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The Roganing

In 2020, Joe Rogan did an episode of his podcast, a 5 hour conversation with Alex Jones. In 2015, he did an interview with Milo Yiannopoulos. 

They are among 42 episodes that - surprise! - vanished from the collection when Spotify paid over $100 million to Rogan for rights to his podcasts.

Keep that in mind when Spotify acts shocked to discover that Rogan might be doing things which are... controversial.

Rogan is sort of emblematic of the hard road many ambitious folks have in show business. A modestly successful comedian and entertainer, Rogan had a small role on the series NewsRadio in the nineties, a somewhat longer gig hosting Fear Factor on NBC, and some niche success as a standup comic - it's hard to quantify success with comics these days, in part because while they may do well enough playing the 2nd or 3rd largest club in Phoenix, the streaming service level of desperation for comic content provides many opportunities to be filmed.

I'm not trying to minimize his success, but as careers go, it may not have been the kind of thing you planned on when you started out.

I mention all of this because Rogan has always been something of a specific draw - not so much a runaway success as a solid, reasonably well liked genre specific star, that genre being a sort of scruffy, working guy icon, with some appeal in his own demographic of 25-54 white guys (hence the added gigs hosting, say, MMA fights on tv), but not necessarily a lot outside of that.

There's a defense of Rogan's podcasts - I'm getting to them - that insists that critics are attacking Rogan's audience, a putdown of all white men wrapped in the takedown of a widely followed (perhaps even wildly liked, though I'm not clear on what that even means) podcast. So let's be clear: I don't blame the audience.

The problem with the podcast is Rogan himself.

Rogan hosts the podcast much the way one would expect for a middle aged comic/reality show host to do (don't take my word for it - watch Andy Cohen) - bring up a topic, bring out a guest or two, ask some questions, bing bang boom, you've got a podcast. Get in the game early enough, promote the hell out of yourself, grab some ziz by mouthing off a few times... and you too could be sitting on the podcast that attracts millions.

But you're late and you don't, and that's kind of the point: what Rogan's doing isn't genius, or even especially hard. It isn't, really, all that different from his overall career. It just happens to be the platform where he's managed to achieve the most reach, ever, of his - again, not being critical - modest success of a career. That's what Spotify paid $100 million for. It's also why we have a little bit of a problem.

The problem, really, is Rogan's minimalist approach to hosting and topics. The whole shtick, really is "I don't know a lot about this, let's talk to someone who does" and it has, as a rising total of pulled podcasts demonstrates, led to Rogan blithely allowing quacks, frauds, Nazis and racists to share, uncontested, questionable information and views which turn out to be, inaccurate, invalid, or simply too much. It has allowed Rogan himself to casually offer up insulting slang as, one supposes, he probably thought was no big deal in smaller setttings. It's a predictable problem that could have occurred to Spotify prior to purchase had Spotify's billionaire owner seen himself (who does, these days) as not just a pass through to audiences but a content provider with a role in determining the quality of the content.

The bottom line point - and it's breathtakingly obvious - is Rogan needs an editor. A supervising producer. Someone, really, whose job exists to plan content, research guests, help prepare the host with questions, and identify potential potholes. It's the way GOOP needed actual medical advisors to point out that jade eggs might cause serious health problems inserted into your cooch. 

This isn't hard. It's not world ending or anti-white guy to point out, in passing, that unsupervised, unmoderated Joe Rogan just spitballing on an interesting topic is likely to be what it, well, is: inaccurate, embarrassing, tactless, even offensive and dangerous. It's the problem created by social media where we all just assume we can do the same thing Chuck Todd does for NBC with a budget, a staff, and a Senior Producer. Content creation is hard, it needs structure and it needs, desperately, expertise. The alternative, as the Roganing of our discourse demonstrates, is a messy, often inaccurate, frequently maddening morass of dubious vitamin cures, "i'm no expert but" opinionating, and a lot of, as it turns out, dangerous misinformation.

It's not the audience, and, I'll say it... the problem ultimately isn't necessarily Joe Rogan - though I do think, as a grown person, it's fair to ask why "maybe I don't know a lot about this and should consult people who do" isn't simply a reasonable expectation of those who wish a central role in our discourse. But, hey, that's me. What I do know is, at some point, Spotify has to move to rein in the free for all of its podcasting plans, or continue, as Rogan demonstrated, to reap the whirlwind of every loose comment and off the cuff rant. Our discourse could use grown ups. And "I hate grown ups" looks fine on a college comic at an open mic... but it may be time for Joe Rogan to think about what maturing means.

Melania Trump Is Selling A Hat

There's a lot going on in the world, but I find myself stuck on the strangest, if not smallest, of news stories: that Melania Trump is auctioning off her hat.

The hat - one she wore to meet President Macron and his wife - is part of an online auction where Mrs. Trump is also selling NFT's of photos of the hat for cryptocurrency.

According to the press release, the starting bid is $250,000.

While much of her husband's family, including his children from his first marriage, are embroiled in a series of financial and political scandals, Melania Trump has managed to find a fairly private life in the post presidency. She is rarely seen. She does not speak, and only occasionally nets public attention, particularly, it seems with auctions. This is her second foray into NFTs.

There are of course, all sorts of questions to be asked over this turn of events - why does she need the money? Is she unhappy? Does she have, as most former First Ladies do, an office and a staff? What do they do, anyway? Sell off her possessions?

And again... why does she need the money?

Myself, I have more questions about the hat. It's a Herve Pierre hat, by the way, and while many may not know, Pierre - a veteran of Bill Blass, Oscar de la Renta and Carolina Herrera - designed Mrs. Trump's Inaugural Ball gown and has been a stylist to her for a number of years. The hat was the topper to a severe white suit Mrs. Trump wore, which complemented the white Chanel suit Mrs. Macron wore that day. The hat, however, was wide brimmed and oversized, and generally blocked most views of Mrs. Trump's face. Mrs. Macron, one might note, did not wear a hat. One might also observe that, in general, outside of the British nobility, hat wearing has largely fallen out of favor.

