#cora is not great at communicating and makes a poll for the poll.

[kinokoshoujoart]

wait why is that option getting so many votes??

[bitletsanddrabbles]

Not a ship, but characters: Elsie Hughes or Cora? Carson or Robert?

First off, and this is very important, I really love all of these characters. Truly. I would have been really upset if anything had happened to any of them. I say this, because I'm about to rag on one of them a bit. I will likely use words that, in our time period, are considered near-obscenities. This is not from dislike, but rather an academic examination of their faults, using proper language.

Secondly, I will undoubtedly refer to the shooting scripts with commentary by Julian Fellows. I bought the one for first season as reference for my fan fiction and bought seasons two and three because I loved the commentary so much! I am seriously beyond annoyed that the later seasons aren't available, in no small part because I suspect it would shed light on the problem of Henry's personality. Anyway, they're great and I highly recommend them.

Next, I apologize for any massive grammatical errors, logic jumps, and other such communication glitches. I don't really intend to spend hours revising this, and I suspect my eyes will be crossing by the end.

And lastly, get comfortable. Get some tea, maybe a snack. Use the loo. Make sure you have no urgent appointments.

You will be here awhile.

In fact, in the interest of not taking up your entire dashboard, here. Have a 'keep reading' cut.

Mrs. Hughes vs. Lady Grantham is a difficult call because they're ultimately such similar and yet different characters. They're both involved in running the estate, but Mrs. Hughes is more involved with the back end schematics and Lady Grantham is more involved in presentation to society as a whole. Some would consider Mrs. Hughes's job more important, and ultimately it might be, but at the turn of the century Lady Grantham's job was not to be underestimated, by any means. She was essentially the sales, marketing, and public representation departments all wrapped into one person. Mrs. Hughes was production.

They are also bother nurturing to their 'families': Cora to her daughters and husband and Mrs. Hughes to her staff. They both do this well.

At the end of the day, having to choose, it becomes a call between Cora's growth as a character, which is interesting, and Mrs. Hughes's stability as a character, which is necessary to allow the movement of everyone else. Steady anchor points are often overlooked in stories, but they are terribly important to keep things moving along and stop them from devolving into a three ring circus. While I enjoy Cora's growth immensely, I think I'm going to have to choose Mrs. Hughes for this one. Downton really would fall apart without her, even if her husband doesn't want to admit it.

Which brings us to the easy choice: Robert.

Hands down Robert.

Charles Carson is an entertaining and enjoyable character. As a human being, he is a basically good man, but is an unfortunate product of his society. Very unfortunate. He is, by dictionary definition (see here) a bigot. He's rarely willing to change his opinion on things, sometimes flat out refusing. Despite his protests to the contrary, he's rarely sympathetic with anyone. He doesn't realize how much the firm structure he requires for comfort hurts others and will deny it when pointed out unless something really, astonishingly bad happens. You know, like one of his underlings trying to kill himself.

When not being asked to choose characters, I'm willing to overlook all of this to a certain degree, because he is human and he does try. The harm he causes is almost entirely unintentional, and when it is intentional, it's generally caused by the belief that he needs to be firm to be a good leader. Show them who's in charge, allow no shenanigans, etc. This is how he was trained. It also hurts him as much as it hurts everyone else. I mean, who else is actively leery of having fun?

No, generally Mr. Carson is a curmudgeon whose bark is worse than his bite and, along with his wife, I love him for his good points and despite his copious glaring faults.

Robert Crawley still easily wins.

People really like to go on about Robert's faults and his prejudice. After all, he is a "privileged white man" and our society hates those. We don't want to understand them. Papers can (and have) been written about how prejudiced Robert is.

The thing is, and what I find more important, is how prejudiced Robert isn't. Seriously, for a privileged white guy at the turn of the twentieth century, he could be far, far worse (see Larry Grey). Here, let's take a look at a few things, shall we?

We'll start with something very general. We'll start with his response to change. There sure is a lot of it in this show! And let's be honest, change is stressful. A lot of people don't handle it well. It's actually quite understanding that Robert's not fond of it. Up until that time period, things had moved around rather slowly. There would be the occasional war or medical discovery. There were always new fashions. That 'industrial revolution' thing had happened and things had started going faster, but compared to today's world when a phone you've had for a year is an old model, time might as well have stood still.

