Offering asides, recommended links, blogworthy quotations, and more, In Brief is the Northwest Progressive Institute's microblog of world, national, and local politics.
Saturday Night Live really pulled out all the stops for last night’s cold open. Ben Stiller returned as Michael Cohen, Scarlett Johansson, Jimmy Fallon, and Martin Short made guest appearances, and Kate McKinnon debuted a new impression of a Trump crony. But that wasn’t all: before the sketch was over, viewers were treated to a surprise cameo from Stormy Daniels herself.
Launch
Mueller interrogates Cohen: Ben Stiller and Robert de Niro reunite for SNL cold open
Launch
Watch highlights from the seventeenth episode of Saturday Night Live’s forty-third season.
Launch
And don’t miss Kate McKinnon as Betsy DeVos on Weekend Update!
Launch
Jimmy Kimmel ordered a bunch of stuff from trumpstore.com and it turns out, a lot of it isn’t even made in America.
Launch
“In the latter stages of Cerna’s broadcast career, all three local network television affiliates have changed hands to corporate owners devoid of institutional knowledge of the region — with a fixation on profit that eliminates most in-depth journalism, let alone regular, focused community-affairs programming.”
Launch
Highlights from the fifteenth episode of Saturday Night Live’s forty-third season included two excellent mini-sketches on the Weekend Update segment, plus another Celebrity Family Feud and “This is Us” parody.
Launch
Watch the five best spots that aired during the fifty-second Super Bowl’s commercial breaks.
Launch
Watch highlights from the twelfth episode of Saturday Night Live’s forty-third season, including Will Ferrell’s return as George W. Bush in the cold open.
Launch
Watch highlights from the eleventh episode of Saturday Night Live’s forty-third season.
Launch
Highlights from the tenth episode of Saturday Night Live’s forty-third season: Mika Brzezinski (Kate McKinnon) and Joe Scarborough interview Fire and Fury author Michael Wolff
Launch
“We cannot blame everything on Donald Trump, much though we might want to,” writes James Traub. “In the decadent stage of the Roman Empire, or of Louis XVI’s France, or the dying days of the Habsburg Empire so brilliantly captured in Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities, decadence seeped downward from the rulers to the ruled. But in a democracy, the process operates reciprocally. A decadent elite licenses degraded behavior, and a debased public chooses its worst leaders. Then our Nero panders to our worst attributes — and we reward him for doing so.”
Launch
“There is a big difference between not getting information and the press using the entire briefing time to ask the same two or three questions over and over and being upset that the answers don’t change no matter how many times they ask it.”
Launch
Recode’s Kurt Wagner: “Twitter came out on Tuesday with its annual list of the most popular tweets, moments and hashtags of 2017. As expected, a U.S. president was responsible for many of the most “Liked” and retweeted posts of the year. Perhaps unexpectedly, that president was Barack Obama, not Donald Trump.”
Launch
Watch highlights from the fifth episode of Saturday Night Live’s forty-third season, including “Come Back, Barack!”
LaunchSaturday Night Live aired the fourth episode of its forty-third season last night. Here are a collection of notable sketches.
Launch
“In the week since bombshell allegations against film mogul Harvey Weinstein became public, the Breitbart website has been all over the scandal as an opportunity to showcase liberal hypocrisy in Hollywood. One thing missing from its coverage, though, is the role that its executive chairman Steve Bannon once played for Weinstein,” writes Eriq Gardner.
Launch
BET has an announcement for America: “Eminem is back! And he’s in classic bar-for-bar form blasting at Donald Trump from his Detroit home.”
Launch
The cold open: Donald Trump (Alec Baldwin) speaks with Sarah Huckabee Sanders (Aidy Bryant), Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz (Melissa Villaseñor) of San Juan, Jeff Sessions (Kate McKinnon) and Senator Chuck Schumer (Alex Moffat).
Launch
Part of the problem is just the social media problem: we are all stuck in the same room and the dumbest, nastiest people are loudest.
Launch
Yesterday, The Seattle Times reported that Bellevue police had conducted a prostitution sting in Bellevue, opening up their own temporary brothel. Over one hundred men
Launch