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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Late Night Open Thread: No Man Is A Hero to His Press Secretary

Late Night Open Thread: No Man Is A Hero to His Press Secretary

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Especially not the Nekkid Emperor of Marred-A-Lago:

Little is known about what happened in the 90-minute conversation between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Osaka, Japan, two years ago. But as journalists were quickly ushered out of the room at the 2019 Group of 20 Summit, Stephanie Grisham once again found herself with a close-up view of the action.

She saw Trump lean toward Putin that day and tell him: “Okay, I’m going to act a little tougher with you for a few minutes. But it’s for the cameras, and after they leave, we’ll talk. You understand.”

It’s just one of many telling interactions detailed by Grisham in her new book, titled “I’ll Take Your Questions Now.” One of the most senior and longest-serving Trump advisers, she worked as the president’s third press secretary and as first lady Melania Trump’s chief of staff and communications director before she resigned on Jan. 6 during the Capitol riot…

A major theme of the book is the culture of lies that pervaded Trump’s administration. “Casual dishonesty filtered through the White House as if it were in the air conditioning system,” Grisham writes…

She is particularly negative about the president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner — both of whom held senior White House positions. She wrote that the first lady and White House staff called Ivanka “the Princess” who regularly invoked “my father” in work meetings, and Grisham dubbed Kushner “the Slim Reaper” for his habit of inserting himself into other people’s projects, making a mess and leaving them to take the blame.

Tellingly, Grisham writes that Ivanka and Jared tried to push their way into meeting Queen Elizabeth II alongside the president and first lady, a wild breach of protocol on a state visit, but were thwarted when they couldn’t fit into the helicopter. “I finally figured out what was going on,” Grisham writes. “Jared and Ivanka thought they were the royal family of the United States.”

“I had shared with Mrs. Trump many times my opinion that if we lost reelection in 2020 it would be because of Jared,” Grisham writes. “She didn’t disagree with me.”…

The Melania Trump whom Grisham describes is as stubborn as her husband, but his temperamental opposite. She believed in self-care so much that she’d change into a robe and slippers almost immediately upon boarding Air Force One. Self-consciousness about her accent and her English grammar meant she rarely wrote anything on her own.

The Secret Service gave her a nickname, “Rapunzel,” because she rarely left her tower, a.k.a the White House residence. Agents would request to be placed on her detail so they could spend more time with their families, Grisham writes.

If she wasn’t spending time with her son, Barron, or her parents, she was working on her photo albums, which Grisham calls one of “her two children.” Deep into the pandemic, she spent two hours re-creating the ribbon-cutting for the White House tennis pavilion because she hadn’t gotten the right shot weeks earlier. She was working on a photo shoot of a rug during the Capitol riot…

(It’s her professional portfolio for when she’s looking for a replacement meal ticket, after all.)

The NYTimes is, of course, gentler on both the writer and her subject:

… In her book, titled “I’ll Take Your Questions Now,” Ms. Grisham recalls her time working for a president she said constantly berated her and made outlandish requests, including a demand that she appear before the press corps and re-enact a certain call with the Ukrainian president that led to Mr. Trump’s (first) impeachment, an assignment she managed to avoid.

“I knew that sooner or later the president would want me to tell the public something that was not true or that would make me sound like a lunatic,” Ms. Grisham writes, offering a reason for why she never held a briefing.

After serving as press secretary, Ms. Grisham worked in Melania Trump’s office. She resigned on Jan. 6 as a horde of Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol. Her book was kept a secret from her closest allies in the White House, though by the time she departed Washington that number had dwindled. (She writes that, months before the election, she had moved to Kansas.) Her publisher, HarperCollins, calls the book “The most frank and intimate portrait of the Trump White House yet.”…

Ms. Grisham says that a trip to North Korea inspired Mr. Trump to ask her to research ways the press could be permanently evicted from the James S. Brady Briefing Room…

As she tries to please Mr. Trump, whose press coverage was relentlessly negative, she describes his anger toward her and others as “terrifying”: “When I began to see how his temper wasn’t just for shock value or the cameras,” she writes, “I began to regret my decision to go to the West Wing.”

