On New Year’s Eve 1862, Black Americans stayed up until midnight, counting down the minutes until the new year arrived. This was known as “Freedom’s Eve,” and first Watch Night services took place in churches and homes across the nation. The enslaved people in Confederate states were declared legally free (more or less) on January 1, 1863 when the U.S. government denied racist traitors their human property.

Union soldiers reportedly marched onto plantations and across cities in the South reading the world-shaking words from President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Many of those soldiers were Black, and I can imagine the joy they felt. The future might finally exist for them.

However, Lincoln’s proclamation didn’t magically break a centuries-long curse and trigger a rousing dance number like “A Brand New Day (Everybody Rejoice)” from The Wiz. Wherever the evil Confederacy still maintained control, Black people could never be free. This remains especially true today.

Freedom would not come for all Black people until June 19, 1865 when 2,000 Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas, and announced that slavery had ended for the more than 250,000 Black people in the state. That was almost half of Texas’s population total at the time. When the marginalized are fully oppressed, their numbers aren’t a problem, but once they’re free, white people start talking about “invasion.” This is why so many former Confederate states would quickly implement Jim Crow laws, but that’s a history lesson banned in Florida for another time. Today, we celebrate Juneteenth, when slavery in America ended two years and more than two centuries late.

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Black people have celebrated Juneteenth for generations, but it finally became a federal holiday in 2021. We owe this long overdue national recognition to then-94-year-old activist Opal Lee, who is known as the grandmother of Juneteenth.

Lee grew up in Texas, where she remembers childhood Juneteenth celebrations. Unfortunately, on June 19, 1939, when she was 12, 500 white rioters set fire to her family’s home in a predominantly white Fort Worth neighborhood.

"The people didn’t want us,” she said, referring to the white population. “They started gathering. The paper said the police couldn’t control the mob. My father came with a gun and police told them if he busted a cap they’d let the mob have us. They started throwing things at the house and when they left, they took out the furniture and burned it and burned the house.”

White people invaded and plundered her home out of racist spite and envy. This was their own ironic commemoration of Juneteenth. You see, when the enslaved were finally freed after the Civil War, they had nothing to show for their lives in bondage aside from the scars. There was no precursor to the Marshall Plan. The United States government didn’t offer the formerly enslaved any money or property. Many were forced to continue working for the very same white people who’d enslaved them, and few were compensated fairly if at all.

Despite starting from nothing, some Black communities managed to build wealth, but at every turn, their hard work became a target for white resentment. It’s the story of Tulsa, Rosewood, and so many other cities where Black people dared to grasp the American dream.

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In 2016, when Lee was almost 90, she walked from Fort Worth to Washington DC to advocate for a national Juneteenth holiday. Even after Sen. Ron Johnson blocked the holiday in 2020, Lee was convinced it would happen eventually.

“My point is let’s make it a holiday in my lifetime,” Lee said defiantly, fully aware of her own mortality. Fortunately, Lee outlived Johnson’s ignorance — well, on this specific issue — and not only did she see Juneteenth become a federal holiday in 2021, she’s still here to appreciate it.

She’s also not ready to live this earthly battlefield, either. “I’m not going to sit in a rocker and wait for the Lord to call me,” Lee said in a 2023 interview. “He’s going to have to catch me.” That’s the spirit of the revolution.

In 2024, the 97-year-old Lee received the keys to a new house constructed on the same lot where a racist mob destroyed her family’s home 85 years ago. Like so many generations of Black people, Lee’s family never talked about what happened on June 19, 1939. Instead, they tried to move forward and rebuild as best they could. Recently, perhaps feeling the Lord gaining on her, Lee started thinking about getting the lot back. When she learned that Trinity Habitat for Humanity had acquired the property, she called up Gage Yager, the CEO and a longtime friend. This was first time Yager had heard what Lee’s family had endured. He sold her the lot for $10, because that was exactly the right thing to do.

“I’m so happy I don’t know what to do,” Lee said from her rocking chair. She plans to hold an open house so she can welcome her new neighbors. “Everybody will know that this is going to be a happy place.”

Many of the companies and institutions that sponsored Juneteenth celebrations just five years ago are pulling back, as the current presidential administration attacks “DEI” on grounds that a federal judge has called out as openly racist. Opal Lee is 99 years old this year. She might not outlive the hatred and malevolence that dominates this nation, but her spirit will remain unvanquished. Let’s follow her lead.

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The Sheep Detectives is based on German crime writer Leonie Swann’s novel Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story, which has very little in common with the movie and not just because the book is in German. I won’t spoil too much of the film. I’ll just say that it’s actually a well-crafted mystery that plays fair with its revelations and offers clever twists on standard tropes from this genre. The screenplay is by Craig Mazin, who once shared a dorm room with Ted Cruz and hated the experience. Director Kyle Balda delivers genuine emotional beats in a movie with, you know, sheep detectives.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who my son only knows from Marvel movies, plays the head sheep detective, and it’s a compelling, deeply layered performance. Yes, she’s a sheep but she’s no less real than any human on screen. Emma Thompson steals every scene in which she appears because she’s awesome.

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Naturally, because of the majority sheep cast, the movie takes a firm stand against slaughtering sheep for their delicious rich, earthy meat. I’m most likely eating lamb or mutton as you read this, but I’m fairly sure none of them could solve mysteries, not even the straightforward “what wine or ale pairs best with this lamb?”

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It’s still spring for another few days, so if you haven’t already, please consider taking advantage of my “Spring Fling” subscription sale — 40 percent off the usual annual paid subscriber rate. That’s just $30 a year. Thanks to all who have upgraded to paid subscriber status recently.

I’m on vacation this week, so the new writing was limited.

I lamented the inevitable loss of Doctor Who while wishing the revival could have had a better ending.

Meg Reid, the executive director of the Hub City Writers Project in Spartanburg, South Carolina, joined me on the podcast to discuss Southern literature.

Yes, this is running on Thursday because my usual Juneteenth piece will appear tomorrow.

And here are some holiday photos. We started in Stratford-upon-Avon, birthplace of Shakespeare.

It’s understandable that a local taxi service would have a Shakespeare-themed name, but Othello? Was he known for driving skills when not murdering his wife? The clever David J. Loehr suggested “I-a-go Taxis, but the cars are all Yugos.”

Then we spent a few days in Chester and enjoyed a day trip to Wales. There were castles!

And me after a Vesper

Today, we’re taking the train up to York. When a travel by train in England, I think of this scene from The Avengers episode “The Town of No Return.” However, my tea service was nowhere near as fancy.

See you soon.

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An editor and book designer, Meg’s essays have appeared online in outlets like DIAGRAM, the Oxford American, and The Rumpus. She holds an MFA in Nonfiction from the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where she served as Assistant Editor of the literary magazine, Ecotone, and worked for the literary imprint Lookout Books. She was a Publishers Weekly Star Watch 2021 Honoree.

Some highlights from our conversation

Meg discussed how corporate publishing tends to look for just one type of story from the South, which ignores the diversity of lived experience.

She explains how Hub City Press elevates voices from every group that represents the South.

Why we should let books be books, and not just part of a pipeline.

Meg shares how Hub City Bookshop in Spartanburg has built a community brought creative methods.

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The BBC lowered the boom last week in a press release that the TARDIS would need to translate from corporate speak into English: “After careful consideration, the BBC, Russell T Davies and [production company] Bad Wolf have collectively decided not to go ahead with the previously announced Doctor Who Christmas episode. This decision was not taken lightly, and we know it will be disappointing for fans, but in order to set the show up for future series, it was decided that rather than bridge the gap with a one off special, we are choosing to push forward to invest in the long-term future of the show which ensures that when the TARDIS lands once more, it does so in all its glory.”

Davies confirmed his exit from the show in an Instagram post and admitted that the previously promised Christmas special was all fantasy: “For the record: there was no script, I never wrote it, and no actor was ever approached to play the next Doctor.” This would also confirm what everyone assumed — Billie Piper was never intended to be the next Doctor. It was just a stunt.

Reportedly, Gatwa’s final episode required extensive — and mostly nonsensical — rewrites when it was clear that he wouldn’t return for a third season. Gatwa had appeared in just 19 episodes over 18 months, so a grand finale seems overwrought, especially when tacked on last minute. (Watch below.)

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Doctor Who’s decline has been blamed entirely on what the Elon Musk set calls the “DEI casting” of Gatwa (the first official Black Doctor) and previously Jodie Whittaker (the first official woman Doctor). This is more bigoted dogma than actual reality. The series had peaked more than 15 years ago during David Tennant’s (first) run, when the average viewership was 8.36 million. Tennant is brilliant but almost every long-running TV series, no matter how popular, peaks relatively early into its overall run, and Tennant originally left after Season 4 and a year of specials.

Russell T Davies and David Tennant both departed Doctor Who in 2010, but their replacements, Steven Moffat and Matt Smith, maintained the show’s momentum, even outperforming Tennant’s first two seasons. The ratings took a turn under Peter Capaldi, my personal favorite Doctor. This has been perhaps unfairly attributed to his age (he’s 24 years older than Smith), but the series was almost 10 years old at that point and had only made superficial changes to its format, unlike the classic series that had a complete overhaul after Patrick Troughton left at the end of its sixth season. Also, Capaldi’s run coincided with the rise of streaming television, which fundamentally altered how people view programs.

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Doctor Who’s ratings rebounded slightly during Jodie Whittaker’s first season, but her final two seasons had ratings lower than most of Capaldi’s run. That’s not because of “woke backlash,” as Whittaker was a woman the whole time. Covid hit in the middle of her second season, and delayed filming for her third, which had a reduced episode count. I had my issues with showrunner Chris Chibnall’s take on the series, but Whittaker was always the standout.

When Chibnall and Whittaker left in 2022, it was assumed that Russell T Davies’s triumphant return would restore the show’s status as a cultural phenomenon. That was perhaps naive in hindsight. The 60th anniversary specials starring David Tennant and Catherine Tate performed relatively well, but viewer interest never materialized for RTD’s second run, despite the Disney+ partnership. The ratings drop off from Ncuti Gatwa’s first full appearance as the Doctor in the 2023 Christmas special to his first season premiere was almost 40 percent, a shocking figure. The second RTD era wasn’t just lower rated compared to his first or Moffatt’s era. It was consistently lower rated than Chibnall and Whittaker’s.

Gatwa’s run had problems that were entirely unrelated to his race and sexuality. There were only eight episodes per season, and, due to scheduling issues, there were more “Doctor lite” episodes than ideal. (Though, ironically, two of them — “73 Yards” and “Dot and Bubble” — were perhaps the best of Gatwa’s run.) It was hard to get to know this Doctor. I won’t speculate on the behind-the-scenes drama that had new companion Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) leaving the show after one season, but her replacement, Belinda (Varada Sethu), clearly felt like a last-minute addition who was playing out an arc better suited for Ruby, who made key guest appearances in what became the show’s final season.

I’ve written elsewhere about my high hopes for this new era, but they soon vanished, perhaps because the era wasn’t all that new. RTD simply added a coat of paint to a 20-year-old vehicle.

It’s frustrating that RTD ended his second run with a shark-leaping cliffhanger that will remain unresolved. Doctor Who has ventured into the television wilderness before but in a far more satisfying and dare I say poetic fashion. The production team figured that 1989’s “Survival” might be the last story for a while, so the final scene treats viewers to a moving voice over from Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor.

“There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, where the sea is asleep and the rivers dream; people made of smoke and cities made of song. Somewhere there’s danger, somewhere there’s injustice, and somewhere else the tea is getting cold. Come on, Ace, we’ve got work to do.” (Watch below.)

