On this episode of a new ideologically idiosyncratic podcast, Maureen Tkacik of the American Prospectjoins co-hosts Clementine Ford, Vincenzo Barney, and Christian Lorentzen to discuss the life and crimes of the late Richard B. Cheney. Topics discussed include Joan Didion’s 2006 essay on Cheney and his status as her final and perhaps most sinister muse (beyond even Manson); the fleeting and febrile ‘innocence’ of America and its elected officials; 9/11; Al Qaeda; the Iraq War; lying; the Iran-Contra scandal; the problem with laws being their enactment and thus the inconvenience for high-ranking officials who must violate them; torture; surveillance; Cheney as hero of Benjamin Netanyahu; Stephen Miller as heir of Cheney; President Ford’s habit of kissing coed beauty contestants; the war on terror as model for the Trump administration’s domestic policy; plenary power; apprenticeship to power and the sublime fantasy of its limitlessness; fathers and daughters; Liz Cheney’s split from Trump after January 6; Mary Cheney’s Caribbean vacation at the time of 9/11; neoconservatives as chameleons in the slipstream between the Republican and Democratic parties; Bob Dole’s 93rd birthday lunch at the 2016 GOP convention in Cleveland and one co-host’s failure to crash it; John McCain’s rescue of the Affordable Care Act as he was dying of brain cancer; former Ramparts editor David Horowitz and whether his offspring is a prominent venture capitalist; the twerpicide of Charlie Kirk; watching Candace Owens “for research”; Justice Antonin Scalia; the film Vice; the film Dick; Halliburton; the consensusphere; the shattering of the revolving door between governments and corporations; the Cheney/Lieberman debate; the Cheney/Edwards debate; William Kristol’s epic 2014 interview with Cheney; Kristol’s fondness for New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and the perception of any idealist as a mark to be converted to liberal imperialism; Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld’s avoidance of the taint of Watergate; their figurative assassination of Vice President of Nelson Rockefeller, aka the Halloween Massacre, and elevation of Dole to the 1976 Ford ticket; Grover Norquist; the whereabouts of guest and co-hosts during the attacks of September 11, 2001; what a good idea morally to invade Iraq via Christopher Hitchens; what a bad idea it was actually to invade Iraq via reality; Tkacik’s childhood in China; one co-host’s case for invading China and another’s sincere wish of “good luck with that”; and much more. Thank you for listening.
On a new episode of an intergenerational podcast, guest Sloane Crosley and co-hosts Clementine Ford, Vincenzo Barney, and Christian Lorentzen discuss the 1970 documentary Norman Mailer vs. Fun City, USA, about Mailer’s failed 1969 campaign for the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York City, and tomorrow’s mayoral election. Topics discussed include: the co-hosts’ whereabouts and the origins of their names; the time Matt Damon met Prince and the time Sloane avoided meeting Matt Damon; a visit to a Brooklyn cheese shop with two movie stars; Meghan McCain’s literary collaboration with Michael Ian Black; NYRB singles meet-ups; Arthur Hammerstein; the alliance of Sloane’s grandmother with New York Mayor Ed Koch; Simon & Garfunkel’s 1980 concert in Central Park and all the joints smoked in the audience; Howard Hughes, Michael Bloomberg, and Bill de Blasio; the nature of charisma; speaking in paragraphs vs. speaking in sentences; Norman Mailer’s dialectics; his notion of an experimental city where the entire population took LSD daily and whether after four years it would result in an epidemic of liver cancer; public housing towers of 50,000 units built of Legos; the visionary New York of Ghostbusters 2; Curtis Sliwa as cat person; Andrew Cuomo as dog person; Corinthian leather; socialism; fear; the city’s newspapers’ hostility to Zohran Mamdani; the unsuitability of members of Generation X for political leadership; the inevitability of Millennial political hegemony; the specter of a right-wing Zoomer anti-Mamdani in 2029, and much more. Thank you for listening.
In this episode of a new podcast, Vincenzo Barney, Clementine Ford, and Christian Lorentzen discuss the many films of the late actress Diane Keaton; her range and acting style; the lives of Louise Bryant and Jack Reed; the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, an occasion that prompts one co-host to red-bait another during a discussion of Reds; Annie Hall, missing Keaton; the never married Keaton’s mid-to-late career genius playing divorcees; the devastating greatness of Alan Parker’s Shoot the Moon; the rage and charisma of Albert Finney; the potent use of classic rock (Rolling Stones, Eagles, Bob Seger) in that film; the in-flight movie options on the red-eye Norse Atlantic flights from JFK to Gatwick; The First Wives Club and its formative influence on one co-host; how to bond with your mother through cinema and home video; Nancy Meyers’s collaborations with Keaton from Baby Boom through Father of the Bride pictures to Something’s Gotta Give; comparison of Keaton to her castmates, peers, rivals, and heirs, including Teri Garr, Jill Clayburgh, Sissy Spacek, Lily Tomlin, Madeline Kahn, Meryl Streep, Mia Farrow, Barbara Hershey, Diane Weist, Tilda Swinton, Cate Blachett, and Jennifer Lawrence; the never-released pilot of the canceled HBO series The Corrections, adapted by Noah Baumbach from the novel by Jonathan Franzen and starring Wiest instead of Keaton; one co-host’s impression of Keaton as Kay Corleone in the The Godfather Part II; the 2008 heist comedy Mad Money, starring Keaton, Katie Holmes, Queen Latifah, and Ted Danson, as yet unseen by any of the co-hosts; and much more. Thanks for listening.
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Quality Lit Game now has membership options on both Patreon and Substack. We've been grateful and pleased by the response to the first two episodes. If you'd like to keep the episodes coming, please sign up at one of those locations. The three of us are all freelance writers with additional side hustles and every bit helps. Future episodes are in the works with fascinating literary, cinematic, and other intellectual topics, as well as illustrious and notorious guests. More soon.
On Thomas Pynchon's Shadow Ticket, recent reviews of the novel, and the challenges of reviewing Pynchon. Plus, talk of Oprah's Book Club, Norman Mailer, Cormac McCarthy and more. Co-hosted by Christian Lorentzen, Clementine Ford, and Vincenzo Barney.
We talk One Battle After Another, PTA, Pynchon, and Rod Stewart's Daughter.