Does Donovan Richards finally realize he’s only a “useful idiot” for the DSA? Welcome to the real world, Donovan. What are you going to do about it?
Are some of them finally waking up to the truth? Truth that many of us have known for decades, truth that history has been clearly teaching for 100 years, but truth that is ignored because it has been suppressed by…hate.
What is the “truth” I’m talking about here? Read on.
Queens Borough President Donovan Richards is a black Democrat who has spent over a decade in city politics, and has, of course, toed the Democratic Party line as all such politicians do. But recently, he criticized the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) after a New York Times article finally laid out what a lot of minority leaders have been suspicious of for quite some time now: the socialist Stormtroopers who have been invading black and Hispanic neighborhoods care more about their ideology than the people they are supposedly trying to help.
Do tell. Duh.
This isn’t news to anybody who understands communism’s beliefs and history.
You don’t murder hundreds of millions of people whom you are supposedly trying to bring “utopia” to. I hope Donovan Richards, and many other black leaders, will finally open their eyes and see what socialism/communism actually is—an ideology of hate that cares only about power for itself, and will use, or trample on, anyone who obstructs their road to the summit.
To think that the DSA leadership, or any Democratic Party leader, truly cares about the welfare of blacks is absolutely ridiculous. Blacks and “minorities” are nothing more than tools the DSA is using to get where it wants to be: on top, with totalitarian power and control over…everybody. And, as proven in every communist hellhole on earth in the past 100 years, they don’t care how many people they murder, torture, or impoverish to reach their goal. Is there anybody dumb enough to think that Joseph Stalin really cared about the people of the USSR? “Oh, I love you so much!” Blam!
Yes, Mr. Richards, the DSA is far more concerned with ideology than they will ever be about you.
How do communists get away with what they do? Well, they talk a good game—“utopia”—to people who have lost religious faith. Their deceptive lies have persuaded billions, but once they gain control, their ideology proves such a disaster that they must resort to whatever method necessary to hold power. That means mass murder, torture, and oppression. But hate, as a substitute for Christian love, is taught as a vital part of their “religion”—for such it is. And they practice such hate—religiously.
Space permits only a few quotes from Vladimir Lenin:
“We must hate—hatred is the basis of communism. Children must be taught to hate their parents if they are not communists.”
“Hatred is truly the beginning of all wisdom.”
“We can and must write in a language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion, and scorn toward those who disagree with us.”
I suspect that 99 percent of the people who vote for Democrats have never read one, single word Vladimir Lenin wrote. But people will do what they are taught; they will imitate those whom they admire or think are leading them to “utopia.” Sheep follow their shepherd; that’s true of all sheep, not just leftists. That is why virtuous leadership, and especially education, is so vital. If people are taught error, if they are taught hatred—by word or example—they will practice error and hatred. If they are taught hate, they will hate in every circumstance they think it is necessary. Can you say, “Trump Derangement Syndrome”?
Most Democrats haven’t read Lenin, but since they’ve been indoctrinated in Leninist, leftist ideals by the Leftist masters they admire, they practice what they have been taught—hatred.
Notice how deep the hatred in Leninism runs: “children must be taught to hate their parents if they are not communists.” This is horrific, of course, but since “hatred is the beginning of wisdom” (a play on Solomon’s “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”), then there exists, in communism (DSA, radical Leftism), a higher calling than even family. Communism is the “god,” literally; it is their religion, for which there can be no higher allegiance. You get on board, or you get silenced—because they hate you if you don’t acquiesce. Their lust for power is simply irrepressible, and they will do—have done—anything to obtain and keep it.
Power is a strange thing; those of us who have never had any of it can’t really understand its attraction, lust, and temptation. But just look at, well, both parties in Washington, D.C. The Uniparty. How many of those people are well past “retirement age,” many of them septuagenarians and octogenarians, who simply cannot give up power.
They are addicted to it like any other drug. Many of them will, like 71-year-old Lindsey Graham, leave office in a pine box. Power is all they live for.
And because of that, they are very, very dangerous people. And especially if their ideology, their religion, teaches them to hate. Too many people yearning for power are just evil, and giving power to Evil is the most terrifying thing that can be done. The histories of the USSR, Communist China, and other communist tyrannies of the past 100 years are full evidence of that. And that hatred in the Democratic Party/communist leadership has filtered down to their followers. It insidiously, remorselessly seeps into human hearts that are unaware of its rising influence over them. These people, mindlessly, unwittingly, become the new Stormtroopers. And then, one day, the call goes out—”hate, kill, destroy XYZ.” And controlled now only by hatred, every one of them wants XYZ dead or destroyed.
