The recent passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg not only marked the end of an illustrious life of service to law and country, but the beginning of an unprecedented judicial nomination process. While Ginsburg’s spot on the Supreme Court sits open, politicians and regular Americans alike argue over whether or not it should be filled immediately, basing their arguments on past practices and partisan points.
When a Supreme Court vacancy came up in February of 2016, nine months before the election, Senate Republicans led by Mitch McConnell refused to even take up a hearing to consider President Obama’s pick for the seat, arguing that it was an election year and the people should have a say in who that seat goes to.
Four years later, a mere six weeks before the election, that reasoning has gone out the window as Senate Republicans race to get a nominee pushed through the approval process prior to election day. Now, they claim, because the Senate majority and President are of the same party, it makes sense to proceed with the nomination.
It’s a stunning display of hypocrisy, even by the political world’s standards.
In a recent Senate Judiciary Committee meeting, Senator Ted Cruz (TX-R) attempted to paint the Democrats’ objections to pushing through a SCOTUS nominee as “political theater.” But Senator Amy Klobuchar (MN-D) wasn’t having it. In a nine-and-a-half minute speech, Klobuchar laid out exactly why this SCOTUS nomination goes beyond political theater—and she did so with an authentic eloquence that earned her viral status.
If you haven’t seen this, there is a reason why this is getting a lot of attention. https://t.co/9bwtfkGRnA
The full transcript of her speech shared on Senator Klobuchar’s website:
“Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I sit in a position on this committee where I often follow Senator Cruz and I often have to throw out my entire plan for what I was going to say because of what he said. But I have never had an experience quite like this one. I could choose to start by taking on his interpretation of history because of the fact that the only other time that we have had a justice die this close to an election was when Abraham Lincoln—a wise wise leader—was president. What did he do?
He waited until after the election.
What is unique in your words, Senator Cruz, about this situation? People are voting right now. Democracy is happening right now and we in this room are supposed to be stewards of this democracy. What else is unique in your words about this situation? It is the precedent that was set just a few years ago by the very people sitting here, by the very leader who is still the leader of the Republican Party.
He said this—Mitch McConnell—the American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president. Those are the facts that you live with. But to me, none of those arguments even compare to what I just heard and what I must respond to. Our democracy, what’s happening right now.
What this President said yesterday and Joe Biden has said he will abide by the results of this election. It is this president, President Trump who refuses to commit to make sure there is a peaceful transfer of power after the election if he is not re-elected. Instead, as he has done for months, just yesterday, he again worked to undermine confidence in our election.
He has repeatedly told people, the citizens of this country that it’s not safe to vote by mail. That there’s something wrong with it, except for in Florida where he has voted by mail. This is what he says almost every single day. And to have the chairman of this committee lead this discussion on this solemn day, when tomorrow the first woman in the history of the nation will lie in state and raise the fact that yes, this may end up in court and then to hear you, Senator Cruz talk about how this is because of some war game that you’re talking about that I’ve never even heard about that this can end up in court.
Well, guess what, I will not concede that this is going to end up in court. You know why? Because the people are voting in droves right now. They are voting all over this country because President Trump is behind in states, in red states that no one even thought he could be behind in. Why? Because the people of this country are fighting back because they know what’s on the line. Do I think this is a tragic death at this moment? Yes, it’s tragic because we lost this woman who is an icon way ahead of her time, someone who opened doors for women at a time when so many insisted on keeping them shut.
Well, we are not keeping our democracy shut this year. This was a woman who would never as Senator Durbin explained would not take no for an answer. She literally applied for law school when there were no women hardly in her law school, when she had to go to a dinner with the dean of Harvard Law School. And he had each woman explain why they were allowing a man to be taking this seat, taking the chair of a man and taking it away from a man.
She then goes on to Columbia and graduates, number one in her class. She then comes up with theories that no one had even conjured up before to argue that women should have equal protection under the law. And when they say a man should argue it, she goes and does it herself. And she wins five out of six times setting landmark law for this country.
She then goes to the Supreme Court, is respected across the land, becomes a cultural icon with her own hashtag—Notorious RBG—in her 80s. She never gave up and I am not going to give up on this democracy. Despite these false lies about the Democratic candidate for president. It is President Trump who chose to clear out peaceful protesters and wave a Bible in front of a church.
It is President Trump who after Charlottesville said there are two sides. Well, there’s not two sides when one side is the Ku Klux Klan. It is President Trump who has put out there that military and soldiers should be at the voting places in a pure attempt to suppress the vote. So don’t go telling the people this committee who know better, who is the divisive person, who is the one that has been inciting violence in this election.
And even if they don’t believe us in this room, the American people have seen through it. That’s why just today you saw nearly 500 military leaders join together—former military leaders—and civilian national security leaders, Republicans, Democrats and independents to say that they did not support this president, because they were afraid of what was happening to our country and our democracy.
