RATIONAL ANIMAL TALES: West Wing and the death of The West!

FRIDAY, JANUARY 17, 2020

The Autumn of '99:
Sometimes, you just have to chuckle.

Wisely, that's the way we chose to react to the material shown below.

This is the way David Sims started his peculiar interview piece in the Atlantic last month. Sims is describing Aaron Sorkin's adaptation of Harper Lee's famous novel, To Kill A Mockingbird:
SIMS (12/17/19): ...Sorkin’s dramatization of Harper Lee’s novel, which opened on Broadway last December, is an unexpectedly probing work that refuses to let an American classic go unchallenged. Instead, it stages two trials: One is from the book, in which Scout’s attorney father, Atticus Finch, defends Tom Robinson, an African American man accused of rape in 1930s Alabama, and tries to combat the community’s entrenched racism.

In Sorkin’s play, the other trial is of Atticus’s own nobility, and how it doesn’t always square with his grander vision of justice. Though the adaptation broadly follows the narrative arc of Lee’s novel, it uses Scout, her brother Jem, and her friend Dill (all played by adult actors) to cast a wary eye over some of the book’s more idealistic details. That framing encourages the audience to ponder the limits of Atticus’s impulse to empathize even with vile racists such as Bob Ewell, a man who’s trying to pin his own assault of his daughter Mayella on Tom. The play beefs up the relatively anonymous parts given to black characters in Lee’s work, gives Atticus’s kids a more argumentative nature, and sheds harsher light on the book’s somewhat pat ending.

The stage adaptation is nonetheless made with appreciation for Lee’s novel, and that mix of homage and update has translated into a family-friendly Broadway hit...
Some of that passage is perhaps a bit too fuzzy to parse.

"Atticus’s nobility doesn’t always square with his grander vision of justice?" Even after reading the full interview piece, we don't really know what that means.

Meanwhile, does Sorkin's Broadway adaptation "cast a wary eye over some of the book’s more idealistic details?" Presumably, that fuzzy formulation means that Sorkin is looking askance at "Atticus’s impulse to empathize even with vile racists such as Bob Ewell."

Rather plainly, the impulse to empathize with Ewell doesn't exist in Lee's famous book. But neither do many other actions and attitudes which Sorkin seems to have placed in his "family-friendly Broadway hit" which, we're told in that passage by Sims, "is made with appreciation for Lee's novel."

Does Lee's novel actually end with Atticus Finch covering up the murder of Bob Ewell? Does Ewell get murdered at all?

It would take a very strange person to understand Lee's novel that way, but Sorkin and Sims excitedly voiced these very strange thoughts before their session was through. And despite Sorkin's "appreciation" for Lee's book, he makes other vast rearrangements in the basic events of the book, as we've been noting all week.

Today, we'll quickly note one more. In Sorkin's adaptation, Bob Ewell apparently rapes his teenage daughter, an act for which Tom Robinson is accused and convicted, and dies.

Does Bob Ewell rape his daughter, Mayella Ewell, in Sorkin's "adaptation?" So several reviewers explicitly say in their reviews of the play.

That said, no one gets raped in the Harper Lee's actual book. But once Sorkin decided that Atticus Finch reminded him of Donald J. Trump, he apparently set out to create a family-friendly, hall-of-mirrors version of the famous novel.

Bob Ewell gets murdered after raping his daughter! Atticus dumbly convinces Tom Robinson to renounce the plea deal which would have saved his life!

And not only that! In the actual words of the overwrought Sorkin, the Atticus Finch of Harper Lee's novel "believes in the fundamental goodness in everyone, even homicidal white supremacists."

In short, Sorkin seems to have created a version of To Kill A Mockingbird on acid. Most significantly, it seems to us that you have to be very dumb to believe the various strange things this guy has said along the way.

In fairness, no animals died in the course of adapting Harper Lee's novel. But what does it mean when our major cultural and political figures seem to be so dumb?

