FRED PLOTKIN is one of America’s foremost experts on opera and has distinguished himself in many fields as a writer, speaker, consultant and as a compelling teacher. He is an expert on everything Italian, the person other so-called Italy experts turn to for definitive information.  Fred discovered the concept of "The Renaissance Man" as a small child and has devoted himself to pursuing that ideal as the central role of his life. In a “Public Lives” profile inThe New York Timeson August 30, 2002, Plotkin was described as "one of those New York word-of-mouth legends, known by the cognoscenti for his renaissance mastery of two seemingly separate disciplines: music and the food of Italy." In the same publication, on May 11, 2006, it was written that "Fred is a New Yorker, but has the soul of an Italian."

One film journalist’s stream-of-consciousness cinematic journey through the pandemic, Part 19 By Laurence Lerman It’s the second week of October, and a new Woody Allen film is opening in theaters for the first time since his last film, Wonder Wheel, was released in December 2017. That’s nearly three years ago, marking the longest lag time between the writer/director’s film openings in nearly a half-century. A Rainy Day in New York is Woody Allen’s 48th feature film in just about as many years (by my count) and one that nearly fell prey to the cancel culture that continues to sledgehammer its way across the landscape, nearly resulting in the film remaining unreleased in his home country. Cooler and more intelligent heads prevailed, thanks to the Chicago-based distributor MPI Media Group, and today Woody’s first film to be set primarily in Manhattan since 2009‘s Whatever Works can finally be seen. That it’s only being exhibited in select theaters around the country and cannot be viewed in Manhattan where the theaters remain closed is a punchline worthy of Woody’s days as a stand-up comic in the early Sixties. Nonetheless, its opening warrants a review by a dedicated fan. A Rainy Day’s story begins with two college sweethearts from an upstate liberal arts school à la Bard, Manhattan-born Gatsby (Timothée Chalamet) and Arizona beauty queen Ashleigh (Elle Fanning), who set out for a romantic weekend in the city, prompted by Ashleigh scoring an interview with a hot filmmaker (Liev Schreiber). After making it to New York City, the two good-looking young people with the movie-ish names each go their own way—Ashleigh to a Soho hotel to meet with the director, Gatsby to see his brother and play some cards. Twenty minutes in the rain begins to fall, and a mildly madcap if unexceptional adventure begins, moving forward in fits and starts, just like the precipitative weather. A pure comedy-romance that hearkens back to the magical New York City of Everyone Says I Love You and Hannah and Her Sisters, A Rainy Day in New York ain’t in the orbit of those two—not by a long shot—but it’s the right movie at the right time for the both the filmmaker and his fans. Woody’s fanciful New York City is filled with beautiful hotel suites, luxurious townhouses, gorgeously appointed sitting rooms, jazz-filled lounges and high-end restaurants, along with the kind of privileged characters that rattle off references to Ortega y Gasset, Grace Kelly, Renoir, Jimmy Cannon, Tom Adair, De Sica, Rothko and Virginia Woolf in passing—and that’s just in the first half hour. (Okay, okay—it’s not realistic that they’d be making these kinds of comments, but privilege has its benefits.) Taking a look out the window at Gotham today following seven months of COVID-19 infestation, it’s hard to believe that Woody's Manhattan—the one he filmed not even three years ago—has, for now, disappeared, as have many of its denizens. And even though it's an upscale New York experienced by only the smallest fraction of moviegoers, seeing it in A Rainy Day gives it all an almost nostalgic appeal, particularly when it’s so lovingly shot by ace DP Vittorio Storaro. The performances are all fine, with Chalamet acquitting himself quite well as the Woody surrogate, just like John Cusack (Bullets Over Broadway), Jesse Eisenberg (Café Society), Jason Biggs (Anything Else) and a bunch of others before him. Fanning isn’t nearly as deft as the Tucson shiksa fending off the non-threatening advances of such New York types as Schreiber’s vain filmmaker, Jude Law’s uptight screenwriter and Diego Luna’s cocksure movie star, but she’s cute enough. More appealing is Chalamet’s possible new romantic partner Selena Gomez, who knows her way around a Woody one-liner (“A farrago of WASP plutocrats? Sounds like something on the menu at a fusion restaurant.”) and Cherry Jones as his hoity-toity mother with a past. A Rainy Day in New York isn’t great Woody—there’s nothing really new here, with Woody reheating the triangular romance fare that he’s served up more than once—but it’s a fine welcome home for one of the greatest filmmakers ever to emerge from New York City and continue to embrace it on film. The final scene finds a pair of lovers sweetly kissing in front of the beloved Delacorte Musical Clock outside the Central Park Zoo as it once again begins