And if they show any hesitation, they become the enemy, too.
Does Donovan Richards finally realize he’s only a “useful idiot” for the DSA? Welcome to the real world, Donovan. What are you going to do about it?
Back in April, we learned that former Rep. and failed California gubernatorial candidate Eric Swalwell faced complaints that he used campaign funds to pay a live-in nanny, and it wasn’t the first time Swalwell tried to use campaign funds for childcare. Four years ago, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) told Swalwell he couldn’t use campaign funds to pay for childcare while he traveled overseas.
Tipsheet
From Swalwell to Gallego to Gray: Democrats’ Slush Fund Scandal Spreads
Back in April, we learned that former Rep. and failed California gubernatorial candidate Eric Swalwell faced complaints that he used campaign funds to pay a live-in nanny, and it wasn’t the first time Swalwell tried to use campaign funds for childcare. Four years ago, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) told Swalwell he couldn’t use campaign funds to pay for childcare while he traveled overseas.
Now another person with close ties to Swalwell appears to be using his campaign account like a personal slush fund. That’s Adam Gray, who was co-chair of Swalwell’s failed gubernatorial campaign.
Gray, who was once a member of the California Assembly, had a reputation in the state legislature for taking charter flights and staying at luxury resorts. When he was elected to Congress, he reportedly kept living large, running up campaign expenses for limousine services, Uber rides, and more than $16,000 on Major League Baseball (MLB) tickets.
FEC documents show that Gray’s campaign spent more than $5,000 on limousine services through a luxury chauffeur service based on Fresno. That company advertises “premier black car and chauffeur services.”
After entering Congress, Gray has amassed almost $37,000 in Uber expenses, making him possibly the most Ubered congressman in America. Campaign filings show a long list of charges, many of them generating triple-digit bills and one that was more than $650.
Between May 2025 and May of this year, Gray’s campaign also spent $16,464.40 on baseball tickets at multiple MLB stadiums.
None of this is new, of course. Back in 2014, Gray was already facing scrutiny over his expensive travel and other taxpayer-funded perks like the aforementioned chartered flights and luxury resort stays. According to CalWatchdog, during his time in the California Legislature, Gray’s campaign spent $21,740 in gifts at Rossini’s Menswear, $14,563 at Vista Ranch & Cellars, and $2,383 at Stevensons Ranch Golf Club. Those expenses were classified as related to fundraising events. Gray’s campaign rang up $7,604 at the Ritz-Carlton, $3,334 at Sheraton Hotels, $1,125 at the Hyatt Regency Indian Wells Resort and Spa, and $347 at the oceanfront Terranea Resort. He also took junkets to Maui and Cuba.
All of this comes as Democrats argue that wealthy Americans like Elon Musk need to pay their “fair share” and California is poised to enact a five percent wealth tax on billionaires in the state as normal Californians struggle with the state’s high cost of living. Meanwhile, Democrats talk about making things more affordable for Americans but offer no real plans while politicians like Swalwell, Gallego, and Adam Gray live a luxury lifestyle paid for by their campaign funds.
You can take the corrupt politician out of Sacramento, but you can’t take the Sacramento luxury lifestyle out of Adam Gray,” said NRCC Spokesman Christian Martinez. “While Californians struggle to afford groceries and gas, Gray is living it up like a Silicon Valley executive. Gray is the same out-of-touch politician he’s always been: putting himself first, keeping donors close, and treating campaign funds like his own personal slush fund.”
Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.
Help Townhall continue to report on the Democrats’ radicalism and inform voters as our nation faces a crossroads. Join Townhall VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.
They are asking simple questions, Margaret. Why in God’s name are we only the major country on Earth not to guarantee health care to all people as a human right?!”
More like…. simple-minded questions.
The only thing Canada guarantees that is real is the right to abortions and to assisted suicide so the medical ghouls can cash in on harvesting human organs. It’s a typical leftist death cult nation.
“Pretty simple question. Canada does it, Europe does it. Somehow we can’t do it.”
Pretty obvious answer. Guaranteeing crappy quality health care… ie “free stuff”… is easy to do. It’s what leftists do all over… everywhere, every time. The reality is… somebody has to pay for all that “free stuff” and it is always, ALWAYS the over-taxed, hard-working middle class, which results in the destruction of that middle class, which is the backbone of every nation.
“Why do we have an economy one man, Mr. Musk, owns more wealth than the bottom half of American society?”
Why do leftists never have a problem with wealthy fat cats like Soros and Singham. Oh, right. Because they donate to and support DemocRats. At least Musk creates actual jobs for patriotic Americans, whereas Soros/Singham only funds jobs for activists, protestors, propagandists and anarchists working against America.
