This Day In History, 1990: The Debut Of Survivor

Believe it or not, Survivor is still out there, still cranking out seasons. Confession: I've literally never watched a single minute of this show. (Blog readers know that The Bachelor, and all its various spin-offs, are my reality TV universe of choice. #BachelorNation)

Click here, here and here to read more about Survivor after 20 years. 

This Woman Is 94 - Updated

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🐴 The Queen is pictured riding Fern - a 14 year-old Fell Pony - in Windsor Home Park this weekend. . Her Majesty has enjoyed riding since childhood and is closely involved with the welfare of the horses she owns for breeding, riding and racing. . Photos: Press Association

A post shared by The Royal Family (@theroyalfamily) on May 31, 2020 at 2:30pm PDT

For more "Queen-on-a-horse" pictures, click here.

Update on June 2:  Today is the 67th anniversary of The Queen's coronation. I don't usually repeat This Day In History posts, but in this case I can't help myself. A 67-year reign is truly remarkable, and actually, it's a 68-year reign, because then-Princess Elizabeth became Queen when her father died in February, 1952. Traditionally, coronations are held a year or more after the death of the previous monarch.

So when will the next coronation take place? Obviously no one knows. The Queen really can't live forever, although she certainly appears to be in good health at age 94. Whenever it happens, the period of time between the death of the current queen and the coronation of the new King, as well as the coronation itself, will be fascinating on many levels, because most of us who are alive today have never even seen a British coronation. Unlike our presidential inaugurations, which happen every four years like clockwork, there have only been eight British coronations in the past 259 years (George III in 1761, 15 years before the U.S. came into existence, George IV in 1821, William IV in 1831, Victoria in 1838, Edward VII in 1902, George V in 1911, George VI in 1937 and Elizabeth II in 1953.) 

What He Looks Like Now

Is it just me, or is Donald's hair getting whiter and his face getting "oranger"? This picture was taken today, I believe as he was leaving to go to Florida for the SpaceX launch:



photo credit; US News and World Report

He also had a weird moment getting off of Marine One:




Seriously. Look at his feet. What could have made him jump like that? Apparently he doesn't want to shake the Air Force Officer's hand.

Once he got to the Kennedy Space Center, he doesn't look too happy to be there:

Bad At Presidenting

Jonathan Bernstein points out another way Donald is bad at being president:

It’s amazing how quickly the CDC has squandered its reputation for straight-shooting and scientific excellence during Donald Trump’s presidency (the latest embarrassments are here and here). There’s a lot to say about this and similar failures across the federal government, but what strikes me is what they reveal about healthy incentives — and how Trump manages to ignore them.

First, having an agency with a gold-standard reputation is a terrific resource for leaders who care about getting their way and also care about re-election. It allows them to speak with the authority of experts even if they themselves are relatively ignorant. It also gives them an opportunity to have most of the nation, and not just their supporters, at least potentially support their policies.

That matters. It matters desperately for Trump right now. His obvious goals are to reduce the spread of the virus while rebooting the economy as quickly as possible; for that, he needs citizens to follow best practices for safety and also to trust that it is safe to return to activities they gave up in March. And he needs strong supporters, strong opponents and everyone in between to do both of those things, or else it won’t work. No politician is ever able to do that on his or her own. But trusted experts make it possible for the president to get it done.

To be sure, there’s a cost. For a president to get the seal of approval from experts, he or she has to listen seriously to them. This may mean compromising the president’s preferred approach. If the president simply ignores the experts but tries to use their reputation anyway, the agency’s bureaucrats may refuse to endorse the policy, or undermine it through such strategies as press leaks or testimony to Congress. Or, if the president succeeds in undermining the agency’s integrity enough that it will slavishly grant his every whim, its reputation — and thus its political usefulness — will be destroyed.

Notice that healthy incentives are built into the system. Agencies care about their reputations for reasons of professional pride, but also because it benefits them at budget time and helps them do their jobs without outside interference. And presidents have good self-interested reason to listen to those agencies. That’s a way to force politicians who care mainly about elections to seek expert input into policy.

Now, I should be clear that good presidents should listen seriously to experts in the executive branch — not necessarily do whatever they say. Experts can be wrong! That’s why presidents beginning with Harry Truman have built up a White House staff with parallel teams of experts who don’t have the same bureaucratic practices as those inside executive-branch agencies, and who are more naturally attuned to the president’s political interests. And beyond that, good presidents apply their own political judgment to the subject-matter expertise that they have access to in order to make good decisions.

