Mendocino County Today: Sunday 5/11/2025

A WEAK LATE SEASON STORM system will bring gusty south wind, light to moderate rain showers, and cold air across the area today through Monday. Moderate conditions will return through most of next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 42F with a mix of sky covers this Sunday morning on the coast. I expect a mix of clouds all day as a system approaches with rain later tonight & tomorrow morning. Clearing by Monday afternoon with a lovely forecast for the rest of next week.

ARNOLD FRED SCHNEITER

Arnold “Fred” Schneiter passed away at home on April 28, 2025 at the age of 87. He was born on November 24th , 1937, and raised in Yuba City, California. Upon graduation from high school, he joined the US Army, where he was stationed in Germany, supporting the nuclear weapons systems. Upon his return from service to the country, he started his career with American Telephone and Telegraph, finally retiring from the company after 33 years. He married JoAnn (nee Harris, also from Yuba City) in 1962 and had three boys, Russell, Jeffrey, and Timothy. The family moved to Ukiah in 1970, where he lived in the same house on Perkins Street for 55 years. Fred served on the Ukiah City Council and was elected for two terms as Mayor. He was always proud of his service to the Ukiah community. He is survived by a brother, Robert, JoAnn, Russell, Jeffrey, and Timothy. He was proceeded in death by his parents, Arnold and Marlene, and his sister Carol. At Fred’s request, no service is planned.

THE 40TH ANNUAL BOONTLING CLASSIC 5K FOOTRACE

Thank you all so much for attending the 40th Annual Boontling Classic 5k Footrace. The overall Female, Male, and Non-Binary winners for this year's event were Kalea Boudoures, with a time of 24:15; Anthony Cortes, with a time of 15:50; and Aster Arbanovella, with a time of 56:14.

Here are the winners of each age division.

It was a great success, with over 220 runners and walkers of all ages. We managed to raise approximately $2,500 for the AV Food Bank due to your participation and generous donations!

Thank you all for coming out and I hope to see you all next year!

Sincerely,

Zane Colfax, Race Director

Ages 0-9:

Zora Boudoures/Mateo Boudoures
Noelle Carter/Juju Foley
Rylee Page/Lawrence Stoner

Ages 10-13:

Kalea Boudoures/Joey O'Ferrall
Leela Foley/Kaimana Ibrahim
Skyler White/Fisher Page

Ages 14-17:

Kylee Vlasak/Nicholas Espinoza/Aster Arbanovella
Alexandra Ramos/Pele Esserman-Melville
Nicole Velasco/Nico Capri

Ages 18-29:

Alondra Mendoza/Harrison Frankl
Abi Stearn/Ramon Alverez
Madeline Sy/Phil Cliburn

Ages 30-39:

Laura Lancier/Anthony Cortes
Nicolet Houtz/Nicolas Knoebbler
Samantha Skowron/Oliver MacDonald

Ages 40-49:

Noor Dawood/Nat Corey-Moran
Sara Hill/Gregory Baer
Pamala Bacani/Enrique Velasco

Ages 50-59:

Peggy Prendergast/Liam Kidd
Rinat Klein/Patrick Pekin
Sara Esserman-Melville/Ronnie DeSoto

Ages 60-69:

Sue Mauren/Tim Riley
Yoriko Kishimoto/Fred Ehnow
Mary Bowers/Scott Smith

Ages 70-79:

Anttoinette Von Grone/Rodger Schwartz
Deborah Elufson/Anthony Flemming
Kathy James/William Ross

Ages 80+:

Nancy Riley/Wally Hesseltine
Lynn Hesseltine

ANDERSON VALLEY FIRE DEPARTMENT: Our EMS branch was out in full force today, providing first aid and medical care during the annual Boonville Beer Festival! Several EMT sudents also jumped in and volunteered to help out! Thanks for always being there and keeping everyone safe!

SAMUEL BAKER (Philo):

The Heart & Soul of Vinegar Ridge (Signal Ridge), Eileen Pronsolino, has passed on. As a newcomer to AV, my wife and I were welcomed by our next door neighbors when we bought our ranch in the early 1990s. Eileen and Angelo were not sure what to make of us “flatlanders,” but over the years we became fast friends and at times awestruck by this “salt of the earth” couple. We learned as we watched their husbandry of their land, and gaped open mouth as we watched Angelo (in his mid 80s), single handedly mount nine-foot redwood barn doors that swung with the touch of a finger.

Eileen was the source of my understanding of the Valley and its history. Her encyclopedic knowledge of the people and families floored me, and we spent hours enchanted by the stories and characters she has known.

Quiet as he was, Angelo was the most self-sufficient individual I have ever met, no doubt coming from living 100 years on an isolated mountain ranch.

Eileen was the people person; she knew everyone and was never at a loss for words. Her recall for events and families in the Valley amazed us.

Terry Sites and the reprint from from S. Sparks do justice to her life and memory, but knowing her for all these years has been a true gift, and I feel blessed.

We are so proud to have The Floodgate Store almost ready to open again! Good coffee, breakfast sandwiches, paninis, and more! Stop by when you see that open sign out one day soon! We are excited to be bringing life back to the Floodgate! If you have a fun story about this place, we would love to read it in the comments!

Butch & Buffy Paula, Philo

BILL KIMBERLIN:

My cousin Avon Ray died the day before yesterday. I lived with his family for my four years of high school in Anderson Valley.

Avon was a brilliant man with an exceptionally high IQ. He was the first person in my life to bring home several vinyl 45 records of Elvis Presley and Little Richard which would signal the explosive social change which was soon to cause a societal revolution in the thinking of my generation.

In our Anderson Valley high school being a band member always seemed to mark boys as pocket protecting nerds. We were the cool guys with our hot rods drag racing from the gravel pits to the Highway 253 turn off. Then the impact of this new music changed everything.

When I left the Valley anyone with long hair was a freak. When I returned to visit my aunt, if you didn’t have long hair you couldn’t get a girlfriend.

Avon’s grand father, Martin Ray was six years old when he came with his parents by covered wagon to the West in 1848 arriving in Virginia City in the spring of 1849. As a young man he worked in the St. Helena at a grist mill (a water powered mill grinding flour that is still there), near Calistoga.

On April 2, 1871 Martin Ray and Miss Alice Alvira Prather were married at the home of the bride’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Prather, in Anderson Valley. They made their home in Napa county, near Calistoga, for about two years, moving to Anderson Valley, where he lived continuously ever since.

To this union were born Avon’s father Avon Ray senior and his sister Pearl who married “Kid” Dutro who had been a prize fighter (thus the name “Kid”).

In 1935 Martin Ray passed away at his home at Ray’s Resort, at the age of 93 years.

Living on a sixty acre ranch that was also a summer resort made an impression on all of us. My cousin Avon probably had at least 16 cars before he could legally drive. There was a 1956 yellow Ford convertible, an Austin Healy sports car that was so low it scrapped it’s way down Ray’s Road, and finally a 442 Oldsmobile muscle car that today is a prize possession.

We were all a little wild and crazy back then and Avon was no exception. He once wrecked his car on the Cloverdale road and his mother asked him what happened and he said, “The bank jumped out and hit me.”

UKIAH SHELTER PET OF THE WEEK

If you're looking for a playful, happy puppy, JET is the dog for you! This adorable youngster loves toys of every shape, size and squeak capacity! Jet is very friendly and will warm your heart with his puppy kisses. He’s a smart boy and a quick study who will, with consistent training and lots of love, graduate Doggie Cum Loudy in the tricks & games department in no time; he’s already learned Sit, Down, and Shake with our volunteers. Jet is an affectionate boy and always up for a challenge. And he definitely enjoys lounging on the couch near his person. What’s not to love? Come meet this sweet pup today! Jet is a mixed breed dog (part Husky?), about 5 months old and 33-ish pounds.

For information about our services, programs, and events, visit: mendoanimalshelter.com

Join us the first Saturday of every month for our Meet the Dogs Adoption Event at the shelter.

For information about adoptions please call 707-467-6453.

Making a difference for homeless pets in Mendocino County, one day at a time!

LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS MEETING 5-20-2025 via Zoom.

State and local budget issues will be the focus of our May program, with discussion of the impact of expected revenue cuts to our county and city budgets. Revenue from the federal government this year is uncertain, making budgeting difficult for the state of California, our county, and our four cities. Details about the challenges facing these entities will be presented, with time for questions and feedback. A lively discussion is expected.

The meeting will be held via Zoom; find the link on our website: https://my.lwv.org/california/mendocino-county

Look under the calendar tab.

For questions or more information, call 707-937-4952.

THINK LONG-TERM

Editor:

After years of study and a multitude of efforts to resuscitate the Potter Valley Project, it is time for us to focus on implementing long-term solutions rather than trying to change the inevitable. As climate change continues to negatively impact our region’s water resources, we must take measures to improve our self-resiliency and prepare for times of shortage.

To prepare for drought, it’s crucial to start implementing solutions now. While building a more reliable wet-season diversion from the Eel River is a priority, our watershed must be able to put that to the most beneficial use. This means that we must actively work toward an array of measures that help increase groundwater recharge, recycled water and on-site storage options, while also reducing overall demands on the Russian River Watershed and increasing existing reservoir storage. Increasing real-time transparency and accountability of water use will also be key.

No matter what solutions are ultimately implemented, the crucial thing is that we begin implementing forward-looking solutions today instead of clinging to the past. This is a problem that we can solve together to ensure our community and the river have enough water.

Jaime Neary, Staff Attorney

Policy director and staff attorney, Russian Riverkeeper

Healdsburg

MOMS & MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS MONTH

by Mazie Malone

Happy Mother's Day, May the month that seems to be ironic in its celebration of Mothers and its dutiful recognition of Mental Health Awareness. There are many other observances for the month of May including Personal History and Better Speech and Language Month, we do not hear too much about the latter two, but the connection of moms, mental health, personal history and speech and language are worth acknowledging as a whole. Mothers like me, being moms to adult children with a Serious Mental Illness are so often the main source of support, physical, mental and emotional, the rock and the witness, unpaid undervalued heroines navigating enormous hurdles on behalf of their loved ones.

Our Mental Health is directly influenced by what our family members experience, however we are not afforded a kind hand or a listening ear to understand or care unless we are fortunate enough to make friends that are rowing in the same turbulent waters. The lifeboat, "the system" only makes room for 1, carried about in very choppy swells then they tip the boat & push the person out into the crashing waves thrashing about hoping they make it to shore without drowning. You are on your own, tough love, tough luck! Mothers standing in the sand watching in horror, all the while yelling, cheering, flailing their hands crazily hoping to be seen & heard so their kid can hone in and make it to shore safely.

We must validate the experience of families, let them on the lifeboat and recognize providing support is tantamount to effective Mental Health Care. Our histories that should remain in the past, can hinder our current reality. We often operate from that known space because its familiarity is comfortable. There is no need for us to feel scared and unsure because the game and outcome are fixed. We prefer to keep things as they are rather than try something new no matter the logical aspect of positive change. The most effective tool for cultivating understanding is speech and language, not a declaration that this month we will bring awareness to Mental Health but actual real conversations that are meaningful.