And - this is really only my opinion - it was kind of an ugly hat. I may not be a huge fan of hats, but I enjoy a dramatic picture hat as much as anyone, or the "fascinators" of Britain, cloche hats, cowboy hats... I'm not hard to convince. But the Trump/Macron hat was the sort of hat that, well, annoys me: too big yet not big enough to be a dramatic statement; droopy, rather than jaunty; limiting things like sight and hearing, which seems counterproductive in a social setting. 

So, on the one hand, I get it: why not unload an outfit specific, already worn hat that, frankly, only sort of worked? On the other hand... if you're going to auction off First Lady items, ostensibly "for charity" (vague "scholarships" are promised), why not pull together a substantial, wide ranging representation? Why just... well, you know... a hat?

By virtue of her silence, Mrs. Trump remains largely a cipher. It's why, aside from being well written, that the two books about Mrs. Trump - Stephanie Winston Wolkoff's and Stephanie Grisham's - have been the most intriguing looks behind the Trump curtains. Mrs. Trump, it is suggested, feels the press is unfair to her. Yet this could easily be addressed in a friendly interview. There is of course the fact that she does not seem entirely confident of her English (though her facility in a number of languages was touted frequently by Trump press agents), why not surprise everyone and do the interview in French? Or Italian?

Aside from the Trump family claims of press mistreatment, there's the similar, but not the same feeling across the conservative right that 'Liberal media" is deeply unfair, even disrespectful to Mrs. Trump, and her role as First Lady. This is, yes, a bit rich, coming from the folks who coined "Pig in a Pants Suit" and suggested, repeatedly, that Michelle Obama was a man. But then, too, the "support" for Mrs. Trump is itself kind of odd - a kind of force fitting of a few thinly known details into a blown up, largely fictional presentation of the former First Lady as a folksy, classy mom just trying to stage tasteful events. And indeed, though Mrs. Trump has been dogged by some fairly salacious photos she took as a model, the idea of widespread liberal disrespect for her is a bit extreme. One would have to have a much better sense of her to really even know where to begin or what to criticize.

As it is, Mrs. Trump largely sailed through the Presidential years largely unseen and undisturbed - arguably bringing a rarified, if occasionally severe sense of high style to White House decorating, and occasionally raising controversy with outfits like "I really don't care... do U?" and $75,000 Dolce jackets that were perhaps a bridge too far. And continuing that largely private life appears to be her plan. Which only brings us back to the overall weirdness of this story: why is Mrs. Trump selling that hat?  

 

The Hillbilly Elegy of JD Vance's Senate Campaign

While it's not entirely surprising that JD Vance has achieved "massive distraction status" in his campaign to campaign for Ohio's Senate seat, that doesn't make it any more serious.

Vance, a veritable compendium of notes on white rural poverty in Appalachia with a soupçon of absurd Trumpism plus a lot of angry white guy, has enjoyed outsize success with a modest book... and well, that's about it. Initially hailed as possessing some sort of unique insight into the Appalachian communities of his ancestors, over the course of the Trump years Vance devolved from Trump critic keenly aware of Trump's know-nothing appeal to rural communities to a Trump cheerleader eager to join the jeering crowd of rural supporters. 

The theory is that Vance's high profile combined with a media ready presence results in a field clearing romp to the GOP nomination; so far that 's been held up by a number of pesky realities. One of which is that Vance isn't from Ohio, but Kentucky, and though he has borderline appeal with some parts of neighboring Ohio territory, he's been out of step with Ohio's less rural, more cosmopolitan cities and nearby suburbs. Another is that Trump personally, for a variety of reasons, favors other Ohio candidates. A third is that Vance seems to be struggling to find a narrative that can be comfortably pro-Trumpist, while not edging into simply "out there" politics. The latter is what's been surprising, since Vance initially seemed well within political mainstreams.

But these are wild times and Vance has, so far, managed to head for Crazy Town at almost every opportunity. He advanced a "pro-family" notion of politics so weirdly extreme even conservatives were baffled (claiming at one point that all left wing politicians including Nancy Pelosi, a mother of 5, could only be childless and anti family). His opposition to even the most common sense approaches to vaccination and other public health responses to Covid has been as extreme as a deep southern governor: fine for them, but absolutely at odds with the popular, sensible policies of Ohio's Mike DeWine. More to the point, Vance has yet to advance the kind of holistic politically centrist policies of a senatorial candidate that have traditionally marked Ohio, where candidates achieve national status as bellweathers of the "realistic middle").

Democratic fear of Vance, aside from the relative star power, has everything to do with the vast nameless fears that Trumpism isn't in retreat but rather running silent, but deadly, under America's cultural notice. The theory being that while normal people may think this stuff is crazy and disastrous for the GOP... just like 2016, liberals will be caught short when Republicans overwhelm them again at the polls.

What can one say? Perhaps that's true... though as a theory it tends to favor 2016 over all that's happened since, including Trump's eventual defeat in 2020, and the sense that without Trump, Republicans are struggling to achieve similar vote results (which, fair enough, could be fine for 2022, but just kicks the fears to Trump re-emerging for 2024). 

Either way, though... Vance, as a harbinger is so far not working out as planned. He continues to poll weakly in potential Republican matchups, never mind any scenario in which he actually gets a nomination and runs against a Democrat. Hillbilly Elegies alone won't solve that problem, and political extremism, so far, is making it worse. Unless some GOP behind the curtain magic works to transform Vance's extreme edges and tendency to mouth off unsupervised, it's hard to see how Vance pulls off a primary, never mind the general.

One larger thread to pull from this, though, is an insight that upsets both the right that's invested in Trump and the left that fears that they're right: ultimately, Vance's take on the rural audience may be right about their anger, but wrong about how that translates to long term political success. Vance's insights, such as they are, provide a window into the sense of hopelessness and despair that drives rural poverty, and he's surely onto something there. But rather than proving that populist politics can be their salvation, the events of the last few years have probably illuminated that hopelessness and despair tend to lead to poor choices, not wise ones, and thus, may just reinforce what it was meant to relieve. Trump, in other words, is a dead end. And Vance, provocative views or not, can't solve that any more than any other non-Trump voice. Trump himself only manages to camouflage the dead endedness with more bluster.