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Although the 1996 movie wasn’t picked up for a series, it established Paul McGann as the official Doctor for new stories in expanded media. This tided over fans like myself until RTD was able to reboot the series nine years later. Unfortunately, RTD has left the series without an incumbent Doctor, so there’s no opportunity for new stories in any media for however long Doctor Who remains in the wilderness.

Even during the Capaldi run, when the series was in no immediate danger of cancellation, Moffatt offered two perfect exit ramps. In 2015’s “Hell Bent,” the Doctor returns triumphantly to the TARDIS and prepares to head off for new adventures, just like the Doctor in “Survival” and the TV movie. (Watch below.)

The Doctor is silent in this epic scene, but in the 2016 Christmas special, “The Return of Doctor Mysterio,” he leaves viewers with these final words: “Things end. That’s all. Everything ends, and it’s always sad. But everything begins again too, and that’s always happy. Be happy. I’ll look after everything else.”

Until we meet again, Doctor.

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Even at 15, I knew something was off when a clearly dubbed Ferris (Matthew Broderick) said, “Pardon my French, but Cameron is so tight that if you stuck a lump of coal [IN HIS FIST], in two weeks you’d have a diamond.” What was so “French” about “fist”?

We all know the film’s plot: Rich kid Ferris skips school with his equally wealthy friend Cameron (Alan Ruck) and his girlfriend Sloane (Mia Sara). Mr. Rooney (Jeffrey Jones), the school “dean” (what rich schools call a principal), is obsessed with exposing Ferris’s chronic absenteeism. He’s an even more Wile E. Coyote version of the principal antagonist from director John Hughes’s previous film The Breakfast Club.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is packed with memorable scenes that have since become what the kids call “memes” — “righteous dude,” “let my Cameron go,” “Abe Froman, the sausage king of Chicago,” “nine times?” and of course “Bueller? Bueller?” Ben Stein brilliantly conveyed the mind-numbing boredom that Ferris had escaped. We could all relate, not just as high school students but later in life as adult professionals on a tedious Zoom call. (Watch below.)

Hughes considered Ferris Bueller’s Day Off his tribute to Chicago, where he spent his own teen years. I confess that this film might’ve inspired my choice to spend the weekend I turned 30 in the Windy City. When I wandered around the Art Institute of Chicago, I thought that Ferris and his friends should’ve at least received an educational field trip credit.

The 1980s were dominated by soundtracks from popular teen films, but Ferris Bueller is a notable exception. The songs in the film — particularly The Beatles’ “Twist and Shout,” Wayne Newton’s “Danke Schoen,” and Yello’s “Oh Yeah” — were never put on a soundtrack release.

“[Record label] A&M was very angry with me over that; They begged me to put one out,” Hughes told Lollipop magazine in a 1999 interview. “But I thought … would kids want ‘Danke Schoen’ and ‘Oh Yeah,’ on the same record?”

Yes, yes, they would. It would’ve printed money. Almost a decade later, it seemed as if every woman I knew in college had a copy of the Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction soundtracks — even if they weren’t fans of the films themselves.

I do have a Ferris Bueller playlist, having spent most of my 20s tracking down the songs from the movie. This was assembled pre-iTunes, so I combed used CD bins in record stores. My favorite remains The English Beat’s “March of the Swivel Heads.” You can’t listen to this without seeing Ferris racing home at the film’s climax. There are blockbuster action films with less edge-of-your-seat tension.

Hughes died from a sudden heart attack in 2009 at the shockingly young age of 59. However, even if he’d lived, I doubt we would’ve seen a Ferris Bueller’s Day Off sequel, even considering the success of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and The Devil Wears Prada 2 (not naming the sequel The Devil Still Wears Prada was a missed opportunity).

I do recommend watching 1999’s Election as a companion piece to Ferris Bueller. Matthew Broderick’s Jim McAllister assumes the Ed Rooney role without ever fully realizing he’s the villain of the piece. Reese Witherspoon’s Tracy Flick is a truly Millennial contrast to Gen-X icon Ferris — she’s no slacker but a driven go-getter. Of course, she doesn’t have family wealth to fall back on, and she’s a young woman in a world where insecure men like McAllister view her success as an existential threat. “Who the fuck does she think she is?” is a chilling final line that has sadly become only more relevant today. (Watch below.)

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It’s June, yes, but spring technically lasts through most of the month, so if you haven’t already, please consider taking advantage of my “Spring Fling” subscription sale — 40 percent off the usual annual paid subscriber rate. That’s just $30 a year. Thanks to all who have upgraded to paid subscriber status recently.

Previously on The Play Typer Guy:

I recall the work of Anthony Stewart Head, who we tragically lost last week.

California takes too damn long to count votes, but that’s no justification for MAGA’s deranged election fraud conspiracy theories.

Graham Platner won the Democratic Senate nomination in Maine, and Nancy Mace came in fifth in her primary race for governor.

I discuss the surprise box office smash Obsession, and its Twilight Zone episode inspiration.

That’s it for now. I have some pieces in the hopper for next week, but I’m taking some Ferris Bueller-inspired days off for a family trip to the U.K. My wife and son will have to put up with me singing “Danke Schoen” in the shower to the beat of “Love Missile F1-11.” (Yes, that’s a deep cut.)

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I confess I can’t read the film’s title without hearing Animotion’s 1984 hit song “Obsession,” which Holly Knight and the wonderful Michael Des Barres originally wrote and recorded in 1983. (Their version appears in the movie “A Night In Heaven.”)

The song “Obsession” was controversial upon its release, at least in South Carolina, because of the lyric “Who do you want me to be to make you sleep with me?” Apparently, the fact that “sleep with me” is a euphemism for “sex” meant that the song was still saying “sex,” which might as well have been “fuck,” so they’d bleep out “sleep.” Southern radio stations weren’t big on euphemism. However, the bleeped-out word just made us kids believe they were singing something explicitly profane. This is also how I first learned that “sleep with me” was a euphemism for “sex.”

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The movie Obsession’s success is interesting to me. It’s not unusual for a well-made horror film to pack seats. Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017) and Ryan Coogler’s Sinners were both cultural events, but superficially at least, Obsession might seem like a feature-length Twilight Zone episode: Bear (Michael Johnston), who works in a music store, buys a supernatural toy that grants him what he desires most — the undying love of his friend Nikki (Inde Navarrette). Unfortunately, her “love” is truly undying. There’s always a twist to those supernatural gifts, though he can at least get Nikki wet and feed her after midnight.

Obsession has been described as a modern spin on W.W. Jacobs’s 1902 classic short story The Monkey’s Paw, in which the White family receive a mummified monkey’s paw that grants three wishes but with “the living will envy the dead” consequences. The thing is so cursed that a previous owner’s third wish was death. So, of course, the Whites give it a go: They wish for 200 pounds (about 15,000 pounds today), which the paw delivers but as a settlement after their son is fatally mangled in a workplace accident. Sick with grief, they later wish for their son to come back to life. The monkey paw again fulfills the wish but the Whites freak out when they realize their son’s decomposing corpse is probably knocking on their door. So, their final wish is for the zombie kid to go away. Altogether, it wasn’t a good monkey’s paw experience.

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I don’t think Obsession is anything like The Monkey’s Paw, though, because the Whites’ motivations were relatively benign and well-meaning. The lesson here was about messing with fate. Still, the Whites didn’t aspire to greatly alter their status. They wished for security and, in desperation, their son’s life. Bear’s wish is far more selfish. He craves love from someone he knows would never willingly offer it. Like many real-life incels, he views love as a form of possession and once he gains “possession” of Nikki, he can’t accept the consequences. We pity the Whites, but we should only have contempt for Bear.

When I compared Obsession to a feature-length Twilight Zone, I was referring to an actual episode, specifically 1960’s “The Chaser,” from the end of the show’s first season. (It was the 31st episode with another five to go — almost the entire run of a modern, long-running streaming series.)

“The Chaser” was itself based on a short story by English author John Collier that appeared in a December 1940 edition of The New Yorker. A nervous Alan Austen buys a love potion from a strange old man, who explains the frankly horrible things it will do to Alan’s intended victim, the woman he claims to love.

“For indifference,” said the old man, “they substitute devotion. For scorn, adoration. Give one tiny measure of this to the young lady -- its flavor is imperceptible in orange juice, soup, or cocktails-and however gay and giddy she is, she will change altogether. She will want nothing but solitude and you.”

“I can hardly believe it,” said Alan. “She is so fond of parties.”

“She will not like them any more,” said the old man. “She will be afraid of the pretty girls you may meet.”

“She will actually be jealous?” cried Alan in a rapture. “Of me?”

“Yes, she will want to be everything to you.”

“She is, already. Only she doesn't care about it.”

“She will, when she has taken this. She will care intensely. You will be her sole interest in life.”

“Wonderful!” cried Alan.

“She will want to know all you do,” said the old man. “All that has happened to you during the day. Every word of it. She will want to know what you are thinking about, why you smile suddenly, why you are looking sad.”

“That is love!” cried Alan

No, it’s not. The Whites genuinely loved their son — enough that they didn’t want him in mindless zombie form. However, Alan can’t wait to have a mindless zombie as his non-consenting love slave.

Alan notices that the old man also sells a lethal poison in addition to the love potion. However, while he practically gives the love potion away for just one dollar, he sells the potion for $5,000 and “not a penny less.” The business model here seems obvious, but Alan is too evil and horny to understand. The old man is certain he’ll see Alan again.

Screenwriter Robert Presnell Jr. expanded the short story for Twilight Zone. Alan Austen is now Roger Shackleforth (George Grizzard) and the object of his obsession now has a name, Leila (Patricia Barry). It’s made comically clear that Leila can’t stand Roger and finds him a nuisance. She’s cold and aloof while Roger remains willfully oblivious to her obvious contempt. Unfortunately, this occurs before restraining orders, so he remains a pest she can’t shake.

Eventually, Roger visits a professor named “A. Daemon,” who sells him the $1 love potion. After Roger drugs her, Leila falls madly in “love” with him, and they get married. However, it’s not long before Roger feels imprisoned within that very love he purchased so “cheaply.” He returns to the diabolical professor, who offers to sell him a “cleaner” that will remove his problem, permanently. Of course, the “cure” for his love potion costs significantly more. “First, the ‘stimulant’ ... and then the ‘chaser.’” (Watch below.)

The short story’s ending is uncertain, but The Twilight Zone episode shows Roger fully prepared to murder the woman he enslaved until he discovers she’s pregnant with their child. He tells himself he never would’ve gone through with it, but self-awareness is not one of his more prominent traits. This is probably 1960 television’s idea of a “happy ending,” even though Leila remains a brain-damaged slave to this sociopath.

“The Chaser” and Obsession are about men who mentally (and physically) rape a woman. You could say that the “twist” is that these pathetic men inadvertently create a monster, but the truth is that they were the monsters all along. This entitlement to a woman’s interest and affection, the refusal to take “no” for an answer … even without magic potions or supernatural toys, they’re ongoing threats to women in the real world.

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That’s my way of revealing the hardly surprising news that Graham Platner won the Democratic Senate primary in Maine. It wasn’t particularly close, either. Despite recent scandals, Platner won with more than 70 percent of the vote against sitting Gov. Janet Mills. Maine has ranked-choice voting, but Platner’s margin was too overwhelming for that to matter.

Many Democrats who are horrified by this result want to blame everyone but Gov. Janet Mills, whose campaign was barely comatose, or Chuck Schumer, who somehow thought the party’s best bet was a 78-year-old sitting governor with cratering approval. Nor do they blame the many Democrats without offensive body art or sexting drama who preferred running for governor.