And what about the Mental Health of the community at large? Humans are interdependent creatures who need each other to survive and evolve. If we can acknowledge the level of street homelessness that is taking a toll on all community members and businesses

we are bringing a level of awareness to Mental Health. Yet it is not enough unless we act to provide the necessary accommodations for resiliency in Mental Health outcomes which will not be accomplished without treatment, housing & support on a continual basis.

For many people Mother's Day is a very difficult holiday, very emotional & bittersweet yet hopeful while also filled with sadness. I am glad I do not watch TV because all the commercials would make my ability to cope much worse. You see when an adult child is estranged this day kind of has you at the edge of your seat, expectant that it may finally be the day they decide to reach out. Now acknowledging you after years of abandonment sounds lovely but it is also frightening because you no longer know them, who are they? Then if they choose not to mend the relationship you are left continually afflicted with grief for a living person, no closure it leaves you empty and sad.

This is significant within the personal history aspect because abandonment runs in my family, my mother abandoned her 5 children, 2 of my brothers abandoned their siblings and my older son abandoned me and his brother. Sadly, there are probably more people in my long lineage that have done the same. So rather than follow suit this girl man's up, does not jump ship or abandon her post. If I had not been abandoned by my own mother I would not be able to write or speak with conviction about how as a society, we neglect the most in need, the most vulnerable people living on our streets. So, I suppose we could say that is a gift from my mom, my ability to stay with it regardless of the odds, thanks mom!

I hope that all moms are lovingly celebrated for their selfless contributions to their families on this Mother's Day 2025, and for those that are grieving I am with you, and I wish you peace and comfort.

Two working payphones spotted in Ukiah (mk)

CATCH OF THE DAY, Saturday, March

TIMOTHY DAVIS JR., 46, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, suspended license, county parole violation.

PETE GONZALES, 23, Ukiah. Domestic abuse, false imprisonment, county parole violation.

BRETT NORGARD, 35, Ukiah. Controlled substance with two or more priors, paraphernalia, probation revocation.

KAMARA PAGE, 36, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

THOMAS THORSON, 40, Nice/Ukiah. Carelessly starting a fire, probation violation, resisting.`

GONZALO VALDOVINO-SADAME, 28, Redwood Valley. DUI.

CASSANDRA WESTCOTT, 32, Willits. Vandalism.

SILAS YOUNG, 42, Willits. Carjacking, stolen vehicle.

CRAIG RECOMMENDS

An excellent film called O Mother Gaia: The World of Gary Snyder has been completed just in time for Gary's 95th birthday. The 100-minute film by Colin Still features extensive footage of Gary himself along with Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Peter Coyote, Jane Hirschfield, Carol Koda (his late wife), and Jack Shoemaker (his publisher).

You can view the film for free at this link https://vimeo.com/1080606289/9a0cc7f7ff any time before midnight this Sunday (May 11). After that time it will presumably be available only through ordinary film distribution. I encourage you to see it now while you have a chance.

Craig Louis Stehr, craiglouisstehr@gmail.com

CHRIS SKYHAWK:

Hey yo, y’all,

The management of acceptable discourse is ongoing. I just got this “fact check” from Facebook. Guess I will have to let leftie luminaries like Medea Benjamin, Chris Hedges, Dennis Kucinich, Jeffrey Sachs, and many others know they are lying to us. Welcome to our Orwellian world!

A READER WRITES: I have a prime documentary recommendation: ‘Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb.’ (2022) It’s about the relationship between LBJ biographer Robert Caro and his Editor, Mr. Gottlieb. From Sony Pictures.

MITCH CLOGG:

Summer In The City

Painful that the world identifies nations with their leaders, that, inevitably, the wretchedness of the Trump/MAGA phenomenon is treated as America's present character. Painful that there's disdain and disgust where there used to be affection, honor, admiration and gratitude.

One of the things I devoutly looked forward to, last year, was the U.S.'s demonstration to the world of how Democracy deals with assholes. We suffered the embarrassment of his first term, gritting our teeth, and anticipating his emphatic rejection at the polls.

As it is, Americans traveling abroad will find way less welcome than ever.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if the Trump traumas resulted in a reassessment of values, purpose, and so on? Capitalism and the materialism it fosters is coming under scrutiny in promising ways, but discussions of more progressive and ethical governance are risky under the fuhrer-wannabe and his nazi party.

"Staycation" is, to me, a depressing word. Pauper that I chronically am, it's my usual choice, but I've always enjoyed traveling vicariously. I ask a million questions of my traveling friends. Before everybody had cellphones with cameras built in, they'd end the summer with sheaves of pictures they took. They'd say, "I don't want to bore you with a bunch of pictures", and I'd say, "NO! Show me! Travel pictures don't bore me!"

I miss the 20th century.

GEORGE LUNDBERG MD, age 93, “If you are older and you don't hurt somewhere when you get up in the morning, you may already be dead. Check your pulse.”

SUNDAY IS MOTHER’S DAY. THE REST OF MAY IS PURE HELL FOR MOMS LIKE ME

by Sara Libby

Parenting is already a full-time job, and as the school year draws to a close, a gauntlet of add-ons suddenly arrives requiring even more money, time and careful planning. (Ray Kachatorian/Getty Images)

As a mom to a first-grader, I find the timing of Mother’s Day to be more than a bit ironic — because the holiday celebrates us at the moment when we’re stretched the thinnest.

Parenting when you have a full-time job is already a grueling slog of after-school childcare, meal prepping and extracurriculars.

But in May, things get truly nuts.

As the school year draws to a close, a gauntlet of add-ons suddenly arrives requiring even more money, time and careful planning.

As I was typing out notes for this column, I got an email from the “room parent” of my son’s class.

It was a solicitation for donations and volunteers for the school’s annual camp-out, a tradition in which families — for some reason — lug camping supplies to the center of the school track to watch an outdoor movie, then sleep in tents, feet from their neighbors.

It’s like a more wholesome and less appealing Coachella.

Yes, it fosters a sense of community and offers a low-cost entertainment option. But it also leeches away at the precious little downtime I have. Friday nights are one of the few truly unstructured moments in my family’s week. A camping trip — even if it’s only eight blocks down the road — means I have to organize, pack and haul everyone back to the school a few hours after we left it.

And this was just the latest of what has become a daily missive requesting supplies, funds and in-person attendance at special school events.

There is Teacher Appreciation Week; it requires homemade cards (don’t forget the support staff!) and volunteer baristas for the teacher’s lounge coffee bar. And that’s just Monday.

There is Spirit Week, a collection of arbitrarily assigned dress-up days that assumes you have an extensive closet of colors and costumes (Thursday is “Dress Like You’re 100 Years Old Day”).

At best, these require extra shopping and the gymnastics of cajoling your child to do what’s essentially a homework assignment. If you’re laughably noncreative like me, they entail hours of trolling Pinterest for ideas.

Dress-up days are now so pervasive that Amazon sells kits specifically for children to play 100-year-olds; for $24.99, you can overnight a mini cane, bow tie, suspenders and graying stick-on beard and eyebrows right to your door.

Then there are the field trips; they require multiple permission slips, 14 snacks per child and the incredibly ambitious assumption that your 7-year-old will successfully apply their own sunscreen.

There is an end-of-year class party, for which 11 veggie trays and six 50-pound bags of rice are needed for the sock bunny craft project. This is separate, of course, from the after-school care program’s end-of-year party, which has its own requirements.

And there are elaborate end-of-year thank-you gifts for each teacher (yes, this happens on the heels of Teacher Appreciation Week).

This means rushed trips between work meetings for food and gifts while fielding emails from my phone — all while I debate whether my son’s occupational therapist would prefer the “California sunset” or “Big Sur coastline” scented candle.

To round things out, the final week of May has just two and a half instructional days; you’re on your own for childcare the rest of the time. Hopefully, you didn’t burn too much vacation time chaperoning that field trip!

Of course, this onslaught of school activities impacts men who are caregivers, too. But studies show that mothers tend to bear more of their household’s mental burden than fathers. Keeping track of all those teacher gifts and snack sign-ups requires significant planning and organization.

“Cognitive household labor represents a form of invisible and often unacknowledged domestic work,” USC researchers wrote in a study published last year.

That study found that mothers are responsible for the lion’s share of cognitive household labor and the majority of physical household labor compared with their partners.

And for some, Mother’s Day itself can become a chore in and of itself.

Well-meaning attempts to celebrate us often mean we are inadvertently stuck with the logistics of planning that brunch reservation or the massage appointment we were gifted. Others feel torn between their own celebration and ensuring that their mom and their partner’s mom feel appreciated, too.

It’s an interesting time as a mom, then, to experience President Donald Trump’s recent obsession with “fertilization,” and his publicly floating the idea of incentives that could persuade women to have more children. Among the lures reportedly being considered are a whopping $5,000 “bonus” or a motherhood medal (which, to be fair, would probably be useful on Dress Like an Olympian Day).

If more babies are what they’re after, they should perhaps spend a week in May — even a day — in a mother’s shoes as she navigates school drop-off while juggling four bouquets for various educators, six trays of strawberries for the class, returns hours later for a midday school picnic and back again when the school day ends.

It would undoubtedly yield more constructive ideas: childcare options that don’t cost more than college tuition, a school day that aligns with parents’ working hours, guaranteed abortion care and paid family leave.

Moreover, part of the reason moms like me are taking on so much of this work is that schools are hemorrhaging resources and need to rely on an army of unpaid parent volunteers. So, it’s unclear how wiping the Department of Education off the map, as Trump has repeatedly said he intends to do, would improve anyone’s experience.

As far as Mother’s Day goes, I am hoping to relax and make as few decisions as possible. I might crack open a bottle of wine. Because I’ve earned it, but also because the school recycling drive starts on Monday.

(Sara Libby previously served as managing editor of Voice of San Diego, where she focused on government accountability, public records access and police misconduct. She also worked as an associate editor at Talking Points Memo, where she led coverage of the 2012 presidential election, and as deputy politics editor at Politico. She is a graduate of the USC Annenberg School of Journalism.)

I WORKED IN THIS CLUB in Mansfield, Ohio, called the Ringside. The stage was just like a boxing ring with the four posts, the ropes and everything.

One of my younger fans made the mistake of heaving a frozen pie at me before it defrosted. It caught me in the neck and I dropped like a pile of bricks.

If a man falls down and gets up, it's funny. If he falls down and doesn't get up it's not funny.

— Soupy Sales

CHP'S NEW WEAPON AGAINST BAY AREA SPEEDING? SUVs YOU WON'T SEE COMING.

by Silas Valentino

The traditional black-and-white law enforcement patrol fleet is easily detectable, but in an attempt to better observe and report reckless driving, California Highway Patrol recently unveiled 100 new patrol vehicles across the state that are designed to blend in with traffic on Bay Area highways.

