Category: Viral

Earlier this year, the band then known as Lady Antebellum removed the “Antebellum” from their name at the height of this summer’s Black Lives Matter movement, opting to go by Lady A in the future. Soon after, Seattle singer Anita White, who has performed under the name Lady A for over two decades, criticized the band for the name change. White and the band would meet to attempt to reach a compromise, but the meeting resulted in the band suing White to “affirm our right to continue to use the name Lady A, a trademark we have held for many years.” Now, according to Pitchfork, White has countersued the group for trademark infringement.

White claims that the band’s name change has resulted in “lost sales, diminished brand identity, and diminution in the value of and goodwill associated with the mark.” White’s countersuit comes a little over two months after the band sued her for rights to the name. At the time of their original lawsuit, he band claimed that were forced to sue the Seattle singer after “she and her team have demanded a $10 million payment,” a request White would explain in a lengthy statement:

“I asked for $5 million to compensate me for this loss, and to help me rebuild under a new name. I also asked that they donate $5 million to a charity so that we could work together to promote racial equality. […] I am hopeful that this fight for what is rightfully mine will help those damaged by this type of bullying and erasure in the past, and that it will prevent it from happening in the future. I will not allow Lady Antebellum to obliterate me and my career so they can look ‘woke’ to their fans.”

The full countersuit by White can be found here.

Oftentimes, drinkers base the value of a particular bottle of whisk(e)y on the age statement located on the label. The older the age, the more nuanced, complex, and thereby expensive the whiskey. But while we’d never tell you not to hold on to hope that one day you’ll get a chance to try Hibiki 30 or Glenlivet 25-Year-Old, there are myriad whiskeys on the market without an age statement at all that definitely deserve your attention.

Sure, blended Scotches like Johnnie Walker, Famous Grouse, and Chivas don’t carry age statements and people don’t seem to mind. But we’re not talking about blended whisky today. That’s too easy. We’re talking about brands that have other expressions that do have age statements.

To find the best options, we once again turn to the experts. We asked a handful of bartenders to tell us their favorite no age statement whisk(e)ys to drink this fall.

Auchentoshan American Oak Single Malt Scotch Whisky

Marla White, lead bartender at Lona Cocina & Tequilera in For Lauderdale, Florida

Auchentoshan American Oak Single Malt Scotch Whisky is matured and stored in American Bourbon Casks that give it a desirably different flavor profile than other whiskies. With notes of vanilla and coconut, this is the perfect whiskey to enjoy outside.

Yamazaki Single Malt Sherry Cask Japanese

Frantjesko Laonora, lead bartender at Curaçao Marriott Beach Resort in Curaçao

Yamazaki Single Malt Sherry Cask Japanese Whisky is one of the few NAS whiskeys named “World’s Best Whisky” and offers fruity notes, fragrant sandalwood, and sweet coconut. It’s certainly a whisky where you get lost in the smell.

Booker’s Little Book Bourbon

Hayden Miller, head bartender at Bodega Taqueria y Tequila in Miami

Booker’s Little Book has consistently been worth anticipating year by year when they release the new blend. Always a variation of tasting notes but subtly different with each bottling.

Blanton’s Single Barrel Bourbon

Molly Safuto, bartender at Mila Rooftop Bar in Glendale, California

Blanton’s Single Barrel Bourbon, the first of it’s kind with a unique bottle design to represent to Colonel Blanton’s pioneer history. Sweet and citrusy with an accumulation of spices make this Bourbon a favorite for myself and even my parents.

Kaiyo The Peated Mizunara Oak Japanese Whisky

Crystal Chasse, beverage director at Talk Story Rooftop in Brooklyn, New York

I was first exposed to Kaiyo “The Peated” Mizunara Oak Japanese Whisky about a year ago and I am still obsessed. Aged in Mizunara Oak and Madeira Casks it has the perfect amount of smoke mixed with honeyed coconut and apple.

Elijah Craig Small Batch Bourbon

Andy Printy, beverage director at Chao Baan in St. Louis

Elijah Craig Small Batch may be the best whiskey on the market for the price. Lots of caramel and toffee throughout but assumes an unmistakable oak and butter on the finish. It’s the equivalent of eating a blondie in the whiskey world.