Sorkin strikes us as quite limited. For example, it seems to us that he completely misses the moral arc of Lee's intertwined (fictional) stories when he tells Sims this:
"Atticus isn’t the protagonist in the book or the movie; Scout is—her flaw is that she’s young, and the change is that she loses some of her innocence."
In Lee's novel, Scout doesn't just lose some of her innocence; she gains a deeply important understanding, an understanding which escapes many of Maycomb's adults.

At the end of the book, she comes to see that Boo Radley is an actual person. He isn't a figment of her imagination, or a source for the childish fantasies she and her childhood companions have always spawned.

Boo Radley's an actual person! This understanding escapes many of the town's white adults with respect to the scary, dumb stories they tell themselves about their black fellow citizens, including the innocent person who gets convicted of a capital crime.

That's the moral arc of the book's two intertwined narrative threads. Scout comes to see something very important. On the whole, her town's white adults do not.

Sorkin seems to have missed this. Setting such denigrations to the side, let's move ahead to The Autumn of '99.

What does it mean? What does it mean when our culture's most influential thought leaders are simple-minded, substantially limited in their insights, perhaps even just a bit dumb?

What does it mean when our Sorkins are so dumb that they can read To Kill A Mockingbird and think it ends with Bob Ewell's murder? Among other things, it means that our major thought leaders were doing things like this in The Autumn of '99:
Sorkin conceived the political drama The West Wing in 1997 when he went unprepared to a lunch with producer John Wells and in a panic pitched to Wells a series centered on the senior staff of the White House, using leftover ideas from his script for The American President. He told Wells about his visits to the White House while doing research for The American President, and they found themselves discussing public service and the passion of the people who serve. Wells took the concept and pitched it to the NBC network, but was told to wait because the facts behind the Lewinsky scandal were breaking and there was concern that an audience would not be able to take a series about the White House seriously. When a year later some other networks started showing interest in The West Wing, NBC decided to greenlight the series despite their previous reluctance. The pilot debuted in the fall of 1999 and was produced by Warner Bros. Television.
Sorkin and West Wing met cute! He pitched the show "using leftover ideas from his script for The American President," a family-friendly, sit-commy film about life inside the White House.

In The Autumn of '99, Sorkin debuted his next collection of family-friendly TV fare. As he did so, a lynch mob was running through the streets of Washington and New York—a mob which would send George W. Bush to the White House, plus Donald Trump sixteen years later.

Hillary Clinton was being slandered in The Autumn of '99, often in plainly misogynist ways. Candidate Gore was being slandered too, but so darn what? Flyweights like Sorkin were flitting around, entertaining us, and dumbing us down, with silly TV piffle.

How did Donald J. Trump reach the White House? The silence and dumbness of flyweights like Sorkin very much helped put him there.

Some of these people were in entertainment. Many others were in the upper-end press.

The Creeping Dowdism had taken hold. But so had the Sorkinism.

This week, we've been telling a Rational Animal Tale about a person who's so dumb that he can read Harper Lee's famous book and think Bob Ewell got murdered. Also, that Atticus Finch "believes in the fundamental goodness in everyone, even homicidal white supremacists."

You have to be extremely dumb to go around saying stupid shit like that. Are you prepared to see how dumb, and even perhaps maybe how dishonest, our own tribe's leaders have been?

There's a whole lot more where Sorkin came from. The spectacular dumbness of this unchallenged group helps explain how we got where we are, with Donald J. Trump in high office.

"Man [sic] is the rational animal." Aristotle is said to have said that, long ago. Are you prepared see how wrong this famous figure was, if only on this one point?

It's anthropology, all the way down. Are you willing to go there?

Next week: The next in our award-winning string of Rational Animal Tales.

We expect to continue with some Little Women Snub Complaints. We'll move on to recent striking accounts of The Reasons Why Hillary Lost.

61 comments:

  1. "The spectacular dumbness of this unchallenged group helps explain how we got where we are, with Donald J. Trump in high office."

