And Don’t Call Me Shirley
I just want to tell you both good luck, we’re all counting on you.
TREASON!
The President seems really chill this week guys!
😵 Oh, wait...
Surely you can't be serious!
One of my all-time favorite movies is AIRPLANE!, the sublimely stupid 70s disaster parody where a plane almost goes down because everyone got sick from the in-flight meal. It’s a timeless piece of comedy, and like most timeless pieces of comedy it seems adorably quaint when compared to current events: Take this week for example, when AIRPLANE! came to life both literally and figuratively.
First, a literal AIRPLANE!-style crisis riveted news junkies on Wednesday morning when a flight from Dubai was temporarily quarantined on arrival at JFK. Passengers and crew fell ill during the flight, but it could’ve been so much worse: Vanilla Ice could’ve been on board(turns out he was on a later flight).
But the real disaster movie is the one in Washington, and it reminds me of one of my favorite gags in AIRPLANE! Just as the plane is making its last-ditch attempt to land, the doctor on board (played by Leslie Nielsen!) comes into the cockpit and tells our heroes “I just want to tell you both good luck, we’re all counting on you.” And then he does it again… and again… and then again after they land and everyone is saved.
It’s an insanely stupid and repetitive joke, so naturally it was the first thing that came to mind when I read the NYT’s anonymous op-ed “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.”
The opinion essay— written in the bizarrely stilted tone of an eighth grade book report— is the latest in a long line of pieces that could basically be summarized like this: “Sure the President is an unhinged madman, but at least you’ve got unelected saboteurs like me to keep things in check!”
This mysterious new author is a senior administration official (reality check: There are over 100 people who could be described that way) who claims to have first-hand knowledge of an abandoned cabinet plan to invoke the 25th amendment and remove the Mad King from the Iron Throne. That latter tidbit isn’t exactly surprising, but it does offer even more proof that yes, everything really is as bad as it seems!
Of course our mystery man (or woman, as the Times was quick to point out) says the 25th amendment idea was abandoned for fear of triggering a constitutional crisis, but let’s just all take a deep breath and call BULLSHIT on this one. As David Frum points out in the Atlantic: “Impeachment is a constitutional mechanism. The 25th Amendment is a constitutional mechanism.” Openly announcing a soft coup to undermine the President at every turn is the literal definition of a “constitutional crisis.”
The whole thing is basically the journalistic equivalent of bursting into the cockpit to say “I just want to tell myself good luck, we’re all counting on me.” (And just like in the movie, this guy isn’t actually doing anything to help.)
💩 Resist THIS
More on this week’s steaming pile of you-know-what
- Okay, but who wrote the op-ed?! My money’s on John Kelly (it’s arrogant enough) but CNN has a whole cast of characters ready for your drunken speculation over brunch this weekend.
- Meanwhile Bob Woodward’s new book on the “nervous breakdown” of the Trump presidency is about to come out, but based on the early excerpts I’m pretty sure we’re the ones in the midst of nervous breakdown. (Favorite excerpt so far: Trump spontaneously ordered the assassination of Bashar al Assad, only to have Defense Secretary Jim Mattis hang up the phone, turn to his staff and say “We’re not going to do any of that.”)
- Reader Recommendation: How to prepare for ex-President Trump.(Thanks, Jon!)
- So where do the investigations go now? The New Yorker’s Adam Davidson has a hunch.
🚫🎃 100% Trump-Free Headlines
There were actually a few of them this week!
- BREAKING GOOD NEWS: India’s Supreme Court struck down a colonial-era law banning gay sex.
- Season 3 of Serial will return to court when it premiers later this month (!!!).
- Global sperm counts are plummeting and the crazy part is we know exactly what’s causing it.
- Update: Les Moonves will finally pay for his crimes against women, by which I mean CBS will pay him $180 million to make this all go away.
- Elsewhere in #MeToo: Ronan Farrow goes for NBC’s jugular, finally bringing evidence that the network tried to bury the Weinstein story.
- CHEESE IS GOOD FOR YOU CHEESE WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE.
👨🏻⚖️ Brett Kava-Nah, Man
Supremely Screwed
We know this man is a bad man, but just how bad is he? That’s the question that was supposed to suck all the air out of the news cycle this week (oh well!), and now Democratic senators are flirting with open revolt as we attempt to find out whether the new Supreme Court plans on gutting women’s rights nationally or just in the south.
- TLDR: After debating (and rejecting) a full-on walkout, the Dems have decided to go the civil disobedience route and are leaking “confidential” documents to prove that this whole Konfirmation is rigged.
- Want to dive deeper? The Cut has been collecting all the bonkers moments from the first twodays of hearings.
- Meanwhile the NYT is just casually leaking proof that Kavanaugh is hostile to abortion rights, nbd.
- But the story I’m keeping an eye on? Kamala Harris might have some serious dirt on Brett and no one saw it coming. (Get it, girl.)
🤖 Terrifying Tech News
But this week that’s kind of refreshing!
- Young people be deletin Facebook like it’s the built-in maps app.
- Jack Dorsey and Sheryl Sandberg went back to Capitol Hill to testify before the only people in congress not currently screaming over each other in Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing.
- There are only 100 crosswalk buttons in NYC that actually work.
- This week in creepin: Google is paying credit card companies to figure out what you bought IRL.
- Vimeo (birthplace of High Maintenance) is getting out of the whole “hosting your friends’ web series” game and pivoting to be the app your now slightly-older friends will use to find stock footage for their new IGTV series.
- Reader Recommendation: This is your smartphone battery.(Thanks, Mike!)
😅 Relax, these are jokes
From our friends at Little Old Lady Comedy
- I Am Part of the Resistance Inside Cub Scout Pack 403.
- All 23 Bikram poses reimagined for the #MeToo movement.
- What your star sign says about how to break up with your cheating fiancée.
🍹 BYOB OF THE WEEK
This week’s Bring Your Own Beverage of the Week is Terra Alta Reserva. Join me, Mia Weinberger, and special guest star Hillary Clinton as we take a taste on this week’s episode of the podcast!
— — —
Are you enjoying this recap of the week’s news? Subscribe to WYOY News to get stories like this delivered to your inbox every Thursday!