She says one frequent target of Mr. Trump’s ire was Pat Cipollone, who served as White House counsel: “He didn’t like them telling him that things he wanted to do were unethical or illegal. So he’d scream at them. But then he’d usually listen. And then yell at them again later.”

(There were other indignities: Ms. Grisham writes that Mr. Trump called her while aboard Air Force One to defend the size of his penis after Ms. Daniels insulted it in an interview. “Uh, yes sir,” Ms. Grisham replied.)…

Reader Interactions

138Comments

  4. 4.

    NotMax

    Open Thread?

    Question for the ladies (and any gentlemen with similar experience).

    Screenshot pulled from the Tonys. Looking at the shoes of Ms Menzel (wearing black). How do you manage to walk in those things?

  5. 5.

    dr. bloor

    I guess my question for Grisham would be “did you already have this book in mind when you took the job, and if not, at what point did you decide that your bank account was more important than preventing the democracy from being torched?”

  6. 6.

    raven

    Jefferson Airplane Mau Mau Amerikon

     

    HEY DICK
    Whatever you think of us is totally irrelevant
    Both to us now and to you
    We are the present
    We are the future
    You are the past
    Pay your dues and get outta the way
    ‘Cause we’re not the way you used to be
    When you were very young
    We’re something new
    We don’t quite know what it is
    Or particularly care
    We just do it – You gotta do it
    Let the music do it, take you there
    Do it, do it, do it – gotta do it
    Something new, something new, something new
    New, New

  8. 8.

    Jeffro

    Now would be a great time for the snooze media to revisit all of trumpov’s lies about the virus…all day every day, in fact.

    I’m glad to see that some of our more mainstream outlets are starting to sound the alarm about trumpists’ various schemes for destroying our democracy next time around.  It’s not much, but ya gotta start somewhere.

    The ‘lights are blinking red’, America.  Whatcha gonna do?

  11. 11.

    stinger

    @NotMax: First of all, they don’t walk, they clump. You can’t walk, turn, sit down, or stand up normally in shoes like that. Movements are graceless and wearers will likely have foot, ankle, knee, and hip issues in a few years.

  12. 12.

    Jerzy Russian

    Who among us* hasn’t brought in a female aid to defend the size of our penis after it was publicly insulted?   For that matter, who among us* hasn’t had their penis publicly insulted from time to time?

    *I mean besides me and everyone else here.

  14. 14.

    geg6

    @NotMax:

    Very carefully and not for very long.

    I once walked all over Manhattan in a pair of shoes with only a slightly lower heel.  I used to tend bar for eight hour shifts in high heels.  All of that is to say that my feet now look and feel like someone did Chinese foot binding on them.  I was an idiot when I was young.

  15. 15.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    “I had shared with Mrs. Trump many times my opinion that if we lost reelection in 2020 it would be because of Jared,” Grisham writes. “She didn’t disagree with me.”…

    I’ll quietly hope Ivanka inherited her father’s habit of letting this kind of gossip get into the folds of her brain like a mustard seed of resentment, and the Gresham’s sales don’t cover her advance, and no one wants her on TeeVee.

  16. 16.

    Feathers

    @NotMax: I don’t know. Her feet don’t look long enough for those shoes. She probably has the toes stuffed with cotton for stability. People also put grippy inserts in the sole of the shoes so their feet don’t slide down. Also, practice.

    I actually had an enormously fun pair of super high heels once. They were wooden, but with very thick, padded suede soles. I have size 11 feet, so proportionally they weren’t that tall. But they really were impressive. Figured out later that they may very well have been intended for a drag queen. Miss the 90s sometimes.

  17. 17.

    Jerzy Russian

    “I knew that sooner or later the president would want me to tell the public something that was not true or that would make me sound like a lunatic,” Ms. Grisham writes, offering a reason for why she never held a briefing.

    The only response that comes to mind is “for fuck’s sake!”. You don’t want to give a press conference since you might have to lie or look like an idiot, but you still hung around there? Jesus H. Christ III (that is read as “the Third”).

  18. 18.

    Jeffro

    @Jerzy Russian: just keep going…”who among us hasn’t banged a porn star shortly after the birth of our fifth child with our third wife, then paid off the porn star via our personal ‘lawyer’ to keep her quiet?”…”who among us hasn’t been forced to settle claims against our fraudulent ‘university’ scam?”…”who among us doesn’t have mob ties going back to the 1980’s?”…”who among us hasn’t had a huge NYT expose on our family’s illegal, multigenerational tax-avoidance schemes published yet not resigned, been impeached, or even said ‘sorry’?”

