Seriously, Cannon said that Special Counsel Jack Smith ‘s appointment violates the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution.” Despite this dismissal (Cannon is a total blowjob whore for Trump), Smith has the option to appeal the dismissal to the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to try to have Cannon’s ruling overturned.
Or the summer of 2020. She’s probably been advised not to out the “turn down the diversity” director, but if you listen between the lines (what’s up with her swollen upper lip?) Fox quit a project in question because casting-wise, the just-arrived director is more into cultural authenticity than diversity-for-its-own-sake. Something like that.
The glasses and the hair style are fine — obviously a statement that says “I have not only discovered my eccentricity but journeyed into the 1950s homo realm of WilliamS.Burroughs.” But tucking in a sweater that I wouldn’t wear with a gun at my head…..noooooo!!
Lieutenant Howard Hunter on Hill Street Blues, Dr. David Howser in Doogie Howser, M.D., Cpt. Stan Jones on Brooklyn South? All those characters are fine…whatever.
But for me the late James B. Sikking is only the high-powered-rifle assassin in Point Blank.
Sikking was the guy who killed Lloyd Bochner‘s “Frederick Carter” and Michael Strong‘s “Stegman”…remember?
Unlike Thomas Matthew Crooks, Sikking’s downtown L.A. assassin was an excellent shot.
Born in 1934, Sikking was only 32 when he appeared in John Boorman‘s noir classic.
What is wrong with those saying that the motive behind Thomas Matthew Crooks‘ firing at Donald Trump is mystifying or doesn’t add up?
Has there ever been an assassin or would-be assassin who hasn’t been described as a quiet loner? Who wasn’t seen as a nerdy, socially inept outcast? Who hadn’t been bullied by fellow students?
Isn’t it totally common for sudden-explosion shooters to have been identified as bad dressers (i.e., high school audio-visual squad)? As quiet dorks with weird senses of humor? “Nice” but extra-quiet, kept to themselves, etc. No girlfriend, etc. Apparent virgins.
Crooks was obviously a standard-issue, tied-up-in-knots nutter who kept it all inside. He “would sit alone at lunch,” etc.
Remember the haunted, enraged expression of that nerd-squad guy who shot Ronnee Blakely in Nashville? Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick…boom.
Daily Mail summary: “Crooks tried out for the school’s rifle team but was turned away because he was a bad shooter, said Frederick Mach, a current captain of the team who was a few years behind Crooks at the school.
“Jonathan Myers, a member of the team around the time Crooks auditioned, said there was something ominous about him back then.
“‘He didn’t just not make the team, he was asked not to come back because how bad of a shot he was, it was considered like, dangerous,’ Myers told ABC News.
“Fellow classmate Jameson Murphy added: ‘He tried out…and was such a comically bad shot he was unable to make the team and left after the first day.’
Crooks reportedly once fired a shot that “missed [the] target by almost 20 feet.”
Poor Shannon Doherty has passed at age 53. She’d been grappling with cancer for nine years. Breast cancer, lymph node cancer, chemotherapy, remission, etc. Then the cancer returned four years ago (i.e., February 2020), and the stage four kind…Jesus. 13 months ago she announced that she had brain cancer and that things had gone terminal. Tough luck, brutal gauntlet. Sorry.
And then she passed on the same day Donald Trump was shot. Doherty, Aldous Huxley and C.S. Lewis. Again, sorry.
R.I.P. Shannen Doherty, who has tragically died from breast cancer at 53. Yes, she was best known for 90210 and CHARMED but to me, she’ll always be Rene from MALLRATS. My heart goes out to her friends and family… pic.twitter.com/nD0jHRVU5R
“You can feel the fire and rage in Lee’s veins in more than a few scenes, and especially during the last five minutes when Lee recalls the venality of 2017’s “Unite the Right” really in Charlottesville, which ended with the death of protestor Heather Meyer, and reminds that Donald Trump showed who and what he is with his non-judgmental assessment of the KKK-minded demonstrators.
“Lee paints Trump with the racist brush that he completely deserves, and it makes for a seriously pumped-up finale.
But that doesn’t change the fact that BlacKkKlansman is basically a police undercover caper film, based on Ron Stallworth’s 2014 novel (“Black Klansman: Race, Hate, and the Undercover Investigation of a Lifetime”).