Robert still handles this change with relative grace for his age and station. Okay, Matthew and Tom, both being younger, from more hands-on view points, and more in touch with the world handle it better, but Carson and Lady Violet both handle it worse. Especially Carson. Robert handles it like a horse who has had something new suddenly introduced to the paddock: he shies, he bucks, he might run a bit or kick out a time or two, but if you slowly lead him back around to this strange thing enough times, he eventually figures out "Oh, hey. This thing isn't really a big deal after all, is it?" And he accepts it - embraces it even, in some cases - and moves on.

This brings us to the first point of actual prejudice and the one he is most undeniably guilty of, classism. First off, people ignore the fact that classism runs both ways. Miss Bunting was probably the single most classist bigot of the show, followed by the Sinderby's butler, then Lady Violet (who, according to every poll I've seen, is the most popular character in the show). Robert's classism (as with most of his prejudice, honestly) is institutionalized rather than personal which doesn't make it okay, but does make it easier to understand and fight once it's attacked in a rational manner. In other words, yes, he pitched an ever loving fit when Sybil married the chauffeur, but he got over it. He went from "you will have no money!" to "...okay, you haven't asked for it, but the money thing can happen" far faster than Carson went from "I will not dress the former chauffeur!" to accepting "Branson is part of the family now”. Carson also didn't have the excuse of feeling like his daughter was actively being taken away from him, off to a different country, a different life, and that he had somehow failed as a parent, which is undoubtedly how Robert felt.

Admittedly, once started, it wasn't all forward progress, but the hiccups there were tended to be fairly legitimate. Grief over Sybil's death combining with the last vestiges of feeling like Branson had taken his daughter away from him. Finding out his son-in-law had abandoned his pregnant daughter in hostile territory after helping to burn down someone's house. I mean I understand why Branson was doing what he was doing, but having an arsonist in the house is something to worry about!

The other thing to note about this is that while Robert definitely believes in the class structure and holds to it and sees himself at the top, he actually values the people below him. The reason Mrs. Patmore was so panicked about her failing vision in season one and so relieved when Robert sent her for surgery rather than turn her out with a meager pension is because so many people wouldn't have. It would have been "thank you for your services, good luck" and that would be that. He sees employing people and making it so they can have a wage his job and when he started not being able to pay a competitive wage or replace people when they quit, he saw it as a personal failure. His decision had created the underbutler position and I don't think he was really happy to have to do away with it (and, observant and in touch with things as he isn't, I am positive he didn't realize how pushy Carson was being about the whole thing. I doubt he would have liked it). He shows up at everyone's weddings. His perception is skewed, but his heart is in the right place.

And speaking of Miss Bunting, there is the point of his not being able to produce Daisy's name on demand. He doesn't deal with Daisy on a regular basis, so he would absolutely be less aware of her than he would be of, say, Carson or the personal staff. However, he did attend her wedding and she has been there for fifteen years. So what makes more sense - that he honestly doesn't know her name or that he straight up blanked on it? I think the second. After all, I once spent probably fifteen minutes all told unable to remember the name of my oldest cousin. He knew her at her wedding, he certainly knew her at the auction in season six and after!, I'm pretty sure when not being put on the spot by someone aggressively vilifying him to his face, he'd do a bit better.

The next big prejudice covered by the show is religion. This is one Robert has, but not in the way you would expect. In a society that could be very anti-Semitic, he doesn't give a flying fig if you're Jewish. His father-in-law was a Jew. Lady Rose married a Jewish boy and there's no indication of disapproval from Robert what so ever. He does have a problem with Catholics and that, Julian Fellows explains, was largely a point of national patriotism. England, as a whole, did not trust a religion that answered to an Italian instead of the Kng. It was seen as something of a conflict of interest. Again, this doesn't make it alright, but it makes it understandable within the context of the society (especially when your Catholic son-in-law burnt down someone's house) and was really more political than anything.

There were more issues at play with Sybbie's being Catholic, of course. There was that whole grieving thing, again the lingering feeling that Branson had taken Sybil away, etc. As usual, though, once it was clear he was outnumbered and the change was happening, Robert set aside fears that his granddaughter might go burning houses if that Italian guy thought it was a good idea and got on with life.

(Seriously, this really does seem to be comparable, at least in the mindset of the English, to a modern day Englishman following the president of a different country rather than the Queen. Not necessarily terrible, but potentially so, especially if war breaks out and the two countries are suddenly on opposing sides. Treason is a thing that can be kinda messy.)

