Trump is playing the culture-war oldies

& the new Jussie Smollett documentary on Netflix is just embarrassing

https://ericzorn.substack.com

8-28-2025 (issue No. 207)

This week:

• Trump plays the moldy oldies in the culture war

• Last week’s winning quip

• I watched the Jussie Smollett documentary so you don’t have to

• News and Views — Hot takes, fully baked

• Trump Derangement Syndrome? How about Trump Delusion Syndrome?

• Land of Linkin’ — Where I tell readers where to go

• Squaring up the news — Where Charlie Meyerson tells readers where to go

• Media Notes — Why Bluesky has bailed on Mississippi

• The latest on “human composting” in Illinois — The idea seems to be rotting on the vine

• Quotables — A collection of compelling, sometimes appalling passages I’ve encountered lately

• Quips — The winning visual jokes and this week’s contest finalists

• What’s on “The Mincing Rascals” podcast this week

• Green Light — A recommendation of “Murderbot” on Apple TV+

Trump continues to play the old hits

Oh, so now we’re supposed to argue about flag burning again?

Monday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the Attorney General Pamela Bondi to “prioritize the enforcement to the fullest extent possible of our nation’s criminal and civil laws against acts of American flag desecration.”

I thought we had dispensed with that ridiculous issue 36 years ago when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (for the second time) that no matter how provocative and infuriating to others it might be for someone to burn or otherwise defile an American flag in protest, the act still fell under the free speech protections of the First Amendment.

For all the reasons why this is so, I invite you to read the 1998 online Rhubarb Patch debate on flag "desecration" in which I owned Northwestern University law professor Stephen Presser, an advocate for a constitutional amendment protecting the flag.

Trump and his administration have also been waging hoary culture-war battles about fluoride in drinking water, birthright citizenship, Confederate iconography, communism, liberalism in academia and the media, abortion, gender-neutral pronouns, the 10 Commandments in public school classrooms and affirmative action. I won’t be surprised if Trump joins the effort to return the question of same-sex marriage rights to the states if that legal battle heats up in the U.S. Supreme Court.*

These oldies — should I also include exaggerating the threat of crime at a time when crime rates are dropping? — seem designed to inflame the perpetually aggrieved and keep them on Team Trump, even though he’s been unable to fulfill his promises to end inflation and foreign wars.

Sure, he’s sucking up to foreign dictators, exacting legal revenge on his political foes, imposing tariffs that will cost average consumers thousands a year and generally acting like an authoritarian bully, but he vibes with retrograde Americans who care more about restoring old verities than creating a more inclusive and compassionate nation where freedom belongs even to those of different views.

These oldies are not mere “distractions,” as some label them. They are part of a scattershot effort to control the narrative as he claims more and more power for himself.

“A lot of people are saying, ‘Maybe we’d like a dictator,’” he claimed Monday. The silence of the Republicans is deafening.

*A reader points out that I forgot to include Trump’s demand that the Washington Commanders NFL team change its name back to the Redskins.

Last week’s winning quip

Whatever you do, always give 100%, unless you are donating blood. — (widely attributed to Bill Murray)

Here are this week’s nominees and the winner of the Tuesday visual-jokes poll. Here is the direct link to the new poll.

What a surprise! The Netflix documentary on Jussie Smollett does not exonerate him

Well, here it is, folks, an image from a previously unreleased surveillance video that disgraced actor Jussie Smollett has said proves his innocence. He says the video — shown in “The Truth About Jussie Smollett?” a Netflix documentary released last week — shows that his “attackers” were white men, as he has claimed, and not Abel and Ola Osundairo, the African American brothers police said (and a jury found) he hired to pretend to beat him up on a frigid night in 2019:

Screen capture from “The Truth About Jussie Smollett?”

What do you see in this image?

To their credit, the documentarians quote a number of players in the case offering various opinions about the race of the men they see in the video (the other man is heavily shrouded):

• Documentarian Abigail Carr, listed as a consultant on the film: “He appears to be white.”

• Freelance journalist Chelli Stanley, also listed as a consultant on the film: “You can see that he’s white.”

• Osundairo brothers attorney Gloria Rodriguez: “Looks like a white person.”