So this hearing that we are about to have is about that very democracy. And so I don’t think people really care about the fights we’ve had about this before. I think we missed a really important ingredient in what I’ve been hearing my colleagues say from across the aisle and that is people are voting right now.
They are voting on health care right now. The fact that we have a court case out of Texas that is coming up for oral argument on November 10th, in which yes, pre existing conditions are on the line because the argument was made that the whole Affordable Care Act should be thrown out. You cannot just fix that when you haven’t been able to even take up the Heroes Act to do something about the pandemic. Yet, in fact, we see that we’ve got time to ram through a Supreme Court hearing in two weeks instead of spending those two weeks to actually take up the Heroes Act and hope the people of this country.
What else is on the line? Well, civil rights is on the line when you look at the decisions and all the money that has flowed into our politics from the outside as a result of this current court’s decision that is dominated by nominees put forward by Republican presidents.
Women’s rights. Oh, yeah, they are on the line and as those fires were blazing on the West Coast of our country, even the right to regulate our environment and do something to protect our air and water, that is on the line. So this hearing will not be divorced from what is happening right now because this president has put it right in the middle of a political campaign.
That’s his choice, not our choice.
So, I don’t see this as theater as you describe, Senator Cruz. I see this as the real world. I see this deeply personally because I know that we have a President in place that knew that this virus was deadly. He knew that it was airborne and yet my family, we were just trying to clean off the surfaces all the time and wash our hands. And then my husband ends up in the hospital with COVID on oxygen because this President didn’t share with us the information he had at the time. All of that is going to be on the line.
So we will look at this nominee and we will look carefully at this nominee that is our job, but we cannot get away from the fact that the process that puts her before us will be one that is not respecting the democracy that we are supposed to cherish.
So I just—I have listened to this for too long and I think the American people see through this raw use of political power. That is why they’re voting in droves. So if you think you can get away from this just by trying to get this nominee through and no one’s going to notice what she stands for or what her views are and how that’s going to play into decisions that are made that affect people’s lives. They already know. They’re voting now.
“Very nice!” It appears as though Kazakhstan’s number one reporter, Borat Sagdiyev, is set to return to the big screen in the near future and the film’s title is a sight to behold.
Reports show that the title submitted to the Writer’s Guild of America, “Borat: Gift Of Pornographic Monkey To Vice Premiere Mikhael Pence To Make Benefit Recently Diminished Nation Of Kazakhstan” is even longer than the first film’s, “Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan.”
As the title suggests, the film is expected to feature an encounter with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence as well as President Trump’s TV lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
Page Six reported that Giuliani called the cops on the film’s star, Sacha Baron Cohen” after he apparently entered his office wearing a pink bikini.
“This person comes in yelling and screaming, and I thought this must be a scam or a shake-down, so I reported it to the police,” Giuliani told Page Six.
The film is also expected to focus on Donald Trump’s relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Borat 2” has been described as a “meta-story” that follows Sagdiyev’s attempts to conceal his identity so he won’t be noticed by his targets. The first Borat film was such a huge hit it turned the character into a pop culture icon, so it’s nearly impossible for Baron Cohen to prank people while dressed as the character.
This was probably why Baron Cohen was spotted performing at the March for Our Rights 3 in Olympia, Washington last June dressed as a bluegrass singer. The comedian trolled a group of 500 supporters of a right-wing militia group by getting them to sing along with a terribly offensive song about the COVID-19 virus.
The song took shots at the Chinese, liberal political figures, CNN, and Bill Gates.
“Obama, what we gonna do? Inject him with the Wuhan flu,” Baron Cohen sang. “Hillary Clinton, what we gonna do? Lock her up like we used to do.”
Borat Sagdiyev was first introduced to English television viewers in 1996 on a show called “Grandpa Television.” At that time, the character was known as Alexi Krickler. The character was revived for “Da Ali G Show” which would become a hit on HBO in America.
Baron Cohen has used the fictional, satirical character to expose real-life racism and antisemitism in American and England. He’s also been criticized by Kazakhstani officials as promoting negative stereotypes about their country.
Kazakhstan’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Rakhat Aliyev, invited Baron Cohen to visit his country saying, “His trip could yield a lot of discoveries — that women not only travel inside buses but also drive their own cars, that we make wine from grapes, that Jews can freely attend synagogues and so on.”
There’s no word on when the film will be released but, in America, we could really use a laugh these days. In a time of political unrest, culture wars, and a pandemic, there’s never been a better time to take a good look at ourselves and few people are better at it than Baron Cohen.
North Carolina native J. Cole has been repping his home state since he first began his musical career. Now, Cole is being celebrated for all of his hard work with a giant mural prominently displayed in Durham to honor Cole’s major contributions to the state’s culture.
