CSotD: On Further Review

We’ll start a day of second-thoughts with Gary Markstein (Creators)’s accurate assessment of the difference between “the end of the pandemic” and “the start of a new reality.”

Fauci has said the pandemic is essentially over, but that doesn’t mean we’re done with covid, which, like seasonal flu, continuously mutates into new variants, each potentially more dangerous.

As someone of a certain age, I get a new flu shot each year and it’s “new” in that its formulation attempts to anticipate the likely variants but is no guarantee, though it’s better than no precautions at all.

It would indeed be lovely if, like polio, smallpox and TB, we could get a single vaccination and be done with covid. It would also be nice if wearing a seatbelt meant your car would never be in an accident.

A lot of things would be nicer in a perfect world.

For instance, I’ll use this cartoon as an excuse to observe that Dr. Fauci has decided to skip tonight’s White House Concubine’s Association Dinner because he doesn’t consider even their precautions sufficient to allow for a safe gathering, both in light of the new variant that has struck quite a few people there, and in light of how more than 10 percent of attendees at April 2’s Gridiron Dinner subsequently tested positive for the virus. 

It’s always nice to have an inoffensive excuse for ducking out of something that is both popular and horrendous. (And a h/t to Ann Telnaes!)

In a perfect world, nobody would be going, but, alas, in a perfect world, nobody would want to.

Over at Rolling Stone, Meredith Shiner doesn’t bother with polite excuses, dismissing the annual schmoozefest with both wit and precision:

As noted here often before, any reporter who claims to have friends is either not a real reporter or is deceived about what constitutes a friend. As a reporter, I attended a variety of business events and had good relations with a lot of my sources, but nobody ever mistook me for anything but a reporter, nor did I want or expect them to.

The notion of walking down a red carpet would have been enough to keep me away even before all the hugging and (ass)kissing that attend such a travesty.

It’s not just a style point or some obscure ethical quibble. Very very bad things happen when these sorts of semi-bogus journalists buddy up to their sources.

 

But let me offer a completely personal take on style for a moment, because I’d never seen Maeve with her hair up before this morning’s Between Friends (KFS).

Jeezus, Maeve, it’s only dinner. The prom is taking place at Zits.

If I were Benoit (her boss), I’d be both disappointed and alarmed.

Disappointed because she’s such a babe with her hair down, and alarmed because I’d worry that she was taking this dinner thing way too seriously. The latter point, given Sanda Bell-Lundy’s talent for convolution, being entirely possible.

It reminds me of my sophomore year in college, when I spent most of the night before arriving on campus in the lobby of a motel in Ann Arbor chatting up the night clerk, a student at Michigan. I invited her down for Homecoming but when she stepped off the bus, the cute blonde in blue jeans and sweats had transmogrified into a lacquered lady.

She was still very nice and the weekend was okay, but the magic had disappeared in a mass of hair spray and bobby pins.

I know: Maeve just tucked her hair up and I should relax.

Still, I prefer that beauty be played in the key of B-natural.

 

John Darkow contrasts the posturing street-corner prayers of that high school football coach with the civil-rights claiming protest gesture that caused Colin Kaepernick to become unemployed in the NFL.

I most certainly agree that Kaepernick’s expulsion was a sign of the racism and rightwing corruption of NFL front offices. He got a raw deal and most of what he accomplished at that moment was to shine a light on the league’s shortcomings.

Which is not so bad.

However, the other day, the owner of the Raiders said that, if his coach wanted to sign Kaepernick, he’d be okay with that, and progressives on social media exploded with excitement.

Chill, kids.

Kap hadn’t been having such a good season six years ago when he began to stand for something more important, and, if somehow he returned to the field this fall, he’d be the third oldest QB in the league, behind only Tom Brady and Aaron Rogers, each of whom are considered freaks for both their talent and longevity.

 

By happenstance, Tank McNamara (AMS) takes on the issue of Jackie Robinson today, with a riff on the idea that modern kids don’t know about overt racism, and perhaps a hint that the ones in Texas and Florida never will.

Of course there were qualified Black players, and it’s good — though way too late — that MLB has recognized the talent and records of the Negro Leagues.

Still, Jackie Robinson’s contributions were not confined to the baseball diamond and he continued to be an icon in the Civil Rights Movement, working throughout his life to improve the world, as did Roy Campanella and other pioneers of athletic desegregation.

“Father Time is undefeated,” the athletes agree, but a good man doesn’t have to be, and Colin Kaepernick, through both his example and his foundation, has done far more off the field than he ever accomplished on it.

Anyone who still sees him only as an unemployed jock is missing a much bigger picture, and a much bigger man.

 

Ann depicts, George expands

A word of advice: Don’t antagonize Ann Telnaes and George Takei simultaneously.

As Trump proved time and time again, you not only can’t make this stuff up, but you don’t have to:

Quit laughing: This man not only once possessed the nuclear codes, but he may regain them.

Particularly if, as Chuck Legge suggests, even those who don’t want him back persist in messaging the pointlessness of bothering to vote in November, given that Biden has not ushered in a perfect world with a faultless economy, no communicable diseases and a complete reversal of environmental damage.

No-one appreciates a sky that is even partially blue.