Glyph Molecular Whisky

Brendan Bartley, head bartender and beverage director at Bathtub Gin in New York City

A very controversial category in whiskey is molecular whiskey. One of my favorite “no age statement” whiskeys comes from that field. Glyph is the first molecular whiskey and I think they do an amazing job. I think it’s more the language that people have a hard time digesting the liquid. I’ve sold this whisky in the bar now for nearly two years. Every time I give someone a blind tasting, they love it. Once I reveal what it is, their faces drop.

Progress will change the way we view things and drink. What is a foreign idea to us now will be common in the years to come. It’s great whiskey and you should certainly give it a try — you might actually start loving science.

East London Single Malt Whisky

Max Stampa-Brown, beverage director at Borrachito in New York City

I was very fortunate to travel to London for a competition with the East London Liquor Company last year. Even more fortunate I got to try their London Single Malt Whisky ahead of its release to the masses. Tasted like hot cocoa and scones. Being the only American in the room I nervously said after my first sip, “is it too cliché for me to say this is quite biscuity.”

We had a really good night that night.

E.H. Taylor Straight Rye

Gavin Humes, bartender at Scratch | Bar & Restaurant in Encino, California

Go with the Colonel E.H. Taylor Straight Rye. It comes in at a hefty 100 proof but doesn’t read super-hot. In fact, it’s got some great vanilla, caramel, and even some peppery quality. The rye gives it a complexity that balances what is sometimes overly cloying in the case of some bourbons. Really a delicious product.

Writer’s Pick:

Lagavulin Distiller’s Edition Single Malt Scotch Whisky

While you’ll find many great whiskies from Lagavulin that do have age statements, Distiller’s Edition is so good, you won’t even wonder how long it’s been aged. It’s a great combination of sweet vanilla and caramel notes melding with herbal and smoky peat flavors.

The Portland Trail Blazers battled admirably to get into the NBA playoffs, but ultimately were unable to topple the Los Angeles Lakers and went home after the first round. Their stay in the Bubble did include a run-in with the other Los Angeles squad that did not exactly sit well with them, and as a result, two of Portland’s stars had a whole lot of fun at the Clippers’ expense as L.A. fell in Game 7 to the Denver Nuggets on Tuesday night.

Damian Lillard and a pair of Clippers players — Paul George and Patrick Beverley — had a war of words during and after a game the two teams played. Despite this, Lillard was not the first member of the Blazers to get some jokes off as the Clippers blew a 3-1 series lead to Denver. That, instead, was CJ McCollum, who started the posting with a bang.

Lillard laughed at the Cabo line, then looked back on his “bad shot” beef with George from last postseason. You see, George took a corner three down the stretch of Game 7 that looked like this…

…and unsurprisingly, Lillard got asked about it.

While this was going on, McCollum decided to get send out a whole lot of posts at the Clippers’ expense.

He did take a quick break in the middle of this to show some love to Denver’s dynamic duo of Jamal Murray and Nikola Jokic, both of whom were outstanding during Game 7.

And then, CJ got back on the Clippers slandering train.

He was serious (kind of) for a moment, saying that he legitimately thought this L.A. side had what it took to win a championship.

But again, McCollum got back to cracking jokes and made it clear that he was, indeed, drinking wine before throwing some more praise Denver’s way.

Oh, look, Lillard got back into the posting game, inviting Beverley to join him down in Cancun. And you will never believe this, but McCollum got in on this fun, too.

McCollum kept going, which included some more Beverley jokes.

Eventually, McCollum wished everyone goodbye, and once that happened, Lillard came in with a few more tweets.

Throughout the evening, other players from other teams chimed in on the torrid posting by the Blazers’ duo.

I don’t know about you, but while I am super stoked to watch how the rest of the postseason plays out before four really fun basketball teams, I cannot wait for the first time the Blazers and the Clippers play one another during the 2020-21 season.

The Denver Nuggets, facing a 3-1 series lead against perhaps the most talented team in all of basketball, capped off their second-straight comeback from that exact deficit. For the first time in NBA history, a team has come back from that hole in the same postseason, and on Tuesday night, Denver earned that distinction with an emphatic 104-89 win over the Los Angeles Clippers.

It was shocking in just about every sense of the word — the Clippers, once again, got out to a double-digit lead, then the Nuggets rallied back, playing like a team that looks like it can win a championship in a second half where just about everything went right. Here are three takeaways from the game, which capped off a comeback that I still can’t fully believe happened.

1. Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray are superstars

Teams that want to win are oftentimes defined by their superstars. As this series emphatically showed, Denver has a pair of superstars who can not only play, but will scratch and claw and fight for every single thing with the hopes of coming out on top in every game they play.

The Clippers, a team that was ostensibly built around its suffocating defense, had absolutely zero answers for Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray in Game 7. The former was about as deadly a quarterback as you’ll see this side of Patrick Mahomes. His 16 points were perfectly solid, yes, but the big man ripped down 22 rebounds and just made Los Angeles’ frontcourt submit to his will on the glass. More impressive we were his 13 assists. Even when he did not make a pass that directly led to an assist, Jokic was finding dudes in perfect places and putting them in positions to do something, whether it was score or make something happen on their own.

Jokic was in complete and total control of every single thing that have been around him. He is the team’s metronome, possessing qualities that you normally expect out of guys like LeBron James or Chris Paul. Instead, we are talking about the 7-foot tall center of the Denver Nuggets. Jokic is nothing short of a marvel, and I hope he never stops doing stuff like this. This was him rubbing salt in the wound by going deeper into his bag than Santa does for the last kids he visits on Christmas Day.

And then, there is Murray, who has been just a straight up monster all postseason. He has brought an edge that works in perfect balance with the steadiness that Jokic brings. In Game 7, he was an inferno, scoring 40 points on 15-for-26 shooting and hitting six of his 13 threes. He doled out five assists and ripped down four rebounds, too.

This is a guy who is just oozing confidence right now. Every single time that Jamal Murray steps onto the basketball court, he is convinced that he is going to outplay everybody else on the other team. And if he does not, he is, at the very least, going to play his behind off. Denver is better for it, and he is, slowly but surely, earning the title of being a superstar in this league.

Meanwhile…

Not great! We’ll get to them in a sec. Before then, let me just say the following:

2. The Nuggets rule

A bit of a mea culpa here: I thought that the Clippers would sweep this series. I did not think that Denver, coming off of an all-out war with the Utah Jazz, would have the horses or answers for any of the various things that L.A. could throw at them.

But my God, does Denver have heart. This is a team that steps onto the floor every single night and wants to make sure that the other team has as miserable a basketball playing experience as they possibly can. Their two stars are fantastic, of course, but up and down their roster are a bunch of guys who want nothing more than to fight whenever they are on the floor.

Paul Millsap has lost a step, but he will battle. Jerami Grant and Torrey Craig are not afraid to mix it up with anyone. Gary Harris, god bless him, had a brutal year in which he battled injuries and looked like a shell of himself, but was fantastic as the Nuggets battled back in this series and competed like hell on the defensive end of the floor, while simultaneously hitting some shots that just did not fall for him during the regular season for one reason or another. The guys off the bench — Mason Plumlee, Monte Morris, Michael Porter Jr. — understand what they have to do when they step onto the floor.

Michael Malone absolutely deserves a ton of credit for what he has built. He has built a team that has this unshakable belief in itself and will not go down without a fight. As a result, this group has so much swagger right now, and even if the Lakers might be a better team on paper, it’s really hard to bet against them being able to put away this team. Denver is such a wonderful story, especially when you consider how close they came to making the conference finals last season. They got a chance to atone for that, and when that opportunity presented itself, they made the best of it.

3. The Clippers are in for one heck of an offseason

No team made a bigger splash last offseason than the Los Angeles Clippers. They pulled off an absolute monster deal, giving away basically every single thing that they could trade in order to acquire Paul George from the Oklahoma City Thunder. As a result, they were able to sign the biggest name in free agency, convincing Kawhi Leonard to come home to Los Angeles after winning a championship with the Toronto Raptors. Between those two, a team that was very good last year, a coach that knew how to win a title, and a front office that was willing to do whatever it took to lift the Larry O’Brien trophy, this team seemed preordained to make some serious noise in the postseason.

And then, they spent an entire season never quite looking like the team that they could be at their best. We saw plenty of glimpses of that, but we never quite saw enough to, in retrospect, justify thinking that this was the best team in basketball. They were capable of earning that distinction, they just never did it quite enough. As for their stars, you saw those numbers earlier in the post, but Leonard had 14 points on 6-for-22 shooting with six rebounds and six assists in Game 7, while George had 10 points and hit two of his 11 attempts from three.

