What do we want? When do we want it?

Comrade with me

From the end of the Carter administration to the birth of the Obama era, Sunday mornings were an occasion for readers of the New York Times to engage with the linguistic persnicketiness of columnist William Safire in the pages of the weekly Magazine.  Safire, an ad man from way back, wet his political feet writing speeches for the Nixon White House, producing most memorably the improbable phrase "nattering nabobs of negativity" written for the mouth of Nixon's Vice President, the subsequently disgraced and dismissed grifter, Spiro Agnew to speak in a speech criticizing the press for slacking on the propaganda front in its coverage of the Vietnam war and Nixon presidency.  The New York Times hired Safire following his departure from public service in the spirit of demonstrating its conservative bona fides as the culture wars of the Carter era were heating up.  In acknowledgement of the popularity of Safire's frequent strategy of critiquing the views of political foes by roasting instances of poor word choice from their public utterances, he was given the weekly "On Language" column in the Magazine which ran from 1979 until a month before his death in 2009.  As a prominent exponent of prescriptive grammar with his weekly column, Safire did a great deal of damage to the image of linguistics in popular culture.  For one Sunday only I'd like to revive the tradition.  

Because I don't have enough to do with my time, I recently watched a 3 hour debate and discussion on the agita surrounding the recent Force the Vote controversy that has been fracturing the left (over whether Progressives in Congress should have leveraged support for Nancy Pelosi's re-election as Speaker of the House in order to force a floor vote on Medicare for All or faced cancellation from the online left).  The participants were Sam Seder, host of the Majority Report and critic of FTV and Briahna Joy Gray former press secretary of Bernie Sanders 2020 and current host of the Bad Faith podcast on the pro-FTV side.  Gray's co-host Virgil Texas served as ostensible moderator and comic relief.  At the outset of the debate, Gray cautioned the partisan frequenters of the podcast to tender questions in the spirit of 'camaraderly' debate. I knew what she meant and wouldn't have given it another thought if the word hadn't returned for 2 more appearances, once by Seder and once more late in the podcast by Gray.  Seder's use which came minutes after Gray's first was telling - he paused and visibly agonized as he hunted for a synonym, came up blank and gingerly mangled the word, placing it in a context that made clear he was using it as a noun ("there was a spirit of ... you know... camaraderily" he says at around the 3:12 mark).  In contrast, Gray used the word both times as an adjective.  I didn't know if it was a word, but I felt if it wasn't it needed to be.  Sure enough, googling it, I discovered it is a word ... in German:  kameradschaftlich.  

In English, not so much.

The difference between William Safire and me (setting aside ideology, success, fame, bank account, vital signs, etc) is that while he would use the occasion to proffer correct alternatives to the neologism (I imagine his list might include amicable, friendly, sympathetic as possibilities, providing him with an opportunity to discuss the shades of meaning of each) I would advocate for Briahna Joy Gray's coinage. Moreover, I would suggest a feature of it would be the flexible orthography that its nascence lends itself to: is it camaraderly? Camaraderily? Comraderly? Comraderily?  You decide and we'll promise not to mock your decision in a spirit of comraderily.

