A Couple Signs Of The Times
All posts by Steve Stern
A Couple of Facebookish Posts & Reality
We saw Taylor Tomelson at the Paramount in Oakland last Friday night. On Saturday, we saw Lyle Lovett perform with the San Francisco Orchestra. They were very different from each other, except that, in both cases, we were in what we used to call the nose-bleed section, and both were great.
I liked the Taylor Thomilson show the best. Her humor is filtered through her life journey, and her honesty, candor, and growing self-awareness are remarkable. Michele and I think she is the funniest comic in, what seems to me, a growing crowd pushing the boundaries of joke-telling.
Here are a couple of short samples.
Michele and I have probably seen Lyle Lovett more times, together, than any other performer, but we had never seen him in concert with a full symphony orchestra until last Saturday. It was terrific. Lovett is a musician, but, more accurately, he is a Texas storyteller.
Once done, the bladder will be given a chance to heal. Then, it might be time to go with BCG. This is an intravesical treatment option. That means BCG liquid is inserted directly into the bladder. Bldder Cancer Advocacy Network.
Because BCG treatment uses live bacteria, it is important to speak with your healthcare provider about reducing the risk of contamination when you empty the solution from your bladder into the toilet at home. Ibid
On Monday, I came back to reality with the above intravesical treatment. Afterwards, I felt shockingly fine. By Tuesday, I felt like I had a very mild cold, and by Wednesday, even that was gone. The only problem, and it is sort of a problem, is that I have to disinfect the toilet every time I use it for eight hours after the treatment, and I have to disinfect myself with Lysol and my clothes, then life is normal until next Monday, for the next five Mondays, actually.
The disinfectant regime does make everything seem sort of yucky, but I’m sure I’ll get over that.
Israel & The Slaughter of Palestinians
My father, who died just before I turned 28, was a secular Jew. However, he was proud of being Jewish. He never said that we were the chosen people, but I suspect that was more because he didn’t believe in a Chooser than anything else. Still, he thought we were better than the people who looked down on us. We were more compassionate, more inclusive, more accepting, all Jewish virtues he strongly believed in.
In a way, I grew up feeling that my compassion and inclusiveness were a result of being Jewish. In a Of course, I believe everybody should be treated equally; I’m Jewish sort of way. Now, watching Israel slaughter Palestinians in Gaza and constantly terrorizing other Palestinians in the West Bank, that all seems like a lie. To a certain extent, who I believed I was now seems like bullshit. It is more than disheartening.
If there is any consultation, it is that I am not alone in my anger and existential grief. Below is a short (-ish) conversation between two very smart, very compassionate people about Israel, Palestine, and being Jewish during the horror of what is going on. Please give it a try.
Zohran Mamdani
Going with the Socialist wing, Bernie is 1.0, AOC 2.0, and Mamdani 3.0. Liz Smith discussing the current state of the Democratic Party on “The Political Scene,” a New Yorker podcast.
Democrats forgot that the customer is always right. Also, Liz Smith.
I’ve read, maybe a dozen times, that the United States, today, is like Germany circa 1933 when the Germans abandoned the ineffective moderate parties for radical parties like the Nazis because they promised stability and national revival. Maybe, maybe Trump is the next Hitler and the current Republicans, including the Roberts’ Supreme Court, are the next Nazis, but I don’t think so. I think Trump is too incompetent, and our Democratic traditions are too strong.
I think another, and I hope more accurate, comparison is France in 1783 – give or take five years – waiting for an unknown future that could be a soft revolution, like the election of an FDR, or a hard revolution, like the French Revolution of 1789. I think Trump won in both 2016 and 2024 because he understood and said he respected the electorate. His competition from Jeb Bush to the Democratic aristocracy was not, and still isn’t, aware of the anger and despair among much of the electorate. In other words, I think much of the Trump vote was not for Trump but against the status quo.
Obviously, Zohran Mamdani will never be president; he was born in Kampala, Uganda, and is only a naturalized U.S. citizen. But, if we have another FDR, he or she will be like Mamdani, young, energetic, authentic, with a sense of humor. Here are a couple of Mamdani Social Media ads to show you what I mean.