to rain. And for right now, that’ll do just fine. Okay, now comes the inevitable talk about zombie movies, that international horror subgenre that’s good for a least a dozen films a year. It’s almost as if there’s an unspoken requirement for youngish filmmakers to make a fresh zombie flick early in their careers as if it’s some kind of Film Production 101 final project. (I don’t know if I’d go so far as to refer to a zombie flick as a dissertation.) Every year or so, an exceptional one emerges from the horde—2015’s The Girl with All The Gifts from England and 2016’s Train to Busan from South Korea stand out, while, from Hollywood, 2018’s Overlord was worth seeing, as was my favorite guilty pleasure of last year, Zombieland: Double Tap (mostly due to the inspired performance of adorable Zoey Deutch as a ditsy So-Cal survivor). Another tasty South Korean tasty zombie morsel, 2020’s #Alive, from debuting feature filmmaker Il Cho, popped up on Netflix last month to an avalanche of positive press, all of it deserved. As much a zombie saga as an urban siege movie à la Gareth Evans’ 2011 genre-definer The Raid, #Alive comes out of the gate with teenager Joon-wo (Yoo Ah-In) awakening late one morning in his family’s downtown Seoul high-rise to discover that his parents are out, he’s all alone, and his building and block are in the midst of being overtaken by throngs of cannibalistic zombies (what else?). From that point on, it’s all about Joon-wo trying to survive both the zombies clawing at his barricaded door and scaling his building’s walls, and the growing hunger and thirst in his belly. Meanwhile, there’s a seemingly nice gal in the apartment across the courtyard with whom the young gamer begins to get on well via hand signals, binoculars and the crafty use of his drone and their shared social media savvy. There aren’t any backstories or many characters in #Alive, just a lot of momentum, tension and appropriately gruesome gore, abetted by a few nice shocks. It’s cool and contemporary and worth catching, complete with a memorable climax that plays like a twisted, post-zombie apocalypse variation on The Graduate, with its protagonists sitting next to each other and unsure of their future…as they check their smartphones for any updates. Laurence Lerman is a film journalist, former editor of Video Business--Variety's DVD trade publication--and husband to The Insider's own Gwen Cooper. Over the course of his career he has conducted one-on-one interviews with just about every major director working today, including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Clint Eastwood, Kathryn Bigelow, Ridley Scott, Walter Hill, Spike Lee, and Werner Herzog, among numerous others. Once James Cameron specifically requested an interview with Laurence by name, which his wife still likes to brag about. Most recently, he is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the online review site DiscDish.com.

By Merrill Lynn Hansen My name is Merrill Lynn Hansen, and I am an addict.  I am addicted to arguing with idiots about Donald Trump.  I know it might seem mean to refer to Trump supporters as idiots,   but I'm convinced they are   I have been interested in politics from a very young age,  and have learned the importance of researching,   keeping  an open mind, and gathering as much information as I can, in order to educate myself.  I watch congressional hearings, read transcripts of legal proceedings  and listen to speeches and press briefings.  I read several newspapers and magazines every day, watch the news, and even watch Fox (as long as I can stand it), to see how many conspiracy theories the network’s pundits perpetuate. My addiction began innocently enough, when Donald Trump first came down the escalator of Trump Tower with Melania in 2015, and announced his candidacy for the office of President of the United States.  I'd begun researching Trump when he pretended he was going to run for president in a prior election, and accused Barack Obama of being a Muslim born in Kenya.  I believed it was a publicity stunt, and my research revealed his history of bankruptcies, lawsuits and trickery, and the fact that he was a well-dressed grifter.   I knew that he might appeal to people who liked reality TV, but I was not aware of the Idiot Factor. At first, I limited my conversations to Republicans who told me they were disenchanted with politicians, and hoped that Trump would offer a change from "politics as usual.”  Some disliked Hillary, and even though I didn't agree with them, I thought of them as intelligent people who just weren't looking deep enough to see the vile person Trump was.  Besides, I never thought Trump would win.  When I realized on election night in 2016 that Hillary had lost, I found myself in a fetal position, and stayed there for weeks.  I then resumed my conversations with Trump supporters and was determined to show them that he was unfit to be president. Slowly, the Trump supporters with whom I was having intelligent discussions began to become disillusioned with him.  