Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Come on, man.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

This fight is for everything.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

The willow is too close to the house.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

White supremacy is terrorism.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Monday Evening Open Thread: Congratulations, Mr. Fahrenthold!

Monday Evening Open Thread: Congratulations, Mr. Fahrenthold!

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… Although the trophy probably doesn’t say “For Excellence in White-Hat Trolling.” May he continue to investigate the myriad weirdness of Donald Trump for as long as the President-Asterisk remains a blot on our national character.

Props also to Marty Baron, former Boston Globe standout, now Fahrenthold’s executive editor at the Washington Post.

Apart from that — and some seders — what’s on the agenda for the evening?

Reader Interactions

78Comments

  3. 3.

    lamh36

    Evening peeps…on the agenda…nothing much…my cell doesn’t get service in the deep bowels of the Micro lab…so I can’t check the internets until I leave the lab for morning break or lunch.

    One of the few things I did catch up on…

    Alright comic book movie nerds…THOR: RAGNORAK teaser trailer

    Thoughts: 1…CATE BLANCHETT!!!!!!! 2…”Yes!!! …he’s a friend from work! LOL! 3…Goldblum/Tessa!!! Hells yeah 4…Hiddles in that curly wig…HAHAHAHA!

    https://twitter.com/marvelstudios/status/851419840241782784

  4. 4.

    Brachiator

    More Pulitzers

    Letters and Drama

    Fiction: The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

    Drama: Sweat Lynn Nottage

    History: Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising in 1971 and Its Legacy by Heather Ann Thompson

    Biography or Autobiography: The Return Hisham Matar

    Poetry: Olio by Tyehimba Jess

    General Non-Fiction: Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond

    Music: Angel’s Bone by Du Yun

    Another tidbit on “Underground Railroad”

    It was announced in March 2017 that Amazon is making a one-hour limited drama based on The Underground Railroad, written and directed by Barry Jenkins, who co-wrote and directed the Oscar-winning film Moonlight.

  5. 5.

    Taylor

    Hoping that the so-called journalists who disgraced themselves last year will learn something from this…..

    …..but expecting only jealousy and pettiness from the courtier press.

    Congrats to Mr Fahrenthold!

  6. 6.

    Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)

    Fuck Eric Lichtblau, fuck Chris Cillizza, fuck Jeff Zucker and fuck everyone on CNN who isn’t Anderson Cooper into the sun.

  8. 8.

    Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)

    And while we’re on the subject of journalism, here’s a hypothetical I posted from LGM last year:

    Suppose that Donald’s Occupancy decides to establish the Trump Ministry of Bigly Truthiness, and that he has appointed you as its acting president. Your role is to oversee mandatory media purges, and you are given almost absolute free rein, albeit with the following preconditions:

    a) The vast majority of the staff of each media outlet will not only be dismissed, but completely barred from any discussion of political matters for the duration of the empire. This operates with the understanding that any such discussion is grounds for immediate liquidation.

    b) However, for each outlet there are three employees whose employment not only will not and cannot be terminated, but who are given completely free reign for the duration of the empire; this is not negotiable.

    c) Additionally, for each outlet there will be two employees who are to be subjected to a simultaneously disproportionate yet hilarious punishment, in addition to termination (ranging anywhere from the Eike Batista treatment to launching into the sun). My question is, which pundits/journalists do you keep, and which ones will you launch into the sun? (All of these conditions are non-negotiable):

    Here’s my list:
    Fuck The Fucking New York Times – KEEP: Paul Krugman, Charles Blow, Nate Cohn
    ELIMINATE: Ross Douthat, Dean Baquet*
    WaPo – KEEP: Paul Waldman, Eugene Robinson, David Fahrenthold
    ELIMINATE: Marc Thiessen, Fred Hiatt
    CNN – KEEP: Van Jones, Anderson Cooper, Jake Tapper
    ELIMINATE: Jeffs Zucker & Lord
    NBC family – KEEP: Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow, Joy-Ann Reid
    ELIMINATE: JoeScar, Mark Halperin
    Fox News – KEEP: Shep Smith, Megyn Kelly, Bret Baier
    ELIMINATE: Hannity, Eric Bolling
    The Intercept – KEEP: Murtaza Hussein, Liliana Segura, Jon Schwarz
    ELIMINATE: Glenn Greenwald**, Zaid Jilani
    Politico – KEEP: Bill Scher, Michael Grunwald, Hadas Gold
    ELIMINATE: Rich Lowry, Jack Shafer***
    Gizmodo Media – KEEP: Ashley Feinberg, Drew Magary, Kara Brown
    ELIMINATE: Patrick Redford, Tim Marchman