And that bluster, I suspect, is itself wearing thin... which is why, while Trump serves as a major distraction for the GOP, he doesn't represent any kind of solution down the political road. Between legal issues, his own short attention span, laziness and greed, Trump would happily scoop up all the money he could and shirk the actual work of even running again if he can avoid it. All because, unlike Vance, Trump isn't running away from a nightmare past in rural poverty. And because much more like Vance, he has little empathy or sympathy for all the people still trapped there.

As an aside, I suspect Vance would seem more dangerous, his appeal to rural whites more on point, had Hillbilly Elegy translated into a film that had not been met with derision rather than awe. Ham-handed and overthought, the film underscored that as much as Vance's story had some appeal, it was not necessarily new, save for the reality that America tends to ignore the addiction issues of non-privileged whites. And indeed, were Vance to position himself as an earnest, hard working voice fighting to help those addicts against an unfeeling system of bureaucracy and privilege, he might very well be the threat many left and right imagined he might be. Doing that, though, would require tapping into the things Vance himself has rejected via Trumpism: a sense of hope, of fairness, of seeing the good in what we do when we help one another.  By defining his quest in terms of his own personal victory, Vance underscores why the Trump dead end is just that dead: "only one of us gets out of here alive. And it better be me."

Real Time: Ain't No Mountain Low Enough

"Did you see that clip from Bill Maher" comes at you one of 2 ways, ways you can usually spot in the tone of the questioner. It's either the "can you believe this" tone of exasperated outrage or the "You've gotta see this" of a Maher loyalist often meant to imply to the questioned that your similar balloon of preconceptions needs bursting. This week, of course, it was "Have you seen Sharon Osbourne" though Maher managed to upstage both her and himself, with a separate bombastic rant about covid hysteria and praise for Ron DeSantis.

Yeah... I'm not here to get into most of that... but maybe I'll circle back to it.

No, what struck me is how I mostly consider Maher an irrelevancy. I've never bothered to review Maher's shows, or even discuss him generally when discussing tv comics; I don't really see the point. Maher's essentially been doing the same shtick for years (even arguably launched a slew of wannabes, like, say, Greg Gutfeld), with about the same effect on the national conversation all along. And me... I don't really see the point.  

But hey, I'll say it: Real Time with Bill Maher is an overhyped, undercooked mess of classy trash - insult humor for the quasi-sophisticate set who enjoy the self satisfied host's air of smug superiority and takedowns of easy marks. Granddad to all the "nothing matters and what if it did" comic takes on politics (oh wait, that's George Carlin), Bill Maher can probably ride this dead horse into retirement... but that's not going to change the pointlessness of it all.

Maher started his career bouncing around the middle of the stand up golden years, back in the eighties when the spots were plentiful and the white guys ruled. Not great, not terrible, Maher has a way with a sly wisecrack or arch putdown and what was, at the time, a "postmodern worldview towards current events" that only afterwards did many of us notice was upscale nihilism in a deadpan dress. In the early nineties, Maher parlayed that shtick into the nascent Comedy Central's late night offering "Politically Incorrect" which, largely by timing, arrived in the right place at the right moment. Skewering "political correctness" in a modest, nobody cares timeslot was a good perch for him and the growing power of cable combined with an appeal to college kids and recent grads lent him an air of Letterman like hipness.

In general, Maher isn't: arriving in the early moments of the Clinton era made him the perfect foil for West Wing era type Kennedyesque hopefulness; it helped that Maher's personal presentation was straight out of the Rat Pack/Playboy After Dark hipsters of a similar era. When Clinton's personal issues blew up into the impeachment saga, Maher rode his act over to parent ABC, and took over their late-late slot (after Nightline), again showing that being a modest success in a nothing timeslot is a kind of stardom. That gig fell through after 9/11 when Maher's screeds against Muslim terrorists crossed from sarcastic to, well, all too real.

And that's Maher's real problem, trying to find that knife edge of just outrageous enough, but not pushing it, insults to the hobby horses of one side or another. Self described as liberal, Maher is just another cynic who is pretty sure they're all liars and crooks, or not cool enough to get what's really going on. He bolstered that act by combining a mix of generally 2nd to 3rd rate celebrities with the kind of political bomb throwers (legendarily, Ann Coulter... but pretty much most of those nineties right wing "author/pundit/columnists" and the eventual lefties who chased after them), tossing a straw man amongst them, and seeing if it caught on fire. Oooh, the outrageousness! Cue the clutched pearls!

Since getting tossed by ABC, it was inevitable that Maher could still find a buyer for what he was selling, and so... there he is, muddling through on HBO as he has for 18 years and counting, still hawking it like an aging stripper who went up market and is now mostly rhinestones and feathers and a lot less skin. Maher skews the proceedings by giving himself both an opening and closing monologue, ten minutes or so with someone usually hawking a policy book or memoir (I'm guessing John Boehner, soon enough), and another 10-12 with 3 "guests": still a Coulter like object, a well meaning but usually clueless Hollywood type and a DC pol looking to ziz up their recognition numbers. No insight, I guarantee you, will be derived.

Trying to get through it is exhausting - I suspect Maher sustains himself, these days, on the fact that John Oliver, while funnier and more topically relevant, comes across as a bit dry and airless. Maher's always been the class clown of the frat party, frantically working the room, pushing any button til he hits, and that desperation does get the job done, eventually and usually. Maher's real Achilles heel is that his monologues, while clever, insist on making him the hero of the joke: he's the one armed with the brilliant insight, the "secret truth," the last thrilling reveal. It's hard being Pithy on Purpose - it is, actually, the opposite of pith. If Maher's occasional flashes of brilliance lead to an indeed meaningful insight, he drowns the good in a sea of "it's meaningful because I say it is." It's too easy, in the end, for Maher to simply play the eternally cynical contrarian, reminding you - the audience - that your real weakness is caring about something, someone, or worse, a principle like justice or ultimate good. Pour yourself a whiskey and listen up kids... the world is going to let you down. See how right I am? QED.

And so Maher tried to double bill his cynical counterprogramming, absolving Osbourne of the racist stench that got her booted from The Talk, while simultaneously piously intoning that only he could serve as arbiter of what is sensible covid health policy and what is overkill. On the latter, he's neither, though the antiscience, anyone can play expert motif is probably more in tune with the times (and why that story mauled Osbourne's, yet again). Osbourne plays to his personal, still Rat Pack-y demeanor as an aging hipster who is weary of the performative wokeness. She may play well to a part of his audience, but Maher's own bad reputation is starting to catch up to him... and Osbourne's presence just underscores how much of Maher's act is long past its freshness date.

