I’ve made it clear that I loathe and despise Joe Rogan‘s dismissal of Joe Biden, but this three-way conversation (Rogan + The Hill‘s Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti) about the looting is worth listening to.

Last night in West Hollywood, sometime around 8:40 pm:

We’ve now witnessed two recent episodes in which New and Old Guard journalists have been sharply at odds. Believers in wokester activist journalism, a Millennial and Zoomer thing that’s about exposing racism, pollution, corruption and all the other social ills and in some cases indicting and/or cancelling old-schoolers (and particularly Trump-aligned righties), have clashed with defenders of traditional liberal journalism — basically a generational rift.

Episode #1 was about wokester N.Y. Times staffers condemning the opinion section’s decision to publish a somewhat rash opinion essay by Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton (“Send In The Military“) that basically said the military should be brought in to stop looters.

Wokester staffers tweeted that running the Cotton piece “puts Black @NYTimes staff in danger”…really? Most Americans believe that the looting has been horrible if not ruinous, and that it should be stopped one way or another.

N.Y. Times columnist Bari Weiss explains the clash as follows: “The civil war inside The New York Times between the (mostly young) wokes and the (mostly 40-plus) liberals is the same one raging inside other publications and companies across the country. The dynamic is always the same. The New York Times motto is ‘all the news that’s fit to print.’ One group” — the 40-plussers — “emphasizes the word ‘all.’ The other, the word ‘fit.'”

“The New Guard has a different worldview,” Weiss went on. “They call it ‘safetyism,’ in which the right of people to feel emotionally and psychologically safe trumps what were previously considered core liberal values, like free speech.”

Episode #2, which happened last night in Los Angeles, was about safetyism.

Variety editor Claudia Eller was forced to take a two-month administrative leave after a Twitter dispute with freelancer Piya Sinha-Roy about insufficient newsroom diversity. The flashpoint moment was when Sinha-Roy complained that “POC voices are constantly dismissed“, in response to which Eller took umbrage because she felt she and other Variety editors had conveyed an understanding of this complaint and a pledge to improve. “When someone cops to something why would you try and criticize them?,” she said to Sinha-Roy. “You sound really bitter.”

Eller surely understands that you can’t get into a Twitter dispute with any younger POC and hope to win the argument. Or at least, she surely understands that now.

American voters are starting to figure some things out also. Scratch an under-40 wokester-progressive and you may find an ideological Stalinist who’s convinced that change can’t happen without slapping a few people around or even deep-sixing them. A day or two ago I equated this crowd with Tom Courtenay‘s “Strelnikov” character in Dr. Zhivago. I’ve said 50 times that we’re living through a period that’s not unlike the French terror, at least within wokester circles.

We’re also living through a certain strain of liberal hypocrisy in which progressives had insisted for nearly three months that strict social distancing had to be observed for God knows how long. This was followed by the partial collapse of social distancing (certainly among protestors) when it came time to march against systemic racism in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.

Drive though any major city now and you’ll see a whole lot of storefronts covered with plywood, plywood, plywood. Caused by looters but also by the George Floyd protestors who’ve given them cover. What kind of impact is this going to have on Average Joe voters? The vast majority is appalled by racially-driven police brutality and support the demonstrations, but at the same time they don’t like the way plywood has totally taken over.

What would be the right proportional makeup of a properly diverse newsroom, by the way? Should the racial makeup of a newsroom reflect last year’s U.S. census figures, which stated that whites comprise 60.4% of the population with other tribes close to 40% (African Americans 13.4%, Hispanic-Latino 18.3% and Asians 5.9%, etc.). Or is journalism a different kettle of fish? How should it work exactly?

In my view, Weiss is one of the few serious truth-tellers within the N.Y. Times community when it comes to wokesters vs. traditionalists.

Judd Apatow and Pete Davidson‘s The King of Staten Island will begin streaming on Friday, 6.12. The embargo finally lifts on Monday, 6.8.

A good film is a good film under any viewing circumstance, but as someone who’s streamed KOSI twice I would pay any fair price to be allowed to watch it with a theatre full of appropriately spaced all-media types and/or early adopters. Just to “feel the room”. I’m very sorry that’s not in the cards.

I booted his sorry ass last night, and let me tell you it feels really good to have done that. This site is now a tad cleaner and prouder and less cluttered with the musings of prickly asshats.

The final two episodes of Ben Mankiewicz‘s “The Plot Thickens” podcast about the life and career of Peter Bogdanovich (#6 and #7) are extremely sad and deeply moving. An account of a truly terrible tragedy and a calamitous fall from grace.

I was especially touched by Bogdanovich’s singing of a Sinatra song (“I’ll Be Seeing You“) at the end of episode #7.

It makes you want to re-read Andrew Goldman‘s q & a session with Bogdanovich (Vulture, 3.4.19). Posted on 3.6.19: “It’s the kind of interview that almost never happens — the kind in which the interview subject says exactly what he thinks. Exactly as in ‘fuck it, I don’t care.'”

The idea of never deploying regular military troops to deal with domestic disturbances goes all the way back to ancient Rome, or at least back to Laurence Olivier‘s thoughts about same in Stanley Kubrick and Kirk Douglas‘s Spartacus (’60).

Olivier’s Marcus Licinius Crassus to John Dall‘s Glabrus: “Have you forgotten Rome’s most sacred law, that a general may never bring his troops within the city walls?” Dall: “Sulla did.” Olivier: “Sulla? To the infamy of his name! To the utter damnation of his line!”