CHP officers already patrol highways in unmarked cars, but the new Dodge Durangos are designed to be an intermediate step between undercover car and obvious highway patrol vehicle. The low-profile vehicles are each in a single color — black, white or the Dodge custom Destroyer Gray exterior paint — and aside from the department’s logo on the car’s side and antennas sticking up from the roof, the specially marked patrol vehicles look like any others on the road.

That is, until a CHP officer activates the red and blue lights that are tucked into the Durango’s front windshield and grille, as opposed to sitting on the car’s roof. The design is geared to appear as if the driver is just another parent scooting off to soccer practice, so you wouldn’t adjust your speed if you were flying by the SUV while doing 110 mph.

Sgt. Andrew Barclay with CHP’s Golden Gate Division told SFGATE that there are Durangos already deployed in the Bay Area — San Jose, Contra Costa County and Hayward each have one — with at least one more arriving at the San Francisco station in the next month. He said the SUVs have a Hemi V-8 engine and were built differently from a standard Durango to enhance officer pursuit, such as by adjusting the brake suspension. A manager at a local Dodge dealership told SFGATE that families typically purchase the Durango model since it can fit up to seven passengers.

The 100 Durangos are not outright replacing the CHP fleet, Barclay said, and are distributed across the state to crack down on what the department called “‘video game-styled’ driving” in a news release May 8. This includes “lane weaving, triple-digit speeds and road rage.”

CHP officers already patrol Bay Area highways in unmarked cars, but the new Dodge Durangos are designed to be an intermediate step between undercover car and obvious highway patrol vehicle.

Barclay explained that the department pursued these designs because CHP officers are aware that California drivers adjust their behaviors anytime an officer passes them by on the highway.

“When I’m in a black-and-white patrol car, it’s like a scene in a movie: Everything is perfect. People drive the speed limit, hands are 10 and 2 on the steering wheel and no one is on their phone,” Barclay said. “We’re not so naive to believe that when we leave or take an exit, everyone’s driving behavior will remain that way. We know there are people who will resume their reckless driving behaviors once we’re gone.”

It may seem strange that CHP has gone on a full media tour to promote a new concealed law enforcement tool, but Barclay said the department is just trying to warn drivers ahead of time in order to prevent reckless behavior.

“We’re doing everything we can to let the public know these vehicles are out there,” he said. “This isn’t a quiet rollout — we’re telling everyone in California: These are out there.”

(SFGate.com)

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

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WARRIORS' DEFENSE FALTERS LATE in Game 3 as Timberwolves take 2-1 lead

by Sam Gordon

Draymond Green (23) and Jonathan Kuminga (00) reacts to a foul call while guarding Anthony Edwards (5) in the first half as the Golden State Warriors played the Minnesota Timberwolves in Game 3 of the Conference Semifinals of the NBA Playoffs at Chase Center in San Francisco., on Saturday, May 10, 2025. (Carlos Avila Gonzalez/S.F. Chronicle)

The Golden State Warriors had the NBA’s top defense after Jimmy Butler debuted and head coach Steve Kerr knows they need it to beat the Minnesota Timberwolves without Stephen Curry.

Matter of fact, he said it pregame Saturday before Game 3.

“We have to win this game with our defense.”

Almost.

With Curry clad in a gray sweatsuit as he cheered from the bench with a strained left hamstring, the Warriors stifled the Timberwolves for three-plus quarters at Chase Center in their best-of-seven Western Conference semifinal series. But Anthony Edwards and Julius Randle found their footing in the second half for Minnesota to overcome a fourth-quarter deficit and drive Golden State to a 102-97 defeat in Game 3.

Game 4 is Monday at Chase Center and the Warriors are down 2-1 in the series.

Butler and Jonathan Kuminga powered the Warriors offensively with a diet of forceful drives to the basket and measured jumpers attempted in rhythm. Butler had 33 points, seven rebounds and seven assists, hunting and exploiting mismatches with ball screens to outwit and overpower smaller defenders. Kuminga came off the bench to knife his way through the lane for a playoff career-high 30 points, six rebounds and three assists.

Edwards, a bouncy, skillful guard who led the league in triples this season, scored 28 points in the second half to finish with a game-high 36. He bludgeoned the basket in the second half and bent Golden State alongside Randle, who had 24 points, 10 rebounds and 12 assists for Minnesota.

The Warriors led 42-40 at halftime, forcing 21 turnovers for 13 points.

Draymond Green played 29 minutes, beleaguered by fouls before fouling out. When Green was on the court, the lane was muddied. When he was on the bench, a pathway opened toward the basket that Edwards and Randle attacked.

“Obviously he’s one of the top defenders in the world. For sure the best defender on this squad,” Butler said. “When he’s out, it’s just different. You don’t got nobody back there that’s quarterbacking the way he does it, that can switch everything and that gets every loose ball and rebounds.”

The Warriors allowed a league-low 109 points per 100 possessions (110.7 in the playoffs) after Butler’s debut and used their defense, according to Kerr, to beat the Houston Rockets in the first round. With Green as their anchor beside Butler, as savvy a defender as he is a scorer, they clogged the lane and pressed the perimeter, betting the Rockets couldn’t beat them from deep.

A similar script helped Golden State beat Minnesota in Game 1 at Target Center mostly without Curry, who strained his hamstring in the second quarter of a 99-88 win in which the Timberwolves shot 5 of 29 from 3-point range.

An experimental Game 2 blowout loss – in which 14 Warriors played in the first half, testing combinations – preceded another strong defensive showing.

Kuminga and Gary Payton II bothered Edwards for 3-of-12 first-half shooting as Green protected the paint in help. Butler and Kuminga carried Golden State’s offense to galvanize another crowd cloaked in yellow. The Warriors closed the first half with a 13-1 run over the last 6:30.

“They made the game ugly,” Minnesota head coach Chris Finch said. “They did a great job of just being super physical and trying to … take it into the mud.”

Golden State was up 53-50 when Green and Randle collided to the paint as the ladder was driving toward the basket, drawing a blocking foul from crew chief Scott Foster. The Warriors unsuccessfully challenged the call – a bang-bang play as Randle used his forearm. Kerr said “it looked like Randle went through his chest … but obviously we didn’t get the call, and that’s the part of the game.”

Green went to the bench for 7:48. Edwards and Randle went to the rim.

A 73-69 third-quarter lead for Golden State was 82-77 with 8:16 to play. A 9-0 run for Minnesota coincided with Green’s fifth and sixth fouls, his sixth occurring – while contesting Jaden McDaniels (15 points) at the basket – with 4:38 to play.

Said Buddy Hield after scoring 14 and converting three third-quarter triples: “That’s a tough call. I feel like everything didn’t go our way tonight that we thought would go our way. There was an offensive foul. I just don’t understand the rules. … We don’t want excuses. We don’t want nobody to feel sorry for us but (nothing) went (Green’s) way today.”

The Warriors were outscored 33-24 in the fourth quarter and the final 4:48 by three (Kuminga made a triple with 5.3 seconds to play) without Green, who had two points, two rebounds, four assists, two steals and five turnovers in 29 minutes. Butler played 43 minutes and missed six of seven fourth-quarter shots as Edwards attacked for 13 fourth-quarter points.

Randle, a bruising, facilitating forward added five assists in the final frame.

Kerr lauded Golden State’s team defense, active, connective and cohesive again, but “we couldn’t quite contain” Randle and Edwards “especially in the fourth, and that was the difference.”

So was the 44-36 rebounding disadvantage keyed by Timberwolves big man Rudy Gobert, who had 13 – including four offensive boards en route to 26 second-chance points for Minnesota.

Still, the Warriors remain optimistic about their chances of evening the series.

“We’re going to win this series with defense. We’re not going to beat them in a skill game” so long as Curry’s out, Kerr said, “We have to get stops to win the series. Without Steph, obviously, we’re a totally different team. If we can get stops and run, create some of our offense with our defense, that’s part of the formula.”

(sfchronicle.com)

GIANTS HELD TO ONE RUN AGAIN AS TWINS PUSH THEIR WIN STREAK TO SEVEN

by Susan Slusser

San Francisco Giants' Wilmer Flores (41) strikes out swinging during the fifth inning of a baseball game against the Minnesota Twins Saturday, May 10, 2025, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt)

MINNEAPOLIS — For much of the first quarter of the season, the San Francisco Giants have had some dead spots in the lineup. In the first two games against the Twins, it’s pretty much everyone.

Manager Bob Melvin expressed his displeasure with the offensive effort Friday. Saturday was more of the same, but against Joe Ryan — a better pitcher who was battling a stomach bug and who appeared to flag in his later innings. The Giants had just four hits, and, for the second night in a row, zero walks. They lost 2-1, the lone run coming on a Heliot Ramos homer.

The Giants had a shot to tie it up in the eighth when Ramos doubled (his third hit of the game) and went to third on LaMonte Wade Jr.’s flyball to center — but catcher Christian Vázquez picked him off, Royce Lewis darting in behind Ramos to put down the tag.

“That was the play of the game right there,” Ramos said, saying that Patrick Bailey’s subsequent flyball would have scored him “and we would have been in extra innings right now.”

Ramos said he knows Vázquez from Puerto Rico, “and I know the type of catcher he is, he loves doing stuff like that. He’s made a career of doing that and I was just focused on trying to go on contact. At the end of the day, I do feel bad about it, because it was because of me that we lost that game for sure.”

The Giants wouldn’t have been in it at all without Ramos, of course, and Melvin didn’t blame Ramos for getting caught by the backpick. “Look, he’s going on contact to start,” Melvin said. “He’s trying to get down the line when it crosses the plate and try to get back; the guy made a hell of a throw.”

Christian Koss bunted for a hit to open the ninth, but Mike Yastrzemski hit a sharp comeback to closer Jhoan Duran to start a double play. Willy Adames struck out to end the game, the ninth K by the Giants.

In the first two games at Target Field, the Giants have seven hits, no walks and they’ve struck out 17 times.

Even Jung Hoo Lee, who’d been something of a lone constant for the Giants’ attack, has gone cold. He’s 0-for-12 in a three-game hitless funk.

Ryan, who is from San Anselmo, allowed two hits, a run and struck out seven and lowered his ERA to 2.84 to help extend Minnesota’s win streak to seven and getting the team to .500 (20-20).

The Twins’ hitting star Saturday is also from the Bay Area. Trevor Larnach, who bashed a two-run homer on the first pitch he got from Logan Webb in the third, is from Pleasant Hill.

“One swing of the bat cost us the game today, so it comes down to the little things,” Melvin said. “We had a man on third and less than two outs, we got picked off. But again, there’s some variables involved with that.”

Webb was terrific apart from that sweeper, which he said was in the wrong location for Larnach, and the walk that put a man on for the Twins’ DH. That was his only walk of the evening, and he thought he’d struck out Vázquez, he just didn’t get the high strike call, something of a running theme this year. “I thought I got him on the 3-2 pitch,” Webb said. “Maybe that carried over to the next couple of at-bats. You can’t let that happen.”

