SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:55 P.M. ET:

IRONY – FROM ROLL CALL:    President Donald Trump on Saturday said he can twist enough House Republican arms to give Nancy Pelosi the necessary votes to become speaker.  The California Democrat publicly says she has ample support within her own caucus to secure the gavel. But all indications are a floor vote could be close, meaning Republicans could opt — for a list of reasons — to put her over the top.  For Trump, making Pelosi speaker would give him the sense that she owes him legislatively and also ensure that his top campaign-trail foil, who remains intensely unpopular with Republican voters, remains in the headlines through his re-election bid.  I want to see this happen.  I love it.  Do you think Pelosi will publicly thank Trump?

THANK YOU FOR INFORMING US – FROM COLLEGE FIX:   Two professors authored a recent essay arguing that calls for civility from college instructors are a “deflection tactic” designed to force people to “fall back in line with the normalized immiseration induced by the wealthy few.”  Johnny Williams and David Embrick, professors at Trinity College and the University of Connecticut, respectively, argue in an article at Inside Higher Ed that much of the demands for civil behavior from faculty are actually calls for “a civility that upholds white supremacist heteropatriarchal capitalist power.”  The calls for civility, many of them from college administrators, “are usually directed at professors interrogating oppression in a manner displeasing to college and university administrations,” Embrick and Williams write. Your son or daughter can be exposed to brilliance like this for only $50,000 a year.  Apply now.  There are only a few seats left.

A PASSING – We note the death of William Goldman, extraordinary screenwriter and chronicler of Hollywood.  He wrote Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Princess Pride, and All the President's Men.  He also wrote the novel, Marathon Man.  He was equally known for his guide to the film business, Adventures in the Screen Trade, in which he dissected the post-Golden Age industry and came to the conclusion that "nobody knows anything."  Absolutely accurate, from what I saw.  Goldman was a screenwriter of the old school, who actually knew how to tell a story.

November 17, 2018