Instead, otherwise sensible Democratic pundits and strategists are blaming “podcast bros” and far-left consultants for somehow forcing an unsavory nominee onto the party. Neera Tanden, former senior adviser to President Joe Biden, even shared this this post from the right-wing Washington Beacon:

“Graham Platner was recruited to run for Senate by a pair of socialist political operatives, Daniel Moraff and Leanne Fan, who determined that another prospective candidate had “a skeleton in the closet.”

The Wall Street Journal published a rare interview with the duo on Sunday who revealed they paid ‘a whole chunk of money’ to vet Platner but managed to turn up neither his Nazi ink nor many of his Reddit posts.”

It’s certainly possible Moraff and Fan (if those are their real names) paid someone “a whole chunk of money” to vet Planter and yet didn’t turn up any red flags. When I was a kid, I paid a week’s allowance to see a mermaid at a traveling circus and that was also a waste of money.

Platner’s victory has devastated liberals who don’t live in Maine but who are convinced that Platner’s rise will cost the party the moral high ground against Donald Trump. Platner has a scuzzy past and perhaps an equally scuzzy present, but he’s nothing like Trump, who’s a comic book villain.

Some especially silly people online insist that Democrats supporting Platner — with his Nazi tattoo, offensive Reddit posts, and allegations of domestic violence — will ensure that James Talarico loses the Senate election in Texas, which is not a nickname for “Maine.” It’s an entirely different state. Yes, Talarico needs to win over more than a few Trump 2024 voters, but what will help him achieve that is his positive campaign plus Trump’s underwater approval rating in the state. Democrats might want to abandon the pretense that voters make decisions based solely on the personal morality of their candidates. At least they don’t tend to vote against a candidate just because they’re gross. Trump is the obvious Exhibit A (2016) and B (2024) in this case. They vote for the candidate they like who they believe can best improve their material conditions.

No matter what you think of Graham Platner, and like Don Draper, I try not to think about him much at all, the focus now should be on defeating Susan Collins, who might appear more respectable. However, Collins is only able to pull off her “very concerned moderate” scam thanks to a media bias towards normalcy that’s only extended to Republicans. Collins doesn’t share unhinged AI posts on social media like the current lunatic president. She’s very polite, but she’s also actively enabled Trump’s fascist regime. She was chair of the Appropriations Committee when the government sent people to a foreign gulag based on their race, which is arguably more Nazi than any tattoo. She voted to confirm Pam Bondi as attorney general and is likely to do so for Bondi’s even worse replacement, Todd Blanche. She voted to confirm crackpot HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., who’s the reason someone you love might die from measles or polio.

If a Democratic senator actively supported a radical far-left criminal presidential administration, no amount of appearances on Fox News would help them maintain a “moderate” reputation. “Look, the senator voted against President Comrade’s Seize the Means of Production bill when it was going to pass anyway. They’re totally a moderate!”

Democrats, still bearing scars from 2020 when Collins beat the polls and easily won re-election, have ascribed almost supernatural political powers to her that I think are unwarranted. Still, although Platner maintains a slight lead over Collins, nervous Democrats point out that a “generic Democrat” polls better than both Platner and Mills against Collins. Of course, that’s because imaginary people always perform better in polls and most bedroom scenarios. Besides, Collins has consistently beaten “generic, milquetoast Democrats.”

Collins survived the blue tsunami in 2008 when Democrats flipped eight seats, and her opponent was former House Rep. Tom Allen, who looked like a cover model for Milquetoast Democrat Monthly. Allen tried linking Collins to George W. Bush but she was able to perpetuate her scam on the public that she’s a moderate, “independent” Republican. Former Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Lieberman even endorsed her.

The 2014 election was a bloodbath for Senate Democrats, so Collins’s victory that year wasn’t really a show of unique strength. Her opponent was Shenna Bellows, Maine’s current Secretary of State who’s one of the 101 “normal” Democrats running for governor rather than Senate. They apparently all bought the hype about Collins and were too afraid to face her head on, preferring to wait until she retires. That kind of opportunistic cowardice doesn’t impress me when Democrats are flooding my in-box about Trump’s “existential threat to democracy” and how a Democratic House and Senate are necessary to provide at least a minor inconvenience to Trump’s reign of terror.

Sara Gideon was the former Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives. She seemed like a tailor-made candidate to defeat Collins, but 2020 was not a normal election. Democrats weren’t campaigning in person or canvassing door to door because of Covid-19, but Republicans did not similarly limit themselves. Gideon also got hammered by the “Defund the Police” backlash. Platner has surpassed Gideon’s raw vote total from the 2020 primary.

So, Platner could very well defeat Collins, an outcome that some Democrats might fear more than Collins serving another term. I know Democrats want to take the high ground against Republicans, but whenever we do, we’re somehow the ones who end up catching fire in flaming lava.

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Meanwhile, my home state of South Carolina firmly and hilariously rejected Rep. Nancy Mace, who was running for governor. Early results had her at fifth place in the Republican primary, right below Rom Reddy, an actual politician. Trump had refused to endorse her, which might’ve been revenge for Jeffrey Epstein and a lot of other things.

Mace had to surrender her seat in Congress for this failed campaign, and not much attention has gone toward who’ll replace her. That’s probably because her district was redrawn to make it all but impossible for anyone but a Trump-humping Republican to win, and unfortunately, there are plenty of those to go around. Republicans Jenny Costa Honeycutt and Mark Smith will advance to the runoff. Either are capable of picking up Mace’s bigoted anti-trans campaign, particularly her grade school bullying of Democratic Rep. Sarah McBride, but let’s hope the winner finds something better to do with their lives.

Mace also fell behind Reddy in her own district, which you could say was because her constituents don’t want her to leave them but that would be an obvious lie. They are just as done with her as we all are.

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No, damnit, we don’t want the votes gift-wrapped in a special box. We just want the results, as if we’re in a first-world country with a functioning democracy.

By Sunday, it was clear that Democrat Xavier Beccera would advance to the general election. If he faces Republican Steve Hilton, which ensures his victory, Beccera can send Katie Porter flowers. Democrat Nithya Raman overtook Spencer Pratt in the Los Angeles mayoral race and will face incumbent Karen Bass in November. The below images look as if they were taken immediately when Pratt learned it was all over. Two happy women of color and one very sad white man.

California is a big state and has made a series of big mistakes that has brought us to this confusing, absurd place. California has very generous vote-by-mail rules. According to the California Secretary of State, “vote-by-mail ballots postmarked on or before Election Day and received within seven days after the election, as well as any provisional ballots cast, must still be counted.” The state’s election officials have up to 30 days after the election to count ballots, and final results are reported to the secretary of state by the drop-dead-but-maybe-more-like-light-swoon deadline July 3, 2026.

It’s only after polls have closed, that local election workers can begin the arduous process of verifying late-arriving ballots and tabulating them. If a voter’s signature on the ballot envelope doesn’t match what’s on file, the voter is provided the opportunity to come in person to prove their identity.

“On Election Night, we will have a good picture of the outcome of most contests, but it will take weeks to know the final results. This is normal,” Secretary of State Shirley Weber said after polls closed on Tuesday night. Just because something is “normal,” doesn’t mean it’s acceptable.

Like most people who take too long to complete assignments, California claims that the tediously slow vote count is because the state prioritizes accessibility and accuracy. I still just want to shout at them, “Move it!” (Watch below.)

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Maybe in simpler times, we could’ve sat around, sipping an ice tea on the patio, while idly waiting for California’s election results, but I thought we all understood the horrible fact that Donald Trump is president and will eagerly exploit these delays to promote more election fraud lies.

“The Dumocrats are at it again!” Trump ranted on social media. “They are trying to STEAL THE GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA PRIMARY, AND THE MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES, PRIMARY, AWAY FROM TWO GREAT REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES. Here we go with the very late and massive numbers of MAIL IN BALLOTS.”

He went on: “There’s BIG cheating by the Dumocrats in California. Votes are all tied up. May not be in for weeks. Under investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles. Why the vote counting DELAY???”

Trump told reporters at the Oval Office on Thursday, “You see what’s happening in California, they’re rigging the election.”

If Trump is going to accuse Democrats of perpetuating widespread voter fraud in a state with about 23 million registered voters, he probably shouldn’t call them “Dumocrats.” That seems like a complex process, though the most effective vote rigging would have just declared Democratic candidates the winners across the board by midnight. There’s no need for all the drama from a red mirage after polls closed, unless Nithya Raman paid extra for a Project Hail Mary-style climax.

On Sunday, Trump walked out on his interview with Meet the Press’s Kristen Welker when she asked him to provide a shred of evidence to support his election lies. “You’re either crooked or you’re stupid. I’ve had enough! Thank you, darling,” he said before stumbling away like some decrepit, diseased maniac. Welker pleaded with Trump to stay, pointing out that she’d “traveled all the way to Wisconsin for this interview.” It’s like a two-and-half hour flight from New York. There’s not even a layover. Trump might act like end-stage Colonel Kurtz, but Welker didn’t take a perilous boat ride up the Nùng River to Cambodia for this interview.

Trump isn’t the only GOP conspiracy theorist who doesn’t need facts when you’ve got instinct. Responding to the above clip from Trump’s unhinged Meet the Press interview, John McCain’s secret daughter Meghan wrote: “For whatever it’s worth, people in my life who have never ever spoken about stolen elections in any capacity are now saying this about California.”

Meghan McCain is a dullard but she’s otherwise powerless. That’s not true of otherse spouting election fraud nonsense. Elon Musk posted on his Klanbake site, “The reason ID is banned in California (and New York) elections is to enable large-scale fraud. When you combine no ID and mail-in voting, fraud is de facto legalized.” All those billions and it’s still not enough for a single functioning brain cell.

House Speaker Mike Johnson also cast doubt on the results: “Some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream it is impossible to prove,” he said. “But I think everybody knows instinctively something is wrong here.”

Mike Johnson should know, even instinctively, that Spencer Pratt was a Republican running for mayor in Los Angeles, a city Kamala Harris carried 70 percent to 26 percent. Pratt will probably perform about the same as Trump did in 2024, perhaps slightly worse, which is hardly a shock considering Trump’s current approval rating.

So, no, California isn’t “rigging” their elections, and there’s bipartisan consensus that just because the ballot process is embarrassing, that doesn’t make it fraud.

“We might not like how California administers its elections (and I don’t),” Stephen Richer, a former Republican election official in Maricopa County, Arizona, posted on social media. “But that doesn’t make it fraud.”

“For the record: we wish the votes were counted faster, too,” Gavin Newsom’s office lamented on social media. Maybe they could tell the governor.

Adding to the confusion is California’s “jungle primary” system. Instead of normal party primaries, every candidate and random crackhead runs in a nonpartisan blanket primary. Proposition 14 appeared on the 2010 ballot and was authored by state Sen. Abel Maldonado, who’d serve a brief term as lieutenant governor (he’s the last Republican to hold the position).

Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger — that seemed like a big joke at the time — supported the open primary and argued that it would create more competition in races that Democrats consistently won. Schwarzenegger himself is the last Republican elected statewide in California. Obviously, the jungle primary was seen as a way for Republicans to resist the rising blue tide, but enough Democratic voters bought line about avoiding political “extremism” that Proposition 14 passed. Since then, Democrats have struggled to avoid near disaster, such as when there was serious concern that Democrats could get locked out of the top-two positions that would advance to November’s general election. Consider that if Texas had a jungle primary, James Talarico and Jasmine Crockett would have advanced to the November election.