The mural is the latest work of art by graffiti artist JEKS. According to JEKS, he worked in collaboration with renowned hip-hop photographer Jonathan Mannion to transform one of his Cole photos into a larger-than-life mural. Painted on Durham’s UHill Walls, the mural sits alongside 40,000 square feet of painted walls across 15 contiguous acres. Cole’s profile was painted last week as part of the city’s goal to create the largest consolidated collection of murals in the Southeastern US.
In other J. Cole news, the rapper is apparently the source of Kanye West’s latest Twitter rant. Kanye asked for a “public apology” a few weeks ago from Cole following his 2016 track “False Prophets,” which many believe is a critique of Kanye’s sudden shift to conservative politics. A few days later, Kanye took shots at the rapper’s sneaker design, saying “all pumas designs are embarrassingly trash but I will personally design puma and adidas and make everything ok.” This comment prompted a response from Cole’s manager, who said the rapper was living “rent free” in Kanye’s head.
Check out photos of J. Cole’s massive mural above.
If you had a Facebook account from 2009 to 2012 your feed was probably full of people’s updates about what was going on in their FarmVille farm, asking friends to visit so they could get points or that one family member that kept sending you invites. It was as much a staple of the rise of social media as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, which is why news the game is shutting down marks the end of a very interesting era of the Internet.
Unfortunately, nothing lasts forever and neither does the original FarmVille. In an announcement that is probably expected for some and surprising for others, FarmVille is shutting down. Cause of death? The end of Adobe Flash. Zynga explained more in a statement on Monday.
Following an incredible 11 years since its initial launch back in 2009, we are officially announcing the closure of the original FarmVille game on Facebook. As previously stated, Adobe will stop distributing and updating Flash Player for all web browsers, and Facebook will stop supporting Flash games on the platform completely after December 31st, 2020. FarmVille will therefore be directly affected as a result of this.
We’re aware that many of you have been with us since the very beginning, helping to build an incredible global community of players over the years who’ve enjoyed this game just as much as we have. For that we say thank you.
For as many faults and arguably toxic features that FarmVille helped create in the gaming industry, it is still a major part of gaming historically and culturally. It might have been a flash game on Facebook but, in many ways, it’s the first mobile game because that model would be copied in phone gaming for the next decade. It would get so popular that South Park made an entire episode about it.
You can make a pretty easy argument that FarmVille is why games have microtransactions today. FarmVille got popular before mobile games were a thing. It came out when the iPhone 3GS was releasing and one year before the iPhone 4. App gaming was sill in its infancy at the time and the largest player base you could possibly find was on Facebook. It was a perfect place perfect time kind of thing and FarmVille reaped the rewards of that.
If you are a fan of FarmVille and this news is disappointing then there is some good news. This might be the end of the original flash FarmVille but there is still farming to be had. FarmVille 2 is available on mobile app stores and Zynga says FarmVille 3 is on the way. While one chapter of gaming history closes another one opens.
The presidential election is in just 36 days and, excluding Lil Baby who recently refused to get involved in politics, many musicians have come forward to urge fans to vote. Taylor Swift encouraged her followers to check their registration status on National Voter Registration Day and Lil Dicky promised to post his nudes if fans registered. Now, Tyler The Creator is the latest musician to discuss the importance of voting — and he took a more direct approach.
In a selfie video posted to Instagram, Tyler The Creator called out his young fans to “cast a f*cking vote” in November. The rapper admitted that this election will be his first time ever participating in an election, and he expects his fans to do the same:
“Look, I know I’m the last person y’all should ever take advice from but I’m reiterating what everyone else is saying. Please, please, if you are young and your f*ckin’ back don’t hurt, go and to them polls and cast a f*cking vote. And I didn’t give a f*ck about none of this sh*t just like a lot of y’all. This i actually going to be my first time voting. But I see the light. A lot of y’all going to be like, ‘My vote doesn’t matter and they’re going to pick who they want’ and yeah, you weird-ass n****, keep that up. Ya’ll was posting black squares and protesting from y’all phone and ‘rights’ this and was canceling everybody. N**** pull up. You want a new DA? Pull up. Y’all want all these rights and sh*t then pull up.”
Fargo has officially returned with both murder and flatulence after a months-long-delay due to you-know-what. So it’s great that we’re seeing an understated Chris Rock doing his dramatic thing, and the show was one of the first to tiptoe back into production, but that doesn’t mean that those involved weren’t nervous. That’s more than expected, given our current situation, and Hollywood Reporter caught up with creator/showrunner Noah Hawley and Rock to discuss the process, which involved a lot of protocols and a special note from Hawley to inspire cast and crew this summer.