As for the debate itself, ironically, it didn't take long for the camaraderliness of the proceedings to degenerate into a bit of open-fisted brawling.  I am a fan to varying degrees of all 3 of the participants.  I confess my sympathies going into the proceedings had gelled a bit more firmly on the FTV skepticism side of the debate.  After listening to the discussion, I am, if not persuaded, a bit more understanding of the FTV side as I'd hoped.  In terms of the performance of the participants, the mere effort to meet face to face was perhaps the winner of the evening.  Seder started out strong but I felt got bogged down in making a case for abstaining from the FTV effort on the basis of its ostensible leader and mascot, the irascible bad faith actor, Jimmy Dore with whom Seder has a history.  In truth, Dore's centrality to the FTV side was like it or not a polarizing distraction from the aims of the campaign. The necessity of confronting one's feelings about Dore at the surface of things was, to those who find him an overbearing ignorant prick, a deterrent to conveying its mission of grappling appropriately with the urgency of action on public healthcare.  Seder likened participation in FTV to getting into a car with a reckless drunk driver behind the wheel.  To Gray, the anti FTV side was, instead of replacing the driver, advocating destroying the car.  Seder floundered a bit at length on the matter of the "ask" of FTV (the spinning sound at the use of a verb as a noun is coming from William Safire's grave), suggesting that rather than confirming that Medicare for All would lose in a floor vote, progressives could have demanded a laundry list of procedural changes and committee appointments-- things likely to produce results in the right direction.  Gray reiterated that FTV came with a list of demands other than Medicare for All which included much of the wonkish arcana that Seder was proposing.  Seder was also not able to fully articulate the negative consequences of Pelosi calling the progressives' bluff should they follow the FTV strategy.  On the whole Seder offered little but weak tea in answering the question of what to do to get healthcare for 15 million who have lost it since the outbreak of COVID-19.  (It's not his fault. No one knows how it will happen.)

Where Seder excelled I think, is in telling the news that we have recent history demonstrating that Centrist Democrats do not pay any price for opposing Medicare for All -- its name is Joe Biden (and Kamala Harris) and it was inaugurated on Wednesday.  This being the case, there is a flaw in the original logic behind Force the Vote which was supposed to shame progressives into forcing action on it,  thereby forcing centrist House Democrats into either voting for it as polls show close to 70% of their constituents want or exposing their opposition and thereby opening themselves up to punishment at the polls in 2 years.  As Seder suggests, given the certainties that a floor vote would fail and an already clear idea of who the opposition would be and the price they would likely pay for it (i.e., nada) it's not clear that forcing the vote would succeed at being anything other than performative theater.  This is not to say that Medicare for All is doomed; merely that potentially eroding the growing progressive base in the House by opening progressives to electoral vulnerability over their unwillingness to perform under FTV pressure in districts where their very support of Medicare For All was instrumental in getting them elected in the first place might not be the most effective way of making it happen. 

 This fine point highlights a fundamental difference in orientation that seems to separate a good portion of the FTV side from the skeptics.  Many FTV-ers, Dore and Gray among them, advocated abstention from voting Democratic in November as a way of punishing the Democrats for collaborating to defeat Bernie Sanders in the primaries when he was surging, and Biden in particular for his repeated promise to veto Medicare for All if it should come before him as president.  To this point, the discussion turned at the end to Seder's objections to 3rd Party Presidential politics, in particular the Green party strategy.  Here I think Seder demolished the Greens, chiding them for squandering millions of dollars in small contributions from their members to run foolhardy serially unsuccessful campaigns at the presidential level that serve mostly as outlets for disgruntled progressives rather than focussing first on winning local or congressional elections to build actual power on the left.  There's a striking, tragic parallel in Gray's support for FTV and for Green party presidential candidates in the last two elections following Bernie Sanders' campaign suspension in the primary of each: the willingness to fail performatively whether in presidential politics or quixotic hacktivism for the benefit of Democrats who could not care less and seem to do just fine in spite of it. 

I've said it before and I'll say it again, if FTV or its contrarian offshoots make Medicare For All happen, I'll be thrilled to be proved wrong about their prospects.  As for the Gray - Seder debate, at the end of the day, there did appear to be a camaraderly meeting of minds about the need for different prongs in the progressive pitchfork.  The will to permit another actual prong to exist on both sides is, alas, at the present moment, as yet forthcoming.

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*It should be noted that Dore, a Bernie Bro in 2016, backed Tulsi Gabbard in the 2020 primaries when Sanders declined an invitation to kiss Dore's ring with an appearance on his YouTube program. Gabbard, who opposed Medicare for All,  eventually dropped her candidacy and fell in line with her Biden endorsement along with the rest of the field when asked. 