    Surely you don't really believe your zombie priests are dumb, dear Bob? Oh, of course, that's what you want to believe. Because in reality it's you and your fellow rank and file zombies who are dumb

    Tsk. In fact, your zombie priests are quite clever, dear Bob. And also maniacal and extremely greedy.

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  2. A couple of years ago, I saw a play version which followed the book. It worked very well.

    I am struck by the choice of adults playing the roles of children. I don't think that would work very well. Directors today seem to think it's OK for actors to not resemble their characters. I recently saw a play deppicting Major Powell's expedition down the Colorado River, in which all the men were played by women. It didn't work at all for me.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Do you know that women have masqueraded as men and taken on men's roles throughout world history and certainly in the US. It is the only way women get freedom and can step outside the constrictive female roles. In most cases, they were only discovered to be female upon their deaths, after doing things like fighting in the Revolutionary or Civil Wars, exploring the frontier, being cowboys or outlaws, and yes, exploring down rivers.

      So, are you saying the women weren't believable portraying men, weren't believable as women who were also explorers, or they didn't turn you on. Not sure what you mean by it "working" for you.

      There are also real life instances of white men and women passing as black (often in order to live with a black spouse), as well as black men and women passing as white, for similar reasons. This whole matter of identity isn't as recent an issue as you would think.

      Delete
    2. You have some good general points, @2:44. However, in this case, the women were not masquerading a men. They were dressed like women and spoke like women. This was particularly odd, since they were playing actual, historical men.

      I saw a similar thing at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The performer playing Julius Caesar was a woman, who wore a dress and high-heel shoes. I found that distracting, although it was a marvelous production otherwise.

      Delete
    3. Your sense of discomfort at seeing women in such roles is perhaps the point. Why couldn't women be explorers? Why couldn't a woman have been Julius Caesar? By asking such questions, you can confront your assumptions about women and the stereotypes about their limitations and roles in society.

      Sort of like looking at Rita Hayworth, who was a movie star who embraced all of the glamour girl portrayals, but who patented spread spectrum radio broadcasting as a method for evading enemy interception of messages during WWII. It is the basis for cell phones and other wireless devices now. Do you look at her and think she couldn't have had such an idea, much less gotten it patented and produced, because she is female and beautiful and an actress?

      Women have already done in real life most of the things you might find hard to accept in a play. As you reject a female Julius Caesar remember that his contemporary in real life was Cleopatra. Look up what she did.

      Delete
    4. Sorry, wrong name but right attributions. She was Hedy Lamarr, not Rita Hayworth (who married Orson Welles).

      Delete
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    6. @9:59 You may be right. The director's intent may be to promote the idea that women could be in these roles that were previously men's role. That's a little questionable when they're portraying real, historical characters. Whether or not women could done the first trip down the Grand Canyon, in fact it was done by men.

      Anther idea is that the director is trying to say that women and men are not that different. Just as a black actor can portray a white role in Shakespeare, a woman can portray a man's role.

      However, I personally think it's just a fad -- directors wanting to do something different. YMMV

      Delete
  3. I wonder if Atticus’ snarky remark to Calpurnia came when she failed to thank him after he told her that he was “.... helping the local black people bigly. No one has ever helped you people so much before.”

    ReplyDelete
  4. “But once Sorkin decided that Atticus Finch reminded him of Donald J. Trump”

    Sorkin says nothing even remotely resembling this.

    Somerby is lying.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. In this interview Sorkin discusses Trump in reference to Atticus after the interviewer makes the Atticus-Trump fatal flaw comparison.

      https://www.google.com/amp/s/deadline.com/2018/12/aaron-sorkin-talks-to-kill-a-mockingbird-atticus-trump-getting-sued-and-giving-voice-to-the-silent-deadline-qa-1202518500/amp/

      There’s a link in the article that references a lawsuit that was settled between Sorkin and Lee’s estate. No details on whether it was about Sorkin’s revisions.

      Delete
    2. First of all, Sorkin doesn’t say Atticus Finch reminded him of Trump anywhere in the article linked by Somerby.

      Also, Sorkin doesn’t say Atticus Finch reminded him of Donald Trump in the article you linked. Please quote the passage from that article where he said that.