Hawley knew that he needed to invoke a big gun here, so to speak, so he thought about Tom Cruise, who not only called a head of state to help Mission: Impossible 7 resume production but also plans on filming in space at some point before 2022. You had to know things got a little cinematic, right? For sure:
“Someday in the not too distant future Tom Cruise will go to space. He will bring a film crew with him. He will bring a director and actors. They will shoot a film. Now space, as we know, is an airless vacuum where nothing can live. A hostile void where a suit breach or airlock malfunction can kill, where even the simplest tasks must be done methodically, deliberately. Astronauts train for years to prepare. They drill protocols and procedures into their heads. They know that surviving in space will require their full concentration… Now imagine doing all that AND making a movie.”
Well, the note worked, and Fargo kicked back into gear, even with Hawley unable to join the Chicago set once more. The season appeared to finish filming without substantial incident, but Chris Rock did not hold back on how the experience impacted his thoughts. That’s because Fargo is a show with a lot of intense face-offs and some handshakes and, well, all of those things that crime syndicate members do to intimidate each other.
“You got an intimate scene with somebody — and I don’t even mean sex, I mean just an argument,” explained Rock. “And you’re yelling back and forth and you’re like, ‘Okay, I hope this motherf*cker don’t have COVID.’” Hey, no one can ever accuse Chris Rock of holding back on his true feelings.
We Are Who We Are (HBO, 10:00pm EST) — This week, Caitlin and Fraser strengthen their bond, which doesn’t go over well with the larger group after Caitlin and Sam’s breakup. Meanwhile, Maggie’s exploring the nearby Chioggia Festival during her own bonding experience. This is Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guadagnino’s first stab at a TV series, and it’s an immersive experience with (of course) a sun-drenched, often picturesque Italian setting. This show should tide Euphoria fans who don’t mind more literally euphoric vibes and less nihilism than the Zendaya-starring series.
Whose Vote Counts, Explained (Netflix docuseries) — Are all votes created equally in the U.S.? Nope, and the right to vote goes under examination in this project to take on what’s actually a fairly dysfunctional system within America’s democracy.
Filthy Rich (FOX, 9:00pm EST) — Kim Cattrall returns to TV in a super-soapy turn. She stars as a mega-rich Southern widow who learns that her late husband fathered three illegitimate children and included them in his will. This week, Margaret attempts to reconcile the situation while also capitalizing upon things for herself.
Manhunt: Deadly Games (CBS, 10:00pm EST) — This week, the true-crime anthology series (that chronicles the manhunt involved with the Richard Jewell scandal) digs into the firestorm created by the FBI’s “hero-bomber” theory going public. You’ve heard the story of the fallout from the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, now witness the TV dramatization (as opposed to the sensationalized movie version) of one of the most complex manhunts on U.S. soil.
The Third Day (HBO, 9:00pm EST) — Jude Law and Naomie Harris star in this series. He’s playing Sam, who’s fighting for his life in this episode after finding out his secret connection and fearing the islanders’ intentions for him. It sounds stressful but like a thrilling distraction for sure.
Following an in-depth report on his finances published by the New York Times on Sunday, President Donald Trump has responded in his usual manner: angry tweets.
According to the New York Times report, the first of many in an ongoing investigation into Trump’s financial records, the president paid only $750 in federal taxes in 2016 and 2017, which is a seriously low amount for a supposedly successful businessman. The Times also found that Trump has a significant amount of debt and will owe anywhere from $400 to $600 million in 2022 when several loans that he personally guaranteed come due. In short, the report painted a bleak and troubling view of the president’s finances. As usual, the president lashed out on Twitter with his customary accusation of “Fake News,” which caused the hashing #TrumpMeltdown to trend on Monday.
“I paid many millions of dollars in taxes but was entitled, like everyone else, to depreciation & tax credits,” Trump tweeted. “Also, if you look at the extraordinary assets owned by me, which the Fake News hasn’t, I am extremely under leveraged – I have very little debt compared to the value of assets.”
Trump then repeated his claim that he’s the “only President on record” to give up his $400,000 presidential salary, which has nothing to do with his purported debt and low income tax rate. You can see his full meltdown below:
The Fake News Media, just like Election time 2016, is bringing up my Taxes & all sorts of other nonsense with illegally obtained information & only bad intent. I paid many millions of dollars in taxes but was entitled, like everyone else, to depreciation & tax credits…..
…..Financial Statements, from the time I announced I was going to run for President, showing all properties, assets and debts. It is a very IMPRESSIVE Statement, and also shows that I am the only President on record to give up my yearly $400,000 plus Presidential Salary!
Of course, as always, the most damning evidence against Trump is his own tweets. Diligent Twitter users were quick to discover that the president loved to boast about how much he pays in taxes, even going so far as to criticize then-President Obama for only paying 20% of his income.