    Yeah.  The guy is just an infinite series of corrupt actions, lies, scams, and things that would get most of us fired from our job as the night cashier at the local 7-11.  But you know, tax cuts and judges…

  21. 21.

    senyordave

    Chicken or the egg?  People always say that everything and everyone that Trump touches turns to shit, but that’s not surprising since most of them start out as shit.  Grisham is just another example.

    I second the earlier comment that hopefully the sales of her book won’t cover the advance.

  23. 23.

    NotMax

    @Feathers

    they may very well have been intended for a drag queen

    Flashing back to a scene in the premiere episode of Miranda.

    Link should be queued up to around 17:47, the bit pretty much runs its course in the following 4 minutes.

  25. 25.

    Gvg

    @NotMax: Look at ballet and toe shoes and those seem more reasonable right? Actually women’s feet are not all the same and some women can do those a lot easier than others. When I was young, I liked high heels (not that high, but pretty high). One advantage is that I apparently had stronger ankles than most of my peers. I only sprained an ankle once, when I was hit by a car, and my friends twisted theirs pretty often.

    I stopped a long time ago, but I actually think the tight pointy toes I liked did more damage than high heels.

    Some women are just better at wearing really high heels than most. If they are, they do.

  29. 29.

    Regine Touchon

    Didn’t Stormy aka Ms. Daniels say it was a short mushroom? For some reason that detail stuck in my head.

  35. 35.

    Suzanne

    @Feathers: I used to work with this gorgeous lady who was very tall and slender, and she had big feet and she was incredibly embarrassed about them. I think size 10. And she felt like flats emphasized the largeness of her feet. So she wore heels that high to work every day, and she had to do that heel-toe-heel-toe bent knee thing with every step. It was ridiculous.

  37. 37.

    Suzanne

    @Gvg: I can wear 2-1/2” heels very easily all day with no issue. Up to 3” for shorter events. Any higher than that and I struggle. But SuzMom has the world grossest feet and attendant mobility problems from years of high-heel-wearing, and I do not want that, so heels are a rare occasion for me these days.

  45. 45.

    Feathers

    I think there will be a point in the not so distant future where these super high heels being worn as everyday footwear will be looked at in amazement when people watch shows and documentaries from today. They really are performative of a certain sort of femininity. It is also showing off how thin you are.

    @NotMax: Thanks, I’ll check it out.

    @Gvg: You can tell that Menzel doesn’t have the feet for those shoes because her toe cracks are visible. And clearly there is no way they are fitting normally into the shoe. Which is why I was guessing the tie box is stuffed with wool or cotton to hold them on her feet. I have great feet for high heels, but far too much weight.

  46. 46.

    boatboy_srq

    @Westyny: We’ve gone from not bothering about what US POTUSes do with their privates, to being scandalized that a POTUS would be intimate with a single staffperson, to being so inundated with what a POTUS does or did with his privates that each incident barely merits mention. All within four decades.

  47. 47.

    NotMax

    @NotMax

    And cannot believe I didn’t catch having typed queued instead of cued.

    (looking for wet noodles with which to properly chastise myself)

  48. 48.

    Shakti

    @Suzanne: Before 1998? :/  But seriously, I blame Republicans either way for making me think about the President’s dick. Either they turned it into an impeachment matter with a report [government porn!] and a trial or Trump couldn’t stop talking about his own hands…dick.

  50. 50.

    boatboy_srq

    @Shakti: Conservatists have been obsessing about sex since the 1970s at least. Look at the Moral Majority, FOTF, FRC and all their other orgs. Never has any group so obsessed with what people do in bed (or elsewhere, for that matter).

  51. 51.

    Mingobat (f/k/a Karen in GA)

    “I had shared with Mrs. Trump many times my opinion that if we lost reelection in 2020 it would be because of Jared,” Grisham writes.

    Yeah, Jared would be why. Nobody else, just him.

