Fandango has a weekly challenge, Who Won the Week, to invite fellow bloggers to choose someone (or something), usually from the news, but not necessarily, to feature as the person/place/thing who “won” the week.
In spite of the horrors in the news this week, most especially the war of aggression that Russia is waging on Ukraine, and scaring the world speculating about a wider war in Europe, there was one piece of good news: Pres. Biden announced his nominee to replace Justice Stephen Breyer (who is retiring) on the Supreme Court, a supremely capable Black woman, Ketanji Jackson Brown. I am not sure which of these three should be my pick for Who Won the Week, however. Should I choose Judge Brown, the nominee who has been honored to replace Justice Breyer on the Supreme Court? Should I choose Pres. Biden, who chose an eminently qualified Black woman who not only is qualified in her own right, but also in an effort to diversify the make-up of SCOTUS? In addition, the U.S. Senate has already confirmed Ms. Brown for federal judge, so they should have no objection to her elevation to the Supreme Court, which was also a smart move on Biden’s part. Or should I choose retiring Justice Breyer, who had the foresight to retire early enough in Biden’s presidency to make it extremely difficult for the Republicans in the Senate to delay her confirmation until the next presidential election? Indeed, there are several GOP senators who confirmed her nomination for federal judge, so it shouldn’t be a problem for them to confirm her again.
So I choose all three. Hopefully, it will be a smooth confirmation process!
Every week Fandango’s hosts a challenge, for those who choose to accept it, called Who Won The Week? It is the opportunity that fellow bloggers have to highlight someone in the news (good or bad) that takes the ‘prize’ for that week.
GREENVILLE, NC – JUNE 05: Former U.S. President Donald Trump exits the NCGOP state convention on June 5, 2021 in Greenville, North Carolina. The event is one of former U.S. President Donald Trumps first high-profile public appearances since leaving the White House in January. (Photo by Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images)
Meanwhile, many conservative states have passed or are considering legislation to restrict voting turnout and have either fired or threatened state election officials, who have been besieged by threatening phone calls and messages (some have received death threats, including local election officials who are Republicans and Trump supporters) and many of these officials are being primaried by more loyal Trump supporters who would go along with falsifying results of future elections if Republicans lose in their districts.
If Trump’s supporters follow his directive – and there is little reason to think they won’t – it may not be difficult for Democrats to maintain and even increase their Congressional majority. That would be good for the Biden administration, who currently must curry favor with two conservative Democratic senators, Joe Manchin and Kristin Sinema, who seem to currently have the power to shape Biden’s “Build Back Better” comprehensive reconciliation infrastructure bill.
I don’t have high hopes that all Trump supporters will not vote in the midterm elections, but Trump has only one concern: himself. His fans still don’t get that he has no interest in improving their lives or helping the country; he only cares about himself, as a true narcissist. Even so, I like to think right now that maybe electing Democrats isn’t a lost cause after all, and for that reason, Trump gets my vote for the person who “won” the week.
My pick for Fandango’s Who Won the Week is Rachel Maddow, a prime-time news anchor on MSNBC. She has been in quarantine because her partner, Susan, had a serious case of Covid-19. She had a substitute for several nights, who told us that she was quarantined because “someone close to her” had tested positive for Covid-19. On Thursday of last week, she was back! Only she wasn’t in the studio, she was in her home office so not only the background was different, but she looked different – this is because she didn’t have on make-up (which she doesn’t wear outside the studio) and doesn’t even know how to put it on herself! At one point, she had trouble with the mikes and had to clumsily figure it out. She told us her story with great poignancy as well as good humor.
Rachel Maddow broadcasting from home last week
She started out her quarantine story this way: “I’m in love.” Rachel and Susan have been together for 21 years and have a very solid relationship. She then went on to explain the anxiety she felt when Susan got sick, especially as she showed some serious symptoms, saying she wished it had been herself instead of Susan. Her story was a lot like the stories of many people around the country – around the world, actually: she unabashedly revealed her emotions and described how worried and fearful she became because Susan was really sick. I guess she never had to go to the hospital, but as an MSNBC news reporter, Rachel knows what can easily happen with this virus and she was prepared for whatever would happen. She nursed Susan, she comforted and entertained her, and I suppose gave her whatever pharmaceuticals she could to help her partner out. She injected a little humor into the story, as she does on TV.