Because, ultimately, the "cancel culture" myth is just the "politically correct" bugaboo in new words: a sort of "it's unfair to criticize me for saying this awful outrageous thing when you're just as awful, mostly for being critical." As Politically Incorrect demonstrated, Maher can beat that dead horse all he likes, and make a clever not exactly funny show of it... but ultimately, there's nothing there but dead ends. Real Time may let him take the old material and dress it up like Dick Cavett, but the shtick remains and the act is beyond old. It's not that Maher may get cut, yet again, on his knife edge of outrageousness... it's that the knife is pretty dull these days. Even if the faithful haven't yet caught on to that.

The Trials Of Nixon

Let's just get this out of the way up front: I think Cynthia Nixon is immensely talented. She has had an amazing career. I'm sorry I missed her and Laura Linney - who I also admire - trading roles in The Little Foxes. Hers is the most wondrous role of Sex and the City, from the very first minutes of the pilot, to the brilliant Models and Mortals, and on and on - even if she couldn't salvage the misbegotten sequel feature film.

None of that, nor her moves into political activism I'm afraid, makes her a necessarily great choice to be the next Governor of New York.

Just how formidable an opponent she might or might not be to Andrew Cuomo isn't entirely clear, and likely never will be. Since she announced her intention to run, backed by the array of allies who backed Zephyr Teachout's more left field challenge to Cuomo that unleashed a torrent of bad feeling for our current Governor, Cuomo has responded with the kind of machine gun to kill a mouse approach that seems to suggest that he's at least looking to not repeat the last debacle. What's less clear is whether Nixon really poses a threat even on par with Teachout, never mind beyond that.

Cuomo's side started early and hard, with Christine Quinn coming out before Nixon even officially entered the race to term Nixon an "unqualified lesbian" who'd been especially unhelpful in Quinn's run for Mayor (as the "qualified lesbian"). Quinn's score settling was so heavy handed that she had to back away from the implications that she was knocking Nixon's later life coming out for fear of ruining her political ties to gay activism (God knows, she's never going to run again in New York for anything, ever). But that episode wasn't helped by a slow-footed response from Nixon and her team that spoke to her challenges as a campaign neophyte... underlining the very things Quinn raised.

New York politics - especially in the city, but really, across the state - is not a nice or pleasant business. Set aside the sense of general sleaze in Albany - which animates the dissatisfaction with Cuomo - and there's still the everyday unpleasantness of a statewide web of political clubs and organizations who use arcane rules and complex procedure to handicap all but the most dogged of political ambitions. It is not for the faint of heart, the delicate of sensibilities or the naive. And Nixon isn't the first, or last, New Yorker with a name to get tossed into a maelstrom of political storms based on a well meaning attempt to ride fame and recognition to glory.

And so it was that Nixon found herself this week managing to get the endorsement of the Working Families Party - a key endorsement for lefties unhappy with traditional Democratic Party machine politics - in a battle that may well have undone the whole party's existence. Before dropping out of the contest entirely, Cuomo used his weight as their chief negotiator to...well, who can say, exactly, but let's try "encourage" WFP's main union backers - SEIU and the downstate local of the CWA - to walk away from their support. Thus Nixon now has a party endorsement from a party that, without it's basic coalition of  activists and union groups, doesn't quite have a reason to exist at all.

The existence of the WFP, and a number of similar small parties not familiar to many outside the state, is just one of our interesting wrinkles. It's why, for instance, the well meaning insurgents on Team Sanders found themselves blindsided by not gearing up early or actively enough in 2016, when the state's arcane rules left them without lines on the small party ballots and voters who hadn't known early enough to switch their party allegiances had no way to vote in the state's primary (that 10 month window - which has passed this year as well - will also hurt Nixon). "Reformers" talk a good game of attacking the interconnected web of New York rules (don't get me started on petitioning, our time honored extra hurdle), but the fact is, the people who benefit from those rules are the ones who'd have to vote to change them. And that, as we say, ain't happening.

There's no reason to fault Nixon for not knowing what many newcomers don't know... but that doesn't excuse a savvy operator like Teachout, who is Nixon's treasurer, from having some insight into the potential messes long before now (like the way, for instance, Cuomo started a "Women's Party" to help stall her chances, and headed it up with... Christine Quinn). And it is a point that Nixon's fame and name recognition is also her Achilles heel - because she's more visible, her name likely to attract readers to New York's splashy but struggling tabloids, every shudder and misstep plays out very publicly. That's the problem of a celebrity neophyte - and a New Yorker doesn't need to look much farther than Donald Trump to see how bad that can be. Sure Trump, more or less steamrolled his way into office... but his campaign was marked, repeatedly, by dumb, unforced errors played out in splashy fashion because of his name recognition (and just as splashily, are stlll likely to get him remove from office sooner rather than later).

Worse still is the fact that Andrew Cuomo's lumpish, disliked presence as Governor is ripe for a strong, thoughtful challenge; it beggars belief that Teachout herself, coming off a surprisingly strong finish against him last time, didn't just re-up herself, even with her more painful loss in an upstate Congressional race in 2016. Teachout's laserlike focus on a platform of combined governmental reform and pledge to focus on the needs of everyday New Yorkers played especially well. Nixon, by contrast, has embraced a set of proposals that seem tailored to both the narrow swath of Sanders stye lefties and a city specific audience happy to hear about lowering apartment rents and tackling the MTA. Missing from that is the basic core of Democratic party success - threading the needs of economically challenged upstate communities with the appeal to minority interests needed to prevail across the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens. So far, Nixon is shaping up to be Teachout lite: an amiable protest vote that will never pose much threat to Cuomo, and that he can easily co-opt by adapting her more attractive proposals to his placating whims. Which is exactly what he did to her this week on recreational marijuana.