Trump, unfortunately, is so bad at presidenting that he fails to follow those clear healthy incentives. To be fair, he did seem to take some expert advice seriously for two or three weeks in April. But he rapidly lost interest, and either he or others in the White House seem to have pressured agencies to go along with him even as he ignores their counsel. Now he wants the economy to reopen safely, but he has no idea how to get there from here, and he doesn’t have the assets the presidency once had. It’s not apt to work very well for the nation, or for him. (This is the column in its entirety.)

Days until the election: 157

Hypocrisy

Mike Pence left a football game because some players were kneeling in peaceful protest against racial injustice. https://t.co/rypmLO93GE

— Miranda Yaver (@mirandayaver) May 29, 2020

A Gift From The Heart

Twitter can be a pretty awful place but every once in a while I see something beautiful. Today it was this and it made me cry:

Does anyone have buddies buried in Arlington who they would like visited today? Since only family members are allowed in, I would be honored to pay respects on your behalf...

— Emily Domenech (@ehdomenech) May 25, 2020

Click here to see what happened next.

"If You Don't Like What A Politician's Doing, Fire Them At The Ballot Box"

... thus sayeth Lindsey Graham:



Stay for the very end and you'll hear Donald saying that Senator Graham is one of the dumbest human beings he's ever seen. Sweet.

Wearing A Mask

Jonathan Bernstein wonders why Donald won't just put on the damn mask:

President Donald Trump had another opportunity to wear a mask in public on Thursday, on his tour of a Ford Motor Co. plant in Michigan. He didn’t do so — according to him, mainly to spite the media — although he evidently did put one on afterward. It’s bizarre behavior, and very likely self-defeating for the president politically.

Public-health experts have said, and have told Trump, that masks are crucial to safely reopening businesses and returning to something resembling normal while minimizing the risk of new coronavirus outbreaks. Trump’s re-election surely depends on successfully controlling the virus and rebooting the economy. And yet the president has consistently downplayed the idea, including refusing to cover his face in front of the cameras. In fact, as Greg Sargent points out, Trump is doing this despite the public being overwhelmingly in favor of him wearing a mask.

I can think of three possible explanations, none of them flattering.

One is, well, vanity, or some other personal stubbornness. Trump doesn’t like the way the masks look, or doesn’t like having to wear them or really does consider it a point of honor to contradict the media’s expectations.

A second is that the president doesn’t want to violate the wishes of his strongest supporters, and he has concluded that the armed demonstrators opposing masks and distancing restrictions are in his corner. It’s possible he doesn’t understand that he’s putting himself on the wrong side of public opinion in doing so. It’s also possible that he’s using a con-artist’s logic: Find the easiest marks and you can make a lot of money, even if they’re a tiny fraction of the overall population. That’s a logic, by the way, that can also work for party-aligned media, and one way that party-aligned media can undermine the party as a whole, which needs broad support from majorities (or at least very large pluralities) to win elections.

The third possibility? Trump, like certain cable-news pundits, really thinks that elections are all about image, and so avoiding a Michael-Dukakis-in-the-tank moment is a first-order priority. In fact, that kind of image campaigning tends not to be important at all in presidential general elections. The condition of the economy is important; so may be, in this cycle, progress against the virus.

Perhaps the most unfortunate aspect of Trump’s decision is that this is a case where a president’s enthusiastic endorsement for wearing masks and otherwise following best practices might really make a difference. After all, the economy simply will not rev up if people are afraid to go out of their houses, and a lot of people are going to be afraid if they see more and more folks — including the president himself — refusing to wear a mask. (This is the article in its entirety.)  

