DramatistDreamer

Interesting piece by Ta-Nihisi Coates How Breitbart Conquered the Media

This article crystallizes why I think some tennis fans were being silly for boo-hooing Monfils in the SF and why John McEnroe (a man who did blow during his pro career and was defaulted from the Australian Open for destroying a TV camera in anger because he was losing a match) was unwarranted for calling Monfils unprofessional. The idea that there is only one way to win a match is a stupid one. I once read an interview where Arthur Ashe (humanitarian and probably the most respected man in tennis lore) spoke of how he 'junk-balled' Connors every way he could, never giving him the same ball twice in a row, (which drove Connors crazy) to win his 1975 Wimbledon title. Connors might have hated it but I defy anyone to try to claim that Ashe's win was not legitimate. It was effective and it did the job. I supposed, had Monfils won, perhaps the criticism(s) might have been muted. Folks need to make up their minds, do they want a clown prince or do they want someone who is going to try to win, even if that means he won't be the Monfils you expect him to be? IN DEFENSE OF MONFILS Personally, I don't think Monfils did anything to defend. He played a match and dared to not to treat it as if it were life or death. Folks need to get over themselves.

Came across this on Twitter and thought it was very well stated.

I'm not surprised that HRC has pneumonia or some other resistance sapping ailment. She had a bruising, long-winding Primary contest, whereas Trump barely had to do anything in the GOP contest. Many of us feel exhausted watching this whole election cycle unfold. I refuse to jump to conclusions until the debates start happening. The media creates narratives for ratings. According to them Mitt Romney was supposed to have defeated Barack Obama so I'm not going to waste an ounce more emotion based on what narrative the media seems to be creating today.

Don't you mean Djovak Novikic? LMAO, some ESPN baseball broadcaster called him that yesterday! So Novak took 2 Medical Timeouts to get what basically looked like a pedicure yet John McEnroe criticized Monfils for being unprofessional for junk-balling Novak in the first set of their SF match (a tactic that got Gael three additional games)?? Let's face it, Monfils or no Monfils, most of Nolé's matches have a bizarre aura about them. Case in point, this Men's Final! Congratulations to Stan, even though he can't take his girlfriend Donna Vekic out for a drink to celebrate (until the return to Europe) but he saved us from having to endure another chest thumping, shirt-ripping, pec-cupping, strange celebration from Djokovic! Congrats to one of my favorite Junior players to watch Felix Auger-Aliassime of Canada who is the youngest Boy's Champion in Canadian history after winning the Boy's title at the US Open. Congrats to Kayla Day of the U.S. as well, who won the Girl's Title. I believe she actually won one round in the Women's Main Draw before getting knocked out and entering the Girl's tournament. It's been a very strange year for tennis in every way, so it made a bizarre kind of sense to end at a tournament where neither number 1 actually won the title. Not happy about Serena but she's already great, has 22 Majors, nothing to prove to anyone and will probably reclaim the #1 ranking again sometime soon.

Oh can we just get to the debates already? LOL. How can any of these so called pundits claim to be informing the general public when the candidates haven't even had the debates yet? Is anyone else exhausted from this election season?

Whoever came up with Basket of Deplorables, that's such a catchy catchphrase. Genius!

You probably already saw it, but a page or two ago I linked to a Politico article from someone who talks at length about how terrible he was as mayor and how unsafe he made the city for black people. I didn't read it but I sure as hell lived it!

@JaneAusten, Giuliani has always been reprehensible, IMO. I remember once after he dumped his first wife Donna Hanover after cheating on her, one of his kids called him a jerk. Most people of color who lived in NYC felt somewhat unsafe with Giuliani as mayor. Chris Rock once joked that he felt as if he could be shot by police just taking out the garbage in front of his Brooklyn brownstone (before he moved to New Jersey) and with Giuliani as mayor, it would've been ruled as justifiable. Not too far from what a lot of us who lived in NYC at the time thought.

I noticed that Suzzane Douglas was the Black woman featured in this episode. I've always liked her. Does anyone know how long was she on the show? Was she a Dayplayer? GL should've expanded her character, Douglas is such an elegant actress, IMO and it was their loss not to utilize her on the show long-term.

Despite the obvious flaws, at least this was at a time when soaps still cared about writing decent dialogue and not just one liners and zingers at all costs.

#LaueringTheBar is trending and has been trending for several hours today. Colin Powell was also trending a few hours ago. I think word could be spreading that HRC may actually have been telling something resembling the truth when she spoke of Powell's advisement of her personal e-mail. @JaneAusten, it has crossed my mind several times over the past few months, that HRC's personal server may have been more secure than the government's servers that are repeatedly hacked, though the narrative that the GOP likes to spread is that her server could have been vulnerable to hackers and there was at least one attempt (what gets played down was that each attempt was clearly thwarted), which I don't believe is the case for the State Department. While I missed last night's forum, the summary seems to be that Trump (who has shifted from the 'Lyin' Ted' moniker to 'Crooked Hillary') continues to lie repeatedly and with impugnity.

I can't even get past tonight's sh*tshow matches. The evening session was so piss-poor tonight. I actually feel for those ticketholders.

You mean to tell me, that Nolé has had 3 f*ckin retirements in a row? WTF?!! When has he last played one whole entire match?? Just crazy!

I agree. Helping to tank the ERA. I'm trying to be respectful of a human being that has passed, so I won't go any further on that. People are braying about the crassness of Rodrigo Duterte but are willing to consider Trump as a genuinely, serious candidate?