Their tolerance for his bad behavior ran out, after I pointed out how Trump had said he saw "fine people on both sides" in Charlottesville, and how Trump had stood next to Putin in Helsinki, and said he believed Putin's assurances that the latter had not interfered in our 2016 election, and he didn't believe our intelligence agencies. I felt I had contributed to their realization that Trump was a scoundrel,  and I enjoyed that feeling. I began to take part in conversations with other people whom I thought were misguided. I was certain that if given enough information, they would eventually see what should have been apparent to them all along: Trump should not be reelected. But, after a while, it became apparent to me that these people weren't really misguided; they were willfully refusing to  pay attention to facts.   They believed everything was "fake news.”  When the Washington Post wrote that Trump had told 20,000 lies to the American people,  they believed every single lie.  I tried to go over each lie with them, but was exhausted by the time I reached 10,000, and their responses were always the same: "hoax.” Even though I was becoming distressed,  I couldn't stop.  I was convinced that  there had to be more Trump supporters I could convert.  But in July, I began to realize that arguing  about Trump with idiots was starting to interfere with my life.  Even though I was still high functioning, and carrying out all of my responsibilities, I started to prioritize my tasks differently.  While working on a project for work, I found myself looking at my text messages and arguing with someone about how Trump was ignoring Dr. Fauci's advice about COVID-19 and was now getting all of his "expert advice" from an MRI doctor and the My Pillow guy. When I explained to one Trump supporter that I had watched the House and Senate investigative hearings about the new Postmaster General and the delays in the mail that were deliberately intended to cause people to lose faith in the Post Office, and had decide not to request mail-in ballots,  she had no idea what I was talking about.  But she was convinced that the Democrats were going to rig the election by sending in ballots for their deceased parents. "How will they do that?, I grilled her. ‘Do you have proof?"   Her response was jarring,  "Rudy Guiliani has proof of that, and he's releasing it in a documentary,  but you'll never believe it,  because you and your friends are sheep."  This woman's  husband had earlier called me a sheep,  when I told him that  according to our intelligence agencies, Rudy Guiliani is spreading Russian disinformation about Joe Biden.  This argument ended with me telling him that I was no one's sheep, and that I was smart enough to be a shepherd, rather than be part of a herd.  Now, I sounded like an idiot. I finally felt the need to distance myself , but the Trump pushers always popped up.  When I wrote on someone's Facebook page about  how pretty her flower pictures were, a Trump supporter posted a comment that "Sleepy Joe" looked senile at the first debate.  When I posted a funny video on my page about an old Seinfeld show, a Trump supporter wrote, "It's interesting that you're posting something other than news about Kamala Harris.  Is that because you know she wasn't born in this country?" I reached bottom when I realized I was arguing with someone who had chased me home from kindergarten the entire school year, with his eyelids flipped up.  I had sworn sixty years ago that I would never speak to that person for the rest of my life,  yet suddenly I was screaming, "There are no intelligence reports that say Obama spied on Trump's campaign.  Do you still think he bugged Trump's microwave, you idiot?" My addiction has overtaken me. I can no longer refrain from calling Trump supporters idiots.  Every sentence I speak or write, ends with "you idiot.” I feel powerless over my addiction. I argued in September with one Trump supporter who said that Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett,  would never try to limit a woman's right to have an abortion.  He assured me that even though he was voting for Trump, he would not vote for Barrett if she's not pro-choice.   "SHE'S NOT ON THE BALLOT, YOU IDIOT!  YOU CAN"T VOTE  FOR TRUMP AND AGAINST BARRETT.!” I am struggling to take the first steps in recovery, and acknowledge that I am powerfless over my disdain for The Base. I am trying to curb my enthusiasm for political spats with those who don’t agree with me. But I have to confess that yesterday,I couldn’t resist having one last argument with a Trump supporter on Facebook about whether or not Trump has spread COVID -19  throughout the White House. He  accused me of hoping that Trump and his aides would test positive for COVID-19.   I have to admit that the conversation ended without me calling him an idiot. Merrill Hansen is a legal assistant, living in West Bloomfield, Michigan. She describes herself as a frustrated writer, who wishes she could be Nora Ephron (when she was alive), if only for a day. She is a news-, political- and FB-junkie, a combination that requires a constant reminder that she needs to take deep cleansing breaths when responding to people who don't agree with her.