Then there's sexism. I honestly think Robert gets way more flack for this than he truly deserves. It's not that he isn't sexist at all (again, institutionalized sexism), but that most of his worst offenses are actually a combination of his being legitimately not-super-observant and the aforementioned "horse in paddock" syndrome. He is used to his family behaving in a certain way. He is also, as with Cora, part of the sales/marketing/pr department. He is concerned about what the neighbors think because he is expected to and people in this day and age just don't get how important that was. The thought that his family would be seen poorly was not just a threat to him and his masculine pride, but to them and their opportunities in life. A lot of his keeping them at home was honestly trying to protect them, even if it was also underestimating their abilities, and really - they were just discovering their abilities! How was he supposed to know all about it?

Suddenly the war happened and his wife and daughters started behaving differently. He was legitimately confused, and no wonder! Can you see season one Mary slopping pigs? Can you see season one Edith running a magazine? People really did think that things would go 'back to normal' after the war, but they didn't. The women in his life started moving without warning and left him struggling to cope with the unexpected change.

Once he circled back around enough times to realize this big, scary change really wasn't big or scary, he was proud of them. He was proud of Mary for taking on the task of agent. Heck, he was practically proud of her for growing up enough to have an affair with Tony Gillingham! He accepted Marigold without batting an eyelash and got to the point where he was pleased to call Edith an "interesting woman". He was really, really proud of Cora after Rose lured him, carrot in hand, to the hospital!  He had never been more proud or the woman he loved.

And he loved her. She was the pillar holding him steady, and that is not just a pretty turn of phrase. One thing our society that has not changed one whit in the past hundred years is that men are supposed to be emotionally dependent on the women they are intimate with. There is huge pressure put on men to have a girlfriend or to be married, and it's not all machismo and Mummy dearest wanting grand kids, it's "this is the person you should talk to about your problems." This leads to emotional discussion being firmly linked, in the male view, with sex. Women, being encouraged to have friends to talk to, don't have that mental connection, and this causes a metric ton of relationship problems. So we come to his affair, if you want to call it that, with Jane (And honestly, while it nearly went beyond two kisses, I still think calling it an affair is giving it an awful lot of credit).

The war was over. Things were changing. While it might be socially permissible for him to discuss the politics of the changes with Bates or some other man, the resultant emotional turmoil was something Cora was, by societal standards, supposed to help him get through. For over half of his life, she had done just that. Now, he needed that emotional support and suddenly it wasn't there because his wife was off learning how to be useful and important. This was a great thing for her, and ultimately for them as a couple, but everything has consequences and the immediate consequence of this was that she didn't need to lean on anyone, he did, and he didn't have anyone. It is really rather unbecoming for a fifty year old man to go crying to his mother every time he needs bucking up.

Jane was young, pretty, was going through the rough transition of losing a spouse, was lonely as a result, and had a son, which appealed to Robert since he'd always wanted one. I seriously think he initially took an interest in her as much to take an interest in something as anything. Things got worse the longer he went without someone to talk to about his feelings, and she wasn't getting any less lonely or in need of someone to make her feel wanted.  Then, finally, Cora got the flu. While it seems outrageous that he would have an affair with a maid while his wife was maybe dying, his wife maybe dying was why he badly needed the emotional support of his wife, which he in turn couldn't have because his wife was maybe dying. Again, at fifty, running to Lady Violet at this juncture would have been viewed as A Bit Much by a lot of people. The fact that those people were absolute prats from a modern view point doesn't change this.

So, while both his society and ours agree that having an affair at the time was wrong, the real question here is what his society would have considered right. Please do ring me up when you've figured out the answer, because honestly? I've no clue.

Of course, once Cora didn't die, he looked back at things, got his head on straight, and ended things with Jane like a gentleman. He did the right thing, in the end. I consider this to be a far more material point than the fact he didn't intuitively pull a graceful way to maneuver a situation that he had no real coping mechanism for out of his ear.