For people reading this who don’t know who Rachel Maddow is, she is an excellent news reporter – she is inquisitive, serious when the issue is serious, and humorous whenever she can. She usually presents the news in a way that captures one’s interest: she begins a human-interest story, focusing on a person, a situation, or a place, and you never know at first how it’s connected to anything but also know that she will make the connection as she launches into the major news story. Her show is on at 8:00 pm Central Time Monday through Friday and her reputation is such that she is allowed to hold off commercial breaks for around 25 minutes while she develops the story she’s reporting on, so you get the facts of the issue as well as her own twist on it. She helps the viewer see the issue in a wider context – like a camera that focuses on a small detail and then zooms out to include the entire scene.
Rachel is no dummy – she was a Rhodes scholar and earned her PhD in politics at Oxford University. She has also won a number of awards as her popularity soared. She connects well with her audience and while we see some of her personality on her show, the story of her partner’s illness and how she felt about it revealed a much more personal and intimate look into her world outside work. She did this not only to explain to her viewers why she was in quarantine but also to hopefully touch someone out there who may not take Covid-19 as seriously as it is, and the anxiety that loved ones go through not knowing how the virus will affect the person close to them. She wanted people to understand why foregoing a family at Thanksgiving this year is the smart and loving thing to do:
Maddow expressed some understanding for those who take risks with their own welfare in order to snatch a tiny slice of normal life back. But she also explained that, unfortunately, that’s not how coronavirus works. “I’m guessing that you might be willing to risk yourself. Especially after all these months and all this time. It’s so frustrating, right?” she said. “You don’t get to just say, ‘I’m willing to get this thing and play the odds.’ You don’t get that choice. It won’t necessarily be you. It’ll be the person you most care about in the world. How can you bear that?” (Quoted from KQED Nov. 20, 2020)
She concluded by saying, “All you can do is move heaven and Earth to not get it and not transmit it. “This thing is scary as hell. Whatever you have been doing to risk getting it, don’t.”
I am betting this story will be one of the most watched of all her shows and who knows? She may get another award for it.
Two career Justice Department whistleblowers testified in before the House Judiciary Committee last week about Attorney General William Barr’s attempts to corrupt the department in favor of his boss, Donald Trump. Barr has made no secret of his belief that a president should not be indicted or implicated in crimes while occupying the office of president.
Aaron Zelinsky served as a prosecutor on the special counsel team led by Robert Mueller and later worked on the case against Trump’s friend and associate Roger Stone. He told the committee led by Jerry Nadler that there was clear interference on the part of A.G. Barr in Stone’s sentencing process.
Donald Ayer, who preceded Barr as deputy attorney general in the administration of George H.W. Bush, called Barr “the greatest threat in my lifetime to our rule of law” as he testified before the committee that Barr had misused his powers as attorney general to advance the president’s personal and political interests. He further told the committee members that Barr has given every reason to “mistrust everything he says” and called for Barr to resign.
A third whistleblower, John Elias, a prosecutor in the antitrust division of the Justice Department, testified that Barr had directed baseless investigations into the cannabis industry because of Barr’s personal distaste for the rising legal marijuana market.
Nadler told the witnesses that they were brave to come forward to give testimony implicating Barr, especially since the Trump administration has a history of witness intimidation. “I have no doubt that they will try to exact a price for your testimony,” Nadler said.
Typically career Justice Department employees do not testify before Congress and it is unclear how the House Democrats can hold Barr and the Trump administration accountable for these corrupt influences. Barr has reportedly agreed to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on July 28, but he has bailed out at the last minute in the past. The Justice Department is already pushing back on the whistleblowers’ testimony.
Even so, the press surrounding the testimony of these witnesses against Barr have added to recent allegations that he has given cover for Trump’s corrupt impulses. These three men have put their careers at the Justice Department on the line to come forward. Therefore, Zelinsky, Ayer and Elias get my vote for Fandango’s Who Won the Week.
I wasn’t going to participate in Fandango’s Who Won the Weekthis week, because not much has happened. Then I started thinking about what I enjoyed most this week. The first thing I thought of was the warmer weather (finally!) and the flowers. But then I thought of something that deserves to “win” the week because I have been enjoying it every Sunday afternoon.
Our senior community has two closed-circuit TV stations – one of which is used by the staff for announcements, virtual meetings, exercise classes, etc. The other station is for our entertainment! Videos of virtual choirs are put together and shown every Sunday afternoon. But that is not the only time that one can hear virtual choirs and other virtual musical groups. Facebook has many postings of virtual choirs and YouTube is another place to see them. A grid of small squares appears on the screen, and in each square is an individual singer performing in his/her own home. It also takes a lot of coordination and tech savvy to put these performances together. Everyone has to be singing at exactly the right tempo (down to the millisecond), on key, and usually with parts memorized. Many wear headphones, presumably to be able to hear a background track to keep them exactly in the right place at the right time. Whoever puts them together collects a recorded track from each performer and syncs them to sound like a real choir, with the right blend and volume. Many have to be tweeked or re-recorded if a singer is just a tiny bit off. The effect, when finished, is quite spectacular! If you are not looking at the screen, you wouldn’t be able to tell that it isn’t the whole rather than the sum of its parts.