When I called legendary broadcaster, Doc Emrick to talk about Topps giving him a baseball card, I thought I had the wrong number. The first voice I heard was distant, and seemed to be a woman asking questions. An afternoon Detroit Tigers game is on the radio, not the announcer I was expecting to hear from. And then Doc finally reassures me that I have called the right phone.
“Just a second, sorry,” Emrick says, and I politely and patiently wait for a transaction to finish before we get started.
“I apologize,” he said, laughing. “I got caught in the drive-thru line trying to get a Diet Coke.”
Even if I were upset about the delay, Emrick is as nice as ever about it all. He appreciates me calling, he said, and started asking questions about my area code (716, Buffalo and much of Western New York) and where I’m from. We talk about where I live now, Boston, and how he had a conversation about real estate there once with Bruins defenseman Zdeno Chara. Soon we were talking about apartment prices, and his three favorite cities to visit (Boston, Chicago, Pittsburgh) while working. We also mourned the loss of a beloved Boston sports bar, which closed this month due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“What an awful thing,” he said. “The Bruins get knocked out on the very day they close The Fours. What a curse.”
The half hour that follows is as much an interview as it is a warm conversation between two strangers, one asking questions and the other eager to tell stories and entertain. We were both trying to do our jobs, of course, but its as refreshing a conversation as I’ve had in 2020.
Emrick is as nice as one would imagine, excited about his job, and thankful to NBC for letting him do it from home. He’s also thrilled Topps put him in their Allen and Ginter set, and later he texted me photos of some cards from his collection and another that was made of him. It’s been a rough year for everyone, including NBC Sports’ lead hockey broadcaster. But a conversation with him, I found, will do its best to help make it better.
Uproxx: What has this process been like for you? Remote broadcast has certainly happened before for the Olympics or things like that, but this is the postseason and now you have to do it. What’s it been like for you?
Doc Emrick: It was actually a challenge at first and now it’s gotten to be fun because you realize that the adjustment that you and your partners had to make… there’s one game that Eddie (Olczyk) and I did, the first game, he was in Stamford, I was here and Pierre was in Edmonton. And later on he was back in Chicago because he had to go back there for a few days to repack to go inside the bubble in Edmonton. So I was here, he was in Chicago, and Brian Boucher was in Toronto. So it’s a little bit helter skelter, but remarkably, through technology I don’t understand, it works. And we get on our headsets and practice counting back and forth to determine what the lag is and it’s remarkable how small it is. It’s well under half a second and it’s only a handful of frames. I think it’s 24 frames a second. And it’s well below, a fraction of as second, in terms of the distance we have to cover.
It’s really a wonderful thing that’s enabled us to do play-by-play of sporting events with virtually no delay.
And it sounds and looks and feels the way people are used to with a hockey broadcast. I was wondering if after the first few games you went back and maybe watched the broadcasts you did to see how they compared to what you’re used to producing to see the result?
No, I let them appraise it at the head end and tell me, because it seemed like a normal broadcast. The start of the game as I was seeing it on my monitor and describing it seemed like a normal game that I was seeing it with the naked eye.
The same limitations that I was having in the arena were the same ones I would be having on the screen: which is that the far winger oftentimes is not turned where you can read his sleeve number. If you imagine a right hand shot will be turned and facing you, but if he’s a left hand shot his sleeve will be turned away and his back will, too. So now you have no identification unless he skates a certain way, which you can pick up. Or unless he’s a (David) Pastrnak who has hair coming out from underneath his helmet. Bad example, because Pastrnak is a right-hand shot, but you see the point is that sometimes you do have to wait a little bit longer to identify a player on the far wing.
That is exactly the same problem that you would have in the arena in that even with the naked eye we are usually so far back inside these press boxes that you’d have to wait a split-second longer to pick up a winger. Because you don’t see his back number, which is very large, and his sleeve number is four inches. And so to make the proper identification you don’t want to guess because your educated guess is probably not right. Your best bet is to wait a split second longer. And you don’t like to do that, but it’s the nature of the business.
As Patrick Roy once said when he gave up seven goals, ‘I’m paid to get those.’ And that’s what our job is.
But it’s fun, and I’m honored that NBC has gone to this extreme measure to allow me to do the Conference Final and the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Because it’s the most fun to get to be there when they present the Stanley Cup. And to chronicle the sacrifice that these guys go through to get there and how much punishment these guys go through to get their name on it.
How long have you been around Boston?
I’ve been here about two years now.
OK, there was a player for the Bruins when they won in 2011 named Dennis Seidenberg, who actually stayed around Boston a bit then played for the Islanders. I remember asking him a few year after they won the championship ‘How many times have you worn your ring?’ And he held up one finger. They are so gaudy that they don’t wear them very often. And they get their name on the trophy and they get to see it when it’s brought out for the celebration for the banner raising. But they don’t get it for more than one day to have a celebration with family. And their name is not on it at that point, the engraving takes place over the summer. So if they see their name on it, they see it at the banner raising in the fall and then the trophy goes back to the NHL and winds out going on tour 300 days.