      The lawsuit was settled, the play goes on. Not relevant.

      Delete
    3. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    4. 7, 2020 at 5:29 PM
      “ k there’s blame on both sides”] after the violence in Charlottesville happen after you started writing the revision? I’m wondering if this was a happy coincidence, the world and Aaron Sorkin coming to these questions at the same time, or did one influence the other?

      ”You know, I think that there are a lot of questions we’ve been asking ourselves, and that To Kill a Mockingbird is a good vehicle to address those questions. For instance, Atticus, throughout the play, is saying, “My family has lived here for generations. I know these people. They’re my friends and neighbors. I know these people. Are some of them stuck in the old ways? Sure, but it doesn’t go as far as sending an obviously innocent man to prison.” I think a lot of us have been feeling, since the election and on both sides of the ideological spectrum, that we thought we knew our friends and neighbors, but we don’t. We’re shocked, and the play addresses that.”
      ————

      Sorkin agrees with the Charlottesville comparison of the Atticus fatal flaw.

      I agree that there’s more to it in that Atticus’ time and place remind Sorkin of the Trump Era. He feels that this era is the same sort of peep-show into our souls.

      Delete
    5. "The lawsuit was settled, the play goes on. Not relevant."

      It's relevant in that that people have argued that Lee would have approved of Sorkin's revisions because his Atticus was more like the Atticus of the prequel book to TKAM.

      Lee's peeps weren't happy.

      I think GSAW's Atticus was what Lee wrote before she decided she got Atticus right.

      Sort of like what God did when he made Michael Fassbender after Christopher Plummer.

      Delete
    6. There is a difference between Lee herself and her heirs, who would be focused on maintaining royalties for the original book (and thus wouldn't want to see Atticus tarnished as a saint).

      Delete
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  5. “Rather plainly, the impulse to empathize with Ewell doesn't exist in Lee's famous book.”

    In response to Scout’s statement:

    “Atticus, he was real nice."

    Atticus says:
    "Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.”

    That is a sentiment that seems at odds with the events described in the book,

    ReplyDelete
  6. “Candidate Gore was being slandered too, but so darn what? Flyweights like Sorkin were flitting around, entertaining us, and dumbing us down, with silly TV piffle.”

    Where was Bob Somerby during the Iran-Contra crisis, or when Dukakis and Gary Hart we’re being slimed?

    Oh, that’s right. He was trying to be a standup comedian, hobnobbing with all those other would-be and soon to be famous comedians, most of whom were intent on their own careers. And most of their material was not about politics.

    This rummaging around looking for liberal culprits, and coming up with Sorkin is ridiculous.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Where was Somerby during the Trump era ?

      Defending Donald Trump, Roy Moore, Ron Johnson, Devin Nunes and Jim Jordan.

      What a lying, hypocritical Trumptard !

      Delete
  7. I see Somerby still hasn't discovered Go Set a Watchman.

    ReplyDelete
  8. ‘In the actual words of the overwrought Sorkin, the Atticus Finch of Harper Lee's novel "believes in the fundamental goodness in everyone, even homicidal white supremacists."’

    And now, Somerby is inventing quotes. Sorkin does not say this.

    Another Somerby lie.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I looked up the original piece on vulture.com. Those are exactly Sorkin's words

      Delete
    2. Why vulture.com when you original article appeared in The Atlantic? I wouldn't trust that kind of site as a second-hand source.

      Delete
    3. It's not a second-hand source., The quote is in Vulture's piece, which was written by Sorkin about his effort to bring TKAM to the stage.

      Delete
    4. So, the other commenters were right about the quote not appearing in The Atlantic piece? You could have acknowledged that instead of shitting on them.

      Delete
    5. By "shitting," I assume you mean criticizing. You're the only one I've replied to about TDH allegedly making up quotes. So it turns out that you were wrong about TDH being a liar, but I'm still somehow the bad one?

      A simple mea culpa would have sufficed.

      Delete
    6. No, I wasn't the one you replied to.