• Former Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson: “No doubt in my mind these are the brothers. I don’t see two white guys.”

• Hotel doorman Anthony Moore, who says he saw a white man in a ski mask passing him at the time of the alleged attack: “African American black males.”

• Former Chicago Police Chief of Detectives Melissa Bell: “The two subjects appear to be male black.”

Abel Osundairo says the video clip shows him and his brother.

To refresh your memory, the brothers, aspiring actors and bodybuilders, said they met Smollett on the Chicago set of “Empire,” the Fox TV show in which Smollett had a featured role, and that he hired them to stage a fake hate-crime against him in the Streeterville neighborhood after midnight on one of the coldest nights of the year.

A Block Club Chicago article in July quoted Smollett promising bombshell proof of his innocence:

It’ll make sense when y’all watch it. They found the actual footage of the people that jumped me, and it just corroborates every single thing that I’ve said for the last almost seven years. … (The footage) was brought to my lawyers a couple days before we started trial and they were like, “Yeah, we already got our defense, so it’s too late to bring that in, we can’t do anything about it.” They did not go with the truth. They went with defending against the lies.

Well, the bombshell was, as I predicted, a dud. The reason his lawyers didn’t show the video at his trial is likely that it’s ambiguous, at best, and, as in the documentary, does little to contradict the powerful evidence against Smollett.

The filmmakers’ attempt to inject serious doubt into the narrative of Smollett’s guilt is a failure.

Here’s why: In the first half, the documentary lays out in great detail how police used surveillance camera footage, cab company data and ride-share company records to identify the Osundairo brothers as the men seen running through Streeterville after the attack (which was not captured on video).

When arrested, the brothers eventually admitted to helping Smollett stage the ruse, which included claims that the attackers yelled homophobic and racial slurs at the gay, biracial actor, poured bleach on him, hung a noose around his neck and, absurdly, referred to Streeterville as “MAGA country.”

Retail surveillance footage from before that night shows the brothers buying supplies they say they used that night. And investigators produced a $3,500 check from Smollett to the brothers that they said was payment for helping with the hoax and that Smollett said was for herbal steroids illegal in the United States.

The filmmakers — and Smollett, who cooperated in the production by giving lengthy, self-serving interviews — want to brush off the police work that tracked down the Osundairo brothers and the damning evidence that they were miles from their home and in Smollett’s neighborhood at the time of this alleged attack.

The filmmakers can’t do that, obviously, so they simply slam the Chicago Police Department for the murder of Laquan McDonald and other instances of misconduct, and they go into detail about how Eddie Johnson was fired as police superintendent for lying about his arrest for drunk driving.

I’m the last person to argue that members of the CPD haven’t lied and cut corners to make cases. But nothing about the sleuthing that led investigators to the Osundairo brothers suggests deceit or bad faith. The hand-waving conspiracy theories implying that two white bigots carrying a noose and bleach were out trolling for victims on the frigid, largely deserted streets in the wee hours are just embarrassing.

Guardian critic Hannah J Davies wrote that “The Truth About Jussie Smollett?” is “icky, irresponsible television. … It’s bold, it’s shocking – and it’s utter nonsense. … A program like this has no business taking the moral high ground at all.”

To me, the question mark in the title reflects the filmmakers’ muddled vision. Slate’s lengthy article/review ends with a question mark as well, echoing my sentiments: “Why make the documentary at all?”

News & Views

News: President Donald Trump wants to restore the old Department of War name for the U.S. Department of Defense.

View: If that doesn't get him the Nobel Peace Prize he openly hungers for, I don't know what will.

News: “Oak Park and River Forest High School removes bathroom doors to prevent student vaping.”

View: I’m with the administrators who removed the outer doors and not the students who have created a petition to get the doors put back. From all the student bleating about this, you’d think the stall doors had been removed or passersby would get an easy look at the area where people were answering nature’s call. But no, these are just open entrances like you find in airports and at many highway stops, and school officials are rightly trying to cut down on loitering and vaping.

News: “Delta, United sued for selling windowless ‘window seats.’”

