Ok, how does this lifeboat inflate? Can I even do this without senpais to notice me? I have opinions on things, especially DC theatre, especially ones that got a major critic to block me on that other hellsite. They are mine, but you can borrow them.
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In only 9 months, we've seen the top-to-bottom transformation of US into an isolationist nation willing to sacrifice economic & political power for nativism. It's happening so quickly & it's so at odds with the values a lot of us were socialized with that it doesn't feel real or possible.
Its really not good that generative AI does this and will literally flip the valence of the actual history
Ric Grinnell spent actual money to destroy Yasmin Williams' set. Not a penny can go to the Kennedy Center under occupation: she tried to continue support to the remaining staff and other performers while refusing to bend the knee to the occupation force, and she was punished for it.
New Isaac Chotiner dropped.
Ford's Theatre's commissions on Lincoln's legacy of a new birth of freedom (the "ok, now what?" of it) tackling the March on Washington, happening in occupied DC after the travesty of the Charlie Kirk hate rally, has way more resonance than originally intended. (See Ro Boddie in all the things.)
Trump's model for his emerging drug war has been imprisoned and awaits trial for war crimes.
Is not your father grown incapable Of reasonable affairs? Is he not stupid With age and alt’ring rheums? Can he speak? Hear? Know man from man?
It ys the seasoun of decoratif gourdes, O knaves
i have to say, as a trans journalist who has covered the "trans debate" for about a decade now, there is no daylight between how the trump administration and conservatives lie about tylenol and autism and how they've lied about youth trans care.
I know we've worked hard to move history ed away from names and dates but I think we might need to swing back to chronology a bit because "who was president on january 8 2021?" and "which came first, the clinical description of autism or tylenol?" shouldn't be this hard, especially for reporters.
The whole administration in one quote
i want to point out that this model of policing is similar to laws like the hong kong security laws of 2021 where the broadening of terrorism, national security and treason basically makes it a field day on civil society activity. expect arrests in trade unions, academia and media to follow
IT IS TIME.
Donald does all his hiring out of central casting.
He lived through the early 80s and fixated on the Tylenol scare. Alzheimer's patients fixate on irrational things, perseverating despite all evidence countering their fixation. All lies or, in his case, "fake news". And there is no shaking those fixations.
He is never beating the charges that the last year he remembers in any detail is roughly 1985.
Former counselor to RFK Jr’s predecessor:
In 1983, 90% of U.S. media was owned by 50 companies. By 2012, that number was 6. Today, it's just 5. Decades of media consolidation made it "a lot easier for authoritarian government to exercise control," consumer advocate Gigi Sohn says. Much more in my new piece: www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb...
If you think this is about Kimmel, you're more delusional than Bob Iger, who at least knows Kimmel is a sacrifice rather than the point.
Ok, good. Apologizing is good.
The writer of Andor, Dan Gilroy, wrote an op-ed in Deadline and it is as good as you might imagine. deadline.com/2025/09/ando...
Footblankets is a great game, but you can't sink your fangs all the way in if it's just a game. Have to pull the punches when everyone is supposed to have fun. Everyone having fun is what makes it a game.
Not quite the case: Cromwell's readmittance of the Jews held in the Restoration. Setting up a synagogue and a burial ground in 1656-7 was one of the first ways of asserting the community was now there, and Charles II made no moves against them. www.jewishgen.org/jcr-uk/Londo...
1985 is the last year he remembers clearly, so yet again this tracks.
The Post is doing a horrible emptying of the Opinion side of the house. The arts criticism is continuing to shine light on powers and ourselves: Kennicott has two bangers this week. www.washingtonpost.com/entertainmen...
It's an investment in the case that should be paid back through fines and restitution in sentencing. So Tom Homan is just spending your tax dollars being a little bitch, and Emil Bove decided you aren't getting paid back for that. These guys are experts at waste, fraud, and abuse.
Ah yes, the "everyone has at least two jobs" administration wants to add to the Grand Inquisitor's plate because Marco is a little too busy to take on the Eastern District of Virginia right now.
Oh no DHS is upset that people are saying mean things about ICE. Im sure this won’t generate a Streisand Effect or anything. www.dhs.gov/news/2025/09...
There is no world in which it is normal for the president to publicly call upon his attorney general to hurry up and prosecute his political foes. It’s like the Watergate tapes but posted on social media. Let’s get a grip on what’s happening here.
“We’re fine with corruption if comes with terrorizing brown people.” Really sums up the MAGA punditocracy.
My bag has no money, just spicy lamb meatballs and an apricot honey cookie. I must be doing something right, unlike Tom Homan.
again, again, again, again: autocrats like to declare themselves untouchable and all-powerful. sometimes they even write it into law. and yet that does not make it so
This is not the greens you should expect with the grains in a Cava bowl.
Was there blood?