In actual fact, Donald did put on a mask yesterday. He said he didn't want the press to see him wearing it, but someone got a picture: 

President Trump wears a mask during his tour of the Ford Rawsonville Components Plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan, where ventilators, masks and other medical supplies are being manufactured. https://t.co/UCqBVUEuBZ

📷 Anonymous pic.twitter.com/eiIFVNPVIh

— NBC News (@NBCNews) May 22, 2020

Days until the election: 165

The Guessing Game/The Queen

What will be on the cover of People this week? My guesses, in no
particular order:

Fred Willard and/or Phyllis George: Dead celebrities
Mary Kate Olson: Trying to get a divorce in France
Harry and Meghan: Today (Tuesday, May 19,) is their 2nd anniversary
Ryan Seacrest: Didn't have a stroke during the livestream of American Idol. Another possibility is Just Sam, the surprise winner
Nick Cordero: After several weeks in a coma, the Broadway star has started to wake up
Brian Austin Green and Megan Fox: Divorcing
Chris and Bri: The winners of the latest Bachelor franchise show, Listen To Your Heart
Tiffany Trump: The "invisible" daughter graduated from law school
Tanner and Jade: The Bachelor In Paradise couple is expecting baby #3
Annie Glenn: The widow of astronaut John Glenn has died of COVID-19 at age 100. That leaves Rene Carpenter, former wife of astronaut Scott Carpenter, as the only surviving wife of the original seven Mercury astronauts

Stories that appear on the new cover will be highlighted in green.

Update: No Harry and Meghan this week, instead we get Harry's granny, looking wonderful in a pink jacket and a very cool hat:

Issue dated June 1, 2020: Queen Elizabeth II


People doesn't usually feature nonagenarians on the cover but clearly this woman is special. Wouldn't you love to know what she really thinks, about anything? Me too.

This Day In History, 2018: Harry And Meghan Get Married

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19 May 2018 ... #harryandmeghan • #princeharry #meghanmarkle #wedding #weddinganniversary ( 📷 from @pa archive)

A post shared by Chris Ship (@chris.ship.royal) on May 19, 2020 at 12:30am PDT

If anyone had said two years ago that Harry and Meghan would leave the royal family and take up residence in Los Angeles, I would have said they were crazy. I certainly didn't see it coming, and I'm curious to see how it all plays out.

Valerie Bertinelli (Not In A Bikini)

In 2009, Valerie Bertinelli lost 50 pounds following the Jenny Craig program, for which she was a paid endorser. She celebrated by posing in a bikini on the cover of People:

Issue dated April 6, 2009



A few weeks later, Melissa Joan Hart was featured in an almost identical cover, celebrating the same accomplishment:

Issue dated June 8, 2009



That prompted me to write this, in a post dated June 1, 2009:

Do we really need this many cover stories about B-, C-, or D-list actresses who lost weight and are now posing in bikinis? To refresh your memory, the cover story for People's April 6 issue was a picture of Valerie Bertinelli in a bikini, with a headline that said "Bikini Body at 48." My thought at the time was "Is this really the most intriguing thing happening in the world of celebrities this week?" That issue must have really sold well because this week's cover is almost identical. It's a picture of Melissa Joan Hart (who???) in a bikini, with this headline "How I lost 42 pounds". There's also a "before" picture that the sub-headline describes as horrifying. Would you like to guess what her horrifying "before" weight was? 250 pounds? 185 pounds? No, her horrifyingly fat pre-diet weight was 155 pounds. (Read the entire post here.)

By 2014 Bertinelli was visually larger than she had been in the bikini picture; predictably there was some criticism (or as she says, shaming) and in an interview on The Talk, Valerie pushed back:

Valerie Bertinelli has no problem admitting that she has gained back some of the 40 pounds she famously lost on Jenny Craig in 2012, but says she shouldn't be publicly shamed for it.

The actress candidly discussed her fluctuating waistline on "The Talk" Wednesday, after recent photos from the set of her sitcom, "Hot in Cleveland," highlighted her curvier figure.

"Because I broke my foot three months ago and I've not been able to work out, the weight starts to creep up," she told the co-hosts. "Then, I started thinking, 'Why do I feel so much shame?' Because the cameras are on me? Because the paparazzi can't wait to get a picture of me looking like I've gained a few pounds. It's like, we have to take the shame out of it." (From ABC News, read more here.)

I agree that women shouldn't be shamed or criticized for their weight, in fact I wish everyone would stop talking about women's bodies all together, regardless of their weight or their size. At the time I was struck by the irony and in a blog post titled "A message for Valerie Bertinelli," I said this:

One way to "take the shame out of gaining weight" is to stop glorifying women who lose weight. Exhibit A: People's cover story from April, 6, 2009.