    *Originally Liz Spayd
    **Originally Lee Fang.
    ***Yeah, Scott at LGM nominated Cillizza as hack of the year, but Shafer’s columns were even worse, made less excusable by the fact that Shafer isn’t as stupid as Cillizza
    ****Originally Pareene, who’d been a total wanker for 2016, but he’s (unfortunately?) gotten his mojo back. Redford was both a wanker and completely inessential/interchangeable with the other purity ponies.

  9. 9.

    MattF

    It’s important to emphasize that the story Fahrenthold covered is the simple, provable fact that Trump lies all the time about everything. Lying about giving to charity is an egregious thing to do– but lying about every single instance of purported donations to charity goes beyond that into the realm of psychopathology.

    This is the real story that he uncovered, and it deserves the prize.

  10. 10.

    Brachiator

    @Mnemosyne:

    So there will be two ongoing TV shows about the Underground Railroad?

    The Pulitzer winning novel is a whole ‘nuther animal.

    The Underground Railroad is a 2016 novel by American author Colson Whitehead. It tells the story of Cora and Caesar, two slaves who make a bid for freedom from their Georgia plantations by following the Underground Railroad, which in this novel becomes an actual underground subway

    The novel also won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2016

  11. 11.

    debbie

    @joel hanes:

    Oh, FFS

    For rising to the moment with beautifully rendered columns that connected readers to the shared virtues of Americans during one of the nation’s most divisive political campaigns.

    They just have to ruin everything, don’t they?

  12. 12.

    Ryan

    Good on him! Take note Mr. Halperin. No matter how many millions you make, you’ll never have the respect that someone like Mr. Fahrenthold has earned.

  15. 15.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I am very happy that David Fahrenthold won a Pulitzer — very well-deserved, in my opinion — but am less happy that Peggy “Magic Dolphins” Noonan picked up a gong for Commentary.

    This seems to be an example:

    “I think part of the answer is: Grandpa. He’d sit on the front stoop in Levittown in the 1950s. A sunny day, the kids are tripping by, there’s a tree in the yard and bikes on the street and a car in the front. He was born in Sicily or Donegal or Dubrovnik, he came here with one change of clothes tied in a cloth and slung on his back, he didn’t even speak English, and now look—his grandkids with the bikes.”

    I. Mean. WTF. Anyhow.

  16. 16.

    Brachiator

    Lynn Nottage’s “Sweat” has been described as THE FIRST THEATRICAL LANDMARK OF THE TRUMP ERA

    From the Wiki —

    The play portrays a meeting between a parole officer and two ex-convicts, and three women who were childhood friends working in the same factory. The action takes place in a fictional bar in Reading, Pennsylvania, a town described as “synonymous with deindustrialisation”. Switching scenes with events of eight years earlier, Nottage shows how events take individuals on divergent pathways, to a backdrop of job cuts, poverty, and downsizing, with none of the characters except the barman realizing what is at stake. Variety quotes him as warning them that “You could wake up tomorrow and all your jobs are in Mexico”, to which the characters respond with lethargy and disbelief. Variety described Nottage as going into “the heart of working-class America”.The characters have been described as being blue-collar workers who voted in Donald Trump as President.

    The play also examines the disintegration of a friendship; two of the women – one white, one black – apply for the same management job. The latter character gets the position, but soon, when the company does indeed move jobs to Mexico, and the trade union goes on strike, the workers are locked-out. The management/worker division begins to separate the friends, and racial tensions separate them further.

  19. 19.

    eyelessgame

    Peggy Noonan got a Pulitzer.

