Editorials and Opinions

Gary Tischler • February 18, 2016

Washingtonians will remember the Blizzard of 2016. It was a blizzard for the ages, as trumpeted the Washington Post whose Sunday paper came on Monday but come it did and whose weekend magazine came on Friday, and come it did—came but did not let go. 

Officially, for Washingtonians and others in the area, it ended on Jan. 23 just before midnight. The snow stopped, and we woke up the next day to sunshine and a pile of snow so high. Hardly anyone went out, and we became  stale air breathers for a time.

The storm was awesome in its fury, its tonnage and created tundras and caused us to start worrying in a serious way.  Weather folks and measurers and which doctors exulted—they had been for once right, and couldn’t wipe the smile off their faces.   This was their time—they even dressed for it. Pat Collins came out with his stick and schtick. It seemed, in spite of everything, that all was all right with the world, as best as it could be.

The storm wiped out—if not the sun—other news for the most part.  Lots of people ventured out, even though Mayor Muriel Bowser sternly told them not to.  They went to the nearest pub, whatever remained open, a restaurant, a street corner, just to see, to get bee-stung by wind-swept snow, to look at the sights, holding hands or to roll in the snow.

This past weekend was a time when the most viral sight was of a middle aged black and white bear sucking his toes as he rolled in the snow with all the delight of a cub. 

Another sure sign that while there was tragedy tonight, while cars got stuck, and people crashed into each other, and some died in a multistage catastrophe—41 feet there, 22 right in our back yards, 29 in Baltimore—there was heart-felt feeling of having once again survived.  Not everyone  or everything did—roofs collapsed, lights went out, the homeless suffered casualties as they always do, we all went to sleep not quite sure on Saturday night what we might wake up to.  

We get warped views of these things—narrow-eyed, only outside the steps, the chatter on the streaming computer, the sirens, the snow, the snow.  And so we become our own best friends, shut-ins.  We listen and watch for the round of reporters out in Virginia and Maryland, standing guard with reports at gas stations, neighborhood stores, impassable and impossible intersections, shivering, some, their long hair in tatters, others looking sharp and fashionable, trudging the roads against the odds.

We salute you guys: wouldn’t want to be you.

My son called from Anaheim, sunny Los Angeles for once, on a job setting up convention media, for a convention of rock-and-roll music instrument buyers and sellers, I think, I’m not sure. It sounded cool, you go, son.  He asked if we were okay, thinking about us and all that. We said it hasn’t stopped snowing and that it’s going to get worse. The tone of his voice was frowning—you don’t need Skype for that.

The television never went off—what a wonder, and through it, through our over-provisioning, we made piles of noodles and meatballs and a hot breakfast. The panda appeared on the screen regularly, as did the stuck truckers.  Outside on Sunday on Lanier Place, tourists—we believe—had somehow ventured onto our street and gotten stuck.  Dogs were being walked, and the little statue of Mother Mary at Joseph’s House  had been wrapped in double layers of scarves, red against the white snow.

On television, we  sectioned out on reruns: “Blue Bloods,” “SVU,” “NCIS,” “Friends” and comfort food.  

In times like these, the world almost disappears: I did not hear the word “Syria” or “Obamacare.” We become smaller.

First, the newspapers disappear for two days, an odd thing not to look for the paper in the pile of snow. The world out there disappears with it.  Oh, we can follow the doings of the British Parliament if we want, but who wants to.  The Kardashians seem to have gone off the grid, also, unless you are looking.  The Middle East is too warm, sunshine on their weapon-carrying shoulders. Putin has nothing to say.

The only people who have something to say are the politicians, the office-runners, still with us, Donald Trump with his daily output of outrageous stuff—”I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and it wouldn’t lose votes,” dissing Barbara Bush, trying to rekindle a feud with Megyn Kelly, and, of course, battling with the prince of darkness Ted Cruz.   Cruz, these days, looks a little mangled, which is the look of that old song “I fought with Trump and I think he’s winning, where the hell are my boots.”