      Delete
  9. Sorkin is as good as it gets for writing witty and pithy dialog. His depiction of the workings of the White House were educational, while the show itself carried the interest of intelligent viewers, including lots of liberals. It wouldn't have done that if it had been a run-of-the-mill sitcom.

    When Sorkin is the topic, Somerby becomes a TV snob, seemingly assuming that anything on TV must be terrible. I saw an interview of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election in which she said that the worst thing for politics has been House of Cards because of the cynicism at its heart. We can thank that kind of show for the belief that politicians must be greedy, uncaring, opportunists with no sense of public service. It is party why so many younger people were willing to believe the slanders of Hillary, Kerry, yes Gore, and having no positive models of hard working public servants to combat those facile TV models of evil.

    Somerby now has the nerve to consider shows about earnest and sincere public servants to be PG, not real versions of those who serve in political and career government jobs. He cannot imagine that there are politicians who want to help their constituents and do good in the world, without labeling this a middle-America version of the presidency.

    That is the damage Trump and the Republicans have done to politics as a job, beyond the many evil acts they're achieved in rolling back liberal progress. And who holds this cynical view of public office as a get-rich-quick con? Conservatives, Republicans, and Somerby apparently. But this isn't the way liberals and especially progressives think about public office. They still have idealism about change and service. That idealism is what Sorkin communicated. Like my liberal friends, I consider it alive and well. If Somerby doesn't, it is most likely because, as Centrist says, he is a Trumptard and he wants this soul-rot to spread to as many liberal voters as possible (to young people as a kind of pseudo-sophistication), so that they will disbelieve the claims of Democratic candidates, believe Warren has rigged the primaries against Sanders, and maybe even sit things out, mimicking Somerby's jaded sneers. Then will Putin have a big laugh!

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  10. Somerby says that the silence and dumbness of Sorkin put Trump into office.

    Here is what Sorkin published immediately after Trump's election:

    https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/11/aaron-sorkin-donald-trump-president-letter-daughter

    Sorkin used his fame as the West Wing creator to campaign for Hillary. Here is what he said in June, well before the election:

    https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2016/06/22/aaron-sorkin-donald-trumps-candidacy-terribly-dangerous-situation-least-hillary-sober-thinking-person/

    Unlike Somerby, Sorkin energetically supported the Democratic nominee, using his professional stature to do so, as did many in the movie industry.

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  11. “It would take a very strange person to understand Lee's novel that way”

    Sorkin doesn’t “understand” Lee’s novel that way. Sorkin deliberately presents a different interpretation of Atticus and adds things not found in the original, precisely because he wants to re-visit and re-interpret the novel. He reflects on the events and on the character of Atticus to craft a new treatment.

    And by the way, at the Shubert Theater on Broadway, “The marquee touted both Harper Lee’s novel and a new play by Aaron Sorkin. Sort of a double reality.”

    ReplyDelete
  12. It should be kept in mind that To Kill A Mockingbird is told through Scout’s eyes. She is a young girl. We see Atticus through her eyes. Her view of her father is apt to be...incomplete, perhaps idealized.

    Indeed, in Go Set A Watchman, the sequel to To Kill A Mockingbird, Scout returns to Maycomb years after the events of the earlier book. She is an adult, and she learns some very troubling things about her father that she might not have known as a youngster.

    The congruence of Lee’s darker vision of Atticus and Sorkin’s is striking.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Somerby’s only real point, forever and at all times, is that liberals engage too much or almost exclusively in “identity politics”, that this is what they “complain” about, and that they lose elections because of it, and this makes them “dumb.”

    He thinks Sorkin is doing the same thing by depicting Finch as a racist or racist sympathizer.

    None of the details in Somerby’s posts really matter. Here, most of his arguments are either false or illogical, but that is irrelevant to him.

    There is no nuance to Somerby’s thinking. He never attempts a critical examination of what is meant by “identity politics” and he never admits the need for ongoing concern about racism or sexism.