View: Oh, please! The only value of a window seat at the outer edges of airplane seating is that it gives you a wall to lean your head against if you want to nap. Other than that, who but a child on their first flight needs to look out the window? It’s much handier to have an aisle seat so you don’t have to climb over anyone else when you have to pee.

The complaints say some Boeing 737, Boeing 757 and Airbus A321 planes contain seats that would normally contain windows, but lack them because of the placement of air conditioning ducts, electrical conduits or other components. … The lawsuits say people buy window seats for several reasons including to address fear of flying or motion sickness, keep a child occupied, get extra light or watch the world go by.

This is clearly one of those class-action suits that, if successful, will result in big paydays for the lawyers and minuscule compensation for the passengers who can prove they were disappointed. A noncash settlement that got the airlines to agree to flag windowless window seats — Alaska Airlines and American Airlines already do so, according to CNN — would be fine and fair, but that’s not how class-action suits work.

MAGA is suffering from Trump Delusion Syndrome

“(I have) the right to do anything I want to do. I’m the president of the United States.” — Donald Trump on Tuesday

At Press Watch, Dan Froomkin writes:

Armed soldiers patrol the streets of the nation’s capital, with more cities apparently to come. Immigrants who have done nobody any harm are abducted and disappeared by masked agents. The state is seizing stakes of national companies. Election integrity is under attack. Political opponents are targeted with criminal probes. Federal judges’ orders are ignored. Educational institutions are extorted into obedience. Key functions of the government are politicized and degraded. Expertise and science are devalued. Trump speaks of serving an unconstitutional third term. Media organizations are paying tribute to the ruler.

Most significantly, perhaps, there are no guardrails anymore. No one inside the executive branch will tell Trump no. No one in the ruling party in Congress will tell him no. The right-wing majority of the Supreme Court won’t tell him no.

And our dominant media institutions won’t call him out.

He quotes historian Garrett Graff:

Do we end up “merely” like Hungary or do we go all the way toward an “American Reich”? So far, after years of studying World War II, I fear that America’s trajectory feels more like Berlin circa 1933 than it does Budapest circa 2015.

And MSNBC’s Ali Velshi:

Each new abuse is justified as temporary, necessary, even an emergency. Until one day it’s not temporary at all. Until one day the justifications stop altogether because once power is absolute it no longer feels the need to explain itself. At best, each assault may seem like an outlier until the day you wake up and realize the system itself has become unrecognizable. Well that’s where we are — right now. It’s not where we’re headed. It’s where we are.

And Wednesday came this news:

“White House fires CDC director as other officials resign from health agency”

Lawyers for now former Centers for Disease Control director Dr. Susan Monarez said Wednesday the recent Trump appointee was getting the broom because she refused "to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts.”

Almost immediately after Dr Monarez's departure was first announced by the health department, at least three senior CDC leaders resigned from the agency.

Among them was Chief Medical Officer Dr. Debra Houry, who warned about the "rise of misinformation" about vaccines. … She also argued against planned cuts to the agency's budget.

Dr. Daniel Jernigan, who led the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, also quit citing "the current context in the department".

Head of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, also said he was no longer able to serve.

Daskalakis posted his resignation letter on social media:

I am unable to serve in an environment that treats CDC as a tool to generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality and are designed to hurt rather than to improve the public’s health. … After much contemplation and reflection on recent developments and perspectives brought to light by (Health and Human Services) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., I find that the views he and his staff have shared challenge my ability to continue in my current role at the agency and in the service of the health of the American people. Enough is enough. .... (Kennedy) should not be considered a source of accurate information.

Further, several news outlets including NPR are reporting that Dr. Jennifer Layden has resigned from her position as director of the CDC’s Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance and Technology.

Wonder why? Oh, how about moves like this: “RFK Jr. limits who is eligible for COVID shots.”

Patients who now want to get the COVID vaccines will first have to consult with their doctor rather than booking directly with a pharmacy, adding another step to the process.

For some reason, not one of these news articles used the term “shit-show.”

Some speak of Trump Derangement Syndrome, but fearing Trump’s dictatorial aspirations isn’t derangement, it’s common sense. So is being dismayed by the persistence of Trump Delusion Syndrome —the failure to see anything ominous in Trump giving power to incompetent sycophants as we slide down the greased pole to authoritarianism.