The Clippers got punched in the mouth for three games in a row, and whenever their opponent threw that punch, they completely folded. Los Angeles has never made the conference finals, and despite this being perhaps the best opportunity to ever do that in franchise history, they came up short once again.

I have no idea exactly what is going to happen next, but considering how high the expectations are from ownership on down in that organization, it seems like something has to go down. I don’t want to speculate on anyone’s job security, but Doc Rivers, for all the good he has done in that organization, might have to answer some questions after how this went. Montrezl Harrell — who was not all that good during the playoffs — is a free agent, as is Marcus Morris. Leonard and George, a pair that was supposed to get them to the promised land and were as guilty as anyone for their Game 7 collapse, both are free agents after next season.

It’s a weird time in L.A., and despite most teams having their eyes on the 2021 offseason, the Clippers are a team that seems ripe for doing something big before next year tips off.

With nine minutes to go on Tuesday evening, Shey Peddy and the Phoenix Mercury appeared to be in deep trouble. The Mercury trailed the Washington Mystics by 12 points and, with the WNBA’s single-elimination format in the first round of the postseason, Phoenix had no margin for error. However, a furious comeback ensued and, in the final seconds, Skylar Diggins-Smith found Peddy in the corner.

From there, Peddy did the rest, calmly knocking down a buzzer-beating three-pointer to win the game by a final score of 85-84.

Peddy finished with 12 points, four rebounds and three steals, with Diggins-Smith adding 24 points, six rebounds and five assists. Elsewhere, Diana Taurasi scored 23 points, dished out six assists and grabbed four rebounds, with the Mystics led by 25 points and four assists from Leilani Mitchell.

In addition to the win-or-go-home heroics, Peddy’s shot also carries a bit of extra emphasis, as the 5’9 guard actually spent time with the Mystics earlier this season. She was waived by Washington in August, quickly signing on with the Mercurcy, and it is a wild confluence of events that she was able to knock down a shot to keep her new team alive in the postseason at the expense of her former squad.

Many hoped things would chill out for Megan Thee Stallion, who last month was involved in a shooting incident with Tory Lanez. However, new rumors started floating around about her past. In an Instagram post, Megan’s ex Karim York alleged details of an abusive past with an unnamed ex-girlfriend. Given that he concluded the caption with the words “P.S. Megan and I are still great friends,” many believed that anonymous woman to be Megan herself. As a result, Megan took to Instagram Live on Monday to clear up the air.

“I just saw some bullsh*t talking about…and I know who it is,” she said on the livestream. “They antagonize me everyday online. They pick with me every goddamn day. They always making up stories about me and now I feel like I have to really start doing something about it.” Megan would then go on to play a recorded phone call between her and York where he denies that his post was about her. On the phone call, York can be heard saying “I am not talking about you,” proving that the rumors were indeed false. “He is not talking about me,” she says. “He is in another argument with some other b*tch.”

Megan went on to deliver a strong message to her viewers. “Stop lying on me,” she said. “That n**** not talking about me. Stop putting n****s on me. Stop making stories up. F*ck y’all because I’m going to hit you with the facts every time you tell a lie.”

Meg Thee Stallion is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

In late August, Sotheby’s announced that one of their auctions, which included a number of iconic hip-hop artifacts, would take place at their New York location on September 15. One of the major pieces up for auction was The Notorious B.I.G.‘s famous “King Of New York” plastic crown, which he wore in a 1997 Rap Pages magazine photoshoot. The crown was set to be auctioned for $200,000, but today it’s confirmed that the crown sold for more than double the price, nabbing a whopping $475,000.

Another major item that went up for auction was a collection of Tupac’s handwritten high school love letters, which sold for $60,000. Other items sold at Tuesday’s auction include a pair of Salt-N-Pepa “Push It” jackets, which sold for $19,000, Slick Rick’s diamond eye patch ($20,000), Fab 5 Freddy’s gold and diamond MTV ring ($28,000), and a complete run of Source magazine ($26,000).

A portion of the proceeds will be donated to Queens Public Library‘s hip-hop programs and Building Beats, a music-based non-profit that specializes in DJing and production.

