Weekend Whats

What to Read: “Trump snuffed out my confidence, flickering but real, that we could go only so low and forgive only so much. With him we went lower — or at least a damningly large percentage of us did. In him we forgave florid cruelty, overt racism, rampant corruption, exultant indecency, the coddling of murderous despots, the alienation of true friends, the alienation of truth itself, the disparagement of invaluable institutions, the degradation of essential democratic traditions … Polls from mid-October showed that about 44 percent of voters approved of Trump’s job performance — and this was after he’d concealed aspects of his coronavirus infection from the public, shrugged off the larger meaning of it, established the White House as its own superspreader environment and cavalierly marched on. Forty-four percent. Who in God’s name are we?” The NYT’s Frank Bruni pretty accurately summarizes my own frustrations in this column. How Will I Ever Look at America the Same Way Again? In addition to taking a cold, hard look at America, each of us also needs to look in the mirror. A country doesn’t get this screwed up without a little help from everyone. And from Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic: The Answer to Extremism Isn’t More Extremism.

+ What to Watch: The third season of Suburra, Blood on Rome is out on Netflix. I enjoyed the first two seasons, which made me realize I prefer fictional political crimes.

+ What to Sarah: 2020 has been a drag. But an independent, awesome artist like Sarah Cooper finding the perfect way to parody Trump and rising to fame doing so is some damn good news. Her Netflix special is called, Sarah Cooper, Everything’s Fine. (I mean sure, I would have preferred it if I had been the awesome, indie to rise to fame during the Trump era. But I’ve still got a few more days!)

+ What to Book: Tiffany Shlain’s 24/6: Giving Up Screens One Day a Week to Get More Time, Creativity, and Connection is out in paperback. While I recommend the book and the tech timeouts, I’m not leaving this screen until Jan 20.

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