Now Valerie's back, on the cover of last week's issue, this time fully clothed:

Issue dated May 25, 2020: Valerie Bertinelli

The article at people.com, linked-to above, starts with this:

When Valerie Bertinelli put on a green bikini to pose for the PEOPLE cover in 2009, it was the first time she had worn a bikini in almost 30 years.

She was about to turn 49, and after nine months on the Jenny Craig diet, for which she was a spokesperson, and countless stomach crunches, she had lost more than 40 lbs. "There's a lot of pride and a lot of shame associated with that cover," says the beloved star in this week's issue of PEOPLE. "I worked really, really, really hard. Physically definitely. I wish to God I had worked just as hard on my mental shape."

"But when I don't work on what's eating me, I'm going to start eating," she says.

... and ends with this:

And as for the green bikini, she keeps it tucked away in a closet drawer. "The funny thing is, the green bikini was a size large," she notes.

"Even at the lowest weight I've been in decades, I was still wearing a large," she says. "Everybody's shape is what we should be celebrating." 

Absolutely.

And one more thing: I didn't do a Guessing Game post for this week. 

It's Just Not Fun Anymore

In yesterday's column, titled "Does Donald Trump Want to Be Re-Elected?" and sub-titled "The president's inattention to the coronavirus doesn't suggest someone desperate to win in November," Jonathan Bernstein ponders Donald's inept handling of the crisis. This is the column in its entirety:

It’s becoming more and more obvious that President Donald Trump has simply stopped dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, and has no particular plan for confronting its economic fallout, either. In both cases, he’s pretty much substituted wishful thinking for action. The Atlantic’s David Graham had a good item about this disengagement earlier in the week, followed by one from Ezra Klein arguing that “the White House does not have a plan, it does not have a framework, it does not have a philosophy, and it does not have a goal.”

What surprised me was political scientist Lee Drutman’s conclusion, based on Klein’s article, that “the debate over what to do has polarized with depressing haste, because ‘winning’ in Washington is not defeating the virus, but winning the next election.” I argued a bit with Drutman on Twitter about this, but it’s worth a longer discussion. My basic sense is that Trump isn’t nearly concerned enough with winning re-election, and that the current catastrophe is in part a consequence of that.

There’s no way to know what’s really in the president’s mind. But we can compare his actions with what a president determined to be re-elected would probably do. A lot of Trump’s critics have claimed that he’s deliberately risking American lives by boosting the economy to improve his chances in November. And it’s true that he seems concerned mainly with re-opening businesses these days. But there are at least two reasons to doubt that this preference is due to the election. For one, public-health experts and economists broadly agree that opening too soon will be a disaster. For another, even if there is a trade-off, there’s no particular reason to think that restoring jobs at the cost of more illness and death will be a good electoral deal for Trump.

At any rate, the evidence that Trump has an economic plan is just as weak as the evidence that he’s engaged in dealing with the coronavirus.

What I think is more likely is that Trump simply isn’t finding this aspect of the presidency very much fun. You might remember when President George H.W. Bush declared that he didn’t like broccoli: “And I haven’t liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!” Trump acts this way about doing most of the mundane jobs of the presidency. Thus his newly invented scandal, “Obamagate.” As the New Yorker’s Susan Glasser points out: “For Trump, spending the week attacking Obama, no matter what the subject, is the political equivalent of retreating to his bedroom and hiding under the blanket. It’s his safe space, his comfort zone.” Except it’s not so much a political equivalent as it is a retreat from politics altogether, along with the duties and responsibilities of his office.

A politician who desperately wanted re-election would’ve been hard at work, from the moment he or she was alerted to the danger, attempting to contain the pandemic and limit the economic damage, and would persevere no matter what the setbacks, never wavering in an effort to produce the policy results that might lead to a big win in November. Such presidents might sacrifice the long term for the short term, as Lyndon Johnson did in goosing the economy in 1964, or Richard Nixon did in 1972. But they would never just give up when things went wrong.

That’s not this president. That’s not Donald Trump.

Mr. Bernstein may be indulging in a little reverse psychology because in actual fact, of course Donald wants to be re-elected. I'd say he cares about winning in November more that life itself, if only to avoid being branded a LOSER. Why hasn't he been hard at work from the start, attempting to contain the pandemic and limit the economic damage, persevering no matter what the setbacks, etc? That's easy. He's just not capable of it.

