Weekend Things, W30–17

What is Reince’s healthcare situation?

Virginia Murdoch
Jul 30, 2017 · 2 min read
Getting up early in the middle of winter has occasional rewards

It was another amazing week in US politics, but it would be hard to top the new White House Communications Director ringing a New Yorker journalist to press him for info about his sources, and then just generally unloading:

Scaramucci also told me that, unlike other senior officials, he had no interest in media attention. “I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own cock,” he said, speaking of Trump’s chief strategist. “I’m not trying to build my own brand off the fucking strength of the President. I’m here to serve the country.” (Bannon declined to comment.)

Bannon. Declined. To comment.


(For the millions of Americans who still have healthcare, thanks to a few slightly-less-appalling Republicans, I guess this moment would be the one to beat.)


And then of course there’s Reince Priebus being abandoned in a van on the tarmac after he was elbowed out of his job as White House Chief of Staff. (Is there a mnemonic for remembering which way around the i and e go in that guy’s names? I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore.)


How did I not know about Joe Pastry? What an absolute goldmine of information. There’s also a couple of new reviews up on Cook These Books, which you will probably enjoy.


For our Essay Club this month, we read Maria Tumarkin’s 2014 essay This Narrated Life, in which she wonders what we lose when we try to shape real events into stories.

But, also, something about This American Life was making me uneasy. ‘A story is like a train going to a station,’ Glass likes to say — except sometimes, and increasingly, it can feel like a tank crushing all sorts of things under its tracks. Something in the way the form pushes itself onto the experience; something about how the obligatory reflection framing the story often feels subtly untrue.

I share Tumarkin’s unease.


Mendel Glick, founder of the famous Balaclava Jewish deli (apparently a chain — who knew?) and the man who first brought Proper Bagels to Melbourne, died this week at 92. Of course, East St Kilda feels approximately as far away to me these days as New York — I’ve probably been in New York more recently, in fact — but still, it’s nice to know that Glick is there for bagelmergencies.


I won’t have to go nearly so far for baked goods when Wild Life opens in Brunswick. They’re hiring!


We are watching The Leftovers, well after everybody else. I’m hooked. We’re also watching Glow, which I’m less convinced by, but still enjoying.

Virginia Murdoch

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Be careful; his bowtie is really a camera.

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