Here are three recent pieces by other people I recommend reading…
In this Twitter thread, David Rothkopf lists the many major issues Biden’s administration is handling simultaneously, including: the evacuation of over 70,000 people from Kabul since August 14; a huge vaccine distribution program that has already resulted in over 200 million Americans receiving the shots; the $1 trillion infrastructure bill; the $3.5 trillion budget bill; the prosecution of hundreds of MAGA morons who attacked the Capitol on 1/6; battling the GOP’s voter suppression efforts; and working on solutions to the climate crisis. Not all of it has gone smoothly, but the president and his team deserve a lot more credit than they’re getting from the public and the media.
While Sony execs try to fix the damage done to “Jeopardy!” by the Mike Richards fiasco — by naming Mayim Bialik the “temporary” host — it’s been odd to turn on the TV and see reruns from 2009 with Alex Trebek behind the podium. It’s a vivid reminder of how the job should be done. Meanwhile, Joe Adalian at Vulture has an excellent look at how things went so badly at Sony, “Inside the Jeopardy! Host-Hunting Meltdown.”
I’ve been mostly unimpressed by CNN’s “History of the Sitcom,” partly because it’s impossible to jam 70+ years of anything into eight hours of commercial television. But I’ve also been annoyed at the thematic structure of the weekly series. I was going to write a whole screed about it, but Preston Beckman beat me to it — and he has the pedigree that gives his viewpoint a lot more authenticity. Now known in social media as The Masked Scheduler, Beckman oversaw NBC’s “Must See TV” era, then put in quite a few years at Fox at the time “American Idol” became a phenomenon. Read what he has written about the CNN series to understand what’s wrong.