A single inappropriate kissing accusation won’t be much of a problem for Joe Biden, but a few more accusations could amount to a serious problem. Stories like this reenforce the default “dirty old sexist dinosaur” thing — notions that Biden may be cut from the same rogue cloth as Bill Clinton and the late George H.W. Bush, who got hit with two or three such accusations a year or so before he passed. We all know how this goes.

What say ye, Sasha Stone? Is Lucy Flores, the former Democratic nominee for Nevada lieutenant governor, doing this on behalf of one of Joe’s rivals? What maneuverings led to her decision to speak out?

Sasha Sez: “He kissed the back of her head. She was made ‘uncomfortable’ and only to a mass hysteria-afflicted mob would this be a big deal. What they don’t realize is that all this shows is just how easy we are to break, how easily undone we are and that our standards are so ridiculously high no one will pass muster. Also, it turns out that the woman in this article is a major Bernie Sanders supporter – she wants to help knock Joe out. What SHE doesn’t realize is that Bernie is next to be accused. It is just too easy now and so no one will be immune.”

Earlier today around noon, just outside the DUMBO-area Celestine (1 John Street). Lunch with Jett. After which I took the lumbering, drag-ass A train to JFK. When I got to the Alaska Airlines counter I realized I’d gone to the wrong airport — my flight was due to depart from Newark Airport in about 85 minutes time. I love it when this happens.

I’ve been sitting on a San Francisco-bound flight for the last four hours. Seat 28C, aisle. I feel like I’m in American-International’s adaptation of The Premature Burial, which starred Ray Milland. Can’t relax, stretch or sleep. Gogoinflight internet used to charge $29 and then $39 for full-flight service. Now these greedy pricks are charging $49, and for shitty wifi at that. Thumbs up!

What…this again? Liam Neeson apologizing again for that late ’70s racial-rage episode that he confessed to and apologized for after his remarks blew up on social media around seven weeks ago?

He’s probably been running into some serious casting shunnings over the last few weeks, hence his new re-apology.

On 2.5 I wrote that “public candor about private failings is not a wise policy in our current situation. You can’t say ‘I once succumbed to an urge to practice witchcraft back in the ’70s.’ To the Cotton Mather crowd that’s like saying you might put a hex on someone tomorrow.”

Neeson’s unfortunate recollection was part of an Independent interview that posted on 2.4.19.

Neeson said that he’d briefly succumbed to a surge of racially-focused rage after learning that a friend has been raped by a black dude. Neeson was in his mid to late 20s at the time. He maintained that his furious reaction was more generically tribal than anti-black — that he would have felt the same gut-level animosity “if she had said an Irish or a Scot or a Brit or a Lithuanian [had raped her]…[it] would have had the same effect.”

That explanation apparently didn’t cut it with the International League of Retroactive Racial-Attitude Correction, Fault-Finding and Stern Admonishment. And so Neeson is back on the p.c. carpet, kneeling and begging and weeping….”please, please, please.”

“Over the last several weeks, I have reflected on and spoken to a variety of people who were hurt by my impulsive recounting of a brutal rape of a dear female friend nearly 40 years ago and my unacceptable thoughts and actions at that time in response to this crime,” he said in a statement.

“The horror of what happened to my friend ignited irrational thoughts that do not represent the person I am. In trying to explain those feelings today, I missed the point and hurt many people at a time when language is so often weaponized and an entire community of innocent people are targeted in acts of rage.

“What I failed to realize is that this is not about justifying my anger all those years ago, it is also about the impact my words have today. I was wrong to do what I did. I recognize that, although the comments I made do not reflect, in any way, my true feelings nor me, they were hurtful and divisive. I profoundly apologize.”

I am so sick to death of hearing mature people of consequence apologize to the Cotton Mathers and Robespierre Committees for having done something wrong (i.e., behaved in a cruel manner or wrote something appalling or hair-trigger that doesn’t pass muster by current p.c. standards) when they were in their teens or 20s.