He also had one superb play made behind him, in his final inning, when Yastrzemski threw out Willi Castro at second on a line drive to right. “We just get used to that now,” Webb said.

Webb struck out nine, using five pitches well and getting 28 called strikes. Twins manager Rocco Baldelli did not care for some of those calls, and he was ejected in the sixth inning in the middle of Carlos Correa’s inning-ending strikeout.

Webb’s made nine starts and has allowed no more than two runs in six of them, and he’s gone six or more innings six times.

With the Giants’ offense flailing, Jerar Encarnacion’s expected May 23 return becomes all the more intriguing. Encarnacion, in his first rehab game with Triple-A Sacramento on Saturday, was in the lineup at first base and had hits in his first two at-bats, including a first-inning RBI double. Melvin said when he rejoins the Giants, Encarnacion is likely to get much of his playing time at first base. Wilmer Flores is holding down the DH spot well and the Giants like the fact the spot seems to be helping Flores stay healthy.

Encarnacion had been projected for DH at-bats, and with none of the Giants’ first basemen faring well, he could wind up there full time or nearly so. Giants first basemen entered the game batting .169, second to last in the majors and with one homer, the fewest in the majors. Encarnacion is likely to take David Villar’s spot on the roster, both are right-handed hitters. Left-handed first baseman Wade is batting .150 and he made an error Saturday.

The team might have misjudged Encarnacion’s return time a bit — he was placed on the 60-day IL April 19 in order to get Villar on the roster when Casey Schmitt strained an oblique muscle, but he might not have needed nearly two full weeks of games to get ready. Now, they even have an extra 40-man roster spot after designating reliever Lou Trivino for assignment. Trivino signed a minor-league deal with the Dodgers on Saturday.

The Giants have made 20 errors over the past 24 games — tied with the White Sox for the most in the majors in that span — after making only three in the first 16 game.

CONGRESSMAN JARED HUFFMAN:

On Tuesday, Ranking Member Jared Huffman led House Natural Resources Committee Democrats to reject House Republicans’ scorched-earth plan in the Committee’s portion of the Republican reconciliation package. Their bill will sell off our lands, waters, and wildlife to fund tax cuts for billionaires and promote their extreme partisan agenda. While House Republicans remained silent at the markup, Huffman, alongside his Democratic colleagues, presented a unified front to protect our communities, the American taxpayer, and our most cherished places.

“Republicans just rammed the most extreme, anti-environment legislation in American history through the Natural Resources Committee. It’s a billionaires-first, Americans-last giveaway to benefit Big Oil and polluters,” said Ranking Member Huffman. “It guts clean air and water protections, slashes funding for our national parks, and sells off, auctions off, and even allows for giving away our public lands to special interests. For the first time, Americans who simply want their voices heard on Big Oil projects on federal land will be slapped with fees for daring to protest. House Republicans not only voted in lock-step for this cartoonishly extreme bill, they refused to participate in any public debate or discussion about it. I’m sure they had plenty of discussion with their corporate polluter puppet masters, but in the only public hearing before this bill goes to the House Floor, they refused to even discuss it. The American people deserve better policy and process than what they’re getting from this GOP Congress. I’m proud that Democrats showed up and fully engaged in debating and challenging this terrible bill. We fought back. And we’ll keep fighting for Americans’ basic freedoms, which include clean air, safe water, healthy communities, and a livable planet for future generations.”

Ranking Member Huffman addresses Republicans’ betrayal to our environment and the American people

Republicans had the opportunity to support common sense safeguards and improve the legislation, but they instead rejected multiple Democratic amendments, including:

• Ranking Member Huffman’s amendments (#20 and #35) protecting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Boundary Waters.
• Ranking Member Huffman’s amendment (#247) striking the section creating a “pay-to-play” process for NEPA.
• Ranking Member Huffman’s amendment (#36) striking out all provisions parallel to Project 2025
• Ranking Member Huffman’s amendment (#105) redirecting funds to support international conservation
• Ranking Member Huffman’s amendment (#39) preventing offshore oil and gas leasing in the Gulf of Mexico
• Ranking Member Huffman’s amendment (#102) prohibiting funds from being used to procure seafood originating or processed in countries identified for failure to address illegal, unreported, or unregulated fishing, bycatch of marine wildlife, or shark management.
• Ranking Member Huffman’s amendment (#197) requiring tribal consultation before approving Ambler Road.
• Ranking Member Huffman’s amendment (#106) blocking the bill from go into effect until the Office of Inspector General submits a report on Elon Musk’s conflict of interest.

A full list of amendments offered by Committee Democrats and blocked by Republicans can be found here

Ranking Member Huffman spent the entire reconciliation markup holding Republicans accountable for their anti-environment agenda, proposing alternative legislative action to improve our public lands, and leading debate to address the issues impacting the American people on the ground. The Republicans, on the other hand, stayed quiet during the reconciliation markup – silently promoting extensions of Project 2025 while doing nothing to help the communities that will be impacted by these reckless policies.

House Republicans are squandering Americans’ money, health, and safety to pad polluters’ pockets. Specifically, this bill:

Instantly boosts big oil and gas company profits by letting them drill and frack at bargain-basement prices while robbing taxpayers blind.
Puts polluters before people by letting the wealthy companies pay for legal immunity for inadequate environmental reviews and slapping Americans with exorbitant fees to protest oil and gas pollution.
Slashes funding for critical and popular public services like NOAA’s coastal restoration and resilience efforts and the National Parks workforce, making it harder for Americans to protect their communities from natural hazards and visit our nation’s most scenic and inspiring places.
Locks up 4 million acres for unprofitable coal mining – more land than the entire state of Connecticut – taking our energy policy back to the 19th century.
Mandates dirty mining and drilling deals that will create toxic disasters in our nation’s most pristine lands and waters, permanently polluting places like the Boundary Waters and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Crushes clean energy development by jacking up fees for wind and solar while slashing fees for oil and coal.
Wipes out protections for endangered species, including dooming the planet’s most endangered whale to extinction by waiving all sensible safeguards for offshore oil and gas operations.
Sells off public lands to pay for handouts to big oil and tax cuts for billionaires – a surprise, late-night amendment paves the way for a fire sale of public lands.

ON LINE COMMENT:

Paper bag Huffer is an attorney from Marin County. A county that is so wealthy, it is the exact opposite of one of the poorest, Humboldt. So who do you think Huffer represents? It’s more than obvious it ain’t Humboldt since he wants to stuff windmills up our butts up here after his real constituents down there told him hell NO, and, if he even tried, he would be recalled and fired.

You do realize the Golden Gate Potato patch area is one of the windiest locations on the West Coast, right? There goes that excuse. You do realize they already have toxic waste dumps for Ports down there, and the infrastructure for more toxic windmill building is already in place, right? There goes that excuse. You do realize many species of cetaceans are endangered, and losing just one to an offshore wind farm scheme is unacceptable, right? There goes that excuse, You do realize not one job beyond pumping gas will ever go to a Humboldt resident in relation to the failed wind farm notion as the Cement people unions from down south will never let that happen, right? The Italians don’t like just anyone messing with their ports if you get my drift. There goes that excuse. Now if you want the Italians controlling Humboldt Bay, I am all for that since I’m mostly Italian, and I welcome fellow gnocchi eaters but…..it looks like there are no more excuses left for offshore windmills anywhere, ever again. Ban offshore windmills foreva, protect Cetaceans and the Pacific Fly way from failed schemes and diabolical dumbazz notions.

“The city had beat the pants off me. Whatever it required to get ahead, I didn’t have it. I didn’t leave the city in disgust—I left it with the respect plain, unadulterated fear gives. New York is an ugly city, a dirty city. Its climate is a scandal, its politics are used to frighten children, its traffic is madness, its competition is murderous. But there is one thing about it—once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough. All of everything is concentrated here, population, theater, art, writing, publishing, importing, business, murder, mugging, luxury, poverty. It is all of everything. It goes all right. It is tireless and its air is charged with energy.’’

— John Steinbeck

TAIBBI & KIRN & THE POPE

Walter Kirn: See, Matt, the other night, you referred to yourself as an ex-Catholic, and I said, no, Matt, there are no ex-Catholics and you just proved it. You have transferred your smoke watching papal anxiety to the NFL draft.

Matt Taibbi: It’s so true.

Walter Kirn: Just as the Catholic Church itself repurposed various goddesses and so on and other people to create saints. So nothing new under the sun here.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah. It’s funny, I think having grown up for a significant portion of my life as a Catholic, there is a guilt/self-loathing factor that I’ve noticed is absent in people of other faiths, particularly Protestant faiths.

Walter Kirn: Yeah. The problem with being Protestant from Germanic background is the Nietzschean cruelty that replaces that guilt. In other words, your kind of default setting isn’t like, wow, I did that, but can I just defy and maybe dominate and eliminate that person? No, it’s not worth it, your Catholic wife tells you.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah. Catholicism, I’m just not sure about the utility of it as a mechanism of psychological conquest or-

Walter Kirn: Well, how can we not joke? I mean, I should tell our audience that I’ve seriously considered at times converting to Catholicism.

Matt Taibbi: Really?

Walter Kirn: Yeah, I’m not kidding. So for all my levity, I’ve looked deeply into it, and I feel like now a taco bowl engagement or something. I love Catholics. They have best incense. But in any case, how can you not as an observer of human life just find this endlessly entertaining and in a weirdly grimly fascinating. Getting people to look at the roof of a building for hours and hours in the weather outside is one of the greatest achievements of human something. Spirituality, hypnotism, something.

Matt Taibbi: And look, people go absolutely bananas for the Pope. I remember the Pope came to Boston when I was a kid, and it’s funny though. There was recently an HBO documentary about the Celtics, and they were comparing, because the two events were relatively contemporaneous, the arrival of Larry Bird to the Pope, and the general consensus is that the Pope won in Boston, but narrowly. People went bananas. I still remember that moment.

Walter Kirn: People can correct me, but there is a great play by the playwright, John Guare, John Guare, I believe it’s called ‘House of Blue Leaves,’ about the visit of the Pope to New York and how it disturbs life. And what I love about popes is that, Are they necessarily good or are they just powerful? It’s never clear. I know they’re supposed to be great authorities on God’s word, but do they have to be good themselves? Because popes that are interesting from history…

'First I was a mucker, that's the toughest job of all, shoveling out the ore. The pay was about $1.50 or $2.00 a day. After a while it got so I'd go away for three or four months on a job. I'd try to bring home $100 to my mother if I could. That was when I really started fighting. I'd always boxed around home because one of my brothers, Bernard, was a fighter. He also fought under the name Jack Dempsey.

In the mining camps on a Saturday night they'd have a fight. Some new fellow would drift in, like me. and I'd fight the local champ, bare fists. Maybe he'd be a big fat guy who couldn't fight much. I knew enough to stay away long enough to get the other fellow tired. Then I'd let him have it. We used to fight until one guy got knocked out or quit. You were no good if you quit. They'd take up a collection and maybe you'd get $1.75 or $2 or $3, in pennies, nickels and dimes. It was found money, an extra dollar on the side. I was only a 135-pounder then.

