Friendo: “Jeff, can you explain the All The President’s Men screw-up on that H.R. Haldeman confirmation call? The guy says ‘hang up, right? Got it straight now? Everything okay?’ But after the story blows up Bernstein explains to Ben Bradlee that the guy ‘thought I said hang on when I said hang up’ or some such shit.”

HE reply: “Hoffman/Bernstein says VERY CLEARLY that if the Haldeman story is wrong, the guy he’s talking to will hang up before Hoffman/Bernstein finishes counting to ten. Only a drooling idiot could have misunderstood what the deal was. Hang UP if we’re wrong.”

What’s the basic idea behind Sly Stallone, Mel Gibson and Jon Voight serving as Donald Trump’s “special ambassadors” to Hollywood?

To try and…what, urge the suppression or perhaps even the eradication of the woke virus? To offer incentives to those looking to make features that aren’t social values tutorials…that don’t try to instruct viewers about the power and the glory of progressivism? That might try and stamp out absurd presentism in historical films? To halt the advancing Best Picture Oscar campaign of Emilia Perez?

I don’t want to sound like a coarse, thick-fingered troglodyte, but I don’t have problems with these goals. No more films like Josie Rourke’s Mary, Queen of Scots? Yes, please, thank you.

Not that any industry hardcore types will offer these old, crusty, well-past-their-prime guys any kind of serious attention or deference. Blah, blah, handshakes, bullshit facetime, whatever. Passing fart fancies in the wind.