NPR, sheesh

“There has been a lot of complaints....”

Related reading
All OCA “sheesh” posts (Raindrop.io)

[Emphasis in the original.]

An editorial cartoon, killed

[Click for a larger view.]

That’s the draft of an editorial cartoon by Ann Telnaes. From top to bottom: Sam Altman, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Patrick Soon-Shiong, and the Mouse. Telnaes left the The Washington Post after her editor killed the cartoon:

As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable. For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical job. So I have decided to leave the Post. I doubt my decision will cause much of a stir and that it will be dismissed because I’m just a cartoonist. But I will not stop holding truth to power through my cartooning, because as they say, “Democracy dies in darkness.”

Andy Borowitz shared the draft and encouraged his readers to share it:

I don’t know Ms. Telnaes but I admire her work, integrity, and courage. I’m publishing the rough draft of her cartoon ... in the hopes that you’ll share it. If enough people do, it will reach a larger audience than if her WaPo editor had had the cojones to run it. Actually, given how many subscribers have fled the paper in recent months, reaching a larger audience than the Washington Post isn’t a daunting task.

A revised cartoon might now include Apple CEO Tim Cook, “Tim Apple,” who’s giving a million of his own dollars to Trump’s inaugural committee.

[Is Soon-Shiong holding a tube of lipstick? If so, what might it mean? That’s he making ready to kiss ass?]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is another puzzle by “Lester Ruff” (the puzzle’s editor, Stan Newman) that still feels pretty ruff. Late in the solving, I put my hands up in the air when I hit 23-A, eight letters, “An interim Australian bioregion.” What? Wut? Too much out-of-the-wayness in this puzzle — and it’s not impressive that the phrasing of that clue appears to come straight from Wikipedia.

I was glad to be able to finish this puzzle.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

2-D, four letters, “‘Plebeian protector’ paper nickname.” I misread and thought that “plebeian protector” was a newspaper’s nickname, but no.

7-D, seven letters, “Italy’s Microlino EV, e.g.” You can guess from the clue, but it’s seems a pretty arcane way to clue the answer.

8-D, ten letters, “Drive-By Truckers’ music.” I could figure out the answer, but I tend to distrust such categories.

14-A, ten letters, “Riot of miscellany.” A lively answer.

17-A, ten letters, “‘Señor Burns’ performer on The Simpsons (1995).” In 2025 there must be a better way to clue this esteemed performer.

31-A, ten letters, “Extremely exciting event.” Another lively answer.

35-A, three letters, “Drippings on menus.” Ick.

41-A, four letters, “‘Inventive’ name from Old Norse for ‘elf.’” I see what you did there.

41-D, seven letters, “Either of a wedding gown duo.” Strangely specific — and arbitrary.

46-D, five letters, “Putting great effort.” Really clever.

50-A, six letters, “What Steve Ballmer said was not “going to get any significant market share’ (2007).” I appreciate the reminder of Microsoft’s cluelessness, but in 2025, there must be a better way to clue this answer.

52-D, four letters, “Name on the cover of The Pluto Files (2009).” P as in Pluto, p as in planet, no matter what that name on the cover says. MVEMJSUNP.

56-D, letters, “Block’s 22-Across.” And 22-A, three letters, says “Ultimate.” Just too strained.

57-A, four letters, “First name of the best-selling American author of the 20th century (as of 1970).” Or: “of the 20th century, if the 20th century had ended in 1970.” This is one strange clue.

58-A, ten letters, “‘Scream queen’ since the ’70s.” So we solve on, pencils against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

My favorite in this puzzle, though it too is overly retro: 13-D, five letters, “Sly spouse from the ’70s.” For a moment I thought I needed the name of a clever TV spouse. SALLY from McMillan & Wife ?