There is one prejudice that I've seen him assigned in fan fiction, and it pisses me off every time: homophobia. This is one prejudice that Robert has barely any of. Yes, it's there in his little chuckles with Bates, but honestly? Compared to Carson? Compared to Jimmy and Alfred and the police and parliament? A little chuckle in private that is meant without malice is hardly a complaint. Thomas isn't happy at Downton most of the time, but he's there. Other employers would have sacked him the second they put two and two together. Heck, left to his own devices and reasonably assured there would be no scandal, Carson probably would have sacked him. I am quite certain that at some point there was a conversation in which Robert brushed that concern off as absolutely no reason to sack a perfectly good footman. This doesn't mean he didn't make a hash of things on a regular basis, but that was more from not understanding the problem than actual malicious intent. If, for example, someone actually pointed out that in hiring Bates he'd basically told Thomas "I would rather have a normal man who will never be able to do his job than a filthy degenerate like you" I would expect him to balk ("I never said that!"), bolt ("Pff, none of the staff would think that!"), and then, when finally reaching the point of accepting it, feel absolutely terrible. He flat out lied to the police to keep the man out of prison, for crying out loud!

While he is not an advocate for gay rights, by any means, it is something that he is absolutely not fussed about.

He has other legitimate flaws. His temper. His passiveness in many situations. But he is a genuinely good man. He cares about his people and wants them to do well. He wants to protect them and provide for them and make their lives comfortable. He is genuinely interested in improving the world as a whole.

There are so many people you can not say that about, and many of them get far more credit.

And on that note, I am going to bed.

[realestate63141]

Bethesda's Nannies Brace For Government Shutdown

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U.S. embassies are promoting President Trump’s properties — though without a “Plenipotentiary For You and the Kids!” slogan, alas. A Republican Senate campaign confused Washington with Hangzhou, China, so if the campaign doesn’t work out, the candidate probably has a future in Trump’s diplomatic corps. And the president has completed only 30 percent of his 100-day promises, though if you don’t count California, the number is much higher. This is HUFFPOST HILL for Monday, April 24th, 2017:

GOVERNMENT SET TO SHUT DOWN SATURDAY MORNING - As if this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner weren’t already strange enough. Julia Edwards Ainsley: “Should talks fail, the government would shut down on Saturday, Trump’s 100th day in office. Trump, whose national approval rating hovered around 43 percent in the latest Reuters/Ipsos polling, is seeking his first big legislative victory…. The White House says it has offered to include $7 billion in Obamacare subsidies that allow low-income people to pay for health insurance in exchange for Democratic backing for $1.5 billion in funding to start construction of the barrier on the U.S.-Mexico border…. A Republican congressional aide said Democrats may agree to some aspects of the border wall, including new surveillance equipment and access roads, estimated to cost around $380 million. ‘But Democrats want the narrative that they dealt him a loss on the wall,’ the aide said, adding it would be difficult to bring any Democrats on board with new construction on the southwest border.” [Reuters]

HONESTLY, WE THOUGHT IT’D BE LOWER - Congrats to the president! Jill Colvin and Calvin Woodward: “Of 38 specific promises Trump made in his 100-day ‘contract’ with voters — ‘This is my pledge to you’ — he’s accomplished 10, mostly through executive orders that don’t require legislation, such as withdrawing the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. He’s abandoned several and failed to deliver quickly on others, stymied at times by a divided Republican Party and resistant federal judges. Of 10 promises that require Congress to act, none has been achieved and most have not been introduced. ‘I’ve done more than any other president in the first 100 days,’ the president bragged in a recent interview with AP, even as he criticized the marker as an ‘artificial barrier.’ In truth, his 100-day plan remains mostly a to-do list that will spill over well beyond Saturday, his 100th day.” [AP]

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Does somebody keep forwarding you this newsletter? Get your own copy. It’s free! Sign up here.  Send tips/stories/photos/events/fundraisers/job movement/juicy miscellanea to eliot@huffingtonpost.com. Follow us on Twitter - @HuffPostHill

U.S. EMBASSIES PROMOTE TRUMP PROPERTIES - This makes a certain amount of sense as the United Kingdom is the only country in the world with worse tourists than the United States. Darren Samuelsohn “President Donald Trump isn’t the only one promoting his private Mar-a-Lago club as the ‘winter White House.’ His foreign policy team is doing it too. The State Department and at least two U.S. embassies — the United Kingdom and Albania — earlier this month circulated a 400-word blog post detailing the long history of the president’s private South Florida club, which has been open to dues-paying members since the mid-1990s and is now used by Trump for frequent weekend getaways. He has hosted foreign leaders there twice…. Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) also slammed Trump’s administration, linking to an April 5 tweet from the State Department’s Economic & Business Affairs office that promoted the president’s club by asking: ‘Curious about the President’s winter White House also known as Mar-a-Lago?’” [Politico]