Virtual choirs uplift my spirit – whether gospel or secular, their enthusiasm is evident, and when I look at their faces, I feel a connection to them. They are putting together these online performances for all of us, who are at home in quarantine, as are they. At that moment, I realize that these individuals could be anywhere in the entire world, because we have the technology to bring everyone together, and that people all over the world are basically doing the same thing we are doing right now – staying at home being entertained by virtual performances. I feel a sort of solidarity with my fellow human beings around the world whose countries are also afflicted by the pandemic. In Spain, England, Brazil, India, Germany, Canada, the U.S. and many others, people are tuning in to their local news outlets which give them the daily statistics of number of cases, number of deaths, and what the “curve” currently looks like in their part of the world. Everyone is going stir crazy, and there are many jokes, cartoons and parodies about the dilemma of being stuck at home while a highly contagious virus makes its way through our communities.
So this week, I honor virtual choirs for their inspiration, dedication and enthusiasm to allow us to forget while being swept into the music, and make life just a little bit easier for us all.
Fandango asks this question every Sunday, to reflect on the previous week. I could have voted for the same people for several weeks in a row now. So today I will:
OUR FIRST RESPONDERS – HEALTH CARE WORKERS who have sacrificed so much in time and energy, and possibly, their own health, to treat and care for the patients that are overflowing their hospital beds during this pandemic. With little help from the federal government, they have had to do their job caring for people with a highly contagious virus sometimes using masks that should have already been thrown away, finding a way to use a ventilator for more than one patient, and finding room for those in need. Under tremendous pressure and disorganization, they are the heroes on the front lines every day and night, doing their best to keep COVID patients alive. And when they fail, they cry. They are truly grieved for the ones who don’t make it.
Sign in a Chicago home
Also, all other ESSENTIAL WORKERS – delivery people, mail carriers, supermarket and pharmacy workers, and those behind the scenes like teachers trying to help their students progress without a classroom, the staff at senior living facilities, apartment managers, and others who go to work to provide services to the rest of us during this pandemic.
My vote goes to Andrew Cuomo, governor of New York. He has been a tireless advocate for the people of his state suffering or dying from the coronavirus. He has asked for test kits, personal protective equipment, masks, ventilators, and medical personnel, and keeps us updated on what’s happening in New York, which has by far the most cases of Covid-19 in the U.S. He has coordinated the building of makeshift hospitals and has welcomed the hospital ship that arrived last week in New York harbor – but alas! It is not taking Covid-19 patients! So it has been nearly empty.
Cuomo has suggested that the supplies mentioned above should go to the area of most need, and then shared with other places as the need arises. He has not been afraid to stand up to Trump. He has held daily press briefings in which he has spoken with conviction, firmness and intelligence; he is well informed and he doesn’t b.s. – he tells the truth of what is happening. The contrast of this intelligent, hard-working man with our supposed “leader” in chief, could not be sharper.
Fires continue to rage out of control in various parts of Australia, a direct cause of excessive heat and drought due to climate change. The annual bushfire season has greatly increased in intensity since September as the above 40ºC heatwave continues. The fires have been spreading and burning everything in their wake for months. Californians know about the devastation that climate-change-induced fires can cause – the fires in Australia are bigger than that. Environmental groups in the Amazon are trying to get the fires raging in the Amazon extinguished to save this important region that provides 2/3 of the world’s oxygen – the fires in Australia are bigger than that. While I don’t minimize the damage and suffering caused by any of these fires, the Australian fires cover at least 16 million acres (6,300,00 hectares), making this fire disaster the worst in the world in the last two years. It is estimated that half a BILLION animals have died in these raging fires. Koalas, who have had their natural habitat destroyed for years by deforestation, are now suffering destruction at an accelerated rate.
My vote for Fandango’s Who Won the Week, therefore, is the Australian firefighters who are battling the blazes day and night, risking their lives to save people and animals caught between the flames, and trying to get the fires under control for nearly two months. These firefighters are the true heroes right now in Australia!
Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi gets my vote for Who Won The Week? this week. First, by following protocol and the rules for impeachment, (created by the Republicans, by the way) she led the House through the impeachment proceedings and a vote to impeach, which was approved on almost straight party lines. However, this was not a partisan procedure. Only two articles of impeachment were approved, narrowing the focus to address Trump’s obstruction of Congress and abuse of his office, while many other articles could have been put forward addressing many other concerns about the president. Pelosi and the other leaders of the House Intelligence Committee and the House Judicial Committee conducted a fair and unbiased investigation, with many credible fact witnesses and convincing testimony, while the Republicans whined and complained that it was just a “partisan and unfair” impeachment. They could not dispute the facts of the case, so they relied on criticizing Democrats for disliking Trump since he was elected and calling for impeachment from the beginning. While those facts were true (the Dems disliked Trump – but so did many Republicans back in 2016 – and there were early calls for impeachment for what people saw as improper and suspicious corrupt behavior), the Democrats were not just “waiting for their chance” to get Trump. Pelosi held off on impeachment for several months as the calls for impeachment grew louder as evidence of Trump’s corruption, lies and erratic behavior mounted.
Further, the Republicans claimed that the Democrats wanted to “undo the will of the people” by nullifying the election, which has not been the case at all. If Trump were removed from office, his chosen vice-president, Mike Pence, would become president and all the appointed cabinet members, judges and Supreme Court justices chosen by Trump would remain in office. Hardly a Democratic annulment of the election!
Finally, after Mitch McConnell had the audacity to declare that he had no intention of conducting a fair trial in the Senate, that he would cooperate totally with the president, Pelosi decided to withhold the articles of impeachment until the Senate comes up with a plan for a fair trial so that the House can appoint managers for the proceeding. If McConnell doesn’t back down (which probably wouldn’t change the Senate’s vote to acquit the president of the impeachment charges anyway), she may continue to hang on to the articles, delaying a conclusion to exonerate Trump. This will cause Trump further anxiety because he wants to be able to boast that he was totally exonerated from all charges by the Senate, confirming his opinion that the impeachment was a “witch hunt.” The longer McConnell stalls, the longer Pelosi can refuse to transmit the articles of impeachment, denying the Senate a chance to resolve the case. Her action has echoes of McConnell’s own refusal to even question President Obama’s choice for Supreme Court justice to replace Scalia for nearly a year, on the chance that a Republican would win the election. McConnell won that gamble. Hopefully, Pelosi’s recalcitrance will push the Senate to at least pretend they are conducting a fair trial.
Nancy Pelosi has proven to be a strong and effective Speaker and very skilled in political maneuvering. She commands the respect of House members in spite of earlier efforts to discredit her leadership. I doubt McConnell gets similar respect from many Senate members. Since he is up for re-election this year, hopefully the voters of Kentucky will let him know he doesn’t have their respect anymore either.
For Fandango’s challenge Who Won the Week? I picked two: one political and one personal.
First, the political: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her remarks to a right-wing reporter, who asked her if she “hated” Trump. Pelosi said she didn’t hate anyone, that her Catholic faith had taught her not to hate, and that she prays for Trump “all the time.” Hear her full reply here: Don’t Mess With Me.
My personal pick is the Show Choir and other choirs at Chesterton High School in Chesterton, Indiana. Yesterday, Dale and I and my sister & brother-in-law attended a madrigal dinner at Chesterton High School hosted by the school’s music department. It was an elaborate affair, with all the participating students in full Renaissance costumes, with singers, servers, jesters, lords and ladies, and lackeys. (My grand-nephew, Josh, was one of the lackeys!)
Josh (standing) and his older brother Jordan (below)
They all played their roles to the letter, even using British accents when possible! Not only were we served a three-course dinner but we were also treated to the most wonderful performance of Christmas songs and carols. This is an amazingly talented group of young people. The videos I made aren’t great because it was dark and no flash photography was allowed and my view was partially obstructed by a pole with an advent wreath and candle on top. But one can hear how wonderful the singing is.
Some other photos I managed to take without flash:
The Show Choir, which did most of the singing. There were also period instruments. After the show, I talked to the girl in the middle (wearing the white dress), who was the “Lady” of the “house” and sang several solos. She is an extremely talented young woman and also very nice, whose ambition is to become a professional singer.
Girls’ Choir members, dressed as servers, singing and bell ringing
Standard bearers (Josh at left)
Server with a tray of “Figgie pudding” (actually carrot cake)
They did a total of 5 of these dinners last weekend – one on Friday, 2 on Saturday, 2 on Sunday!
This is an exceptionally musically gifted group of high school students, who worked very hard to put this all together, which is why I chose them as winners of the week. We all were very impressed and loved the entire event!
A footnote: We were seated at Table 11, called “Duke of Normandy” – I noticed this coincidence, because our family had all gone to Normandy, France together last June, and pointed it out to Josh, who’d had no idea and also appreciated the coincidence!
Wanderlust & Wonderment 