It’s hard to let go of them and their importuning ways—the first votes to be cast will be cast just about any February day now and the procrastinators and protesters, and anti-procreators and predictors,  and rotor rooters are spinning their wheels.  What if, and if this happens, and those people go to a caucus  and another one sits on a caucus and can’t vote, why we could be looking at President Trump.  This is what the Sunday morning shows do to you.  You can’t look away, it’s the opposite of viral, some blue addiction.   Bernie and Hillary and Marco and the Donald and all those experts and reporters  following them all like rabbits.

It’s enough to make you watch old movies.   We watched “The Outlaw Josey Wales” and were surprised to remember what a fine old western and movie movie it is, a kind of homage by Clint Eastwood to John Ford, bloody, to be sure, but a kind of tall tale, too, like “True Grit” and “Little Big Man” with the steadying commentary of Chief Dan George. It seemed like every grizzled old face that had ever graced—grizzly and all—a western.  

In this atmosphere, in these times of white fallout and inundation, people running for office seem like intrusions, flies around a bone, buzzing needlessly and uselessly. 

Let the music play, help your neighbor, say hello to your neighbor, sing a song of sixpence, that’s what’s important.  In the silent night, should you wake up in the dark, remember a friend or a song, and say goodbye again. Watch the children and small dogs in the snow. Kiss your wife and the window.

Make an angel in the snow.   Watch your breath in the cold. Pray for the people along the flooding, churning Atlantic.

Drown out for a few days the noise of the chattering classes trying to drown out the sound of your breathing—those who claim they know you and what you want.

Georgetowner •

Mike Copperthite’s 60th birthday party took place at Martin’s Tavern where a bunch of his friends stopped by to visit him at the booths in the Dugout on Jan 6. Drinks and fun were had by well-wishers. He was his usual exuberant self, proud of his wife and daughter, and proud of the newest wall plaque at Martin’s, which celebrates his relative, Henry Copperthite, as D.C.’s “Pie King” and celebrates Walter Johnson as one of the greatest pitchers of the Washington Senators.

Copperthite, a political strategist and a descendent of the founders of the Connecticut-Copperthite Pie Company, resurrected the baking of Copperthite pies in 2012 — one of the largest businesses in Washington a century ago (with a bakery at Wisconsin Avenue and O Street NW and one on Capitol Hill). He is often seen about town delivering his pies, mostly as donations to such places as St. John’s or the Georgetown Senior Center. He even restored a 1914 Model T Connecticut-Copperthite Pie Company delivery truck, and donated it to the Smithsonian.

We’re glad to wish Mike a Happy Birthday for his love of Washington history and of Georgetown. We know that — even at 60 — he has no “off” switch. So, don’t even try.

David Roffman •

David Roffman, former editor and publisher of The Georgetowner, retired to the Gulf Coast six years ago. He and his wife Carmen are living and loving the beach life, taking it easy every day with their two big dogs. Washington seems so far away now — not that Roffman has stopped commenting about politics and American life. Nevertheless, one never knows what excitement retirement can bring. The following is an update from our favorite old guy.

I was just elected president of our homeowners association. There are 290 homes in our Ashford Park community, which is in Foley, Alabama — on the Gulf Coast, near Mobile.

On my first day as president, on Jan. 12, I was holding my first meeting with the newly elected board of directors when two guys brandishing guns entered the home and announced, “Everybody down. This is a holdup!”

There were eight of us at the meeting, almost all senior citizens. I stood up and faced them with a gun pointed right at my stomach and said, “This could take a while. It’s hard for us to get down … let alone get back up again.” True story.

One of the seniors started to scream, another ran down the hall and jumped out of the bedroom window, and the two perpetrators ran outside chasing him. We locked the doors and called the police. A few hours later, after a robbery at the nearby Walgreens parking lot, the police caught the guys — two 18-year old punks who were former football players at Foley High School. The cops booked them and their bail was set at $100,000 each. They had been on a crime spree all the way from Texas, according to WKRG-TV Channel 5, which also interviewed me and others about the crime.

How’s that for my first day in office? Just like old times in Georgetown, when I was Crime Prevention Chairman for the Citizens Association of Georgetown. (And, by the way, bring back Au Pied de Cochon!)

