I’ve said before that I’m not especially interested in Disney’s live-action, Robert Zemeckis-directed, Tom Hanks-starring musical Pinocchio (Disney, 9.8), and that my real interest is in Guillermo del Toro‘s fascist-Italy version, which Netflix will premiere on 12.9.22. I don’t think I even want to see the Disney version, to be honest. But what a trouncing by Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic.

Bernard Shaw was a first-rate TV news journalist who peaked during his time at CNN (1980-2001).

Shaw’s second most memorable moment with CNN was reporting from Baghdad on the 1991 Gulf War (“This feels like we’re in the center of hell“).

But there’s no question that Shaw’s most consequential moment happened when he drilled Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis with a highly emotional question that by normal human standards demanded some kind of emotional response. Dukakis’s refusal to answer with his heart did a lot to kill his chances of being elected.

Shaw had asked if Dukakis would support an “irrevocable death penalty” for a man who had hypothetically raped and murdered Dukakis’s wife. Dukakis’s reply was logical, measured and legalistic, and so doing he defined himself as a chilly technocrat.

This debate answer plus Willie Horton plus Rocky the Squirrel on a military tank did the job. Dukakais is still with us at age 88.

In the wake of his mother’s passing at age 96, the 73-year-old Charles, Prince of Wakes, has unofficially become the King of England, to be ceremoniously crowned in due time. It was only two days ago when Queen Elizabeth received the new Prime Minister, Liz Truss, in Balmoral Castle. The moment has happened; no one is gut-punched; tradition soldiers on. Ten days of pomp and cirumstance to follow.