Lobenthal.com

If anything doesn’t encapsulate Fox’s malovelent anti-reality propaganda programming,
it’s their firing of Fox news editor Stirewalt, for the unpardonable crime of correctly calling the Arizona vote and thus earning Trump & Co.’s unending wrath.

But had no problem with Trump’s Cabinet cenacle of ghouls.

So far.

Seth Abramson sets the record straight.

One of the culpable women is Maggie Mulvaney, niece of the infamous Mick.

Remember Mick’s crocodile ululations attempting to distance himself from the insurrection?

If David Hogg had stopped to engage with her when she stalked and harassed him out of the Capitol, she probably would have said he was threatening her and shot him.

Nancy Pelosi and all the other people Congresswoman Psycho has threatened should take out restraining orders against her.

signals a ratcheted-up level of treason at Fox “News.” Fox’s ratings plunge hasn’t caused the Murdochs to take stock about turning Fox into a legitimate network. Instead, Tucker and his fellow human cartoon “news” hosts are doubling down, ridiculing tCongress members who fear for their lives.

Of course, as Aaron Rupar points out on Twitter, when non violent threats are made at Tucker, boy does he sing a different tune.

Like most things amiss in America, it all goes back to Reagan–in this case, to his abolition of the Fairness Doctrine.

Needless to say, Tucker spent this week on reprising his customary tirades denying the threat, even the existence, of domestic terrorism.

Matthew Cunningham-Cook in The Intercept reports on Baby Doll Mercer‘s very own Mein Kampf, a 2019 published transcript of a berserk and defamatory attack on any and all who try to protect America from her criminal,apocalyptic insanity.

“Fascist billionaires like Rebekah Mercer have bankrolled and fueled the rise of violent white supremacist and authoritarian forces in this country,” said Saqib Bhatti, the co-executive director of the Action Center on Race & the Economy.”

Mercer is more insane, more traitorous, more out-of-control than ever before, and yet the FBI does nothing to stop her ever-more audacious treasonous incitement.

An ex-New York City Ballet told me she loved Wilde Times. As always my reaction was sort of like, “Thank you — what did you really think?” Not that she didn’t have EVERY reason to like the book, but although compliments are fun, it’s always criticism that you learn from. Constructive criticism, that is. I am so more and more inclined to tell people to weigh every criticism any one gives and then feel free to accept it or not, and always to ask yourself, Where is this person coming from? Sometimes someone has a completely different take on how a project should be “prosecuted,” as it were. Or there can be a personal bias, etc. And let’s face it, if you want to do anything your way, someone’s going to object.

But what I really meant with this ex-dancer was, since you were there, what else do you want to say? Something she said that was interesting was that there was a period of time when Wilde was being coached by her mother-in-law, Mme. Nevelska, and a different quality appeared in Wilde on stage that this ex-colleague hadn’t seen before. Wilde had never told me about that, and now I thought, I should have asked her, “Were you ever coached or taught by your mother-in-law?” But I was glad to hear this factoid, better late than never.

Interesting, too, because it shows that New York City Ballet dancers did go outside the company for coaching even while he was alive. Jonathan Watts recalled that he once even brought Stanley Williams into the studio with Balanchine there to inspect something that Balanchine had made for him!

Now the arch-misinformer is right on point with the treasoners and their preposterous claim that the ravening MAGA coup mob was really comprised of Democrats!

And, of course, Fox “News’ is now planning on rewarding her with a prime-time slot.

[I know, discussing Bartiromo right after Holiday is too disrespectful–to the latter– for words.]

after 65 years.

“This would have made a whole movie,” William Dufty told me in 1994, and now it has:
Lee Daniels’ The United States vs. Billie Holiday–out next month.

Paul Alexander is writing a new book on Holiday for Pantheon. Last summer he interviewed me about Tallulah vis a vis Holiday. In 1994 I interviewed Dufty, who co-authored Holiday’s 1956 autobiography, about Holiday vis a vis Tallulah. I told Paul that I’d look for those tapes and transcribe them in their entirety–so far I’ve found and transcribed one tape and sent it to him. Dufty had a lot to say; in fact, we both wonder why Dufty never wrote his own autobiography.

Dufty recollected at some length to me the subject of Daniels’ new film: Holiday’s relationship with black narcotics agent James Fletcher. Fletcher “went into the Prohibition bureau,” Dufty told me, “when you needed, if they had a back face they practically had to work undercover, and he was practically alone.” Fletcher’s later involvement with Holiday was such that he betrayed his professional mandate and did not arrest her when he had sufficient cause to do so.

Fletcher “was around’ during Holiday’s final hospital stay in 1959. Holiday wanted Dufty to collaborate with Fletcher on a memoir: she “had essentially put the gun to his head and the gun to my head.” Eventually they did collaborate on a manuscript, not describing his “love story” with Holiday but describing “the drug enforcement landing on blacks, showing that it was corrupt from the first moment.” That’s the message that Holiday wanted put out: “She was totally radicalized by her exposure to the U.S. government. She thought the Fletcher thing would have impact.”

The book was too honest for New York publishers: none would accept the book.

Dufty said he also wrote a two-person play about Fletcher and Holiday that foundered because he couldn’t find an actress he thought could embody her.

Now the Fletcher-Holiday dyad is finally going to reach the public.

You can’t say we weren’t warned.

Victoria Nuland, former foreign policy advisor to that Dick Cheney, then worked in the Obama administration to sabotage any moves Obama made toward de-escalating international flash points.

Now Biden is nominating her for the No. 3 position in the State Department.

Read in detail at Common Dreams why Nuland is “a ticking time bomb.”