    Makes sense. Donald Trump is the President. Is Adam Sandler up for an Oscar?

  20. 20.

    Comrade Scrutinizer

    History: Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising in 1971 and Its Legacy by Heather Ann Thompson

    Attica! Attica! Attica!

  22. 22.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @joel hanes: Just this. Of course, the commentary award can’t help but suck if they pick anyone at all beyond Krugman or Egan. I mean, look at some of the “luminaries” they’ve chose in the past, such as the human shitpile Krauthammer.

  26. 26.

    Steeplejack

    @joel hanes:

    Goddamn, I thought maybe your joke was based on Noonan’s having won a Pulitzer in some long-forgotten heyday when she was at least plausibly semi-relevant. But that didn’t compute, so I checked on the Google. And, goddamn it, she won the Pulitzer for commentary this year?! For what?! I can’t bring myself to read the citation, lest I have a stroke. Ugh. This makes my bad mood today even worse.

  28. 28.

    different-church-lady

    I bear Mr. Fahrenthold no ill, but of all the things Trump has demonstrably lied about, this is the only thing anyone picked up that was Pulitzer-worthy?

  29. 29.

    lamh36

    @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Yessss…I saw a magazine cover with the Thor cast on it and I swear I barely recognized Cate!!! She’s VERY good a villains…she was one of the best things in that last, unnecessary Indiana Jones movie, and she was SOOO WICKED in the live action Cinderella…

  31. 31.

    lamh36

    @gene108: I really liked the first one (exception…found Natalie Portman…really boring as Jane). The second one was meh to me (probably cause it involved more of Jane than I cared for). This trailer though…made me a bit excited to see how they finish the franchise…and Helmsworth…is hot short or long haired…of course…lol

  32. 32.

    Steeplejack

    @Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):

    Keep Megyn Kelly?! You were thinking with your little brain there, amigo.

    And not only did you commit the “free reign” atrocity, you did it after correctly using “free rein” two paragraphs above. Extra points off.

  34. 34.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @debbie:

    Oh yes! Loved and miss Russell Baker!

    I also very much liked Anna Quindlen as a columnist (I’m a fan of her novels, too, but it’s not the same as a twice-a-week fix).

  35. 35.

    Iowa Old Lady

    @different-church-lady: What I liked about Farenthold’s reporting is that it was methodical and open. He posted images of his notebook as he contacted each charity and learned that none of they received donations from the Trump Foundation. It was such a good example of fact finding, and the way he did it was an example for his readers in the Age of Trump. IOW, I thought the process taught us as much as the findings did.

  36. 36.

    Mnemosyne

    @lamh36:

    I think Natalie Portman is one of those actors who has a lot of trouble acting against a green screen. No knock against her — some people just can’t do it no matter how good they are.

  37. 37.

    Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)

    @Steeplejack: Forgot that Kelly was no longer at Fox. But it’s slim pickings either way; we have to keep three. (In their place, I’d suggest either Chris Wallace and/or Juan Williams; Shep stays).

  38. 38.

    lamh36

    Opinion | Gay and terrified in Chechnya
    http://wapo.st/2ofWyF0?tid=ss_tw

    The crusading newspaper Novaya Gazeta published a startling article April 1 that reported Mr. Kadyrov’s armed thugs were detaining and executing gay men, with more than 100 men already seized, three of them known to be dead and many others possibly murdered in extrajudicial “honor” killings…

  40. 40.

    Turgidson

    @MattF:

    If only people had cared. One thing Trump wasn’t lying about was that he could commit murder in broad daylight without losing any supporters. While his pathetic poll numbers and popular vote loss show that he obviously wasn’t and isn’t made of teflon like St. Ronald of Reagan, it does seem that the only way to ensure the end of his political career would be to nuke him from orbit. But that is problematic for other reasons.

  42. 42.

    Mnemosyne

    @Turgidson:

    The ironic thing in my family is, the two guys who are still Reagan-worshippers (older cousin and older brother) both despise Trump and voted for Hillary.

    The Trump voters are ones who would think Reagan was a cuck for raising taxes and not bombing Russia.