Land of Linkin’

• “School hacks: The very best advice for students making a big leap this fall” (gift link) is my 2019 Tribune column offering incoming college freshmen the fruits of my hard-won wisdom. Here are the tips I offered the twins when they entered high school in 2011.

• “The myths of effective law enforcement and the demand to defund the police,” is a law review article by Mayor Brandon Johnson’s new strategy chief, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law professor Sheila Bedi.

• “The Future Of Podcasting Is Here, And It Sucks” in the Defector. “The chat shows are entertaining. They fill up my bathroom with agreeable noise when I’m showering, but often I wonder if I’ve turned myself into a grown-up iPad toddler, unable to cope with the silence of being alone.”

• “Ghosting Spotify: A How-To Guide” on Little Door goes deep on alternatives to the popular music streaming service.

• The click voters have spoken! Comparing Donald Trump to Liberace is unfair … to Liberace.

• In a web exclusive, HBO’s John Oliver skewers the new retail effort of Mike Lindell — the “My Pillow” guy.

• In “Oh No, What is Jim Acosta Doing?” Parker Malloy sharply criticizes the former CNN White House correspondent for using AI to conduct an “interview” with a victim of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The dead boy’s parents don’t mind it at all, though.

• Now seeking your opinion: Should the school year start before or after Labor Day?

• Block Club Chicago: “Is Raddle the next Wordle? A Chicago puzzle maker’s word ladder game could be your next addiction.”

• “Democrat Catelin Drey’s victory in Iowa special election breaks GOP supermajority.” Drey’s win “in a district that had been held by Republicans and had voted heavily for President Donald Trump in 2024 … breaks Republicans’ supermajority in the 50-member Iowa Senate.”

• Here’s why Trump may back off on his determination to send the National Guard to patrol the streets of Chicago, along with polling results on how the effort is playing.

Squaring up the news

This is a bonus supplement to the Land of Linkin’ from veteran radio, internet and newspaper journalist Charlie Meyerson. Each week, he offers a selection of intriguing links from his daily email news briefing Chicago Public Square:

■ For the first time in six years, Chicago magazine has ranked city and suburban elementary and junior high schools.

■ Axios: A new report ranks the best and worst neighborhoods for Chicago kids.

■ As President Trump threatens to send National Guard units onto Chicago’s streets, the Sun-Times’ Neil Steinberg—doing “that truthy-facty thing” journalists do—found a Chicagoan who matches Trump’s assertion that “African American ladies, beautiful ladies” have been begging him to do it, and Illinois Republican leaders are mostly behind the notion.

■ Veteran Capitol Hill reporter Jamie Dupree — “Yes, I’m the radio guy who lost the ability to speak” — shares what he saw in a bike ride around occupied D.C.

■ This means “lawfare”: That’s a University of Michigan public policy professor’s take on the Trump administration’s targeting of his political opponents with claims of mortgage fraud.

■ Asserting that Trump’s “just looking for a pretext to fire someone who isn’t a loyalist—and who happens, surprise, to be a black woman”—economist Paul Krugman concludes that “nobody is safe from weaponized government.”

■ Politico: The Trump housing official leading probes into the president’s critics was a Northwestern University broadcast journalism student.

■ The American Prospect: “Moderate Senate Democrats enabled Trump’s D.C. takeover.”

■ USA Today’s Rex Huppke: “Trump is wildly unpopular and losing ground fast. Why is anyone afraid of him?”

■ Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Gene Weingarten on the president’s health issues: “The president is likely not ill and enfeebled with one foot in the grave. … It is merely that he is old and ugly and flabby and benignly rotting all over.”

■ The Daily Beast has unearthed years-old video in which now-White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt offered tips on how to get hired by the Trump administration.

■ “Everyone reassures Trump that he doesn’t have a small penis as they hand him a gift”: Last week’s merciless installment of “South Park” skewered the president’s D.C. takeover, tech-bro culture and ChatGPT’s “overly pandering appeal,” putting these words in Apple CEO Tim Cook’s mouth: “Mr. President, your ideas for the tech industry are so innovative, and you definitely do not have a small penis.”