My first thought was that this new Da 5 Bloods poster is an attempt to link Spike Lee’s new film to the George Floyd uprising, et. al. Yes, many if not most African-American Vietnam combat soldiers probably came to a similar conclusion between the mid ’60s and early ’70s, thinking perhaps of the words of Muhammud Ali (“I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong“). And this would fit right in, of course, with the story of four 60something vets returning to Vietnam and reconsidering their shared history. If I’m mistaken I apologize, but I don’t recall reading or hearing that “this ain’t our fight!” is a major theme of this soon-to-stream film until today. Da 5 Bloods will be on Netflix starting June 12th.

More fencing going up around the White House complex early this morning pic.twitter.com/VLBRnx1lgz

— Betsy Klein (@betsy_klein) June 4, 2020

I recently fell in love with an HE-thread comment about “lily-white anarchist cosplay riotbros**,” but now I can’t find the source. Either way this two-day-old CBS News story about a white Chicago guy, Timothy O’Donnell, having been popped for setting fire to a Chicago Police SUV in the Loop district last weekend fits the profile perfectly.

Because O’Donnell was wearing a Joker mask while igniting the vehicle, and was photographed in the act. A telltale neck tattoo (“PRETTY”) led to his arrest.

It would appear, in short, that O’Donnell was inspired as much by Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix as the murder of George Floyd and the nationwide protests that followed, if not more so. The basic anarchist impulse was fueled, of course, by nearly three months of quarantined isolation. Without covid would street insurrections still be happening as we speak? Doubtful.

Poor Chicago…just starting to reemerge from quarantine a couple of weeks ago, only to be trashed and plywood-shuttered by the protests and especially by the looters. Same goes for Los Angeles, New York…all over, right?

Timothy O’Donnell in Joker mask.

Apparently lighting police van last Saturday.

** “Riotbros” being from the same temperamental family previously identified as “virusbros” and “Berniebros.”

Trump ’20 has just announced the sale of Keep America Great camoflauge hats. No more red — camo is the new deal. Subliminally, what does that tell you? It feels like an upping the stakes signal, Trumpies vs. lefties, armed insurrection against the Deep State, etc.

Terrible convulsive traumas have sadly happened to this country from time to time. But they’ve never been long-term. A few days or a week, and then everyone began to gradually emerge and resume basic routines.

JFK was shot on Friday, 11.22.63 and buried on Monday, 11.25. Four days of emotional gloom and devastation. And on Tuesday, 11.26, the world slowly started again. The grief never went away, of course, but the wheels of commerce and culture began to turn.

John Lennon was murdered on 12.8.80. The shockwaves of anguish were devastating. Everyone wept. But after a few days or a week, the clouds began to dissipate.

The Los Angeles Rodney King riots lasted for six days (4.29.92 to 5.4.92). The aftermath seeped and simmered. Nobody ever forgot what happened. But on the seventh day the world began to move on.

The 9/11 recovery took a lot longer. The shuddering trauma aspects, I mean. But that was a first-ever attack on U.S. soil, and of course mass murder.

George Floyd was killed by four Minneapolis cops on 5.25. That was 9 or 10 days ago. The protests are still going on, and there’s another one happening in Los Angeles a few days hence (Hollywood to West Hollywood to Santa Monica). The curfew is still on, and a high percentage of stores in WeHo are boarded up.

So how much longer? The mindset and makeup of big-city police departments aren’t going to change overnight. Will the protests and demonstrations keep going for days to come? Weeks? Indefinitely?

My son Jett says “Nah…another week or so. It won’t stretch into July. It’ll wind down. Sometime next week, I predict.”

A friend says, “It’s not going to ease off in New York City until Cuomo and De Blasio call in the national guard. An organ of the NYPD released a statement yesterday saying they’re ‘losing the city.’ It’s winding down in some cities. But not in the major ones like NYC and Los Angeles. Who knows how long it’ll continue?

“Have you read or seen any legitimate journalist on TV or print actually condemning the looting? A good portion of the N.Y. Times staff is revolting because Times editors published an op-ed by Republican Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton calling for the military to stop looters. Not the demonstrators but looters, but it became a flashpoint condemnation thing among Twitter lefties.

“Nobody, it seems, wants to strongly condemn the looting. It’s as if the media are too scared to say that the protestors/rioters need a to stop because they would then be seen as ‘against the cause’ and racist.

“That’s a major dilemma for politicians as well right now. How to condemn what’s happening without sounding racist or against Black Lives Matter. The Republicans have no problem doing that because it’s part of their usual agenda to go against such things and not be PC, but Democrats are in a major bind right now.”

A couple of hours ago another friend called and said, “Remember social distancing? It was a very strict thing. But have you seen any social distancing since the marches, protests and lootings began?

Social distancing was essential to slowing down the coronavirus. But it stopped the economy and it raised the unemployment rate to something approaching 20%. And after a few weeks it drove the bumblefucks crazy. Their thing was “if grandma has to die then grandma has to die, but we have to live…we can’t just fold into a fetal ball and stop living. We have to work and keep our lives going.”

Was it wise to fraternize in churches and Arkansas pool parties and anti-Gretchen Whitmer protests? Probably not, as we’ve seen infection rates spiking in certain hinterland regions.

But the Democrats and especially the progressive left looks just as confused and compromised now.

Starting seven or eight days ago, social distancing was called off to protest and scream against systemic police brutality and racism. Social distancing was a big deal before Floyd’s death, but then it was put on hold…more or less forgotten as far as many protestors were concerned.

As I regard myself as a lefty iconoclast it pains me to post a tweet from James Woods (the actor, not the HE comment-thread guy), but I have to say that it’s a fair remark in this context:

Friendo: “Hypocritical is the right word to use. The narrative was that if you didn’t social distance then you needed to be shamed and ridiculed on social media. What happened to that? Is COVID-19 over? Has the media moved on to the next crisis? The 24/7 news cycle has become such a toxic enabler.”