TGIF 4/8/22

Who had a week, and what kind of week was had? 

The House of Representatives referred two more Trump flunkies - Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino - to the DOJ for criminal prosecution for contempt of Congress. A bad week for them is a good week for us.

And let's throw another bad week into the mix: Will Smith, who resigned from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences a week ago, has been banned from attending the Oscars or any other Academy event for ten years. The ban includes both in-person and virtual appearances. 

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will become Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson - a good week for her, and for the rest of us. All 50 Senate Democrats and three reasonable Republicans voted for her elevation to the Supreme Court. Jackson, speaking to a Rose Garden gathering, said in part

In my family, it took just one generation to go from segregation to the Supreme Court of the United States.

Sens. Tom Cotton, Lindsey Graham, and Rand Paul had a bad week. Paul, for not being on time to vote against Jackson; everyone had to wait a reported 25 minutes for him to drag himself to the cloakroom, open the door, and toss a thumb's down before slinking away. The cloakroom vote was necessary because he couldn't trouble himself to put on a tie. Neither could Graham, according to reports, although he was wearing on earlier in the day. As for Cotton, he suggested that Jackson might have defended Nazis at Nuremberg, a comment so nasty that even John Roberts of Fox News challenged it. Cotton's a jerk, with or without a tie. 

Tiger Woods is having a good week; he's playing competitive golf again. Against almost all odds, Woods made the cut in the Masters, a tournament he's won five times. A mere mortal might have been killed in a similar accident, or ended up losing their leg. But Tiger Woods is no mere mortal, is he? 

Russia had a bad week; the Senate voted unanimously to strip the most-favored-nation (MFN) trade status from the country, and to ban imports of Russian oil products. The House also passed both bills, although not unanimously. Voting against the MFN removal? Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie, and Matt Gaetz. Let's give them a heartfelt bad week round of applause.

The jury in the trial of four men accused of plotting to kidnap and murder Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer had an interesting week, which caused a bad week for the government and a good week for the four defendants. Two were acquitted; the jury failed to reach a verdict on charges against the others. It sounds like the jury believed the defense theory that the FBI went off the rails on this one; or, maybe the defendants truly had a jury of their peers?

In another high-profile case, a Minneapolis police officer who killed Amir Locke in February won't face charges. Body cam video released this week shows Locke, who was not a subject of the no-knock warrant being executed at his cousin's apartment, holding his legal gun in a manner that led to the officer to shoot him three times, within ten seconds of entering the apartment. To me, this deserves a horrible week mention - there are no winners here, that I can see.

Let's end on a good week note, OK? How about dogs being reunited through pet DNA testing? A Texas woman had adopted one of the pups; an Oregon woman adopted the other. The women had the DNA tests don on their dog and a match was made. The women via social media, and a play date was arranged. There's video - and who doesn't like cute pet videos?

TGIF, everyone. 

Wondering, on Wednesday (v36)

Here in Syracuse, we had a tough Independence Day weekend, with eleven shootings in 24 hours, one resulting in the death of a 19 year old. Several others were injured during the incidents. Interestingly, or shockingly, or somethingly, the young man had apparently posted on Facebook that he was going to be taken out. His message was shared and liked dozens of times, although it's hard to tell whether that happened before or after he was killed.

Not surprisingly, the shootings drew a lot of attention on our local news websites, including several comments making reference to the SAFE Act, the hastily passed gun legislation that came about in response to the Sandy Hook shootings. Here are a few of the comments:

Good thing we have the SAFE Act. How's that SAFE Act working out for you? Clearly the SAFE Act is working as intended. 

When I see these comments, I always wonder whether the authors were at the scene of the shootings, and tried to take out the bad guys, but were unable to do so because they only had seven bullets?

And speaking of taking out the bad guys, how about that Bill Cosby deposition? The one where he said, yeah, Quaaludes, we're gonna have Quaaludes (oh wait, that was Ice Cream...) Anyway, what he said was that yes, he did purchase Quaaludes with the intent of giving the pills to women he wanted to 'be with' as Lester Holt so delicately stated last night on the news.  And he admitted to giving them to at least one woman with whom he had sex.