TV or not TV

In some respects my brother thirteen and I-- twins-- are on reverse complementary trajectories.  Formerly fit in my 30s and 40s, I occasionally teased him about some weight that he had put on in those same years.  I came to regret it when the shoe was on the other foot.  He chided me for voting for Nader and not for Gore in 2000; in 2016, we had some words over my tepid attitude toward Jill Stein and okayness with voting for Hillary.  He frequently introduced me to exotic entertainment like Spongebob Squarepants, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Daily Show and Colbert Report.  I lived most of my adult life somehow without ever subscribing to a cable service. I'd take him up on some of his recommendations with rentals from Blockbuster.  He had to practically twist my arm to get me to try Netflix.  Netflix is where I got addicted to Mad Men at the end of Season 4.  By the start of season 5, I took advantage of an upgrade to my internet service by adding cable so I could watch it in real time.  When I proudly announced my life change to my brother, he informed me that I was bucking a trend away from cable; he had coincidentally just dropped his cable provider to go totally a la carte with his entertainment.

I experienced Mad Men as something like a dream, as though someone had made a visual representation of my 1960s childhood fantasy of what adulthood was like as I leafed through oversized issues of Look and Life magazine losing myself in the cartoon glamour of the ads.  Furthermore, it captured some of the gothic drama of suburbia that I absorbed by osmosis of a working class version of it.  It read like a thick juicy Pocket Book edition of Mailer, Cheever or Roth.  I was curious whether it would evoke similar feelings in my brother.  I made a pitch.  I could not interest him.  By this point, he and tv had mutually turned each other off.  

To watch or not to watch became a periodic topic of conversation for us.  Not just about Mad Men but about television in general.  His view was that tv which should be a public commodity was in our culture a cheap manipulative stolen medium that was designed to hypnotize the masses in order to line the pockets of motherfuckers and to cheapen everything it touched. Mine was that while this was no doubt true, given the ubiquity of it and the oceans of time that had to be filled with programming some of which had to be produced by creative, intelligent, hopefully occasionally subversive people, some it was bound to actually be worth a watch every now and then.  After a while I could hear myself dog paddling to justify my complicity in the theft of the commons by broadcasting leeches.  After all, TV is really the IV, the delivery system of the opiate that keeps most of us distracted from alternate possibilities, acquiescent about the lives our lords and masters prefer us to lead, drained of passion that isn't directed toward some desired object of consumption: a car, a detergent, a celebrity, a politician.

I overheard Matt Christman recently talking about appointment tv as a poor but essential substitute for literature in this hypoliterate age.  The bottom line in publishing and the monopolization of bookselling has perhaps priced out risky, challenging books, and ensured a tiny fractured audience for those that still get produced. Yet people still want what we once got but no longer get from literature, and appointment tv has become the delivery system for it.  This could explain why so much tv is artistically and aesthetically aspirational by design.  While the model for the production of television is prohibitive to the possibility of true art actually coming out of it, it's better than a kick in the head.  In my experience there has been a proliferation over the past 20 years or so of television that dazzles the eyeballs, manipulates the heart rate, provokes the sensibilities and then evaporates within seconds of turning off the appliance that conveyed it to you. 

In the spirit of this, I humbly urge you, since I know it's pointless to urge my brother thirteen, to please avail yourself of the entertainment services of the Netflix television series, Love starring Gillian Jacobs and Paul Rust, Produced by Judd Apatow and created by Apatow, Rust and his wife Lesley Arfin.  I was skeptical going in, but I think I saw a charming interview with Rust somewhere at the start of season 2 and it inspired me to give it a try.  We all know that it being appointment tv it is incapable of succeeding at being literature, but I confess that it does things to my brain as I'm watching it that feel very much like nourishment.  It is a comedy, a hilarious comedy presented by very talented comedians, by a producer who has been very successful at capturing a young, male audience for bursts of non-threatening, non-challenging fun.  And it is fun.  But maybe the writing is above average.  Maybe the chemistry of the cast is exceptional.  Maybe the aspirations are aimed at the viewer's head as well as at the groin.  For whatever reason this show is rich in nougats that feel almost nutritional in value.  Netflix, don't just thank me, pay me.

