwing them under one.”

The United States officially rejoins the Paris climate agreement today.

CNN on Capitol crimes:

Six US Capitol Police officers have been suspended with pay, and 29 others have been placed under investigation, for their actions in the January 6 riot, a department spokesman said Thursday….One of the suspended officers took a selfie with someone who was part of the mob that overtook the Capitol, according to Rep. Tim Ryan, a Democrat from Ohio. Another wore a "Make America Great Again" hat and started directing people around the building, Ryan said.

Important note to the above by Charles P. Pierce on the various “enablers” of the insurrection now trying to cover up or in any case get off legal issues. “But the temptation to scapegoat the rank-and-file is going to be overwhelming for some of Ryan’s more militia-curious colleagues in the Congress. More than just a cop’s permission sent those lunatics into the Capitol. Something beyond that showed them the way to go.”

George Takei: “Today is the Day of Remembrance. On this day in 1942, FDR signed Executive Order 9066, which led to the incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast. We lost our jobs, our homes, and our freedom. We #NeverForget today, so that it can #NeverAgain happen.”

As Reagan might put it: “Mr. Biden, sir…tear down this wall.” Yes, Biden has halted building more border wall—but activists and local residents say that’s not enough, in this Mother Jones article.

Coke addict: A new report from Washingtonian details all of the painstaking steps that employees of former President Donald Trump's hotel had to take just to correctly pour him a Diet Coke.

Young PA state rep Malcolm Kenyatta last night announced he would run for the open Senate seat there in 2022. Of course, Big John Fetterman is already in the race. Kenyatta said on MSNBC that he had already secured endorsements from the American Federation of Teachers and the Working Families Party. He is openly gay and if elected would be the youngest Senator (he is now 30).

On this day in 1947, the first movie drama about the atomic bomb, from MGM, premiered in Washington, D.C.—after its original criticism of the Hiroshima decision and decision to launch a nuclear arms race was scrubbed after intervention by President Truman and the Pentagon. My acclaimed 2020 book has the same title as the movie: The Beginning or the End.

More like Dumb Quixote:

Just up from Pro Publica: “This is a story about a white police officer who decided NOT to shoot a black man, and instead attempted to de-escalate. Then another officer arrived & fatally shot the man. The police department fired one of these officers.” The city: Weirton, West Virginia, which I know well, as my wife is from the area—and part of my first book was set there—featuring the local sheriff who risked his life going undercover.

Music

Smokey Robinson, one of the great songwriters and singers of our era, was born on this day in 1940. Below: Live version of song that young ‘uns today might think is titled “I Second That Emoji.” After that a priceless duet with Linda Ronstadt on another Smokey-penned tune.

Also on this day, in 1964, little-known folksinger Paul Simon finished tinkering with a little ditty titled “Sounds of Silence,” according to his singing partner, Arthur Garfunkel. A month later they went into the studio for Columbia but the track, in keeping with their posture, was entirely acoustic, and it soon appeared on their brutally ignored Columbia album Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. Then something happened: Dylan went electric and the Byrds hit with their rocking version of “Mr. Tambourine Man.” So Tom Wilson—not coincidentally Bob Dylan’s producer—laid down an electric track for the S&G track, using some of the musicians who played on “Like a Rolling Stone,” and also added echo (to suggest being down in the subway?). Columbia released it in September 1965 without the suddenly dynamic duo even knowing, and it became a #1 hit. I was a huge fan and subsequently also bought the bare-bonedWednesday Morning lp. Here’s link to that untainted original.

A Richie Furay film coming up so they’ve released this clip with him doing a Poco medley not long ago.

Film/TV

Happy Nomadland Day. Finally the acclaimed movie is up at Hulu.

Coming tomorrow night: A C-SPAN special program focusing on my award-winning book, The Campaign of the Century, on Upton Sinclair’s wild and wildly influential left-wing race for governor of California—and the newsreels created by Irving Thalberg to torpedo him. As many know, that is a key plot element in the current David Fincher drama, Mank, and now you can hear more about it and view excerpts from those newsreels, which I’ve called “the first attack ads on the screen.” It airs at 10 p.m. ET Saturday and 4 p.m. on Sunday, and several times thereafter. Here’s my recent NY Times piece related to the campaign and Mank.

In just the five weeks of this newsletter’s existence I have already written about the recent doc about Billie Holiday (a lot on her drug problems) and previewed the upcoming Hulu movie drama (as she’s haunted by the FBI) starring newcomer Andra Day. Today the NY Times does much the same, while also going back to the distant Diana Ross portrait in Lady Sings the Blues and the more recent one by Audra McDonald. “Over the years, portrayals of Holiday have become more nuanced, shifting focus away from her problems with addiction to include insights into her history and legacy as a musician, a pioneering Black female entertainer and, with ‘Strange Fruit,’ a champion of civil rights.” Here, the original, with some trumpet cat named Armstrong, her most important vocal influence.

Starts streaming today: Truth to Power is a documentary portrait of Serj Tankian, the Armenian-American lead singer of the heavy metal band System of a Down, and an outspoken human rights activist…..

Also today: The new series on HBO Max by Russell T Davies (who did Queer as Folk), this one It’s a Sin, on unnaware young men in London at beginning of AIDS epidemic, “propulsive, galvanizing, even joyous. This is a stirring requiem for the dead, shot through with defiant life.”

Books

For her 90th birthday, a guide to the essential works of the late Toni Morrison.

Song Pick of the Day

Has to be a tribute to hard-hit Texas with a special Austin City Limits performance of Lubbock’s own Buddy Holly and “Not Fade Away” with Bonnie Raitt, Joe Ely, Jeff Bridges, Sheryl Crow, Robert Earl Keen, Brittany Howard, Jimmie Vaughan, more.

Greg Mitchell 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 and now has written and directed his first feature, Atomic Cover-up, which will have its American premiere at a festival this spring.