Almost everyone has one or two things in their immature past that they wish they hadn’t done. So here’s a one-size-fits-all apology that the next celebrity or politician can repeat when they get into trouble.

“Dear P.C. Commissars: I am truly sorry for having retroactively transgressed against or otherwise offended current p.c. values when I was in my teens or 20s. If I could return to that offense-giving moment via time machine, I would certainly not make the same error. I wish that my teenaged or 20something self could have summoned the wisdom and maturity that I now possess, but unfortunately it rarely works that way. Young hormonal types often do, say or write stupid things. I wish it were otherwise.

“But I also wish to say that as embarassed and mortified as I am by this decades-old error or shortcoming, the sum total of my regret and shame can’t begin to compare to the loathing and contempt that I hold for you and yours — the admonishing, politically correct, shrieking banshees of our time.

“In my humble judgment the group-think, finger-wagging, potentially-career-ruining admonishments and oppressions that you and and your fellow accusers occasionally issue about decades-old missteps are just as regrettable and perhaps even worse than the bad things that I was guilty of when young.

“I’m truly sorry for and ashamed of my youthful failings, but you guys, no offense, are hooded ogres, and if I could tie your hands and dunk you in a lake I would. Peace.”

Beto O’Rourke is hereby strongly advised to never again apologize for something bad he did in his youth. Explanations and regrets are obviously necessary and appropriate, but begging on your knees really doesn’t make it…”oh, please forgive me, I’m so very sorry, I was such a terrible flawed person before,” etc. Because people like me are SICK OF HEARING THIS SHIT.

Agnes Varda, the legendary nouvelle vague filmmaker (La Pointe Courte, Cleo From 5 to 7, Vagabond, Faces Places) and HE’s favorite French grandmother, has passed at age 90. We’re all gonna get there, no exceptions — her long journey simply came to an end.

By any measure Varda, bless her, made the most of her 90 years — full, active, influential. All I can say is that when it comes to older women of fame and consequence, I’ve always preferred women like Varda to, say, women like Betsy DeVos.

Thank God for Faces Places, which I highly recommend as something to watch later today.

From “’HE HAS NOWHERE TO GO BUT DOWN’: DEMOCRATIC RIVALS PREDICT BIDEN WOULD BE THE NEXT HILLARY,” posted today (3.328) by Vanity Fair‘s Chris Smith:

“[Biden’s] team knows he’d start off as the front-runner. What they’re trying to gauge is whether that’s a real thing,” says a Democratic strategist who worked for Hillary Clinton, and saw her favorables crater once Clinton declared her 2016 candidacy. “They’re saying, ‘Is that a durable cushion of support, or will we give back half or two-thirds of that support within three months, after we decide to get in the race?’

“No doubt Biden’s team is actively polling and focus-grouping those questions, though his spokesman refused to comment. Biden’s potential rivals are certainly measuring his strengths and weaknesses, and they are encouraged by what they’re seeing and hearing.

“Biden is polling as the front-runner right now, but there’s no intensity there. And he has nowhere to go but down,” a strategist for one of the Democratic contenders says. “There were these mirages in early polling that doomed Hillary both times, and it was a function of a similar dynamic, where you’ve got broad, deep name I.D. Every backward-looking Democratic nominee, one who’s been a vice president in the previous administration or played a major role — Hillary, Gore, Mondale — all failed.

“And Democrats have always succeeded when it’s been a fresh face and somebody who hasn’t spent a ton of time in Washington. That’s consistent with the research we’ve done internally this time: ‘Do you want someone older, or someone new?’ People overwhelmingly want someone new. To me, A.O.C. represents so much of what is going to be challenging for Biden. She’s speaking to people, saying, ‘Yeah, I’m fucking sofa-surfing as a member of Congress. That’s how people live.’ Biden is not exactly matching that moment.”

The spirit is upon him, etc. Great stuff. It’s roughly what I would say if I was Chicago’s mayor.