    He asserts that the Others, whoever they may specifically be, are pissed off by (their belief in) liberal “identity politics”. And that is all that matters to him.

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    Replies
    1. To Kill A Mockingbird has been banned in some libraries and schools because of the n-word, it’s depiction of black people,and for overt acts of racism portrayed in the book.

      Ironic isn’t it?

      Delete
    2. And you think the decision to ban the book isn’t controversial in liberal circles? Are liberals collectively at fault when someone somewhere wants to ban the book? Has the book been banned strictly at the request of liberals?

      Does that negate my original point, that any concerns with racism or sexism are wrong, because sometimes they are misapplied?

      Delete
    3. Yes, I think we are living in a time where an errant tweet concerning identity politics can make you a target of a mob out to destroy you. Comedians fear performing for college students now. That once was a time in life when free speech was sacroscant and our minds were generally so open that our brains fell out.

      The last paragraph is just a straw man.

      Delete
  14. 'How did Donald J. Trump reach the White House? The silence and dumbness of flyweights like Sorkin very much helped put him there.'

    I realize that Somerby is a Trumptard, and that lying is as natural to him as it is to his Lord and Master DJT, but even by Somerby's standards this is an astonishing lie.

    Sorkin campaigned against DJT. What has TDH done now ?

    Um -- defended Donald Trump, Roy Moore, Ron Johnson, Devin Nunes and Jim Jordan.

    Attacked liberals.

    Attacked anyone he disagrees with on any topic as a 'liberal'.

    Lied and been inconsistent about everything except attacking liberals and defending DJT.


    Somerby is a lying, clueless Trumptard devoted to relecting DJT. He can call himself a liberal if he likes, but his blog reveals his true intentions -- to be a useful idiot for Trump. Fortunately, he lacks the audience to be useful to Trump, so one can call him a useless idiot.

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  15. Where’s my Anonymous correspondent from yesterday’s comment section where he (or she, as the case may be) wrote to me at 12:33 AM,

    You have no idea what Somerby means by it. The name Aristotle appears nowhere in today's post.

    Well, it does today. Do you have the context now?

    Come back. All is forgiven. I await your apology and admission that you haven’t been reading carefully enough.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. 1. You said Aristotle never made that reference. 2. I still don't like Somerby calling liberals animals. 3. He is too loose with his references. Why should readers be expected to have been around on other days, when he may or may not have mentioned Aristotle?

      I live in CA where it is 3 hours earlier than the times shown on Somerby's blog comments.

      Delete
    2. 1. I said that TDH made the reference and erroneously attributed the words to Aristotle.

      2. He says "Man [sic]," that is mankind, the human species, all of us are supposed to be rational animals.

      3. Careful readers are expected to have familiarized themselves with the work of the people they accuse of malfeasance. I'm constantly saying you can't include yourself in that group and you're constantly saying I'm mistaken. Are you ready to admit that I'm right?

      Delete
  16. Aaron Sorkin stages the Trojan War. Act I, Scene I, the palace of Agamemnon, King of Mycenae. Agamemnon is talking with his brother Menelaus, King of Sparta.

    Menelaus: What’s the hold up, big Brother? It’s been weeks since my wife Helen ran off with Troy to Paris. You promised to help me avenge myself.

    Agamemnon: Whoa, there, little Brother. Paris? Paris won’t be founded for another 900 years, and in any case, it will be inland. The Greek fleet isn’t gonna help you there.

    Menelaus: Sorry, I mean Helen ran off with Paris to Troy. The fleet can help with that. How many ships do we have?

    Agamemnon: About a thousand, but the weather has been terrible, almost like we’ve been cursed.

    Menelaus: Can’t you do something?

    Agamemnon: Well, sure, but do you really want to do this thing? It could take ten years and there’d be a lo of casualties. Sure, Helen is hot. Too hot for you, LIttle Bro, if you don’t mind my saying so. And she was a bit of a bitch. Clytemnestra is getting pissy about my leaving for so long: every time she picks up a knife, she looks at me like she’s trying to figure out where to stick it.