In a Reuters interview prior to the auction, Sotheby’s senior specialist Cassandra Hatton spoke about Biggie’s King Of New York crown, saying, “I think that crown is one of the most recognizable symbols of hip hop, 20th century culture. Everybody around the world recognizes this crown. You see it on T-shirts. You see it on coffee cups and prayer candles. It’s huge.”

The Miami Heat outlasted the Boston Celtics in a memorable Game 1 battle on Tuesday evening. With the win, Erik Spoelstra’s team slides into the driver’s seat against the slightly favored Celtics, while Boston is left to nurse its wounds in advance of a pivotal Game 2 on Thursday.

To that end, here are three key takeaways from the opener as the series progresses.

1. This is going to be a fun, long series

Game 1 was truly a back-and-forth affair in every sense of the word. The Celtics opened with a 12-3 start and, in the early going, Boston was firing on all cylinders.

Jayson Tatum had it going, hunting mismatches and letting it fly with impunity.

Boston led by as many as 13 in the opening period but, after a 17-4 run by Miami midway through the second quarter, a highly competitive contest began to take shape.

The Heat used a 30-12 overall run to take a six-point lead and, fittingly, Boston returned the favor by knotting the game at the halftime break. From there, the Celtics zoomed again, using a 9-0 run capped by a Marcus Smart three-pointer in transition to take a 65-61 lead in the third quarter.

Later in the third, Boston enjoyed another run, outscoring the Heat by a 13-2 margin to close the period and taking a 12-point lead to the fourth.

From there, though, it was all Miami. The Heat made their first push to slash the lead to four, including Bam Adebayo finishing with a flourish.

That proved pivotal in allowing Miami to stay in touch and, in short, the Heat saved their best for the big moments in this spot. First, Butler delivered a three-pointer for the lead with 22 seconds remaining in regulation.

After an away-from-the-ball foul on the inbounds, the Celtics tied the game on a free throw from Tatum and they retained possession with a chance to win it. Boston strung together a broken possession, however, with Tatum forced to launch an ill-advised shot that allowed the Heat to survive and force overtime.

In the extra frame, it was push-and-pull again, with the Celtics leading early and Miami delivering another 7-0 run. Kemba Walker knocked down a step-back jumper for the lead with 23.2 seconds left, but it was Butler that answered on a three-point play that ultimately proved to be the game-winner.

Finally, Adebayo sealed the game with a one-in-a-million block on Tatum that will go down on his highlight reel when his career ends some day.

This was a game that had virtually everything, and the entertainment value was off the charts. Both teams have adjustments to make, and they have top-flight coaches to make them. Both teams also have star power and talent all over the floor. Miami owns a 1-0 lead, but this looks to be a (very) long series.

2. Kemba Walker must be better for the Celtics

To begin positively, Walker came up big in the overtime period, converting a pair of wildly important jumpers with the game in the balance.

Before that, though, it was an adventure for the All-Star point guard, and Boston just needs more. The Heat provide opportunities for Walker to cook in this series, deploying a small handful of perimeter players that don’t qualify as elite defenders. However, Walker finished the night just 6-for-19 from the floor and 1-for-9 from three and, given his defensive challenges as a small guard, that kind of shaky production is hard to overcome.

On the bright side, the Celtics nearly won this game twice without much from Walker, and that is probably a good sign for Boston moving forward in the series. Still, Boston needed some genuine heroics from Brad Wanamaker to make that a reality and, for as much as Walker’s struggles aren’t sustainable, neither is Wanamaker playing at this level.

Wanamaker, who was on the floor defensively in place of Walker in crunch time, finished with 11 points, six assists, and five steals. He should be lauded for his effort and, throughout the postseason, the veteran guard has given Boston a nice jolt. Still, Walker has to be the star-level player that he has been in the past in order to pave the way for a Celtics victory, particularly if Goran Dragic and Tyler Herro continue to shine for Miami. Hey, on that note…

3. Have a game, Goran Dragic and Tyler Herro

The Heat are led by Butler and Adebayo. That is indisputably true, as both players are genuine stars. In this game, that was still the case in many ways, with Butler producing the biggest bucket of the night on the way to a trademark 20-5-5 performance and Adebayo saving the game with a clutch block in the midst of an 18-point, nine-rebound, six-assist evening. With that out of the way, this was really the night of Dragic and Herro for Miami.

