Blood Meridan makes The Road look like a tea party. I mean in content. Both books are masterworks.

Emma Woodhouse is one of my most likeable protagonists in fiction. (I also like Mansfield Park's Fanny Price, though your mileage will definitely vary.) I would really like a movie about the muckracking journalists in Bully Pulpit, especially one about Ida Tarbell.

Yes, you are right. Though being a moron is being multidimensional. What I was trying to get at is that Maher's fucking moroness isn't the same as a Republican's fucking moroness. The latter is much more vast and broad and predictable about that person: he believes in all the stupid things you would expect down the…

I loved Doctor Sleep on first reading. I think the addiction stuff is good. Would love to see Cate Blanchett play the villain in a movie.

Maher has blind spots and flaws. But they make him into a multidimensional person, when a lot of people present themselves as predictable in their certainty. I'd argue it's not good to judge people on the basis that they don't agree with every single thing you agree with.

I don't actually want to punch Trump in the face: he's acting his nature. It's the Republicans in Congress who are betraying every principle they've ever loudly and often proclaimed that I'd like to punch in the face. For those who hate Bill Maher, his final New Rule last night about how if you have an R next to your…

The Bird's the Word!

While we're in this ongoing shitshow of human beings being very stupid and vicious to each other and to the planet, this is a great mood changer, and very wise reminder about perspective and that there are other living things on this planet. Plus, the great beauty when we're in moral ugliness.

Got around to John Lewis's March: Book 1. The art by Nate Powell is beautiful. This first volume is an elegant recounting of his boyhood—where he discovered God, preached to his family's chickens, and developed a social conscious when they became dinner—and his young adult work in the Nashville lunch counter sit-ins.…

No, you're right. It's super hyperpartisanization plus the fragmentation of the media based on that where there isn't one respectable source everybody gets their news from plus social media being covered on the news as news. I don't have a clue what to do about it.

That albatross reunion on Planet Earth II is the most romantic thing I've seen on TV so far this year.

If I didn't live in this country and/or didn't want to see 320 million people suffer, I would half fantasize of Trump being such a wrecking ball, doing so much great harm, that there would be a constitutional amendment passed on getting rid of terrible presidents quickly.

I assume these people don't read legitimate newspapers and magazines but only conservative online outlets. They also watch the infotainment that is cable news. Now, CNN may have improved in factually criticizing Trump, I don't know, but the state of American popular media I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it's still…

Yep, you know this is a Malick film right away. It's like a sequel to Knight of Cups. Malick is doing his autobiographical films in the same style. (I don't think he was an indie musician but there could be other things in this that are about his life.)

They believe it because they really want to believe it; their political ideology has nothing to do with politics or intellectual ideology, but is psychological and emotional—like fervently believing in a religious faith that gives meaning to their life and identity. Same thing. No matter how untrue their facts are, no…

To be consistent, Simon and Schuster should also start giving out book deals to ten year old boys and their plans to give cooties to ten year old girls. How did this guy get a career and become famous is what I'm asking. His shtick is purely sophomoric and a sign of a frivolous, morally bankrupt society. Also said…

It greatly helps that the conservative media class has convinced people that all news that isn't worshipful of conservative people and ideology is "liberal", meaning fact free. You'd need something in your own life that would directly contradict what your media is saying, right away, right after you heard or read it.…

Nah, you can make an arguable point that liberals sometimes go overboard in sensitivity to where they shut down speech they disagree with, without inviting a self-declared troll on your show who says vile shit nobody in basic decency would agree with just to get lulz reactions, which he will because he's on TV and…

Thanks. That's encouraging.

The problem is and has always been transmission. Ideally, once Americans who vote Republican have the full force of Trump and Ryan's policies affect them, they might, just might, see the light. But maybe not! As I've thought for years, the Republican party is a religious faith. It's going to take a lot of…