By John Rolfe It always occurs to me how the world is very much like my workplace. As the driver of a school bus, I’m quite familiar with kids who won’t listen or behave. They’re not much different than some adults. The nasty ones make everyone’s life a misery with their bullying and defiance, and endanger us all by refusing to follow safety rules. No matter how often you discipline them, they go right back to their shenanigans. One such lad, a middle-schooler I’ll call Rollo, was fond of sticking his arm out the window while the bus was moving, the better to give pedestrians the finger. It was a source of great glee to his pals and a great way to have his arm broken or his hand taken off if we passed too close to another big vehicle, a tree, a road sign, or a telephone pole. Yes, the odds of it happening were slim, but such accidents have occurred. That’s why we have rules requiring kids to keep their arms inside the bus even if they may only end up with a scratch and not an amputation. Of course, Rollo’s chums and other kids seeking his approval followed his brazen example, driving me to exasperation with repeated warnings and write-ups. Naturally, I’m the bad guy in this scenario. Now, let’s say the worst happened to Rollo. How much sympathy would I be required to feel for him? Concern, certainly. I’d do all I could to help him. But express sympathy? That’s a little harder to do in this case. “I told you so” is the last thing you want to hear after the calamity you’ve courted befalls you, but it’s to be expected. At some point, personal responsibility for one’s actions comes due in this life. A smoker who ends up with lung cancer can’t really say he wasn't warned or blame anyone else, nor can those he encouraged to light up who also ruined their health. What makes the case of coronavirus that has consumed our nation's capital so galling if not infuriating is that anyone with a morsel of common sense could see it coming for months. Despite warnings from medical experts, President Trump pooh-poohed their advice, urged his followers to disregard safety precautions, and made cavalier pronouncements that the virus would just disappear. Having had the bug in September and recovered, my views are now deeply colored by what I call my COVID-19 goggles. The virus is no longer an abstraction. It’s a scary reality that has also sickened people I know, some severely. So I grind my molars to nubbins as I think of Trump saying the virus “affects virtually nobody” when 7.9 million Americans have had it and more than 218,000 have died. I seethe at his mockery of Joe Biden and others for wearing a mask — an act designed to prevent the wearer from spreading the virus. Let that sink in. Because so many people refuse to wear a mask or maintain a safe social distance, mandates have been required in some cities and states , only to incite absurd cries of “tyranny!” The restrictions are no more tyrannical than drunk driving laws or forbidding school kids to stick their arms out of bus windows. Apparently, though, little or nothing will change with those who insist on taking COVID-19 lightly with little or no concern for the safety of others. The argument that wearing a mask must always be a personal choice means that not wearing one when near other people is a choice possibly to contaminate them with a potentially deadly virus. Nice. I also spit three-penny nails when I hear Trump hailed for his bravery in the face of the virus. Methinks the hailers have badly confused foolishness with courage. Schadenfreude is unseemly and not good for one’s karma, but the demands that Trump be shown sympathy by all Americans strike me as akin to demands that an injured Rollo be treated with tender, loving care, even by the kids he reduced to tears with his name-calling or whose lunch money he threatened to steal. It’s no surprise that those who are saying “I told you so” to Trump are being denounced by his allies. I know what that’s like. I hear it all the time from certain kids on my bus. John Rolfe is a former senior editor for Sports Illustrated for Kids, a longtime columnist for the Poughkeepsie Journal/USA Today Network, and author of The Goose in the Bathroom: Stirring Tales of Family Life. His school bus drivin’ blog “Hellions, Mayhem and Brake Failure” is parked on his website Celestialchuckle.com (https://celestialchuckle.com) with the meter running.

By Jessie Seigel People think of Washington, D.C. as the center of political power, with all of the machinations that entails. The media talks of inside and outside “the Beltway” (an interstate highway surrounding D.C.) as if that designates separate political universes. Inside are the power players: Pelosi trying to push COVID-19 relief through the House; McConnell refusing to take the matter up in the Senate while he simultaneously tries to push through Trump’s right-wing Supreme Court nominee; Trump tweeting his vitriol from the White House and lying to the public about COVID in his CDC “press conferences,” over and over. And now, Trump has escalated from simply lying to the public about COVID-19 to his current insanity, personally exposing everyone in his ambit to the disease: the political sycophants who attended his Rose Garden soirée, the Secret Service agents forced to drive him around in a hermetically sealed SUV so he could wave to his supporters outside Walter Reed Medical Center, and his own White House staff. And that’s not to mention his maskless Mussolini-like appearance on the White House balcony, proclaiming his manliness in “beating” the virus. How frenetic it must be to live in the midst of all that, you may think, and even if in a frightening way, how exciting. But if, like me, you are a longtime citizen of the District, you are living in the eye of that hurricane, that quiet place in the middle—but with the storm as ready to upend you as anyone else in the nation. Like you outside the Beltway, we’re working from home when we can, or are forced to go to work despite the COVID-19 danger in order to pay the rent. Unlike some other places in the country, we are mostly obeying the rules, wearing our masks—whatever else those in the White House may be doing. And yes, we’re as much prisoners of the political hacks and maniacs as the rest of you. Maybe more so because we do not have the autonomy that states have. When our leaders pass legislation, the Congress can overrule it, and actually has, on occasion, refused to even let votes on our citizen-backed ballot initiatives be counted. Here, we are living through an inverse version of Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death,” with President Trump as Prince Prospero in all his hubris, the Republican hierarchy as his courtiers, and we citizens of the District as the mere peasants outside his palace. The only difference is that Prince Prospero put up barricades to keep the Plague out of his palace while he and his courtiers reveled within. The White House, on the other hand, has opened its doors and invited the COVID virus to enter. The other difference, of course, is that in Poe’s story, they wore their masks. We can only hope that the virus running rampant through the White House does not spread into the District at large and raise our death numbers. Although we in the District of Columbia can now vote in presidential races, we still have no voting member in either the House or the Senate. Eleanor Holmes Norton, our representative to the House, caucuses with the Democrats but has no vote in that body. We do not have the power the rest of you have to change this nightmare. So please heed this cry from the capital--VOTE! Jessie Seigel is a fiction writer, an associate editor at the Potomac Review, a reviewer for The Washington Independent Review of Books, and a dabbler in political cartoons at Daily Kos. She has twice received an Artist’s Fellowship from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities for her work. But, Seigel also had a long career as a government attorney, in which she honed her analytic skills. Of this double career, Seigel would say, “I guess my right and left brains are well balanced.” More on and from Seigel can be found at The Adventurous Writer, https://www.jessieseigel.com.

