Vee

More Wisteria/Unrecorded Night shenanigans, now featuring Kyle:

This is his forever future.

Thread:

Honestly, Todd and to a lesser extent Karl and others have gotten such relentless pressure in the last year or two that I wonder how long it will go before a change is finally made. I don't expect the Beltway to ever give up on bothsides journalism completely. But I do think the social media feedback loop has become a real force in the last half-decade especially that they can't ignore it forever as they used to. Look how many journos backpedal on Twitter regularly, and how often the NYT, etc. is forced to change shitty headline ledes.

Rodan was always a fine actor and a great interview. (And the Adam storyline was always my angle for bringing back the show as a straight continuation when I was much younger - the idea that 'the experiment' could transplant Barnabas' or others' consciousness into a different, young body without anyone knowing.) RIP.

This is a very old trick of Ron's he has deployed many, many, many times. Take audience complaints about a character or story, put them in the mouths of someone or plural someones to give the appearance of finally 'validating' them, then completely tear that story and character down as a fùck you to the audience. He will do it again here.

I grew up with Beverly Cleary's books. What a legacy. Larry McMurtry, too, goes without saying. I saw the director's cut of Peter Bogdanovich's Texasville, his and McMurtry's sequel to The Last Picture Show, recently - it is strange, but better than it has any right to be. It's very clearly the product of McMurtry's singular voice. You could never mistake it for generic workproduct. Tavernier gave me one of the first films I ever saw at the Film Forum when I first moved to NYC - Coup de Torchon, a Jim Thompson noir adaptation transplanted to West Africa with Isabelle Huppert. Brilliant. I didn't dig into him enough in years since but I've always wanted to.

They harder they try, the harder people will come. Plus, I do believe we'll pass the voting rights act.

Time to change the thread title:

Yglesias has been drifting further and further towards contrarianism and whining about cancel culture, but I don't agree with him that this stunt is going to work much with the larger public anymore than the caravan did.

Hotline Josh is verging on the Halperin fringe at this point, but yes he and Politico did push that and are getting widely roasted for it, as I noted.

There are also not one but two editorials in the WaPo this morning led off by Ashley Parker and another writer, both of whom are clearly pissed that the public and media takeaway (in many outlets, print and TV) from yesterday's press conference is that Biden owned them and the press on-site looked like unserious goofballs. So now her angle is: "No, Biden is obsessed with Trump, not us!" It cracks me up. More trouble for Politico, which has been stepping in it with a speed generally reserved for the NYT in recent months:

Spooked: Meanwhile, 45 engages in pathetic Apprentice cosplay to relive the glory days:

One of the greats. I too thought she'd never die.

Most media critique of the Biden presser is in the Politics Thread atm, but I wanted to add this.

The story of the moment - even in media - is: Biden did fine/great, but the central point I'm seeing now is, why did the media completely ignore COVID in favor of a Republican talking point (immigration) which Biden firmly rejected and tossed out? When you have even other Beltway journos and Haberman asking this and saying it's astonishing no one asked about the pandemic, that's bad news for the reporters on-site. You're going to see a lot of spin about that trying to make themselves look better.

Biden smashes the final question - scoffs at the idea that migrants are dying to sell everything they own to coyotes and risk it all to come here, rejecting the GOP framing again. He playfully dismisses GOP as 'posturing'. Which is wise and will infuriate the Beltway. This will become the dominant Beltway takeaway, which is why I post it, not because I love Joe, Tumulty or Max Boot:

And a fundamental point from earlier: Joe is doing very well. I thought he'd do decent if a bit sleepy but this is once again everyone underestimating him.