The Fragments are Fragmenting

What happens when you gut public education and glut police budgets

As I'm writing this, an army of big circle-bearded lunks have breached a thin blue line and swarmed the US capitol just in time to prevent outgoing Vice President Mike Pence from certifying the November election of Joe Biden as President No. 46.  The invaders were sent to the capitol by their cause célèbre, outgoing President Donald Trump whom they had come to support on his fictional quest to overturn the election, and who after exhorting his supporters to go to the capitol to see what would happen had made himself scarce with a hasty retreat to his COVID palace at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  When the protestors about nothing got to the capitol, the police put up a struggle but as they had never properly prepared for how to handle rioters who are big, pasty, circle-bearded and covered in Blue Lives Matter patches, they were swiftly overcome. 

The hand to hand combat between 2 groups (police and lunks) usually associated with the right and with each other made me temporarily forget an analogous rift raging on the other end of the spectrum (or by some visualizations a small hop from one pole of the horseshoe across to the other).  That squabble though fierce is taking place mostly on our smart phones and computers, and while it had threatened to consume my soul as recently as this morning, it looks rather insubstantial compared to the specter of some creep in a Trump beanie mugging dopily for the cameras as he walks off with the actual lectern from the Senate Chamber.  The excuse for the firestorm-- a disagreement over whether the Squad should be cancelled for not threatening Nancy Pelosi's* reelection as speaker of the house unless she put Medicare for All up for a symbolic, performative and most certainly doomed floor vote-- seemed rather quaint juxtaposed with the image of AOC, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib (who used the occasion of Pelosi's re-election to successfully push through a limit to Pay-Go rules in certain cases-- a prerequisite for any sort of sweeping legislation such as Medicare for All and the Green New Deal) suddenly spirited away to a hidden location for their safety in the bowels of Congress. Perhaps we'd better figure out what the hell is going on before we start purging allies from the cause for lack of purity. 

It's almost too easy to go after these people who stormed the capitol today -- these men-- these boys-- for their stupidity.  There is a side of me that wants to see what's going on with them as an extremely misdirected outlet for extremely justified rage.  They are after all citizens of what's left of America.  They have not escaped the wealth inequality that is home grown here.  If they get shot in their oil lord's wars, do they not bleed?  If their livelihoods were undercut,  outsold and squeezed dead by a monopolistic global monolith or if their jobs were moved overseas to sweeten a corporation's profit margin, do they not starve?  If COVID ravages their lungs, do they not die and their surviving family members get stuck with the loss and the bill?  If a diet of Fox News and right wing media distract them from the squalor of the future laid out before all of us with irrelevant outrages like the petty gall of transgender rights, black lives matter, feminism and the war on Christmas, do they not get distracted and outraged?  Whiteness comes with special blinders that makes patsies of us all; some of us identify with the masters rather than face the fact that they have enslaved us too.  The lords wanted to separate us from each other to save their own necks and the proof of their success is in not just the intactness of their necks, but the bottomless supply of circle-bearded jerks willing to make asses and fodder of themselves publicly in the service of their lords (yet again).   A sort of emblem of their stupidity - while their brothers in arms were rampaging through the halls of congress, looting, vandalizing, taking selfies from the senate floor where Pence had just been speaking, some outside draped giant TRUMP banners over the railings as though rebranding the capitol for the object of their wet dreams, the outgoing dumbass in chief.  Poor dumb fucking saps!