    Re heels: I maybe wore heels higher than 2” three times in my life, and any heels lower than that are for job interviews and other occasions that require getting dressed up. For any other occasion where sneakers are frowned upon, the world is full of reasonably flat footwear that won’t trash my feet. I never understood self-inflicted pain in the name of fashion, and my 53-year-old feet and back are better for it.

  54. 54.

    Steeplejack

    Grisham’s book is called I’ll Take Your Questions Now—seriously?! The press secretary who didn’t hold a single press conference in her entire nine-month tenure? C’mon, man.

    Maybe the title is satirical, I guess.

    “I knew that sooner or later the president would want me to tell the public something that was not true or that would make me sound like a lunatic,” Ms. Grisham writes, offering a reason for why she never held a briefing.

    Okay, point taken. Or, you know, she could have resigned. Either/​or.

  57. 57.

    NotMax

    @Just Chuck

    Colorful history.

    …During the reign of Louis the XIV, aristocratic men had the right to wear shoes with red heels, (which were strictly restricted to the court). While the exact date of the first appearance of high heels is a little grey, not only was Louis XIV painted often while wearing them, he issued an edict in 1673 declaring that only nobility could wear the coveted red color. This included the law that no one could have heels higher than his highest pair of heels, which was five inches tall. Source

  59. 59.

    Dan B

    @Regine Touchon: WHen Stormy was on Kimmel they brought out a board with 20 or so different peen models.  I still have the image of the tiny weird one she picked and her remark that, “It was the worst 90 seconds of her life.”

    Gah!

  61. 61.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Dan B: wuuut?  I just watched the interview (OK, I fast-forwarded a good bit, but still, in five-sec chunks), and I only saw Jimmy offer her three carrots of differing sizes (she didn’t pick any).

  62. 62.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Mike in NC:

    Evil clowns belong in cheesy horror movies, not the White House. 

    Hey now!  Don’t you be calling Killer Klowns From Outer Space “cheesy!”

  64. 64.

    Shakti

    @boatboy_srq: I know WHY they do it as a matter of strategy and tactics.

    It’s still weird to see people work themselves into frothy anger over the tamest, most mundane things by bringing an air of outraged titillation while insisting loudly that liberals are anti-sex, antiseptic woke prudes.

  67. 67.

    Kayla Rudbek

    Off topic/open thread: how many filing cabinets (2-drawer) should I buy to deal with 30-something years of documents for two people? Will two be enough?  (The problem is that I would prefer to have matching ones, and Target is running out of the model I want).

  71. 71.

    Tenar Arha

    @Kayla Rudbek: Minimum buy 4, because worse come to worse that sets you up to make two desks using  two basic hollow core doors even if you don’t use them all.

    ETA buy file cabinet wheels & you can make one a rolling work table ;)

  73. 73.

    Mary G

    @NotMax: Painful practice, probably worth it because shoe designers pay her goodly sums. They go on just before the red carpet, then are changed to slippers during their audience time, then the torture devices back on right before walking on stage.

  75. 75.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Paragraph I did not expect to read this morning: “Mr. Trump’s handlers designated an unnamed White House official known as the ‘Music Man’ to play him his favorite show tunes, including ‘Memory’ from ‘Cats,’ to pull him from the brink of rage.”

    Sounds like violin scenes in Young Frankenstein. Trump’s personality is a put on too, ROFL

  77. 77.

    sab

    @NotMax: I have really high arches, so my feet just natirally do that (stand or walk on my toes) anyway without the heels. Now that I am older and don’t want to look ridiculous I stopped wearing high heels. Pre-Covid I would wear them mostly only to the grocery to discourage people from standing too close behind me in line.

  80. 80.

    Comrade Colette

    @Kayla Rudbek: Are you moving to France, where apartments and houses routinely have built-in document closets to store all of the records people are required to keep for 30 years?

    If yes, get 6. Maybe 8.

    If no, get one and cull your docs so they never outgrow it.

    True story: when Monsieur Colette and I moved back to the US from Paris, we were so paranoid after 4+ years of dealing with the French obsession with/legal requirement for hard-copy recordkeeping, not to mention residual trauma from the crazy bureaucratic nightmares of opening bank accounts, paying rent, and maintaining our immigration status, that we considered shipping all our paper bank statements and receipts back home at enormous expense. Mind you, this was well after the existence of the internet and online records. We were worried that if we ever wanted to move back to France we’d have to document all of our former life there in excruciating detail to be compliant with their insane records laws.