Coming as a surprise to no one, the jungle primary didn’t reduce political extremism and promote more moderate candidates. Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton is MAGA, and while Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt has tried to play it coy, Trump hasn’t hidden his support. Meanwhile, Democrats had shown zero discipline in limiting the number of candidates in major races. Even in a heavily Democratic state, you risk splitting the vote to a potentially fatal level.

If California had normal partisan primaries, Steve Hilton and Spencer Pratt would have won their respective ones with absolutely zero chance of winning the general election against any reasonably sentient Democrat. Instead, they both ended election night seemingly in position to advance — Hilton was in first place! — while the incoming ballot drops whittled away their leads. There’s nothing skulduggerous about this: Democrats tend to complete their mail-in ballots later, so the drops will only get “bluer.”

The media doesn’t help matters by insisting on reporting incomplete results as a developing story. Spencer Pratt didn’t have a lead that he suddenly lost. Vote batches that favored him were simply counted first. Nithya Raman didn’t mount a comeback. Those votes in her favor already existed.

Unfortunately, Republicans no longer accept that elections are fair if they lose. Pratt suggested in a social media post that 43,0000 homeless people were somehow responsible for the vote swing against him. Of course, when the GOP’s leaders, including the president and House speaker, freely undermine election results, a gadfly like Pratt won’t mind adding fuel to the fire.

Republicans aren’t feverishly spinning wild Charlie Kelly conspiracy theories over the results in swing states like Michigan or Pennsylvania. This is California, where Democrats overwhelmingly outnumber Republicans. Don’t be surprised if Trump and his corrupt MAGA regime use the results from a mayoral race in Los Angeles as a pretense for their attempts to seize control of elections in November.

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Head is best known, of course, for playing Rupert Giles on Buffy the Vampire Slayer from 1997 until 2003. Posing as Sunnydale High School’s very English librarian, Giles was Buffy’s “Watcher,” who was tasked with preparing the Slayer to fight demonic forces, as well as general adolescent turmoil. He did far more than just watch over Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar), though. He soon became the reliable father figure for both Buffy — whose own father was MIA — and her teen allies, known as the “Scooby Gang.”

It turns out this wasn’t just a part Head played on TV. His Buffy co-stars have all posted moving tributes to him on social media, and the consistent theme is that the then-40something actor set an example for his younger colleagues.

“Tell Giles I figured it out and I’m ok” Sarah Michelle Gellar posted on Instagram — quoting what Buffy said before she sacrificed herself to save the world. “Well I don’t have it figured out and I’m not ok. But I know I’m the lucky one because I knew you. Thank you to Daisy and Emily who not only shared their dad with me, but with the world.”

Giles was a compelling model of masculinity, and perhaps a very relevant one for today’s politics. He wasn’t always the urbane Watcher, nor had he lived an unblemished life. In his youth, he went by the “trying too hard” handle “Ripper.” A college drop-out, he was involved with a gang of dark arts practitioners, and one of his friends died when they summoned the demon Eyghon. I’ll never understand what people expect will happen when they summon the Devil or even random demons. They’re not gonna tap dance for you or bring you a pizza in 30 minutes. Giles eventually found redemption and a higher purpose as a Watcher, although he would often have to answer for the mistakes of his past. (Watch below.)

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However, Giles the character in many ways represented the limits of series creator Joss Whedon’s supposed feminism. After all, this key role in Buffy’s life — the inspiring mentor — was an older man not a woman (more than 80 percent of librarians are women, by the way). Buffy never had a strong relationship with a woman over the age of 40. The one woman Watcher we meet in Season 3, Gwendolyn Post (Serena Scott Thomas), is evil and dies a Disney villain death.

When Buffy starts college in Season 4, she briefly considers Professor Maggie Walsh (Lindsay Crouse) a potential mentor, but instead Walsh feels threatened by Buffy’s relationship with her protege Riley and tries to have her killed. (Watch below.)

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Even Buffy’s own mother Joyce (Kristine Sutherland) isn’t that encouraging of Buffy’s duties as the Slayer. She tends to take a whole “hate the sin, love the sinner” approach to this core part of Buffy’s identity.

In the Season 2 finale, Buffy comes out to her mother, and Joyce says flatly, “I don’t accept that.” It’s a gut-wrenching scene, one perhaps all too familiar to queer viewers.

BUFFY: Open your eyes, Mom. What do you think has been going on for the past two years? The fights, the weird occurrences... How many times have you washed blood out of my clothing? And you still haven’t figured it out?

JOYCE: Well, it stops now!

BUFFY: No, it doesn’t stop! It never stops! Do-Do you think I chose to be like this? Do you have any idea how lonely it is? How dangerous? I would love to be upstairs watching TV, or gossiping about boys or, God, even studying! But I have to save the world. Again!

Buffy is at her lowest point, but her mother doesn’t support her. She kicks her 17-year-old daughter out of her own home. Contrast this to a previous bleak moment for Buffy: She and Angel (David Boreanaz) had sex, which caused him to lose his soul and revert into a vicious monster. (Yes, she was also 17 when she hooked up with the 250-year-old vampire. It’s best not to dwell on it.) After stopping Angel’s first soulless killing spree, she breaks down in front of Giles, who consoles her not as a Watcher but as a loving parent. (Watch below.)

BUFFY: You must be so disappointed in me.

GILES: No. No. No, I’m not.

BUFFY: This is all my fault.

GILES: No. I don’t believe it is. Do you want me to wag my finger at you and tell you that you acted rashly? You did, and I can... I know that you loved him. And he... has proven more than once that he loved you. You couldn’t have known what would happen... The coming months a-are gonna- are gonna be hard... I-I suspect on all of us. But... if it’s guilt you’re looking for, Buffy, I’m-I’m not your man. All you will get from me is, is my support... and my respect.

Head’s moving performance here is just one example of why his former Buffy co-stars have praised him as the best actor in the cast. Yet, I can’t help but imagine this scene’s impact if Giles were a woman. You don’t need to gender swap Joyce, either. The clueless, stifling parent and the understanding, nurturing mentor is a dynamic that could easily reflect all aspects of femininity.

Joyce did try to improve her relationship with Buffy in later seasons, but she was never fully part of the show’s action. She offered a domestic oasis. Even vampire Spike (James Marsters) enjoyed her hot cocoa with mini marshmallows. But as the show’s only recurring example of a woman over 40, this could prove limiting for any young women watching the show. They could immediately identify with Buffy or Willow (Alyson Hannigan) but Joyce was perhaps too much like the mother they already knew and not the woman they’d want to become. That’s what was so unfortunate about Hulu pulling the plug on a Buffy reboot. Sarah Michelle Gellar, now playing a Buffy well into her 40s, could have served as the new slayer’s Watcher: A maternal figure with a messy past but possessing a heroic spirt, someone ready to confront a complicated world head on and not hide from it.

Nonetheless, I am grateful for the version of Giles Anthony Stewart Head brought to the screen. His strength was in his wisdom, compassion, and fallible humanity. Watching Buffy in my 20s, Giles definitely inspired my fashion sense and predicted the middle-aged man I’d become (or perhaps already was).

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Under The Cherry Moon is a curious film. Prince stars as Christopher Tracy, a charming rake who works as a piano player in the French Rivera (a nice job if you can get it). Originally from Miami, Prince and his wingman Tricky (Jerome Benton from The Time) target rich women in hopes of marrying for money. They are described as “gigolos” though they behave more like ambitious single women in a 1950s musical comedy. You could easily imagine flipping the genders and casting Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell as the leads. Christopher and Tricky might’ve been written in a Hope and Crosby mold, but Prince and Benton’s chemistry has a distinctly camp sensibility. (Watch below.)

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Christopher sets his sights on the 21-year-old daughter of a shipping magnate who’ll soon inherit $50 million (about $150 million today). He legitimately falls for the heiress, Mary, which removes the usual conflict — it’s not as if he’s pursuing someone for whom he has no interest but her money. Thus, this is a straightforward star-crossed lovers romance, as Mary’s father would prefer that she not get involved with broke-ass piano players from Miami.

Many of the scenes look as if Prince had watched a lot of French New Wave cinema. The script certainly promotes the movement’s themes of alienation, rebellion, and the absurdity of human existence. Thus, when Tracy the cynical womanizer embraces love and romance, he forfeits his life, as if he’s no longer suited for our cruel reality.

Susannah Melvoin, Prince’s girlfriend at the time, was originally intended to play Mary, but it became obvious in pre-production that she couldn’t act — a pretty damning assessment considering that Apollonia from Purple Rain is hardly Meryl Streep. Prince replaced Susannah (at least on film) with Dame Kristin Scott Thomas in her feature debut. She obviously could act. (Watch her hilarious attempt to say “Wrecka Stow.”)

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Like Susannah, Thomas is also very white, as are most of the women swooning over Prince in the film. Audiences born long after 1986 might wonder why that’s even relevant, but interracial relationships on screen were still rare. Notice that Eddie Murphy, perhaps the biggest movie star of the period, had never been paired with a white woman on screen. Under the Cherry Moon shows Prince and Mary passionately kissing in the trailer! There goes the South.

In contrast, Purple Rain is a very Black film and, in a way, that might’ve made it more palatable to white suburban audiences. They could imagine themselves venturing into a separate, hip world (in Minneapolis) — sort of like the white New Yorkers who ventured uptown during the Harlem Renaissance. In Under the Cherry Moon, it might’ve seemed as if Christopher and Tricky were moving into their neighborhood.

Under the Cherry Moon was released in black-and-white, which is a very Woody Allen move but not particularly commercial. Purple Rain put Prince’s music front and center, and audiences were free to leave for popcorn or the bathroom whenever the film focused on what passed as the plot. Under the Cherry Moon flips that dynamic. Christopher suddenly singing and dancing to Girls & Boys is the only outright performance in the movie. This film isn’t that musical. The songs feel like an afterthought (you could even replace them all, including the hit “Kiss,” with little impact).

Prince attempted to emulate Elvis, who was a bonafide movie star for more than a decade. Prior to his late 1960s decline, Elvis films practically printed money and their soundtracks topped the charts. Prince briefly achieved this with Purple Rain but his movie career effectively ended with Under the Cherry Moon and 1990’s disastrous Graffiti Bridge.

Ironically, Prince’s music videos paled in comparison to the ones from contemporary artists such as Madonna and, of course, Michael Jackson. Jackson’s short films for such hits as “Beat It,” “Thriller,” “Bad,” “Smooth Criminal,” and “Remember the Time” were lavishly produced “events” that took advantage of the burgeoning music video format and in their way predicted the YouTube era.

Under the Cherry Moon is still better than its reputation and is worth a watch, as part of a “wish you were in France” binge session.

It’s June, yes, but spring technically lasts through most of the month, so if you haven’t already, please consider taking advantage of my “Spring Fling” subscription sale — 40 percent off the usual annual paid subscriber rate. That’s just $30 a year. Thanks to all who have upgraded to paid subscriber status recently.

Previously on The Play Typer Guy:

I celebrated what would have been Marilyn Monroe’s 100th birthday.

I remind folks fretting over Graham Platner that Bill Clinton existed and was even the president.

I talk a little about Mad Men — not the ones in the White House right now but the fictional characters from the AMC TV series.

Over at , I discuss how Donald Trump is clearly insane and why that might prove a national security issue.

Public Notice

Why does the media ignore Trump’s madness?