I didn't hear the Arizona speech but the word going around social media is that it is scary. Is there anything new from what he's already been saying?

@Juliajms, I honestly can't say whether or not, Weiner has had any therapy but isn't this his 3rd go 'round with the d*ick pics? From the time he was a Congressman in Queens, he always seemed to be more about the spectacle than the substance. I don't subscribe to Showtime but perhaps the documentary that he has allowed to film him and his supposed 'rise from the ashes' revival of his political career, may show whether he is or isn't getting therapy. Showtime is certainly promoting the heck out of that upcoming documentary! With his child next to him, when I read that, it honestly turned my stomach!

MSNBC gives a summary of the Mother Jones article and more re: Trump's modelling agency subverting immigration laws while exploiting models as young as 14. Trump Model Management

How wonderful of Gov. Mike Pence to run after Donald Trump, touting how they're going to fix and clean up everything while there has been a long simmering crisis in East Chicago, Indiana with high levels of lead contamination in the soil. An Indiana City Is Poised To Become The Next Flint Their Soil Toxic, 1,100 Indiana Residents Scramble to Find New Homes

Aside from angst for Dusty and Meg, I feel as if the John/Emma relationship seemed like more of a transitional relationship, where John, who had been known for being married to and lusting after much younger women, could now be seen in a relationship with a "mature" woman. I agree that it was not meant to be a permanent lasting relationship and it obviously paved the way for a soap opera surprise elopement with Lucinda, who John had a much more organically fiery chemistry with, the kind that the big 80s supercouple-loving soaps would've wanted, plus John and Lucinda just had a lot more natural conflict, unlike Emma and John who needed their children to provide the conflict, Lucinda and John needed no outside source, they could create it all on their own.

Yeah, I feel bad for Huma Abedin. If I found out my husband was sexting while my toddler was in bed with him, I would be very, very upset. Sharing a child with someone who lacks all sense of parental judgement has to be really nerve wracking. I have no idea if he's getting therapy, I certainly hope so, but if I were in her shoes I wouldn't give be very impressed with that. All these people run to therapy when they get caught, as if therapy wipes the slate clean. Weiner should've been getting therapy from the get-go, maybe he wouldn't have been a repeat offender. Huma has given him multiple chances at cost to her pride because she clearly wanted to keep her family together probably hoping he'd stop but he has only become more brazen, it's time to kick him to the curb. Trump who has cheated on his first wife and as I understand, his second has no standing to sit in judgement let alone to claim some clumsy argument that it will impact national security. Why doesn't he just focus on his phoney outreach to the African American community.

I feel like when a vital William Bell Sr. was in charge, he tamped down inflated egos fairly quickly (e.g. the fight between Eric Braeden and Peter Bergman, where Bell threatened to fire Bergman, I think it was Bergman). Actors may have grumbled but did their job. Once he had to step down because of his health diagnosis and other people had to take charge of the show, I think that's when the inflated egos started getting out of control and starting to control the show's dynamic. Yeah, Marland though, maybe because of his experience as an actor himself and NYC being a theater town where most actors are used to being part of an ensemble, Marland was probably able to be very clear about the actor being in service of the character and not vice-versa.

When I saw Anthony Weiner trending yesterday, I didn't even bother to click because I knew what it was going to be about. Is he getting therapy or what?! However, I don't see how his addiction (or whatever it is) impacts national security, as Trump wants people to believe. Huma Abedin is separating from Weiner so I don't know what else needs to be said, other than it's a personal matter, at this point.

The Trump's history of racial discrimination in Trump rental properties is well known but this NYT article features a personal story of people involved in one case in Queens New York and one in Cincinnati, OH the subject of a lawsuit brought on by the Justice Dept against the Trumps. ‘No Vacancies’ for Blacks: How Donald Trump Got His Start, and Was First Accused of Bias The contrast is striking between Trump, in his youth working at his father's knee, deep in these policies being investigated by 'testers' sent out by the New York Urban League while HRC worked as a 'tester' for Marian Wright Edelman and the Children's Defense Fund, documenting instances of deliberate racial segregation of schools in the South.

I see what you're saying @~bl~, even though most people I know who watched ATWT also watched GL, two P&G shows with similar methods of storytelling, the contrast wasn't as glaring as between Capitol and ATWT. Some of my friends who watched both actually elected to drop GL, preferring to record Y&R, B&B and ATWT. For me personally during 94/95, I had entered college, got busy in life and really only picked up most of the soaps in the summertime and although I remember a few storylines and characters from 94, 1995 was completely forgettable to me and I watched very little of it, '96 almost none of it. The storylines didn't move me to tune in and up until '95, I would have considered myself a loyal ATWT viewer, I was raised watching it, it was my favorite soap. Speaking of ATWT specifically, if the accepted narrative in soap opera lore being that the OJ case shifted the viewing habits of the soap viewing public in large number is the case, it just seemed as if ATWT and GL did very little to counter or compete. The writing/storytelling by 94/95 was bland and mostly forgettable irrespective of casting. There were a couple of decent storylines but writers no longer seemed capable of layering storyline after storyline so that you had multiple compelling storylines one after another as in the past. If the OJ case was this huge compelling juggernaut that all these people claim it to be, then shouldn't ATWT tried to compete with equally compelling writing? I just don't believe they did and I have have one big theory as to why but it's just my theory.