ADMINISTRATION LEVELS NEW SYRIA SANCTIONS - Julie Hirschfeld Davis: “The Trump administration on Monday said it was imposing sanctions on 271 employees of the Syrian government agency that produces chemical weapons and ballistic missiles, blacklisting them from travel and financial transactions in the wake of a sarin attack on civilians this month. The sanctions on members of President Bashar al-Assad’s Scientific Studies and Research Center more than doubles the number of Syrian individuals and entities whose property has been blocked by the United States and who are barred from financial transactions with American people or companies. It seeks to punish those behind this month’s chemical weapons attacks and previous ones carried out by Mr. Assad’s government, senior administration officials said, and to deter others who are contemplating similar actions.” [NYT]

Trump crapped on the United Nations today — and his own ambassador (sort of).

TRUMP FORCING ENTIRE SENATE TO COME TO HIS HOUSE - As power moves go, this one’s a little odd. David Nakamura and Ed O’Keefe: “The White House announced Monday it would host an unusual private briefing on North Korea for the entire U.S. Senate, prompting questions from lawmakers over whether the Trump administration intends to use the event as a photo op ahead of his 100-day mark…. [T]he location at the White House perplexed lawmakers who have grown accustomed to such briefings taking place in a secure location on Capitol Hill, where there is more room to handle such a large group. Past administrations have often held briefings for smaller groups of about two dozen or fewer lawmakers in the White House Situation Room. But they have traditionally sent high-level aides to Capitol Hill to hold discussions with larger groups in secure, underground locations. A senior Trump administration official said the meeting with senators will take place in the auditorium at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, the building next to the White House.” [WaPo]

REPUBLICAN LAUNCHES SENATE BID, PROMISES TO REFORM OUR CHINESE CAPITAL - Real estate executive and Republican bundler Jeff Bartos announced today he’s running for Bob Casey’s Senate seat. “Bob Casey’s Washington is booming,” Bartos said in his announcement video, which features scenes of economic decline from Bartos’ hometown of Reading. However one of images that flashes on the screen as Bartos discusses “Bob Casey’s Washington” (at the 29 second mark) is actually a stock image of a construction site in Hangzhou, China, according to this Getty Images page. We welcome our new Chinese overlords and hope to see them at the next Communist Party meeting at Ryan Grim’s house.

SO GLAD WE’RE MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN - But thank God Ivanka and Jared are moderating influences. Michael McLaughlin: “Harassment, vandalism and other hostile acts against Jewish people and sites in the U.S. increased by 34 percent last year and are up 86 percent through the first three months of 2017, according to data released on Monday. A spate of bomb threats against Jewish community centers and schools, and vandalism at Jewish cemeteries in the U.S. this year have contributed to the surge, according to the Anti-Defamation League’s report. There have been more than 100 bomb threats against 75 Jewish community centers and eight Jewish day schools around the country this year through early March.” [HuffPost]

Congratulations to the anti-globalists: “Why Paul Wolfowitz Is Optimistic About Trump” [Politico]  

BEGUN, THE GREAT GOP FLOP SWEAT HAS - Alex Isenstadt: “Republicans say President Donald Trump needs to turn things around fast — or the GOP could pay dearly in 2018. With the party preparing to defend its congressional majorities in next year’s midterms, senior Republicans are expressing early concern about Trump’s lack of legislative accomplishments, his record-low approval ratings, and the overall dysfunction that’s gripped his administration. The stumbles have drawn the attention of everyone from GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson, who funneled tens of millions of dollars into Trump’s election and is relied on to help bankroll the party’s House and Senate campaigns, to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Adelson hasn’t contributed to pro-Trump outside groups since the inauguration, a move that’s drawn notice within the party, and McConnell is warning associates that Trump’s unpopularity could weigh down the GOP in the election.” [Politico]

