2022: The Year That Ended

 Another year, another recap of the year that's ending.  Let's go!

Two years removed from his Presidency and still believing he won the 2020 election, Donald Trump is still making headlines whether we want him to or not. The House committee examining the events of January 6, 2021 trotted out witness after witness before handing its findings to the Justice Department, pointing the finger at Trump for encouraging the mob scene at the U.S. Capitol that day and recommending that Trump never again holds office.  The FBI unearths evidence of classified documents scattered all over Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida that he wasn't supposed to possess now that he isn't President.  Lawsuits involving him are clogging up the courts.  And we are about to see the tax returns that Trump has been hiding for a long time.  So what does he do?  Why, announce his candidacy for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, of course.  You really think they're gonna convict the once and future(?) President of the United States?

Russia invades Ukraine, insisting that the land is theirs and has been since the Soviet Union was in existence.  Even though the country is being bombed to hell, Ukrainans and their plucky leader Volodymyr Zelensky have surprised the world by hanging in there and going toe to toe against an obviously superior opponent.  Worldwide sanctions aimed at Russia and its leader Vladimir Putin have so far resulted in Putin being hurt less than his own people.  The next year will decide whether Ukraine emerges from the rubble victorious, or go under Russia's boot.  So long as nobody gets nuked in the process.

The Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, to the surprise and shock of abortion rights supporters who had been covered by the law for nearly 50 years.  Now, if you are a woman living in a state that restricts abortion, you are running scared, looking at options to get to the nearest state that still allows the procedure to be performed.  Congress may or may not want to revisit that law so they could codify it.  But they sure didn't waste time in the lame duck session making same-sex and interracial marriage legal, unless the Court finds a way around it.

The Court, now having a 6-3 conservative advantage, did throw a bone to the liberal/moderate minority with the addition of associate justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to the bench.  She replaced the retiring Stephen Breyer. It won't stop the complaints that the Court has been running amuck with unpopular rulings and less-than-civil behavior among some of the justices.  But it's a start.

Democracy survived another round when voters went to the polls in November, voting out many of the charlatans who thought Trump should be President and losing the election would result in recounts and lawsuits.  But some of those same folks were re-elected, thanks to gerrymandered districts.  So the 118th Congress will be divided for the next two years, both by slim margins:  Republicans controlling the House and Democrats hanging on to the Senate.  This will result in President Joe Biden's policies getting less traction in Congress than they did when Democrats ran the show, and that seems to suit the GOP fine..

In Minnesota, Democratic Governor Tim Walz won a second term over Republican Scott Jensen.  The DFL (Democratic-Farmer-Labor) party had a great night, retaining all of the state offices and both houses of the Legislature.

COVID-19 remains a threat to the health and safety of the world, though it seems we've gotten a better handle on it than we used to with vaccines and prevention.  It's vax deniers and others who don't think they should be wearing masks in public that's keeping the disease front and center with their lies and misinformation, resulting in millions of lives lost around the world. So it's still a good idea to be careful out there.

Queen Elizabeth II, who had been ruling Great Britain and its commonwealth for most of our lives (actually since 1952), died in September at age 96.  She left behind King Charles III, who had been waiting for most of his life to assume the throne until he finally did at 73, and a bickering family that's the source of many a tabloid headline or gossipy TV special.  Oh, and England has had three Prime Ministers in the span of a few weeks.  Seems the new King isn't the only thing that needs saving in England.

Brittney Griner is back in the United States after spending several months in a Russian prison, traded to the U.S. government for an arms dealer.  The pro basketball player made the mistake of trying to get her marijuana-based oil supplement past customs, for which she was accused of violating Russia's drug laws.  The fact that this incident just happened to coincide with Putin's invasion of Ukraine was no coincidence.  Griner might return to playing for the WNBA's Phoenix Mercury this summer--if she's up to it, but she and other players will certainly think twice before going abroad to play basketball, even if the countries they play in pay much better than the WNBA ever could.  That goes double if, like Griner, you're young, Black and LGTBQ.