I've been reading about the rise of the right in Rick Perlstein's multiple volumes (with volumes of pages) series on the topic, most recently Reaganland, and have come to think of it as something  deliberately manufactured by clever scoundrels out of certain people's inchoate outrage and  their susceptibility to abandon solidarity and to blame their discontent on the neighbor in front of their face rather than on the owners hidden from view who actively immiserate them. Something manufactured and as such something that can be disassembled.  The laws of entropy dictate that the dismantling will be more difficult than the assembly.  But in the spirit of this thought, to anyone on the shallow right who wakes up from this moment as if from a bad beer-and-wine drunk and finds that maybe they aren't all that averse to the idea of putting our heads together to figure a way out from the bleak future that global capitalism has in store for all of us, let's talk.

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Lastly, a little meditative musical antidote that is perhaps in keeping with the theme of the day:

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* Something the left and right can agree on: Nancy Pelosi is a tool.

North by Northwest: The Art of Survival

 As streamlined legend has it, Alfred Hitchcock commissioned a script from Ernest Lehman that would begin with a murder at the UN and end with the protagonist hanging off the face of Mt Rushmore. (Working title: The Man in Lincoln’s Nose)  From that premise, Lehman crafted the iconic twists and turns that Cary Grant's character, Roger Thornhill endures in North by Northwest.   To give heart to aspiring screen writers everywhere, it took Lehman a year, and it was a year of struggle and writer's block, belying the apparent seamlessness and breeziness of the finished product.  This being a Hitchcock thriller, the plot incorporates mistaken identity and intrigue involving a cool blonde, the coldly competent and worldly enigma Eve Kendall, played by Eva Marie Saint.  All of it arguably just an excuse for one of Bernard Herrmann's greatest scores:

It's still a thrill to watch, but it invites a question:  Could a Roger Thornhill of the twenty-first century undergo what the Roger Thornhill of 1959 endured?   Updating the story to today (versus remaking it) would be an interesting challenge and it’s not immediately apparent that such an adventure would still be possible given advancements (and regressions) of the present time.  (Note: Spoilers may follow).  Some obvious opportunities for re-imagination present themselves immediately.  Smart phones would obviate the mix-up at the hotel bar that sets the plot in motion.  They would also make it unlikely that a truck stolen in the flat heartland would make it all the way back to Chicago without being stopped.  The ubiquity of surveillance cameras in the lobbies and halls of hotels  and for that matter everywhere would complicate things for someone evading police.   The omnipresence of security at train stations, public gatherings and official spaces like the UN would pose special challenges to one trying to sneak onto transportation, disrupt an auction or make a hasty getaway from the scene of a very public murder (let alone commit one).  

These are trifles compared to some of the other changes in American society since Roger Thornhill first appeared on screen that would call for a vastly different approach to the suspense.  What would replace the cold war politics?  What information would be worth transporting in a physical object that couldn't be more efficiently procured cybernetically from the safety of the home country?  Is the UN as relevant to American audiences today as it was then?  For that matter, what foreign power poses as much of a threat to everyday Americans as that of homegrown corporate evil-- and that being the case what could be done with contemporary Roger Thornhill's complicity in it as an adman?  There's a mini theme in the original concerning the assistance that workers -- cabbies, redcaps, maids, bellhops, valets and maitre d's-- provide in evading the authorities and the thugs or making things happen-- often for a price, but always with a subtle finger flipped to the powers that be.  Isn't that still a thing?

I'm not saying it would be impossible to update the story (if one were up to the challenge), but to match-- or realistically merely to emulate-- the knowing punch of the original would take some serious remapping.  What you would wind up with would not be the elegant sophistication of Hitchcock's North by Northwest.  It would be pointless to do unless you were using the inspiration of the original to explore the question of what present day menace would be the counterpart of the cold war threat of the original and what obstacles of the given surveillance state would inspire a contemporary Roger Thornhill to make it through to the face of Mount Rushmore with grace and wit to spare.  Sounds just crazy enough that someone who cares to do it right (without pretending to want to "improve" the original) just might ought to someday give it a try.