So they battle hard to get their name on a trophy they can’t keep and a ring that’s too big to wear, but you never see them battle harder than when they go into this.
There’s a grind in covering the postseason and a routine in being at the arena to experience it. Are you trying to replicate that in some ways to get ready to broadcast from home?
2020 is odd for all of us and not because I’m at home but because the joy of covering a playoff is being close to players and after the pack peels away, going and sitting down next to a player in a dressing stall and asking a question about something you’ve been curious about and all of a sudden you get a story that you wouldn’t have gotten otherwise about a player’s background that you can use in your telecast. And there’s no chance of that this year because we have no access to dressing rooms. Any interviews you get with players are all public, which I get with the rest of the media.
There’s hardly any camaraderie with the rest of the reporters you would be with anyway because very few, there’s only one reporter permitted per media source. And so all of the camaraderie you’d have with the print guys and all the other electronic media guys you would normally see. That’s different. The time you get with coaches is limited compared to what it’s been. And that’s not to say it’s wrong, it’s just necessary. And that’s different too.
So what I’m saying is the difference between home and inside the bubble, that’s different but it would not be as gratifying this year to be inside that as it would have been. And I got a taste of that on March 11 in Chicago when we covered them and San Jose. Because the rules were put in place that morning that we could not go into the dressing room. That Brian Boucher could not do any coaches interviews, that he could not do the Inside The Glass position if he had to access it by going into the bench area. That he could not enter the Inside The Glass position through team dressing rooms, because at some places you have to do that.
So we were getting a taste of what it would be like and were we going to complain? No. And we sure wouldn’t complain now because we realize this is what is absolutely necessary to keep these playoffs going as smoothly and wonderfully as they’ve gone.
In April, NBC made a video of a message you gave staffers during a conference call that was really reflective of the moment with the pandemic. What made you want to put that speech together and what was it like to see it reach viewers later on?
I was invited to do that at a meeting of staff just to close off the meeting and Sam Flood, who was in charge of the meeting, thought that would be a good thing to put to video. So five people worked very hard to put that to video and put it out there on one of our past historic telecasts and it was just how I was feeling at the time.
I think we were all missing the sport and looking forward to that time when we would all get back together again. But that was at a time where we had no idea of whether we would get back together again this summer and also the circumstances that would be prevalent at the time. I guess I was just trusting that I would be a part of that and that there would be some risks involved for somebody that was my age.
There was a gentleman by the name of Lamoriello that you may have heard of (Islanders president Lou) who was general manager of the Devils. He used to say ‘Michael, before you make any decision, look in the mirror and look at your birth certificate.’ And so I’ve remembered that, it was probably 15 years ago that he said that, and of course we’ve had a good laugh about it since then. But it was one of the decisions I had to make later in the summer.
NBC has been wonderful to me to do all of this equipment, and they also said ‘do not do anything that you are not comfortable with.’ And the fact that they’ve chosen to let me do these playoffs right until the end from my home is not a tribute to me, it’s a tribute to them.
I’ve been asked by several people to ask you whether you have a list of words or phrases you keep to keep your vocabulary so varied on a broadcast.
No! (laughs)
That’s one of the great myths of all time. I never have anything written down and I never have written words down to use. It’s just my vocabulary. The dogs don’t understand me sometimes. But, yeah.
I had a fifth grade teacher. It’s kind of an old story, her name was Una McClurg. She said that any word you use five times becomes yours for life. And I was actually told by an announcer, he did a year with the Capitals and just recently passed away. His name was Lyle Stieg. When I was just getting into this line of work he was a fellow broadcaster in the IHL and Dayton and I was in Port Huron and he said if you can come up with different ways to say many of the repetitive things that happen in hockey games it will help you because otherwise if every time the puck’s dumped in you say it’s dumped in, you’ll drive people nuts.
So I didn’t write things down, I didn’t write words down. But it’s just how I talk. I tend to use different ways and try not to repeat different ways of the same thing. So that’s one of those myths. I don’t have anything written down. And once I’ve used a word for the night I try not to do it over again.
I try to use “blockered” more instead of “waffle board” these days because in times past the waffle board was a more popular way to describe a blocker a goaltender uses because at one time it was brown, like a waffle. And it had rivets in it that used to look like the divots in a waffle. But then they started to get colored ones so the bright white ones and red ones, they no longer looked like a waffle. It became an archaic phrase so I don’t use it as much anymore.
As you can probably guess I grew up a Buffalo Sabres fan and really fell in love with hockey listening to Rick Jeanneret and Jim Lorenz.
Yeah, as you should! You had two wonderful ones there to listen to.