Elon Musk is no longer the richest man in the world.  He spent some of his cash on Twitter, the social media giant he's currently running into the ground by making it less friendly to those who don't espouse his right ring views or believe in anything but facts.  Maybe Musk would be better off running an electric car company or giving rides in space to billionaires--which is what he had done before.  He's probably thinking that over right now.

We all learned about the term sportswashing during the past year.  It's when repressive governments with questionable human rights records host major sporting events aimed to make themselves look good in front of the world, while its propaganda guilts everyone watching on TV.  We've already had the Winter Olympics in China, soccer's World Cup in Qatar, and the Saudi Arabia -funded LIV pro golf tour.  There's been a backlash over sportswashing, but who's gonna argue with the billions of dollars these countries spend on state-of-the-art facilities to impress organizations--possibly done on the backs of immigrant labor?  Or the countries who try to get in the good political and economic graces of those who supply the oil or have nuclear weapons?  It's a slippery slope.

Besides all the victims of mass shootings, natural disasters and wars around the world, here's a not-so-complete list of those you may have heard of who died this year..  Cue Sarah McLaughlin's "I Will Remember You":

Peter Bogdanovich, Sidney Poitier, Bob Saget, Meat Loaf, Louie Anderson, William Hurt, Taylor Hawkins, Estelle Harris, Bobby Rydell, Gilbert Gottfried, Naomi Judd, Mickey Gilley, Vangelis, Ray Liotta, Mark Shields, James Caan, Claes Oldenburg, Paul Sorvino, Tony Dow, Olivia Newton-John, Anne Heche, Ramsey Lewis, Jean-Luc Godard, Coolio, Sacheen Littlefeather, Loretta Lynn, Angela Lansbury, Leslie Jordan, Jerry Lee Lewis, Gallagher, Irene Cara, Christine McVie, Kirstie Alley, Diane McBain, Ian Tyson, Mikhail Gorbachev, Bill Russell, Madeleine Albright, Ivana Trump, Vin Scully, Kathy Whitworth, Thom Bell, Franco Harris, Stuart Margolin, Curt Simmons, Mike Leach, Paul Silas, Nick Bolliteri, Gaylord Perry, John Y. Brown, Robert Clary, Fred Hickman, Ray Guy, Vince Dooley, Bruce Sutter, Art Laboe, Anita Kerr, Judy Tenuta, Bill Plante, Louise Fletcher, Maury Wills, Ken Starr, Bernard Shaw, Anne Garrels, Moon Landreau, Earnie Shavers, Barbara Ehrenreich, Len Dawson, Tom Weiskopf, Pete Carril, Nicholas Evans, Judith Durham, Lamont Dozier, David McCullough, Clu Gulager, Pat Carroll, Nichelle Nicholas, Mary Alice, Bob Rafelson, Larry Storch, Marlin Briscoe, Hugh McElhenny, Ken Bode, Jim Seals, Marion Barber III, Ronnie Hawkins, Roger Angell, Gino Cappelletti, Bob Lanier, Ron Galella, David Birney, Jim Hartz, Orrin Hatch, Guy Lafluer, Daryle Lamonica, Robert Morse, Liz Sheridan, Mike Bossy, Rayfield Wright, Nehemiah Persoff, Tommy Davis, Gene Shue, John Clayton, Jean Potvin, Timmy Thomas, Johnny Grier, Tim Considine, Alan Ladd Jr., Sally Kellerman, Emile Francis, Ian McDonald, P.J. O'Rourke, Ivan Reitman, Bill Fitch, Yvette Mimieux, Joe B. Hall, Clyde Bellecourt, Ronnie Spector, Don Maynard, Dwayne Hickman, Lani Guinier, Dan Reeves, Stephen Boss. Pele, Barbara Walters, Pope Benedict XVI.

Time to turn the page.  See you in 2023.

The Emmys: The More Things Change . . .