Staying Alive

A sentiment I'm hearing a lot toward the year soon ending: Fuck you, Year! I'm hearing it on the left, on the right and in the middle.  I have some sympathy for the thought, but probably not as much as I could. I am lucky to have a job that can be done anywhere, including from home.  Here I've been since March, which is kind of where I've always wanted to be.  Not everyone in my family has been as lucky with their livelihoods.  The youngest and oldest especially.  But together, we've managed.  

Life in America is so cruel usually.  It was unusual to say the least that even in this cruelest of eras, presided over by a petty mean small band of know-nothing thugs, the structure of so many workplaces, so many lives, was rearranged so quickly in the service of human safety.  Not as thoroughly as it could and should have been  of course.  Not without a toll for many; not without empty gesturing and divisive posturing on the part of those in a position to help people shelter in place, but whose aid to those most in need of it was stingy when it came at all; not without knee-jerk resistance; not without the already financially bloated managing to profit excessively from the new circumstances (disappointingly typical for them).  This is America after all.  

But looking back over the course of the year, it's astonishing that human society the world over was rejiggered so violently in the service of protecting the species from a new sudden threat to its mortality.  You could argue (and you'd be correct) that we humans had it coming -- we made the threat by the way we exploit animals to keep our vast impoverished global labor force alive.  For decades, we denied or ignored that our activity was causing the warming of the planet and could also be marshaled to mitigate it until it was too late to make a difference; but you have to hand it to us, we responded to a virus many of us never saw with astonishing swiftness.  (Leaving aside those who exploited and exacerbated the situation as a gamble for their own political gain.  The worst offender ultimately lost the bet in November.)

It's unimaginable that there won't be some permanent change, but humans will be humans so who knows.  What we need more than anything to combat this and future threats to our health is universal healthcare, but our stagnant ideology prevented the implementation of even that small obvious measure this year.  The string pullers are used to exerting their influence while quarantined from us in the best of times anyway.  Physical separation of the rest of us from each other is an obstacle to solidarity which poses an extra challenge to the advancement of change;  but observing the immediate impact of the nationwide protests that erupted following the police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor largely without further spreading of the virus was inspirational.  If we haven't learned anything from this sequestration about how to be disposed toward each other, let alone about how rapidly and thoroughly drastic change can happen, I'll be pissed.

The year started for me on a note of hope, in the form of the Bernie Sanders campaign, which coincidentally with the novel coronavirus was gaining momentum throughout the winter.  Its emergence and spread in the early primaries too was met with swift, sudden, well-coordinated countermeasures that succeeded in nipping it in the bud before it threatened to completely infect the electorate, almost as a throat clearing exercise on the part of the professional managerial class for the public health crisis that erupted at nearly the same time.  How differently would the crisis have been managed if Bernie Sanders had been the Democratic counterpoint to Donald Trump throughout the spring instead of the hibernating eventual nominee, who was too wise to botch things for himself by appearing in public in those early months of the crisis.  His career was built on letting things happen, and with his opponent Donald Trump predictably unable to stifle himself when checking out might have served him better, it worked for him again this time.  No question that the infection rate and death toll in the US would have been lower with someone else at the helm of the opposition, and without the president and his party aggravating the situation.  I think Bernie Sanders as an opponent might have inspired Trump to step up in response (a possibility we might be catching glimpses of on his approach to the exit ramp as he shames congress to up the stimulus payments to $2000 from the measly $600 that it had been barely able to muster without his input), and it might have done him as much good as the country.  But in spite of the obstacle that the Trump administration was to public health, a sane swath of the country fell in line to help stem the spread until a vaccine could be found. 

I cringe a little when front line workers are thanked for their service. It's a bit too easy for a conglomerate of any kind to promote the practice in advertising or on TV, but for those regular people who take them up on it, it's surely heartfelt, well intended, and may strike the thanker as the least that can be done.   Many on the front line, to be sure, particularly in health care are called to their work; mere thanks are inadequate when supplies to do the work and for their safety are not forthcoming.  As for essential retail, food and factory workers, if my circumstances forced me into front line exposure to the virus on a daily basis for almost certainly not enough pay, at risk to myself and to my family I don't know that thanks would make up for it.  But thank you all anyway.

