Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

Consistently wrong since 2002

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Sometimes the world just tells you your cat is here.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Okay, Who Blew Wilford’s Cover?

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90Comments

  6. 6.

    Old School

    I saw it pointed out that Tom Cruise is five years older in the current Mission Impossible movie than Wilford Brimley was when he made Cocoon.

  7. 7.

    p.a.

    Ancient history, but he gave a sports station radio interview promo-ing The Natural and was a miserable SOB. Radio host was being professional, no bsing.

  14. 14.

    MJS

    @Baud: Maybe at one point, but according to his Twitter, tgese days he’d be willing to take a baseball bat to John Bolton.

  15. 15.

    SFAW

    When the hell did Seagal decide to become a rikishi? I don’t recall reading anything about it.

    Then again, I follow news of Seagal about as much as I follow the latest news from Shemya.

  20. 20.

    Raoul

    Do these types of guys think putting black shoe polish on their hair and beards works? I mean, he can afford a colorist who could actually pull something off. But no, they go to CVS and buy 8.99 garbage and think they look good? Hahahaha.

  24. 24.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Old School: Even though he looked plenty old on screen on Cocoon, I remember reading that he had to do some persuasion that he could pull it off.

  27. 27.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Raoul:
    Dude hasn’t aged well. He is 66, but he didn’t look this bad ten years ago from the pictures I’ve seen of him. Perhaps since becoming a Russian citizen, he’s been trying to fit in by looking like warmed-over shit like all Russian men of a certain age.?

  29. 29.

    Tokyokie

    Wilfred Brimley is a crotchety old Mormon who has seemingly missed out on the exquisite etiquette other members of his faith display. He’s always been upfront in saying that if non-Mormons don’t like how Utah is run, they can move someplace else. Frankly, I’ve always liked him because he’s a no-B.S. kind of guy with a good sense of humor.

  30. 30.

    geg6

    @Old School:

    I’d take Wilford over Cruise any day. Nothing more repellent to me than a nutzoid enmeshed in a crazy abusive religion who thinks he’s a god and who has had so much plastic surgery and Botox that his skin resembles nothing so much as a Ken doll’s. He’s my age. He isn’t kidding anyone with a brain.

  31. 31.

    Tokyokie

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: Wilford Brimley got his start in movies working as a farrier on John Ford movies shot in Monument Valley. He spent a lot of his younger years outdoors in the desert, so he always looked older than really he was. Sort of like Walter Brennan in that regard.

  38. 38.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Major Major Major Major:

    I’ve thought that Seagal looks ready to play Gorka every time I’ve seen his picture over the last week or so.

    He does! Though I doubt very much Segal would ever agree to play him if the script resembled anything close to reality considering he’s a Putinite now.

  40. 40.

    Tokyokie

    @Major Major Major Major:

    For his part Gorka think Russell Crowe could play him “if he hit the gym.”

    If you’ve ever seen Russell Crowe in Romper Stomper, you’d know that he already has played Gorka.

  41. 41.

    momus

    This is not fake news

    Seagal is a useful idiot as far as Putin in concerned. Per NYT 8/5 “Steven Seagal Appointed by Russia as Special Envoy to the U.S.”

  42. 42.

    The Dangerman

    Wilfred Brimley’s alive? No shit. Oh, well, I had Abe Vigoda dead a decade or 2 before he passed.

  43. 43.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Mike in NC:

    If he ever pisses off Vlad, expect to hear he fell off the roof of his building.

    Or broke his own neck by practicing aikido on himself.

  48. 48.

    ruemara

    I must say that if one is going to read love poetry, there’s nothing funnier than setting your Kindle reader voice to the primmest English uppercrust male voice. Especially if there’s anything remotely erotic about the selection. I wonder if I should have him read translated Catullus.

  49. 49.

    Mike in NC

    Read today that thousands of manufacturing jobs in South Carolina are in jeopardy due to Trump’s tariffs. Sad!

  51. 51.

    Keith P.

    “You’ll never get old, and you’ll never die. You just have to wear yellow-tinted glasses and dress like a Romulan wherever you go.

  53. 53.

    MomSense

    I’m just surprised to learn Brimley isn’t dead. I really thought he was. Carry on, Wilford.

  54. 54.

    ruemara

    @Major Major Major Major: I did use the latin of one canto for a scene. … I hope no one translates it or this scene will get an R rating.

    I shan’t do that in any of the kids’ content I’m writing.