Nor the fact that tonally it sometimes feels like Starsky and Hutch or even to some extent like John Badham‘s Stakeout, especially as it involves the main cop protagonist falling in love with a girl (in this case an Afro’ed black activist played by Laura Harrier) who shouldn’t know what he’s up to, but whom he eventually confesses to. In this sense John David Washington‘s Stallworth is Richard Dreyfuss in the Badham film, and Adam Driver (as partner Flip Zimmerman) is Emilio Estevez.
Set in 1972, pic isn’t literally about Stallworth joining the Ku Klux Klan but a stealthy undercover investigation of the Klan, initiated when he was the first black detective in the history of the Colorado Springs Police Department.
After initial correspondence with the Klan, Stallworth received a call in which he was asked if he wants to “join our cause.” Stallworth answered affirmatively, and in so doing launched an audacious, fraught-with-peril inquiry.
SPOILER-ISH BUT NOT REALLY: Right away you’re telling yourself, “Yes, I know this actually happened and that Lee is using the facts in Stallworth’s book, but it made no sense for Fallworth to be heavily involved in this operation.” And it just feels crazy as you’re watching one crazy incident after another.
Problem #1 is that throughout the film Stallworth talks to KKK members on the phone (including wizard David Duke, played by Topher Grace) and so Zimmerman, pretending to be the Real McCoy, has to sound like Stallworth as much as possible. Except this is a dicey game that’s unlikely to fool anyone. Early on a local KKK leader tells Stallworth that his voice sounds different, as it obviously is.
If I was Stallworth’s supervisor I would tell him he’ll make a mistake sooner or later and that he’s too much of red flag, and that the smart move is for Zimmerman to carry the ball alone.
Problem #2 comes when a KKK member spots “a black guy” (i.e., Stallworth) behind the wheel of a car that’s following as he drives with Zimmerman. Brilliant tactical maneuvering, Stallworth!
Problem #3 happens when Zimmerman is told by a suspicious klan member to submit to a lie-detector test, and so Stallworth, knowing that Zimmerman’s in a tough spot, runs up to the KKK member’s house and throws a rock through a window…it just seems nuts for Stallworth to have done that, given the likelihood that the klan might wonder why a black guy happened to be nearby.
Problem #4 occurs when the same looney-tunes KKK member looks up Stallworth’s address in the phone book and pays him a visit. Stallworth answers the door and for a couple of minutes he and the KKK member eyeball each other.
Problem #5 happens when a Colorado Springs police supervisor insanely orders Stallworth to provide security for David Duke during a visit to their city. Before you know it Stallworth is in the same room as the same KKK member who knocked on his door, his identity protected only by a pair of shades. And then he takes them off before posing for a Polaroid photo. It’s just crazy — no undercover cop would behave this way.
All this aside, BlacKkKlansman is edgy and involving as far as it goes, and occasionally quite funny from time to time. It’s a reasonably good film, and I love that Lee shoots Trump between the eyes at the end, but people calling it “great” need to calm down.
I’m not going to summarize the main points of James Kirchick’s 2.4 Air Mail article as anyone can read it (it’s not paywalled), but there’s no question that anyone with an open mind will emerge with their previous impressions strongly challenged.
I read the article this morning, and many of the accusations against Hammer look kinda flimsy now, I can tell you that.
At the very least readers will conclude that Kirchik’s piece has downgraded Armie’s status from that of an alleged monster and ruthless rapist-carnivore to the much less odious label of admitted former asshole (an asshole in recovery, I mean) who knows where the BDSM attraction came from (i.e., sexual abuse as a powerless youth).
The article claims that Hammer’s primary sin was using his power as a rich, famous actor in his 30s (“power imbalance” being a major #MeToo felony these days) to sexually overwhelm various younger women and then (this is what really got him in trouble) ghosting them when he decided to abruptly or whimsically end the affairs like that.
Message to everyone: “Ghosting” a lover really hurts and often leads to revenge moves. If you want to move on, save yourself a lot of trouble by conveying this in some kind of half-considerate way.