The fact that these people are this upset over chalk drawings tells you how easily they’ll cave when faced with actual mass resistance. Bullies fold when you stand up to them. www.arlnow.com/2025/09/19/c...
So whether or not it was pay to play or just a scam, he stays out of jail and gets to keep our tax dollars. Every damned one of these people is a grifter because no one else would dare work with the Grifter in Chief.
“Send the interns” was a battlecry during the Bush 43 years - have college kids record the briefings and maybe challenge the podium lies but experienced investigative reporters stay away and work sources Any serious newsroom should do this with Hegseth’s Pentagon
Read the whole opinion. Absolute fire. Multiple bangers.
Disney/ABC have a responsibility to refuse to participate in corruption. Kimmel must be reinstated. If Disney/ABC agree to this extortion then perhaps creatives + workers should consider collective action to push back. Same w/buying park + cruise tickets if they bow. People have power. Ask Target
DC's theater community lost several spaces & events this year. In response, a few theater-makers & two actors turned activists successfully found new stages & launched new festivals to fill the would-be gaps. A great piece from @nicolehertvik.bsky.social washingtoncitypaper.com/article/7708...
It's Vanity Fair; the reader should never be surprised that Becky Sharp can manage to land on her feet after sexts with RFKJr.
In the 2010s, this country's elites were thrown onto social platforms with everyone else and could finally read what we all think about them and it caused them so much psychic damage that they decided to destroy both the internet and democracy to make sure nothing like it ever happened again.
This isn't even a slight exaggeration. He is actively working on destroying the US's entire vaccine infrastructure. The HepB vote will be tomorrow, where they will get rid of the birth dose and recommend it at 30 days, dooming a bunch of infants to chronic infection ft. cirrhosis, cancer, and death.
Good cast, nice kids, I want nice things for them, this is good for right now amidst the daily horrors.
You know who isn't implicated? Your local nonprofit theatre (probably). It's Theatre Week in DC, many options to keep you entertained by people who don't cave to fascism. I was just at Olney for Red Pitch, a nice evening of nice teens trying to control their lives, and that's good for us right now.
I think nothing can live up to Part 1, but Part 2 does a nice job of bringing the Howard's End of it around and honestly, we need right now nice people doing their best. Even Toby.
more of this
Extraordinarily corrupt. I watched FCC chair Brendan Carr's full interview on Hannity. Carr basically said straight out that coverage of Trump he deems overly hostile can be decreed contrary to the "public interest," and thus grounds for yanking licenses: newrepublic.com/article/2006...
it is interesting to me... that we have observed in the span of two weeks the remembrances of two lives and the response to those two lives is very different ... what has been left behind polar opposites It's almost as if ... what you do matters
Mr Real Estate demonstrating the art of the deal.
Really demonstrating the art of the deal here.
A totalitarian movement must never achieve its goals, as that would eliminate the need for the movement itself. Even in victory, new enemies must be created in order to justify further cruelty and domination.
This is so messed up.
I fear trial by jury will be a target before this administration ends.
ah, well
Becoming increasingly clear we’re gonna have to build a parallel infrastructure for all the media we really love. The reason all of this is happening under the color of law is hyperconsolidation, dissent being traded straight up for merger approval, or fear of harassment.
We don’t gotta ever hand it to Karl Rove but this vividly illustrates how far the right has fallen into fascism that KARL ROVE is trying to be the voice of reason.
Yeah, I'm not looking it up either. If Patel were better at excuse making, he's not the director of the Bureau of Prisons is valid, but the director of the FBI should recognize some major cases, and he didn't make it because he sucks at excuses. (he probably def doesn't remember Tree of Life.)
The success of government censorship through threats is absolutely appalling. Disney as a corporation has no shame, every organization is bending the knee to preserve shareholder dividends, and we are poorer as a society for the cowardice. www.cnn.com/2025/09/17/m...
The other one is the Tree of Life murderer.
it's so funny to see America's health insurance companies be like "look. If there's one thing we love it's denying you care. but we ran the numbers - and we cannot BELIEVE we're saying this - and it's cheaper for us to just pay for the vaccines than deal with you going to the ER."
Is Prince Andrew going to take him to Pizza Express? That's where you go to attempt (and fail at) exoneration in British culture, I've heard.
folks, I want to remind you that a ton of federal workers are about to get their last pay check at the end of this month and this stuff is going to get much worse
My favourite Robert Redford story is the one about why he got rejected for the lead role in The Graduate. RIP to a real one.
Almost 10 years ago now, when I had the honor of guest-blogging for @radleybalko.bsky.social at the WaPo, I wrote an item about then-President-Elect Trump's unsettling admiration for Rodrigo Duterte and his extrajudicial drug war in the Philippines. archive.is/wx19c Hard not to think of that now.
I do not believe the rabbit is using that unicycle safely, and we need a follow up report.
I just wrote about what he meant here in Utah. He was so controversial as an activist, but he was consistently right about things. He helped us be a better place. saltlakemagazine.com/farewell-to-...