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15 days ago · 488 likes · 23 comments · Stephen Robinson

The Tony Awards are on Sunday, and my friend Raven Snook joined me on the podcast to discuss what’s nominated and who might take home the major awards. This is part two of our kibbitz session.

Here’s Part One:

And here’s Part Two:

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That’s it for this week. See you on Monday

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This is part two of our kibbitz session, and we discuss Death of a Salesman, the musical flop Queen of Versailles, and The Jellicle Ball, an actually good version of Cats.

Raven’s work has also appeared in New York Magazine, Yahoo Parenting, the New York Post, The Village Voice, Bon Appétit, Better Homes & Gardens and Parents.com, among others.

Enjoy and don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe.

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Some Highlights From Our Discussion

Raven raves about The Jellicle Ball. You don’t need a hypnotist to convince you it’s much better than Cats.

Raven explains why The Lost Boys musical doesn’t quite work.

I was in New York when the original Ragtime production opened, so I was interested to hear Raven’s thoughts about the revival. If The Jellicle Ball beats out Ragtime for the Tony, it will prove a catty footnote to The Lion King winning the top aware over the original Ragtime.

Raven believes Liberation should win the Tony for Best Play but she thinks it might have serious competition from Giant and The Balusters.

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Perhaps that explains this post that appeared last week on Threads: Los Angeles Chef Alex Ramirez wrote, “I started rewatching Mad Men, and I have a theory that the show’s nostalgic portrayal of the 1960s contributed to the conditions that enabled the rise of MAGA. Walk with me on this.” (This goes on for a while.)

Obviously, Ramirez is a chef not a TV critic, and regardless, she’s welcome to her opinion, which you can read in full. However, the theory she posits is one I’ve seen expressed elsewhere, and it extends beyond “I don’t care for this program.” It makes an assertion about Mad Men’s impact that reality doesn’t support.

Although Mad Men briefly boasted an audience of 4.7 million at its peak, the series usually averaged less than 2 million viewers (and barely 1 million viewers in its first season). Around the same time, The Big Bang Theory was averaging 14 million viewers an episode, but I don’t think Sheldon and Leonard are responsible for Donald Trump’s presidency, either.

Mad Men’s audience was relatively affluent, college educated and urban — basically the demo for today’s Democratic Party, hardly MAGA. Over the past 20 years, there’s been a cultural bias toward treating TV shows with a small, highly educated, urban audience as major cultural touchstones. Their series finales receive the same coverage as the final episodes of M*A*S*H and Cheers without commanding anywhere near the same viewership.

Mad Men’s first two seasons aired at the end of George W. Bush’s presidency. A first season plot line involves the Sterling Cooper advertising agency working to elect Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon. It’s 1960 not 1968, so they obviously fail. The series often depicts its characters, particularly the protagonist Don Draper (Jon Hamm), as on the wrong side of history. Most shows steeped in nostalgia almost always put their heroes ahead of an era’s moral curve, and if they lose a particular battle, their defeat is lessened with our knowledge that history will prove them right.

Yet, Draper wasn’t just a hired gun for the Nixon campaign. He genuinely believed in the candidate. He dismisses Democrat John F. Kennedy as “nouveau riche,” someone “who bought his way into Harvard” while Nixon came “from nothing. A self-made man, the Abe Lincoln of California, who was vice president of the United States six years after getting out of the Navy. Kennedy? I see a silver spoon. Nixon? I see myself.” (Watch below.)

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You could read Don’s rebuke of JFK as an obvious hit at current President George W. Bush, whose family did likely buy his way into Harvard. Conversely, you could argue that Don’s open contempt for an American “elite,” which he expresses from the comfort of a Madison Avenue boardroom, reflects a certain hypocrisy that previews the later MAGA movement. Either way, that misses the core point about Don’s character: Despite his own superficial charm, slick good looks, and easy way with women, Don doesn’t identify with JFK, the Camelot president. Instead, he sees himself in Richard Nixon, the guy who bombed on TV repeatedly. Just 10 episodes into the series’s run and Mad Men has tipped its hand regarding Don’s fate. Like Nixon, he’s a tragic figure, whose drive and insatiable ambition will gain him everything he thought he wanted, only for him to lose it all because of his inescapably self-destructive nature.

Don would later side against popular history when he, along with most of Sterling Cooper, bet on Sonny Liston over Muhammad Ali in the fateful 1964 prize fight.

“He’s got a big mouth,” Don scoffs. “‘I’m the greatest.’ Not if you have to say it. Moo-hammad Ali. Liston just goes about his business, works methodically. Clay will dance and talk, throw a few until he’s wiped out.”

Don refusing to respect Ali’s name change is obviously ironic because “Don Draper” is a fiction, but Don also chooses to exist somewhat in the shadows, to not draw undue attention to himself. He thus can’t understand or appreciate why Ali would or what it means to Black Americans that Ali demands the spotlight he deserves.

It’s also hard to draw a line from this to MAGA. After all, Barack Obama was the president when the episode aired, and “No Drama” Obama was a leader who “goes about his business, works methodically.” Donald Trump is the attention-seeking showman but without Ali’s skill and commitment. He is only flash and self-aggrandizement.

I wouldn’t call Mad Men a “nostalgic” series. I think it’s revealing for those who do. The characters who are the most redeemable are women (and even they are deeply flawed) and the audience is meant to identify with their struggles in a white male dominated reality.

Mad Men is even less nostalgic than Goodfellas, which plays up the machismo culture until everything goes to hell. Don Draper is descending into a hell from the opening credits. I’ve seen Don compared to Jay Gatsby, which misses the mark. He’s certainly the best product he ever sold, but he lacks Gatsby’s willful ignorance and naïveté. If Gatsby “believed in the green light,” Don knows that it’s all a scam.

“What you call love was invented by guys like me, to sell nylons,” Don tells Rachel Menken, a client he’s wooing in every sense of the term. “You’re born alone and you die alone and this world just drops a bunch of rules on top of you to make you forget those facts. But I never forget. I’m living like there’s no tomorrow, because there isn't one.”

Self-important teenagers might think that’s cool, but they weren’t the show’s primary audience. In another, later scene, when Draper aggressively pitches a client, he insists that happiness is unattainable … and that’s the point.

“You’re happy because you’re successful — for now,” Draper says. “But what is happiness? It’s a moment before you need more happiness. I won’t settle for 50 percent of anything. I want 100 percent. You’re happy with you’re agency? You’re not happy with anything. You don’t want most of it. You want all of it, and I won’t stop until you get all of it.” (Watch below.)

Sure, maybe advertising executives might show this clip out of context at a corporate retreat — sort of like how MBA classes have shown the Alec Baldwin speech from Glengarry Glen Ross, but privileged men missing the point isn’t what “enabled the rise of MAGA.” The societal cancer was too widespread.

I’d argue that shows such as Bridgerton, Miss Scarlet and The Duke, or more recently The Other Bennet Sister — all of which I enjoy — promote a more dangerous nostalgia about the past. The period’s intrinsic classism, racism, and sexism are easily overcome if someone is exceptional enough. Worse, most societal prejudices are completely ignored. People of color are seemingly welcomed in “high society.” Mad Men presents the 1960s for what they were, including the casual bigotry and sexism that coincided with JFK’s Camelot. Sure, MAGA might prefer those past conditions to a more inclusive future, but the series wasn’t catering to them.

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Many Democrats insist that when the party pushed Al Franken out of the Senate, that provided the “permission structure” for decent Republicans to vote against mall-cruising pervert Roy Moore in Alabama. While a popular theory, it’s unproven and a classic example of the fallacy President Jed Bartlet called “post hoc ergo propter hoc” (“one thing follows the other therefore it was caused by the other”). It also presumes a level of intellectual and moral fairness among Republicans that remains unproven.

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Platner’s apparent scandal endurance has caused some pundits with short-term memories to suggest that we now exist in “post-shame” political reality. Although Donald Trump is directly to blame for most of the country’s current woes, this is actually a situation that predates him. Trump is the beneficiary of post-shame politics, not it creator. After all, he truly never built anything.

Well before Graham Platner, Al Franken, Roy Moore and Donald Trump, there was Bill Clinton. I would never blame Clinton for Trump, but it’s been said that Democrats conceded decades ago that character ultimately didn’t matter in the presidency when defending him, especially after the Monica Lewinsky scandal that led to his 1998 impeachment for fellatio-related felonies.

Having lived through the 1990s, I can attest that the liberal reaction to Clinton’s womanizing was very different. I recall liberals comparing Clinton’s serial infidelity to President John F. Kennedy’s Bond-level bedding of women. The Clinton years are when I first learned President Franklin D. Roosevelt had at least five extramarital affairs — one of which was with his wife Eleanor’s social secretary, Lucy Mercer, which was probably more “social” than appropriate.

Although one indiscreet photo ended Gary Hart’s presidential ambitions, once Clinton came along, the press was chastised for even covering a politician’s personal affairs (in every sense of the word). Nick Bryant at the Independent wrote in 1994 that back in the 1960s, “journalists acknowledged the separateness of a politician’s private and public life.”

Few in the Washington press corps questioned the role of Martin Luther King in spearheading the struggle for black equality, for example, yet rumours of his promiscuity were widespread long before his death in 1968. Towards Kennedy the press were even more forgiving. For them, Kennedy - whose lofty rhetoric inspired a nation used to the soporific leadership of Dwight Eisenhower - was proof that being a lousy husband did not necessarily make you a lousy president. That helps to explain why Bill Clinton tries hard to invoke Kennedy’s memory.

“It’s the economy, stupid” was the Clinton campaign’s potent response to the GOP’s fixation on “family values.” When Platner’s wife released a video defending his extramarital “sexting,” it recalled the famous 1992 60 Minutes interview when Bill Clinton admits to causing “pain” in his marriage. Hillary nods approvingly when Clinton suggests the worst allegations about his conduct are the result of tabloids paying desperate women for phony stories. This is also when Hillary insisted, “You know, I’m not sitting here, some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette.” An offended Wynette later released the pointed follow-up song, “At Least My Man Won’t Fool Around With Some Intern In My Own House,” which felt cryptic at the time. (Yes, I made that up.)

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Back then, the Clintons had to play a transparently evasive game. Now, the Platners just admit flat-out that Graham fucked up. One might lament the lack of any pretense of shame, but we can clearly trace that back to the collective Democratic response when Monica Lewinsky’s curious dry-cleaning practices forced Clinton to own up to their sexual relationship in the Oval Office.

There was some moral scolding from Joe Lieberman on the Senate floor, but Democrats mostly rallied behind Clinton and denounced Republican efforts to remove him from office. Public support for Clinton only increased during the impeachment crisis, and this was not a “post hoc ergo propter hoc” fallacy. The data was clear. Republicans actually lost seats in the 1998 midterm, a shocking setback when Clinton was entering his lame duck period. House Speaker Newt Gingrich announced his resignation from Congress, and his supposed replacement Bob Livingston would also step down when it was revealed that he’d had his share of middle-aged “youthful indiscretions.”

Democratic House Leader Richard Gephardt demanded that his colleagues reject the “politics of personal destruction.” His speech on the House floor is quite a contrast to where many liberals currently stand:

“Our founding fathers created a system of government of men, not of angels. No one standing in this House today can pass a Puritanical test of purity that some are demanding that our elected leaders take.

If we demand that mere mortals live up to this standard, we will see our seats of government lay empty, and we will see the best, most able people unfairly cast out of public service.

We need to stop destroying imperfect people at the altar of an unobtainable morality.”