What does surprise me is that there is apparently no one in the administration who has the smarts to handle a crisis. In truth, it doesn't surprise me, it's been clear all along. It's just that this is the biggest crisis the Trump administration had faced and it's happening within sight of the election. You would think that Ivanka, Jared and the vice president, in particular, would have a vested interest in helping Donald to succeed at this, but nope. The slobbering, ass-kissing sycophantic-ness of Mike Pence continues to astonish (and disgust) me, but it's not just him. There's mind-boggling incompetence from one end of the White House to the other.

And one more thing: In November, Steve Schmidt, a former Republican political operative and one of the Never Trumpers behind the Lincoln Project (read more here,) said that he thinks Donald will dump Mike Pence for Nikki Haley as his running mate this year. (I wrote about it here.) This was before the coronavirus crisis started but it occurs to me now that with Pence in charge of the response, doesn't that make him a convenient scapegoat for the whole bungled mess? Maybe Donald really will give him the boot. 

The Guessing Game - Updated

What will be on the cover of People this week? My guesses. in no particular order:

Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor: Today is Archie's 1st birthday, Harry and Meghan have said they'll release a new picture to mark the occasion. Another possibility is Princess Charlotte, who turned five on Saturday
Michelle Obama: The Netflix documentary Becoming, based on her best-selling book, debuts today
Anderson Cooper: A new baby via surrogate
Nick Cordero: The broadway star is still in a coma, not recovering well from a vicious case of COVID 19
Gigi Hadad: She's pregnant, Zayn Malik (not Tyler Cameron, haha,) is the father
Lori Zillow: She's back in court, her children are still missing
Michael Jordan: The 10-part ESPN series is a big hit; the finale airs May 17
The Bachelor: A 10-episode retrospective will air this summer, taking the place of The Bachelorette. Apparently they're hoping to begin filming Clare's season in July. Former Bachelor Peter has confirmed that he is dating Kelley, who appeared on his season and came in 5th
Nikki Bella: A new memoir
Natalie Wood: A new HBO documentary, produced by her daughter

Stories that appear on the new cover will be highlighted in green.

Last week it was another HGTV cover. and just like Chip and Joanna Gaines when they appeared on their first cover, I have literally never heard of these people:

Issue dated May 11, 2020: Ben and Erin Napier

Last year at this time: Issue dated May 13, 2019


Update:

Issue dated May 18, 2020: Jimmy Fallon

This Day In History, 2011: "Holy shit, we're going after bin Laden"

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This is my remembrance of the days leading up to the bin Laden raid, the day of the raid centered on the iconic Situation Room photograph, and the day after.⁣ ⁣ Note that the most important people from this day are not pictured at all. Our country owes a debt of gratitude to Admiral Bill McRaven, the former Commander of Special Operations, and the members of SEAL Team Six that planned for and executed the mission. They are the real heroes of this day. It was a real honor to be at Fort Campbell a few days later when they presented President Obama with the American flag that flew aboard the helicopter.⁣ ⁣ If you have more questions, please leave them in the comments section. I will try to answer the ones that I can. I will not be able to respond to questions about what was on the screen during the raid or what I might have overheard.⁣ ⁣ Please stay safe, practice social distancing, and wear a mask when you’re out and about!⁣ ⁣ ⁣ ⁣ ⁣

A post shared by Pete Souza (@petesouza) on May 1, 2020 at 6:47am PDT

Here is the wider view of this famous picture, along with the original caption:

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Nine years ago tomorrow, I made this picture during the bin Laden raid.⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ As promised, I will be posting an IGTV video here on Instagram tomorrow with my perspective on the photo and that day.⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ For reference purposes, here is the original caption we posted to accompany the photograph when we posted it the following day along with eight other photographs from the day on the White House Flickr Photostream:⁣⁣ ⁣ President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, along with members of the national security team, receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in the Situation Room of the White House, May 1, 2011. ⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ Seated, from left, are: Brigadier General Marshall B. “Brad” Webb, Assistant Commanding General, Joint Special Operations Command; Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough; Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Standing, from left, are: Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; National Security Advisor Tom Donilon; Chief of Staff Bill Daley; Tony Blinken, National Security Advisor to the Vice President; Audrey Tomason, Director for Counterterrorism; John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism; and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. ⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ Please note: a classified document seen in this photograph has been obscured. ⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ ⁣⁣

A post shared by Pete Souza (@petesouza) on Apr 30, 2020 at 6:48pm PDT