LOBBYISTS PRETTY AMPED FOR YOU TO BREATHE SMOG - What’s the over/under on industry groups paying prominent fashion designers to include air masks in their next collection?  Alexander Kaufman: “A utility lobbyist called on regulators to do less work monitoring greenhouse gas emissions. An oil and gas lobbyist praised the Trump administration’s retreat from safeguards and urged federal rulemakers to limit regulations on carbon emissions and smog. A lobbyist for wood-product manufacturers complained about the ‘ever-tightening’ public health standards for ozone pollution and asked regulators to change the permitting process. Those were just some of the requests made by industry advocates during a conference call Monday, when the Environmental Protection Agency held the first of several sessions to ask the public which rules should be eliminated under President Donald Trump’s executive order instructing agencies to slash regulations. The three-hour call, held by the Office of Air and Radiation, focused on clean air and ozone pollution rules.” [HuffPost]

IMPORTANT LABOR DEVELOPMENT - Man, the unreleased alternative ending to “Norma Rae” sure got weird. Cora Lewis: “Back in October, 2011, Hernan Perez got chewed out by his boss. We’ve all been there. But Perez, whose workplace was in the midst of a tense unionization campaign, escalated things during his next break by publishing a Facebook post dedicated to his boss: ‘Bob is such a NASTY MOTHER FUCKER don’t know how to talk to people!!!!!! Fuck his mother and his entire fucking family!!!! What a LOSER!!!! Vote YES for the UNION!!!!!!!,’ the post read. Three days later, after the post came to management’s attention, Perez took it down. A little over a week later, following an investigation, he was fired. He’d worked at the company for 13 years. But on Friday, a federal appeals court ruled Perez, like all workers, has the right to call his boss a nasty motherfucker — at least when such speech is part of legally protected statements involving union activity.” [BuzzFeed]

WILL THERE BE HEARINGS NOW? - Lesley Wroughton and Yeganeh Torbati: “Former Fox News anchor and correspondent Heather Nauert will be the new U.S. State Department spokeswoman, the State Department said in a statement on Monday. Nauert was most recently an anchor for Fox News’ morning news show ‘Fox and Friends,’ and previously was a correspondent at ABC News. ‘Heather’s media experience and long interest in international affairs will be invaluable as she conveys the administration’s foreign policy priorities to the American people and the world,’ the statement said.” [Reuters]

OBAMA RETURNS, THANKS YOU FOR YOUR ‘STILL MY PRESIDENT’ FACEBOOK POST - No, he didn’t. He doesn’t care. Marina Fang: “Former President Barack Obama returned to the spotlight on Monday, moderating a civic engagement panel featuring Chicago-area high school and college students and young leaders. ‘So, uh, what’s been going on while I’ve been gone?’ he joked at the start of the event, held at the University of Chicago. The panel discussion was Obama’s first formal public appearance since leaving office in January. It was also a homecoming, as Obama began his political career in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the university for 12 years. He is building his presidential library just south of the campus, in Chicago’s Woodlawn neighborhood, with the involvement of the university and community organizations.” [HuffPost]

BECAUSE YOU’VE READ THIS FAR - Here’s a baby elephant frolicking on the beach.

STUPID RESTAURANT HAS STUPID NAME - It’s a real shame that the cultural mecca of Friendship Heights — the Paris of neighborhoods that abut AU Park — is taking such a hit. Dan Steinberg: “From the moment Tony Kornheiser announced in January that his high-powered group of friends would buy classic Friendship Heights restaurant Chad’s, it was clear that the name would eventually be changed…. Kornheiser announced on his podcast last week that the former Chad’s (formerly Chadwick’s) has been renamed Chatter, effective immediately. The name is both a reference to the restaurant’s new podcasting studio — which he said should be open by May 1 — and to a famous quote about newspapers…. As it turns out, though, I work at a newspaper, and I had never heard of this precise line. So I Googled it to try to source the origins correctly, and I was unable to find the reference. Then I put the beginning of that phrase — ‘Cut the chatter, sweetheart’ — into Nexis. I found six references. All six were Washington Post columns by Tony Kornheiser.” [WaPo]

COMFORT FOOD

- We can’t stop reading the Flat Earth Society’s FAQ page.

- Bowling a perfect game in 90 seconds.

- Don’t mess with the Utah Jazz’s mascot.

TWITTERAMA

@AdamSerwer: What if Mark Halperin was replaced by a bowtied dog named Bark Halperin

@alanalevinson: Folks, can we all settle on one platform for posting our video “stories”? I am exhausted by watching your brunch boomerang three times

@pourmecoffee: @realDonaldTrump Maybe the Saturday rally will fill the hundred-day-hole in your heart.

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