  44. 44.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @lamh36: She’s just good, period. And I can’t believe they’re doing the headdress.

    @Mnemosyne: That link seems to be missing that line?

  46. 46.

    Kathleen

    @Taylor: Alas, their paychecks do not depend upon them learning or valuing anything of importance or relevance to real people.

  47. 47.

    NotMax

    @Brachiator

    Lived outside of Reading* for a few years during the late70s/early 80s and don’t have any recollection of it being particularly industrialized at the time.

    Agriculture (including large scale mushroom farming), the various colleges in and around the area, the gigantic factory outlet complex plus its associated entities, Pennsy Dutch tourism, pretzel making and restaurants were the big kahunas for employment, IIRC.

    *Sinking Spring, to be precise. Mention it due to fondness for the name.

  50. 50.

    Turgidson

    @Mnemosyne:

    I know a few of those. They turned against the GOP because of W and vote Democratic, but are hardly thrilled about it.

    I guess we can be grateful that Trump is such an awful public speaker. Reagan sold a shit sandwich dipped in dog vomit to a commanding majority of voters because he had discipline, good speechwriters, was a skilled liar, and had that endearing affect. Trump can’t string two sentences together without wandering off into a thicket of verbal diarrhea, can barely make it through a prepared speech at all, much less deliver it with any grace, and is about as appealing to listen to as a tornado siren.

  52. 52.

    Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)

    @Steeplejack: Yeah I know how much she sucked, but when I compiled the list (December) she was the only one I could think of at the moment to show editorial independence. (And I never watch FOX). And this is irrelevant anyway, because she now works at NBC.

    And you still haven’t made any suggestions for the list.

  54. 54.

    JustRuss

    @debbie: Christ, I thought Hanes was joking. “President Trump” is bad enough, now we have to live with “Pulitzer Prize Winner Peggy Noonan”?!! I just can’t……

    What’s next, Michael Bay gets the Oscar for Best Director?

  55. 55.

    Mnemosyne

    @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:

    D’oh! I blame G — I assumed he had posted the same clip he showed me. That one just has the actual parody.

    Basically, the surrounding story is that the couple is being interrogated by the USPIS and the woman interrogating them is one of the audience members sitting behind them and glaring at them. I’ll have to see if I can make my own GIF.

  56. 56.

    Brachiator

    @lamh36:

    Author Margot Lee Shetterly to Uncover Even More Hidden Figures in History

    Very cool. I always thought it a shame that there are not more books about black women who served during WW II. I wish that some teachers would encourage their students to use tablets, phones and similar devices to record living histories of these people, and their other family members.

    This obviously applies to other people and groups as well. We have at hand the equipment to easily document mini biographies of people. The results could be illuminating.

  57. 57.

    sharl

    @different-church-lady:

    I bear Mr. Fahrenthold no ill, but of all the things Trump has demonstrably lied about, this is the only thing anyone picked up that was Pulitzer-worthy?

    After reading some of the relevant articles, I really appreciated other awardees’ work quite a bit. Fahrenthold’s work was thorough, diligent, and spread out over many weeks, so didn’t offer to me* any one single article that really made an impact (*though one or more such articles may exist). That kind of steady grinding work Fahrenthold did – performed while maintaining professional discipline and attention to detail – seems like it would be no small thing.

    FWIW, one of Fahrenthold’s colleagues noted the following:

    Ed O’Keefe @edatpost

    Heralding @Fahrenthold, @stevenjay says no political reporter has won @PulitzerPrize for campaign coverage since @davidmaraniss in the 1990s

    I’m glad he got the award; we need more like him. Someone (like me) would have voted for those writing that one article (or short series) with a big ‘WOW’ factor.

  59. 59.

    Mnemosyne

    @JustRuss:

    What’s next, Michael Bay gets the Oscar for Best Director?

    Well, it is the Year Of Rewarding White Mediocrity, so …

  60. 60.

    Credenzal Jocularity

    Did any Colorado Juicers hear Peak NPR break their cart process about 20 minutes ago?

