DramatistDreamer

If you wait for people to be ready, most never will. Also, the longer Obama stayed in the Senate, the more likely whatever direction he cast his votes, would be used against him. And we know how high the artificial bar is set for any minority in public office. We have to acknowledge that had the George W. Bush administration not made a complete mess of the country, many voters were unlikely to consider a Barack Obama for president. By the way, Obama spoke today in South Africa on Mandela's centennial birthday and it was an inspiring event! I've almost forgotten what it's like to listen to a president who can articulate a vision and a position, acknowledge the obstacles while encouraging people to become involved in the process toward finding the solutions, but lo and behold! In other news- the kind that details how Black people's daily lives are being disrupted by people calling the police over the dumbest, most petty, arbitrary sh*t, one of the 2 CVS employees who got fired recently ran for City Council! CVS Fires 2 for Calling Police on Black Woman Over Coupon As annoying and anger-inducing as being followed around in a department store is, this is even worse. The thought of it raises my blood pressure.

And she appears to be looking right at the camera.

This aspect hasn't been examined enough and it's unlikely that it ever will be.

You're welcome again. And I wasn't kidding about Brengle. She literally just pulled the team from behind into the lead with only the men's singles left to be played. Hopefully Frances can maintain the lead and close the match out for the night.

McHale was borderline useless in the MXD and WD sets. She barely scraped the last point together to get women's doubles to salvage the set. There's another match on, being livestreamed. If you look to the right at the column under Up Next you'll see the other match--Orange County Breakers vs. Springfield Lasers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0k-4OnxYs8

You're welcome. Too bad the Kastles don't have Venus or Martina Hingis playing for them tonight, they could use them badly. They're relying on Madison Brengle to carry the team.

By the way, in case you're not completely sick of tennis for the week, World Team Tennis is streaming live on their website and also on You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfh6cjWBkLo

ESPN was too busy trying to bamboozle people into paying more for their glitchy streaming service ESPN+. Because the tournament was so lackluster this year, it didn't even bother me that ESPN was holding so many of their matches hostage on +. I watched whatever was available on ESPN3, The Wimbledon Channel and their Spanish language streaming channel. I refused to pay more for more crappy delivery.

ICYMI, The Kushners are being sued.

Man, that was bad! Someone, other than Bernie, needs to advise her. She looks out of pocket and ignorant there. Given the fact that Crowley has been in forever and hasn't adapted or demonstrated that he has his constituency's needs fully on his radar (which is why he lost the primary in the first place), I don't believe it's too late @marceline but Ocasio-Cortez will have to get her butt back to the district where she's actually running and pay attention to the people there-- perhaps admit that she has a lot to learn geo-politically while demonstrating somehow that she knows local politics and that her priority is to the people in her district before it becomes too late. Crowley could pull a Lieberman and sneak back in but if she admits her mistakes and vows to show improve, she could very well find some forgiveness on that issue being that she is a neophyte, not a hardened experienced politician. Also, as much as it pains me, I must admit that Bernie does have some degree of popularity in certain pockets of NYC. So we'll see what the impact is on Ocasio-Cortez.

I must admit that when I started college, I dipped in and out of daytime soaps, never watching continuously. I missed some parts of Camille's early story and what is offered online from that time is quite choppy. From what I've seen colorism was definitely an issue in terms of how the writers chose to portray Camille versus how they portrayed Denise. Then again, colorism was a common issue through BTS dynamics at every soap and much of entertainment (television and movies). Both actresses were great though, I enjoyed them both despite the limitations in their stories.

It really wouldn't surprise me if P&G, the network and focus groups had their say. The ole "this won't appeal to housewives in the Midwest" excuse. If you compare the Franklins and the Griffins, you will notice a lot of similarities. It's as if Marland tried, didn't succeed, wait a couple years and tried again. There wasn't much attempt after Marland, where most of the Black characters that followed were intimately connected to Jessica Griffin and even less before Marland (see Tucker). This wasn't just a Marland issue, it was a daytime drama issue. Across the board, it was systemic. I would love it if someone had a good honest conversation with all of the surviving Black actors of daytime and really get their unguarded thoughts of what they thought of the industry as a whole, in its portrayal of Black characters and families. I'd pay good money to read all about it, lol!

Are reporters continually saying "Wow" because they cannot think of anything else to say? Why is this surprising to anyone? Were they not paying attention to the debates and Trump's campaign speeches? He's performed disgracefully throughout. How is any of this coming as a shock? Have people not been paying attention, at all?

Also meanwhile-- Ivanka's clothes continue to get dumped by department stores. Hudson Bay is a Canadian department store which also happens to be the parent company of Sax Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor.

Meanwhile in Helsinki, Finland-

Just starting to read up on this recent event. Ocasio-Cortez would be well advised to focus on the NYC politics that she is better versed in and to not let her political associate lead her down the road to perdition. Because when sh*t hits the fan, the WOC will be the most likely to suffer any fallout, not Bernie.

Yes, of course that's obvious since Pam didn't arrive until later the next year in '87. I guess your post was unclear to me, which sometimes happens on social media. I know it wasn't your intention to sound dismissive of the character but sometimes people do dismiss characters, particularly the African American characters on the show as only being best friends of another character. As a writer and a Black woman, who has been inspired to write because I saw so much lacking in media, I do admit to getting defensive when it feels like a character is dismissed as only having importance as the best friend or sidekick of a White character (which unfortunately happened all too often). It was never my intention to sound didactic.

