What Make America Great Again Really Means
one. Back the Blueish
If you've been reading this newsletter for a while, you know how cop-skeptical I am. Individually, police officers often act unprofessionally and collectively police officers often turn a blind eye to the misconduct of their colleagues. And by and large speaking, it's the cover upwardly that reveals the rot.
Anyone can brand a bad determination in a snap-second state of affairs. Corruption is when an institution covers up its incorrect decisions instead of bringing them to light.
But as I've been saying since January 8, more often than not the functioning of the Capitol police officers on the ground during the insurrection was exemplary. (The operation of the college-ups is a dissimilar affair.) It was everything we want from law enforcement: They deescalated violent situations when they could. They placed themselves in harm's way in social club to protect the members of Congress. It is a miracle—a damn phenomenon—that only one of the insurrectionists was killed.
Because if the Capitol Police force had acted like the Buffalo PD, then the death toll would have been unthinkably high.
Here is something I want you to consider when nosotros talk about the ways in which both conservatism and the Republican party are trending toward actual, no-fooling authoritarianism:
Many Republicans and conservatives are quick to defend the police whatsoever fourth dimension they act unprofessionally. Shoot a black kid? They had a reasonable suspicion he might be armed. Choke black guy to death? He was resisting arrest. Black Lives Matter? Blue Lives Matter, bitches.
But when it comes to the Capitol Police doing their jobs professionally, suddenly these same people are quite anti-cop:
The situational nature of their back up for law enforcement is revealing. When these people talk near "backing the Blueish" what they actually mean is that they support violence confronting their enemies.
Never forget this.
Absolutism is real. The door to political violence has been opened in America for the first time in fifty years. Information technology's time to stand.
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2. Olympics
I'm an absolute sucker for the Olympics.
For me, the essence of sports—the real juice—is stakes. Show me a stakes game where everyone on the field really cares virtually winning and I'll sit downward and watch. Doesn't matter if it's a seventh grade basketball league championship game or Olympic synchronized diving last.
When the athletes intendance, then we care.
This is why and so much of the NBA and NFL production falls flat for me. Playoff football between high-quality teams is amazing. A late-flavour game between 2 5-ten teams is a death march. If anything, the NBA is even worse because nearly regular flavor games are meaningless.
All of which is to say that the Simone Biles news today is crazy.
After a crude go in the prelims, Biles did 1 event in the team last this morning and and so pulled out. Conspicuously, something wasn't correct with her and this is the sort of stakes moment that makes the Olympics and then compelling: Because it'south an amped-up, super-contrast case of the human condition.
I don't know exactly what happened to Biles, but if I had to approximate information technology would be something like this: The entire weight of the world has been on her shoulders, for years, in full view of several billion people.
It'south ane thing to be a dominant racer who is expected to perform well. Generally speaking, fast never takes a day off. But skill sports are different and require a different type of mental focus.
And being a "dominant" athlete is different than having billions of people—with a "b"—talking virtually how you lot're the greatest of all time, how no one else is fifty-fifty shut, how you're leading a team in a historic level of authorisation, etc. As I've watched the Biles-mania of the last month, I kept thinking that the assumptions baked into information technology were incredibly, almost criminally, unfair to her.
Biles is the greatest of all time. Simply she's likewise 24 years old in a sport that'southward built for teenagers. She'south doing this with an extra year of wearable and tear on her body. And that extra twelvemonth was also another 12 months that she had to wake up and be Simone Biles for the rest of the world, every 24-hour interval.
God dear this kid. If she never competes again, she's already the Caprine animal. She should be cherished, admired, and supported. And the residual of the women on the team who stepped up—especially Hashemite kingdom of jordan Chiles—ought to be celebrated, as well.
That'due south the thing nearly stakes games. It'southward not the outcome that matters. It's what the games bring out in us.
3. Howard the Duck
I didn't know what a box-office bomb was in 1986, but I knew that Howard the Duck was something extraordinary. THR has an oral history on one of the signature cinematic disasters of our time:
At the end of a lengthy bicoastal audition procedure, Zien learned Robin Williams had been bandage as the vocalization of Howard. But that would not last long, as Zien reveals the belatedly actor-comedian left the project within the first week out of frustration over syncing his vox to the duck's animatronic bill. An actor to voice Howard had not been cast during product, so all of Howard's lines were read on fix by the puppeteers, and the bill moved to fit their banal delivery, rendering Williams' wild improvisational manner moot in postproduction.
"What I was told was past the tertiary day, Robin said, 'I can't practice this. It is insane. I tin't get the rhythm of this. I am being bars. I am beingness handcuffed in order to friction match the flapping duck's nib.'" Zien reminisces. "So, on Memorial Day 1985, I got a telephone call from my amanuensis who said, 'You have to get right to the drome! Robin Williams just quit and y'all're now Howard the Duck. You need to get there tonight. In that location is a ticket waiting for you at the counter.' I was incredibly excited." . . .
"It wasn't working on the level it needed to piece of work on," Thompson remarks. "I felt similar I was draggingHoward the Duck up a colina by myself with my teeth the whole time. All the jokes were falling flat. Comedy is a souffle. Nosotros had amazing puppeteers, but they were the ones doing the jokes. I was similar, 'It would be great if you could take an actor doing the lines to keep the ball in the air.' The technical side of making the movie was so difficult and fraught. I kept saying to them, 'The duck doesn't piece of work.'"
Zien confesses he was also concerned after he saw the showtime 12 minutes of footage in his initial recording session at Industrial Light & Magic.
"I thought, 'Uh oh. This looks a piffling weird,'" admits Zien. "I called my wife and said, 'I don't know. The technology seems a chip behind the times.' Only — and this is really important — past my fourth day, I thought this was the greatest motion picture ever fabricated." . . .
Executive producer Lucas was positive he had some other mega-franchise on his easily likeStar Wars and Indiana Jones, with Zien revealing that he signed on for a total of three films. "I was supposed to be Howard the Duck every bit a fill-in host onEntertainment Tonight,"discloses the player."I signed a contract to exist the vox of AT&T. And I had coincident rights for talking Howard the Duck dolls. It was overwhelming."
Lucas threw a massive postproduction bash at his sprawling Northern California estate, with festivities that included a total circus, Zien says. And for a moment, the actor didn't have a care in the world as he marveled at the grand spectacle, believing he was on the cusp of smashing wealth and film distinction. That would speedily alter.
Read the whole thing.
What Make America Great Again Really Means
Source: https://thetriad.thebulwark.com/p/what-back-the-blue-really-means