The secret of boxing is very simple - hit the other guy and don't get hit yourself. Anybody - even a baby - can punch if they don't get hit back.'

— Jack Dempsey

DAVID SIROTA: “There’s not a single Democratic Party official, powerbroker, elite, pundit, or politician who has faced any negative political, financial, or social status consequence from their participation in the decisions that resulted in their party losing two elections to Donald Trump.”

FLORIDA DAD REVEALS UTTERLY DISGUSTING COST OF DAY AT DISNEY WORLD FOR FAMILY OF FOUR

by Alyssa Guzman

A Florida father-of-three was utterly disgusted at the $1,400 he had to pay to take his family of four on a “bargain” day out to Walt Disney World.

Craig Stowell took his three kids and his wife to the self-proclaimed “Happiest Place on Earth” in Orlando while family was in town visiting them, but he quickly found out just how deep the one-day trip was going to hit his pocket.

“It started with the ticket purchase, and then it ran right into the parking, and then it just was like a cash cow for the rest of the day,” the small business owner told Fox & Friends.

By the end of the day, the father spent $1,394.91 on the outing, with the excruciating outlay documented by Stowell on his Instagram.

He deliberately shunned pricy extras that can get people on the most popular rides more quickly, to try and get an accurate reflection of how much the cheapest day possible at Disney would cost.

Stowell broke down the cost in a social media video, saying it cost him $30 to park, $974 for tickets — including the Florida resident discount — $145.64 on snacks and drinks, and an expensive $245.27 dinner.

They opted out of the $35-per-person Lightning Pass, as it would have only allowed them to skip the line for three rides.

The father-of-three ultimately decided it wasn't worth the extra money.

“Trying to put a price tag versus value, what’s it worth?” he asked Fox and Friends. “The lines were so long, so we’re already a thousand dollars deep into the park. Now we’re going to drop another $400 to get Lightning Passes.”

“I don't want to say it this way, but if you do the average of cost per ride, it probably isn't really worth it.”

The passes used to be free five years ago, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Passes to get into the amusement park can cost over $200, depending on what day and season you visit.

Disney increased prices in 2024 for the 2025 season and again for the 2026 season, Fox reported.

Stowell believes the prices are not worth it for those coming for just a day.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think those day-trippers are what Disney wants,” he told Fox and Friends.

“They want you to never leave the park. They want you there for five days, and they want you to drop 10 grand. So, I think that one-day trip I’m actually being punished for it.”

Since late 2023, return visitors have dropped and the park's growth has also declined, according to WSJ.

Prices have nearly doubled, with a family of four trip for four days costing $3,230 five years ago to $4,266 in 2024, the outlet found.

Disney was envisioned to be an affordable family playground, but over the decades the theme park has grown to be an expensive vacation.

Now, the vacation that was once a part of nearly every kid's childhood has become unattainable, WSJ found.

Disney insists a visit to its parks are within the means of ordinary families.

But the firm's own executives are said to be concerned at rising complaints over prices and believe they're almost at the limit of what they can keep increasing prices by.

(DailyMail.uk)

COWARDLY AND DUMB

Cowardice rises

And freedoms fall

Democracy's crisis

Confronts us all

Empowered by Courts

And the cowards in Congress

He's allowed to deport

Breaking his promise

Sworn to the oath

To uphold and defend

Enforce the laws

Not to break or bend

Dementia on display

For all to see

Tariffs on trade

Crashed economy

We hope for the day

And pray it will come

When Donald The Great

Becomes Donald The Dumb

STFU!

— Elvin Woods

ON THE EDUCATIONAL CASE FOR ENCAMPMENTS

by Jan Werner Muller

Months before the Trumpist onslaught on higher education, US universities were rushing to prohibit protest encampments. Why do some ramshackle tents on lawns present such a threat to authority – as opposed to demonstrations and marches, which remain generally permitted, subject to certain regulations?

Encampments make a claim to land; and they contest the authorities’ control in a way that isn’t true of marching. People can hide in them, retreat into them and use them as staging grounds for further protest actions. They can be noisy and dirty, sometimes on purpose. Their aim is to put pressure on universities to change policy (there are no anti-Putin encampments in the West); noise and dirt may force administrators to react. Proponents of encampments might say that if they become part of the landscape, they have failed. They should resemble, to borrow an image from Robert Lowell, fishbones in an institution’s throat. No wonder, then, that universities have cracked down on encampments in the name of protecting property and safeguarding public order.

The core issue isn’t property, though, and it isn’t whether encampments are inherently unsafe, as some administrators have claimed. The question is whether they can be justified with regard to an institution’s educational mission, and hence receive some protection under the rubric of academic freedom. That appears to be the implicit wager when encampments proclaim themselves ‘free universities’. It also appears to be the assumption when university leaders negotiate with students, granting them some legitimacy – as opposed to treating them as simple trespassers (as happened with the most brutal crackdowns last year).

Those of us who teach at universities can’t simply include encampments in our pedagogy: regular seminars should not be held there, since that would amount to professors de facto coercing their students to take part in the encampment; any ‘free university’ should be free to access, but it must also remain free to enter and leave.

There is also a genuine issue with claiming property, which doesn’t have to do with bourgeois notions of ownership. A Canadian judge ruled last year that a student encampment at the University of Toronto ‘constituted a private appropriation of the university’s lands’. When others have good reasons to want to be in a space that has been occupied, they have a justifiable complaint. It’s tempting to say that being on the lawn to discuss war and peace is part of the educational mission; being there to chat with friends, shop online or make TikTok videos is not. But as Timothy Zick has argued, universities cannot legitimately make ‘content-based speech restrictions’. And yet there is still an educational argument for universities to tolerate encampments.

In principle, such spaces could become sites of serious discussion, both among the (broadly speaking) like-minded and among those whose views differ profoundly. At an encampment you can easily find people willing to engage on a particular topic. Encampments also allow for a productive ambiguity: with a march, you either join it or you are clearly a bystander. But entering an encampment does not signal commitment as such: you might be part of it; you might just be checking it out (and, unlike in a seminar relocated to the encampment, you remain free to leave at any time). Exactly contrary to the claims made by administrators, encampments can be a safe space – from a pedagogical point of view.

This strengthens the case for keeping encampments open. Plenty have been more like fortresses, with those inside bracing for a confrontation with the authorities. Beyond such quasi-military logic, the case for closure rests on the function of the encampment as fostering community, which may be less likely to happen when people come and go all the time, or when a site becomes a target of something like political tourism. Critics of the open encampment may say it that it ceases to be an uncomfortable fishbone and instead becomes part of an easily digestible educational menu.

Encampments are set up in particular places; but they echo recent methods of civil resistance in that their structures are light and easily moved. The quasi-monastic solemnity of neo-Gothic university buildings contrasts with what often develops as a festival atmosphere in encampments. More than half a century ago, a visionary designer tried to make the case for tents – quickly assembled and disassembled – as a new kind of campus:

I would counsel you in your deliberations regarding getting campuses ready now to get general comprehensive environment controls that are suitable to all-purposes like a circus. A circus is a transformable environment. You get an enclosure against ‘weather’ that you can put up in a hurry, within which you can put up all kinds of apparatus – high trapezes, platforms, rings, nets etc. You can knock it down in a few minutes … I would get buildings where it is possible for many to meet … You don’t have to put any ‘architecture’ there at all. You don’t have to build any sculptured architecture – use the ephemeral. Work from the visible to the invisible very rapidly.

Buckminster Fuller’s invocation of a circus might seem frivolous, bringing to mind the condemnations of student protest as a pseudo-revolutionary ‘carnival’ (as May ’68 was dismissed by liberals like Raymond Aron, for instance). But the ephemeral, and the effervescent, can also loosen up the atmosphere – making for encounters, difficult conversations and even productive conflicts that otherwise would not have happened. All of which can contribute to learning.

HOW I ALMOST WENT TO THE CLINK OVER ONE LETTER

Two years ago I nearly sank the Twitter Files project with a stumbling appearance with Mehdi Hasan, but the real mistake was going on the show at all

by Matt Taibbi

Two years ago I made a catastrophic decision to give an interview about the Twitter Files with MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan. I made a worse decision to cop on-air to what at the time I thought was at most a minor mistake, interpreting a Slack passage reading “According to CIS (escalated via EIP)” as “According to CIS[A] (escalated via EIP).”

The alleged error here was substituting the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or the Homeland Security body CISA, for the Center for Internet Security, or CIS. As Mehdi put it, I’d “deliberately and under oath” made communications from a “nonprofit” look like recommendations from an “intel agency.” This episode, incredibly, led to a letter from Congress (not even sent to me, oddly) threatening a prison term of “up to five years” for “providing false information” under oath.

I took a bigger beating for a line about the Stanford-run Election Integrity Partnership: “According to the EIP’s own data, it succeeded in getting nearly 22 million tweets labeled in the runup to the 2020 vote.” Stanford issued a spirited defense of the group’s efforts, writing, “No, the EIP did not censor any tweets or label any tweets as ‘misinformation’.” It added that platforms were responsible for “their own content moderation decisions,” and that the EIP “did not make recommendations to the platforms about what actions they should take.”

It later came out (after a long legal fight) that the EIP did send concrete recommendations to platforms in big numbers, saying things like:

“We recommend Twitter remove the tweet as it is a fairly clear violation.”
“Hi Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter … we recommend it be removed from your platforms.”
“Recommend disabling the account at link.”
“We recommend you label or reduce the discoverability of the post.”

There were many more of this type, underscoring a basic problem of the Twitter Files. With the EIP, there was significant public data about its research endeavors, but the flip side was a real-time reporting program thrown together between the platforms and the Department of Homeland Security in 2020 for the purpose of policing tweets in time for that year’s election. We knew it was important because email after email said things like “CISA received a grant to build a web portal for state and local election officials to report incidents of election-related misinformation,” and “DHS want to establish a centralized portal for reporting disinformation.” Once operational, complaints about topics came in via routes like the EIP, after which Twitter would issue quasi-automated content moderation responses in big quantities. But how big?

Yesterday Mike Benz tweeted a new video showing an EIP partner talking about how the group “identified 20+ million tweets related to ~400 false, misleading, or unsubstantiated claims” that “functioned to sow doubt in the election.” The video doesn’t change much, echoing things written in the EIP’s report.

I let this alone for ages because it’s a weedsy matter, because Lee Fang already addressed many of the main issues, and because players like Hasan refused to retract their own errors, even after I was threatened with jail over them. But I want to explain part of this bizarre story.

Ben Kawaller yesterday wrote about the phenomenon of activists refusing to engage with potentially hostile media. Once, I believed journalists should never do the same. I thought reporters should always engage, even if you know you’re going to take a beating. Now, I’m not sure.

All this mischief — the threat of prison, talk of “deliberate” lies “under oath, as well as claims that the Twitter Files had been “dismantled” and a “fraud” — began with one line in one tweet changing one acronym to another…

https://www.racket.news/p/how-i-almost-went-to-the-clink-over

⁣⁣⁣Starting in 1942, the U.S. implemented mandatory gasoline rationing as it became important to the war effort.