Dragic led the Heat with 29 points (on 11-for-19 shooting) and he added seven rebounds and four assists for good measure.

Herro “only” scored 12 points, but he contributed 11 (!) rebounds and nine assists while knocking one of the bigger shots of the evening when Miami was teetering at the end of regulation.

Oh, and the rookie guard delivered a memorable, on-point bounce pass in overtime that drew a lot of attention.

Dragic has been fantastic in the postseason, recapturing his All-Star form and occupying a notably larger role for the Heat. That comes at a perfect time for Miami, as he can take pressure off Butler as a primary creator while giving the Heat more juice off the dribble, attacking the rim and finding shooters when needed.

As for Herro, he has been a spark plug throughout the season, spacing the floor as a more-than-effective shooter and doing a lot of little things. This was an outlier in terms of his rebounding and assist totals, but Herro made several winning plays in this one. Furthermore, it was crucial that the Heat got something from their supporting perimeter players and, on a night when Duncan Robinson and Kendrick Nunn didn’t provide all that much, Miami needed everything they could get from Herro.

Moving forward, the Heat can rely on Butler and Adebayo to be stars and, at this point, it would be surprising if Dragic tailed off given the way he’s playing. If Miami continues to get this kind of production from at least two of their non-stars, however, they could build off an already solid starting point of a 1-0 series lead.

Heather Cox Richardson didn’t set out to build a fan base when she started her daily “Letters from an American.” The Harvard-educated political historian and Boston College professor had actually just been stung by a yellow-jacket as she was leaving on a trip from her home in Maine to teach in Boston last fall when she wrote her first post.

Since she’s allergic to bees, she decided to stay put and see how badly her body would react. With some extra time on her hands, she decided to write something on her long-neglected Facebook page. It was September of 2019, and Representative Adam Schiff had just sent a letter to the Director of National Intelligence stating that the House knew there was a whistleblower complaint, the DNI wasn’t handing it over, and that wasn’t legal.

“I recognized, because I’m a political historian, that this was the first time that a member of Congress had found a specific law that they were accusing a specific member of the executive branch of violating,” Richardson told Bill Moyers in an interview in July. “So I thought, you know, I oughta put that down, ’cause this is a really important moment. If you knew what you were looking for, it was a big moment. So I wrote it down…”

By the time she got to Boston she has a deluge of questions from people about what she’d written.

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“It was clear that the readers wanted to know more,” she said. “They seemed to want to know the answers, so I wrote again…And I’ve written every night since because questions just poured in, and people flooded me with questions about what was going on. And who were the players? And how was this going to play out? And what were the laws, and why should I have any hope that this was gonna turn out in a good way? And this was just something that really was sort of reader-driven, not driven by me at all. And I think that’s probably why it’s had such staying power.”

For a year now, Richardson has synopsized the day’s political news in a way that only a historian can. She places everything into the big picture of American history while also offering facts and details that help readers understand the significance of what’s happening at the moment.

Prior to her letters, Richardson was best known as an academic for the five books she’s written, including “How the South Won the Civil War,” and “To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party.” Now, everyday Americans love her for her informative daily Facebook posts.

In an age where people build personal social media brands around being sensational, entertaining, or the loudest voice in the room, Richardson’s concise, historical, fact-based, no-drama posts are an unlikely way to form a following, but here we are. In 2020 there are still a whole lot of us who are desperate for a steady, knowledgeable voice of reason and sanity, and Richardson’s posts have have become lifelines of knowledge and hope for the nearly 600,000 readers who follow her Facebook page.

Part of Richardson’s appeal is her clear love of the topic. “I take our government extraordinarily seriously,” she told Moyers. “I have lived with American politics really since I was about 21, and maybe earlier because I was really first aware of the world during Watergate. And I care deeply about our traditions, about our heritage, about democracy. I’m happy to criticize it, because I always want it to be better, but I take that stuff really seriously.”

Another part of her appeal is that she is able to take the rapid pace of the news cycle, the constant craziness of our political climate, the complex patterns of history, and the way each of those things intertwines, and then condense it down into a 1200-word, easy-to-read “letter” that anyone can digest.

Having a political historian providing context is a huge gift, especially in the era of Donald Trump as president. While he clearly tramples over political and democratic norms—which some love and some hate—it’s not like we haven’t seen politicians like him before. In fact, his tactics are straight out of an autocratic playbook.

