NOTE: If you only read one story today, consider making it the AP link ay the top of those listed below.
***
In the past week, a significant number of new subscribers have joined us here on Substack, mostly coming via Berkeleyside, The Oaklandside and Richmondside.
Welcome, one and all, and thank you for giving this little newsletter a try. I figure I should explain a bit who I am and what it is I am doing here.
This newsletter serves both as a news analysis site and as an odd type of memoir-in-progress. I’ve been a journalist for 59 years and have had a wide variety of strange, hazardous and/or wonderful adventures in that role. My recounting of those episodes appear here interspersed with somewhat weightier essays warning about the threats from autocracy, climate change, xenophobia and Donald Trump.
Most of the time, I try to keep things as light-hearted as possible, specifically because out in the real world things have gotten so heavy.
***
As many of you may know, I was a writer and editor for Rolling Stone magazine from 1974 to 1977.
Saturday nights sometimes would get weird in those years. One of the most memorable occurred just as Howard Kohn and I were gaining national attention for the first of our stories about the kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst, called "The Inside Story" in October 1975.
(The painting called “Tania’s World” for the cover of Rolling Stone.)
Our boss, the irrepressible Jann Wenner, lived in a Victorian mansion on California Street. He had a bunch of us over on the evening of October 11, 1975 -- a night that was laced with enough drugs and alcohol that it’s hard to recall in detail. Jann had an early version of a large-screen TV, and we all gathered to watch the debut of a brand new show called Saturday Night Live. It featured something never before aired by network TV -- fake ads, and I remember that Jerry Rubin was in one of them.
I'd known Jerry for several years, since my SunDance magazine days, and in fact I'd edited a book of his, Growing Up at 37. Though we were all too stoned by 11:30 when the show came on for me to be absolutely certain about this, my memory is that Howard and I were referred to in one skit as “those two guys from Rolling Stone.”
That, alas, was our only “appearance” on the show. They never invited us back.
Annie Liebowitz was there that night. She broke into tears when she discovered her cameras had been stolen out of her car parked in Jann's driveway. Annie never got her cameras back, but Jann bought her new ones.
As for me, that Patty Hearst story would change my life forever.
Note: This year marks the 50th anniversary of SNL and also of “The Inside Story.” The former is a big deal.
HEADLINES:
Beneath a veneer of calm, Trump’s inauguration holds warning signs for US democracy (AP)
Trump puts all US government diversity staff on paid leave, starting 'immediately' (BBC)
The Trump Pardons That Will Haunt America (Slate)
Trump threatens 10% tariff on China and considers EU levy (Guardian)
Six Trump executive orders to watch (BBC)
Trump puts all US government diversity staff on paid leave, starting 'immediately' (BBC)
Trump pardons roughly 1,500 criminal defendants charged in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack (NBC)
Police union that endorsed Trump blasts Jan. 6 pardons (Axios)
Twenty-two Democratic-led states sue over Trump birthright citizenship order (Guardian)
President reinstates plan to strip protections from federal workers (WP)
Trump DOJ shake-up sidelines top prosecutors in national security, adds new US attorneys in DC and New York (CNN)
Files detail bid to contain fallout from Tulsi Gabbard meetings with Assad (WP)
What Trump’s Executive Orders Mean for the Climate (New Yorker)
Mexico defends sovereignty as US seeks to label cartels as terrorists (AP)
Hegseth Routinely Passed Out From Alcohol Abuse, Witness Says (WSJ)
A fork in the road for Tesla (Financial Times)
Economists Increase Inflation Forecasts Due to Trump’s Economic Policies (Forex)
174-year-old Bay Area bookstore company files for bankruptcy, will close Berkeley store (SFGate)
Instagram users encounter blocked political hashtags in search results (Axios)
High fertiliser use halves numbers of pollinators, world’s longest study finds (Guardian)
Historic snow amounts are falling in Florida, Louisiana and Texas as a once-in-a-generation storm hits (CNN)
OpenAI product chief says world is "on the verge" of AI agents (Axios)
I’ve experienced the next era of AI, and I’m never going back (Digital Trends)
The Pentagon says AI is speeding up its ‘kill chain’ (TechCrunch)
Watch: World’s first human-like walking humanoid robot takes a stroll in China (IE)
Last Time Sources Checked This Still America (The Onion)
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Who Killed Betty Van Patter?
(Photo courtesy of the Baltar family)
Welcome, readers of The Oaklandside, Berkeleyside and Richmondside who are looking for the rest of the ten-part series, “Who Killed Betty Van Patter?” Just click on the links below to read each part.
See also: Betty Van Patter, the Black Panthers’ bookkeeper, was murdered 50 years ago. Who killed her? Investigative reporter David Weir and others have spent decades searching for answers. (Berkeleyside) (Richmondside) (The Oaklandside)
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