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Monday September 13, 2021

Lancelot Links

  • David Simon talks about the questions the late Michael K. Williams asked before the second season of “The Wire,” and what he asked each subsequent season. The answers to those questions are why “The Wire” is the greatest show in TV history.
  • James Fallows explicates George W. Bush's speech on the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and where we've gone wrong since. Yes, there should be a greater mea culpa in this from W., but he's one of the few members of the GOP who's saying what needs to be said: “We have seen growing evidence that the dangers to our country can come not only across borders, but from violence that gathers within.” I'd say it's the best speech W. has ever given; I wouldn't even know what might compare. 
  • As I mentoned on Twitter, W.'s line “step by step, toward grace” is very much Aeschylus by way of RFK: “drop by drop ... comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”
  • Here's a good YouTube discussion between David Chan and Walter Chaw on the merits, such as they are, of Marvel's “Shang-Chi” movie. I'm with Chaw; I was not impressed. I liked the bus scene but the more fantastical it became the more bored I got. And in the end it was too much like a Hong Kong/modern Chinese movie rather than a Hollywood or Marvel movie.
  • The Washington Post's Lily Kuo on how China's crackdown on tech companies, private tutoring, “sissy men,” and actress Zhao Wei, as well as its increased regulation of everything from karaoke songs and park dancing, has many fearing another Cultural Revolution.
  • Singer-songwriter-comedian Nick Lutsko has taken Alex Jones' rants and turned them into a folk song. And it's effin' brilliant.
  • This is a few months back but a goodie: Jonathan Chait on why Tom Brady joining Pres. Biden at the White House and joking about Trump is the sum of all Trump's fears. I didn't know much on their history—Trump ingratiating himself over and over again—nor Brady skipping the 2017 Super Bowl celebration at Trump's White House. Fun. Makes me resent Brady a little less.
  • Another new horrific term to learn: swatting, meaning to call 911 about a fake life-threatening situation to provoke a heavily-armed response from the police. I got it from this Post story. For a covetted Twitter handle, @tennessee, which belonged to Mark Herring, a father, grandfather, and 60-year-old computer programmer, several little shits, in both this country and the UK, harrassed him and others for several months. Then the swatting. They claimed violent, criminal activity at the Herring home when nothing was going on; and when the cops came, guns drawn, Herring suffered a heart attack and died. It's stories like this that make you want to wipe your hands of the whole mob.
Posted at 10:11 AM on Monday September 13, 2021 in category Lancelot Links