■ The Washington Post: “Education Department quietly removes rules for teaching English learners.”

■ “NFL podcast host announces engagement to recent guest”: That’s Awful Announcing’s headline on Taylor Swift’s decision to make it official with Travis Kelce.

■ Men Yell at Me columnist and author Lyz Lenz, who got the news “24 hours after getting dumped by a guy who was uncomfortable with my career,” says Swift and Kelce are selling “a fantasy world where a woman can be successful and her partner won’t be mad about it.”

■ The Lever: ICE is using Swift’s aviation regulation loophole—designed to obscure celebrities’ private-jet moves—to hide deportation flights, which reportedly are now taking off in record numbers.

You can (and should) subscribe to Chicago Public Square free here.

Media notes

Age-verification requirement prompts Bluesky to go offline in Mississippi

NPR reported:

The Mississippi law requires all users to verify their ages before using common social media sites ranging from Facebook to Nextdoor, a social media site that connects people to their nearby neighbors.

The new law requires that —

Users must verify they are at least 18 years old by providing a digitized identification card or using a commercial age verification system. The system must verify a government-issued ID or utilize any commercially reasonable method relying on public or private transactional data to confirm the user’s age.

Bluesky, a Twitter-like social media site, posted:

Age verification systems require substantial infrastructure and developer time investments, complex privacy protections, and ongoing compliance monitoring—costs that can easily overwhelm smaller providers. This dynamic entrenches existing big tech platforms while stifling the innovation and competition that benefits users.

Sites that opt in are hoping that users aren’t shy about sharing that sort of detailed information with them and, of course, that courts ultimately rule such a requirement to be an unconstitutional abridgment of free speech rights.

The Cato Institute in “Mississippi’s Age Verification Law Could Impact Us All”:

What happens with all these government IDs and face scans? The collection of this additional data comes with privacy risks and vulnerabilities for users. Recent headlines only further illustrate this. The dating information app Tea recently suffered a data breach that exposed millions of user selfies and driver’s license pictures used for verification.

Age verification laws would only increase the likelihood that an individual’s sensitive data could be compromised for merely trying to access their standard platforms. Unsurprisingly, many individuals would be uncomfortable doing so, particularly those who may be more privacy-conscious for their safety, such as whistleblowers and political dissidents, or those trying to escape abuse or refugee communities.

As someone who, at this point, qualifies as a political dissident, I am most definitely alarmed.

Also..

• Another savior for the Chicago Reader — “Noisy Creek, a media company that’s working to bolster alternative weeklies and keep them thriving.” The Tribune’s Darcel Rockett has a comprehensive story (gift link). It’s difficult to overstate how important the Reader was in town when I arrived in the 1980s — great writing, interesting columnists, vital listings and amusing, comprehensive classified ads. Not all of that can be restored, but I’d sure like to see them bring back columnist Ben Joravsky and add a media critic.

• Kudos to the Tribune for allowing departing film critic Michael Phillips a valedictory column. Radio and TV outlets almost never let their personalities say goodbye to their audiences, and it speaks well of the Trib that it gave Phillips, 64, a prominent spot in the Sunday paper to post a farewell.

• WTTW-Ch. 11 assures me that its tech engineers are working on the problem that “Chicago Tonight” audio podcasts are frequently unavailable after they post. As a fan of the program, particularly the “Chicago Tonight Week in Review” episodes on Fridays, I’m eager to see the problem addressed.

• Scott Detrow will be the new host of NPR’s “All Things Considered” starting the end of next month.

• Nell Salzman, who has covered immigration and education for the Tribune, will be a Local Investigations Fellow at the New York Times for the next year.

• The Associated Press is discontinuing weekly book reviews.

• I’m still not sure what to make of “Substack just killed the creator economy,” a post by the co-founder of a competing newsletter site. He writes “Last week, they announced that all writers would be required to offer Apple’s in-app purchase (IAP) payment option. That means that Apple will be collecting a 30% fee for all subscriptions purchased on Substack via IAP. … Substack will automatically set prices higher in the iOS app so their writers take home the same amount (i.e., the cost is passed on to the readers).” Subscribers do not have to go the Apple route, and I would encourage them not to. But if this becomes a real problem, I and many others will leave this platform.