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

The Power Broker, all done

Elaine and I finished reading Robert Caro’s The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York last night. We started reading on October 27 and read at least fifteen pages a day, save for four or five days devoted to family hijinks. I count The Power Broker as one of the great reading experiences of my life. It’s an extraordinary narrative of a young idealist’s acquisition of power and his use of that power to reshape and deform the life of a city.

I don’t think I’ve ever been angrier while reading than I was while reading “One Mile,” the chapter of the book that documents what the construction of the Cross Bronx Expressway did to the East Tremont section of the Bronx. (And I’m still angry.) There, as elsewhere, Moses asserts himself as a figure of blind will. Modify the path of an expressway — resulting in enormous savings and the preservation of a neighborhood? Can’t be done. There, as elsewhere, Moses ignored realities and constructed his own. The East Tremont apartment buildings he was to destroy he called “slums.” (They weren’t: I’ll be posting a WPA tax photograph of one soon.) The residents who protested he called “animals.” “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs,” he was fond of saying: his contempt for “the people” was profound. And yet he was celebrated as the city’s master builder, by The New York Times and, for a long time, every New York newspaper but the Post — until he wasn’t.

It’s a measure of Caro’s humanity that he’s able to depict Moses in his own humanity: arrogant, underhanded, and vain, but a gifted visionary, a tireless worker, and a figure who inspires pity in his downfall. Allowed to keep his chauffeurs and limousine, Moses in decline reminds me of Lear with his retinue of knights: the trappings of power, without the power.

I have many passages from the book still to post. I’ll stop here by noting that congestion pricing in Manhattan begins in two days. Like the effort to cap the Cross Bronx Expressway, it’s an attempt to undo damage done by Robert Moses.

Related reading
All OCA Robert Caro posts (Raindrop.io) : Elaine’s post after finishing the book

“A terrible finesco!”

Michael J. Madigan was a Moses engineer. From Robert Caro’s The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (1974):

The son of an impoverished bartender, Jack Madigan had come out of the Pennsylvania hard-coal country in 1907 at the age of thirteen to enter the construction industry as a waterboy lugging buckets for thirsty work gangs, and by the time, in 1928, he was promoted to supervisor for one of the Jones Beach contractors, he had spent his whole life with the gangs. With his ruddy, square face and grizzled hair he looked like one of them, and he was as boisterous as they as he crowded with them into South Shore taverns after work to wash the sand of the barrier beach out of his throat. His “dese, dose and dem” speech revealed his lack of formal education; he was addicted to awesome malapropisms: “From the standing point of finances,” he would say of Tammany’s handling of the Triborough Bridge project, “what a terrible finesco!”

Related reading
All OCA posts (Raindrop.io)

Deco hospital

[From Internes Can’t Take Money (dir. Alfred Santell, 1937). Click either image for a larger view.]

As I wrote in this post, the Art Deco hospital is a star in this movie. The movie also stars Barbara Stanwyck and Joel McCrea, who’s at the center of the group standing in front of the desk.

Sardines at YouTube

Sardine Exposition is a YouTube channel devoted to taste-testing sardines and other tinned fish.

Thanks, Kevin.

Related reading
All OCA sardine posts (Raindrop.io)

Handwriting in the news

In an attempted bank robbery in Colorado:

Loveland police say a man walked in to the First National Bank, located at 750 North Lincoln Avenue, and handed the teller a note. His handwriting was allegedly almost completely illegible and the teller had a hard time reading it.

While the teller was struggling to read the note, the man reportedly got frustrated and quickly left the bank.

See also these 2020 and 2021 attempted bank roberries. And see, of course, Take the Money and Run.

Related reading
All OCA handwriting posts (Raindrop.io)

Resolutions

At Dreamers Rise, resolutions for the new year. Click through — you won’t regret it.

Public Domain Day

Today is Public Domain Day (Duke University School of Law). I repeat: it’s Public Domain Day (Public Domain Review). Featuring William Faulkner, Robert Frost, Wanda Gág, King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, Cole Porter, Ma Rainey, Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, Virginia Woolf, and many more.