“According to newly-released records, Donald Trump Jr. texted then-chief of staff Mark Meadows during January’s Capitol attack, urging him to make President Trump condemn the violence. … Fox News host Laura Ingraham also texted Meadows during the attack and said Trump needed to tell the rioters to go home. Mostly because her show comes on at 10, and they’re her target audience.” —Seth Meyers
“CNN fired Chris Cuomo because he was caught giving secret political advice to a politician. Now it turns out that basically everyone at Fox News was giving secret advice to President Trump and his people during the insurrection. But I guess that’s what makes it okay: if one person at your network has no integrity, that’s a problem. If nobody has integrity, that’s a company policy.” —Trevor Noah
Continued…
You are now below the fold. We suggest crampons for the rest of your descent.
“Meadows bailed right before his deposition to the January 6th executive committee, claiming executive privilege forbids him to speak, even though he just released a book in which he writes about the insurrection and his conversations with Trump. By writing a book, Meadows may have inadvertently waived his executive privilege. But I’m sure it was worth it for a blockbuster that’s burning up the charts as Amazon’s 520th-best-selling book, only a few hundred slots behind actual classics like The Big Book of Farty Facts.” —Samantha Bee
“After the tree outside the Fox News headquarters was set on fire by a homeless man, Fox and Friends host Ainsley Earhardt said, ‘This Scrooge is not gonna get away with it.’ Nothing has ever explained Fox News better than a rich white lady calling a homeless man Scrooge.” —Michael Che, SNL
People on Twitter are guessing the lawmakers who texted Mark Meadows after the Capitol riot about ways to overturn the election. You can play the home version in this fun new game.
—The Late Show
“Saturday marked one year since the FDA authorized the Pfizer vaccine. Still, only 60 percent of Americans are fully vaccinated. That is nuts. I hate to say it, but it might be time to fight misinformation with misinformation. If a dozen of you went on social media and posted, ‘After I got vaccinated I got right back into my old jeans,’ we would probably be done with this.” —Jimmy Kimmel
Once again, I wasn’t named one of my own “Favorite People of 2021.” —Conan O’Brien via Twitter
And that infamous holly jolly day eight years ago:
Clip of Fox News host Megyn Kelly: For all you kids watching at home, Santa just is white. Jon Stewart: Santa is just white? Who are you actually talking to—children who are sophisticated enough to be watching a news channel at 10 o’clock at night, yet innocent enough to still believe Santa Claus is real, yet racist enough to be freaked out if he isn’twhite?“
And now, our feature presentation…
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Cheers and Jeers for Friday, December 17, 2021
Note: Please be aware that the Baldwin sisters’ eggnog is likely spiked with moonshine. Ike Godsey has pulled it from the shelves at the general store and the proper Nelson County authorities have been notified. —Mgt.
Percent of Democrats and Republicans polled by Monmouth University who say they’ve been vaccinated: 96%, 54%
Percent of U.S. adults surveyed by Pew Research who said they were religiously-unaffiliated in 2011, 2016, and 2021, respectively: 19%, 23%, 29%
Number of religious groups in America that are larger than the religiously-unaffiliated: 0
Years during which Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi were inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress:1989, 2010, 2021
CHEERS to promise-keeper Joe. One thing you gotta say about President Biden: he deserves bigtime props for diversifying federal benches all over the country. More like this, please…
President Joe Biden has announced 9 new federal judicial nominees, one of whom is a citizen of Navajo Nation.
Judge Sunshine Suzanne Sykes.
Judge Sunshine Suzanne Sykes would be the first Native American Article III judge in California, the first Article III judge from the Navajo Nation, and the fifth Native American Article III judge actively serving in the United States. She is nominated for the United States District Court for the Central District of California.
Judge Sykes has served as a California Superior Court Judge on the Superior Court of Riverside County since 2013. She currently presides over a civil litigation department and is the presiding judge of the appellate division.
Also in Joe’s bragging rights column: more confirmed judges in his first year than his predecessor. Just in case you’re wondering why all those chairs are flying through the air down at Mar-A-Lago.
CHEERS to clean slates. Nearly a year before Rosa Parks’ famous 1955 act of defiance for civil rights on a Montgomery metro bus, teenager Claudette Colvin got in the same kind of “good trouble,” and she’s had the criminal record for 56 years to prove it. But not anymore:
Now 82, Colvin filed a petition to have the record of the incident wiped clean, and a judge in Montgomery has granted the request. “My record was expunged,” Colvin told “CBS Mornings” in an exclusive interview. “And my name was cleared. And I’m no longer a juvenile delinquent at 82.” […]
Finally, a spotless record.
Colvin said she was with three classmates and “sitting in the section that was allowed for colored people” when a White woman boarded and moved to the back of the bus, hoping to take a seat. At that time, as Colvin explained, a Black person and a White person could not sit in the same row. The bus driver asked the school kids to move and three did—Colvin refused. […]
Colvin said her cleared record was important to her for the message it would send to her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. “Because when they go out into the world, the struggle of being African American is still going on,” Colvin said. “So I want my grandchildren to know that their grandmother stood up for something when she realized that she was an American at a very early age, and she wanted equal rights.”
