Lobenthal.com

Remember ex-CBS head Les Moonves’s comment about his wall-to-wall Trump campaign coverage maybe being not so good for America, but good for CBS?

Moonves should have been forced to resign for that crack and that belief espoused, long before he was canned for sexual harassment.

Now, CBS continues to give Trump a megaphone, staging before the Super Bowl “a typically gibberish-filled interview during which Trump was essentially allowed to roam free and go largely unchallenged.”

Eric Boehlert continues at Daily Kos: “That’s the dance that now takes place. Trump provides access, news outlets know not to ask too many tough questions—and in return, the media companies profit.”

I just finished reading Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome for the second time. I thought it was the most haunting, romantic thing, just as I did nearly  fifty years ago. Is that why I’m so drawn to New England, or to small towns? Or was it spending some summer time in Williamstown, MA that turned me in that direction?

Did you know it was dramatized on Broadway in 1936, with three of the greatest stars: Pauline Lord, Ruth Gordon & Raymond Massey?

I’ll go to the Library for the Performing Arts and read the Owen Davis typescript.

When you’re no longer the Mayor selling out the city to international investors,  or no longer the owner of a coffee business selling over priced brew, nobody really cares what you have to say–unless you’ve REALLY got something to say.

All that’s left it seems, at that point, is to run for president.

that Pat McBride Lousada had had such a varied career.

Here’s Roslyn Sulcas’s obituary of Lady Lousada in the Times.

I saw New York City Ballet’s penultimate performance of Balanchine’s Orpheus. Penultimate for this season, that is.  It was the second time I’d seen it this season. I hope they bring it back. One of the reasons the audience doesn’t love it is that they don’t see it enough.

Certainly it was a smash hit at the 1948 premiere, when audiences were immersed in a different ideology of ballet, much more accepting of pantomime and acculturated to narrative. As much as you want to gratify the audience, you have to keep educating it as well.  It’s great if you can do both at the same e time, but you can’t always.

There were two casts this season but I saw the same cast both performances. Gonzalo Garcia was Orpheus, Sterling Hyltin was Eurydice, Peter Walker Dark Angel, Unity Phelan as Leader of the Bacchantes, and Lars Nelson as Apollo. Hallowed roles created by, respectively, Magallanes, Tallchief, Moncion, Le Clercq, and Bliss.  And this season’s cast lived up to those legendary names and presences.

Which are anatomized by Paul Krugman in yesterday’s Times.

Call them an out-of-touch billionaire who doesn’t want to pay his fair share of income taxes.

QED.  Case closed.

and spent years working for his Dad (Mick’s the self-made, bootstrap type) in his scandal-plagued real-estate business.

Then he hooked his talons into the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, shredding their protections for victims of financial fraud.

He’s perfect, then, to lead the Dep’t of Commerce, right?

Bess Levin at Vanity Fair reminds us that “Constantly looking for a new government agency to destroy is kind of Mulvaney’s thing.”

Last month, Grace Ashford in the Times reported on the extremely lax and lenient approach that NYC agencies have taken toward hideous abuse by NYC landlords.

The irony is that it is primarily rent-regulated tenants who dare complain about intolerable conditions–they are the only ones who have legal protection ensuring them a lease renewal and regulated rent increases.

If NYC is to survive, we need a Renters’ Revolt.

Walter Srebnick’s four-part seminar on Alfred Hitchcock.

Andy Rowell at Oil Change International:

“The numbers do not lie: Trump is killing his voters. Trump is making our kids sick. Trump is killing the planet, at the same time as giving his polluting friends in the fossil fuel industry billions of dollars in handouts.”

Trump represents the ultimate in a species-wide death wish that is now manifesting itself so starkly even as millions of young people are increasingly vehement about demanding a future.