Culture

Two weeks ago, musician and filmmaker Boots Riley dropped a rather hard critique of Spike Lee's Black Klansman. I've hesitated to get involved in an online controversy between two black filmmakers. I'm white and I don't make films. As a jump further into disclaimer world, I've met and talked Boots Riley on multiple occasions in 2011 during Occupy Oakland. I found him to be very nice and exceedingly well educated when it comes to left history. If there were a leftist version of trivial pursuit, I would have many pie slices. Boots Riley wrote the cards.

We should all have a moment of silence. We should reflect on the most important day in the life of now former Senator John McCain. Fifty Years and ten months ago to the day, October 26th 1967, John McCain was shot down while part of a 24 plane bombing run on downtown Hanoi. The raid was no successful, with three aircraft lost including McCain’s.

Stormy Daniels, the adult film star embroiled in intertwining lawsuits with Donald Trump and his former lawyer turned prison bitch Michael Cohen, was arrested at Sirens in Columbus today in the early morning hours. Daniels is accused illegally touching patrons at the club, at least four of whom were undercover police officers. Her bail was $6054 and her often outspoken lawyer, Michael Avenatti is claiming that the arrest was a “setup” and “politically motivated.” Avenatti continued “She has performed this show at over 100 clubs across the country.”

Today Donald Trump signed an executive order that will end the tearing of children from their families at the border and sending them to private prisons, where some of them are later trafficked in slave labor, raped by guards, or simply “lost.” Instead they will be detained with their families, indefintely. That means life in prison in a cage for whole families.

Anyone who reads the Mockingbird regularly knows that that this author, whether writing elsewhere or writing here as editor-in-chief officially doesnt like Jeff Bezos. He is the richest man on Earth and he made a hefty payday off the CIA, which he spent on the Washington Post. The editorial and business policies noticably took a turn for the shady soon thereafter. Jeff Bezos is a fan Tthe Expanse, has read all the books, and directed Amazon to get that show. This was not altruism on his part.

Derek Lutz, played by MCU icon Robert Downey Jr in the 1986 comedy Back to School, said it plainly in the Reagan drunk heyday of the late cold war “Football and other violent ground game sports are just a cryptofascist metaphor for nuclear war.” The public would like it to be just a pastime, just a game, just a sport. It is not and can not be just a game.

The SyFy channel canceled The Expanse yesterday, May 11th, by surprise in a way that mirrored the incredible stupidity of their parent company NBC's back alley murder of the original Star Trek series in 1969. This author is a fan, and some faceless hacks in a corporate headquarters are about to catch a railgun round of 190 proof nerd rage moving at 12gs. Strap in here comes the juice.

The whole process of watching Chappaquiddick was painful. Rotten Tomatoes gave this one an 80% rating for reasons I don’t fully understand. I entered the theater and the show was only available in IMAX. There was a bar next to the snack bar with an on duty Columbus cop drinking something from an opaque cup, and he was there when I left. There were no unarmed black children to shoot in the back so he had nothing to do but drink.

Russia is a cold cold place full of sneaky sneaky people. Their president is a former spy. They have their own special word for sneaky sneaky warfare, maskirovka, which directly translates as “masking” from their funny not quite European language with it's funny not quite European alphabet. During the height of the cold war, when America was an alert nation that had the good sense to openly murder dissidents and mass execute protestors on college campuses, we could still catch Russian spies. The CIA's head of counter-intelligence, James Jesus Angleton, had everyone under scrutiny.

The Columbus Dispatch was happy some years back to welcome J. Anthony Precourt's ownership of the Crew SC. He was termed an “engaged” owner. With Precourt now demanding a brand new downtown stadium lest he move the team to Austin has this author looking up their editorial staff's home mailing addresses. I wonder if they would prefer salt or ketchup to wash down those column inches.