ALL I CAN SAY is, it's a good thing we didn't win the revolution. We would've ended up with people like Abbie Hoffman and Eldridge Cleaver at the helm; we would've been in big trouble. Big trouble. It would've been such a Stalinist purge… All those people who were the top names in those movements back then were all egotistical assholes, it turned out, every single one of them.

― R. Crumb

LEAD STORIES, SUNDAY'S NYT

Why Danger for India and Pakistan Has Not Gone Away Despite Cease-Fire

How the Clashes Escalated to the Brink of Catastrophe

A Night in Kashmir, Caught Between India and Pakistan’s Fight

U.S. and China Will Meet for Second Day of Trade Talks

Why America’s ‘Beautiful Beef’ Is a Trade War Sore Point for Europe

Attacking Trump’s Tariffs, Democrats Focus on Small Business Struggles

A Shipping Change Might Help Small Businesses if Not for Trump’s Trade Wars

OVER THERE: ISOLATING WAR MUSIC

by David Yearsley

When war broke out in Europe in early August of 1914, that month’s edition of The Etude, America’s “Journal of the Musician, the Music Student and all Music Lovers,” had already appeared. The editor, James Francis Cooke, who had been at the magazine’s helm since 1908 and would remain there until 1949, first addressed the conflict in the September issue in an editorial rich with his characteristically WASPy sanctimoniousness: “War, always hideous, is never worse than when the people of so-called Christian and civilized nations fight,” he began. It would seem that infidels are allowed, indeed encouraged, to kill each other or should let themselves be killed by the forces of righteousness.

Cooke goes on to lament the increasingly efficient barbarity of mechanized modern warfare: “Not since men first chose to settle their disputes by swinging broad axes at each other has the machinery of battle been so horrible as now.”

Advances in technology were relentlessly retailed in The Etude. The journal was full of advertisements and articles about engineering innovations in the music industry. In 1914 these included hearing aids for piano tuners; portable practice keyboards; new-fangled electric lamps to illuminate all that sheet music printed in the magazine’s pages; various metronome models; and that industrious cousin to the musical keys, the typewriter. By 1914 this ever more reliable, refined, and rapid tool of commerce and communication had, readers were told, lightning-fast actions to match those of all those uprights and grands touted in the journal. The legions of typists, their fingers trained in childhood at the piano, were mostly women, who also comprised the main readership of The Etude. The magazine was abundantly graced by advertisements for skin creams and corsets.

Cooke claimed musical technology and tuition as forces for peace and prosperity. Yet his editorial is both ardently isolationist and vigorously opportunistic: “It is a fact that the triumphs of battle do not go to those who fight, but to those who are at peace. The neutral, non-fighting nation is always the real victor … Unwanted, unsought, great gains are bound to come to us.” His lofty anti-war pronouncements quickly give way to visions of a rising Musical Superpower: “With out vast territory, bursting granaries, enormous wealth, earnest workers and spirit of confident optimism, America should furnish opportunities so great that even the wildest imaginations might have difficulty in grasping them.”

In his editorial for the magazine’s next issue in October of 1914, Cooke conjured this destiny even more vividly: “Staggered by the misfortunes of Europe we must take the lot that fate has cast upon us. Tomorrow in America may be the dream of the ages. In music, as in all other arts, we are on the threshold of greatness which should thrill all those who love the name of the land of the free.”

Still at his post when, thirty-five years later, a second World War broke out in Europe, Cooke cited his predictions from 1914 in his editorial of October of 1939: “Through events entirely beyond our control, our musical interests in America, educational, professional and industrial, were compelled to advance in the years succeeding the great war and were benefited more than during the entire preceding century.” Just as Cooke had forecast back in 1914, the United States had indeed become “the most eminent musical center of all history.”

But Cooke had to tread carefully. The Etude had undeniably Germanic roots. It had been founded by Theodore Presser, the child of German immigrants. Needing compositions to complement the articles, the magazine began printing sheet music; the Presser firm remains the oldest continuously operating music publishing house in the United States.

When each of the century’s world wars broke out, Cooke used his editorials to recall that Presser’s father had spoken not just German, but French as well. Cooke also reminded readers that while Presser, who died in 1925, loved the music of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, he also harbored an intense hatred of German militarism. A long-time piano teacher and choral conductor, Cooke himself had studied in Wurzburg, before taking his Ph.D. back in the United States.

Balanced precariously between pathos and patriotism, the wartime pages of The Etude bristle with the tension between isolationism and empathy, pacificist bromides and calls for profit-making. Aside from Cooke’s condemnation of war, the September 1914 edition was an etude in escapism: “A Special Issue Devoted to Music in Lighter Vein,” that description running below the cover’s portrait of Johann Strauss, Jr. (In this image, Strauss could almost be an American sheriff in his cowboy and duster, and styled with Wild West moustache.) Yet the Waltz King of Blue Danube fame was also the composer of the Radetzky March, the ubiquitous theme song of the Austro-Hungarian army. An article in The Etude of Octboer of 1914, “The Music of the Warring Nations” extolled the heroic qualities of the combatant countries’ military hymns: France and Belgium, England, and ”Slav” (i.e., Russia) all have their nobel calls-to-arms. But at the top of the list came Germany and Austria, and the Radetzky March gets it due for inspiring the polyglot peoples of the Hapsburg Empire to fight: “The Hungarians are excellent soldiers and especially susceptible to the appeal of their inspiring national hymn.”

When America entered the conflict 1917, Cooke duly added his rhetorical firepower to the cause while also enlisting the propagandistic talents of his art department

As Cooke had hoped, The Etude emerged ascendant from the Great War. “Presser’s Musical Magazine” reached the apogee of its circulation at 250,000 in 1919. A decade later, when the Great Depression put an end to the editor’s fantasies of perpetual expansion, the magazine was making a loss and did so continuously until it was shuttered in 1954, five years after Cooke’s long editorial tenure had ended and six years before his death. By then, the journal’s print run had fallen to nearly 50,000.

Across these decades of growth and decline, The Etude shows that Americans, from Pentagon first desk to piano stool, have been adept at finding ways—commercially, industrially, musically and morally—of profiting from foreign wars while singing and playing of liberty and freedom, peace and power.

(David Yearsley is a long-time contributor to CounterPunch and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. His latest albums, “In the Cabinet of Wonders” and “Handel’s Organ Banquet” are now available from False Azure Records.)

BARRY DILLER’S MOMENT OF TRUTH

by Maureen Dowd

Barry Diller has only just started his book tour, but he’s already trying to sneak away.

“I’m shortening the tour part,” the 83-year-old mogul said recently in his sonorous baritone, the “Killer Diller” voice that intimidated and intrigued Hollywood for more than half a century. “I am not up for interrogation on aspects of my personal life.”

As we sat on cappuccino-colored couches in his gorgeous Art Nouveau aerie in the Carlyle hotel, I reminded Diller about the bewitchingly candid first paragraph of his bildungsroman, “Who Knew”:

The household I grew up in was perfectly dysfunctional. My parents separated often and came a day short of divorce several times before I was 10; my brother was a drug addict by age 13; and I was a sexually confused holder of secrets from the age of 11.

And there it was, Hollywood’s worst-kept secret spilled: Barry Diller is gay. Or rather, bisexual — or bi with Di, since, as he writes, “While there have been a good many men in my life from the age of 16, there has only ever been one woman.” The sultry Princess of Wrap, Diane von Furstenberg, swept him away back in the Studio 54 days. She’s proud of being the first woman he ever slept with, in a torrid romance that later unfurled into a long, happy, sexually liberated marriage.

Von Furstenberg and Diller’s friends are watching, wide-eyed, as Diller talks publicly for the first time about his unorthodox private life. The gruff, point-blank executive is known, as the Netflix chief executive Ted Sarandos said, as “one of the very few who doesn’t care what people think in a town full of people who do care.” That is true in business. But for most of his lifetime, Diller did care about what people thought of his sexual orientation.

“I wanted to tell the story,” he said about his alienated childhood and dazzling career. “And I knew if I told the story, I had to tell the truth.” That doesn’t make it easier. He’s kept his private life shrouded for so long, it’s hard now to rip off that shroud.

Even though he early on created what he calls his own “Bill of Rights,” where he would not tell many people in his business world that he was gay but would also not pretend to be heterosexual and act like “one of the boys,” he now says he was just “chicken.”

“So many of us at that time were in this exiled state, so stunted in the way we lived,” he writes. “Consider if you can what such a daily drip of that kind of dysfunctional life does to one’s sense of self.”

In his big, sprawling life, Diller has helped shape the culture across the 20th and 21st centuries, traversing the world of entertainment from a heady time for Hollywood studios to a bleak time, deftly surfing the shifts from networks to movie theaters to cable to VCRs to streaming. He was early to see the artificial intelligence revolution coming and to predict that the upstart streamers would swallow the grand old studios — the death knell for Hollywood as we knew it.

“It’s interesting that Barry spent the first part of his career building Hollywood,” The Ankler’s Janice Min said, “and the second part talking about what a disaster it is.”

But that culture has also shaped his life. His memoir is blunt, like him, with a vulnerable story about coming of age in America that stands in stark contrast to the manosphere and the cartoonish, chest-thumping, cat-lady-hating “masculine energy,” as Mark Zuckerberg termed it, being projected in Washington by President Trump, JD Vance and Elon Musk.

While there is far more tolerance now, Diller writes, he believes there is still “agonizing pressure on most young men and women at the first glimmerings of their sexuality.” He could be fearless as a young executive, he says, because his dread of being exposed as gay “absorbed most of my fear-making capacity.”

Known for boldly jumping ahead, he confesses that he should not have lagged behind in talking about his personal life.

“For too long I justified my silence by believing that my ‘complex’ sexuality would preclude me from being a poster boy for gay pride,” he writes. “In truth, I was just too chicken to tell anyone anything. I rationalized that this was an honorable position because I’d been adhering faithfully to my rules of behavior: never be hypocritical, never lie, never pose. Given all my own trauma, I believed I didn’t owe the world a defining statement. I was wrong. I should have been a role model, for whatever good that might have done for others. It’s a guilt that will never leave me.”

Diller is one of a growing number of billionaires dominating America, although he is not gleefully wrecking our government, the media or the internet, like some of his peers. His private life may be very different from that of most Americans, but Diller has shared many of the unsettling emotions that assail us all as we all come of age: shame, anxiety, unmet expectations and guilt.

He lived a double life of sorts for a startlingly long time, a choice that many young gay people would find baffling now. But that choice said a lot about America in those years — and about how traumatized Diller was by his family.

“The whole concept of coming out today is so absurd,” he told me, noting that a few days ago, when New York magazine ran an excerpt from his book and reporters began jumping on the story, “Diane calls me laughing and saying, ‘They called and asked me about your coming out.’” They both thought it was “silly” that it made news. “I’m getting congratulations literally from people I don’t even know,” Diller said.