I would quibble with Gephardt’s assertion that not cheating on your wife with a 21-year-old intern is “unobtainable morality.” It wasn’t like we were asking the president to always “be kind and rewind” his video tape rentals. Still, almost 30 years ago, Democrats were affirmatively opposed to “cancel culture.” Feminist icon Gloria Steinem defended Clinton’s relationship with Lewinsky in a New York Times op-ed that today would probably get her called a “rape apologist.”

As reported, Monica Lewinsky's case illustrates the rest of the equation: ''Yes means yes.'' Whatever it was, her relationship with President Clinton has never been called unwelcome, coerced or other than something she sought. The power imbalance between them increased the index of suspicion, but there is no evidence to suggest that Ms. Lewinsky's will was violated; quite the contrary. In fact, her subpoena in the Paula Jones case should have been quashed. Welcome sexual behavior is about as relevant to sexual harassment as borrowing a car is to stealing one.

The progressive PAC Move On got its start in 1998 by demanding that Congress “censure President Clinton and move on to pressing issues facing the nation.” Although Clinton was impeached and easily acquitted in the Senate, the public did in fact “move on.”

However, I did notice something interesting once Clinton left office. The idealized version of himself on the West Wing, President Bartlet, was in a stable, faithful marriage. His shady vice president, John Hoynes, was the philanderer, and it did negatively impact his job. (He’d eventually resign in the fourth season.) When a disgraced Hoynes attempts a comeback, White House Press Secretary C.J. Cregg — a former lover — confronts him. (Watch below.)

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“When you run, the press will find some of those women,” C.J. warns Hoynes. “And if you try to attack them, if you get your opposition research team on them, if you try to destroy them, say they’re bimbos and liars, I’ll be standing with them and I’ll be ready to take anything you or your people throw.” This line felt like a stinging rebuke of how the 1992 Clinton campaign squashed so-called “bimbo eruptions.”

In the 2003 movie Love Actually, Clinton’s womanizing was projected onto Billy Bob Thornton’s strawman Bush president, except of course Bush didn’t have a sexual history like Clinton’s. Yet, Hugh Grant’s Slick Willy-style flirtation with a much younger woman on his staff is presented as romantic. (As Tom Servo would say, “There are certain flaws in this film.”) Of course, now modern audiences are more likely to read the villain U.S. president as an obvious Trump parody. (Watch below.)

Of course, after eight years of Barack Obama, who was squeaky clean and didn’t require much defending on moral grounds, liberals perhaps found it easier to abandon their previous, practically French position that a politician’s personal flaws and foibles were a private issue unrelated to their job.

When Trump launched his first presidential campaign, liberals condemned him (rightly) as both a political buffoon but also an adulterous sleaze who preyed on women. There was no romanticizing his behavior, like JFK back in the Connery Bond era. In fact, when JFK (Michael C. Hall) appeared in a 2017 episode of The Crown, he is depicted in a very Trump-like fashion — no James Bond rizz is present, just ick. (Watch below.)

Trump’s candidacy might’ve compelled Democrats to start prioritizing personal character to almost puritanical levels, but what’s ironic is that no one could seriously argue that he’s personally flawed but otherwise good at his job. Trump’s all-around garbage, and those of us who remember the dream of the 1990s might only wish his only problem was inappropriate cigar placement.

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Norma Jeane chose “Monroe,” a name from her mother’s side of the family, and Lyon recommended “Marilyn” because he said Norma Jeane reminded him of Ziegield Follies star Marilyn Miller. It’s now impossible to imagine Marilyn Monroe reminding someone of anyone other than Marilyn Monroe. She would become and remain a true screen original.

Marilyn and I share a birthday, and I think that’s how my affection for her started. On June 1, 1986, when Marilyn would’ve turned 60, a local station showed a marathon of her movies, which is how I spent most of my 12th birthday, while eating the pecan pie my mother baked for me. (I preferred pie to cake.) Her movies always felt like a special occasion, even the ones where she wasn’t the lead. Her star still shone brightly. She has only a small role in the classic All About Eve (1950), but she’s a scene stealer in a movie where every cast member is committing cinematic grand larceny. Marilyn’s Miss Caswell is a savvy schemer beneath a seemingly vacuous exterior. (Watch below.)

Director Joseph Mankiewicz said, “I felt Marilyn had edge. There was breathlessness about her and sort of glued-on innocence about her that I found appealing.”

My adolescent self couldn’t agree more: I recorded her movies off AMC whenever they aired and rewatched them constantly. This is why I later felt an immediate connection to playwright Ken Cameron’s Making Marilyn, which my friend Debbie invited me to see when I lived in New York. The 2005 play follows lonely teenager Scout’s slightly obsessive infatuation with Marilyn, who the fabulous Ashlie Atkinson brings to life in all her heartbreaking complexity. For me, Marilyn on screen was always a comfort but never a total escape from reality. Perhaps that’s how I avoided Scout’s fate.

My friend Simi used to host “film fests” at her Upper East Side apartment, and for my 27th birthday, she hosted a Marilyn-themed one in my honor. The three films I picked remain my favorites:

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) is perhaps Marilyn’s most famous work, thanks to her epic performance of the song “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend.” Yes, as a true Gen-Xer, I first saw Madonna’s homage from her “Material Girl” video. In the 1949 stage musical, Carol Channing originated the part of Lorelei Lee. Monroe’s comic timing and chemistry with Jane Russell ignites the film. (Watch below.)

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The same year, Marilyn starred in the noir thriller Niagara as the femme fatale Rose Loomis, who plots to murder her loser husband George (Joe Cotton). Rose is no sweet Lorelei. She’s delightfully sinister in this exchange:

George: You smell like a dime store. I know what that means.

Rose: Sure. I’m meeting somebody. Just anybody handy, as long as he’s a man. How about the ticket seller himself? I could grab him on my way out. Or one of the kids with the phonograph. Anybody suits me. Take your pick.

Marilyn finished 1953 with How To Marry A Millionaire alongside Lauren Bacall and Betty Grable. It was 20th Century Fox’s first film shot in CinemaScope wide-screen, and it looks amazing on the big screen. I adore the musical overture style opening that makes you fall in love with New York. (The below is abbreviated, alas, so go stream/download/buy the original.)

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Marilyn shows off her comic chops once again as Pola Debevoise, who’s practically blind without her glasses but avoids wearing them because she’s afraid people won’t notice she’s stunning. In fairness, glasses were an effective disguise for Superman. It’s interesting to consider how often — and well — Marilyn played against type. (Watch below.)

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I could spend another century discussing all my favorite Marilyn movies — The Seven Year Itch (1955), Bus Stop (1956), The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) — but for now, I’ll finish with Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot (1959). It’s not just my favorite Marilyn movie, it’s one of my favorite movies ever made. I had the pleasure of seeing Some Like It Hot on the big screen at my college campus theater in the mid-1990s. Not long afterward — though it felt like a full lifetime — I saw it again at the Film Forum in New York. Each time, leaving the theater was like reluctantly departing another world, one far more magical.

Marilyn was skeptical about playing what she considered another “dumb blonde” part, but her skepticism decreased when she was offered 10 percent of the film’s profits in addition to her salary. (By the time of her death in 1962, Some Like It Hot had grossed $14 million in the U.S. or $512 million in today’s money, an incredible amount for a comedy.)

Wilder and Marilyn disagreed about how she should play Sugar, and Marilyn was not terribly confident about the film’s success, likening it to a “sinking ship.” This tension probably led to the accounts about how difficult Marilyn was to work with on set. She struggled with both her lines and showing up on time. She infamously required 47 takes to correctly say, “It’s me, Sugar.” (After a dozen takes, I’d have accepted
“Sugar, it’s me” or even “It’s Sugar, me,” but that’s why I don’t have an Oscar.)

Although studios and her colleagues started to dismiss Marilyn as an unprofessional flake, in reality, she struggled with mental health problems that ranged from depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and chronic insomnia. She was likely bipolar, and toward the end of her life, she’d self-medicated with alcohol and prescription drugs.

Nonetheless, Marilyn still manages to imbue Sugar “Kane” Kowalczyk with gut-renching sincerity. When she laments, “I always get the fuzzy end of the lollipop,” it’s not a punchline but a painful confession. It’s why your heart swells at the film’s climax when Sugar and Joe (Tony Curtis) finally get together, and no, I won’t accept the cynical view that Joe will end up sticking her with the “fuzzy end of the lollipop” like all the others in her past. Sugar deserves her happy ever after, even if Marilyn never experienced it. (Watch below.)

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Moulin Rouge! was directed by Baz Luhrmann, who is like Ed Wood with an actual budget. I don’t mean that entirely as a slight. Ed Wood had a madman’s vision but without the means to ever execute it effectively. Of course, he also lacked the technical skill, and money can’t solve all your problems. Sometimes, more money only leads to more of them.

Luhrmann is technically proficient, but he lacks subtlety, which again I find compelling at times. His 1996 version of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (literally titled William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet as if the author’s name is the first question on the exam) is overwrought and ridiculous, which is appropriate for a teenage romance. His 2013 adaptation of The Great Gatsby is just plain ridiculous.

Here is the Moulin Rouge! cast performing “The Pitch (Spectacular, Spectacular)” number. The score is the “Can-Can” from the operetta Orpheus in the Underworld by Jacques Offenbach. The frenzied dance — now simply known as the “Can-Can” — was originally titled the “Infernal Galop,” an appropriate description for pitching a project to financial backers.

“The Pitch” is my favorite number from the film, but for some reason it wasn’t included on the first soundtrack collection. Fortunately, “The Pitch” eventually made it onto a later, second collection. Finally, my angry letters meant something.

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Luhrmann liked to flavor his films with (often anachronistic) pop songs, and the soundtracks were usually big sellers. Romeo + Juliet features The Cardigans’ “Lovefool” and a remix of Garbage’s “#1 Crush.” I still listen to will.i.am’s “Bang Bang” from Gatsby. Moulin Rouge! owned the summer of 2001 with the cover of “Lady Marmalade” by Christina Aguilera, Lil' Kim, Mýa, and Pink. I loved Fatboy Slim’s “Because We Can,” although despite the lyrics, it is not the “Can-Can.”

I can enjoy Luhrmann’s jukebox musical approach to his films, but I’ve always preferred original scores. Danny Elfman, who turns 73 today, is one of the greats, who I rank alongside Bernard Hermann and John Williams. A year after his funky title jam for John Hughes’s Weird Science, he composed the epic score for Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. This began his long-running relationship with director Tim Burton. It’s almost impossible to imagine Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure without Elfman’s score. It’s almost like a vital supporting character. Elfman’s score for Batman (1989) soon came to define the character as much as Williams’ Superman score. Elfman’s relationship with superheroes would extend beyond Gotham City: He later composed scores for Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man (2002) and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) featuring my beloved Scarlet Witch.

Elfman was the first composer whose movie scores I bought at a record store and listened to constantly on my portable cassette player (yes, this was the early 1990s).

Here’s a clip of Elfman performing the magical “Breakfast Machine” live.

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It’s still springtime in my heart at least, so if you haven’t already, please consider taking advantage of my “Spring Fling” subscription sale — 40 percent off the usual annual paid subscriber rate. That’s just $30 a year. Thanks to all who have upgraded to paid subscriber status recently.

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Previously on The Play Typer Guy:

Another Memorial Day means another wonderful year since I met my lovely wife in 2007.

I argue that Donald Trump’s MAGA purge of any Republican who even mildly defies him is not a show of strength but rather tremendous weakness.

I wrote about how eating at home — even the dreaded “casserole” — is hardly a fate worse than death.