Letting Jussie Smollett slide because he merely acted selfishly and sociopathically, and because he didn’t commit a serious felony (he basically just “put on a show” as a way of servicing his faltering career)…that’s not a call I would have approved. But I understand why his friends muscled this through. They figured it was better to “fix” the situation than see Smollett descend into a pit of career hell. But Smollett continuing to insist that he’s innocent and that he really was attacked….that part really stinks. And in its own way is just as odious and rancid as the idiot Trump wind.

For whatever reason Universal Home Video released a 1.37 version of Charley Varrick on the same “street” day (6.1.10) as their 1.37 DVD of The Sting. Yes, the one I mentioned a couple of days ago. My boxy fetish demanded a purchase. Unlike the aesthetic synch with The Sting (i.e., the boxy a.r. fits into the mood and atmosphere of the early ’30s), I have no rationale for justifying a 1.37 version of Don Siegel‘s 1973 caper thriller. I just like watching boom mikes dip into the top of the frame.

..the radiation will seep out from my screen and infect me. My skin will turn red, and then my eye sockets will start bleeding and then my fingers will fall off. Moronic as this sounds, on some primal level I’m a teeny weeny bit fearful of this. This may be the dumbest thing I’ve ever written on this site.

Nobody wants to see Tom Hanks play a fat, selfish, cigar-smoking prick who wore a straw hat and spoke with a Southern drawl…nobody.

Col. Tom Parker was literally the devil — the grotesque asshole who turned Elvis Presley‘s career into a joke by casting him in a string of shitty ’60s movies. He also fought against Presley’s 1968 live televized concert, and when he couldn’t stop it wanted Elvis to sing Christmas songs instead of rock tunes.

People want to see Hanks play nice, mellow, mild-mannered guys — that’s his brand, his wheelhouse. Whom would I cast as Parker? John Travolta. Nic Cage. Somebody who can deliver the casual demonic, and who’s already fat.

I’m telling you right now I’m not that interested in seeing this Baz Luhrmann film. I feel all Elvis-ed out at this stage. We all know this story. It’s been told and re-told and re-told.

Whoa…Denzel Washington and Francis McDormand as the ruthlessly ambitious Macbeths in a new version of the classic William Shakespeare tragedy? Sorry but they’re too long-of-tooth.

Grand Shakespearean roles demand actors of specific ages or age ranges. Hamlet has to be played by young (or at least young-seeming) actors, Macbeth is a role for actors in their 30s or early 40s, and King Lear is something you tackle in your 60s or 70s.

It is therefore grotesque to imagine Washington, 64, and McDormand, 61, as the original hungry, ambitious climbers. The trouble the Macbeths get into is par for the course for ruthless Type-A couples in their 30s or early 40s. People in their 60s are generally past that jazz.

The oldest Macbeth I’ve ever seen was Peter O’Toole, 48, in that 1980 Old Vic production. And O’Toole tried like hell to look younger, trust me. Heaps of makeup. I caught a performance so don’t tell me.

All the other Macbeths have been younger. Jon Finch was 28 or 29 when he starred in Roman Polanski‘s 1971 Macbeth. Orson Welles was 33 when he starred in his 1948 film adaptation. Michael Fassbender was 37 or 38 when he starred four years ago in Justin Kurzel‘s Macbeth.

Washington and McDormand’s performances will of course kick ass, but that’s not the issue. There’s just no believing that people of their age would be so completely consumed by mad ambition, spooky visions and witch cauldrons. They should play the parents of this famous couple, counseling caution and restraint.

The film will be directed by Joel Coen, produced by Scott Rudin and distributed by A24.

Otherwise known as The Jesus-and-Mary Madgelene Movie They Could Not Open Domestically For The Longest Time. The movie that was sucked into a Harvey Weinstein distribution calamity hole. The movie that missed its time, and which nobody wants to see. The movie in which Joaquin Pheonix plays a moody, muttering, slightly paunchy, 44-year-old, partially gray-haired Nazarene. (Forget the belief about our savior dying on the cross at the relatively young age of 33.) The Garth Davis movie that opened in the U.K.and Australia a year ago, and wasn’t reviewed with a great deal of enthusiasm. It’ll open on 4.12.19 via Focus Features and IFC Films.