Gary Tischler • February 10, 2016

Somewhere out there in the vast expanses of the American electoral map, there are some hearty souls—maybe three, maybe a dozen—who are saying, “I told you so,” after Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders made victory speeches in New Hampshire for winning their respective Republican and Democratic primaries. 

Anybody predicting this scene a year ago would have been jeered at and mocked even in the darkest corners of the Internet.  Whoever predicted this outcome probably won the most recent Powerball lottery and should be investigated.

Yet, here we are: Donald—”Let’s Make America Great Again”—Trump and Bernie—“A Future to Believe in”—Sanders, not only winning but running away with their respective races in a state famous for its ambush-style, contrarian, heavily independent-in -spirit, -thought and -action voters. 

Sanders trashed the odds-on, all-but-anointed-favorite Hillary Clinton and the Clinton machine by more than 20 points. Trump, who was a loser to the evangelists’ favorite, Ted Cruz, in Iowa—ran away from the Republican field, which saw nice-guy, moderate Republican, Ohio Governor John Kasich, rise to temporary viability with a surprising second-place finish.

Watching this process play itself out has become an increasingly surreal experience. Lots of things happen in the background, history marches apace, but more and more the primary process and its endless series of debates has begun to overwhelm the news of our daily lives.  Economic figures, terrorist attacks, wars and refugees, black lives matter and immigrants have become and been often reduced to talking points for the various men and women who woke in the middle of some night—when they were seven or 70—from a vivid dream in which they had had one hand on the Bible and the other raised upward, saying, “I . . . fill-in-the-blank . . . do solemnly swear . . .”

There were 16 Republicans who had that dream, fewer remaining to still believe it, and there will probably be fewer still after this second round of actual voting.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, after carving up Florida Senator Marco Rubio like a pot roast during the last GOP debate, was rewarded with a negligible 7 percent of the vote, just ahead of businesswoman Carly Fiorina and befuddled brain surgeon Ben Carson,  who was last seen still waiting to be called to the podium. For Carson, it was a long fall from his high point. Was it just yesterday or the month before that he had shared the lead in the polls with Trump?

It’s fair to say that ever since Trump announced that he was a candidate for president by calling for a wall that he would but on Mexico’s credit card and talked about rapists streaming across the border, that we have lived in Trump World.  As a result, our electoral process has become a kind of three-ring circus of polls, debates, world events as talking points, debates and more debates, punctuated by Trump gaffes, outrageous remarks and proposals, after which Trump would again rise in the polls.  Trump has turned the whole process upside down, obliterated a G.O.P. establishment which had planned for a Jeb Bush nomination—more or less—or some other rising conservative star like Rubio.

The rise of  the gnomish Sanders has been less acrimonious but just as improbable.  He is after all a self-described Socialist-Independent-Democrat, a senator from Vermont with a not particularly spectacular legislative record, 74 years old and not getting younger.  To Hillary Clinton followers, he must have seemed an annoying little speed bump in her road to the presidency.  Instead, in New Hampshire, he won by 20 points and captured 80 percent of the under-30 vote as well as big support from gun owners and women. Go figure.

Both Trump and Sanders, it’s been noted, have tapped into what everyone sees as a hugely angry voter population—angry about jobs and the lack thereof, angry about values, angry about middle class erosion, angry about the one percent, angry about terrorists, immigrants, America’s standing in the world and, evidently, most angry about political correctness.

Somewhere in there, though, we have marched into the Land of Oz, the carnival, the circus.

If we were not in Kansas, we did get into Iowa, which is a similar place, a land of caucuses and corn, where Trump got all the attention for not appearing in a debate and a relished showdown with blonde-ambition moderator Megyn Kelly. Iowa became a place where up was down, where a third-place finish by rising Rubio had him sniffing the steps of the White House, where a near-tie between Bernie and Hillary had Clinton claiming victory — and, while Cruz won the G.O.P. caucuses, it was Trump who got the last word, at first gracious, and then claiming that Cruz had cheated.

There were more debates to come before the N.H. primary. Sanders and Clinton engaged in impolite battle on the Democratic side on a Friday, and as for the Republicans, it was the Chris Christy show, where Jeb Bush once again was the only person on the dais taking on Trump and the Donald trying to shush him, literally.  That debate took place on Saturday night, when good people should be out having dinner or imbibing something or other. Any notion that this was not the year for that was dispelled when you found Bernie in a “Saturday Night Live” skit on the Titanic.