Texas Republicans rejected their incumbent Sen. John Cornyn and nominated perpetual corruption machine Ken Paxton. He’s a scumbag, but at least he’s not “vegan” and likes trans kids like that “woke weirdo” James Talarico. I’ll probably never understand how these people see the world.

That’s it for this week. I’ll see you on Marilyn Monroe Day (that’s Monday for you non-believers).

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Paxton, the state’s attorney general, is a perpetual corruption machine who was impeached by the Republican-controlled state House on multiple charges. His senior staff reported him to the FBI for using his position to help a major donor. State Sen. Angela Paxton, who willingly married him, filed for divorce last year on “biblical grounds,” which specifically refers to adultery, though he’s probably not on familiar grounds with the most of the 10 Commandments.

Not long after the runoff was called for Paxton, Democrats started to rejoice, suggesting that Paxton’s upset victory makes it more likely that Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico could prevail in November. This immediately triggered flashbacks to 2016 when so many of my fellow liberals celebrated Donald Trump’s primary win because they were certain he was so unfit that Hillary Clinton would win in a landslide. I am no fan of John Cornyn, but he’s obviously preferable to Ken Paxton, just as Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, or even Ted Cruz would’ve been better than Trump.

Of course, Hillary Clinton was up against decades of right-wing smears and demonization, but on the other hand, Talarico made public statements on video during the Great Awokening Period — one that might still continue to claim liberal casualties.

In a 2021 speech defending trans rights, Talarico said, “God is both masculine and feminine and everything in between. God is nonbinary.” This greatly offended Republicans who insist God is either George Burns or Morgan Freeman. (They won’t acknowledge the Alanis Morissette version.)

Tuesday night, Republican National Committee Chair Joe Gruters exclaimed, “Tala-freako is a creep. He’s a vegan. He thinks God is nonbinary. He wants to mutilate children.” The childish playground nickname shows how Trump has left a permanent stain on our politics.

The vegan “smear” is perhaps rooted in remarks Talarico made during his 2022 re-election to the Texas House of Representatives. He announced — again on video — that his campaign was reducing its meat consumption to help fight climate change.”

“I am proud to say that our campaign has officially become a non-meat campaign,” Talarico said. “We are only buying vegan products from our local vegan businesses.” He’s wearing a mask in the clip that’s circulating, which I suspect won’t help. Obviously, Texas, whose state animal is the brisket, is not where you want to discuss reducing meat consumption.

Talarico has confirmed that he’s not personally a vegan. He told the MeidasTouch Podcast, “I’m an eighth-generation Texan. I’ve been eating barbecue since before Ken Paxton’s first indictment.” He’s even shared photos of himself eating barbecue.

Ted Cruz, soon to be the senior senator from Texas, claimed that the barbecue in the photo was probably a “tofu log.” (I think it’s a turkey leg.) They’re really going all in on this.

Honestly, it’s not a great image, as no one ever looks good eating messy barbecue. Well … there’s a 1994 X-Files episode where Mulder and Scully eat ribs, and Gillian Anderson with barbecue sauce on her fingers and cheek made 20-year-old me weep. (Watch below.)

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During his victory speech, Ken Paxton condemned Talarico as a “threat to our very way of life and our values. I mean, he’s a vegan who thinks God is nonbinary.” It’s hilarious that Paxton would pit his own “values” against any other upright mammal.

The Paxton campaign immediately released an ad declaring Talarico a “radical” who’s “too low-T for Texas.” Yes, that’s a reference to testosterone. (This is what happens when you let Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the White House.)

The right-wing Club for Growth released an ad that introduced Talarico as a “woke weirdo” with “he/it/their” pronouns. Paxton might’ve cheated on his wife and broken several laws, but Talarico once admitted, “I was a big nerd in high school. I never played sports.” There’s no room for vegan theatre kids in Texas!

A Republican strategist, in between maniacal laughter, explained the party’s anti-Talarico plan to The Independent: “Nobody’s laid a glove on Talarico in any meaningful way. Right-wing cable and online noise only move the needle so far. By November he’ll be defined as an emasculated vegan dweeb. It won’t be pretty.”

“Emasculated vegan dweeb” is obvious coded language for “gay,” and some of the worst people alive aren’t bothering with dog whistles. Stephen Miller shared a photo of Talarico and posted, “The Democrats made history in Texas by nominating their first transgender senate candidate.” Those are bold words coming from someone who looks as if he were a failed lab experiment.

It’s clear that Republicans plan to run against Talarico as if he’s gay, regardless of whether he is or not. Bigots aren’t known for their scruples. They want voters, especially Latino men, to feel ashamed to even consider voting for Talarico — sort of like the anti-electric car propaganda in a classic Simpsons episode. (Watch below.)

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This is Texas in 2026, so I am either cynical or realistic enough to worry this will start to stick. Talarico is soft-featured, dare I say “delicate,” like an unseen tragic character in a Tennessee Williams play, and a 24 hours hadn’t even passed before Talarico was put on the defensive.

During a CBS News interview, Talarico was pressed about his woke transgressions as if he were the one who’d committed securities fraud, bribery, and adultery. He told Ed O’Keefe, “There are some statements that I've made that I certainly regret. There are statements that I've made where I've missed the mark. I'll be the first to admit that. But Ken Paxton is intentionally clipping my cringey comments to distract from his career of corruption.”

On the upside, Talarico seems prepared for a fight. When O’Keefe asked him about the GOP’s juvenile “Talafreako” nickname, he said:

“If Ken Paxton is worried about freaks, he should stop giving Epstein-style sweetheart deals to pedophiles. This is the guy who just released Adam Hoffman from jail, an admitted child rapist, after one of Ken Paxton’s wealthy lawyer friends got involved in the case.

Ken Paxton even kept him off the sex offender registry. Adam Hoffman was supposed to serve 25 years to life, but instead he served less than a month. As of this week, he’s now back on our streets because of Ken Paxton’s corruption.

Ken Paxton is the most corrupt politician in America, and it is costing Texans, it’s endangering our children, and it must end. The Epstein class has no place in Texas.”

That’s the fire Talarico will need to show against a bigoted, petty GOP. Let’s hope it’s enough.

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Voss wrote, “The younger and poorer the generation, the more they eat out and DoorDash. This is part of the problem.”

I suppose the problem is that Gen Z is broke. I don’t think this is a novel circumstance for early adulthood. I was in my 20s throughout the run of Friends, whose theme song declared, “Your job’s a joke. You’re broke. Your love life’s DOA.” (The series depicted the exact opposite for its characters.)

According to Voss’s graph, Gen Z spends 46 percent of its food budget on restaurant meals and 22 percent on food delivery. The combined 68 percent is far more than older generations spend.

However, Millennial journalist Taylor Lorenz defended Gen Z’s economic honor. She posted in response:

This is bc they do not have the time or capacity to create home cooked meals. It’s an issue countless ppl have tried to raise w leftists but big leftists online continue to shame/abuse poor ppl for being forced to rely on these services for meals, which act as a tax on the poor

So, I must say, with all respect, “Huh?” A “tax” is a compulsory contribution to state revenue, imposed by the government on your income. You won’t get audited if you refuse to use DoorDash.

I don’t judge or even care that much how people spend their money, but I do object to this excessive hyperbole. Maybe it was all those philosophy courses I took in college but I believe everyone must fully own the choices they make as a free individual. You choose DoorDash. You choose a $17 Chipotle lunch. There’s nothing inherently wrong with those choices, but they aren’t forced upon you.

Let’s unpack Taylor Lorenz’s statement that Gen Z lacks “the time or capacity to create home cooked meals.” I spent my early adulthood in New York City, where people famously don’t cook — though I didn’t always order out. Like Jerry Seinfeld, I considered cereal a prepared dish. I remember many Raisin Bran dinners with Cracklin’ Oat Bran for dessert (actual crack might’ve been better for my health).

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I also ate a lot of pasta: A box of spaghetti and a jar of Ragu or Newman’s Own if I felt charitable cost a combined $5 and could last for two or three meals. I made a lot of “breakfast for dinner” because scrambled eggs and raisin toast were straightforward. There was also canned vegetarian chili that only gave me food poisoning every once in a while. Still, I probably ate out more than my friends outside New York who had full-sized refrigerators.

Back then, there was no DoorDash, but most restaurants offered free delivery (you of course were rightly expected to tip the person who biked your food to you at Flash-like speed). If I want to feel really old, I check the current prices for some of my go-to orders. Shrimp fried rice (sometimes with a free egg roll) from Ollie’s was also around $5. Now it’s close to $15 — an increase that’s outpaced the rate of inflation.

During the summer of 2001, my girlfriend at the time suddenly decided that we were spending too much money on takeout and restaurants. She announced that she’d make dinner for us at home for a change. Of course, she wasn’t interested in spaghetti and Ragu or even that pasta sauce that made you an opera singer. (Watch below.)

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No, my ex wanted to make something from her favorite Boston restaurant’s cookbook. The recipe she picked involved obscure, gourmet ingredients that sent me to every corner of Manhattan. I think I had to get a dragon’s tooth. It took three hours to prepare, used up every dish in the apartment, and cost far more per meal than takeout.

This is what I’ve called the Alton Brown Effect, where people define “home cooking” as a process far more complex and time-consuming than anything your grandmother did when feeding a family of 12.

I love Alton Brown — a fellow University of Georgia alum — but his show Good Eats made cooking at home look impossible for the casual person who’s not interesting in cooking as a pastime. They just want to eat dinner eventually. (Watch below.)

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Yes, Brown’s macaroni and cheese recipe is far superior to anything cheap from a box, but it’s also not ready in few minutes. Brown would often say “Your patience will be rewarded,” but that’s not always true. What I appreciate about Rachael Ray’s 30 Minute Meals is that she acknowledged that most people have full-time jobs and hectic schedules.

In the above clip, Rachael Ray makes Mexican lasagna, which is technically a casserole. Someone posted on social media — I assume in jest because really: “We don’t eat casseroles. We like freshly cooked stuff, if I am out of time/energy to cook/clean (it’s 2nd shift) then it’s takeout. If you feel that this should be a luxury for families with 2 working parents or young ppl working long hours, you are simping for the ‘master class.’”

Ray’s dish is “freshly cooked.” Casseroles, which is not just for serfs anymore, has the benefit of offering days of tasty leftovers that reheat well. With some bare minimum planning, you can avoid cooking every day while not needing to eat out or rely on DoorDash.

As I’ve said, I don’t judge anyone who orders a lot of takeout, even if there are more financially viable (and nutritious) options. However, growing up in rural Greenville, South Carolina, takeout was usually Kentucky Fried Chicken, McDonald’s, or Waffle House. (Our regular Saturday night “takeout treat” was a meal from a chain called Carolina Fine Foods, which was more commonly known as “Carolina Fried Foods.” It wasn’t for dieters.)

These places were significantly less expensive than most modern takeout: A working parent coming home from a double shift could pull into a drive-through and have a hot meal within minutes. At least here in Portland, takeout takes forever. You’re waiting at least 45 minutes to an hour. I could make dinner myself in less time, even if I had to swing by the grocery store first. And the added fees and upcharges on the menu prices all add up.

Someone else online who I assume is joking posted: “And anyone saying ‘just make food at home’ is a person who does not buy their own groceries.”

I do buy my own groceries, ever since my butler quit. While I still use Instacart for large Costco orders, I prefer to shop for everyday groceries myself. I tired of paying the excessive fees for often inconsistent service: So many botched orders from shoppers (usually men) who just weren’t even trying to find my items. (No, this store is not out of olives. They just are on a different aisle from canned vegetables.) The constant notifications that my order was delayed far beyond the requested window, so I’d hope I could get back from picking my son up from school before my food spoils while waiting on the front porch.

