MyPillow’s Mike Lindell Lost $5M Pillow Fight & AI Is Set to Influence 2024 Elections While Also Making Our TV Shows Without Writers or Actors
MyPillow’s Mike Lindell Lost $5M Pillow Fight & AI Is Set to Influence 2024 Elections While Also Making Our TV Shows Without Writers or Actors
Texas School District Wants to Replace "The Laramie Project" with "Mary Poppins," Ending of "True Detective" Gets Frostbite, Oscar Isaac sings “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me”
What I’m Discussing Today:
Kareem’s Daily Quote: Sometimes our deepest hurt is also our most effective cure.
Federal judge affirms MyPillow’s Mike Lindell must pay $5M in election data dispute: Lindell wagered $5 million that no one would disprove his lies about the election being stolen. Then someone did.
‘Disinformation on steroids’: Is the US prepared for AI’s influence on the election?: This is how democracy will end, not with a bang but a text.
TV soaps could be made by AI within three years, director warns: If we let this happen we deserve the results. You can’t deep-fry cardboard and call it a steak.
Texas School District Axes ‘The Laramie Project,’ Play About Hate-Crime Victim Matthew Shepard: What exactly is the board afraid the audience will see? Are they afraid the play will make them more compassionate?
Kareem’s Petty Media Gripes: The Ending of True Detective: Night Country Is Lazy: I loved the series, but am disappointed that the season’s creator chose to be ambiguous about important plot points. That’s just lazy and insulting.
Oscar Isaac sings “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me”: This song from the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis shows why Oscar Isaac can do anything.
Kareem’s Daily Quote
That kind of hurt has to eat.
S.A. Cosby, All the Sinners Bleed
While I was reading Cosby’s intensely suspenseful and poetic mystery novel, All the Sinners Bleed, this line appeared and I paused to fully absorb it. Many of us know instinctively what that means: When you suffer a hurt so deep it feels carved into your bones with a dull knife. The rest of your life is viewed through the distorted lens of that hurt. Usually, that hurt is a betrayal from someone we trusted and loved—a parent, a sibling, a friend, or a lover. That hurt is so profound that we feel like some essential part of ourselves was ripped out and we spend the rest of our lives trying to fill that empty space.
There’s a famous Cherokee parable about two wolves:
A grandfather is talking with his grandson. The grandfather says, “In life, there are two wolves inside of us which are always at battle. One is a good wolf which represents things like kindness, bravery, and love. The other is a bad wolf which represents things like greed, hatred, and fear.”
The grandson stops and thinks about it for a second then he looks up at his grandfather and says, “Grandfather, which one wins?”
The grandfather replies, “The one you feed.”
Some pains gnaw on us throughout our lives. Not all are caused by others against us, but caused by us against others. I don’t think we should try to eradicate the beast that lives within us, but we must learn to tame it so it is more of a cautionary reminder than a snapping predator. We need to remember the hurts to avoid becoming victims of them or inflicting them on others.
What we don’t want to do is fetishize or romanticize them, which is feeding them, to excuse ourselves from constantly making the same mistakes, the way Mary does in Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road”:
You can hide 'neath your covers and study your pain
Make crosses from your lovers, throw roses in the rain
Waste your summer praying in vain for a savior to rise from these streets
Mary’s disillusionment left her hiding from the world, turning her pain into a single-person cult, and waiting for someone else to save her, which the song makes clear only makes it worse. We have to save ourselves.
I’m not suggesting this is the kind of soul-searing pain you can “walk off” or that it’s just a matter of “pulling yourself up by the bootstraps.” Deep-rooted pain is insidious and more often than not requires the help of others to recognize and to tame. That means sharing without making your pain your most important characteristic.
We all have “the kind of pain that has to eat.” That’s why we understand it in others and want to help. It may have to eat, but we don’t have to let it consume us. After all, we have teeth, too.