In Washington, the city still spent time recovering from the blizzard of 2016—all those pockets of dirty snow piles slowly disappearing.   Out in the wide world,  there were attempts at Syrian peace talks, which were failing, and North Korea tested a long-range missile, which led to much saber-rattling among G.O.P. debaters.  In Hollywood, folks were talking about boycotting the Oscars over a lack of diversity in the acting nominations—no African Americans for the second year in a row—while the Super Bowl proved to be a washout for North Carolina’s super-star with the dance and the pants Cam Newton.   None of the news—including two particularly horrific murders in the area—could quite compete with Iowa and New Hampshire.

None of the news, in the end, could quite compete with Trump.  The media did its usual thing, gathering around tables and predicting or dissecting results like fussy first-year medical students around a still-warm corpse.  But inevitably while they pondered what suddenly vulnerable Rubio might do, or how the Clintons would recover their lost mojo, or how Bernie would do in South Carolina, or if Kasich could survive his new-found political prosperity, the mike, the notebook, the attention always turned to Trump.

Trump did not disappoint.   As a parting shot, he urged voters “even if you’re dying or your wife is leaving you” to vote.  He became involved in using a sexist P-word at a rally, and suddenly, Trump’s vulgarity became an issue in not one but two NBC interviews.  Trump,  said he was just repeating what a woman had said at a rally, and in any case, he was “just having fun” — and anybody that would object, well, it’s P.C.

Political correctness has always been Trump’s magic bullet and cover for just about any sort of behavior or comment, from mocking a reporter’s disability to making fun of Sen. John McCain, when he was a U.S. Navy aviator for becoming a prisoner of the North Vietnamese in 1967 to the Kelly contratemps.

On NBC News, veteran legend and reporter Tom Brokaw bemoaned the lack of civility in politics. He’s right, but it’s not coming back.

We’re not just not in Kansas anymore.   You can’t ignore that man behind the curtain any more. Goodbye, New Hampshire.

Hello, South Carolina.

And wait, there’s more: Super Tuesday is March 1.

Gary Tischler • February 1, 2016

These days, we’re having more than a few “days the music died.”

Natalie Cole seems like a little while ago. David Bowie, just last week. Glenn Frey.

Frey, co-founder with Don Henley (his collaborator and best bud, no question) of the Eagles, the soulful, rock-and-country-tinged super band-hit machine of the endless summers of the 1970s, died Jan. 18 at the age of 67 from complications from rheumatoid arthritis, acute ulcerative colitis and pneumonia.

Henley, who issued the evocative solo album, “Cass County,” last year, said, “He was like a brother to me, we were family, and like most families, there was some dysfunction. But, the bond we forged 45 years ago was never broken, even during the time when the Eagles were dissolved. … Glenn was the one who started it all. He was the spark plug, the one with the plan. … We are all in a state of shock and disbelief and profound sorrow. … I will be grateful every day, that he was in my life… Rest in peace, my brother, you did what you set out to do, and then some.”

A mega-rock band, is still a group, so that when one of its members passes, there’s a temptation to go into tribute mode for the whole band.  With Frey, it’s probably entirely appropriate to do just that.  While and Henley wrote co-wrote many of the songs, and the band members—the originals were Frey, Henley, Randy Meisner, Bernie Leadon, Don Felder, Joe Walsh and Timothy B. Schmit, Frey was probably its most dynamic, charismatic and resonant member, who set the band’s tone.

That tone and that amalgam of talent over the years produced a huge number of just downright perfect hit songs, in the 1970s  songs that were particular but also universal mode, one that was hard-driving, full of rueful melancholy, romantically cynical, regretful about last night, eager for the next night. Their music was one of the most successful attempts to marry rock attitude and beats to the best and most resonant kind of country content, tinged with frayed cowboy hats, hangover blues and stretches of long highways with road stops at diners and clubs and somebody else’s bedrooms.

Run that list through your mind sometimes:  if you heard one of their songs, you’re bound to hear them a thousand times, same as ever, the lyrics going into your blood stream like a straight shot of pure, 30-year-old scotch.