Scott Rudin, who was the young head of production at 20th Century Fox during Diller’s stint as chairman, said that being a gay Hollywood executive back in the 1970s and ’80s was tricky.

“Being gay was perceived as a deficit, something that would hold you back if you were the public face of a big company,” Rudin said. “It required a level of strength and fortitude if you were not welcomed in the club you were expected to be in.”

Despite the passions he had to constrain, Diller’s fervor for work was intense. While he operated with private fears about his sexuality, his ferocity in business over big deals and small matters of office etiquette provoked fear in others. “Yes, absolutely,” he told me, “I’m a difficult manager.”

John Malone, the wizard of media investments who has worked on deals and served on boards with Diller — they even sued each other a couple of decades ago — calls Diller whip-smart and said he has “matured” in terms of being impatient with those who don’t get things as quickly as he does.

“I’ve never been more intimidated by anybody in my life, with the exception of maybe Nelson Mandela,” Diller’s friend Oprah Winfrey said. “I was like, ‘Gayle, you sit next to him.’” When she got to know him, she said, she found an unlikely sweetness and soulfulness.

Barry Diller with then-girlfriend Diane von Furstenberg at Studio 54 in New York in the late ’70s. (Robin Platzer / Getty Images file)

From a tender age Diller was a visionary of culture, and he later immersed himself in technology. He was ahead of the curve, ignoring naysayers and second-raters who insisted his innovations were impossible. As a wunderkind at ABC, he conjured the enormously successful “Movie of the Week” and the mini-series, airing “Rich Man, Poor Man,” “Roots” and “The Winds of War.” At 32, he was the youngest chief executive Paramount had ever had, and at a time when movies were vital, he turned out hits like “The Godfather, Part II,” “Saturday Night Fever,” “Grease,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Reds,” “Terms of Endearment” and “Beverly Hills Cop.” Working with Rupert Murdoch at 20th Century Fox, he midwifed a fourth broadcast network, which everyone thought was impossible, and spiced it up with shows like “Married With Children” and “The Simpsons.” (It is said that the rich, dastardly, bullet-headed boss, Mr. Burns, is inspired by Diller.) He only used his instincts, disdaining research data and dreading algorithms.

When he asked Murdoch if he could become a principal at Fox, the Aussie’s answer was pure Logan Roy. “There’s really only one principal in this company,” Murdoch said, adding, “This is a family company, and you’re not a member.”

As Diller writes, “Rupert the Sun God” had “gotten what he’d needed out of me and now we were on cruise control — a dangerous place in Murdochland.” He decided to leave.

Von Furstenberg told Diller about QVC, the home shopping network where she was selling her wares. Diller was amazed that the station was selling goods directly to the public, so he bought into it.

“People ridiculed him for being in Shmatteland,” his longtime friend Marlo Thomas told me. “He instinctively knew there was something there, and he was going to investigate it and learn about it. He was willing to end up in a dead end. He was curious and excited, and that’s the essence of Barry.”

Diller used QVC as a launchpad into interactivity — buying Expedia Group and Ticketmaster, and acquiring dating sites like Tinder, Match.com. and Hinge, as well as the Home Shopping Network. He took over the USA Network and instructed Dick Wolf to lean into the “Law & Order” universe, which is how we get to watch Mariska Hargitay say “Where were you last Tuesday?” pretty much 24 hours a day.

Just when Hollywood thought that Diller was relegated to the margins, on his way to what we now call being Quibied, he whipped the hodgepodge of digital sites into the powerhouse IAC. In 2020, he spun off the dating sites and then doubled down on digital content, acquiring the Meredith Corporation, which publishes People, Better Homes and Gardens and Southern Living. He also owns The Daily Beast.

Even though he doesn’t gamble, he now thinks the future is in Las Vegas, with all the new sports teams there and all the stars in residence. He bought into MGM Resorts, a conglomerate of casinos, hotels and entertainment venues.

His book is a saga of inventing this enormous, original career that spawned so many cultural touchstones. But he also talks about his fears, his childhood nervous breakdown, his failures, the times he cried.

He grew up in Beverly Hills, the son of a builder who became affluent constructing indistinguishable tract housing on streets with names like Dillerdale and Barrydale.

Reading about Diller’s disconnected relationship with his family, it’s easy to understand how he fell for the woman he calls “an earth mother.” His home was airless, sterile and filled with pain.

He said that his father didn’t know how to father, his mother didn’t know how to mother and his brother didn’t know how to brother.

His noncommunicative father was in business for 30 years with his uncle, who lived two blocks away, but the families never socialized. “I also never met my paternal grandparents, or most of my aunts, uncles and cousins,” Diller writes.

When he was 7, he was lonely at camp and begged his mother to come pick him up; she left him waiting outside in the dark.

“I gave up on my mother that night,” he writes. “There would be no rescue.”

At 11, Diller rode his bike down to the Beverly Hills Public Library. “I furtively hunted the shelves for books on homosexuality,” he writes. “In each one, chapter after chapter hammered home to a frightened child that all such activity was a result of mental illness. It was a disease!”

He added, “I had to compartmentalize my sexual feelings to keep from being branded forever as abnormal.”

He became obsessive-compulsive, feeling like there was “an anvil hanging by the most tenuous wire over my head and the discovery of my sexuality would snap that wire and the anvil would come crashing down.” At 19, he writes, he had “an actual heart-and-mind-racing nervous breakdown.” The family doctor put him on a maximum dose of Valium; he was “living like a zombie,” indulging in “all-night wanderings and all-day sleeping.”

Diller’s older brother, Donald, was smart and handsome, a piano prodigy. But around puberty he became “gruesomely and violently abusive” to Barry. Once, his brother “took one of those old heavy Bakelite telephones and twirled it around like a lariat, finally landing it on the side of my head, knocking me out cold.”

“To him I was dumb and clunky, and probably homosexual,” Diller writes. “All this planted a corrosive and deep seed in me that there absolutely shouldn’t — there couldn’t — be two ‘bad’ sons. One a drug addict and the other a sexual outcast.” This fear, he said, “was the dagger to my heart.”

By 16, Donald was hooked on heroin. The brothers were estranged. At 36, Donald was shot and killed in what police called a “drug-related incident.” Diller wrote that he still feels bitter toward him.

At Beverly Hills High, Diller’s friend Nora Ephron fired him from the school paper because he wasn’t serious enough. He said that even when she was a teenager, Ephron, the tart-tongued daughter of screenwriters, could disdainfully dissect a Hollywood party. “She was my first dose of sharp, critical dialogue,” Diller told me.

Diller didn’t care about a college degree. He asked Marlo Thomas’s father, Danny, the king of sitcoms, to help him get his first job in the William Morris mailroom.

He worked his way up as a personal assistant to big shots. He had trained with his family at trying to please the hard-to-please.

Ignoring advice from his friends, Diller called his autobiography “Who Knew.”

“Because so much of my early life was, who knew, first of all, about me and my confused sexuality?” he said. “Who knew that I had any talent?” But lots of people knew both things, actually, so he left off the question mark.

Did Diller worry that his lack of candor about his personal life would leave him vulnerable to sexual partners blowing the whistle on him?

“Oh, my god,” Diller replied, laughing. “If I’ve been closeted for decades, that closet has the brightest light and glass door anyone has ever seen. That is so beyond insane.”

In 2015, when Trump was first running for president, Diller said in an interview that he might leave the country if Trump won because “all he is is a huckster” who found “a vein of meanness and nastiness.”

Trump tweeted his response to “Little Barry Diller,” saying “he is a sad and pathetic figure. Lives lie!”

I asked Diller how he felt when he read that tweet.

“I laughed,” he said, “because it was so consistent with his manner of attack.”

Diller saw some striking examples of homophobia in Hollywood.

In 1974, he heard that People magazine was planning to do a “mean and homophobic” story on him. In the end, it just dissed his business acumen, saying he had failed upward. He said he was relieved because in those days, it was “better to be called a failure than a fairy.”

“By the way,” he writes dryly, “I now own People magazine.”

When he was the chief executive of Paramount, he learned that two of his executives were stealing from the company. One of them threatened that if his bosses went to the authorities, he would concoct a story about his 11-year-old son, claiming that Diller had molested him in an elevator. They turned the man in; he pleaded guilty to criminal charges and later came out as gay himself.

Diller writes that when he was at QVC in 1994, in a hot competition with Sumner Redstone to acquire Paramount, rumors began circulating about Diller and AIDS. A New York Times reporter called Diller to ask about his health. Shocked, he replied that he was fine.

James Stewart wrote in his 2005 book “DisneyWar” that in 1995, when Diller’s friend Michael Eisner was asked to name a potential successor as chief executive of Disney, he threw out Diller’s name in a confidential memo to the board, noting, “He is not a family man, but I believe you do not have to be a chicken to know a good egg.” He added, “the fact that he is homosexual should have no weight,” in effect, outing him to those who didn’t know and dooming his chances.

Diller settles a few scores in the book, but mostly he tends to be forgiving. He praises Eisner and says he regrets some of the harsh things he has said about his old boss Murdoch.

“I went on a podcast and said Rupert is the suck-up of all time,” Diller told me. “He’s always been a toady to power. Whoever’s in power, he’s right there at the first moment.” He also said the “horribleness of Fox News” would be a stain on Murdoch’s legacy.

I tweaked Diller that in helping to create the Fox network and the pioneering reality show “Cops” — not to mention helping Murdoch establish himself in American TV — he paved the way for Trump.

He said that Fox News came after he left, but he did admit to one damning thing: “I introduced Rupert Murdoch to Roger Ailes.”

He defended his “very, very dear, loving friend” Jeff Bezos, for embarrassing The Washington Post and driving away a lot of its talented writers and editors when he killed the paper’s Kamala Harris endorsement and told its opinion editors that they had to cleave to the principles of free markets and personal liberties.

He thought the policy of not endorsing for president was fine, but the timing was “unfortunate” because “it would have been better to have done it six months before, when it wasn’t so close to the election.” As to the instructions for opinion writers, Diller played the contrarian, as he often does: “I think it is an utterly principled position.”

He also defended Shari Redstone — he dealt with her when he took another swing at buying Paramount last year — for being willing to cave to Trump on his “60 Minutes” lawsuit to clear the way for Paramount’s merger with Skydance.

Although “the idea of settling this idiot suit is horrible,” he said, Redstone has financial problems “and made this deal to get bailed out by the sale.” It’s understandable, he said, to “bend the knee if there’s a guillotine at your head.”

Diller, who was a generous Biden donor, said he blamed Joe Biden more than Trump for Trump’s election.

“I’m so angry at the Democratic progressivism and elite nonsense of the last decade,” he said, adding: “I hate the woke right as much as I hate the woke left. A ban on both their houses.”

At our interview, over a lunch of Cobb salad and grilled cheese sandwiches, I note that Diller does not seem as nervous as he did the last time I interviewed him, when he broke out a pack of cigarettes.

“I came close to dying,” he said. He tried to stop smoking and started vaping a lot, and his lung collapsed.