When asked what she planned to do to celebrate her freshly-scrubbed criminal record, Colvin said she’s still trying to decide between robbing banks or setting up an offshore extortion racket.
CHEERS to the original airhead. Happy Wright Brothers Day! On this date in 1903, after paying a $50 luggage fee, shuffling shoeless through security and spending eight-hours on the tarmac next to a screaming baby, Orville Wright made the first controlled, sustained flight in a power-driven airplane at Kitty Hawk on North Carolina’s Outer Banks:
At 10:35…the flyer moved down the rail as Wilbur steadied the wings. Just as Orville left the ground, John Daniels from the lifesaving station snapped the shutter on a preset camera, capturing the historic image of the airborne aircraft with Wilbur running alongside.
This would be the last time a passenger flight had enough leg room.
Again, the flyer was unruly, pitching up and down as Orville overcompensated with the controls. But he kept it aloft until it hit the sand about 120 feet from the rail. Into the 27-mph wind, the ground speed had been 6.8 mph, for a total airspeed of 34 mph. The brothers took turns flying three more times that day, getting a feel for the controls and increasing their distance with each flight. […]
This was the real thing, transcending the powered hops and glides others had achieved. The Wright machine had flown.
The jalopy-of-the-skies was in the air for less than a minute. It would’ve been longer but they ran out of booze.
CHEERS to BiPM: future seer. I stumbled on something I wrote in the December 18, 2008 C&J, before Obama took office and when Osama bin Laden was kickin’ back with some fresh porn in his Pakistan townhouse:
Al Qaeda is scared of Obama because, unlike Bush, he won’t come after them like a clumsy buffoon but more like a Ninja in the night.
Freaky, huh? I can also bend spoons with my mind. Plastic ones, anyway. Mostly on really hot days.
CHEERS to home sweet teeth-chattering home. On Sunday’s date in 1777, George Washington parked his 11,000 troops at Valley Forge for the winter. The General knew how to rally his men:
“Look, all we need to do, guys, is invent central heating after creating a regional power grid and it’ll be just like Club Med! Plus I know a great caterer and he’ll be along just as soon as we invent the Grubhub app.”
Needless to say, it was a very long winter.
CHEERS to home vegetation. Weekend TV gets off to a fast start tonight with Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow doing the Friday news dump thing on MSNBC…also the 89th annual Hollywood Communist Socialist War on Christmas Parade on the CW…Sing on ABC…and at 11 Keanu Reeves, Olivia Colman and Mahershala Ali are lined up for BBC America’s The Graham Norton Show.
On 60 Minutes: reports on America’s unsanitary sewer systems and the devastating tornadoes from which the Biden administration is doing such an efficient job helping states clean up after. Fat Tony becomes Maggie’s godfather on The Simpsons, and someone vandalizes the city nativity scene on Family Guy. And the weekend wraps up Sunday night with an epic duel between the Saints-Buccaneers football game on NBC, Christmas Takes Flight on CBS, and The Sound of Music on ABC. Bill in Portland Maine’s pro tip: never bet against Julie Andrews—ever. Now here’s your Sunday morning lineup:
Meet the Press: Doc Fauci; Gov. Jared Polis (D-CO).
Also: Santa appears on the Sunday shows to announce he’s no longer giving coal to the bad Republicans because they like it too much. New gift: a Biden 2024 hat.
This Week: Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL); Washington Post National Political Reporter Robert Costa.
Face the Nation: NIH Director Francis Collins; Former Afghan national security adviser Hamdullah Mohib; DEA Administrator Anne Milgram.
CNN’s State of the Union: TBA
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday with without Chris Wallace: Senator Joe Manchin (Manchin-WV); Govs. Phil Murphy (D-NJ) and Larry Hogan (R-MD).
Happy viewing!
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Ten years ago in C&J: December 17, 2011
JEERS to premature declaration. Earlier this week, thinking that nothing could possibly surpass it, I announced that my Headline of the Year was, “Anti-Gay Alabama GOPer Secretly Donated Sperm To Lesbian Couples In New Zealand.” I’m not going to be a Scrooge and take away its trophy, but I am going to break with tradition and give an identical one to this late entry:
NH woman brought Mom’s ashes to bingo for good luck; urn stolen
Saaaaaaaa…lute!!!
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And just one more…
JEERS to not staying abreast (and a’ wing and a’ thigh) of things. What a wonderful way to take advantage of a unique way to fill our house with the aroma of a dumpster behind a chicken joint. Perhaps after noticing the success of Burger King’s “Flame” body spray—or perhaps after taking one too many bong hits—KFC decided it would be a swell idea to ring in the holidays with a five-pound fried chicken-scented yule log (through Walmart, of course) for the low, low price of only $15.88:
“Hey kids! It’s time for our cherished Christmas tradition of burning Colonel Sanders in effigy.”
But with postal service so unreliable these days (has Louis DeJoy been returned to sender yet?), I think we’ll just go buy a bucket of the Colonel’s finest, stick it in the middle of our living room, and set a match to it. And once the holidays are over, KFC can go back to focusing on what they’re best at selling: atherosclerosis with 11 herbs and spices.
Have a great weekend. Floor’s open…What are you cheering and jeering about today?