Here you go start your engines, alphabetically: “Already Gone,” “Best of My Love,” “Desperado,” “Doolin-Dalton,” “Guilty of the Crime,” “Heartache Tonight,” “Hotel California,” “How Long,” “I Can’t Tell you Why,” “I Don’t Want to Hear It Anymore,” “James Dean,” “Life in the Fast Lane,” “Long Road Out of Eden,” “Lyin’ Eyes,” “One of These Nights,” “Peaceful Easy Feeling,” “Take It Easy,” “Take It To the Limit,” “Tequila Sunrise,” “The Long Run,” “Wasted Time,” “Witchy Woman.” You get a drift in just the song titles, of what it was like for them in the 1970s and beyond. Frey was long considered the Warren Beatty of rock and roll and did not shy away from drugs.

The Eagles always seemed to be on the verge of breaking up and eventually did, only to reform years later and tour again.

But the two versions, while much the same, in terms of the music, didn’t  quite look the same, especially Frey.

Look at them, those early Eagles. They appear as if they came out of the shade of the summer of love, the long hair, the eager playing, the frayed shirts, all of that tanned look, but the guitar rolls are the same, and the pretty blonde hippie madonnas in the audience are bopping up and down. Years later, here they are again, Frey, minus the beard, a friendly but craggy look, short hair, pink shirt, blue suit, playing hard, singing with soul and clarity and the same girls are out in the audience, with their boyfriends (now their husbands?), smiling knowing smiles at the lyrics. In later life, Frye, who had a solo career, was into fitness and health food, looked like a guy who could give a power-point talk.

First point:  Take It Easy.

Last point: Take it to the Limit.

He did both—personified it all.
 

Gary Tischler • January 31, 2016

Remember what Dorothy said to her dog? “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

No, we’re not. We’re in Iowa.

It’s only hours until that singular once-and-once-only American political event, the Iowa caucuses where Iowans gather in each voting precinct, voting together on their preference for who should be their nominee for president.

On Monday, around 7 p.m., Iowa Republicans will head to one of 1,681 precincts around the state (there are some 120,000 Republicans in the state, according to Election Central) and talk about their preferred candidates and express their preference by voting.  The Democrats, too, will gather together in ways too complicated to explain, but which will also given a concrete determination by way of voting.

All this will translate into percentages, hard numbers and so much seer-like media, round-the-clock commentary that it will make you head for an NCIS binge marathon, if you have nothing else to do.

Last Thursday, Jan. 28, the Republican Party held its last debate before the Iowa decision in Des Moines—minus Donald Trump, the leader in the national polls.  (It’s a wonder they didn’t have a empty podium on the stage, but no matter.) Trump, because Fox News decided to keep Megyn Kelly, the Vanity Fair cover girl, on as one of the three moderators, and furthermore, because some network swag had sent out a snarky notice that made fun of Trump, had instead decided to hold a charity rally of his own only a few miles away around the same time, raising money for American veterans. Just before the debate, there was an undercard debate featuring former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, Carly Fiorina, former Senator Rick Santorum and former Governor of Virginia James Gilmore.  (Remember him? Me neither, although he has the lowest poll numbers of any of the remaining Republican candidates).

At one point during the evening, if you were channel switching, you could watch Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Florida Senator Marco Rubio battle it out over who was weakest or strongest on immigration, who said legalization or citizenship, jump to CNN while Trump was introducing his wife at a distance and listen as four reporters in cutouts trying to explaining the tortured machinations surrounding reports of phone chats between Trump and Fox News President Roger Ailes.  Did Trump call once, twice or numerous times?  We shall never know for certain.  Meantime, somewhere in Iowa, Hillary Clinton and the Bern, aka Socialist-Independent Bernie Sanders were also criss-crossing the state and importuning would-be voters.  So far, there have been no rumors that Madame Secretary has offered to have a shot and a beer with anybody.

Is this Oz, or what?

Trump’s announcement and then decision that he would not take part in the debate sucked out all of the air out of political media discussions.  Trump, as is his wont, complained that Kelly and Fox had not treated him fairly, and said that Kelly was a third rate reporter and that he would not call her a bimbo (as he had previously).  