Nella's appearances on the canvas pre-date her friendship with Meg. She was initially introduced as Roy's bratty little sister when Heather was dating Roy, sometime in early-spring 1986. Nella was initially involved in storyline during the early stages of the "Falcon" mystery because she was dating a drug dealer who Roy and Hal eventually ended up shooting when they interrupted a plot in action where Nella inadvertently got caught up with when this boyfriend lured her to the location where the shootout soon took place afterward. Nella was pregnant with the said boyfriend's baby and had some sort of back alley abortion where she ended up getting an infection. There was fallout from that as Nella confided in Heather but didn't want Heather to tell Roy and when Roy discovered this, he lashed out at Heather. Roy tried to reconcile but Heather had left town, never to return. Meg didn't start working at the hospital until the late summer and didn't begin the nursing program until the fall. She met Nella during that time.

Sarah played by the great theater actress Novella Nelson who died just last year. There was Leonard, Sarah, Roy and his sister Nella. There was a middle sibling who was dead, shot by the police which was a big (mainly unexplored) source of contention in the family, especially seeing that Roy was a police detective. I know that the graduation party was to emphasize Pam (excuse me for saying Meg, who'd already graduated) and Nella's ties but Nella predated Pam's appearance on the show. The audience really should've been more familiar with Nella since she'd been on more than a year before Pam arrived on the canvas. In fact, the entire Franklin family had been on before there was even a Pam character yet people can remember Pam but not them. Therein lies the problem.

True. This is the reason why I think the problem is more systemic and industry-wide rather than the fault of one particular writer or production company.

I do think there was a desire (in Marland) to achieve what the show had previously left behind, part of the soap's origin story of an agrarian farming family. When ATWT began, the Hughes family had all but completely abandoned the farm, even Pa Hughes was struggling to adjust to live 'in town'. Marland likely was fascinated in showing what life might have been like for an agrarian Hughes family in the Snyder clan. I'm not mad at that but there were some problems for a rural family being dramatized on a daytime soap and that is the isolation involved and we know on soaps, characters generally are most effective when they mix it up with lots of other characters on the canvas. This is probably why the Snyders became somewhat incestuous, in a matter of speaking (fun parlor game is to count the number of Snyders who shared the same partners). Roy's family lived in Oakdale and they were definitely isolated, so much so that when they once tried to have Roy's parents mingle at the Mona Lisa, presumably to attend Nella and Meg's graduating party (from the nursing program), it felt contrived and I kept thinking that it was a nice attempt but Nella's parents looked out of place. I think the Franklin's could've been better, ahem, integrated onto the canvas but that would've involved more screen time. For example, Roy's father Leonard (yes, I remember his name, lol) was a bus driver for Oakdale's transit department and there were characters like Meg, who supposedly frequently took the bus to get into Oakdale. There could've been a scene (or more) where Meg is riding into town, presumably, at a time when she wasn't supposed to be, lied about here comings and goings when Leonard inadvertently mentions her being at the bus as a certain time of day to Iva or Holden or some family member who he's likely to run into in town. That could've been the beginning of making more connections among other characters, as a start anyway. There are ways of connecting characters but it would involve spreading screen time out among more characters and soap fans can sometimes me averse to this. Marland with his tendencies to concentrate storylines among certain characters, was still one of the more judicious storytellers in terms of how many characters he tended to incorporate into his stories. I've seen headwriters who were far more stingy with what/how many of their characters got meaty stories on soaps.

Congrats to Novak Djokovic and his fans! It must feel like a solid result for him and his team that he's progressed from where he felt stuck. As a tennis fan, I can't really remember one match that truly felt memorable from this past fortnight. The Anderson/Isner match will be remembered for its length, the way the Isner/Mahut match is remembered. And when recalling this Wimbledon years from now, the winners will be cited as well as some stats like Kerber being the first German since Becker, Graf and Stitch to win a singles title at Wimbledon and this being Djokovic's 13th GS title, or all the Top 10 women crashing out in the first week. Other than cold hard facts, I won't remember this Wimbledon for having any truly sublime matches. Plenty of matter of fact ones though.

Well, I don't know about that. Y&R continues to add token POC characters and give them marginal story before unceremoniously writing them out. The Michaelsons and Jordan Wilde immediately come to mind. The only difference is that with Y&R's recent characters, they were attached to core families but in all honesty the Winters have never fully occupied screen time the way that the Newmans and the Abbotts do. That's the one realistic thing about the Snyders. Marginalized people like low income and many minorities tend to be fairly well, marginalized in the U.S., except for working spaces. Even in working class sections of a town or cities there is an invisible "red line" that people are relegated to. In the beginning where Holden only interacted with the Walshes at work, through the stables...that was a dose of reality. Where the soap opera fantasy comes in is where Lily crosses that line by walking into the Snyder house (muddy shoes and all).

You mean the 1880s? As in Gangs of New York? Trump might consider the 1980s as still too progressive.

Someone on Twitter called this the "Pusher's Grand Slam" year.