Revolution Still Not Televised

Today's edition of news and political takes, cartoons, and Questlove's film finally, here, plus music from Los Lobos, Gil Scott-Heron and Gladys Knight and the Pips.

And away we go, Friday edition. Don’t forget to subscribe, it’s still free for now.

News & Politics

Stephen Colbert responds to promise by Trump (a.k.a. “Dick a l’Orange”) that he would return in “2024 or before” with: “I believe you're done in 2021.”

The Onion: “NYC Mayoral Primary Results Delayed Until Officials Finish Watching YouTube Explainer On Ranked Choice Voting.”

Not The Onion: “Jerry Seinfeld Is Making a Movie About the Creation of the Pop Tart.”

Ann Telnaes, below, on Rudy G’s law license suspended yesterday. An appellate court said that Giuliani’s actions represented an “immediate threat” to the public and that he had “directly inflamed” the tensions that led to the Capitol riot in January. The court also said that he would most likely face “permanent sanctions,” which could include disbarment.

Miller’s Crossing: New book by Michael Bender claims Joint Chiefs chair Gen. Mark Milley rejected Trump suggestions military should “crack skulls”: during George Floyd protests last year, and told Stephen Miller to “shut the fuck up.” And:

"Just shoot them," Trump said on multiple occasions inside the Oval Office.... When Milley and then-Attorney General William Barr would push back, Trump toned it down, but only slightly.

No Pride: Politico’s Playbook this morning with headline about Lindsey Graham: “Graham is Out.” No, it’s not what you might hope for, but just a reference to him pulling out of the new bipartisan infrastructure deal.

The remains of 751 people, mostly children, were found in unmarked graves at the site of a former boarding school in Saskatchewan, a Canadian Indigenous group said. It follows similar discoveries reported in other provinces in the past month. And now in U.S., Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland just announced a new initiative that would delve into the records of the federal schools to which Native American children were forcibly relocated for 150 years.

OAN host Pearson Sharp is defending a segment in which he imagined thousands of “radical Democrats” executed for supposedly stealing the election from Trump. The Daily Beast: “OAN Goes Full Fascist.”

Democratic activists? No, they were conservative spies.

Next 3 days in Portland, Ore.: 107, 114, 112-- and that's actual temp, not "heat index."

Since last year’s George Floyd protests, police officer retirements have surged by 45 percent and resignations rose by 18 percent, according to a new survey of 200 departments that compared the year from April 2020 to April 2021 with the previous 12 months…. Meanwhile, Derek Chauvin faces sentencing today—the resolution will be televised.

Music

Winston Marshall has announced that he is officially leaving Mumford & Sons following an uproar after he praised a book by right-wing social media personality Andy Ngo.

50th anniversary of my old Crawdaddy columnist Gil Scott-Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” being celebrated as forerunner of rap.

Film/Tv

Chris Carter: “I Crreated X-Files—and Here’s Why I’m Skeptical of UFO Report.”

Today marks the release of Questlove’s Summer of Soul doc, which we have already previewed two or three times, but here’s a little clip of Gladys Knight & the Pips doing “I Heard It Through the Grape Vine.”

Song Pick of the Day

Los Lobos has an upcoming album paying tribute to fellow L.A. stalwarts including Jackson Browne, Little Feat and Buffalo Springfield. They’ve already released cool version of Beach Boys classic, “Sail on Sailor.”

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“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.