By the time the debate rolled around, the process of turning  the American political process into a circus,  with Trump as P.T. Barnum, was beginning to be realized. As one CNN reporter suggested, quite accurately, that in the beginning there was concern that the businessman-showman-shaman Trump might become too much the politician.  The opposite has happened—the election process, thanks in large part to Trump and the kind of attention paid to him by the media—has become show biz.

The debate, as was noted by just about everyone, was conducted in the shadow of Trump. This might have led to some discussion about Trump’s absence, policies, thinking, behavior or even hair style, but, Kelly aside, the candidates themselves barely noted his absence. Cruz, usually a noticeably humorless man, did start off by taking a lame shot at Trump, saying, “I’m a ‘maniac,’ and everyone on this stage is ‘stupid’, ‘fat’ and ‘ugly,’ and Ben, you’re a ‘terrible surgeon. And now that we’ve gotten the Donald Trump portion out of the way . . .”

Nobody laughed. Some people booed.

Other than that everyone behaved pretty much as they did during the first debate.  Kelly produced video selections from Cruz and Rubio speeches in which they appeared to be weak on immigration issues, videos that Rubio and Cruz danced around like, if Fred Astaire, at least as well as you’re average amateur hoofer.  Rubio distinguished himself with an increasing bellicosity that may guarantee that ISIS may never again attack anybody.  In Iowa, in Republican, a notably evangelist state, we had a Rubio who mentioned Jesus and God frequently and with great passion, as if he spent more time in church than he does in the Senate, which may account for his absences on Capitol Hill.  John Kasich once again pointed out how he balanced his state’s budget, the governor of New Jersey once again reminded us that he prosecuted terrorist as a district attorney, and Jeb Bush fought the good fight with Rubio.  For a long time, no one seemed to notice that Carson was even there.

Nothing was different except: Trump was not there.

He was elsewhere, which if you went to CNN, you could clearly see, as he greeted strays from the undercard, Huckabee and Santorum, who had wandered on to the stage for no apparent reason.

Why is all this and Iowa so important? The Iowa Caucuses are where voters will cast the first real votes in the 2016 campaign, that’s why.

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my.

Gary Tischler • January 28, 2016

I don’t know if Sunday amounted to must-see TV, but if you want to see what television is about in America and how it’s become one big, interconnected reality show, you could do worse than peek in on what was up on the tube Sunday morning, afternoon and night on Jan. 10.

We had Donald Trump on “Meet the Press,” Washington Redskins fans singing “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” and getting it broken. On the Left Coast, we had Ricky Gervais pied-pipering a host of celebrities behaving badly, weirdly, interrupted only by the sound of silence at the Golden Globe Awards Show, the first and probably most silly and odd  of award shows leading up to the Oscars later this year.

There isn’t a great distance between the GOP front-running presidential candidate Donald Trump, who lists really rich tycoon and host of the television reality show “The Apprentice” on his resume, and the parade of presenters, nominees, winners besotten with themselves and each other, presided over by Gervais, who was invited back like a prodigal, profitable son to host the show, Hollywood’s brazened-out version of “Cabaret.”   Surely, one of these years, all made-up with white paint, piercings and suspenders, Gervais will return, singing in his oily fashion, “Willkommen, meine Damen und Herren . . . Willkommen.”

Of course, should things not work out for Trump with this president thing, hosting the Golden Globes might be a good thing for him. Think of how many opportunities to call people “loser” that exist among the overblown categories in television and movies, presented by a group of overseas journalists who rather loosely cover the entertainment business, if not the waterfront.

Sunday on television highlighted our national obsessions of game—playing and watching. There’s the game of politics as a kind of perverse unreal reality show, led by ringmaster Donald, played out as a form of not-too-informative entertainment on television in shows like “Meet the Press” and the recent roundelay of GOP and Democratic debates.

There’s  the game of professional football in which fans make an inordinate emotional investment in the fortunes of their home teams should they still be playing this time of the year. This was especially true of Redskin fans, who went all in, convinced the team under its new coach and resurgent quarterback had turned the corner. 

