I tried to figure out the right Memorial Day mix of pop culture and politics to opinionate on this weekend. But try as I might nothing was working.
Until Bruce Springsteen did the job for me.
They don’t call him the Boss for nothin’!
Singer-songwriters can do that. But when they’re also the superstar frontman for their own superstar band, and have just begun an international tour, well, that’s even better.
Meaning not only can they get a message out with talent and charisma but they have a humongous platform from which to do it from.
Fame indeed!
It’s difficult to live your entire life in a country that has always aspired to liberty and justice for ALL – even in decades where it has fallen far short of them – and watch it being slowly dismantled, one principle at a time, by a man who seems to operate primarily on vengeance, rage, pathological self-glorification and bottom line personal grift numbering in the many millions, and now billions, and counting.
But here we are.
Yes, we know
One could ask the question, how much money do you need once you reach a billion plus, but let’s not. Because we all know that by the time you surpass a billion it’s not about the planes, cars, yachts, houses and hookers – it’s about the power.
As Mel Brooks once famously joked in his 1981 film, The History of the World, Part I:It’s good to be the King!
I think he’s wearing less makeup though
Though history and literature show us that while it might be for, well, a time, for most Kings it’s a very mixed bag. And for many it doesn’t end well. At all.
What’s that old expression? Oh, right –
Power corrupts but absolute power corrupts absolutely.
I generally don’t like old expressions but in this case and in this country it feels apt.
Preach, Chairy!
Or as I said not so famously to my husband this week, I feel like we’re in the beginning of the fourth act of a five-act Shakespearean-like tragedy where the King will be doomed after destroying parts of his country but, like all great plays, we’re not yet sure what His doom will look like or exactly how it will play out.
I know that might sound like nasty, wishful thinking but I am absolutely sure of one fact: After a lifetime of movies, books and miniseries, I can recognize a doomed, over-the-top main character in a larger-than-life modern-day tragedy a million miles away. And so could any of you with a brain.
See: Cable news
But what most of us are unable to do is to sing and communicate it as well as Bruce “The Boss” Springsteen.
Memorial Day is a time to honor those who died while serving in the United States military for sacrifices made in defending the freedoms our country has tried to always stand for. So I can’t think of anything more patriotic in May/June 2025 than to post two clips of The Boss at a recent concert in Manchester, England. He encapsulates what it means be a real patriot by putting himself front and center on the firing line of dissent in order to push back against what seems to so many of us to be our first aspiring Oval Office dictator.
I love movies and the theatre. Always have. The story you can’t second-guess. Memorable characters. Unforeseen, angry, funny and generally snide and/or uncomfortable conflicts.
They tell me stories I can BELIEVE and somehow they have always informed me, metaphorically at least, about my life.
So why am I having so much trouble turning off cable news these days?
Because no play, film or even TV series can touch the Mueller vs. Trump countdown that is being broadcast 24/7 on your small, medium or perhaps even big screen in your home.
Me, watching Rachel Maddow, EVERYDAY
Don’t get me wrong – I’d be thrilled to not have this particular story. But now that it’s here, I can’t turn away.
People say:
You’ve got to do it – for your own sanity!Actually, they don’t say it – they admonish it – and me.
To which I say/admonish back:
WHAT SANITY????
I keep repeating to anyone who asks or who will listen:
These are insane times. Is the proper response to continue life as you have always known it???
Luckily, I don’t have children. Not so much because I wouldn’t be there for them. But more like —
What if one of them was a Trump supporter??????
I honestly don’t know how the Keatons did it.
Oh, don’t reassure yourself. I absolutely would NOT leave them alone. And if they pushed it too far I most certainly COULD leave them. Or at least stop talking to them. My mother stopped talking to me for four months after I relocated to Los Angeles for a job and temporarily moved in with my Dad and stepmom. And this was 10 years after they BOTH remarried!! And Jimmy Carter was president!!
So DO NOT say that I don’t have it in me. I have a lot in me.
And more.
The Never-Ending Story is not a fantasy novel or an OLD movie from 1984.