 This year's Primetime Emmys, which were held on Monday night instead of the usual Sunday, was mostly a repeat of the previous year with "Succession" winning for best drama and "Ted Lasso" best comedy.  Same went for some of the main acting awards, including Jason Sudeklis winning best actor in a comedy for "Lasso", and Zendeya getting a second nod for best actress in a drama for "Euphoria".

There were a few Emmys passed out in the prime time telecast for the newbies, however.  "The White Lotus" won for best limited series, as well as its stars Murray Bartlett (supporting actor) and Jennifer Coolidge (supporting actress). Lee Jung-jae became the first Asian man to win an Emmy, taking home a best dramatic actor award for "Squid Games".

Among the familiar faces picking up Emmys:  Michael Keaton (actor, limited series) for "Dopesick", Julie Garner (supporting actress, drama) for "Ozark", Sheryl Lee Ralph (supporting actress, comedy) for "Abbott Elementary", Amanda Seyfried (actress, limited series) for "The Dropout", and Jean Smart (actress, comedy) for "Hacks".

Other winners announced included Matthew Macfayden (supporting actor, drama) for "Succession", and Brett Goldstein (supporting actor, comedy) for "Ted Lasso",  The Governors' Award went to actress and activist Geena Davis.

Among other things:  

• Late night comedy shows "Saturday Night Live" and "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" won Emmys for the umphteenth year in a row.  Maybe they should take a cue from Oprah Winfrey (who opened the show) and Ellen DeGeneres (whose long-running talk show has been replaced by either local news or Kelly Clarkson in most markets).  Both of them pulled their shows from future nominations after winning so many times.
• The award for best reality competition went to "Lizzo's Watch Out for the Big Grrrls", which means morbidly obese women have replaced what we used to call drag queens (previous winner "RuPaul's Drag Race") as entertainment.  Quite a trade-off.
• "Abbott Elementary" was this year's Great Network Hope in a sea of cable and streaming offerings.  The ABC sitcom did win twice.  Once for Sheryl Lee Ralph, and a writing award for the show's creator Quinta Brunson.
• Kenan Thompson was just fine as Emmy host.  The producers were kind of overzealous in keeping the winners' speeches to 45 seconds.  And the opening number was the first that I can recall that needed a disclaimer for strobe lights.
• If you're not going to take the "In Memorium" segment seriously, with the pop singers and faraway camera pans, please take the list of those who died since the last awards telecast and show them on your website.
• NBC moved this year's Emmy telecast to Monday because Sunday night belongs to football.  Apparently, they forgot that ABC and ESPN were simulcasting the Broncos-Seahawks game at the same hour.  So much for blockbuster ratings.  Try Tuesday or Wednesday next time.

The 64th Grammys: Vegas, Baby!

 The 64th Recording Academy Grammys were moved from January in Los Angeles to April in Las Vegas because of the ongoing pandemic, but the show went on anyway.  This one went on without incident, unlike last week at the Oscars, because Kanye West was told to stay as far away from the MGM Grand Garden Arena as possible.  Much to the relief of Trevor Noah, who hosted the CBS telecast.

Song of the Year and Record of the Year went to Silk Sonic's "Leave The Door Open", a Bruno Mars-.Anderson Paak rendition of those 1970s-era soul groups that was introduced last year at the Grammys.

Jon Batiste, who's much better known as Stephen Colbert's TV bandleader, won five Grammys out of 11 nominations including Album of the Year for "We Are".  So that's also a win for host network CBS, right?

Olivia Rodrigo, who was expected to do much better with nominations for her album "Sour" and hit single "drivers license" ended up with three Grammys including Best New Artist.  Still not a bad evening.  It should also be noted that Billie Eilish, who has dominated the awards the last couple of years, came away with nothing this time despite seven nominations.

The In Memoriam segment got too cute when it doubled as tributes for drummer Taylor Hawkins of the Foo Fighters and composer Stephen Sondheim.  As four singers warbled through some of Sondheim's greatest hits, images floated by on the TV screen of all those important music figures who died during the past year, whether we could read their names or not.

