Hey divas, thanks as always for reading and reaching out! I’ll continue to be in your inboxes every Thursday talking about whatever I find interesting in entertainment, politics, and/or pop culture.
This week, my thoughts on the rest of 107 Days + Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension and return.
As always, if you like what you read please share + subscribe, and you’re always more than welcome to reach out if you have thoughts on these topics or anything else!
107 Days Takeaways
Honestly, I honestly can’t decide if Kamala Harris’s decision to write 107 Days was a good idea or not. I appreciate how the book holds former President Biden and his family and staff accountable for the outcome of the 2024 election, because it’s obvious they all were a huge part of the problem. I think Harris deserves to air out her grievances against them for how they treated her as veep and around the campaign. Calling Harris right before her debate with Trump to air grievances about her “criticism” of him and make her worried about losing funding in Pennsylvania is genuinely shameful on Biden’s part.
It’s clear that Biden, his family, and his staff all put their own ego above what was good for the country, and they should be held accountable for that, especially given the dire consequences for the rest of us now that Trump is back in office.
However, some of the other revelations in the book show that Harris doesn’t completely grasp what went wrong with her campaign.
Harris talks about that moment on The View, where she didn’t differentiate herself from Biden. However, she said that she had notes about how she would differentiate herself by appointing a Republican to her cabinet — I mean really, that’s the only differentiating factor?
She talks about wanting to select Pete Buttigieg to be her running mate, but how she didn’t do so due to fears about asking the country to accept a ticket with a woman of color and a gay man. Considering she also writes that she didn’t pick Governor Josh Shapiro due to his naked ambition to be president, I’m shocked that Buttigieg was her top choice — he’s the most desperate to be president guy I’ve ever seen.
It’s also a sign of her instincts not being the best, considering Governor Tim Walz, her actual running mate, was a great choice. He had a decent approval rating throughout the campaign and his strategy of calling Republicans out for being “weird” seemed to resonate. The couple of weeks I felt best about the Harris campaign were around Walz being chosen as her running mate, it felt like a sign the campaign was listening and wanted to do something different from Biden.
Of course, the campaign quickly put that to rest by not allowing any Palestinian Americans to speak at the DNC, doing events with Liz Cheney, muzzling Walz, not doing enough to distance Harris from Biden, and more.
Harris does seem to genuinely try to reflect on her inability to distance herself from Biden, particularly on Gaza. She talks about how post-election surveys found that voters wanted to see more separation from her and Biden on Gaza, about her own urging for Biden to speak with more empathy, and her own feelings about the humanitarian crisis. Still, she also seems to have an inability to grasp why pro-Palestinian protesters would be at her events and threaten to not vote for her, even as she continued to not truly differentiate herself from Biden on the issue throughout the campaign.
I do respect that Harris declined to regret or apologize for her willingness to defend the rights of LGBTQ+ individuals, particularly the trans community, at a time when they face attacks from all sides. Though I wish she had been more specific in her defense during the campaign, and now.
Ultimately, I genuinely appreciate that Harris is self-reflecting more than other prominent Democrats (Biden, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and more) seem to be. She was put in an impossible position, and I hold Biden and his team the most accountable for why we lost the election.
Still, Harris and her campaign, as she acknowledges in the book, didn’t do enough with the time they had to make the right case to the American people. I don’t think her reflection has gone far enough in realizing why exactly people were and are so frustrated with the Democratic party, and she offers no real solutions to the problems we face.
Jimmy Kimmel’s Suspension + Return
The escalation between Paramount pretending their decision to cancel The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was about money and Disney declining to offer pretense for their decision to cancel Kimmel is not great, but not surprising.
I appreciate that this situation catalyzed folks to genuinely react to a clear violation of free speech and the capitulation of a cowardly company to the Trump Administration. I’m glad Disney reacted to the public pressure (and economic pressure consumers were exercising) and put Kimmel back on the air this week.
Still, Trump truth’d about Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers being next, just as he truth’d about Kimmel being next after Colbert was canceled (if he comes for my number one diva Seth Meyers, me and the rest of the Quaid Army, iykyk, will be in the streets for sure). I don’t think this marks the end of his efforts to come after late night, especially with Saturday Night Live returning next month.
Comedy remains one of the few ways in this fractured media environment we can speak truth to power in a way that garners real attention — Kimmel’s return this week was his most watched show. Hopefully this has taught these media companies something about the dangers of giving into Trump over the American people.
The Silly Little Fun Shit
Things that brought me joy + entertainment this week. Would love to hear about the things that are bringing y’all joy and keeping you engaged as well!
The Morning Show is back. Honestly this show is basically just The Summer I Turned Pretty for adults who also like Aaron Sorkin projects in terms of the melodrama mixed with random journalism plots. It’s truly one of the most insane shows on television — they’ve had Reese Witherspoon in the Capitol on January 6th, they sent her to space, they made her be bisexual and she could not pull it off, Jennifer Anniston is randomly in trouble with Iran and is hosting the Olympics for some reason and now they’re about to make her get with a Joe Rogan knock off? If you’re looking for brain-rot insanity, unnecessarily dramatic needle drops, crazy line deliveries, and a show that toes a weird line between pretending to exist in the real world but not actually wanting to be that controversial — you gotta watch The Morning Show.
Also check out Witherspoon’s recent appearance on Las Culturistas to promote the show, it was a delight. Begging her to stop making this crazy show and lock in on Big Little Lies season three.
The girls on TikTok articulating that Devi from Never Have I Ever would eat Belly from The Summer I Turned Pretty for breakfast. Devi was an actual, fleshed out character with a journey that wasn’t totally about whichever men she was terrorizing. She was sympathetic, likable, and her love interests presented a genuine choice. She had interests and experiences and actual friends aside from whatever man she was obsessed with at the time, unlike Belly. She got into Princeton, she positively impacted the lives of the boys in her love triangle instead of ruining a family. Her relationship with her mom was beautiful, and a core part of the show, unlike how Belly just didn’t see her mom for two years for some reason? That’s how you actually write a love triangle show without making the girl a terrorist who by the end no one is rooting for! Justice for my poor diva Conrad though.
I binged Adolescence. I thought the performances were amazing, I appreciated the story they were trying to tell, but felt like they didn’t completely stick the landing. I think with one or two more episodes, they may have gotten there. I felt the show was extremely strong until the finale, where the focus got lost a bit. I think they were trying to show that even “good” parents can raise “bad” children, and that the radicalization of young men is dangerous and almost unpreventable, without completely letting the parents off the hook in the finale. Still, there should be more efforts towards changing these behaviors and finding ways to stop it so more women don’t get murdered by men who feel entitled to them. It felt like the show came really close to making several good points, and just fell a little flat at the end, but the performances were so good that it is worth a watch.
Thanks for reading! If you made it down here to the bottom I hope you’ll like/subscribe and continue to follow along. Comment or drop me a line if there’s anything specific you want me to talk about in the coming weeks, or if you have thoughts about this week’s topics or anything else, always down to chat more about whatever!