    Eventually we realized that almost all of our records were in my name, and the French in their inimitable way had insisted that I use my husband’s last name (which is not mine) and misspelled my first name (think Karine instead of Karen) in our official records. They had effectively created a legal identity for a person that did not exist. If we ever move back, I’ll just start over.

  81. 81.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @senyordave: Cheese bags like Grisham normally expect there are enough competent “little people” who do the actual work that they can run their scams in peace, so the Trump “it’s grifters, all the way down” was more than they bargained for.

    It’s a bit like being an anti-vaccer, in a normal population being anti-vaccier heard immunity lets one pose as a purity troll. When it’s nothing but anti-vacciers then one just ends up crippled or dead.

  83. 83.

    sab

    @Comrade Colette: Thanks for the reminder. My husband moved into my house when we got married. He needs to have at least one utility bill in his name, and he doesn’t yet. Also, I need to have at least one utility bill in my married name and I don’t.

    ETA : Someday we may discover we can’t vote because neither of us can prove where we live. And we’be been married almost twenty years.

  84. 84.

    Comrade Colette

    @sab: Oh yeah, definitely need to do that. Monsieur Colette moved into my house when we got married several centuries ago, and we split the utility bills so we’d each have proof of residence. Fortunately we live in California, which wants us to vote and makes it easy.

    If we ever split up, I guess he gets custody of all the water and I get all the electricity and gas?

  85. 85.

    Ksmiami

    We are about to default- no one is going after McConnell and America is about done, but Grisham’s take is interesting I guess…

  88. 88.

    Jim Appleton

    I need to nebulize hydrogen peroxide, gargle with iodine and bleach, mainline Ivermectin, do several lines of hydroxychloroquin, surgically implant a bunch of backlights, then take a long shower because of all the talk of a goon’s nether parts here.

  92. 92.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @Comrade Colette: well, not quite as bad here in Virginia, although Mr. Rudbek had to go dig up his taxes from before he graduated from college when we moved here about ten years ago. So we will have to keep state tax records until/unless we move out of Virginia…

  93. 93.

    sab

    Just looked up Stephanie Grisham on Wikipedia. I sure wouldn’t want to go forward in life with that CV/resume. As Kay often says : “Bad hire.”

  95. 95.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Comrade Colette: Thank you, Mme. Collaboratrice.  That got a chuckle out of me.  I know that others have it much worse than me, but ….. this isolation is wearing.  And I’m an introvert, so the first … year-and-change wasn’t so hard.  But these last few months are rough, and I find anger welling up from bottomless pools.  Ugh.

  96. 96.

    NobodySpecial

    Reading this article, fuck them all,but especially the author of the book, who managed to land a cushy job not doing their job, kept their mouth shut through all this shit, and now wants to cash out and pretend to be one of the good Germans standing up to Hair Furor.

    Rusty pitchforks, sideways, all of em.

  100. 100.

    Chetan Murthy

    @sab:

    after Covid all of my current friends

    There seems to only and ever be one subject of conversation.  And so, over time I just don’t want to talk to people.  Or, I want to talk to people, but I don’t want to talk.

  101. 101.

    the pollyanna from hell

    At the time I was almost ashamed of what I was doing, but on further consideration, I look really good in retrospect.

  102. 102.

    sab

    @Chetan Murthy: I am up for jury duty this week. So far every day they have cancelled it. My husband said  “Yikes. So you get the car on Thursday when I have coffee klatch?!”  I said ” No. Drop me off and if we get out early I’ll go to the Art Museum and you can pick me up later there.” The thought stunned him.

    ETA : One car retiree family is interesting new experience, although his parents spent most of their married life one car.

    We gave other car to one of our kids who needed it more. Then she traded it in on a piece of junk. Kids these days.

  105. 105.

    RaflW

    @Ksmiami: The Dow fell 570 points today, second one of these big jitters in recent weeks. The first one the biz press blamed on global trade, but the very next day Yurtle made some sort of two-faced assurance that the Dems would do his bidding.