Petty objections are stalling expansion of burial-freedom rights in Illinois

A New York Times article posted over the weekend with the headline “When I Go, I’m Going Green: More Americans are choosing burials in which everything is biodegradable” (gift link):

Although a consumer survey conducted by the National Funeral Directors Association found that fewer than 10 percent of respondents would prefer a green burial (compared to 43 percent favoring cremation and 24 percent opting for conventional burial), more than 60 percent said they would be interested in exploring green and natural alternatives. … Aside from their environmental concerns, many survey participants attributed their interest in green burial to its lower cost. The median price of a funeral with burial in 2023 was about $10,000, not including the cemetery plot or a monument. …

The company Earth Funeral has facilities in Nevada, Washington and, soon, Maryland, for so-called human composting. In this process, a body is heated with plant material for 30 to 45 days in a high-tech drum, where it all eventually turns into a cubic yard of soil.

That’s 300 pounds, more than most families can use, so local land conservancies receive the rest. The cost: $5,000 to $6,000.

I have written in support of allowing people to choose the environmentally friendly “natural organic reduction” method of disposing of their human remains after death —

• “Human composting” bill advances in Springfield. (March 2023)

• “The flimsy case against ‘human composting’” (May 2023)

• “The ‘human composting’ bill is dead for now” (May 2023)

— and it’s annoying that state lawmakers are evidently letting the “ick” factor and certain religious objections stand in the way of allowing us the choice of how to safely return to the earth.

John Patterson, spokesman for Illinois Senate President Don Harmon, told me:

The legislation remains under active consideration in the Senate. We’re hoping the advocates will be able to answer the many questions that have been raised. The Senate President has heard from many colleagues and constituents with questions along the lines of: What do you do with the composted remains? Are there restrictions on the use? How do you dispose of this respectfully? The legislation remains actively pending in the Senate and we’re hoping the advocates will take advantage of the ample opportunities to answer questions.

Really? The practice is now legal in 13 states. The answer to these and other questions can be found here.

Quotables

A collection of compelling, sometimes appalling passages I’ve encountered lately

Loneliness is rarely about empty rooms. It's about carrying words you cannot say and truths you do not feel safe to share. — attributed to C.J. Jung

I’m sure Israel wasn’t trying to kill those journalists. Sounds like they were just caught in the crossfire of a routine hospital bombing. — Cameron Bradford

America’s secret economic weapon has never been oil, tech, or cheap capital. It’s the rule-of-law premium: the trust that here, contracts mean something, courts are impartial, and power has guardrails. This administration is cashing it out. — Tom Steyer

The free world needs to boycott the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, just as they should have boycotted the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany. — Mark Jacob

Kindly stop telling me what I need to pay attention to and what I must ignore because it's a "distraction." I know how to multitask. — Betty Bowers

Government so small it’s literally just one dude. — The Volatile Mermaid

Confederate statues are “history,” but a rainbow crosswalk dedicated to victims of a mass shooting is “political.” — unknown

Quips

In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite tweets that rely on visual humor. Subscribers then vote for their favorite. Here is the winner from this week’s contest:

The new nominees for Quip of the Week:

• Some sad news: Turns out my barber calls everyone “Boss.” — @NateSmith.dev

• I'm pretending to be meek until we all inherit the earth, and then I will reveal my true leonine nature. — @camerobradford

• I can’t wait for technology and evolution to meld. Newborns won’t just be babies anymore, they’ll also be wifi hotspots. — @epicaricist

• By the time I got to “orange you glad I didn’t say banana,” it was like all the light behind her eyes was gone. — @benedictsred

• What is the homeowner’s association going to do about the noisy kids who keep coming in my house and demanding snacks and calling me mom? — @deloisivete

• [Cat training class] Instructor: Open your textbooks to chapter 3 and then slowly push the book off the desk. — ‪@frovo.bsky.social‬

• Toddlers are just like drunk people except they’re easier to get out of the car after they pass out on the way home. — @stevesuckington.bsky.social‬

• My wife texted me a selfie in a new dress and asked, “Does this make my butt look big?” I texted back “Nooooo!” My phone autocorrected my response to “Mooooo!” Please send help. — @mariana057

• Why bother complaining when you can silently judge? — @wildethingy

• I just took the presidential fitness test and got Grover Cleveland. — @DeereJonathanxo

Vote here and check the current results in the poll.