After being turned down for the Oscar telecast, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy turned up on the Grammys to beg the West for more support for his war-torn country.  It was followed by the usually overexposed John Legend leading a group of singers and a poet of Ukrainian descent to pay tribute to their homeland that is currently fighting for its life.  Which is about as political as the Grammys got all night.

Louis CK, whose career has been in eclipse since allegations of sexual misconduct turned him into a pariah, won a Grammy for Best Comedy Album.  Canceled or not, the Recording Academy seems to now have a Bill Cosby/Woody Allen problem.

In three and a half hours, only a few awards were handed out during the telecast.  The rest of them were done earlier and was carried on the academy's website.  Still, in today's attention-deficit disorder times, three hours is an awful long time to wait between the musical act you want to see, the suspense of who won what, and the seemingly endless length of commercial and station breaks.  Sometimes it's just easier to announce the results in a one-hour TV special, or online.  But no.  That'll never happen.  Or would it?

The 94th Oscars: We Need To Talk About Will and Chris. Not Bruno.

 Before we go too much further, here were some of the winners at the 94th Academy Awards, which were held Sunday night in Los Angeles:

• Best Supporting Actress went to Ariana DuBose for "West Side Story", the very same award Rita Moreno won back in 1961.
• Best Supporting Actor went to Troy Kotsur for "CODA".
• Jane Campion was named Best Director for "The Power of the Dog".
• Best Actress went to Jessica Chastain for "The Eyes of Tammy Faye".
• And the Oscar for Best Picture went to "CODA", the first to be seen mainly on a streaming service (Apple TV+).
• "Dune" won ten craft awards, most of which were relegated to commercial breaks.
• There was a musical number from the animated film "Encanto", which included Megan Thee Stallion, called "We Don't Talk About Bruno".

Right now, we need to talk about what happened between Will Smith, Chris Rock and Jada Pinkett Smith.  Not Bruno.  Together, they turned the Oscars from another overlong snoozefest into a horror show that even Hollywood couldn't have scripted.

In his monologue prior to announcing the award for Best Documentary, Rock made a tasteless joke about Pinkett Smith's hair.  She has been living with alopecia, a hair loss disease that affects thousands of people per year in the U.S. alone. Will, her husband, took exception to the joke.  He confronted Rock onstage, slapped him, then returned to his seat shouting expletives.

You might say Will was trying to defend his woman, but that's not how it looked to those who watched the incident inside the Dolby Theater and on TV around the world.  In the olden days, a slap on the face with a velvet glove was often an invitation to a duel, which was settled with guns at the crack of dawn.  It has evolved into shootouts on the mean streets of Dodge City or Tombstone, or just about any American city today..  At least that's according to Hollywood.

A few minutes later, Smith was announced as the winner of the Best Actor Oscar for "King Richard"--his first.  He played Richard Williams, who taught his daughters Venus and Serena how to be tennis champions in a mostly unorthodox manner.  Smith used his acceptance speech to apologize to everyone except Rock for the incident, and to explain that Williams also did all he could to protect his daughters.

In the aftermath, it must be noted that Smith is one of the most powerful men in Hollywood and will likely survive this incident, even if it is now tainted.  Rock, who has hosted the Oscars before, will now have to think a little more before making edgy jokes at the expense of his targets.  And now standup comedians and other performers have to worry about idiots who get up on stage and harass them.

Today, Smith issued an apology to Rock and others on social media.  To date, Rock has not filed criminal charges against Smith.  And the Academy put up a statement denouncing violence, while deciding what to do about disciplining Smith.  It's not likely that they'll ask for their Best Actor Oscar back.

The movies are a place for escape and fantasy, even in troubled times like these.  What we didn't need was a dose of Reality TV.

UPDATE (4/9/22):  The Academy has banned Will Smith from attending the Oscars for the next ten years, which is kind of a moot point since Smith said he was going to resign from the Academy anyway.  Remember what we said about Smith being one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood? That'll certainly be put to the test going forward. 