By Alan Resnick Judging by the amount of television coverage and the number of Facebook memes, I, like millions of Americans, was transfixed by the fly perched on Vice President Mike Pence’s snow-white hair during last night’s debate. During the approximately two minutes (according to those who felt it important to time this), the cameras focused on the fly inspecting Pence’s scalp, I experienced a revelation: I hate Mike Pence. Even more than I abhor Donald Trump. To be clear, that’s an extremely high bar that Pence had to clear. Given the events of the last week with the President and Melania testing positive for COVID-19, Trump being airlifted to Walter Reed Medical Center, the obfuscations of his doctors and chief of staff, his triumphant return to the White House, his long walk up to the Truman Balcony, and his glowering and wheezing visage after theatrically ripping off his face mask, I don’t believe I’m alone in admitting that my best wishes for the President have been uttered through clenched teeth. My hope has been that he recovers from this horrible illness, but preferably through an extended convalescence culminating in his being led in shackles from the White House, and subsequently indicted in state district court for tax evasion. However, Trump was on television this morning (October 8), stating that he has been completely cured, so there goes another fantasy. Trump is clearly an arrogant, ignorant, compulsively lying sociopath, who scares the shit out of me. But, c’mon, ‘fess up, he is mesmerizing, extremely entertaining, and his television appearances are must-see TV. I watch them like I do an extremely violent movie – with a hand over one eye but not entirely able to look away. There is both a morbid fascination for what others see in him and a curiosity about what twisted logic will dribble out of his mouth. Since testing positive, Trump has argued that, since he, as President, contracted the coronavirus, it just goes to demonstrate that anyone can get it, thereby implying that masks and social distancing are not effective. The fact that he rarely wears a mask and hosted a soirée in the Rose Garden for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, where hundreds sat shoulder-to-shoulder is conveniently omitted from this narrative. It also takes quite a pair of cojones to argue that contracting the coronavirus is actually a sign of strength, and that your opponents is somehow weak or deficient because he has yet to get sick. What a sap Joe Biden has been for following the advice of Dr. Anthony Fauci, our nation’s top infectious disease official, and Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)! So, for me, Trump, in a perverse way, is honest in his complete dishonesty, hucksterism, and falsification. I respect the fact that there’s no artifice; he cares only about himself. The packaging is clear cellophane. Mike Pence is an entirely different animal. When I watch Trump on the tube, I reach for the popcorn, but when Pence comes on, I go for the disinfectant wipes. He offers himself as a slow-talking, sincere, “aw shucks” kind of guy. But beneath that Midwestern farm-boy veneer lurks an obsequious, brown-nosing, dissembling dullard. It was first evident to me back in 2016 when Tim Kaine (I have to admit that I had to google who ran with Hillary Clinton) debated Mike Pence. Kaine kept bringing up the various disparaging comments that Trump had made about women, including the famous “Access Hollywood” interview with Billy Bush. Pence sat there, head cocked to the side slightly, with a slight smile on his lips and responded, “He didn’t say that.” Well, yeah, he did. Last night’s debate was no different. Kamala Harris referenced quotes from Bob Woodward’s new book or statements made by Trump about John McCain, and Pence had that same look on his face. But this time, Pence’s go-to lines were, “That’s not true,” or “You have a right to your opinion, but not your own facts.” This was rather ironic, given the infamous assertion of Kellyanne Conway (she also tested positive for COVID-19, as did her daughter) that there are “alternative facts.” Conway also said this with a straight face. And then Pence went on to falsify Trump’s accomplishments and the President’s deep caring for each and every American. Whenever I listen to Pence speak, I feel like an appliance salesman is trying to sell me an extended warranty on my $79 microwave: “For only $89, you and the little lady can have the peace of mind of knowing that your purchase is protected for three years.” About 15 years ago, my wife and I were on a cruise to the Bahamas that she won as a sales incentive. One evening, we decided to go to the main showroom and watch what was billed as a “Las Vegas style” stage show. Passengers were encouraged to get there early, as seats would be available on a first-come, first-served basis. So we got there about 30 minutes before show time. I do not remember the exact name of the production, but it was some sort of celebration of America. As the curtain went up, the cast came out and I spotted the woman who had shown me how to put on my life jacket, now on stage in spangled stars-and-stripes hot pants. I saw other members of the crew appearing as cast members as well. The cast was earnest, if not overly talented. But the emcee was memorable, offering up lame patter (“Hey, who out there is from Kansas?”), lamer jokes, and cheesy double entendres. Whenever the show seemed to lag, which was often, he would attempt to pump up the crowd with chat designed to pull at our patriotic heartstrings (“Don’t we live in a beautiful country?”). The show ended with a “Stars and Stripes” tribute. On our way out, we were given a card which asked us to provide our comments on the show. To this day, I remember what I wrote about the emcee : "He was smarmy and reeked of insincerity." Perhaps there is a future for Mike Pence after this election. Alan Resnick is an industrial psychologist with over 40 years of professional experience. He and his wife are sheltering at home in Farmington Hills, Michigan. He is passing the time by cooking, exercising, catching up on friends’ recommendations of must-see TV and writing.