I think I learned more from Lorenz about hockey doing color than anyone else in my life.
I guess you would! Especially a steady diet of him every night, doing the games. Jim is a wonderful guy.
I think about that when it comes to broadcasting, especially on a national broadcast. Is there a balance you actively consider between educating people and giving them new things to learn or possibly considering, especially later in the postseason, that people watching might be newer to hockey?
Yeah, you try to balance that. And I’ll tell you what Sam Flood tells us, he’s very conscious of this. And he reminds us on the days of Winter Classics, Olympic Games, Game 7s and Stanley Cup Finals. That the audience is going to broader than it ever is for anything else.
So Winter Classics, which are New Year’s Day. Game 7s, Olympic Games and when you get to the Stanley Cup Finals. You’re always going to have a broader audience and you don’t want to talk a lot of shop. Yo want to make sure that you don’t leave anybody out that might be fascinated by this because we know for a fact that a lot of people jump on to these playoffs because of what battles take place and how it’s every other night and all of that lore I was sharing with you earlier that people just love about the playoffs.
So those are special times where we are more conscious of such things like mentioning where a player is from, because it only takes a half second to do it. Sean Coutourier, born in Arizona. It doesn’t take long. Ah, he’s American? Because some people think all of these guys are from Canada or they’re born in Sweden. But you throw that in because not everybody knows that 44 percent of the players are from Canada, 30 percent are Sweden, the rest are the U.S. and so on et cetera.
This year in particular has been fascinating with a pandemic and a national conversation about race and police relations playing out across sports. Some have been critical of the NHL in particular for lagging behind other leagues in addressing some of these issues. I was wondering if that’s something you noticed as well and if it was maybe the Canadian influence on the game or the bubbles being held outside the US that impacted that, or something else like hockey culture making players less willing to stick up?
No, I think they’ve caught up remarkably. And if you look at some of the quotes over the last four months, this is a culture that — I don’t know what was in the past how it compared to others. And one of the things that was always said is that there aren’t many players of color in hockey and it was something that just wasn’t addressed. Well, they’re addressing it now.
You see what Braden Holtby had to say and the comments Bruce Cassidy had, and many of them came during the quiet time where no games had been played and training hadn’t even begun. We can all address the past and the things that maybe we didn’t see or maybe didn’t do at that time, but the present is what’s most important and the present is becoming more vibrant all the time and more active all the time. And I’m very proud of that and to be associated with a game that is addressing it.
It’s been fascinating to see how different leagues are handling these situations and embracing social justice messaging. As someone with a big hockey background working for a site that focus so much on basketball the differences are notable, but I think you’re right that things have changed considerably in recent months.
I think the thing, too, is that it’s a different sort of animal in that we have 13 foreign countries represented in the last eight teams. That doesn’t excuse them by any means. But it does mean it’s a more diverse culture to begin with, and so sometimes these things don’t get addressed as quickly. And they have been addressed now, and they have been by people such as Zdeno Chara from Slovakia. The birthplace does not matter anymore.
I have to ask you about baseball, and getting a card in the new Allen and Ginter set. You’re a huge baseball guy, what’s this mean to get your own card?
I’m 74, and as a bubble gum-blowing youth in a rural Indiana town of 600, LaFontaine. I grew up in that town of 600, I had a newspaper route and was obligated to save a certain percentage for church, a certain percentage for savings and the rest I could spend on what I wanted to spend it on. And I spent it on Topps baseball cards. From 1953 and 57. Now, sadly, before the craze hit which made the value go up my mom asked when I was in college what I wanted to do with those. They were in a cornet case in the basement.
And I said ‘I don’t care, do what you want.’ So she sold them to an antique dealer, and there were Mayses and Mantles and Aarons, Snyders in that. She sold them for $80 and divided the money and we were happy with that. But the crazy didn’t hit for another two or three years, so they had no value to us. And I had no longer wanted to keep them.
So the reason I’m sending you a picture later of those cards is probably in 1985 I started hoping to try to regain some of my collection. All but the really inexpensive ones. And I’ve been able to get a lot of the common cards from those years of my Topps collection. And they wouldn’t want me to say this, but I did collect one year of Bowmans as well. But those are very important to me because they are part of an idyllic youth that I spent in rural Indiana.
We of course maligned them by putting them in bicycle spokes as part of an archaic culture you may have read about or the people at Topps have told you about, probably a person who was bald and grey and about to retire from the Topps company told you what he used to do with them as a kid: he put them in bicycle spokes and they’d make a real clacking noise. But that’s what we did when we were bubble gum-blowing youth in Indiana.
But I love those cards, and I just went down and pulled them all out. They’re in number order and I took a picture of them this morning and I’ll send it off to you.
What did you say when they came and said they wanted to put you on a card?
