Old Goats with Jonathan Alter

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This column is not about anything in the news from the Middle East. My current views are well-represented by Rahm Emanuel’s blistering critique of the Israeli government. I’m concerned with something simple: whether writers should be free to write, whatever their nationality or the conduct of the governments they live under.

Amended transcript: The word out of Maine is that Graham Platner is in the process of being forced out of the race. Even Bernie Sanders wants him gone. That’s great news for Democrats. Republicans are claiming that Democrats are forming a circular firing squad. Wrong. Pretty much anybody that Democrats nominate will have a very good chance against Susan Collins, much better than Platner. So the question is, who is it going to be? Will it be a Maine politician?

I sat on the curb this morning watching a 4th of July parade in a suburb outside Chicago, where my wife and I are visiting her mother. My thoughts turned to the Bicentennial, which only about a quarter of today’s Americans are old enough to remember. I was 18 then — 68 now — and even the best of AI medicine won’t get me to the 2076 Tricentennial alive.

As you may have noticed, the U.S. and Iran are still skirmishing in the Strait of Hormuz. And Donald Trump is still issuing bombastic threats. If the Iranians don’t bend to his will, Trump said last week, “the Islamic Republic of Iran will cease to exist!” Get used to hearing that.

Everyone is right to expect a big blue wave — maybe a tsunami — in the midterms this fall. Even with all of the gerrymandering, the odds of Democrats winning control of the House are strong. The Senate, which Republicans now control 53-47, is much closer, which makes it more likely to be the locus of a constitutional crisis. Donald Trump is a chaos agent, and his fear of impeachment and a Senate trial are making him desperate and more dangerous.

(amended transcript) For some reason, this 60 Minutes story put me in mind of 1968. That was the horrible year in American public life when 60 Minutes first went on the air. It was also the year that the Ford Mustang put a V-8 engine in the car, and Steve McQueen used that fantastic Mustang in the movie Bullitt. What happened at CBS News is that they gave the keys to the Mustang to a know-it-all woman named Bari Weiss, and she drove that Mustang right into a brick wall.

My wife, Emily Lazar, worked at both The Colbert Report and The Late Show and she helps me look under the hood. Stephen Colbert Error My view of Stephen Colbert and the demise of his show is even less objective than that of all of the superstars who have been paying elaborate tribute to him in recent weeks. He and his formidable wife, Evie, are good friends in Montclair, N.J., where we have all lived for many years.

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