By Andy Borowitz October 8, 2020 WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Ben Carson, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, is wondering where everyone at the White House has gone, Carson has confirmed. Carson showed up unannounced at the White House on Thursday morning, “just to say hi,” and was surprised to find the building virtually deserted. “I was wondering if there was some holiday I didn’t know about,” Carson said. “I know there are a lot of holidays that Jewish people celebrate this time of year, but that just explains why Jared and Ivanka weren’t there. It’s kind of a head-scratcher.” The H.U.D. Secretary was also trying to make sense of the presence of cleaning crews throughout the White House, but “couldn’t figure it out.” “Maybe there was a big party they’re cleaning up after,” he said. “To be honest, I would be kind of hurt if I hadn’t been invited. Unless, of course, it was a party to celebrate one of those Jewish holidays. I’m not Jewish, like Jared and Ivanka. Still, that must have been one heck of a Jewish-holiday party, if that’s what occurred.” Carson said that he was prepared to accept the mystery of why the White House was deserted. “It’s like the pyramids of Egypt,” he said. “For years, no one knew that they were used to store grain, and then it all became clear. Someday we may know why the White House was deserted. And then it will all make sense.” Andy Borowitz is a Times best-selling author and a comedian who has written for The New Yorker since 1998. He writes The Borowitz Report, a satirical column on the news.

FRED PLOTKIN is one of America’s foremost experts on opera and has distinguished himself in many fields as a writer, speaker, consultant and as a compelling teacher. He is an expert on everything Italian, the person other so-called Italy experts turn to for definitive information.  Fred discovered the concept of "The Renaissance Man" as a small child and has devoted himself to pursuing that ideal as the central role of his life. In a “Public Lives” profile inThe New York Timeson August 30, 2002, Plotkin was described as "one of those New York word-of-mouth legends, known by the cognoscenti for his renaissance mastery of two seemingly separate disciplines: music and the food of Italy." In the same publication, on May 11, 2006, it was written that "Fred is a New Yorker, but has the soul of an Italian."