    Menelaus: Ya, know. Yer right. Forget the whole expedition.

    Agamemnon: Excellent choice, Bro! [He shouts offstage:] Clytie, I’m staying home! Iphigenia, Daddy won’t be needing you at Aulis after all.

    [The brothers embrace and shout] αδελφοι παρεκ πορνες!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Apollo; There’s a good chap, Agamemnon. I always say “let bygones, be bygones”.

      Delete
    2. I thought that Agamemnon managed to offend Apollo only after he got to Troy. Wasn't it Artemis that he pissed off before he even got started?

      Delete
    3. Yes, you’re right, that was the progression. He ticked off Artemis from jump. Apollo later.

      Zeus intervened against him at the behest of Thetis.

      Nobody liked him. He was no Achilles.

      Delete
    4. My husband and I take turns reading a book to each other. Well, he reads aloud more often than I do because I enjoy that more.

      We rhave ead The Iliad and more recently tried The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller.

      It’s a good book and Miller has taken a different tact by focusing on a love story between Achilles and Patroclus.

      In it there are several homoerotic scenes, soft-core, well done, and though he insists he’s not homophobic, my husband was put-off in reading them and lost interest,

      Since I’m spoiled by being read to, I finished it on Audible. Miller is a very sensuous writer and I recommend her to everyone.

      Delete
    5. Nobody liked him. He was no Achilles.

      Though by all accounts, the latter was a heel.

      Delete
  17. Sorkin is a writer, director, producer (and actor, mostly as an extra or playing himself). How did he inspire a movement TDH calls Sorkinism? Why is he an important personage? And as dumb as is some of the stuff he says, why is his dumb so noteworthy?

    Is Sorkin’s dumb any dumber than say, putting a laugh track on the TV series M*A*S*H and turning Frank Burns into a simpering fool?

    Haven’t Sorkin’s and his ilk’s name been legion in the entertainment world for a while? And even if I accept that he’s a particularly egregious example of a symptom of the ills of our age, how did he become a serious vector for the diseases?

    ReplyDelete
  18. The book ends with vigilante Boo Radley stalking Bob Ewell who only went out to buy skittles and then murdering him.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Only part way through January, and we have a second nominee for comment of the year. Well played!

    ReplyDelete
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  21. How i got my Husband back Thanks to Dr Padman for bringing back my Husband ,and brought great joy to my family, My Ex-Husband dumped me two weeks ago after I accused him of seeing someone else and insulting him. I want him back in my life but he refuse to have any contact with me. I was so confuse and don't know what to do, so I reach to the internet for help and I saw a testimony of how a spell caster help people to get their ex back so I contact the spell caster and explain my problem to him and he cast a spell for me and assure me of 48hours that my ex will return to me and to my greatest surprise the third day my ex came knocking on my door and beg for forgiveness. I am so happy that my love is back again and not only that, we are about to get married. Once again thank you Dr Padman , You are truly talented and gifted. padmanlovespell@yahoo.com is the only answer. He can be of great help and I will not stop publishing him because he is a wonderful man.Email: padmanlovespell@yahoo.com or whatsaap +19492293867 . padmanlovespell@yahoo.com

    ReplyDelete
  22. 5 years ago I had warts, I was treated with some liquid applied to the warts they continued to grow and spread... The next 2 doctors did laser surgery to remove them. 1 year after the surgery, they grew back close to where the 1st ones were' so I was finally told it was hpv. I have had it for very long time, I contract it from my cheated boyfriend and I found out he was also infected and I end up the relationship between us. the warts was so embarrasses because it started spreading all over I have be dealing with this things for very long time the last treatment I take was About 2 years ago I applied natural treatment from Dr onokun herbal cure, a week after applying the treatment all the warts was gone. it's now 2 years and some months I don't have single wart or any symptoms of hpv. wow"" it's great, Dr onokun has finally cured me. Anyone living with hpv contact Dr onokun for natural treatment.
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    ReplyDelete
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    ReplyDelete
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    ReplyDelete
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    ReplyDelete