“It’s not just that he’s good at reading an audience, and it’s not just that he himself might have a short attention span,” Richardson told Moyers about Trump. “If you continually change the subject, you continually stay one step ahead of the story, you can do a couple of things. First of all, you can control the narrative, because by the time people have fact-checked you, you’re already onto the next story. Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy in the 1950s developed that tactic really carefully. Because the media simply couldn’t catch up with the stories, by the time you fact-checked ’em, they were fourth-page news. And there was the first-page story of something else outrageous. So it’s partly to control the narrative, but it’s also something I think more nefarious with this particular president. And that is that, if you, as Steve Bannon said, ‘flood the zone with expletive–’ what you do is, you keep your audience off guard all the time. They never know what the truth is. They never know what’s coming next, and they don’t know how to answer to any of it. And it’s a game of psychological warfare, if you will. But if you keep knocking people around enough, eventually what they will do is simply say, ‘I don’t care. It’s too much for me. Everybody’s lying. I don’t know what’s real. Just make it all go away.’ And when you do that, the way is pretty clearly open for an autocrat to step in.”

Richardson eloquently explains some of the realities—or alternate realities—that have so many of us baffled in the disinformation age. One of her areas of expertise is how politicians and political parties deliberately construct narratives to create their own reality; it’s something she’s spent a lot of her research time studying.

But the main draw to Richardson’s letters is how well she distills and contextualizes everything the way a history book would—only she does it for us in real time.

Writer Elly Lonon summed it up perfectly:

“Honestly, if democracy were a tv series, Heather Cox Richardson would be that little blurb that runs before the actual show starts. You know, ‘Previously, in Democracy…’ and then the summary so you remember where you left off and what you’re supposed to be paying attention to.”

It is definitely worth a click to follow her on Facebook.

She also hosts fairly frequent Facebook Live History & Politics chats in which she answers reader questions about things in the news. Her video from today addresses the I.C.E. whistleblower complaint about COVID handling and mass hysterectomies in an I.C.E. detention facility, gives some history of eugenics and poverty and wealth in the U.S., and explores whether or not there will likely be another coronavirus stimulus bill. It’s a worthwhile way to spend an hour.

It’s long been fashionable to diss the Star Wars prequels, but it’s worth noting that each film at least opened to decent reviews and boffo box office before their reputations plummeted. But there’s one element that was never, ever popular: Jar Jar Binks, the Rastafarian-esque alien who was intended as comic relief and was instead greeted as a distracting annoyance. You won’t find too many Jar Jar defenders — that is, with the noted exception of another prequels star, Liam Neeson.

As caught by IndieWire, the Oscar-nominated actor recently appeared on Andy Cohen’s SiriusXM radio show, and he spent some of his time defending The Phantom Menace, in which he played Jedi master and mentor Qui-Gon Jinn. He saved some of that energy for Ahmed Best, the actor who played Jar Jar in cinema’s very first all-motion-capture performance. The furor over the character — which was such that his role in the sequels was greatly reduced — drove Best to consider suicide. That was deeply unfair, Neeson said, and it may have even robbed us of a great and diverse career.

“I know a lot of fans and critics didn’t like it and my lovely friend Ahmed Best, who played Jar Jar Binks, came in for a lot, a lot of criticism. To the point where it really hurt his career,” Neeson told Cohen. “And I have to say when I was making that film, he was probably one of the funniest guys and talented guys I have ever worked with. I remember calling my old ex-agent at ICM and said, ‘I think I just worked with the new Eddie Murphy.’ I still believe that.

“Truly, he is one of the funniest guys,” Neeson added. “He had all of us in stitches — including George Lucas. And then bam, the film comes out and he’s attacked, personally attacked by fans and critics for whatever reasons.”

Neeson added that he remains “very proud” of The Phantom Menace, adding, “I got to be a Jedi, got to play with those wonderful lightsabers and stuff, it was terrific. It really was. I liked the movie. I’m proud of it. I’m proud to have been a part of it.”

Anyone who would like to give The Phantom Menace — and its two follow-ups, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith — can do so on their current home on Disney+. Surely they’re a better watch than the instantly disliked The Rise of Skywalker, which didn’t even enjoy the luxury of decent initial reviews.

(Via IndieWire)