“Anytime I see somebody vaping,” he said, “I go and try and take it away from them.”

Diller is still bristling with ideas. His foundation is building a park at the top of Franklin Canyon, north of Beverly Hills. And Diller and Rudin are talking about opening a complex of five Off Broadway theaters in Manhattan. Diller is also exploring buying Candy AI, a site that creates any avatar you like.

“The big story of my life,” the man famous for spinning 1,001 stories told me, “is Diane and my family.”

And his five cloned dogs, of course. He found the original, Shannon, a homeless Jack Russell terrier, wandering a back road in Ireland long ago. He loves the dogs so much, he took one of Shannon’s progeny, Dina (inspired by DNA) back to Ireland to discover her roots.

David Geffen, Diller’s best friend, observed that while the von Dillers, as the superagent Sue Mengers called them, may not be a “run of the mill” family, their alliance is full of love and joy and charity.

“I think being with Diane, her children and their grandchildren has mellowed Barry tremendously,” Geffen said.

What was he like before? I asked. Geffen laughed and replied, “Less user-friendly.”

And certainly, the frank von Furstenberg is a match for the blunt Diller.

Diller told me of taking his wife out in a boat on the Hudson to see his celebrated new office building in Chelsea when it was completed in 2007, so she could be on the water when she saw it, a Frank Gehry creation designed to evoke a tall ship in full sail.

“I say to her, ‘Isn’t that gorgeous?’” he recalled. “She says to me, ‘It’s too short.’ I say, ‘What?’ She says, ‘It’s too short. We should build it up another four stories.’ I was so angry that she said about my beautiful, magnificent building in perfect proportion, ‘It looks like it was collapsed.’”

When they’re not sailing the world on their Art Deco yacht, the Eos, or ensconced in their Connecticut estate, Cloudwalk, or holed up in their dreamy Beverly Hills mansion, or dining al fresco at the Venice palazzo Diane has been spending time in, or planning a Miami family compound, the pair live separately in their art-filled Manhattan apartments. His is uptown at the Carlyle and hers is downtown above her flagship store in the meatpacking district.

Their romance in the ’70s ended painfully for Diller; they were drifting apart, but then he learned that von Furstenberg had dallied with Richard Gere. Diller was the 33-year-old head of Paramount at the time, and Gere was the sexy star of one of his pictures, “American Gigolo.”

“It was a little … nothing,” von Furstenberg murmured when I asked her about it.

A decade later, Barry and Diane got back together, and the rest is part of New York City history. Their foundation funded two of Gotham’s most popular and enchanting downtown attractions: the High Line and Little Island, which has an amphitheater for plays and concerts. When people began referring to the site as “Diller Island,” Diller shuddered. Unlike other billionaires, he does not want his name plastered on things, even when they cost, as Little Island might, in the end, between $400 million and $500 million.

Both von Furstenberg and Diller say they did not talk about his sexual confessions in the book or revelations about his gay liaisons, including one with Johnny Carson’s stepson and one with Michael Bennett of “A Chorus Line” fame, both of whom died of AIDS.

“It’s something I’ve never discussed with him,” von Furstenberg said. “Because what is between him and me is so much more. It’s so much deeper.

“But, you know,” she added, “I’m an odd cookie.”

She recalled her beginning with “my little honey”: “Barry was very shy, very reserved, never talked, never opened up about anything. With me, for whatever reason, he opened his heart fully — boom! — and never closed it. Even when I made him suffer, he never took it back.”

“The only time we ever talked about our relationship,” Diller said, “is when she left me.” That was during the turbulent period when he refused her entreaties to have a child, and she frolicked with Gere and then moved to Bali and took up with a beach boy named Paulo, launching a perfume inspired by Paulo called Volcan D’Amour.

“I wish I was not such an immature child as to not have a child with her,” Diller told me, noting that he was scared of settling into “suburban somnambulance.” “I lost myself on this idiot idea that I would be driving a woodie in the San Fernando Valley.” (As though von Furstenberg is capable of driving a station wagon through suburban somnambulance.)

I called Diller when he got back to Los Angeles to see how the book tour was going.

“If I let them,” he said dryly of his publishers, “they’d send me to a yeshiva in Oshkosh.”

He said he was under his bedcovers, with a cup of tea and his dog Luna.

“It’s too much,” he deadpanned, “for little me.”

17 Comments

Harvey Reading May 11, 2025

CHRIS SKYHAWK

LOL! Talk about propaganda. Surprised you haven’t been given an appointment by the brainless mutant…

- Lee Edmundson May 11, 2025
  
  I don’t quite understand Skyhawk’s missive. Is the posting his, or in reply to one of his? Please advise.
  
  - Harvey Reading May 11, 2025
    
    Check with management. I’m just a subscriber.
    
Iggy May 11, 2025

Almost always enjoy/ appreciate Mr. Crumb’s cartoons, but his political comment today seems a bit off the mark. The revolution didn’t happen and yet we are now ruled by even bigger “egotistical assholes” than those he accuses!

George Hollister May 11, 2025

Great piece by Bill Kimberlin today, except there was no Virginia City in 1849. Maybe. 1859?

- Kimberlin May 11, 2025
  
  Thank you for your comment. The date I listed was in the original newspaper article from 1935. Of course it could be wrong, however I would note that a lot of these early gold rush towns existed before the towns even had names.
  
  - George Hollister May 12, 2025
    
    True. I have spent a some time researching the interesting history of VC since my maternal 2 great grandfather had a retail business there during the mining boom of the 1860s.
    
Kirk Vodopals May 11, 2025

Of course the “Happiest Place on Earth” is ridiculously expensive.. That’s the American way.
Why anyone would want to go is beyond me.
My Dad took us to LA when I was around 12. After a day of playing at the beach he asked my brother and me if we wanted to go to Disneyland the next day. We both said no. The beach was the happiest place on earth for us.

- George Hollister May 11, 2025
  
  There is true happiness that comes from playing in the dirt, not so for an expensive pleasure day at DL.
  
  - Kirk Vodopals May 11, 2025
    
    I definitely agree! As long as the cat hasn’t left any surprises first
    
  - Matt Kendall May 11, 2025
    
    When I was growing up the creek behind our hay field was the best spot on earth. We had tree forts and BB guns. A nasty old brick of days work or brown mule plug tobacco was normally hidden somewhere near our fort.
    
    We had An old horse and a mule named Amanda who lived the good life. They were our Calvary. Those two took us on short rides while defending the pasture from communism, the NVA or whoever was currently an enemy of the US.
    
    There were times when defense of the ranch turned for the worse and we brothers and cousins engaged in civil wars. These skirmishes consisted of rock fights, BB Gun assaults and grenades carved from oak balls.
    
    My grandmother encouraged us to settle our issues in boxing matches which we held in an old corral by our barn. It was Maddison Square Garden for us back then and definitely a more civilized means of squaring up with each other. We only turned to this option when we couldn’t muster our soldiers for war.
    
    A few bumps, bruises and abrasions were to be expected. Occasionally one of our battle hardened 13 year olds proudly displayed an arm cast which was signed by all the kids in school.
    
    It’s been a while since I have seen a kid in an arm cast. I wonder if that means we are getting smarter or perhaps our fears have grown to the point they won’t allow today’s children to engage in the childhood endeavors most of us experienced.
    
    For better or worse it’s definitely a different world today.
    
    - gary smith May 12, 2025
      
      Not picking on you, Sheriff, it’s a very common mistake, but Calvary is the hill where Christ was crucified. Cavalry is the word you wanted.
      I appreciate you coming here regularly to join the discussion.
      
Soi Même May 11, 2025

McDonald’s, another happy place is soon to be out of reach for multitudes it was meant to serve.

Breakfast Sausage and Egg McMuffin meal is gasp $10.49.

- Soi Même May 11, 2025
  
  for the multitudes it was meant to serve.
  
Cotdbigun May 11, 2025

Corporal Klinger is finally discharged, thanks to President Trump. Happy Mother’s Day.

Marco McClean May 11, 2025

When I was five, winter of 1963, my mother’s then-boyfriend took us to Disneyland. His name was Gino Pelli, he was in college to be a doctor. I don’t know where his money came from, but he had a modern-art palace of a house in a canyon (or the hills) of L.A., that was enclosed in a wet green labyrinth of trees and vines and moss all around, with lights in the ground shining up through the moss. I clearly remember going there at night in my mother’s Oldsmobile and how, when we went back to the car to leave, the car looked so technologically attractive there, like a magazine ad for the car. When I saw Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, the neighborhood the main character lived in seemed familiar. When my mother was working for realtors we often went to places like that in the hills. She’d measure everything with a 100-foot tape measure that I was allowed to wind up with its crank. She’d bake bread in the oven, take Polaroid pictures, make notes, use the phone, stick signs in the grass by the street. Go to the next place, repeat. Go back around to all the places and shut the ovens off, meet with anybody who showed up, run out the clock. And then maybe Bob’s Big Boy for hamburgers and milkshakes on the way home. I don’t remember what happened to the bread. The actual bread wasn’t the point; it was for the smell in the house. And I still slightly expect, whenever I open a car trunk, to see a mound of real estate signs there. That’s what a trunk is for, like Charlotte in /Pushing Daisies/ was raised by her aunts who made cheese for sale, so when she’s visiting a new friend and sees her friend’s refrigerator she says, “I like your cheese closet.”

In 1963, Disneyland still had the hovercraft flying saucer bumpercars ride, and the spinning teacups ride, that they had to tear out right after that because of too many expensive neck injuries. My favorite ride was the round theater rocket ride to the moon with the screen in the floor and the ceiling, and hydraulic chair cushions and footrests to simulate G-forces. It gave me the same good-shivery, anticipating-the-future feeling that I got from the The Outer Limits, and from Klieg lights up to the sky that you’d see from the freeway and say, “Can we go there?” “Sure.” Turn off, follow the pillars of god-light, and behold! A brand-new gas station or a new movie opening, or a furniture store sale…

Juanita and I went back there to get married in November of 1988, on the roof of the Griffith Observatory, above the vast shimmering fairyland plain of L.A., and Juanita’s best friend Annye’s mother (they’re both dead now) gave us the wedding present of the next day and evening at Disneyland and then a night in the Disneyland Hotel. I hate and fear hotels, but it made it easy to stay in the park until the rides closed at midnight, which meant no lines; you could get off a ride and run straight to the front of the line of that one or the next one. I was almost 30; I still liked rides then. The only ride I really like now is the carnival one where you’re in a ring of chairs around a tower, they lift you up to the top, and they drop you. It’s very simple but it’s the best feeling. You’re not spinning around and being jerked this way and that until you throw up. It’s the exact opposite of nausea and a headache. It feels like the last instant as you deliciously fall asleep, especially if you’re sleeping at a desk or otherwise in a cramped position. Juanita still likes rides where they shake you like a can of spray paint.

- Matt Kendall May 11, 2025
  
  Marco that was great! Thank you for sharing your memories on Disney Land. Loved reading this!

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