    Perhaps.

  55. 55.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Mike in NC:

    If he ever pisses off Vlad, expect to hear he fell off the roof of his building.

    Or, as it’s technically known, “drowning of gunshot wounds.”

  56. 56.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Major Major Major Major:

    even in an infinite multiverse, could there be a place so self-contradictory that Trump is always speaking the truth?

    In his own mind? Not what you meant, but I got nothing. There were conspiracy theorists citing the Mandela Effect as evidence that Trump had shifted from an alternate universe where muslims really had danced in the streets on 9/11 in New Jersey.

    And now suddenly I’m thinking of a lost episode of Sliders where Trump was a guest star. He did that a lot in the 80s and 90s. He was in an episode of Fresh Prince and I think in one of the Home Alone sequels.

  57. 57.

    zhena gogolia

    When we saw a man in a La Jolla restaurant with a Hawaiian shirt and a beer belly and a big white mustache and a phone pressed against his ear throughout his entire meal, I said, “What’s Wilford Brimley doing here?” But my witty husband beat me to it with a more obscure and apt reference, saying, “Peabody, you’re disgusting!” (Warren William to Guy Kibbee, Gold Diggers of 1933)

  59. 59.

    grandpa john

    @Mike in NC: Yep, Tariffs projected to cause a 2 billion dollar blow to our economy although you would never know that by reading facebook or the local medias

  61. 61.

    SFAW

    @Mike in NC:

    Read today that thousands of manufacturing jobs in South Carolina are in jeopardy due to Trump’s tariffs. Sad!

    But her e-mails!

  64. 64.

    Kay

    Columbus Dispatch Retweeted

    Jim Siegel
    ‏

    @phrontpage
    8m8 minutes ago
    More
    Licking County early vote:
    Balderson 3,315 50%
    O’Connor 3,204 48.5%

    It was 62/33 Trump in ’16 BUT don’t get excited because early vote is better for D’s :)

  65. 65.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Mike in NC:
    Jobs boom favors Democratic counties, not Trump strongholds

    The United States is on pace to add about 2.6 million jobs this year under President Donald Trump’s watch. Yet the bulk of the hiring has occurred in bastions of Democratic voters rather than in the Republican counties that put Trump in the White House.

    On average for the year-ended this May, 58.5 percent of the job gains were in counties that backed Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016, according to an Associated Press analysis of monthly government jobs data by county.

    Despite an otherwise robust national economy, the analysis shows that a striking number of Trump counties are losing jobs. The AP found that 35.4 percent of Trump counties have shed jobs in the past year, compared with just 19.2 percent of Clinton counties.

    […]

    Job growth in Trump’s economy is still concentrated in the same general places as it was toward the end of Barack Obama’s presidency — when roughly 58.7 percent of the average annual job gains were in Democratic counties.

    Yet the lack of transformative job growth in Trump areas hasn’t seemed to erode his support among Republicans, while hiring in Democratic areas have done little to improve his standing with those voters. For Trump’s core supporters, cultural issues such as gun rights, immigration and loyalty to the president have become dominant priorities.

    I may be accused of American exceptionalism, but I can’t think of anything more undemocratic and un-American than caring so much about being loyal to the POTUS.

  66. 66.

    rikyrah

    My favorite Wilford Brimley role is the one of the mean, vicious Head of Security in The Firm, cause, it was so against type for him.

  68. 68.

    piratedan

    @rikyrah: I actually thought his best turn was in Absence of Malice but he’s always had a way of oozing credibility….

  71. 71.

    Ohio Mom

    @Kay: I like the results on the NYT’s site better: Balderson 35% and O’Connor 63%.

    But that is with less than one percent of the vote tallied, so its meaningless.

  72. 72.

    Kay

    @debbie:

    I love the part of Ohio elections that includes getting 40% in R districts as “the winning formula” for Democrats :)

    It’s true too! He just needs to hold down the crazy in 4 counties and get Franklin and we’re good.

    This is the oart where we somberly remind everyone that R’s vote on election day and D’s vote early. HOWEVER- if the total number of R, D and I #’s on early vote are correct he’s doing fine with the pain in the ass, fickle and indecisive independents, which is good.

  73. 73.

    Kay

    @dmsilev:

    I don’t know. They add (paid) poll workers for big races so hopefully they did that.

