From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Late Night Snark: Lawyers and Dictators and Assholes, Oh My!
“Kim Jong Un might cancel his meeting with Trump, where they were supposed to discuss North Korea's nuclear weapons. Trump was like, ‘How could someone just pull out of a nuclear agreement?’ And Iran was like, ‘I know, it's crazy, right?’"
---Jimmy Fallon
“Michael Cohen: Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, and a lawyer so shitty he made Trump say, ‘I need someone good. Get me Rudy Giuliani on the phone.’”
---John Oliver
”Trump regurgitates anything he sees on Fox News. At this point, I’m surprised he hasn’t retweeted an ad for mesothelioma.”
---Jimmy Kimmel
“A horrible comment about John McCain [was] made by White House aide and flight-attendant-telling-you-to-get-back-to-coach Kelly Sadler. After the ailing senator announced that he opposed Trump’s pick for the CIA, Sadler said of McCain: ‘It doesn’t matter, he’s dying anyway.’ Kelly, you don’t know that for sure. Medical science can do wonders, though sadly for you there’s still no cure for assholes.”
---Stephen Colbert
“This month a white woman called the police on two Native American teenagers who were taking a college tour because she didn’t think they looked like they belonged there. They’re Native Americans standing in America! They’re the only people who do belong there. If you want to get rid of people who don’t belong, get your pasty ass back on the Mayflower and go home.”
---Late Night writer Amber Ruffin
C’mon down and splash. In honor of the one-year anniversary of the Mueller investigation, we've filled the kiddie pool with chocolate-covered subpoenas. Your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Friday, May 18, 2018
Note: Ceding this space to Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT):
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By the Numbers:
Weeks 'til the start of the Memorial Day weekend: 1!!!!
Days 'til the Magnolia Festival of Oklahoma in Durant: 13
Percent of youth of color surveyed for HRC’s 2018 LGBTQ Youth Report who believe their racial or ethnic group is regarded positively in the U.S.: 11%
Portion of LGBTQ youth of color who say they’ve personally experienced racism: 4/5
Number of vehicles, including riding lawnmowers, recovered last year by Relentless Recovery’s repo teams in Ohio, double the business it did in 2014: 25,500
Number of the twenty top-selling items in Amazon.com's toys & games section consisting of Fidget spinners one year ago and today, respectively: 18 / 0
Time at which Seoul’s government shuts down computers on Friday evenings to force employees to stop working, according to Harper’s Index: 7:00
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Can you spot Tasha? (She doesn’t think you can.)
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CHEERS to the Great Media Swarm of 2018. If you’re going to be a raging racist who runs around town (NYC in this case) shooting your mouth off at minorities and people of color (Hispanic employees at Manhattan’s Fresh Kitchen in this case), you should at least have the guts to stand up for your beliefs in the aftermath of your little tantrums. But, like so many other right-wing assholes who feel emboldened in the age of Trump, attorney Aaron “My next call is to ICE!” Schlossberg is a denigrate-and-dash kinda guy. Or at least he was until yesterday, when the press caught up with him trying to sneak into work while cowering under a ski cap and umbrella. This may be the most glorious media flash mob of the year:
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From what I hear it’s the first time an attorney has ever been laughed into court.
JEERS to previews of coming train wrecks. As far as I know, the Korean summit is still a go for June 12th, although the childish chest-thumping and alpha-male-establishing activities are now in full swing. Assuming it still happens, here’s a little preview from one year ago that explains why the White House is doing everything it can to minimize Lord Dampnut’s actual participation in the talks beyond a few photo-ops. The setting was Brussels. The event was a NATO meeting. And this was the preparation behind the scenes…
“It’s kind of ridiculous how they are preparing to deal with Trump,” one source briefed on the meeting’s preparations told Foreign Policy, explaining how members of the 28-nation military alliance are preparing to kid-proof Trump’s experience. “It’s like they’re preparing to deal with a child---someone with a short attention span and mood who has no knowledge of NATO, no interest in in-depth policy issues, nothing.” […]
NATO organizers are reportedly asking heads of state to limit themselves to two-to-four minutes of discussion time. “Even a brief NATO summit is way too stiff, too formal, and too policy heavy for Trump. Trump is not going to like that,” Joege Benitez, a NATO expert with Washington think tank the Atlantic Council, told Foreign Policy.
He’ll be the first Nobel Peace Prize recipient to fall asleep during his own ceremony.