I was shocked, I had no idea that there would be any value in anything like that. I signed about 50 of those a day. And I’ll tell you what was in the back of my mind. My brother is a big Dodgers fan going back to Brooklyn days. And he’s a very big Duke Snider fan, and twice I found autographed baseballs with Duke Snider’s autograph on them. And one was a little better autographed than the other. And the man who sold me both of them said that Duke had had a long day of signing and was tired. And now I understand what that meant and I decided I would only sign about 50 cards a day because I wanted the signature to be good. And if I just tried to blow through and do all of them at once that somebody wouldn’t get a very good autograph because I was just trying to gun through it.
So it took me about a week to go through all of the cards that they sent me so the signatures are good. I think that they’re legible, I wanted people to be able to read all the letters. That’s one of the things I admired about Gordie Howe’s autograph: every letter in Gordie Howe’s first and last name was just like he was probably taught in grade school.
Yeah, actually I have a Howe autograph from about 10 years ago somewhere in my parents’ house and you’re absolutely right. It’s remarkable how good the handwriting is. Because mine is not. I’m a journalist so I’m allowed to have bad handwriting.
Just like a doctor, right? [laughs]
I have to ask a Pirates question.
Well, we won last night. We’re at about one win for every three games which, for the amount of money that we’re paying players I guess that’s probably it.
That actually leads me up to the question nicely. Is there any hope in the Pirates and what they’re trying to build in the future?
I think there’s at least an optimistic culture. I loved Clint Hurdle, I thought he was a very positive guy. But in any situation after nine years or 10 years a change is needed and I think they’ve gotten that. I think they probably got new direction in the front office, too. But I’ve been a fan since 1959 and I’ve had a chance to be around three world championships. I’m proud to say I know a lot of the guys that played on hose teams and I’ve gotten the chance to meet them. And that means an awful lot to me. I hope that there are people in Pittsburgh that get a chance to say the same thing when they’re my age. I don’t know if that’s going to happen because as you know you need to spend money in order to have a good team unless you want to take a roll of the dice and hope that you’re Kansas City every once ever 50 years.
So I hope for the sake of the fans of Pittsburgh that they’ll get what I’ve gotten in my lifetime, which is three world championships. And a chance to meet some of the guys that are on it.
A blockbuster story from The New York Times on Sunday revealed President Trump paid only $750 in taxes in 2016 and 2017 and no taxes for 10 of the 15 years before entering the White House.
The extremely low figures are shocking because, according to Forbes, Trump is worth approximately $2.5 billion.
“His portfolio, which includes commercial buildings, golf properties and branding businesses, is worth an estimated $3.66 billion before debt,” Forbes reports. “The president has a fair amount of leverage — adding up to a roughly $1.13 billion — but not enough to drag his net worth below a billion dollars.”
In 2017, the median income American household brought in $63,761 according to the Census Bureau. The federal income tax cost for this family would be about $8,600 for couples filing jointly, and $11,670 for singles — that’s more than ten times greater than what the President of the United States paid.
Trump’s tax payments provide even further evidence of his duplicitous business dealings and are an indictment of a system that treats billionaires differently than working people.
However, to Trump, it’s simply an indicator of his intelligence.
In a 2016 debate, Hillary Clinton brought up his attempts to stiff the government on his tax obligations, to which Trump replied, “That makes me smart.”
“He’s paid zero. That means zero for troops, zero for vets, zero for schools, and health,” Clinton said. “And I think probably he’s not all that enthusiastic about having the rest of our country see what the real reasons are because it must be something really important, even terrible that he’s trying to hide.”
By the way, @HillaryClinton told y’all… https://t.co/kOrsJ3nCeg
Democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pointed out the blatant inequity in our system that allows Trump to get away with tax avoidance while lower-wage workers foot the bill.
“In 2016 and ’17, I paid thousands of dollars a year in taxes as a bartender. Trump paid $750,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted Sunday. “He contributed less to funding our communities than waitresses and undocumented immigrants. Donald Trump has never cared for our country more than he cares for himself. A walking scam.”
In 2016 & ‘17, I paid thousands of dollars a year in taxes *as a bartender.*
The news about Trump’s taxes has inspired many Americans to follow Ocasio-Cortez’s lead by sharing the amount they pay in taxes and how they earned their money.
As an undocumented immigrant, I can now say that I’ve paid more in taxes than the President. According to NYT,… https://t.co/msS6IvSn6T
— Rodrigo P. Pimentel (@Rodrigo P. Pimentel)1601242782.0
I am a 16-year-old part-time minimum wage worker and I pay more income taxes than the billionaire President of the United States
My family of seven, with a household income of less than $75K per year in high cost-of-living New England, pays mor… https://t.co/SmYZSVKAtL
— Religious Sect Survivor 🌹 (@Religious Sect Survivor 🌹)1601258613.0
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