We all agree that ignoring a safe word is an awful thing to do, and this charge hasn’t been specifically addressed in the article (or maybe I read it too fast) but the sexual behavior of Armie and the various women who participated, so to speak, is addressed and explained. Hammer raped no one, he says — it was all a consensual game with rules and a particular script laid out in advance.
Hammer seems to be mainly guilty of behaving like a sexual obsessive. He certainly didn’t chew on anyone’s rib or cut off a woman’s toe and put it in his pocket….none of that crazy stuff.
Excerpt #1: “The Hammer case raises questions about the media. Virtually without exception, the press has treated the accusations from Hammer’s professed victims, no matter how fantastical, with utter credulity. As recently as last October, for instance, a story in New York magazine claimed that Hammer stands accused of ‘possible cannibalism.'”
Excerpt #2: “One prominent Hollywood figure has decided to speak out unreservedly in Hammer’s defense. ‘I found him to be so polite and so well mannered and so nice and so funny and so real,” says Howard Rosenman, the veteran producer of Call Me by Your Name. ‘And don’t forget, I spent time with him a lot, both in Crema and on the road, when we were on the Oscar trail. So all of [the allegations are] just pure bullshit, and yes, he deserves a second chance.’
“Rosenman, who is gay and has been involved in some of Hollywood’s most important gay-themed films (The Celluloid Closet, Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt, Milk), sympathizes with Hammer as someone whose sexuality was once considered taboo. ‘It’s been puritanical,” Rosenman says of the media’s prurient coverage. ‘The kink-shaming is just awful. I, as a gay man who had sex for many, many years with many different kinds of people, understand this better than anyone.”
“In a recent podcast interview, Luca Guadagnino said that he ‘cannot wait to work with Armie as soon as I have a great role for [him].'”
Excerpt #3: “When I ask [Hammer] if he takes inspiration from his mentor Robert Downey Jr., who was arrested multiple times in the late 1990s on drug charges and spent several spells in jail, his answer turns toward the mythological: ‘What I would say is this: There’s examples of people who went through really difficult times and experienced what [the author] Joseph Campbell would call ‘the hero’s death.’ And the hero must die so the hero can be reborn again.’
And it tears my heart apart to admit this, but that image of a defiant, fist-pumping Trump with blood streaked across his face means…please, God, no…that he’s going to win the election.
Doddering, drooling, hoarse-voiced, cognitive-decline Joe vs. the Bloody Defiant Fist-Pumper…courage under fire.
That image is like Boris Yeltsin climbing on top of the tank during the Russian coup attempt of ‘91. It’s the precise opposite of Martin Sheen’s Greg Stillson cowering before a would-be assassin’s bullets.
Obviously a theatrical gesture. Trump realized it was a huge historic moment and he instinctually “performed”. Shameless but effective.
The post-shooting hubbub will all calm down by tomorrow. Before you know it, the “oh my God!” will fade away. But that fuckingphoto will live on.
The only chance Democrats have in being at least competitive between now and Election Day…even competitive, mind…is to jettison stumbling Biden immediately and nominate someone substantial and especially younger. Otherwise it’s over.
I strongly suspect that Trump’s favorability rating will shoot up now, just as Ronald Reagan’s favorability numbers went up after John Hinckley tried to assassinate him.
Abraham Lincoln
James Garfield
William McKinley
Teddy Roosevelt
JFK
Malcolm X
Martin Luther King
RFK
Gerald Ford
Ronald Reagan
Assassinations and assassination atttempts are as American as apple pie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_assassination_attempts_and_plots
He looks dweeby, dorky — like the Sandy Hook guy. Ten to one he had no girlfriend.
BBC: “The FBI has named the man who shot at Donald Trump during a campaign rally as Thomas Matthew Crooks.
“Crooks is alleged to have opened fire while the former US president was addressing a crowd in Butler, Pennsylvania, leaving one audience member dead and two others badly hurt.
“The 20-year-old was shot dead at the scene by a Secret Service sniper, officials said.
“He had not been carrying ID, so investigators used DNA to identify him, the FBI said.
“He was from Bethel Park in Pennsylvania, about 43 miles from Butler, the site of the attempted assassination. He appears to have graduated in 2022 from Bethel Park High School, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review newspaper.
“State voter records show that Crooks was a registered Republican, according to US media. He is also reported to have donated $15 to liberal campaign group ActBlue in 2021.”
