Quarantine Diary 1: Incident at DD and RNC Call

As we end the fifth week of the COVID-19 quarantine, a dull lethargy has set in. The New York Times recently ran an article stating some Gothamites have given in to despair and just given up. I don't quite feel that way. I don't believe this state of affairs will continue forever. Sooner or later a vaccine

Judy Woodruff's bookcase

or treatment will be developed and people will feel safe enough to venture into movie and Broadway theaters. It's not going to happen by Memorial Day as Vice-President Mike Pence--or as we like to call him Race Bannon--cheerily predicted to Geraldo Rivera on Fixed Noise. (Where does he get this sunny optimism from? It's not based on data or statistics.) A return to "normalcy" may take a few years. There will be many deaths and economic hardships, and but eventually, gradually people will probably be packing into subways like sardines without a thought in their heads about climate change or pandemics. But citizens are getting a bit antsy. Two recent incidents are examples of the threads beginning to fray.

Clinton vs. Trump: Wicked Stepmother vs. Drunken Uncle

I get it. I understand how many voters are frustrated by both major party candidates in this presidential election. Let's take a look at both sides of this difficult bargain. Trump is a total non-starter, totally unacceptable even in a nightmare to be the leader of the free world. Can you imagine the havoc he would wreak. Every day he'd shoot his mouth off insulting a world leader, breaking a treaty, being "sarcastic" and we'd be on the perpetual brink of World War III. It's reached the point now where even members of his own party are disowning him. He doesn't even understand basic grammar or concepts of rhetoric. This past week, his "off-the-cuff" controversial statements on "Second Amendment people" and Obama "founding" ISIS caused violent reactions among the media and in the halls of power, and were purposefully ambiguous. He could have clarified them, but he wanted the explosions to detonate. It's his way of having fun. (He often says during his rallies after inciting violence and mocking his enemies, "Isn't this fun?")

Thoughts on Robin Williams and Lauren Bacall

Lauren Bacall

The deaths of Robin Williams and Lauren Bacall so close together had a stronger impact on me than most celebrity passings. Williams' suicide was so shocking, and though Bacall was 89 and her going was not unexpected, it was still very sad because she was one of my first Broadway crushes.

As with Phillip Seymour Hoffman, I had not really been aware that Williams was dealing with depression and addiction. So on Monday night it was a genuine surprise when my husband Jerry gasped as he was reading New York Times headlines on his I phone as I was driving and I said "What's the matter?" "Robin Williams died," he replied, "they think it was suicide." I had seen Williams live on two occasions, in the Broadway play Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo in which he embodied the ferocious title animal in Rajiv Joseph's bizarre dreamscape of a play, and performing stand-up on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera for an HBO special. He performed for about 90 minutes without a break and was amazing. Friends I'd met on the Long Island beach that morning had an extra ticket and I gladly took it. I arrived on time, sandy and sunburnt, while they were all late (Williams called attention to their tardiness.)

Pennsylvania's Restrictive Voter ID Law Suspended

While visiting my parents in Pennsylvania recently I saw a really offensive commercial. The ad showed a diverse group of people--white, black, young, old, Asian, male, female--holding up either a passport or a drivers' licence and saying "To vote in Pennsylvania, you need one of these." Some slick ad agency was making restrictive voter ID laws palatable, even reasonable by making it seem so easy to vote. In fact for those who do not have one of these forms of photo ID, it's been a bureaucratic nightmare. At least, according to several stories of elderly people who no longer drive, students, and minority people with no cars having to wait for hours to get their new cards from crowded PennDOT facilities with overworked and confused personnel.

Well, today that's all changed. A Pennsylvania judge ruled the law is temporarily suspended until after the general election. He didn't dispute the constitutionality of requiring a photo ID, but ruled that the state has not provided enough time to fairly implement it so there is not an undue burden on citizens to exercise their constitutional right to vote. I believe that after the election there will be a review and theoretically the state will have enough time and training to make sure everyone who wants to vote can without undue hassle.

This just happened this morning and I was in Planet Fitness in Manhattan where they have numerous huge TV screens with closed captions. As I hit the 30-minute express workout area (as I do maybe once a month), CNN and Fox News were on screens next to each other, so I could compare coverage of this breaking story. No MSNBC for some reason at Planet Fitness, only the major broadcast channels, Fox, and CNN. I will have to complain about that.

Anyway, the story broke and CNN devoted about 10-15 minutes to it with reports from their legal reporter and interviews with political strategists on how this might affect the president race (P.S. Romney was going to lose PA anyway in spite of what the Republican State Senate Leader said about delivering the state to Mittens thanks to Voter ID). Fox was covering two murder trials, a planned sky dive from space with neat photography, reports on how bad the security was at the American consulate in Benghazi and the White House is covering up its prior knowledge of it. The news of the PA decision was confined to a headline on the news crawl at the bottom of the screen. After CNN had finished with the story, Fox finally got around to it about 45 minutes later with an interview with their legal expert, a judge (apparently retired). During the interview, not once did they mention the difficulties PA voters where having getting their IDs and how the state was placing an undue burden on nondrivers by not being fully prepared to issue all the IDs that would be needed in a timely and fair manner. The interviewed judge explained that there might be a possibility that some voters might be denied their rights and the anchor did not follow up be asking "What about these stories of four-hour lines and untrained staff at the Penn. Dept. of Transportation?"

I should get to the gym more often so I can compare and contrast coverage of these issues. It would be even more interesting if MSNBC were in the Planet Fitness mix.

The Politics of Envy and Resentment

It's not necessarily relevant, I just love this picture

So now the Republicans are really screwed. Newt won South Carolina, and Mittens is tripping all over his own tongue and his taxes. If Newt is the nominee, Obama wins without breaking a sweat. Newtie cannot sustain the politics of resentment against cultural elites in Washington and New York. His basic message is "These fancy people wanna take America and make it into a European socialist haven where your hard-earned money goes to lazy minorities and snooty Hollywood types look down their noses at your churchgoing fineness. BTW, I know you forgive me for having an affair...or two. I'm 68 and a grandpa now, so you know I don't fool around no more. And even though I'm a professor, I ain't no intellectual."

Meanwhile Mitt accuses anyone who criticizes his 15 percent tax rate as practising the politics of envy. I think he will prevail and get the nomination and he could win against Obama.

We just finished watching DVRed segments of the roundtables of Meet the Press, Chris Matthews, and This Week. The consensus seems to be Romney has a great message (according to the right-leaning pundits) but still cannot connect with the average voter. They forgave Bain Capital, but it was the brushing off of $350K as if it were nothing that turned people off.

Yesterday we were flipping the channels looking for news about any early returns on the SC primary. My partner Jerry stopped on Fox News and we thought we'd give the other side a chance. It was the Wall Street Journal Editorial Bloviating Session or whatever that thing is called. I had not seen the host Paul Gigot in a long time since he only appears on Fox. Anyway, I disagreed with just about everything the WSJ crowd but one guy had an interesting point. He said Romney feels guilty for making so much money and paying such a relatively low tax rate, so whenever he talks about it, he comes across as embarassed, stilted and uncomfortable in his own skin. That's why he laughed when he said he didn't make very much in speaking fees. He's not at peace with all that money. That may be. While Mitt is uncomfortable, Newt is shameless and has absolutely no tinge of guilt about anything he's ever done including cheating on two wives while they were sick. That's what attractive to those SC voters, they sense Newt's unapologetic brashness. That type of ease got W. into the White House, but it won't work for Newtie.