Meet the Veep, the World's Worst Mail Carrier
Personally, I'd rather have a Saint Bernard delivering aid.
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Move over Selina Meyer, there’s a new Veep in town, and he’s got you beat.
There’s been a kerfuffle today about a video purporting to show Vice President Mike Pence delivering empty boxes of personal protective equipment (PPE for you acronym fetishists) to a Virginia nursing home. The storm in a teacup started when Jimmy Kimmel released a version of the C-SPAN video that had been edited to make it look like Pence dropped off empty boxes of PPE at the nursing home as part of a staged photo op. The reality, as the full video above reveals, is that the Veep dropped off full boxes of PPE as part of a staged photo op at a Virginia nursing home.
The actually important part of this, of course, is that Pence—who presumably has more important things to be doing right now—is tooling around with a delivery van to do a job that by all rights the Post Office could be doing. (Never mind that the GOP wants them out of business.) The fact that Pence is joking about making the staged photo op even more staged speaks to the general mindset in the Executive Branch these days.
But wait! Stop the presses! There’s more. Turns out Pence’s press secretary, 25-year-old Katie Miller (She’s married to that peach Stephen Miller, btw), tested positive for coronavirus on Friday. Not only that, but she’s right there in the video!
Let’s break this down. The Vice President of the United States, who is old and in an high risk category, delivered some boxes of PPE to a Virginia nursing home that is filled with high risk residents as part of a needless staged photo op. He didn’t wear gloves or a face mask while making the delivery of the PPE. Meanwhile, he was accompanied on this photo op at the nursing home by none other than his COVID-19 infected press secretary. If anyone in that nursing home gets sick, I can think of a couple of good candidates for the disease vector. And what about all these other guys handling deliveries without masks or gloves? It’s like they’re all living out a childhood fantasy of being mail carriers. It’s too bad Kimmel didn’t wait 24-hours to skewer the Veep. Instead of fudging a video, he could have actually exposed some major executive malpractice.
I guess this is why we shouldn’t rely on comedians for our news.
Today’s Film: In the Loop (2009)
I first encountered the searing satyrical genius of Armando Iannucci while watching British and American diplomatic teams fumble around while attempting to either prevent (or cause) a war in the Middle East in 2009’s In the Loop. Iannucci, who would go on to create the HBO show Veep, directed the film and co-wrote it with Jesse Armstrong, whose most recent credits include creating another satyrical HBO show, Succession. Indeed, the DNA of both of these shows is evident in In the Loop, and it produces the same evil frisson that drives the respective series.
What sets Iannucci’s work apart in general, and particularly in In the Loop, is his understanding of how terrible—both in ability and values—the people running our institutions and bureaucracies can actually be. But he doesn’t stop there. The plots in Iannucci stories always seem to have a life of their own. Small details blow up into big problems, and bureaucratic momentum just seems to take over and deliver an inevitable outcome, even when the few good people in the room try to take control of the situation. In the case of In the Loop, Iannucci was clearly modeling the story and characters after the George W. Bush and Tony Blair administrations in the run up to the Iraq War. Veep was a broader send-up of Washington politicking. (Armstrong’s Succession present the altogether more vicious world of big business.)
The final nail in the coffin for Veep, of course, was the Trump administration. It became essentially impossible for the writers to satirize the White House when the real thing was just as—it not more—ridiculous than their fictions. As if we needed further proof, Vice President Mike Pence’s recent dalliance with COVID-19 supplies at a nursing home feels like a classic Selina Meyer caper, only Julia Louis-Dreyfus would have been more fun to watch.
In similar vein, the only “criticism” that can really be leveled against In the Loop is that the characters sometimes seem quaintly committed to at least attempting to do the right thing, or at least to displaying a minimal level of self-awareness about the nature of their skulduggery. Don’t let that discourage, you, though. James Gandolfini and Tom Hollander deliver standout performances, the dialogue is lightening quick and the jokes are poisonous. In other words, there’s still lots of terrible behavior to witness and laughs to be had In the Loop.
There’s no place like New York, even now.
Spike Lee directed a short film about the Big Apple under quarantine, set to Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York.” It’s a heartwarming vision of the City that Never Sleeps, especially when there’s a job to do.
Care for a Drink?
The weather is finally starting to turn nice, so why not catch a few rays this weekend while sipping on a bourbon lemonade? Plus, it’s incredibly easy to make!
Make some lemonade (Mix sugar, water and lemons, and chill it in the refrigerator).
Combine lemonade with some bourbon or whiskey—to taste—roughly 1.5 oz. per 1.5 cups of lemonade. (I like Bulleit or Maker’s Mark for this.)
Serve in a tumbler and garnish with a slice of lemon.
Reading List:
Veselka’s back in business, baby! Bring on the pirogies. Coronavirus closed the 24-hour Ukrainian diner for the first time since the 1990s, something that not even 9/11 or Hurricane Sandy accomplished. Gothamist has the story.
“I Wish I Could Use This Time Spent Cursed By A Sea Witch To Be More Productive” is a new piece in McSweeney’s. The title pretty much says it all.
Reader Georgia Gray pointed out an error in my recollection about meeting Elaine Stritch. We were at a production of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, only it was at the Duke Theater in Manhattan, rather than at Theater for a New Audience’s new location in Brooklyn. She also recalled that the production starred Maggie Siff, whom some of you may recognize as Wendy Rhoades from the Showtime show Billions.
Benjamin Reeves is an award-winning screenwriter, journalist and media consultant based in Brooklyn, New York.
Follow him on Twitter @bpreeves or write to him at breeves.writer@gmail.com.