Last, but not least, there’s the game, not of thrones, but trophies, presented as an entertainment in which the “Today Show” crew, which also presumes to report on politics and news, fawn over their good friends and neighbors like Will Smith and his family, Leonardo DiCaprio, compliment them on their gowns and jewel. They then mercifully dismiss themselves so that Gervais can insult the audience, while the winners try to find their way to the podium, a journey increasingly more difficult as the evening went on.

Trump went on “Meet the Press” in person to spar with Chuck Todd, as opposed to being interviewed on the phone or as a hologram.  Todd—who seemed, intimidated, at least overly friendly, and not a little wary—didn’t lay a glove or a hand on Trump. You never know, of course, what might set Trump off. He always lets people know if they’ve treated him nice, or not, like Jeb Bush or Megyn Kelly, or that Muslin woman who stood silent in protest at one of his rallies recently.   Trump was fairly well behaved and allowed that he was in a tight race with Ted Cruz in the upcoming Iowa caucus, a fact he seemed somewhat puzzled by.  But he let it be known that he was also puzzled by Cruz’s citizenship problem and also explained that, because Hillary Clinton went after him for his alleged sexism, it was O.K. to go after Bill Clinton for his reputation.  “He’s an abuser,” Trump said and noted the word rape had been mentioned by somebody. 

The interview was singularly unenlightening on the issues, but it had the appearance of being entertaining. Meantime, the Iowa Caucus and the New Hampshire primary are heading at us like a train with no brakes.  In Iowa, Bernie Sanders is suddenly closing in on Hillary Clinton. Sanders also leads Clinton in New Hampshire, where Trump has a solid lead among GOP candidates.

Speaking of winners and losers, the Redskins did turn the corner into an alley, where they were mugged by the Green Bay Packers and their still proficient, efficient quarterback Aaron Rodgers. It’s not that the Redskins played badly or underachieved, it’s that in these kind of pressure-filled games, they flinched a few times too often.  This was an exercise of dashed expectations for the fans.   Truth be told, I was one of them, at least I was hoping.  It hurts a little more than losing the Powerball lottery, which is only like losing a couple of bucks you left out in your jacket pocket. Still, there, you did it again—you had visions of another Super Bowl in your head.  When an announcer cut in for a preview of the 11 o’clock news to note that “the Redskins are already planning for next season,” it occurred to me to want to say, “That’s because they haven’t got anything else to do.”

That would have been churlish.  For that, we turn to Gervais, who did his very best to make transgender jokes, to be obscene, as if political correctness had already been slain by Trump, to once again get into a mouth fight with Mel Gibson, who got the better line when he said, “It’s good to see Ricky every three years, it reminds me to get a colonoscopy.”

That was about the level of the humor meted out by Gervais, who went on throughout the evening holding a drink which could have been either a stale glass of beer or a urine sample. He mocked the nominees for wanting an award that he said wasn’t important when the award was “worthless.” And so on.  The evening was highlighted by pockets of silence—which presumably bleeped out even more tasteless matter than was actually spoken.

Still, there is something about this kind of show: the red carpet, the beautiful people, the stars, the awards, the way people remember to thank their agent, and their mother and father, their friends, their agent.  This show being set among groups of tables where food and alcohol were consumed, it was looser than say the Oscars where people are stuck in their seats.  You have to love it in some disturbing way: I’m sure tears were shed when Sylvester Stallone won for supporting actor playing Rocky Balboa one more time and Leonardo DiCaprio won his for “The Revenant,” remaining as always an elusive movie star.   There are always moments. Ridley Scott,  who was named best director for “The Martian” in the comedy category, responded to attempts to keep within the time limit by saying, “Screw you.” Lady Ga Ga, who won a best actress for award for “American Horror Story: Hotel,” walked up to the stage in a slinky black dress, all black and blonde, as if auditioning for a future role as Nora Desmond.  Matt Damon won for “The Martian,” his second space movie, and “Mr. Robot” won best drama series.

I kept thinking of  Russell Crowe in the 2000 film, “Gladiator,” at Rome’s Coliseum, bloody sword in hand, yelling, “Are not you entertained? Is this not why you are here?”

You bet, Maximus.