This morning (June 23) NYTimes.com ran this teaser:
“Good morning. The Times pieced together the days and hours leading up to President Trump’s decision to strike Iran. It’s a story of diplomacy, deception and a secret that almost got out. But first, the latest news: Iran and Israel traded misiles this morning.”
This evening the website features reporter Maggie Haberman describing how observers were misled by Trump’s “Misdirection play.”
You’re not supposed to say it, but… I told you so! The deception was obvious to readers of Farnaz Fassihi’s article June 13 (June 15 in the print edition). The US and Israel were running a good cop/bad cop con, and Iran’s leaders fell for it… And the absurd parity myth is still spewing forth from The Paper of Record.
Fort Cavazos
Doesn’t ring a bell? Maybe you knew it as Fort Hood, the big Army base in Killeen, Texas. It was originally named in honor of a Confederate general, John Bell Hood. In 2023 it was renamed to honor the Army’s first Hispanic four-star general, Richard Edward Cavazos. Now it’s been Hooded again.
I hope to find, as I unpack, a mimeographed paper produced by GIs at Fort Hood, aided and abetted by staffers at the Oleo Strut coffeehouse. It described the frame-up (on a marijuana charge) of the editor, a soldier named Bruce “Gypsy” Peterson. The point needs to be made that “our” intervention in Vietnam was intertwined with “our” prohibition of marijuana. Oliver Stone did a good job in Platoon of showing how connected the two “issues” were.
Hoops End
The 2024-25 NBA season ended Sunday with Tyrese Halliburton in the Indiana Pacers locker room, his right Achilles tendon torn. Halliburton had a strained right calf and was playing with his entire right leg tightly wrapped when he went down. His tendon couldn’t do the work of all his constrained muscles. (When Bill Walton was young and radical, he said of the NBA owners “They treat us like cattle.”) I was once in a pick-up game in the UCSF gym when a guy went down. He knew he had torn his right Achilles tendon, but he asked me to feel it for confirmation. I did and it wasn’t there.
The Oklahoma City Thunder won what could be the first of many championships. They’re young and they’re deep. The big if is their players staying healthy throughout the overly-long seasons. The experts say “Defense wins championships,” but a strong case can be made for “Staying healthy wins championships.” Indiana might not have gotten by the New York Knicks if Brunson wasn’t hobbled. But then again, Halliburton was hobbled by his strained calf.
Today is my first non-hoops evening. (The Warriors announcers talk about “non-Steph minutes.”) No withdrawal symptoms to report. You get weaned during the two months of playoff basketball. In late April we could watch two games every night. Then one. Then every other night. And finally, every third night. Wednesday and Thursday the NBA will televise the first and second rounds of the draft. I might check it out for a few minutes. The commissioner, Adam Silver, is a hideous creature. Howard Cosell might have dubbed him “The Sepulchral One.” Stephen A. Smith definitely will not (though Stephen A. assumes a militant pose).
The Houston Rockets have traded for the great Kevin Durant, hoping to win it all next year. In return the Phoenix Suns get a good young forward named Jalen Green, the assertive Dillon Brooks, this year’s 10th pick, and five second-rounders. That’s not as much talent as Oklahoma City got when they traded aging, injury-prone Paul George to the LA Clippers for a slew of high draft picks that brought them Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams, among others. But Durant is 36, and injury-prone… The Clippers have a hands-on owner named Steve Ballmer, a supposedly brilliant tech billionaire who once was the ad manager for the Harvard Crimson. Neither the Clippers nor the New York Knicks thought Isaiah Hartenstein was worth re-signing, but he helped OKC win the championship…Another genius, Leon Rose, general manager of the Knicks, traded Obi Toppin to Indiana for two second-round draft picks. Instead of firing Rose, the Knicks owner, an ass named Dolan, fired the coach.
Expect the Warriors to bid for Giannis Antetokounmpo if the big man wants out of Milwaukee. Joe Lacob will offer our future –Brandin Podzemiski (who is from Milwaukee), Jonathan Kuminga (potentially great), Moses Moody and Trase Jackson-Davis (solid players), and draft picks. They’ll say they owe it to Steph, Draymond and Jimmy Butler to shoot for a last championship. Deep down they know the world could come to an end after next season..
Spike Lee, now fat as a bishop, shows his devotion to the Knicks by wearing an orange mumu with blue stripes. Local angle: Raymond Burr, who lived in Santa Rosa, wore mumus. They’re cool, I’m told, and Burr spent a lot of time in greenhouses. He was an orchid breeder. (He played Perry Mason, but he gardened like Nero Wolfe).
Most offensive ad: “Round-Up: This stuff works!”
Also vile: A mom expresses sadness as she sees her son off to college. While hugging him she checks her phone and sees a text from Carmax offering a deal. She blurts “This is the happiest day of may life!” She realizes her faux pas, but can’t stop smiling. The kid is very cool, unsurprised… A DoorDash commercial in which a middle-aged WM gets very uptight when he sees his daughter (who looks to be 16 years old) returning home with her boyfriend. He quickly orders popcorn, which enables him to intrude on the young couple as they watch TV on the couch… Progressive insurance ads featuring a male therapist who is exasperated by the inability of his clients “young homeowners in danger of becoming their parents.” (BTW, half the young homeowners in the US get financial help from their parents.)
Resy
A cousin is coming to town and we’re going to a classy new restaurant. It was a deli in 1983 when I ran Variety Home Video in the building next door. That location is now a tasting room, of course… Although the restaurant is directly across Highway 12 from our house, I couldn’t just drop in and make a reservation. Couldn’t even do it by phone. The restaurant’s website steers you to a site called “Resy.” (The cute new words entrepreneurs devise annoy me -except for “Zepbound,” which makes me flash on Bill Murray in Meatballs joyously singing “We’re nookie-bound” with his fellow camp counselors.)
From the restaurant owner’s POV, Rezy makes sense. _Why tie up your greeter with phone calls?) ut prospective customers can’t ask questions, and they’ll have to pay for Resy indirectly (assuming the owner isn’t going to “eat” the cost.)
Juneteenth Myth
June 19, 1865, was not the day that slavery ended in Texas. The Emancipation Proclamation (the federal order freeing slaves in states that were “in rebellion”) was signed by Abe Lincoln on September 22, 1862, and took effect on January 1, 1863. It was ignored, of course, by the Confederate states until Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomatox on April 9, 1865. Then implementation began state-by-state. Texas held out the longest, not because the governor, the big plantation owners, the state legislators, the newspaper publishers – slaveholders all – didn’t know about the Confederate surrender, but because they didn’t want to free their slaves and the Union Army hadn’t arrived to enforce federal law. Of course the news had reached the slaves in Texas. (If you think otherwise, better check out “James” by Percival Everett.) So why was June 19, 1865 different from all other days?
It was on that day in Galveston, Gen. Gordon Granger, who commanded the District of Texas for the Union, posted a “Military Order” asserting that “in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.” What caused jubilation was not NEWS of the Emancipation Proclamation but the FALSE IMPRESSION that the Union Army had come to enforce it. Anyway, it’s a good excuse to pitch a wang-dang-doodle.
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