For instructions and guidelines regarding the poll, click here.

Why “quips”? See “I’m rebranding ‘Tweet of the Week’ in a gesture of contempt for Elon Musk.” Also, I’m finding good stuff on BlueSky now as well.

Minced Words

Austin Berg, Marj Halperin and I joined host John Williams on this week’s episode of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast. We discussed the potential deployment of the National Guard in Chicago, the city’s multiple budget woes, the movement to outlaw the burning of the American flag, Trump’s effort to fire a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and much more.

Hear Austin’s solution to getting the city out of the parking meter deal!

Traffic Lights:

• John: A yellow light for “Mulholland Drive,” a 2001 movie that can be rented on Amazon Prime.

• Eric: A green light for “We Are Too Many: A Memoir (kind of), Hannah Pittard’s 2023 semi-autobiographical novel about the fallout when she learned her (now-ex) husband was having an affair with her best friend. Then a yellow light for the 2024 response novel “Set for Life” by the ex-husband, Andrew Ewell. (I’m now reading Pittard’s recently released novel “If You Love It, Let It Kill You.” which continues the back-and-forth in this messy business, but I’m not far enough along to judge it.

• Marj: A green light for Seth Rogen’s Apple TV+ series “The Studio.”

• Austin: A green light for the Sept. 9 Waxahatchee concert at the Salt Shed. Jessica Pratt & Sharp Pins are also on the bill.

Subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. Or bookmark this page. If you’re not a podcast listener, you can hear an edited version of the show at 8 p.m. most Saturday evenings on WGN-AM 720.

Read the background bios of some regular panelists here.

Green Light

Green Light features recommendations from me and readers not only of songs — as in the former Tune of the Week post — but also of TV shows, streaming movies, books, podcasts and other diversions that can be enjoyed at home — i.e., no restaurants, plays, theatrical films, tourist sites and so on. Email me your nominations, and please include a paragraph or two of explanation and background along with helpful links, perhaps including excerpts from reviews or background articles. For TV shows, please include links to trailers/previews on YouTube and advice on where to stream them.

This week’s nomination comes from the reader who goes by the handle “Skeptic.”

My wife and I watched the first season of “Murderbot” on AppleTV+ and enjoyed it. It is a sci-fi show where humanoid robots serve people. I think it is really a story about adolescence. Being parents of two young men that were sometimes awkward as teenagers, we could relate to the protagonist robot.

Here’s NPR critic Glen Weldon:

It's about a robot played by Alexander Skarsgård rented by a team of planetary scientists to work security on their expedition. Unbeknownst to them, it's more than a robot – it's gained sentience, and wants nothing more than to be left alone so it can watch the thousands of episodes of TV shows it's downloaded.

It knows that its gaining of free will would be considered a malfunction, and would result in it being scrapped for parts. So it pretends to be the unthinking, dutiful machine they rented, even as it silently, and hilariously, judges the humans it's protecting for being impractical, unsafe, naive and (from its perspective) wildly emotional. …

"Murderbot" is the name the robot calls itself. Not because it's homicidal, but because it thinks it sounds cool. …

“Murderbot” has managed the impossible. It's found a way to take the oldest, most tired, most overused premise in all of science-fiction — What does it mean to be human? — and mine it for comedy gold.

Info

Eric Zorn is a former opinion columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Find a longer bio and contact information here. This issue exceeds in size the maximum length for a standard email. To read the entire issue in your browser, click on the headline link above. Paid subscribers receive each Picayune Plus in their email inbox each Tuesday, are part of our civil and productive commenting community and enjoy the sublime satisfaction of supporting this enterprise. Browse and search back issues here.

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Help?

If you’re having troubles with Substack — delivery, billing and so forth — first try “Picayune Sentinel Substack help, Frequently Asked Questions.” If that doesn’t work check out the Substack help page. And if that doesn’t work, shoot me an email and I’ll be happy to help.

Thanks for reading!