May 16, 2022

"Quartet" on Netflix

This is an older movie (2012?) but I found it to be a heartwarming thing of beauty.

"Quartet is a 2012 British comedy-drama film based on the play Quartet by Ronald Harwood, which ran in London's West End from September 1999 until January 2000. It was filmed late in 2011 at Hedsor House, Buckinghamshire. The film is actor Dustin Hoffman's directorial debut." Wikipedia

May 2, 2022

What Trevor Noah Got Desperately Wrong at the White House Correspondent's Dinner

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/05/trevor-noah-mistake-white-house-correspondents-dinner.html

*Snip

The most notable part of an event that has felt in recent years like a stale and hackneyed tradition—even before the former guy’s multi-year boycott—came when Daily Show host Trevor Noah stuck the landing as he closed out the evening with a gentle admonition to U.S. journalists. Noah ended the event with these words:

"Ask yourself this question: If Russian journalists who are losing their livelihoods… and their freedom for daring to report on what their own government is doing, if they had the freedom to write any words, to show any stories or to ask any questions, if they had, basically, what you have, would they be using it in the same way that you do?"

*Snip

Well. Illiberalism is nigh. It voted in 2016, it rampaged in the Capitol in 2021, it formed the basis of myriad new election restrictions in 2022, and it may well steal the election in 2024. It is dictating what children may read, what teachers may teach, how private companies may speak, how parents can raise their own children, and it’s conscripting citizen vigilantes as its lawful enforcers. We should report on that as though we are in Russia because, in real ways, many Americans are already experiencing similar levels of repression. Women in Texas have been in reproductive Russia since September of 2021. Freedom is a continuum and not a touchdown dance, and nearly everyone in media knows this. The problem isn’t so much that we in the press aren’t doing our jobs. It’s that we know nobody would come to watch a show about how now that the occupiers and election deniers have temporarily and mostly—though not entirely—vacated the Capitol, they’re actually still out there, preparing for the next attacks, that very little is being done to stop them, and that this is generally considered neither interesting nor news.