Protect Colman Domingo at all costs.
if i see any post expressing less than debilitating thirst for robert redford i am calling your boss
My voice is my passport. (I had to do work at work so my in memoriam thirst posting is late. Do talk to my boss about this.)
During a visit to NASA’s Johnson Space Center last March, I was confronted with an environment of fear, uncertainty and discrimination which struck me as a troubling moral issue that also raises serious safety concerns. Read all about it here: www.thespacereview.com/article/5060/1
The fix is in. Get your COVID vax THIS WEEK, friends. Do not wait if you can avoid it.
Everybody gamely says “Vance hosted Kirk’s podcast” instead of “the regime officially turned the major channel into state-controlled media just as it began its violent crackdown on any opposition or dissident messages.”
The destruction at HHS is honestly the thing I'm most angry about. The gleeful jumping into mass death with both feet, throwing out some of the greatest works of human ingenuity for absolutely nothing, not even the joy of dancing on the ashes because they are just as likely to die of their actions.
at the center of the efforts to destroy civil society in russia, hungary, georgia and elsewhere is the stigmatization, harassment, & criminalization of NGOs. that's what this is about, a full-on assault on democratic debate & freedoms. this is not hyperbole. it's right here.
This has been coming from the beginning. All major democracy-supporting NGOs and foundations have their legal complaints already drafted. And in time, perhaps not even much time, they will win their cases. What is needed most in the meantime is courage. Keep saying what you think, doing what you do.
Uh, guys, I know you feel like you have a lot personally in common with Lukashenka, but he only has Vlad's permission to invite you over because Vlad views you with contempt rather than as part of the special autocrat gang. www.cnn.com/2025/09/15/e...
"The goal of the federal surge seems to be not to make the capital safe but to let its residents know they should be afraid."
Removing information about slavery at Harper’s Ferry is like removing information about hydroelectric power at the Hoover Dam. “John Brown went to Harper’s Ferry because he was so infected by the woke mind virus that he had a pathological hatred of states rights.”
Breaking — FEMA Acting Chief Counsel Colt Hagmaier just resigned in an email to staff. He's worked at the agency for more than a decade. Hagmaier's resignation comes immediately after two FEMA employees were placed on leave for comments about Charlie Kirk. Text of his email shared with me:
Scars don’t go away, no matter how hard you try to hide them.
And yes, I was the last Black full-time columnist in the Opinion section. Washington Post -- operating in a city which for a long time has been majority Black, is now without any full-time Black opinion writers.
Was it more impressive than the most famous ball pit ever?
This is a good opinion.
If you thought I might cave for the right thing, this confirms you dead wrong. In addition to not putting a penny where Ric Grenell can see it, I will not breathe the air for free until it is no longer under the suzerainty of the ghouls. They are marking it as their space, but they already had it.
I can't explain this but it feels like desecrating a holy site
Yes. The Pennsylvania guy is his son.
DC is under occupation as collective punishment for Big Balls getting a bloody nose and Congress would like to see some collective punishment carried out for the death of Charlie Kirk. That’s what they’re calling for, it’s what they’re trying to legislate, it’s what we’re seeing with the firings.
He's already had one minor stroke and just doesn't strike me as a guy full enough of himself to run for president. (He was my congressman before jumping to the Mikulski opening.) Replacing Schumer would be fantastic.
This is as huge a scandal & blunder as this chaotic Administration has seen. The person who should be called to answer for it is Secy Kristi Noem. When a woman who loves the camera as much as Noem is nowhere to be seen for 10 days it’s b/c she’s hiding out. Media should be all over this.
And if employers do it without writing that it's in response to a government official posting on X that business should fire people for it, it's a successful end run around the First Amendment. No law, and it was technically outside the government's pressure campaign.
Still allowed on federal property, and clearly the DC Guard has been made federal property.
So - just no roof deck? Or is unpermitted construction coming down?
"When black parents petitioned for desegregated schools during the summer of 1955, for instance, [the local Citizens Council] published the names and publicly called for the petitioners to be placed on an employers' blacklist." Where Charlie Kirk and his fans got some of their ideas...
I wrote for @msnbc.com about what the engravings on the shell casings of Kirk’s shooter represent and where the references originated. Given what we know so far, they suggest a young man who had his brain fried by the irony poisoned, anti-social nature of certain aspects of online culture. /1
If he's trying to be Eric Adams to get those votes, he's going to have to step it up on leprechaun catching. (I suspect he already has the Turkish airline tickets.)
I live in DC, so I think I had the advantage of experience here decoding Sam's renovations. Or possibly an extremely dirty lens through which I'm decoding all this. He seems to be living this comment thread, and the picture should explain a lot. www.popville.com/2021/05/cost...
I wrote my own Charlie Kirk obituary, and about valuing truth over manners: www.thenation.com/article/poli...