    Even so, I’ve said for years the stock market is terrible at pricing risk, and they’re even worse at gaming out how the Republican bomb throwers are going to (mis)behave. And or innumerate press will see any 1000 point future dive as trouble for Biden no matter what the cause.

  107. 107.

    sab

    @RaflW: Well no wonder my broker didn’t return my call. I don’t follow the market much because I try to invest for the long run. So every once in a while I call him in all innocence on a terrible day for him. Sigh.

    ETA Just needed some cash to chop down the sick tree in our front yard and deal with our beloved new dog’s cancer diagnosis. Could be nothing. Could be catastrophic. So meanwhile she gets field trips for ice cream. Happy times for her. Hopefully we will have to unspoil her later.

  108. 108.

    RaflW

    If I wake up fairly early tomorrow morning (unlikely given that I’m on a screen right now) I may “buy the dip” with a little of mad money.

    Mostly I do boring long term investing, but I set aside a few bucks for stonks I think are fun, or to play a little market timing. Never with any retirement nest egg.

    Ok, now I really should get some shut-eye.

    eta: Oh. Sorry for the rough patch, sab.

  109. 109.

    piratedan

    there have been times when I wondered if Dems played the game the same way that the GOP does but I have to remember that in order to play the way that the GOP does, you need a 4th estate who will record every statement you make and accept it as a veritable truth and ask no questions.

    I would be happy to see Chuck and Nancy make a brief statement.  We voted for the bill, to meet our responsibilities to our creditors on the promises our predecessors made.  They’ve chosen to default on those obligations and turn this into an attempt to undermine this nation.  You want a statement, go ask those that decided that defaulting on their own promises made sound financial sense.

    They’re right over there….

  110. 110.

    Gretchen

    @Feathers: I think that both Nancy Pelosi and Kamal Harris wear very high heels every day is that they are both quite short.  Height=authority so they enhance their height so they can look people in the eye.

  111. 111.

    sab

    @piratedan: GOP used to be savvy cynical business types of the worst order. Nowadays they are actual idiots who know nothing about anything. Too long on the rich donor gravy train without any actual work experience. If Devin Nunes’ cow were an actual cow, she would probably be brighter than him. So this brinkmanship is terrifying because the GOP side actually has no idea what is at risk.

    Alexander Hamilton set up an amazing system that established us as a fiscally responsible icon even though we were at that point a struggling little new country of doubtful governance.

    My RWNJ brother in finance understands that.

    Bozos in Congress think “Libs loved Hamilton the musical. Lets blow it all up to show them.”

  112. 112.

    Gretchen

    @Kayla Rudbek: do you really need 30-some year’s worth of documents?  Buy one file cabinet and a shredder to deal with everything that’s more than 10 years old, besides birth and marriage certificates and social security cards.

  113. 113.

    sab

    @Gretchen: And anything establishing cost basis for any property you own. Big house repairs or improvements.  Stock purchases.

    Also if you need to pass background checks for any sort of certification you may need to establish income sources back for years. Tax authorities aren’t the only authorities out there.

  114. 114.

    sab

    @Gretchen: She might, but yes she should think about it.

    She needs documents to establish cost basis of every property she owns: house and big repairs, and investments she has.

    Also, if she needs any sort of government certification she needs to be able to establish income sources back for years, depending on who might be looking. Tax people aren’t the only people looking. Security clearances. Brokers licenses. Gaming licenses. Insurance certification. Judgeships. All sorts of government agencies have long timelines. Everyone needs to figure out who might be looking and for how far back before they do a document purge.

    ETA I am a packrat and save much too much. But in my past that has saved me a lot of time, money and effort. Now that I am retired, I am dunging stuff out and what a nuisance it is.

  115. 115.

    Mai Naem mobile

    I can’t be bothered to look it up but Grisham is from Arizona and had 2 or 3 DUIs not that long before she worked at the WH. I have to wonder if she was drinking on the job just  to deal with the stress. A boss like Donny would lead anybody to drink.

  117. 117.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    There was a time when one could honestly go to work for Donald Trump without knowing what depravity one was becoming involved in.

    That time ended several decades ago.