October 5, 2020 Jeffrey D. Sachs | Project Syndicate Like other world leaders who have contracted COVID-19, US President Donald Trump could easily have avoided being infected by observing normal public-health strictures. But Trump’s anti-scientific dispensation has deeper roots in recent American politics and culture. NEW YORK – Unlike tens of millions of people around the world who have contracted COVID-19 because of their poverty, bad luck, vulnerability as essential workers, or poor decisions by policymakers, US President Donald Trump’s infection is of his own making. Trump’s disdain for science and his brazen disregard for public-health advice led directly to his own illness; far worse, they have fueled America’s soaring COVID-19 death toll – now at more than 214,000. Since the pandemic began, public health experts around the world have begged the public to wear face masks, avoid large gatherings, and maintain physical distance from others, in order to stop the transmission of the virus. Leave it to Trump, a man of pathological disposition, to reject all such advice. Barely two days before announcing that he and the First Lady had tested positive, Trump was mocking Joe Biden for wearing one. “I don’t wear a mask like him,” Trump said at the first presidential debate. “Every time you see him, he’s got a mask. He could be speaking 200 feet away … and he shows up with the biggest mask I’ve ever seen.” Rejecting appeals by public health experts and local officials, Trump had been holding large rallies both indoors and outdoors in recent months, with non-masked attendees standing close together. And Trump spurned basic precautions in the White House, including physical distancing of staff and requiring face masks in meetings. Trump’s recklessness not only exposed himself, his wife, and his entourage to COVID-19; it also encouraged his supporters across America to mock public-health warnings and threaten infectious disease experts, thereby contributing to the spread of the disease. Many Americans lack basic scientific literacy and are easily swayed and encouraged by manipulators like Trump and his allies at Fox News. Trump not only blocked an effective federal public-health response, but incited dangerous behavior by his followers nationwide. Like other world leaders who have contracted COVID-19, Trump could easily have avoided being infected by observing normal public-health strictures. It is not a coincidence that populist politicians in Trump’s mold, notably UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, also became infected. Like Trump, both Johnson and Bolsonaro systematically downplayed the threat of the pandemic and brazenly flaunted routine public-health measures. And, like the United States, the United Kingdom and Brazil are among the world’s hardest-hit countries, with a COVID-19 death rate of 647 per million population in the US, 687 in Brazil, and 623 in the UK, compared with a global average death rate of 133 per million. Of course, Trump’s anti-scientific dispensation has deeper roots in recent American politics and culture. It fits with two purposes of the modern Republican Party going back to Ronald Reagan. The first is to mobilize the GOP’s white, evangelical Christian base. Their rejection of science is rooted in the literal interpretation of Scripture – a belief known as Biblical inerrancy. The second, related reason is the rabid anti-environmentalism of the modern Republican Party, which has been lavishly funded by Big Oil and Big Coal for decades in exchange for actions to block and reverse regulations aimed at environmental conservation and climate safety. It is no coincidence that Trump not only rejects the basic science of controlling COVID-19, but also rejects basic climate science even in the midst of the horrific wildfires raging in the US west. Just as he declared that the virus would simply fade away, he recently promised that global warming would magically stop: “It will start getting cooler. Just you watch.” As an aside, Bolsonaro is a near-clone of Trump in this respect. With his base of Christian evangelicals and his radical anti-environmentalism, rejection of climate science, and policies favoring Brazil’s oil industry, he has governed in the same way. But Trump does not represent a departure from GOP policies in this respect. A quarter-century ago, Newt Gingrich, as Republican Speaker of the US House of Representatives, forced the closure of Congress’s Office of Technology Assessment, which had provided scientific and technological guidance to members of Congress. Gingrich’s aim was to prevent environmental science from informing regulations affecting industries that support the Republican Party. Trump’s anti-scientific agenda has endangered the entire world. Under his administration, the US has withdrawn from the Paris climate agreement and the World Health Organization, thereby frustrating the global fight against climate change and against COVID-19. Instead of addressing global crises on the basis of scientific evidence, Trump and his evangelical secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, have tried to launch a Christian crusade against China. It is hard to know whether Trump’s COVID-19 infection will cause more Americans to wake up to the realities of public health and climate change. The truth has been battered long and hard by the Republican Party and its allies. Fox News, evangelical belief in Biblical literalism, and corporate propaganda and campaign contributions have profoundly undermined America’s propensity to base policies on science and evidence rather than lies. I hope that Trump recovers from his illness. But, because that won’t help America recover from his misrule, I also hope that Biden wins a landslide victory in next month’s election. In that case, Trump would likely spend 2021 reviewing, under oath, a very different kind of evidence, concerning charges related to his bank and insurance fraud now being investigated by New York prosecutors.