    They started with one sentence about Gorsuch surviving fierce political opposition and then there was dead air for about 15 seconds. Then it started playing random sentence fragments about grape juice, bank fraud and something about the SPLC being the REAL hate group, all with different voices.

    A non sequitur fugue of reasonable intonations.

  63. 63.

    eemom

    Why anybody gives a shit about Pulitzer prizes — or any prizes — is beyond me.

    Fucking MoDo won a pulitzer, y’all. Basically any emmessemmbot you’ve ever heard of has won one. So not surprising at all that waaaaay has-been Noonan got one now — they probably just looked at the list of over-80 hacks and realized, oh shit, we forgot about her.

  65. 65.

    Mnemosyne

    @lamh36:

    It wasn’t just her — everyone was really bad. But she definitely had trouble with all of the green screen acting and said so.

  66. 66.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Mnemosyne: Well, when you’re basically cast as a walking mannequin for utterly bizarre and impractical female attire, actually acting becomes unimportant.

  67. 67.

    Steeplejack

    @eemom:

    I ended up on Noonan’s Wikipedia page and was shocked to discover she’s only 66! She does sound like an 80-year-old fossil. Hell, she has always sounded like an 80-year-old fossil!

  68. 68.

    Mnemosyne

    Also, in other arts news, G and I saw the touring production of Into the Woods last night. It was really good, but some people seemed a little confused about what a Sondheim fairy tale would be like and brought kids who were way too young to enjoy it.

    The second act has structural problems but the cast was great and managed to pull it over the finish line. And it’s nice that, even in Trump’s America, live theater is still casting the best people for the job, not just white people.

  69. 69.

    mainmata

    @SiubhanDuinne: Excuse me, Ms. Dumbass Noonan (who has an Irish surname) but people from Donegal do – and did – speak English albeit with a lovely accent.

  70. 70.

    Brachiator

    @Mnemosyne:

    She was in the “Star Wars” prequels and was really bad in them.

    Everybody was bad in them. People fixate on Jar Jar, but the greater problem was that George Lucas found a way to take a group of talented actors and get a bad performance out of all of them.

  71. 71.

    Roger Moore

    @Mnemosyne:

    It wasn’t just her — everyone was really bad.

    I think a huge part of it was the Lucas didn’t know or care much about directing actual human beings. He knows how to make an impressive spectacle, but engaging human interactions are beyond him.

  72. 72.

    sharl

    The NYT’s C.J. Chivers won a Pulitzer for this – a long and often hard read, but very well told. At least it has an ending that leaves one hopeful:

    The Fighter: The Marine Corps taught Sam Siatta how to shoot. The war in Afghanistan
    taught him how to kill. Nobody taught him how to come home.

    This one might be more in Adam’s wheelhouse – well at least kinda-sorta – on how much diplomacy and relations with the rest of the world have changed after 9/11, Snowden, hacking, etc.: The Last Diplomat, an account of how old school Pakistani expert Robin Raphel got into trouble with our new signint-based and culturally ignorant security apparatus.

    I’m not sure I’ve yet read this Pulitzer winner from the Charleston (WV) Gazette-Mail – Drug firms poured 780M painkillers into WV amid rise of overdoses – but I’ve read enough other accounts of the flood of opiates into Appalachian and other communities to have some awareness of the size of the problem.

    As far as Peggy Noonan…blech. I did like the idea from one wag who suggested that Maureen Dowd should have got an award for investigative journalism, for her fine work checking out pot brownies in Colorado. Far too late, I guess.

  74. 74.

    Jeffro

    @Brachiator: Catherine Rampell’s a big fan of “Sweat”…probably a good reason to go see it. A lot of these writers for the WaPo tweet out pretty good theater recommendations…Fahrenthold was the one who said “As You Like It” was amazing (this was back in Feb) and my family & I had to agree!

  75. 75.

    Jeffro

    Btw, I mentioned a day or two ago (speaking of Pulitzers): y’all have to read The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. Just outstanding.

    That’s what all these ‘best of’ and ‘year’s best’ lists are for, folks! Who has time to pick out a couple dozen great books in any given year? ;)

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