Please Open: Important Note on This Newsletter

Perhaps less will be more. But for today, a few political takes and cartoons and music from Neil Young and Louis Armstrong.

Call it just a “summer break” but the content and six-days-a-week regularity of this newsletter will be changing starting this week. As I have noted often in the past, there’s just not enough sharing and RTing and commenting and subscribing—despite no fee—going on to justify the vast load of daily work I have put into this. That perspective may change down the line, but for now….Will be skipping days here and there and when it does appear it will be in a somewhat tighter edition (some humor, a few hot news and politics takes, cartoons, two or more songs). Possibly less will be more: that is, more of you will open the email and read and respond knowing there’s less to look through and it will arrive a little less often. But I will still offer the occasional Music Profile with a dozen or more songs/videos—tomorrow, Richard Thompson— or excerpt from my memoir, and other “in-depth” specials. Not going away. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, subscribe NOW to keep it coming almost every day.

New & Politics

A woman was killed and two people were injured in Minneapolis late Sunday after a man drove a car into a group of people who had gathered for a vigil against police brutality, the police said.

As Martha and the Vandellas sang, it’s a heatwave out West, and the all-time high for Vegas (117°F) may fall today, along with statewide records for Arizona (128°F) and Nevada (125°F).

From The Onion’s “Guide to Critical Race Theory.”

Q: Should critical race theory be taught in our schools?
A: Not unless we’re aiming for fewer white supremacists.

Q: Does critical race theory instill the belief that all white people are racist?
A: Academics are way too timid to pull off something like that.

Q: Why are conservatives attacking it so aggressively?
A: They have come to view Joe Biden as too nonthreatening of a target.

Q: Will incorporating critical race theory into education curriculums lead to a less racist society?
A: Probably not, but might as well mix it up a bit in history class.

Newsmax says it is "reviewing the matter" after its highest-rated host, Greg Kelly, posted racially charged tweets.

From The Daily Beast: “MyPillow Guy’s MAGA Rally Saturday Rouses ‘Stop the Steal’ Truthers With Corn Dogs and Hate for Fox News.”

New cases of Covid have suddenly stopped dropping in the USA. That’s because 1 in 3 still refuse to get vaxxed—and the new nasty Delta variant now represents 10% of cases. It is murder for the unvaxxed. Some expect a new surge across the largely unvaxxed South.

Column by NY Times’ Ben Smith on New Yorker star writers vs. unionizing there includes claim that editor David Remnick may have been illegally classifying full-time employees as contractors for decades to avoid paying them any benefits and—salaries of some employees '“remain under $60,000 after 20 years on the job.”

New China Syndrome? CNN: “The US government has spent the past week assessing a report of a leak at a Chinese nuclear power plant, after a French company that part owns and helps operate it warned of an ‘imminent radiological threat,’ according to US officials and documents reviewed by CNN.”

Sen. Ron Johnson, who was kicked off Twitter this weekend for Covid falseness, still allowed on Fox News on Sunday to say again of January 6: “They weren’t rioting. It doesn’t look like an armed insurrection when you have people that breach the Capitol, and I don’t condone it, but they’re staying within the roped lines in the Rotunda. That’s not what armed insurrection would look like.”

Song Pick #1

Thirty-six summers ago (how time flies) some of us enjoyed the LiveAid concert in Philly—I did, with David Corn, as it happens—so here’s Neil Young that day with one of my favorites from him, “Powderfinger.”

Cartoons

Song Pick #2

Many may know that Louis Armstrong is considered by many the most important American musical figure of the 20th century, as a musician and for his jazz innovations in the 1920s. Fewer may recognize that he was also probably the most influential singer (see testimony by Sinatra, Billie, Crosby etc.) Of course, he invented or at least popularized “scat” early on but then he also set a standard for singing….standards. Here, one of the earliest covers of “Stardust,” from 1931.

Film/TV

"Why did he do it? That's the question that anyone who's ever been touched by the hungry, life-force spirit of Anthony Bourdain will have at the top of his or her head going into Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain,” Variety's Owen Gleiberman writes in his review of the new film which debuted at Tribeca Festival this past weekend. .

You’ve probably read about the allegedly fresh and hot new AMC series starring Schitt’s Creek’s Annie Murphy, Kevin Can Fuck Himself, so naturally there is a trailer.

“Essential daily newsletter.” — Charles P. Pierce, Esquire

“Incisive and enjoyable every day.” — Ron Brownstein, The Atlantic

“Always worth reading.” — Frank Rich, New York magazine, Veep and Succession

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. His new film, Atomic Cover-up, just had its world premiere and is drawing extraordinary acclaim. 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.