Sunday/Superbowl/Stream

Parenting is constant and tiring and unlikeable at times. Add a slumber party into the mix, and I guarantee you’ll want to run.
The Patriots did, by most accounts, cheat during DeflateGate and maybe have again since, but are, objectively, an exceptionally amazing team, and Tom Brady, while likely insufferable IRL, is a bot-like specimen that sort of proves Malcolm Gladwell’s point about practicing things tens of thousands of times and being committed and steadfast. One must admire his athleticism, mental fortitude, and talent. One need not admire Belichick’s attire.
The Saints were robbed by an extremely horrible call. Shoulda been Saints-Pats.
donald trump is a deeply horrible person who lies more than he breathes and is an abject, disgraceful blotch on America. I truly loathe him.
Maroon 5 needs to go away. Does Adam Levine actually play the guitar, or does he just wear it around his neck like an accessory? I ask because his looks extremely undersized. I don’t understand the tank he wore during the SB halftime. I dislike tattoos.
Ralph Northam needed to resign two days ago. NO ONE in 1984 should have been in blackface and they MOST DEFINITELY should not have donned KKK robes.
Thank GOD I have a cat. I often like him best of all things.
It is utterly dismaying that rabid pro-life arguers will rear their vitriolic heads once again in 2020. Sigh.
I folded and ordered an InstantPot yesterday.
Last week, while volunteering at World Central Kitchen, I got to briefly speak to the indomitable Nancy Pelosi. I thanked her SO profusely for everything. I later watched the RBG documentary (fabulous) and ordered an XL “I Dissent” RBG collar necklace. I love men, but you know what, now is the time for women and our leadership and our voices. The ship is listing. Let others try.

NANCY!

The shutdown continues as does World Central Kitchen and its new locations and Resource Center

Earlier this week, I worked at World Central Kitchen’s new Resource Center. Next door to the café, it provides furloughed workers with fresh groceries (nothing canned!), infant formula, diapers, feminine products, and pet food. Additionally, companies like Pepco, Washington Gas, and Verizon are there helping people with bills: deferred payments, avoiding late fees, and so forth.

I was on the product distribution team. We made thousands of sacks of groceries and handed them out to everyone in the line passing our table en route to diapers and the fruit station. In terms of physicality, it was easier than working in the kitchen. But emotionally, it was a more direct link to everyone hurt by this ludicrous shutdown. And it was hard and humbling and deeply moving.

A number of people were teary or in tears. Some seemed or said they were embarrassed. There were parents, kids, babies, owners worried about their pets. There were women in need of Poise pads who were so ashamed to have to carry them out, prompting us to resuscitate all manner of box or bag in hopes of helping them be discreet. I talked to one man who’s been furloughed from USAID, the irony of which was not lost on either of us. Another man shared that his wife, a nonprofit worker, was laid off last year, and now he’s been without pay since before Christmas. They have kids. I shared many hugs. Countless folks thanked me. As if I was doing anything really except trying to thank and honor them.

Whole worlds upended, near and longer term futures forcibly adjusted, happily employed people waiting in food lines with heads bowed. IN THIS NATION’S CAPITAL. And throughout the country.

Representatives Joe Kennedy from MA and Eleanor Holmes Norton from DC visited Chef Andrés while I was there. Later, Senators Van Hollen and Cardin (Maryland!) went. Nancy Pelosi helped the day before. Yesterday, the café served 11,400 meals. Today, the Republicans voted to keep the government shut down. Please watch this powerful, fact-based, historically-accurate and provable rebuttal by Colorado Senator Michael Bennet.

(In addition to opening the Resource Center this week, WCK also expanded its reach to feds in 20 states and Puerto Rico!! You can click this link to see the various WCK locations and also participating restaurants offering free or reduced-price meals to feds.)

The book we chose for the Open Discussion Project’s next discussion is How Democracies Die by Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky. It’s eerie, really. I am well-informed but maybe I wish I weren’t. Part of me wishes I didn’t see so clearly how trump’s behavior tracks almost exactly with the four warning signs Ziblatt and Levitsky lay out in a nation’s descent from democracy to authoritarianism. (If you want to watch the authors present the Cliff’s Notes of the book, click here.) And in votes like today’s, I see people enabling the fall. For NOTHING but fear and/or ephemeral popularity or relevance.

For what it’s worth, I’ve not met one trump supporter volunteering to help furloughed workers.

A fuller story?

Friends, this evening on Twitter, Jake Tapper posted an article from reason.com that suggested the media had it all wrong regarding the interaction between the Native elder, Nathan Phillips, and the Coventry Catholic boys, and specifically, the grinning boy in the MAGA hat. If you click on that link and watch, the first hour is largely of five Black Hebrew Israelites (BHI) antagonizing pretty much everyone. Their behavior was disgusting, heinous. But the new story is that Phillips antagonized the students. In fact, the author wrote, the high school boys are owed an apology.

On one side of the BHI men were the Coventry kids, and on the other, some of the people from the Indigenous People’s march. An hour and twelve minutes in, Nathan Phillips walks in front of the BHI and towards the kids, beating a drum all the while. He is slow and steady. The BHI are, at this point, screaming things to the kids like “You’re future school shooters” and appalling crap like that.

I asked the Twitterverse this: “I am very confused. I watched the video three times and see no evidence of Mr. Phillips antagonizing the kids. The BHI were acting in appalling fashion. Why isn’t their behavior part of this story?”

In addition to your typical ugliness, two people shared links to different videos, one of which does seem to show MAGA kid telling his peers to cut it out. One of his classmates was carrying on with stupid, offensive commentary like “Just go back to Africa” and another boy said “land gets stolen; that’s how it works.” Imbecilic. I’m not suggesting these kids don’t need to learn some history, decorum, and respect or that they shouldn’t face consequences for their behavior. Also, I hate their hats and all they stand for. And I hate that Coventry Catholic wouldn’t let the valedictorian give a speech because he’s gay. That school  seems to have an enormous and ugly cultural and toxic male problem that preferences white, heteronormative, aggressive behavior at all turns.

But I can’ t ignore what seems to be a much fuller story than we got yesterday, and I’m sharing this with you both to try and hold myself as accountable as possible and to urge all of us to read well beyond headlines, to keep our early understandings malleable enough to take in new information, and to demand better than click-baity shit from the media. It’s a reminder that there are often multiple sides and strands and varying degrees of fault and bad behavior. And some of it shouldn’t be quickly forgiven, but the assessment should be as fair as possible.

This story very much alarms me because it demonstrates the power of who controls the narratives that most Americans have access to. Yes there are enormous problems with social media and how users are targeted and what they’re shown. But it is also enormously worrisome because without any real, trustworthy places to get news, what happens to democracy? Not everything is real, but people are increasingly confused about what is and where they can find truth. It’s hard to know how people who are currently so polarized will ever trust each other again when full stories are rarely told, most people don’t read past headlines, and too many only read what reinforces the beliefs they want to hold.