The simpler fact is that Nixon, for many, doesn't cross the threshold to be Governor; this is a state of active, thoughtful voters (especially in primaries) with a high bar and serious criteria. Nothing in Nixon's fine resume as a performer suggests the skills needed in a Governor, and nothing in the early days of her run suggests the kind of nerve and political savvy needed in a state as complex and diverse as New York. If she'd started small, if she'd started earlier... who can say? But sadly - and cynically - her run seems to be exactly, well, what it seems: plucking a name brand celebrity with some lefty cred and throwing her out there in the hopes that she can thrown Cuomo off balance enough to pose a real threat. Sure it's deeply unfair to voters to play them like that... but ultimately I'm a little more sad for Nixon herself - she didn't, and doesn't, deserve this.

And so, we'll get what we'll always get: more time with a connected guy from a political family who long ago ceded his integrity for power and some limited prestige. Cuomo is so badly damaged - if nothing else, he's an ethical disaster - that he has no chance on the national stage, yet he commands the levers of a well oiled political machine so skillfully that no ordinary opponent can stop him in state. Zephyr Teachout was the kind of wild card that threw a wrench into that machine. Nixon, quite simply, isn't. And knowing that now, with so much yet to unfurl, is the real trial we all face, here in the Empire State.

Related articles

'Sex and the City' star Cynthia Nixon kicks off New York governor campaign in Brooklyn

Why New York's Andrew Cuomo has a race on his hands

Cynthia Nixon is running for governor of New York

Cynthia Nixon Announces Bid to Run for New York Governor.

What in the World, Matt Lauer?

Lest we get too carried to near tears as Savannah Guthrie was this morning, let's try to remember that there's a reasonable case to be made that firing Matt Lauer from the Today show could also be presented as overdue, and necessary.

Lauer, the highest paid anchor on NBC, at $25 million a year was the longstanding face of a cash cow, but beyond that... well, discussions of his role there were often kind to say the least. His immediate predecessors went on to host the NIghtly News (Brokaw) or be the face of NBC Sports (Gumbel), but no one ever suggested Lauer was good for any of that Indeed, it's hard to say, even now, just what he was good at. His interviews were never called "must see" or memorable, he wasn't the go-to person for major "gets," as they say. He wasn't especially insightful and did little in the way of political moderation (and when he did push his way into the format, last election season, his inartful pestering of HIllary Clinton was widely panned).

Lauer sat with several cohosts - Katie Couric's star power was undeniable, Meredith Vieira's quietly assured, Savannah Guthrie's enthusiasm widely admired. Lauer was none of these, and worse, really, in helping to wreck Ann Curry. Lauer was the face of endless self satisfaction, of having nailed the catbird seat on a money train no one was prepared to stop. He was the nonthreatening, disinterested, slightly sarcastic face of a show that gave up on hard news and settled comfortably into puff pieces and cross promotion, soldiering on through Olympic mornings and Macy's parades without ever rising above expectations. No wonder, on his watch, Today fell from first to third (briefly) in morning shows, the subject of endless backstage gossip and production team shakeups, full of senior executives too nervous of change or too scared of anger to point out that the thing most in need of a revamp was sitting at the main desk.

He started blandly handsome and never especially developed into anything more, and arguably helped immeasurably in making morning television exponentially worse. Weddings on beaches, travelogues from across the globe... and of course another day of diets and that book everybody's reading and that movie that opens at $150 million or more. Lauer's tenure turned Today into People and people into marketing ploys. Hard news? Why even bother?

And for all of this he was known and seen all over New York as one of those guys who had it all and expected more. The ever growing absurd salary. The helicopter to the Hamptons just to go to work. That house and the perfect wife and those puffy articles in magazines you never read at the doctor's office (like, erm, People, the print equivalent of Today). He was never especially loved - tabloids were all too happy to attribute internal strife at Today to his ever growing ego - but post enough publicists on the project and from a certain light, not examined too closely, he was just an ordinary guy doing another day's work. Or something. And hey, check out that mansion!

It took less than 3 hours for Guthrie's "we had no idea" innocence (and hey, how better to elicit that reaction than to tell her an hour or so before going on air) to be subsumed by reports that both Variety and the New York Times had been working, for some time, on reports of complaints against Lauer - and that NBC knew of those allegations. That's gonna sting, and gives some indication, still, of how on air female talent is treated next to male costars. I'm thinking less of Gayle King and Norah O'Donnell than I am of Kelly Ripa, who finally put her foot down after repeated attempts to be written off while carrying ABC's syndicated "Live!" NBC has wasted years perpetuating this TV "husband and wife" silliness of Today cohosts, despite a storied history of women - Barbara Walters and Jane Pauley through now - perfectly able to carry the show alone.

But more than that, more than the way Lauer's story dovetails so neatly with all the "we're shocked, shocked" responses to power male misbehavior, the real test it seems to me is if someone takes note of the way Lauer's endless mediocrity warped and degraded the very fabric of the Today show itself, into the fluffy, pointless, four hour monstrosity he leaves behind. It's that glossy, false fun patina of endless morning cheer that really deserves to die, sacrificed on the alter of the sacred monsters allowed to thrive in its fake living rooms and rope line courtyards. No more Matt Lauers. Is that really too much to hope?

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Knowing

By no means a Hollywood insider, I have to say, I am just a lover of film. Have been since I was at least 13. That's the summer - I remember it well - that I spent in the dark of the Walters Art Gallery auditorium getting my introduction to the classics of film. Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Joan Crawford, Katharine Hepburn... I fell in love with Hollywood's Golden Age. It led me to The Oscars, and histories of The Academy, and to taking film seriously, and to the criticism of Pauline Kael (along with Steinem, the writer I aspire to be).

I don't care a lot about celebrity, but I like getting the "inside scoop" on Hollywood, how films are made, who's doing what, what it takes to get to the top.  Over the years, I've learned about producers, and studios and the work of directors... just to keep up, to be "in the know."

The point of all of this, and why I bring it up now is that... I'm no insider, and even I can't say I had no idea what was going on with Harvey Weinstein.

In the midst of his stunning downfall, the claims of "I had no idea" or "if I had known" are spreading far and wide. And I get it. No one, really, had a handle on the specifics and the scope of Weinstein's activities until near simultaneous reporting from The New York Times and The New Yorker (I'll get to Ronan Farrow in a minute), and there's an enormity to the revelations in total that matters. But at the same time... this thing about "knowing," and what it means, sticks with me, and I suspect, it will haunt us in film and pop culture in the months to come.