Mamdani & The NY Mayoral Race
Those Democrats who think Mamdani will hurt their party are right to be concerned, but they’re thinking about the problem the wrong way. It’s not the skeptics they need to worry about. It’s the fans. Those Democrats who think Mamdani will hurt their party are right to be concerned, but they’re thinking about the problem the wrong way. It’s not the skeptics they need to worry about. It’s the fans. Ramesh Ponnuru, the editor of National Review and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in an editorial in the Washington Post entitled How Zohran Mamdani is teaching Democrats to lose.
I can’t speak to how other people feel, but I can say that as a Jewish New Yorker and as a member of a Jewish organization, I think that Zohran has done an incredible job of demonstrating care and concern and shown a real commitment to ensuring the safety of Jewish New Yorkers, of all New Yorkers. Sophie Ellman-Golan, director of strategic communications at Jews For Racial & Economic Justice
I’m not going to let this Communist Lunatic destroy New York, President Donald Trump, after Mamdani’s primary win (and was repeated in August).
Your dedication to an affordable, welcoming, and safe New York City where working families can have a shot has inspired people across the city. Billionaires and lobbyists poured millions against you and our public finance system. And you won. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, US representative for New York’s 14th congressional district
The Anti-Mamdani Movement Is Fizzling New York Magazine
Zohran Mamdani is running for mayor of New York City. He is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America – which is the largest Socialist group in the United States – is 33 years old, a practising Muslim, and, surprisingly, he will probably be the next mayor of New York City. And those are not the most surprising parts of the story. He was born in Kampala, Africa, and moved here when he was seven with his parents, Mahmood Mamdani, a professor at Columbia University and Mira Nair. The same Mira Nair who is the director of Mississippi Masala, Monsoon Wedding, and the Amelia Earhart biopic, Amelia, starring Hilary Swank and Richard Gere.
Mamdani holds political positions that Conventional Wisdom, and a big hunk of the Democratic Party’s leadership, think – maybe hope is more accurate – it should be impossible for him to win anything, even a Municipal Dogcatcher Position. As a short aside, about 12% of people in New York City are Jewish, and 2.4% are Indian, and Mamdani has said both Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are war criminals and would be jailed if they came to New York if he were mayor. End aside. And he most probably will be the next mayor of New York City.
Mamdani is running on a platform that includes free city buses and a rent freeze in rent-stabilized housing; he advocates for universal childcare and pre-kindergarten childcare, as well as the construction of 200,000 new affordable housing units and five city-owned grocery stores—one in each borough—to drive down grocery prices. He was also an early supporter of Defund the Police and continues to support public safety reform. He supports a $30 minimum wage by 2030 and proposed giving all new New York City families baby baskets containing diapers and nursing supplies. Mamdani’s platform calls for tax increases on corporations and those earning above $1 million annually. He is running against a lot of very powerful special interests, and I am thrilled that he will probably be the next mayor of New York City.
While I am admittedly biased, the biggest reason I say he will be the next mayor of New York City is that the polls say that. Still, I have other reasons he is likely to become the mayor of New York City: he is young, personable, and, most importantly, authentic; the populace is tired of dour old men running the country for themselves, and Mamdani is running on ideas that are popular even though the conventional wisdom says they are loony tunes.
There is another reason, besides the City of New York’s—and the country’s—general discontent with the status quo, that I think Zohran Mamdani will win, and it is very similar to why Trump won in both 2016 and 2024. To back up a little, there are three ways the Main Stream Media covers elections, and the New York Times and CNN in 2016 are the best examples of that. If they like a candidate, like Hillary Clinton, they give them lots of good, thoughtful – or seemingly thoughtful – coverage. BTW, lots is the operative word in the previous sentence. If they don’t like the candidate, like Bernie Sanders, they ignore him. Just ignore him, and people will forget that the candidate is even running. Or, if they dislike the candidate, like Donald Trump, they will constantly badmouth him. The last way is counterproductive; it ended up keeping Trump in the public’s conscience, and that is what is happening to Zohran Mamdani right now.