Winner By An Eilish

News and politics and film, plus music today by Billie, Chrissie Hynde, Donovan, Bob Marley and Marianne Faithfull.

Billie Eilish performed new hit “Your Power” for Colbert last night, below. Enjoy, then share, comment, subscribe (it’s still free)….

News & Politics

Stephen Colbert: “I wonder if the current GOP is having a civil war just so they can put up statues of the losers.”

The Onion: “Conservatives Panicking After Every Member Of Republican Party Ousted For Insufficient Loyalty To Trump.”

Not The Onion: Opening for the ravings of MyPillow nutcase Mike Lindell last night—at (yes) the Corn Palace in South Dakota—was none other than washed-up ex-SNLer Joe Piscopo.

Paging Virgil Cain—Dixie Not Driven Down Yet: The Atlantic explores, Why Confederate Lies Live On. “For some Americans, history isn’t the story of what actually happened; it’s the story they want to believe.”

New AP poll: Biden’s overall approval rating at 63%. When it comes to handling of the pandemic, 71% of Americans approve, including 47% of Republicans.

Good news/Bad news: It’s been a cooler year than normal so far, which is swell, except as Axios warns: “The lack of a new ‘warmest year’ record could sap urgency among policymakers” to combat climate change.

Horse shit: Legendary racing trainer Bob Baffert charged onto Fox News yesterday to issue a blanket denial of wrongdoing after his Kentucky Derby winner, Medina Spirit, tested positive for an illegal drug. Then he blamed it on the libs. “We live in a different world now. This America is different. It was like a cancel culture kind of a thing so they’re reviewing it." Stephen Colbert: “And the horse claimed he was just holding it for some friends.”

Dan Rather said in a new Substack post on the Republican gaslighting that the press "needs to start taking this even more seriously than it does now." The media "is used to two opposing forces waging battle over policy," but this battle is "over a belief in democracy itself and not things like taxes or foreign policy."Rather observed that Republicans "desperately want the mainstream press to cover the daily news cycle through the lens of traditional party politics" — while the GOPers "go on their propaganda channels and stir up their base against the mechanics of fair and open elections…..The Big Lie is everything right now and the press and the American people must not provide safe harbor for it to continue to metastasize."

Golden Deceivers: NBC says it won't air the Golden Globes next year, but open to doing it the following season. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association is battered by criticism for its record on diversity and other issues.

The NY Times editorial board today endorsed Kathryn Garcia, a six-year sanitation commissioner, to be the city’s mayor.

CNN’s Jake Tapper with new fictional thriller (he earlier wrote the true-life The Outpost), revolving around Sinatra and the Rat Pack and the Mob and other doings in JFK era, got a positive review in Monday’s NY Times. Was on Colbert show last night (along with Billie Eilish, as we noted).

Has he painted his masterpiece? The largest-ever collection of Bob Dylan artwork goes on display late this year in a "Retrospectum" featuring 120 paintings, drawings and sculptures, AP reports. It debuts in Miami on Nov. 30 at the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University, and runs through April 17, 2022. Here’s his 2020 view of NYC subway.

Music

Chrissie Hynde and Pretenders mate James Walbourne are coming out with an album of Dylan covers this month, Standing in the Doorway—and a behind-the-scenes TV special about recording it. Songs, not the usual hits, include everything from “Love Minus Zero/No Limit” to “Every Grain of Sand.” Chrissie: “Whatever Bob does, he still manages somewhere in there to make you laugh because as much as anything, he’s a comedian. He’s always funny and always has something to say.” They had posted the songs as a “Dylan Lockdown Series”—see YouTube—over the past months. Here’s one also on the album, “Blind Willie McTell.”

On this day in 1964: The Stones were refused lunch at The Grand Hotel in Bristol, because they were not wearing jackets and ties. The following day the Daily Express ran a story with the headline, 'The Rolling Stones gather no lunch.'

On this date in 1974: Members of Led Zep attended an Elvis show at the Los Angeles Forum. After a shaky start, Elvis halted his band and said: “Wait a minute, because we’ve got Led Zeppelin out there, lets try to look like we know what we're doing.” Zeppers met with Elvis after the show backstage.

And on this tragic date in 1981, Bob Marley died at 36 of cancer. With the original Wailers, below, “Concrete Jungle.” Name someone greater today. Proud we gave him first U.S. cover story at Crawdaddy early on after we sent Tim White to Jamaica.

Declaring Ward: NY Times finally gets around to obit for rock writer/historian Ed Ward. He was at Rolling Stone just long enough to publish my first-ever magazine piece, which I detailed last week....

Film

Sometime Superman: I’m not a David Lynch fan, but if you are—you might appreciate his new video for Donovan and re-do of his odd 2010 song, “I Am the Shaman.”

Song Pick

Speaking of (often underrated) Donovan, Variety celebrates his 75th birthday with “ten deep cuts,” such as one I loved back in ‘67, “Hampstead Incident.” Another one, below, is his vintage “Young Girl Blues” covered by Marianne Faithfull as she is “working her way through the phonies.”

“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, Following the Ninth, about Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.