Jeffrey D. Sachs | October 6, 2020 |  CNN.com Editor's Note: Jeffrey Sachs is a professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author; view more opinion articles on CNN. (CNN) President Donald Trump's recklessness about protecting himself and the White House against the novel coronavirus not only led to his own infection, but likely to the infections of many other political leaders and White House staff in recent days. His recklessness knows no bounds. Even on Monday, with all of the dangers he has caused to himself, his wife, his staff and his fellow politicians, and with all of the suffering and deaths across the nation, he tweets, "Don't be afraid of Covid. Don't let it dominate your life." This is yet another Trump lie in a nonstop series of Trump lies since the start of the outbreak, including those that Bob Woodward got on tape in early February. Trump is not only a liar but a narcissist, forever unable to think beyond himself. Trump claims that Americans shouldn't worry about Covid-19 because of "some really great drugs & knowledge," disregarding the rather pedestrian fact that Americans do not have access to the same drug regimen that Trump received, nor to the helicopter that ferried Trump to the hospital, nor to the dedicated hospital wing that Trump has had for his private use, nor to an around-the-clock personal medical staff. For all of Trump's absurd boasts, he remains pathetically oblivious to the 210,000 Americans who have died so far, at a death rate of 64 per 100,000 people, one of the highest in the world. He makes the Emperor Nero look good. Here are four of Trump's major and oft-repeated lies about Covid-19: First, despite Trump's apparent assumption that the nation must choose between the economy and public health, that has never been the case. Trump and his minions can't seem to understand the most basic point: the way to control the pandemic is through systematic public health measures, called Nonpharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs), not an economic shutdown. NPIs are preventative measures such as wearing face masks, bans on large events, physical distancing, contact tracing, quarantining, monitoring of symptoms at workplaces and transit areas, limits on travel and more. An economic shutdown is an emergency stopgap to put the NPIs into operation when the pandemic is raging and more concrete protective measures are not yet in place. The tragic fact is that Trump worked against the efforts of many other political and health leaders who vocalized the need for NPIs. He even politicized the use of face masks and failed to launch effective nationwide contact tracing and quarantining efforts. The work to implement NPIs was left to overwhelmed state and local governments, which utterly lacked everything they needed for quick action: sufficient amounts of protective equipment, mass testing resources, contact-tracing teams, quarantine facilities and prior experience. Far from there being a choice between saving the economy and fighting the virus, Trump is killing the national economy precisely because of his administration's failure to bring the virus under control through NPIs. Job recovery is slowing; the employment-population ratio is the lowest on record since record-keeping began in 1948; personal incomes are now declining with the end of federal benefits; and in many parts of the country, the virus is resurging. Second, the US response to the virus has proven to be one of the worst in the world. But, all the while, Trump has repeatedly praised the US's handling of the disease outbreak. Of course, we know that Trump will say anything to talk himself up. Trump simply refuses to compare the US with countries with successful outcomes, notably those in the Asia-Pacific region. More importantly, the Trump administration has not shown the slightest interest to learn from the successful countries. The only aim of team Trump seems to have been avoiding reputational damage. I pointed out months ago the need to learn from the Asia-Pacific examples. Those successes remain in place. As of Tuesday, the US is averaging about 134 new cases per day per million population. By comparison, Australia has averaged less than one new case per day per million; South Korea, less than two new case per day; and Japan, about four new cases per day. Third, while Trump endlessly touts his closure of US borders to China at the end of January as a great accomplishment, the tragic joke is that the US border was not closed and the US was not protected from the arrival of infected passengers from abroad. For two months after Trump's supposed travel ban, there were almost 40,000 arrivals from China, and many with little scrutiny. Moreover, until March 11, Trump left travel open with Europe, and some research has indicated that New York's outbreak came mainly from Europe. To this day, the security of US airports is nothing less than shambolic. Even basic health screening at some airports has been stopped. In short, Trump has left our borders exposed. Fourth, while Trump has relentlessly claimed that blame for the pandemic lies with China, the fact is that Trump has had ample time, more than nine months since the outbreak was first reported, to put effective US pandemic response policies in place, but he has failed to do so. Trump's finger-pointing at China is a pure smokescreen, or at the least his typical attempt to blame others for his own startling incompetence. Citizens in many of the Asia-Pacific countries, which are much closer to China than the US, already knew what to do by late January to protect themselves from the virus. Many took swift precautionary measures, such as widespread use of face mask, avoiding contact with tourists and objects in public, and improving hygiene practices. Shamefully, the White House failed to encourage such measures in the US and Trump has continued a despicable war against face masks until now, including his ostentatious removal of his face mask upon arriving back at the White House on Monday. It wasn't so hard, after all, to discern the emergency: China was already in a countrywide lockdown. We know from Woodward's tapes of his interview with the President that Trump also knew by then how deadly the virus was. Yet he failed again and again to take the necessary measures to protect the nation he leads. Now the questions about his transparency regarding his own illness are raising yet more eyebrows. Through all of this, many in the Republican Party have played along, parroting Trump's lines, minimizing the pandemic, and utterly neglecting to protect American lives and livelihoods. It has been a shocking abnegation of responsibility, beyond anything that the US has previously experienced by a major political party. https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/06/opinions/trump-reckless-covid-costing-us-opinion-sachs/index.html

Reminiscing about his 2019 performance at the Supreme Court at the invitation of Ruth Bader Ginsburg FRED PLOTKIN is one of America’s foremost experts on opera and has distinguished himself in many fields as a writer, speaker, consultant and as a compelling teacher. He is an expert on everything Italian, the person other so-called Italy experts turn to for definitive information.  Fred discovered the concept of "The Renaissance Man" as a small child and has devoted himself to pursuing that ideal as the central role of his life. In a “Public Lives” profile inThe New York Timeson August 30, 2002, Plotkin was described as "one of those New York word-of-mouth legends, known by the cognoscenti for his renaissance mastery of two seemingly separate disciplines: music and the food of Italy." In the same publication, on May 11, 2006, it was written that "Fred is a New Yorker, but has the soul of an Italian."