Email subject lines are hard.
My darlings, how I’ve missed you! I hope you didn’t miss my as-Rome-burns fiddling too much over the last few days, but rest assured that there’s still much to kvetch over.
I’m no presidential advisor, but I’m pretty sure that telling the widow of a deceased-in-combat serviceman that “He knew what he was signing up for, but I guess it hurts anyway” is maaaaaaaybe not the best thing to do. I gotta know, is empathy genetic? Like, can you inherit it? Can it skip a generation?
The WaPo overview of how Trump handled the twelve days after four U.S. Special Forces soldiers were killed in Niger is bonkers. Re: POTUS, Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo hits Trump on the nose: “he poisons everything, inflames everything, destroys and degrades anything in his path for his own ends. No one gets out in one piece.”
My Mum passed on a meditative piece from Macleans on loneliness as a communicable contagion, and how it contributed to the rise of the far right. I think the headline does the bulk of the piece a disservice, but his mention of the decline of “third spaces” - i.e. not home or work - certainly rings true for me.
And lest you think the rest of the world is all puppy dogs and snowflakes, Hollywood is also terrible! Woody Allen said the following re: the outcry over Harvey Weinstein’s predatory behavior: “You also don’t want it to lead to a witch hunt atmosphere, a Salem atmosphere, where every guy in an office who winks at a woman is suddenly having to call a lawyer to defend himself. That’s not right either.” Yep, Woody Allen said that. Coolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcool.
Also, Paula Froelich at the NYPost cautions those of us who hope we’re encountering an asshole sea-change: Harvey got exposed because he’s not profitable anymore.
Headline palate cleanser: She claimed tall, blond aliens kidnapped her as a child. Now she’s running for Congress. (ht NextDraft)
You all are lovely :) See you tomorrow.