A surprise appearance from Hillary Clinton reading Fire & Fury at the Grammys pic.twitter.com/VAYk70pqAj
— David Mack (@davidmackau) January 29, 2018
(Full clip here; explanation here.)
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All across America, people who tuned in to watch bands like Aerosmith for the nine millionth time are extremely, extremely confused right now.
— The Hoarse Whisperer (@HoarseWisperer) January 29, 2018
Apart from dishing the Grammys, what’s on the agenda as we start another week?
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“Welcome to the throbbing heart of Anti-Trump Country, a land where — if you believe in polls — the majority of Americans reside, and yet a place that the mainstream media seem determined to ignore.” https://t.co/3kVeWGMjEH
— Eugene Scott (@Eugene_Scott) January 27, 2018
Meanwhile… “Oh mah garsh, Jethro, it’s a trend!” Will Bunch, in the Philadelphia Inquirer:
There are no sooty coal mines underneath the steep, foliage-shrouded streets of Mount Airy, no Formica-wrapped diner where men in flannel shirts and steel-toed boots load up on painfully bitter coffee and heaping platters of cholesterol while dissecting last night’s Hannity, no driveways where an unemployed factory worker parks his Chevy truck next to a “Make America Great Again” yard sign.
No, life on these blocks centers around a joint on Carpenter Lane called Weavers Way, the venerable corner food co-op that launched in the twilight of the hippie era in 1972, where today senior citizens and young social workers wander down from rambling old-stone houses with their reusable canvas bags to load up on bulk spices, home-baked muffins, or maybe a treat like pumpkin gingersnap ice cream…
Welcome to the throbbing heart of Anti-Trump Country, a land where — if you believe in polls — the majority of Americans reside, and yet a place that the mainstream media seem determined to ignore.
I decided to come to the Northwest Philadelphia neighborhoods of Mount Airy and Germantown after reading the 26th, or maybe it was the 206th, “Report from Trump Country,” where some wire-rimmed reporter from New York or D.C. parachutes into small-town Ohio or Kansas to hang out in a bacon-drenched breakfast spot to discover that the locals who watched six hours of Fox News Channel the night before still love it when Trump blasts the liberal “fake news” on Twitter, no matter how many promises the president breaks on bringing their jobs back or replacing Obamacare with “something really terrific.”…
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Tragic coda, via commentor Gin & Tonic, “Mired in squalor, but still voting for Putin”:
… In Soviet times, “monotowns” dedicated to a single industry were part of a proud industrial heritage. Today some are still home to about 14m Russians, or 10% of the population, but many others have been bulldozed and burnt. One of the ghost towns in the far north, Khalmer-Yu, has been used for military target practice. Putin, who relishes any opportunity to show off his manly prowess, went up in a bomber to launch missiles at an abandoned block of flats.
A few brave souls linger in Roza, a former coal-mining town named after Rosa Luxemburg, the German revolutionary. It is perched on the edge of a crater two miles wide. The air is filled with sulphurous smoke from burning subterranean coal seams that have caused land on the edge of the settlement to subside.
More than 4,000 have departed in search of better lives. Most of those who remain are jobless. “People are upset, angry and disappointed,” said Liubov Artiomova, 49, at the counter of the All You Need dress shop. “I rarely get any customers. All we do is exist.”…
Kurdyavtseva, a mineworker’s widow, suffers from severe asthma and her grandson needs to see a dentist — two of his front teeth are black. “There’s no dentist round here,” she said. “And we can’t afford to go anywhere else. All of my pension goes on getting us something to eat.”
She could barely afford to feed the child and her two sons. In spite of the hardship, she will vote for Putin on March 18. “Who else? He gave us a good life in the past. Others have let him down.”
If you’re old, like me, you can probably remember back when it was a point of American pride that even our most isolated, ill-educated hayseeds had an independence unimaginable to the dumb kulaks mooing adulation for whichever Strong Soviet Daddy was standing at the front of today’s parade review…
Monday Morning Open Thread: (Fighting for) RespectPost + Comments (139)