Cross Town Thoughts
Grading the debate.
Kristen Welker A+
Joe Biden D-
Donald Trump C+
Trump gets points for kind of behaving. He didn’t bring a Hunter poster, but he did bring Bobulinski. Nobody wanted to comment on Biden’s clear senility. Welker was a model moderator.
Now that the last debate is done. What’s left? Still plenty of time for hijinks. Every day seems like a year. If Biden does win, it will be a “dark winter” for the media. What in the hell will they talk about?
Petulant Adolescent President v. Hiden Biden. The final debate in the 2020 Presidential election.
Will Donald shout over the mute button? Complain about Kristen Welker, the moderator’s sanguinity? Bring along props such as life-sized cardboard posters of Hunter & Hillary? Invite Gary Busey and Kanye West to sit in the front row? Superimpose the nodding lady behind his head? Dance to YMCA?
Joe just has to show up and stay awake-ish. And. He wins.
Good book.
The Searcher by Tana French
Football.
Old Guys Tom & Gronk trounce Rogers & Co
Giants post their first W
Extra points are no longer a given
Games all times and days
Normalcy?
mAd Ben returns to the office after 7 months
Hypocrisy.
Holier-than-thou Jeff Toobin master debater
Artsy.
Fargo’s continued gorgeous stagecraft
No. Not leaf-peeping. Fall television viewing.
Happy – Maine Cabin Masters
Smart – Shark Tank
Theatrical – Fargo
Formulaic – Love It or List It
Snarky – Real Time With Bill Maher
Uneven – SNL
Topical – The Circus
Anticipated – The Undoing
Geezer Bowl – Green Bay v. Tampa Bay
Best news. Masters Golf coming in November. Augusta National does not allow greens books so maybe there will be no Slow DeChambeau.
Dueling Town Halls. Trump. NBC. Biden. ABC.
Savannah Guthrie was blatantly biased and inept. And. It was not a Town Hall. And. On what planet does a professional media person wear a hot pink jumpsuit with clunky black heels. And. Trump ran roughshod over her attempts to wrangle the mike from antithetical questioners.
George Stephanopoulos ran a Town Hall. He dressed appropriately and pushed back and followed up. Biden insulted young Black voters with his anachronistic platitudes and incoherent mumbles. Joe was Joe at his best at the end of the show when he spoke from the heart.
Two cosmos. No one under 65 watched anyway. So.
Crisp air and pommes-picking season. Time to make Apple Carol.
The New York Times takes on motherhood as its latest silo. Grouping people into labels. Gender, race, economic class, education, DNA.
Amy Coney Barrett has a multi-cultural ménage. Kamala Harris came to step-motherhood late in life. So what? Each has a unique experience and took different paths to great career success.
Let’s evaluate everyone on their own merits and rejoice in the many factors which they’ve been lucky enough to be born with and/or have had to overcome to get there.
New normal. Zoom business meetings. Face-timing with family. Does this work for everything?
Presidential campaigning needs energy from in-person interaction with voters. Biden allows small groups in safe venues when he ventures out of his underground den. Trump flouts masks and holds huge rallies even after getting Covid. Risk vs. Reward.
But. C’mon. When you know you’ll be interrogating a Supreme Court nominee in prime time. Do you choose to do it from a remote office with bad lighting and horrible sound? Kamala? Seriously?
Amy Coney Barrett is going to be the next Supreme Court Justice. On October 22 the Senate will vote for her along party lines. In the meantime, old codgers will mumble talking points on each side.
Republicans will cite her qualifications and credentials as a legal scholar, mother, and conservative. That she is a woman who revered Scalia.
Democrats will say that she will overturn the Affordable Care Act and Roe v. Wade. It’ll look like a Jerry Lewis telethon parading examples of those who will suffer.
I just hope they don’t dump my soaps for this sham of a hearing for the next week. It’s like the recent impeachment fiasco. Result a foregone conclusion as well. Okay. That was worse.
It’s 7 PM. What to do?
Shep Smith has moved to CNBC. Now the best evening news show on TV. He is the rare journalist with his own twist. Stories from around the U.S. and the World with a unique brand of enthusiastic entertaining delivery.
It’s not typical cable slanted political narratives with panels who regurgitate the network’s talking points all day and night. Amazing to find out that there is more happening than Trump and Covid.
7 o’clock is also the Jeopardy time slot. Cannot miss our favorite info game show every night. Which to record? It’s a good choice.
As college students, we had to type footnotes on the bottom of each page in our term papers. Back then, with an IBM Selectric, even with the backspace eraser, that meant re-typing pages for days. Just to organize the stupid format so everything fit. And. We had to read all of the footnotes in a text, which seemed so tedious.
Later learned to love great writers’ footnotes. Many were better than the core work itself. David Foster Wallace had the funniest footnotes ever. They could go on for pages and were laugh-out-loud biting wit.
Nephew Matt Levine is the DFW of Finance, with a happier ending. Matt’s Bloomberg Money Stuff column is stuffed with clever footnotes. For that and other stuff, he is profiled in the NYTimes.
Side Trek . NYC 