My point about knowing, and saying that I knew... something, is that Harvey Weinstein's very public lifestyle and professional behavior were pretty much impossible to hide. He was proclaimed legendarily difficult, temperamental, and damned everywhere with faint praise when directors and stars of his productions were interviewed. Stories abounded of his crass acts, bad moods and public unpleasantness. They were joined - and here's what people tended to focus on - by tales of his passionate concern for the quality of the finished product, his commitment to the talent, and his hucksterish skills promoting the work he cared about. 

And herein lie a number of the problems his actual behavior have revealed. First, there's the unmitigated power he held over individuals and careers. The success of Miramax, and subsequently The Weinstein Company, lay in cornering the market of "Art House" or "Classy" productions, the stuff we call "Oscar bait" and "small films" which imply both Too Good for the Mass Audience and a sort of labor of love that may never make back its cost. In fact, Weinstein was very good at turning a profit on these productions, both by keeping them relatively cheap and promoting the hell out of the ones that he thought would catch on. But outside of Weinstein, that kind of success has been increasingly rare. And because of it Weinstien had a power over one segment of the film industry (at his height) that was fairly unmatched going back perhaps as far as the days of the great moguls. That power, in turn, made it easy for him to corner aspiring starlets and other neophytes, and behave in spectacularly inappropriate ways with no fear of consequence.

Second, Weinstein benefitted from the casual ways of doing business in Hollywood, where there is a formal casting process for most roles and another, less formal approach to star parts and star making ones. This story isn't new, and the rumors have abounded, forever, that the route to stardom for many, if not most, is littered with agreeing to do things one wouldn't necessarily want to do... and the winners are the ones who did. The revelations of Weinstein, literally "go down on this and I'll make you a star," are little more than... well, the fantasy made flesh, and a reminder that the reality is way worse than any fantasy would ever imply.

Weinstein's fall, some have suggested, is actually an indication that he hasn't actually been powerful for some time, and I tend to agree. Primacy has a short shelf life in Hollywood, and we're long past the days of high Merchant Ivory and Shakespeare in Love. The Weinstein Company is important, but plenty of avenues exist to go independent, and Moonlight is merely the latest in a string of examples of how the Awards givers are aching to challenge the public to see more and better. Weinstein can be taken down now because, in part, his hand doesn't control all the levers like it used to - remember when he launched Tina Brown into Talk? And while this week's events may have hastened his breakup with Georgina Chapman, how long was that marriage going to last if Marchesa's dominance of the gown market was sliding away from lack of celebrity stylist use?

The thing about Weinstein in Hollywood is that there's always a Weinstein. Someone with too much power (hey Mike Ovitz), too much control (hey Mike Eisner), too much bad behavior (hey Simpson and Bruckheimer). The question is, do we plan to take the next woman - or man - seriously when charges of sexual misconduct come up? Is Hollywood planning to rule some behavior ethically unacceptable, no matter how powerful? Or, as we did this time, are we going to sit there and pretend, with straight faces, that we would have done something... if only we had known. Because we knew. People knew. And people did, in essence, nothing.

In the aftermath, as we do in America, there's a fervent search for someone to blame. It makes things easier, and absolves us from the harder conversations that a) lots of people have some responsibility here and b) that blaming isn't really the point. Blame Hillary Clinton for not responding fast enough. Blame NBC for not feeling that Ronan Farrow's story was strong enough last March or last August... or whenever. Blame Cyrus Vance Jr. for not prosecuting Weinstein in 2015. Blame Bob Weinstein, because surely "brother's keeper" ought to mean something. Blaming is useless (and with Clinton, among a list of politicians and other celebrities, especially ridiculous), and misses the point. If this behavior troubles you deeply - and God knows, shouldn't it? - then the problems we have are about preventing it, and taking it seriously when its reported. And I, for one, have heard precious little about fixing that.

I hate the idea that good people knew and did nothing. It saddens me to think that women who could have saved one another from predatory behavior were too scared or felt too powerless to intervene. It angers me that someone like Vance, or members of the TWC board, can sit there and make excuses for not doing enough, or anything, soon enough. Mostly I just hate knowing that as bad as I ever thought Harvey Weinstein was, he was something far, far worse. The problem is.. that's not all we know. But I think we'll pretend not to know, again, next time.

 

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A Price Above Rubies

In America's mix of egalitarian and elitism, it's not hard to find oneself living or socializing in close proximity to great wealth. It's one of the oldest staples of Hollywood - the good (or bad) kid from a modest upbringing getting exposed to the ways of the upper class. The scholarship kid at boarding school. The everyday worker who marries the boss' daughter. That time you went to dinner in a fancy New York restaurant, surrounded by the obvious displays of people with far more money, if not taste, than yourself.

In some ways, I feel bad for Tom Price. It's not easy to be in close proximity to extravagance, natural, even, to feel somehow you should get to do and have the same things. I was a scholarship kid at a fairly elite private college where other kids drove the spare family BMW, amongst other luxuries large and small. I lived in Manhattan. I've had the privilege of a private showing of the Chanel Couture collection. As much as you think you know about wealth, there's always a level more.

Sadly, the lesson of the last few days is that these are the moments that really do show one's moral compass, and in that, Tom Price failed. Excessive use of private jets on the government dime is a ridiculous, petty excess that flies in the face of claims to cost consciousness and an interest in cutting the size of government. And it's not as though Price's fall was recent. His history of questionable stock deals in health companies while Chairing the House Committee overseeing their affairs was, it's clear, just an indication of Price's sense that he wanted in on the gravy train rolling nearby.

It's gotta sting when you're so very close to it, and reminded constantly of just how far away that life actually is.

Donald Trump may not be as wealthy as he claims, but he is, of course, the very essence of the eighties era "Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous" that he came to embody, and take as his "brand." (Trump, in fact, doesn't have the usual Gulfstream size PJ as his main plane - he has a 737 gaudily painted with his logo that hangs out, visibly, near the runways at LaGuardia.) And he has, naturally, stacked his Administration with like minded, and similarly well-heeled, millionaires and billionaires. In the midst of revelations this week involving a number of Trump officials... there sits Betsy DeVos, who doesn't spend government money on a jet, because she owns one.