A different white, hairy monster
(Note: Yeah – 1984 is 34 years ago so it now qualifies as OLD. And Note the year – 1984??? George Orwell? The David Bowie song? AND – yes, I AM seeing connections that make perfect sense that YOU. ARE. MISSING).
#THEREALDONALDTRUMP is the malevolent force in OUR NEVER-ENDING STORY and the only one who can stop IT from permeating the globe and destroying US is not a BULLIED CHILD – as it is in the book (Note: Ahem, ANOTHER magical connection you didn’t see or won’t acknowledge – bullies? Children?). It is the former head of the Globe’s chief law enforcement agency – ROBERT MUELLER.
And another SIDE NOTE: Just know that if this is over soon (though as Carrie Fisher once wrote: Wishful Drinking) it is NOT too late for Harrison Ford to play him in the movie. Mueller will be 74 next month and Mr. Ford just turned 76. So by Hollywood standards Mr. Ford is actually a bit young for the part. Nevertheless, I am SURE he would take it —
…If he got final script approval.
…And his choice of director.
… and if he can’t, we know De Niro is game #efftrump
Yeah, IF this is ever over (Note: A BIG if) AND we all survive, the movie industry will be back to business as usual. Even I would like to dream that we’ll all be a lot more benevolent by then but if the post Drumpf years really do turn out to exist the one bromide we’ll all be well-advised to even more strenuously live by will be to watch our backs.
Even the Harrison Fords among us.
I had two favorite snippets this week from our ongoing, ad-infinitum, never-ending narrative. One occurred during the 10-hour testimony of my new fantasy boyfriend, FBI agent Peter Strzok, before the House of Representatives.
Hey Pete… DM me. <wink>
Mr. Strzok was called on the carpet by countless Republican congressmen for sending text messages criticizing Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign to his former mistress, Justice Department attorney Lisa Page, which were no more inflammatory than numerous public statements made by some of those very same sitting Republican Congressman at the time about the sheer guttural horror of allowing Trump anywhere near the Republican nomination for president, much less the White House.
Still, each elected official kept coming, trying to rattle, corner and otherwise grandstand Mr. Chair Strzok into admitting his political bias disqualified him from doing his job properly just as they simultaneously and continuously disproved this theory by showing their own extreme right leaning biases over and over again with each heated accusation they threw his way.
Disgusted that his grilling of Strzok was not even slightly cracking the trained-to-be-uncrackable veteran FBI man, Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Republican Christian conservative from Texas long referred to as…well…any number of pejorative terms for crazed by his House colleagues, at one point angrily stared at Strzok and sputtered:
I can’t help but wonder, when I see you looking there with a little smirk — How many times did you look so innocent in your wife’s eye and lie to her about Lisa Page!?….
um… YIKES
To which Rep. Bonnie Watson-Coleman (D-NJ) finally shouted back at him:
….What is wrong with….You need your medication!!!
And you wonder why I can’t, okay won’t, turn away.
The other example was a soundless 30-second video snippet that encapsulates everything one needs to know about the ways in which Trump is able to insult everything not only within inches of his grasp but many millions of miles beyond.
After dodging 250,000 protestors in London demonstrating against him and his policies with various sizes of Baby Trump floats in diapers, our Electoral College president was scheduled the next day to meet 92 year old Queen Elizabeth for a brief tea at Windsor Castle.
It’s real.. and it’s spectacular
As the Monarch stood outside under a canopy, periodically glancing from side to side, dressed in her signature suit, gloves, hat and handbag, #Drumpf arrived a full 15 minutes late, not only leaving the nonagenarian waiting in an overly bright daytime sun but causing her to check her watch several times. Even after he finally arrived he couldn’t find a way to walk gentlemanly beside, near or behind her – only in front.
seems about right… #chompchomp
This is not only a grievous mistake in Royal protocol but, as everyone but him knows, a common courtesy when you find yourself beside 92 year olds of any station.
It is also one more reason I can’t turn off cable news. That daily reality check is the ONLY thing that is keeping my thoughts and me from TRULY going INSANE and not falling into some awful alternative universe of a dreaded NEW NORMAL.
notes from a chair 