China '22, Week 2: Beijing Olympics on Thin Ice

The Winter Olympics in Beijing ended Sunday with the usual bombast and blather about how sports promotes peace and world harmony.  Which would sound even better if these Games hadn't been held in a totalitarian country during a pandemic.

But there they were, athletes from around the world competing in empty stadiums, getting tested for Covid-19 and its variants, shuffling from venue to venue to living quarters and back, without so much as moral support from back home or being able to say what they really think about the situation they're in.

Here's the final medal count:     

                        Gold            Silver            Bronze            Total

Norway              16                8                      13                  37

ROC                    6                12                     14                  32

Germany            12               10                       5                  27

Canada                4                  8                      14                 26

USA                      8                10                      7                   25  

• Kamila Valieva, the teenaged figure skater from the Russian Olympic Committee who was cleared to compete in the women's finals in spite of using a banned substance that she claimed was her grandfather's heart medication, turned in such a terrible performance at the final free skate that her coaches were colder to her than an Arctic front from Siberia.  Two of her ROC teammates won gold and silver, but didn't seem too happy about it considering the circumstances.  Unless the powers in figure skating helps fix the doping crisis and raise the age of skaters, we shouldn't call this the "Women's" Figure Skating Championships.
• Oh yes.  Because of the situation involving Valieva, the other participants in the Team Skating competition are still waiting for their medals.
• The biggest name to come out of these Olympics was Eileen Gu, a freestyle skier from the United States who chose to compete for China, her mother's homeland.
• In the NHL-less men's hockey tournament, Finland won its first-ever gold medal over the favored ROC team 2-1.  The Canadians won another women's hockey gold medal over their only rivals in the United States 3-2.
• Snow fell on the slopes in China.  The natural stuff, not the man-made kind that created some problems for skiers.
• NBC drew more than 100 million viewers for the Super Bowl.  They'll be lucky to get anywhere near that with Olympics coverage on the network, Peacock, USA Network and various other sources.  A lot of it wasn't their fault with the 14-hour time difference, lack of familiar sports and personalities, and the fact that it was in China.  But the decision to do the coverage from studios in Connecticut instead of on site, while understandable because of China's Covid policies, took all the starch out of being there.  Then again, we've gotten used to that stuff the past couple of years.

The torch has been passed to Milan and Cortina in Italy for 2026.  Unless something changes, the Olympic movement will continue to be run by governments who can pay the freight, organizations who can pay the International Olympic Committee to look the other way, and sponsors and networks who shell out billions to see which eyeballs are attracted to what they're selling.

In the end, though, it's still about athletes who want to compete at their best.  That will never change.

 

China '22, Week 1: More Scandals, Less Snow.

 The Winter Olympics in Beijing continued on its dreary pace with restrictions sucking the life out of it.  And that's without China doing all it can to try and eradicate the COVID-19 virus and its Omicron variant from within its borders.  In other news from the week:

• Reacting to worldwide disgust over their alleged treatment of Uyghurs, the Chinese cynically used an Uyghur skier to carry the Olympic flame for the opening ceremonies.
• What looked like silos from an abandoned nuclear power plant (which the Chinese tell us aren't really) were hard to miss during the freestyle skiing competition.  If this were Springfield, USA (hometown of "The Simpsons") instead of Beijing, plant owner Montgomery Burns would be in his office rubbing his hands and saying "Excellent!".  Nonetheless, it looks weird.
• What snow there is, by the way, is 100 percent man-made.  Just like your local ski slope.
• The scandals keep coming.  Kamila Valieva, a 15-year old figure skater from Russia (known as the Russian Olympic Committee for these Games), is currently allowed to compete in spite of testing positive for a banned substance.  It's the reason why the final results for Team Figure Skating have been delayed, and why her place in the Women's Figure Skating competition is in doubt.