It's a mess, for sure. And one that a judge thought we had the right to see.  In releasing what he did, as the request of the Associated Press (AP) US District Judge Eduardo Robreno noted that

The stark contrast between Bill Cosby, the public moralist and Bill Cosby, the subject of serious allegations concerning improper (and perhaps criminal) conduct is a matter as to which the AP - and by extension the pubic' has a significant interest. 

There are some two dozen women who have come forward stating that Cosby drugged and had sex with them against their will, or when they were not able to consent.  As was the case when Tiger Woods was initially exposed as a serial play-arounder before he played a round, anyone can say it happened and Cosby really can't do much about it. After all, vehemently denying one out of a couple dozen sort of makes it look like the other 23 are telling the truth, right?

And while I hope that the women victimized by Cosby get some justice, in one form or another, it is hard to sit and watch this epic fall from grace and not wonder why no one around him, no one associated with Cosby, was able to exert any (or enough) influence on him, to protect the women from him and to protect him from himself.

Finally, tonight, I'm wondering about another person who was not protected from himself, who was not prevented from doing something that, tragically, took his life in an instant.

Devon Staples, a 22-year-old, was killed when he lit a fireworks mortar on his head. Apparently he pretended he was going to do it, and friends thought they had talked him out of it, but for whatever reason, he did it anyway. According to some reports, he was the kind of guy who would do anything for a laugh, was the joker, was the one everyone wanted to be around.  And now he's gone, in an instant.

Sometimes, wondering is all I can do.

Wondering, on Wednesday (v11)

President Obama announced today, in one of those casual-leader videos we in the business world see so frequently, that he'll be talking to the country tomorrow about his plans to use his legal authority to make changes to some part of our immigration policy. The announcement came on the White House Facebook page. In reporting on it, NBC's Nightly News announced that the major networks would not be carrying the President's address. Seriously. According to an article on Yahoo TV, the big four have confirmed they won't be broadcasting the speech, expected to last for about 1.25 inches of Lake Erie lake effect snow.

The administration said today that Obama will be speaking live from the White House at 8PM ET on Thursday. But ABC has the fall finale for Grey's Anatomy on at that time, while CBS has ratings powerhouse The Big Bang Theory, NBC has reality show The Biggest Loser and Fox has Bones. As of right now, none plans changes to there regularly scheduled Thursday night November sweep schedules for the approximately 15-minute speech. 

Say what you want about Obama, immigration reform, executive authority, and the rest - he's still the President. I'm wondering, on Wednesday, shouldn't we at least pretend that it's as important for Americans to hear what he has to say as it is to watch a bunch of people get yelled at by personal trainers?

Bill Cosby's art collection is on exhibit at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art in Washington DC.  Everything else about Bill Cosby is on exhibit in the papers, on the news, on social media. In an almost surreal life-imitates-art situation, several women - fourteen? fifteen?  have come forward with accusations that Cosby drugged then molested or raped them, going back years, decades even. Cosby is not answering questions about any of this, and has lost at least two deals, one with Netflix and one with NBC.  The only similar situation I can think of that comes close is our old friend Tiger Woods, another guy who couldn't do much other than stand silent as accuser after accuser came forward, and you have to wonder with me, why the hell do these guys do this?

And then there's Tommy Chong talking about Jonathan Gruber on Fox News. I don't even know what to wonder about that one.

Return of the Trifecta

A trifecta is generally described as a type of bet where, in order to win, the bettor must pick the top three finishers in the correct order. Here are the top three from the past couple of days:

According to a published report, New Gingrich is 'really puzzled'.  Honest: he's not sure what to call a cell phone.

Think about it. If it is taking pictures, it’s not a cell phone. If it has a McDonald’s app to tell you where McDonald’s is based on your GPS location — that’s not a cellphone. If you can get Wikipedia or go to Google — that’s not a cell phone. If you can watch YouTube — that’s not a cell phone. Or Netflix. This device is something new and different. I have been calling it a handheld computer.