For myself, a natural hermit, I can't deny that 2020 with its enforced separation has had its perks.  It's been something of an antisocial dream-come-true to see myself being universally avoided in public nearly to the extent that I have spent a lifetime avoiding others.  Nevertheless, I am looking forward to my daughter's generation getting another chance at living life as adults among each other.  I will not miss not shaving.  I will not miss masks. I will not miss Zoom.  I will look forward to seeing family in person and to traveling freely and to getting haircuts when necessary and to indulging occasionally in public entertainment.  But while I don't wish ill on my fellow humans, if and when we re-emerge from this episode, truth be told, I will sort of miss the distance. 

Hot Takes

In the interest of meeting an impending deadline and in the spirit of continuing writer's block, we give you yet another listicle: 

• There's been an intense war raging on the left recently over a suggestion made by a popular contrarian YouTube channel host that "The Squad" in congress-- the burgeoning leftist bloc-- should withhold their votes for Nancy Pelosi's re-election as Speaker of the House in exchange for a floor vote on Medicare-For-All and that if they don't it's because they are lying gaslighting traitors.  Hot Take: The first part of the suggestion is fine as a starter.  The rest of it, which is what underlies the schism that's erupted from it is the problem.  I'll give the Purgers this, they are the loudest side in the fracas that's ensued.  They have commandeered the histrionics.  They own the bombastics. Theatrics R Them.  I'm not going to complain about how Medicare for All happens as long as it happens; but to make the question of how it happens interesting, I'm going to put my money on "The Squad". I've been to DSA meetings and know I am outmatched. Trust socialism to the actual socialists.
• Some public intellectuals and figures in the media such as Bill Maher, Jonathan Haidt, Jordan Peterson, Bari Weiss, and the members of the "Intellectual Dark Web" for starters, are fixated on promoting the notion that the single greatest threat to democracy and to the future of the country is Cancel Culture and in particular, its supposed proponents The Millennials.  Hot Take: I'd point out that most of the voices critical of millennials are baby boomers.  The ones who aren't are children of privilege. Let me repeat, the ones complaining about how spoiled the millennials are are boomers and preppies!   Are you rolling on the floor yet?
• In a zoom meeting with black leaders recently, President elect Joe Biden lectures that he's optimistic that things are changing for the better in America because "three or four out of seven commercials [are] biracial commercials."  Hot Take: I too have noticed a sharp uptick in the featuring of biracial couples in tv ads during the Trump administration. Does Joe realize these are actors and their relationships are fictional? Conclusion: Casting for tv commercials is woke. Why? Because along with foot deodorant, we're being sold a myth of a post racial America precisely to undercut the struggle for substantial meaningful change like police reform, healthcare for all, a green new deal and a living wage for everyone.  What does a potato chip have to do with it?  Because if you're busy applauding the biracial couple snacking on it, you may not notice the deforestation that production of the palm oils used in making the chips are causing in Southeast Asia.
• The Wall Street Journal has mocked Jill Biden for insisting on being addressed and referred to with the Dr title when she is only a PhD, not a doctor of medicine.  Hot Take:  Never mind that there is ample precedent for the president elect's wife to go by the prefix bestowed on her by her education.  I don't care if you're a Doctor of Philosophy or Medicine, enforcing your title is an asshole-y way to be.  Traditionally by acceding to the formality of addressing you with the honorific we are acknowledging your achievement.  True, it is an achievement that some of you worked so hard for so many years for the right to be addressed with the title.  It's also pretty pathetic.  Lots of people work hard; only assholes demand constant respect for it. In any case, please leave me out of your twisted status grubbing.

"Where'd you go to school to get a title like that?"
(Benjamin Schwartz, New Yorker)