JEERS to the Boy Wonder's bubble-headed blunder. On tomorrow’s date in 1992, Vice President Dan Quayle cited Murphy Brown as a poor example of family values. Said Ken Tucker back then in Entertainment Weekly:
Dan Quayle's spleen venting about the way Murphy Brown subverts family values is only the most direct expression to date of a notion that has gained in intensity over the past decade---that TV has some sort of obligation to present only ''positive'' examples of family life, that any portrayal of something other than the happy nuclear clan is detrimental to our American way of life.
But TV isn't an arm of social policy or government propaganda; it has no more responsibility to be upbeat and positive than do, say, poetry or the theater....
Someone pour Quayle a glass of cold milk, please.
Isn't it nice to know that the Republican party has come so far in its thinking over the last 26 years? (Please try to not break your face while smirking.)
JEERS to disappearing acts not involving trained magicians. Today is Endangered Species Day, which is billed as "an opportunity for people of all ages to learn about the importance of protecting endangered species." You can see the whole list here via the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. (Quick---somebody archive the site before Trump deletes it!) Here’s one of them, the Hawaiian monk seal. Imagine our planet without these little bundles of flippered joy:
I'm proud to say I did my part to mark Endangered Species Day. I spent the afternoon giving sympathy hugs to senior White House staffers.
CHEERS to having the courage to be a lover, not a fighter. On Sunday's date in 1774, the first Shakers, led by Ann Lee, sailed to America from England. During the Revolution they refused to fight and were jailed, making them our first conscientious objectors. And here I thought they just made nifty furniture.
JEERS to moving day in Dixie. Li'l Civil War nugget from the past: on Sunday’s date in 1861, the Confederate Congress agreed to pack its bags and move the capital from Montgomery, Alabama to Richmond, Virginia. I believe a similar event would take place 51 years later with the deck chairs on the Titanic.
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Ten years ago in C&J: May 18, 2008
JEERS to rude surprises. Scientists say that Mars' North Pole is made up of several layers of dust and ice. Which I guess explains why my radishes never come up there.
CHEERS to home vegetation. A decent slate of acts for your entertainment on TV this weekend, starting tonight with Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow unpacking the latest Friday news dump on MSNBC. Then on HBO's Real Time, Bill Maher gets all chatty Cathy with former FBI special agent Clint Watts Dan Savage, Bari Weiss, Evan McMullin, and author Dambisa Moyo.
If you’re up in during the wee hours of tomorrow morning---like 4’ish---you can watch the media have a collective orgasm over the OMIGOD! OMIGOD! IT’S A ROYAL WEDDING OMIGOD! Yes, this time it’s Prince Harry tying the knot with---gasp---an American! Viewing options are here via USA Today. (Personally, I think this is a plot by the British to take our country back and make America great again. If we get universal healthcare out of it, I’m cool. But I draw the line at fishhead pie.) New home video releases include the Marvel mega-hit Black Panther and (finally) the It’s Alive trilogy. The baseball schedule is here, basketball schedule is here and the hockey schedule is here. The 143rd Preakness is tomorrow (NBC, 5pm), and as usual all my money’s on Secretariat. Tina Fey hosts the season finale of SNL. On 60 Minutes: a report on the power of Google and a report on the power of Pope Francis. (Spoiler alert: Google is more powerful by a factor of a thousand lightning bolts.) The Billboard Music Awards are Sunday night (NBC, 9), and as usual all my money’s on Secretariat.
Now here's your Sunday morning lineup:
Meet the Press: Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA); Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT); Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone.
This Week: TBA
CNN's State of the Union: Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA).
Face the Nation: Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA); Jon Meacham.
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski; Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-Pawpatch County, home of Little Miss Dewhurst’s Parasol Emporium, which he owns a 49% stake in.)
Happy viewing!
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And just one more…
CHEERS to putting this week…this month…this decade…this century…this millennium…this 5.43 billion years…in perspective. Leave it to NASA to take us out of our bubble and remind us of a self-evident truth: we’re just an atom on a boil on the butt of the universe:
NASA's Voyager 1 took a classic portrait of Earth from several billion miles away in 1990. Now a class of tiny, boxy spacecraft, known as CubeSats, have just taken their own version of a “pale blue dot” image, capturing Earth and its moon in one shot.
One of the CubeSats...used a fisheye camera to snap its first photo on May 9 from 621,371 miles away. "Consider it our homage to Voyager," said Andy Klesh, MarCO's chief engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
The MarCO CubeSats were launched on May 5 along with NASA's InSight lander, a spacecraft that will touch down on Mars and study the planet's deep interior for the first time.
Photos like this are a timely reminder that in space no one can hear you scream. But thanks to advances in telescope technology, there’s a better-than-even chance that everybody within a dozen solar systems can see you naked.
Have a great weekend. Floor's open...What are youcheering and jeering about today?
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