I kid you not. Apparently the lights might go out in Georgia if we don't get a better name for the thing that most of us call a smart phone.  Newt's team doesn't think that's the right term, because it places too much emphasis on 'phone' and they're  not used all that much as phones.  I'll give a dollar to the person who comes up with the next great name for the little time-sucking, occasionally-ringing, picture-taking, web-searching, pocket-vibrating distracto machine. 

Yesterday, Tiger Woods won The Player's Championship, his fourth victory of the year. I think it's pretty clear that he's back in the swing of things, if you know what I mean (wink wink nod nod).  Woods didn't win much in the immediate aftermath of his Thanksgiving 2009 flame out but now that he's got a steady girlfriend, and is at least apparently settling in to co-parenting his children with his ex, things seem to be on the upswing. I still don't think much of him as a person, but when he's playing well, he sure is fun to watch.

And last but not least, today Barbara Walters announced that she's retiring. Next year. Yep, she's leaving TV. Except for when she's going to be on TV, doing specials or whatever she wants to do. Because I doubt that any network would turn her down if she felt like asking some famous person what kind of tree they'd be, if they were a tree.  

She's had an amazing career, but do we really need to take a year to say goodbye to her?  And was it Oprah who started this whole goodbye tour for talk show hosts?  I'm thinking we need to have these folks sit down with Dr. Phil and figure out why they feel the need to put us through this long goodbye.

I Did Not Have Sex with That Man

Just to set the record straight, I was not the brunette that allegedly had a dalliance with Tiger Woods earlier this year when he played at a charity tournament in our neighborhood. Not that I couldn’t have been – after all, it seems like Tiger was pretty available and indiscriminate about some aspects of his personal life.

Watching this whole saga unfold is really just so much déjà vu all over again. Tiger has joined a long list of folks who are apparently blinded by their own celebrity, addicted to what that celebrity brings, and now in the ranks of those tarnished by their ‘celebrity behavior’:

• Politicians including JFK, Gary Hart, Bill Clinton, and Wilbur Mills (remember Fanne Fox?)
• Newt Gingrich famously taking divorce papers to his wife in the hospital, so he could marry his mistress.
• More recent flameouts like Eliot Spitzer and Mark Sanford.
• Wilt Chamberlain, who boasted that he had slept with 20,000 women.
• Kobe Bryant who bought his wife that huge apology diamond.
• Magic Johnson – enough said.
• David Letterman, who admitted sleeping with people who worked on his show.
• Any business leader with a trophy wife…any rock star with a groupie…any actor with a ‘sex addiction’…

So, what do all of these have in common? Well, other than men behaving badly, they all have women behaving badly too. For the most part --  maybe not in all cases but for the most part --  it seems the women were willing accomplices, not forced into what they did, as far as we know. And absent accomplices, whether amateurs or professionals (in Spitzer’s case, at least), these guys would have likely found something else to do. 

Instead of going to Vegas for the VIP clubs and the ‘hostesses’ that work at them, or the cocktail waitresses (Michael Phelps), they could have been gambling and helping the economy, for example. They could have been home with their families, or working at soup kitchens, or teaching kids to read or play basketball or golf or to tell funny jokes or sitting around watching the news or reading the tabloids, rather than being the news or tabloid fodder.

The more recent cases also have the public apology component in common. Press conferences, ‘mea culpa’ interviews (Hugh Grant’s on the Tonight Show was a great one), or in Tiger’s case, a statement on his web site, begging for forgiveness and privacy while the family works it out. 

After the apologies come the speculations: will they stay together? Will his career be ruined? Will the sponsors drop them (in the case of athletes, actors and musicians)?

They also have in common a public forgiveness component. For all their foibles, the majority of us are collectively eager to welcome them back after they come clean. We’ll continue to watch them, read them, listen to them, support them. We’ll continue to pay to see them do their jobs, whether it’s giving a speech or playing a game or writing a column or selling books or running for office, even as we study them and remember them for their failures.

The biggest problem for them is of their own making. The biggest problem for us is, why do we put these folks on a pedestal in the first place?