I confess I once thought Instacart was a time saver, especially when I’m on deadline, but it turns out it wasn’t! It’s more efficient (and cheaper) to do it myself.

Everyone’s life is different, so it’s up to the individual to make the choices that work for them, but if those choices lead to bad outcomes, there’s no harm in choosing something else. Self-reflection has served me well in middle-age. I recommend it for the younger generations, as well.

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Barely two years into his second nightmare term, Trump has whacked Marjorie Taylor Greene, Bill Cassidy, and Thomas Massie. He also took out some Indiana state representatives who defied his gerrymandering scheme. Although in theatre we’d consider that a good first act, in the political world, this all seems desperate, like the end of a Shakespearean tragedy but with less appealing characters.

Media coverage has boasted about Trump’s continued command over the Republican primary electorate. This is a short-sighted interpretation of events. The Republican primary electorate is shrinking, as evidenced by Trump’s approval rating, which is deteriorating almost as fast as his mental state. In Kentucky, where Trump basks in his triumph over Massie, Republicans accounted for 47.75 percent of primary voters, Democrats 41.79 percent, and independents 10.47 percent. In the 2020 presidential election, Republicans had a 16 percent advantage over Democrats. It’s obviously not an apples to apples comparison, but this was a primary with significant GOP interest. The president endorsed Massie’s primary challenger and wouldn’t shut up about it. He sent his stooges to campaign against Massie.

This wasn’t unique to Kentucky, either. In Georgia, Democratic primary voters had a 15 percent advantage over Republicans. Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff received more votes than all Republican Senate primary candidates combined, and he ran unopposed!

Democratic nominee for governor Keisha Lance Bottoms pulled in 607,193 votes, which is almost the total vote count combined for Republicans Burt Jones and Rick Jackson, who will face each other in a runoff. Bottoms won outright, so she’ll have a head start in the general election. This is also what happened in Texas, where Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico won a majority of the vote, while Republicans Ken Paxton and incumbent John Cornyn moved on to a punishing runoff race.

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Sitting presidents rarely, if ever, personally target a member of their own party for political destruction. That’s just one of many norms Trump has broken, and it’s hardly an impressive achievement. Even at his lowest approval level, former President Joe Biden could have easily defeated any Democrat for whom he held a grudge. He never considered it because he’s not an unhinged psychopath.

Biden remained above the fray, like an actual president, when Democrats expressed growing frustration with Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Unlike Trump, Biden didn’t lead the torches and pitchforks mob. It’s revealing that Trump had to get his gross hands dirtier and expend political capital to unseat Cassidy and Massie.

In 2022, Biden endorsed Oregon Democratic Rep. Kurt Schrader’s re-election. This was after the centrist Schrader, a member of the so-called “unbreakable nine,” actively sabotaged Biden’s Build Back Better bill. Nonetheless, Biden said, “We don’t always agree, but when it has mattered most, Kurt has been there for me.” Schrader lost his primary to progressive Jamie McLeod-Skinner, and there was much rejoicing among liberal circles. This included me, but I confess that I might’ve missed the larger strategy behind Biden’s loyalty. McLeod-Skinner lost the general election to Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer — Trump’s future scandal-plagued labor secretary. The margin was narrow enough that it’s highly possible Schrader would’ve held the seat. He might’ve been a “no” on Build Back Better, but he also would’ve been a “no” on the many terrible GOP bills that Chavez-DeRemer offered an enthusiastic “yes.”

It’s also a misread to suggest that Trump “controls” the MAGA mob. He can benefit from their fury, perhaps even direct it against a Republican enemy, but he can’t persuade the mob to support saner candidates, even if threatens the GOP’s congressional majority, especially in the Senate.

Last week, Trump shocked Republican senators with his last-minute endorsement of Ken Paxton in the Texas Senate primary runoff. It’s not a major surprise that Trump would betray John Cornyn and back Paxton, a perpetual corruption machine. Sure, Cornyn has shamelessly pandered to Trump, but he’s 74. If he’s re-elected, this is likely his final term and Trump can’t risk Cornyn suddenly discovering his conscience when free from electoral consequences. He’d find a degenerate sleazebag like Paxton far more reliable. It’s why he currently surrounds himself with shameless opportunists and incompetent grifters.

What is surprising about Trump’s Paxton endorsement is how long he waited. The runoff is literally today. After the March primary, Trump demanded an immediate end to the Republican Senate primary. He said he’d ask whichever candidate he didn’t endorse to drop out of the race. At the time, it was speculated he’d throw Cornyn a lifeline. However, Paxton openly defied Trump and made it clear that he wouldn’t drop out. Worse, polls showed that Trump’s endorsement held little sway, and there was a very good chance Cornyn would lose the runoff even with Trump’s endorsement. Meanwhile, Paxton’s lead continued to grow. So, predictably, Trump joined the mob from the rear, the position with the least appealing view.

“Ken is a true MAGA Warrior who has ALWAYS delivered for Texas, and will continue to do so in the United States Senate,” Trump posted on social media.

Republicans who enjoy playing dumb professionally questioned why Trump would behave entirely consistent with his emotionally damaged personality.

“How does that help strengthen the president’s hand?” Sen. Lisa Murkowski asked. “I mean, we lose a state like Texas?” (Murkowski has survived Trump’s attempts at unseating her.)

Sen. Susan Collins noted that Paxton is “ethically challenged” (i.e. a crawling piece of slime) and said Cornyn “deserved the president’s support.”

Of course, as Clint Eastwood once said, “Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.” Trump is loyal to no one but himself.

“John Cornyn is a good man, and I worked well with him, but he was not supportive of me when times were tough,” Trump wrote. Cornyn had suggested that the party should move past Trump, but that was in in 2023. It’s not new information. Maybe Trump had never forgiven Cornyn and was always going to lower the boom. Sadism is also in character for him, but shame-driven cowardice is an even more prominent personality trait. Paxton was set to defeat Cornyn no matter what, so Trump slapped his name on this particularly grotesque structure so he could take undue credit for it. A gullible media will likely help promote this narrative. However, the reality is clear. Trump isn’t strong. He’s weak, scared, and increasingly desperate.

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The big Memorial Day weekend movie that year was Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, which I would not have bothered seeing in the theaters, despite my affection for the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. Instead, earlier in the week, I’d seen Liev Schreiber in Talk Radio on Broadway. I now realize that I’d also seen Sebastian Stan (Bucky from the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the less heroic Donald Trump from The Apprentice). Here’s the very young Stan on opening night with Schreiber and Stephanie March (Law & Order: SVU).

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The first Broadway show my wife and I saw together was Grey Gardens before it closed in July 2007. No, I didn’t wait a couple months until letting my wife know I was weird. She’d already figured that out. Here’s some footage of the wonderful Rachel York and Betty Buckley in a 2016 production of the show.

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Memorial Day is when we remember those who died in active military service. It’s a noble rationale for what has become the unofficial beginning of summer in the United States, even here in Portland, Oregon, where the forecast calls for scattered showers and a high in the 60s. I’m still grilling, though. I’ve lived in the Pacific Northwest for almost 15 years now, so rain no longer sends me indoors.

Five years ago, President Joe Biden gave the all-clear for Memorial Day gatherings with family and friends. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention even said you didn’t need to wear a mask if you were fully vaccinated. Happy days were here again. Then the Delta Variant arrived and mask mandates returned — although most Americans outside of major cities ignored them. Still, we were all pretty optimistic on Memorial Day 2021. Donald Trump was banned from Facebook and Twitter, which was its name at the time, and the media mocked his “glorified blog” where he was reduced to sharing his deranged rants.

I was so pumped on Memorial Day 2021, I made Alison Roman’s pasta salad to celebrate. She put capers in the motherfucker. It was truly the “salad of summer.” (Watch below.)

If you’re grilling up burgers today, consider this recipe from J. Kenji López-Alt. I’m personally going to spend some of my Saturday cleaning my smoker for the summer and then turning it loose on a large, delicious brisket.

Yes, gas is expensive and life is insane, but that’s no reason not to enjoy yourself. Fortunately, summer cocktail season has also arrived, and I’m excited to try the Enzoni, which combines muddled green grapes with gin, Campari and lemon juice. I will probably skip the simple syrup, as the grapes will make the drink sweet enough on their own. YouTube mixologist Anders Erickson shows you how to make the Enzoni and two other “porch pounders.” (Watch below.)

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At the time, it might’ve seemed odd that Cruise would star in a movie based on a 1960s TV series, one that was briefly revived in the 1980s, but Mission: Impossible would become one of the most successful film series in history.

Cruise lit the fuse when he hired Brian De Palma (Scarface) to direct the movie. The result is a tense action thriller, with constant twists and turns and genuine surprises. The first one comes early, when the Impossible Mission team of 1990s film stars are summarily murdered, leaving Cruise’s Ethan Hunt the only survivor and the prime suspect for betraying them. The second twist, which about to spoil so skip to the next paragraph if you’re unaware, reveals that IMF team leader Jim Phelps from the classic series is a traitor who’s behind the whole scheme. Fans of the TV series weren’t pleased with that development, and neither was Peter Graves, who originated the part. Jon Voight played the villainous Phelps, which now seems inspired casting.

De Palma delivers some amazing set pieces in Mission: Impossible. When Hunt’s superior Kittridge (Henry Czerny) informs him that the failed mission was actually a “mole hunt,” the camera tilts as Hunt is thrown off balance, before making his dramatic escape. (Watch below.)

Kittridge is an excellent “red herring antagonist.” He practically toys with Hunt while not bothering to hide his contempt.

Kittridge: Since your father’s death, your family’s farm has been in receivership. Now, suddenly, they’re flush with over a hundred twenty grand in the bank, your father’s illness was supposed to wipe out that bank account. Dying slowly in America after all, can be a very expensive proposition. So. Why don’t we quietly get out of here onto a plane. I can understand you’re very upset.

Hunt: Kittridge, you’ve never seen me very upset.

The most famous scene from the movie, one that ramps up the tension to 11, is when Hunt attempts to break into CIA headquarters in Langley as part of an elaborate heist. (Watch below.)

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The second Mission: Impossible opened on May 24, 2000. My friends and I saw it in Manhattan over Memorial Day weekend. John Woo directs an installment that is more over-the-top Bond-style action film than its predecessor. There’s also a Notorious-inspired romance between Thandie Newton and Cruise, who attempts his best Cary Grant. This was the beginning of Cruise performing death-defying stunts for our entertainment. The rock-climbing scene elicited more than a few gasps from the audience. (Watch below.)

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Although Memorial Day is considered the official start of summer, spring technically lasts through much of June, so if you haven’t already, please consider taking advantage of my “Spring Fling” subscription sale — 40 percent off the usual annual paid subscriber rate. That’s just $30 a year. Thanks to all who have upgraded to paid subscriber status recently.

Previously on The Play Typer Guy:

I salute the living legend that is Janet Jackson.

No, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has no obligation to ever trust or respect Marjorie Taylor Greene.

I don’t care much for Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, but failed Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison should probably find someone else to scapegoat, especially if it involves botching U.S. history.

Bill Maher and John Fetterman mistake Donald Trump’s deranged cruelty for refreshing honesty. They also probably missed the point of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Just in time for the upcoming Tony Awards, my friend Raven Snook joins me to discuss the recent Broadway theatre season. This is part one of our kibbitz session. Please hop over to YouTube and subscribe to my channel.

That’s it for this week. See you after Memorial Day.

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