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The Gray Lady’s Debauchery: Karen’s Story
This is yet another recommendation of a Bari Weiss podcast, this one featuring fellow writer Kmele Foster and his coverage of The Central Park Karen. It isn’t a story to which I paid much attention when it was big last year, but it’s interesting to hear an actual investigative journalist (yes, there still are a few) covering what the bigshots at the New York Times didn’t think was worth revealing to their readers.
Quick recap: a white woman, Amy Cooper, was walking her unleashed dog in Central Park when a black man, Christian Cooper (no relation), asked her to tether her dog as required by the park rules. In the ensuing exchange, Ms. Cooper reports (and Mr. Cooper confirms) that Mr. Cooper said:
The original Olympics was over 2,500 years ago, and included the following events: running, long jump, discus, shot put, javelin, wrestling, boxing, pankration (something similar to modern MMA), and equestrian events. So a total of about nine or ten events, with nine or ten winners. This year in Tokyo, they will be awarding 339 gold medals, for 339 different events, for men and women. These events include discus and long jump etc, like the original Olympics. But they also include artistic swimming, field hockey, skateboarding, table tennis, golf, canoe slalom, surfing, water polo, BMX freestyle bicycling, badminton, sport climbing, trampoline, handball, and so on and so on and so on.
So does that mean that we could attract similar interest today in Olympic events that featured skills valued in our modern society? I don’t think so. ‘Java script’ and ‘competitive finance’ would be unlikely to attract screaming crowds of fans. So instead, we add skateboarding, etc. But as we add more and more sports, the Olympics gets smaller and smaller. The organizers of the Olympics understand this, and make the opening ceremonies more glitzy every year, and make the venues more spectacular, trying to attract interest by putting on a bigger and bigger show. But viewership continues to fall.
Vice President Kamala Harris is the best-positioned politician in the country. After six years as California Attorney General and just four as U.S. senator, the 56-year-old was catapulted to the number two position in government. She’s a heartbeat away from the presidency, understudying for a doddering septuagenarian who may not have a lot of heartbeats left in him.
The impending multibillion-dollar 
I was watching the film Picnic (1955) the other day which stars William Holden, Kim Novak, Rosalind Russell, Arthur O’Connell, Cliff Robertson and others. It’s one of my favorites. For those who haven’t seen it, a restored, high-definition version is available and sometimes makes the rounds on Turner Classic Movies. The story, for those unfamiliar with it, takes place in a rural community smack dab in the middle of what we now call flyover country. It was shot in various locations in Kansas, and centers around the arrival of, Hal Carter, played by William Holden, a star college school football player who comes in search of his college roommate looking for a chance to start again after a series of missteps and trouble with the law after college in the wider world beyond.
The many messages about life, love, and the restless American spirit that Inge’s play explores, and the amazing performances by the actors, are worth exploring further. But what struck me on this most recent viewing of the film is the lengthy sequence, montage really, around the festivities of the rural community’s Labor Day picnic, using hundreds of locals from Halstead, Kansas who are engaged in a series of races, sing-alongs, talent contests, pie-eating contests, complemented with crying babies and tired folks fanning themselves in the hot sun while watching a musical group on stage. The picnic sequence, for the most part, documents an actual picnic with only the narrative of the film framing it on either end. It’s a chronicle that gives us a glimpse of the community’s personalities and dynamics in an America perhaps quickly receding from our public consciousness and seen now from the perspective of Americans today in communities still reeling or still contending with COVID lockdowns, irrational mask mandates, hysteria, confrontation, public friction, riots, shaming by elected leaders (mayors and governors), accusations, and purported victimization by imagined oppressors. For those of us who experienced something akin to what the picnic scene in the film depicts, it beckons to us. For those too young or too sheltered to have witnessed something akin to what is shown, how much poorer are their lives and how much emptier their future?
Gov. Andrew Cuomo violated federal and state sexual harassment laws, according to an independent investigation by New York state’s attorney general. In a Tuesday news conference, AG Letitia James revealed that Cuomo engaged in “unwanted groping, kissing, hugging, and making inappropriate comments” to multiple women, including state employees. The probe also found Cuomo allegedly retaliated against one accuser and presided over a toxic and hostile work environment.