Of course, as the adage goes, money can't buy taste, and the kind of wealth Trump and his friends bring to DC is a kind of ostentatious, showy display of wealth that rubs many, rich or not, the wrong way. Trump's gilded, golden everything decor in his homes and Country Clubs is designed to impress the easily awed, not demonstrate classic, sublime taste associated with older, quieter money (even DeVos, in that regard, seems more understated and private). Trump's is the conspicuous, elaborate consumption of someone who cares more about showing off, and the appearance of class than anything actually classy. Even Trump's much lampooned language about "the best" and "big league" in regards to what he owns betrays that endless need to show off, to preen and self aggrandize. What's sad, ultimately, about Price isn't just the small, petty nature of his fall - it's the way he let Trump's especially tasteless approach to extravagance further warp his own sense of entitlement. Surely, there are better ways to aspire to being upper class.

Trump's extravagant obviousness, too, is why losing Price is neither the end of this story, nor even likely it's worst example (and we do, after all, still have the oblivious displays of Steve Mnuchin and his recent bride, who may be hiding for now, but seem likely to reappear at any moment). The ridiculous trips, the family with no sense of propriety, combined with dozens of hangers-on, some rich and wasteful, some poor and aspiring... the stories can, and will, write themselves (the world waits, Scott Pruitt - don't stop now). And then of course, there's the even more familiar territory of say, Ryan Zinke, and the casual selling of favors to vested interests, like the oil and gas industry.

Still, at the heart of this Dynasty-like resurgence (I, for one, am not so sure that the CW's revival/reboot isn't a stroke of genius) is that sad, small tale of Tom Price. Covetousness and greed are embarrassing; it's almost painful to watch anyone's flaws laid out in such public, shaming display. American culture markets conspicuous consumption like it's, literally, going out of style. You will never have enough. You will never be rich enough, or thin enough, well dressed enough, or live luxuriously enough. The penthouse apartment, the private jet, the furs, the cars... the list is, truly, endless. And yet, how we punish those who succumb most to the siren's call.  It is vengeful, bordering on cruel.

The trick of course, is to learn what it means to have enough. To see luxuries as just that - the occasional extra, a little bit more, a nice perk. When I get to fly in the front of the plane, dine in the 5 star restaurant, buy the Tom Ford fragrance at Saks... I try to remember to be grateful. And to enjoy it without asking for more. At the very least, it gives one the luxury of giving Tom Price something worse than scorn... and that's pity.

Stay Thirsty, My Friends

Jim Comey, apparently, is the most powerful man in the world.

I mean, honestly: who helped decide this past Presidential election more? Who is now in a position to provide the evidence that will get the man who won it removed? Who said, at his testimony this week "I thought maybe if the memo got out, we could get a Special Prosecutor"? And whose leaked memo did precisely that? And not only that, seems to have gotten him the Special Counsel he actually wanted all along, Bob Mueller.

Outside of J. Edgar Hoover, I'm not sure we've had a head of the FBI who managed to place himself so centrally at the nexus of law and politics and power in this country... and in that sense, bear with me, Donald Trump firing him, while idiotic and venal, may have achieved a goal that may never have been achieved by anyone else for years: Comey is no longer wielding immense power in a way that guarantees he cannot be touched.

What was remarkable at Comey's hearing with the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was just how chastened he seemed - which is to say, not much, but just, somehow, enough. No longer ennobled by his Cloak of Official Power, Comey teed up on his new sworn enemy (he's clearly no fan of the President, not now) and provided a series of exceedingly direct, and even revealing answers of the sort he'd likely have avoided were he still Director of the FBI. Power, after all, lies not in what you know, but how and when you let others know. And Comey's power, now, rests in letting the knowledge run free, not in carefully hoarding it.

The terrifying thing, after all, is how boxed in those who would nominally be in charge of Comey were, or would be, were he still in  charge. President Obama had myriad calls to relieve Comey, and seemed, by the end of his term to have realized the buyer's remorse of appointing him to begin with. But there was no way Obama coul fire him without looking like a partisan protecting Hillary Clinton. And had Clinton been elected, she certainly would have been in a similar box. And then there's Trump, who should have understood that while he might have been able to fig leaf firing Comey right upon taking office as a "necessary housecleaning" would look atrocious, and  dumb, to fire Comey as the drip drip drip of revelations began regarding Flynn, Russia and a hose of questionable contacts and acts by his campaign and nascent Administration (actions and contacts, which, despite conservative mythmaking, seem to clearly point to a major, troubling level of meddling in US affairs by a foreign power).

That Trump's firing of Comey will likely lead to his undoing - impeachment, resignation, charges, jail time... whatever - doesn't negate the serendipitous side effect of separating Comey from the absoliute power that was clearly getting out of hand. The kind of power that had him overruling a sitting Attorney General in the conducting of the Clinton investigation - behavior he continues to justify, even as he admits that there's literally no there there with the case. The kind of power that left Presidents beholden to his whims. The kind of power that made people quake when he merely said "I cannot confirm or deny..." whether vaguely made allegation of wrongdoing was under investigation.

There's a healthy, even necessary conversation we ought to be having about this kind of power. About the problematic history of the FBI, and the uneasy compromise we've made that projects the shadow of Hoover and his tactics over American life long after he's left the stage. "Director of the FBI" is the federal government's strangest made up role - there's nothing in the Constitution that suggests a federal role in law enforcement - and we accept, somehow, that it's real and deserves to be left with virtually no direct control... and we wonder, often, how that power winds up being corrupting.

Without Comey, we're avoiding that conversation. Any Trump appointee - assuming, absurdly, one can be confirmed - will be damaged goods, an instant question mark, an easy scapegoat. The power of the FBI willl be checked, in part, because Comey ran amok, and because without him, this Administration's options to run amok seem worse. We will not have Comey's FBI, but we will want an FBI that's strong. And in that contradiction lies so much about who we are as a nation. The conversation can wait... but it shouldn't. We'll wait, and somewhere, down the road, we'll probably get another person drunk on power who can't quite be stopped. Just don't pretend we don't know that this can happen. Or why.