  118. 118.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @Kayla Rudbek: i am a hoarder when it comes to paperwork(utility bills from 10 yrs ago!)  Pre pandemic I  looked into buying the kind of medical records set up doctors used to have for my paperwork. Its basically shelving for files but has a sliding “door” that locks. I haven’t looked recently but you can find them used because some practices are giving them up when they switch to electronic records.

  119. 119.

    Richard

    @dr. bloor: 
    She was just fine and A OK with taking the job. Then she had a change of heart.
    I hope her ambition buys her a house.

    Other than that, this is not news.

  120. 120.

    Jimmm

    @Kayla Rudbek:

    Do you *need* that much paper?  I got a Fujitsu Scansnap document scanner a few years ago and was able to purge about 95 percent of the files I had been carting around for years.  It’s very liberating, and the scanner is lightning fast.

  121. 121.

    Anya

    I don’t remember this Gresham character being a press secretary or anything else at all. But also, wasn’t the lying liar, Huckabee Sanders the press secretary during the Stormy Daniel’s scandal?

  122. 122.

    Richard

    @dr. bloor:
    She was just fine and A OK with taking the job. Then she had a change of heart.
    I hope her ambition buys her a house.

    Other than that, this is not news.

    @debbie: i don’t remember her either. Probably she was there.

    Her name sounds like i would find it on the cover of a cheap romance novel.

    I never underestimate these people. Just when you think they are not possible, they come up with a Marjorie T Greene, or a what’s his name Gaetz, or some other abomination.

     

    I’m sure she is mostly telling the truth.

  123. 123.

    sab

    @Chetan Murthy: What I love about BJ is how much we experience the world differently, and express that, even if we are otherwise a lot alike.

    I am sure you went to bed and will never see this, but still, I thought about it.

  125. 125.

    Richard

    @NotMax:

    I had a brief romance with a boy from Walla Walla. He was sure cute. We were in our early 20s.

    He was not very bright,  but he had a good heart.

    We went on a few roadtrips. We were young.

    It was doomed, because he was a poor little evangelist boy.

    Take care when you pick up a hitch hiker. You might get one of these biblebangers.

    I hope that he is still alive today. If he is, he is probably still living in Walla Walla, or maybe he moved to Albuquerque where he has family.

     

    Anyway,  it is not worth the trouble to have these people.

  129. 129.

    Joey Maloney

    @Richard:  Do people hitchhike any more in not-emergency situations? In the ’70s I was all up and down the Eastern seaboard and through the Midwest on my thumb and there were plenty of us. I can recall having to walk to the next exit because some other hitcher already had the ramp staked out. The other day I realized it’s been years since I saw someone with their thumb out on the highway.

  130. 130.

    What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us

    @Kattails: That happened to me once and it’s not a laughing matter, if it happens to you. If it doesn’t happen to you, well, the guy at the urgent care center where I had it removed had a good chuckle and I didn’t really blame him.

  131. 131.

    raven

    @Joey Maloney: I thumbed all over the country in the early 70’s. A buddy and I hitched from LA to Santa Barbara on our way to San Francisco. We were on 101 right across from the Bank of America that got burned down and spent 24 hours trying to get a ride. People in front of us and behind us got rides but we never did so we ended up taking the bus!! Something to do with those Chicago Police motorcycle jackets I guess. I still have the sign we had!

  135. 135.

    ThresherK

    I don’t expect TFG to have any geek opinions about Betty Buckley v. Babs, or how awful the live-action Cats movie was.

    That said, I’m sorta glad Cats is way up on TFG’s list of musicals.

    If he had a yen for On The Twentieth Century, Carousel, or Ragtime, I’d need to examine many things about my life choices leading me to agree with him.

  136. 136.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Starboard Tack: ​…those that decided that defaulting on their own promises made sound financial sense…

    Including most specifically TFG – since that was his standard treatment of subcontractors. (“You’ll take a dime on the dollar I promised to pay you, and you can thank me for being so generous. Otherwise my lawyers will tie you up in court til you go bankrupt.”)

  138. 138.

    No One You Know

    @Kayla Rudbek: I filled 2 4-drawer filing cabinets with 30 years of paperwork, and 2 2-drawer cabinets with just portfolio samples and professional development schoolwork. Your mileage may vary; I’m an incessant note-taker, and I tend to keep both originals and final copy.  I bought hardware at Office Depot, though, so matching wasn’t hard.

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