    Randy Ludlow
    ‏Verified account
    @RandyLudlow
    Follow Follow @RandyLudlow
    More
    To summarize, early vote going the way of @dannyoconnor1 in #OH12. Not unexpected, Ds tend to cast more early ballots than Rs, who show up better on elex day. But, he has to be pleased with some margins.

    Some of these are very R counties and he’s doing okay with ev- ahead or even- that’s what they mean by margins. He won’t win them but that isn’t what D’s try to do- they try to hold down the R vote and pick up in urban counties.

  77. 77.

    Ohio Mom

    One thing I’ll add about the NYT’s site is that if you scroll down, there is a map of the district, colored in varying shades of blue and red to show how each of the seven (!) counties in the district leans.

    The darkest blue is the northern part of the city of Columbus, with a ragged, zig-zagged southern border. It is a very stark illustration of just how gerrymandered Ohio is.

    You can see how Columbus is split to dilute the Democratic vote. And then you can consider how little the northern Columbus area has in common with the far reaches of the district which are three counties over. The gerrymandering is embarrassingly obvious, if the Republicans in statehouse we’re capable of either embarrassment or shame.

  78. 78.

    hitchhiker

    Fun fact: In the early 80s I worked at Young Electric Sign Company — a mormon (“Young,” as in Brigham) outfit that made a ton of $$$ building the monstrously lit strip in Vegas. Wilford Brimley used to show up at the office every now and then b/c he was related to somebody on the exec team.

    At the time, I didn’t care. Still don’t, but it’s weird to me that he’s on twitter!

  79. 79.

    Ohio Mom

    On another note, I see that the “remember me” box for nyms and emails is missing. Well, that’s honest, my info hasn’t been remembered in days and days, no matter how many times I checked that box. Probably
    better this way, no illusions.

  81. 81.

    hueyplong

    @piratedan: You thought that because his “somebody’s ass in my briefcase” scene is in fact his best moment. Love that scene.

  82. 82.

    Roger Moore

    @Ohio Mom:

    The gerrymandering is embarrassingly obvious, if the Republicans in statehouse we’re capable of either embarrassment or shame.

    While the gerrymandering is embarrassingly obvious now, we need to be careful about defining gerrymandering around such obvious features. It’s possible to draw districts that are heavily gerrymandered while still doing a reasonable job of keeping them compact, following existing political lines, etc.; it just takes more sophistication to make it work. IIRC, after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court threw out their districts, the Republicans came back with a new set of districts that avoided the obvious signs of gerrymandering while still greatly skewing the results. I’m worried this is a sign the Republicans have updated their software to make their gerrymandering less obvious. We still need to focus on having independent groups draw the districts or, even better, go to proportional representation.

  83. 83.

    The Moar You Know

    Seagal used to put in a yearly appearance at the NAMM show (National Association of Music Manufacturers). He would cruise around with his eight man posse, drenched in spray tanner, and try to find vintage/rare instruments to buy up for his already immense collection of vintage guitars. Of course, he is seriously the worst fucking guitar player I have ever heard in my life. Zero talent or ability. He tries to bullshit people with some Zen horseshit about “the vibe of the instrument”, but apparently musicians aren’t nearly the suckers that the martial arts crowd is, because the proof is in the playing and that motherfucker cannot play. He’s universally loathed. Nobody likes having to clean spray tan off a guitar and restring it afterward. Espicallly an antique.

    I am stunned at his age. The last NAMM show I went to was in 2004; 19 straight years was enough. I would have guessed back then he was in his sixties. Of course, I saw him up close without Photoshop. He’s also an asshole with no manners, not that this will shock anyone here.

  85. 85.

    Amir Khalid

    @The Moar You Know:
    From what little I know about NAMM, admission is restricted to trade and media (including YouTube). I didn’t know guitar collectors could get in if they were famous.

  88. 88.

    Brachiator

    @Old School:

    I saw it pointed out that Tom Cruise is five years older in the current Mission Impossible movie than Wilford Brimley was when he made Cocoon.

    I really liked Brimley in “Risky Business.”

  89. 89.

    The Moar You Know

    From what little I know about NAMM, admission is restricted to trade and media (including YouTube). I didn’t know guitar collectors could get in if they were famous.

    @Amir Khalid: they don’t even have to be famous. They just have to know someone at a store that is a NAMM member. It’s not hard to get in.

    I would say, come to think of it, that the hard way of getting in is being a music store or manufacturing employee.

  90. 90.

    BroD

    He used to play the Super Jew in those old martial arts spoof comedies–like Jerry Lewis on steroids, right?

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