As for Trump, our hopes really do rest on... well, Jim Comey. Not just on those revelations he shared and what is left to reveal, but the discipline and effectiveness of the organization he shaped and now leaves behind. It rests in all of us - the ones not in the tank for Trump - continuing to insist that questions be asked, laws be followed, and justice be swift and sure. He may not be the ally we wanted... but he is the most powerful man in the world. Stay thirsty, my friends.

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Bad Milo. Bad, Naughty Milo.

Even his name - "Milo Yiannopolous" - is something of an alternative fact: he changed it from "Hanrahan" which was the name of his father, who left when he was six.Yiannopoplous comes from his maternal grandmother, who raised him.

There was never much reason to pay attention to Milo, a bratty British schoolboy eager to spread his opinions, calling it "journalism," in that way conservatives do, repeating twice told tales to justify their negative views of others. Being British, and snide, was about all that differentiated Yiannopolous from the other far right voices - slap a dress and a blonde wig on it and you've got Ann Coulter. Or Monica Crowley. Or Kellyanne Conway. Or...

He'd made himself something of an internet star, mouthing off about "Gamergate" - which boils down to teenage boys trying to put a "No girls allowed" sign on video game playing, with just the sort of especially ugly, hateful results one would expect. For no particular reason, he decided to turn his negative energy - and that of his teenboy fans - on Leslie Jones, resulting in that much more negative attention and a lifetime ban on Twitter.

As Andrew Sullivan noted, the kind of bratty conservatism espoused by Milo (and Sullivan, from much the same background) thrives and grows on the negative response. It's political theory as reaction formation, why I've been clear on what Coulter and Malkin et al actually are since college - what was "Dartmouth Review" but the "politically incorrect" screed of kids eager to express opposition to feel good slogans of liberal activism? And 30 years on that's what conservatives have to offer: not ideas, but something outrageous, designed to oppose perfectly reasonable proposals meant to help others. It's not what you're for, but what they're against.

Since the Jones imbroglio, Milo enjoyed a rapid rise to that curious kind of American stardom that only happens in the fevered circles of the angry right - he got a book deal, and speaking gigs... and last week, he popped up on Real Time with Bill Maher, and got announced for a speaker role at CPAC, where the show always needs the fresh ziz of the latest hateful thing.

If I'm surprised by the fall Milo has had in only 4 days, it's only that I figured he'd at least get to give that CPAC speech. As it was, the only thing that could embarrass CPAC (and it's leader, the smooth talking Trump supporter and Fox "contributor" Matt Schlapp) was new exposure to old interviews Milo had done, applying his bratty British humor to gay sexuality and the priest sex scandal. That was enough(!) to lose Milo the book deal, the speaking gigs, and his job as Associate Editor at Breitbart.com. Because, naturally, where else would Milo  be working, but Breitbart?

It's easy to get hung up on Milo's outrageous comments around sex - and it's not as if that particular element hadn't been swirling around him all along. Part of Milo's shtick was wearing his status as a young gay man on his sleeve, touting his (reductive, racially insensitive) love of black men and hinting at his own sexual prowess. (It's especially amusing, given CPAC's checkered past with gay conservatives, that they blustered into booking Milo anyway.) And it was, in fact, the cavalier way Yiannopolous described his own experiences of priest sex abuse that drove much of his downfall, given that, as even he admitted in his Tuesday press conference, that abuse goes a long way to explaining his bratty public persona since.

But let's not get too lost in focusing hard on Milo: the real lesson here is about conservatives, their role in propping up and pushing hateful rhetoric like Milo's, and the endless need to find fresh flavors of the month expressing all that hate. Let's remember CPAC played that role in launching Ann Coulter, and Michelle Malkin, and numerous others (hey, Ben Carson!) as well. Let's point out, as well, that this flameout illuminated yet more clearly all of what's wrong with "news outlets" like Breitbart, which never called Yiannopolous to account for many outlandish things he wrote and said - and indeed, never raised a peep about those sex comments at the time they were made, nor in context of his overall persona. One can only marvel out how dysfunctional a work environment could be that a "half dozen" staffers at Breitbart threatened to quit this week if Milo were allowed to stay on. This week!

Conservatives would like, of course, to isolate Milo now, now that the cat's out of the bag, that he's "gone too far" despite the reality that "too far" was an interview he gave last year, and ignores years (and years) of examples of Milo's excessive, hateful words and actions. It was too much for Twitter... but conservatives still clung to him (and arguably, too, Twitter's actions were years past due as well). Simon and Schuster lost authors over holding onto Milo's book... but still they held on. Until this week. Conservatism didn't become "like this" yesterday. And Milo is a symptom, not the disease. Removing him addresses neither cause, nor cure.

So CPAC will offer up "President Trump" and plenty of other familiar lines of conservative anger and hate... and pretend Milo was a bad dream that maybe never even happened. That's what they do, over and over, as these once hot flavors "go too far" or the lies catch up to them. And suddenly, there's no speaking space for Ann Coulter. Or Sarah Palin. What a shame Milo couldn't hold it together long enough to provide another Outrage Du Jour...

Because, of course, what passes for conservatism these days is so utterly bankrupt and bereft of intellectual heft and interesting ideas that it is simply beyond embarrassing.  Literally. Everything about Milo's rise, his career, his galloping leaps toward greater fame... all of it was an embarrassment, a waste, a pointless exercise in watching a bratty child act out for others' amusement. Watching Milo's smirky, childish appearance on Maher - what little I could take - I figured it was a matter of time before something would wipe that smirk off his face. Two days later, no smirk. And a month from now, or a year... it's just another chance for another flavor of the month to rise.

If any good can come of this, I'd like to hope it comes from Milo reckoning with his own demons, working out his issues, finding some measure of personal grace. I wouldn't even necessarily mind the "I was a bratty jerk, but now I've changed" book he'll be pushing in a year, or two, or five... if he comes about it honestly, and expressively. That would at least show that someone is capable of growth and change. Because Lord knows, growth and change isn't going to come to the Conservative movement. Just another naughty bad boy, or girl, looking for attention. And getting it.