We need to talk about Mikaela Shiffrin, the heir apparent to now-retired Lindsey Vonn as America's alpine skiing queen.  Pegged to win several medals in Beijing, she flamed out in her first two races by missing early gates.  After the second slipup, NBC cameras caught Shiffrin rolled up in a ball of misery out of bounds for several minutes while other skiers whizzed past her.  The question became:  Are we witnessing the next Simone Biles, whose legendary withdrawal from several gymnastic events at the Tokyo Olympics, put athletes and mental health front and center?  Turns out, no. Shiffrin completed her Super G run the following day without incident and without medals.  We'll see what happens next.

The medal count as of 2/13/ 22 reads like this (from ESPN.com):

NORWAY  Nine gold, five silver, seven bronze= 21

ROC           Four gold, five silver, eight bronze=17

GERMANY  Eight gold, five silver, one bronze=14

AUSTRIA  Four gold, six silver, four bronze=14

CANADA   One gold, four silver, nine bronze=14

U.S.              Six gold, five silver, one bronze=12 (tied for sixth with Netherlands)

NBC is, predictably, getting hammered in the TV ratings.  But they don't seem to be too concerned about it, because the numbers on streaming service Peacock and social media are trending upwards so far.  So in the end, this may not be the most watched Olympics ever.  Instead, this might be the most viewed ever.  We shall see.

Another week to go.  Who knows, maybe a war might start.

The Winter Olympics: China Being China

 The Winter Olympic games are underway in Beijing, China, six months after the Summer Games ended belatedly in Tokyo, Japan.  Beijing is hosting its second Olympics this century (the last in 2008), and is now the first city to have hosted both versions.

The COVID-19 virus, which has since mutated from variant to variant and continues to sicken and kill millions of people around the world, is again affecting the conduct of these Olympics.  Just like in Tokyo, the athletes who compete here will face venues with no spectators save for invited guests, extensive testing and social distancing.  Those who violate the rules are likely to remain guests of China until long after these Games are over.

China being China, not only will the government be cracking down on COVID, but also on foreign and domestic journalists and dissidents who don't stick to the script when it comes to human rights abuses, uprisings in Hong Kong and other sensitive topics.  The United States is leading a diplomatic boycott of these Games for those reasons--that is, send the athletes but not government officials,  But since so much of the world's economy revolves around China, you can't afford to piss them off too much.

As athletes from Russia are competing under the name ROC (Russian Olympic Committee) as punishment for alleged doping violations, President Vladimir Putin is risking a world war with a possible invasion of Ukraine.  Adding to the pressure is President Joe Biden's decision to send American troops near the Ukrainian border as an attempt to get Putin to back off.  Oh, and both sides still have enough nuclear missiles to blow each other up.

The National Hockey League, who you would think had wanted to come to China for the exposure that country could provide just like other North American sports leagues have, has once again begged off sending its players to the Olympics.  Because they've had problems scheduling games and keeping rosters together due to COVID, as well as balking at China's restrictions, the NHL decided to use its Olympic break on rescheduled games just to get its season back on track.  Which leaves the men's hockey competition with rosters full of whoever they could get, and possibly affect the quality of play.

As you watch skiiers, figure skaters, speed skaters, curlers and others on whatever video device you're watching from, keep in mind that the announcers calling the action is in a studio half a world away.  NBC, which has held the American TV rights to the Olympics since forever (1988, actually), moved most of its announcing staff to its sports headquarters in Connecticut to call games off monitors because of China's COVID policies.  They also might be walking a tightrope when it comes to honest appraisals of how China and the International Olympic Committee is behaving during these Games, to put it mildly.

The IOC has had a longer history of cozying up to dictators and oppressive governments than a certain former (and future?) President of the United States.  Germany 1936.  Russia 1980 and 2014.  China 2008 and 2022.  Promoting international brotherhood (or whatever the term is now) through sports has given way to the universal language of money, and we are the poorer for it.  The next few Olympiads will be held in what are now considered democracies:  France in 2024, Italy in '26, the United States in '28, and Australia in '32.

Let's all see what happens in China for the next few weeks, whether they're behaving themselves or if they're just being China.