“Why do the economists tell us the richest country in the history of the world our kids will likely have a lower standard of living than their parents?”
The economists won’t dare mention that the real reason that America might have a lower standard of living is because it’s a blatant lie. Why else would illegals flock to America and try to get into America… because the standard of living they’re escaping from is so much worse than the most poverty-stricken in America. But… if it was true, it would be because of the (deliberate) destruction that Democrats have already done TO America via open borders, socialism and corruption by the Democrats in positions of power. Leftists/Democrats are the destroyers of economies everywhere they are in power.
“The American people are tired of a rigged economy, a corrupt campaign finance system. They want real change.”
The American people proved last November that they are tired of rigged elections and Democrat corruption (See: Minnesota Somali fraud). They voted for and GOT “real change” and moved America away from the leftist corruption and insanity leadership by OBiden by overwhelmingly electing Donald Trump. Since last November’s election, the exposure of the Democrat corruption and destruction has been eye-opening, proving what most patriots already suspected. It is very likely that the next presidential election will again reflect the mood of most LEGAL American citizens that will, by then, know about even more Democrat corruption and sedition. Suck on that fact and reality, Bernie.
Has Vice President J.D. Vance been sidelined by President Trump over Iran? Right now, it seems that indeed, this might be the case.
Let’s take a look at a brief timeline.
On July 8, President Trump, joined by his Secretaries of War, State and Treasury at the NATO Summit in Ankara, Turkey, publicly ripped up the Vice President’s “Memorandum of Understanding” (MoU) with Iran. He said it agreement was “over.”
“To me, I think it’s over. I don’t want to deal with them,” Trump told reporters at the Summit. “They’re scum. They’re sick people. They’re led by sick people.”
The President also issued orders for a new series of air attacks on Iran beginning with a wave of 90 U.S. air attacks that day – which continue to this evening.
And exactly where was Vice President J.D Vance on July 8?
He wasn’t at the White House. He wasn’t in the Situation Room monitoring events. Instead, he traveled to Milwaukee, Wisconsin where he delivered a speech about Medicaid and food stamp fraud.
Of course, if he were still engaged in Iran, Vance could have canceled his Milwaukee speech and remain in Washington to interact on both the diplomatic and national security fronts concerning Iran and his now dead MoU.
Vance wasn’t needed there at all. In fact, the administration was well represented in Milwaukee. Dr. Mehmet Oz, the head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services was speaking at the same event on the same subject.
I believe that when the President decided that he was done with the MoU, he also decided he was through with his Vice President’s input on international affairs.
This is speculation of course. But based on public actions to date, and what I know of how inside Washington works, it appears that for now, Vance is largely out of the loop.
Remember, as a U.S. Senator, Vance had no committee assignments on armed services, intelligence or national security. He never sat on a single committee that dealt with foreign policy or military policy.
But, while Vance might have been sidelined, he really wasn’t done on all things concerning Israel.
On July 14, Politico reported, “Vance postponed earlier plans to address a Tuesday morning House GOP conference meeting, instead traveling to Texas to tape an episode of the Joe Rogan podcast.”
Now Vance was giving the big finger to the House leadership and instead decided it advanced his own interests as he traveled to Austin to appear with Joe Rogan. The podcaster has about 11 million viewers per episode.
In fact, the House Republican conference was confronting very important issues close to the President and could determine the outcome of the mid-term elections.
At that July 14 meeting, they were grappling with legislative efforts to finalize an $95 billion budget resolution, with supplemental requests related to fighting the war in Iran, and the President’s top priority, to pass the SAVE Act, an electoral reform bill to reduce electoral fraud.
In the end, the House did narrowly pass all three pieces of legislation today – but without J.D. Vance’s assistance on July 14.
And then, while on Rogan’s podcast, Vance decided to viciously attack Israel – America’s key ally in the Middle East as well as our wartime ally.
The Vice President claimed that Brad Parscale, Trump’s 2020 Presidential campaign manager, had committed political treason: he secretly lobbied on behalf of Israel through podcasters.
The Vice President was furious over a Time investigative article that focused on Parscale’s attempt to generate pro-Israel sympathies among conservatives through a digital campaign. Indeed, the contract was awarded to him through Havas, an Israeli-based global ad agency.
Vance lashed out at Israel, telling the podcaster, “When I open up the pages of Time magazine, and I see that there’s a literal foreign influence campaign being funded to tank the very deal that I was pursuing, and many of the people who were receiving that money were actually attacking me in completely dishonest ways. You know, my response to that is, well, go to hell.”
But Pascale, in the same Time article categorically denied that his campaign tried to undermine the President of the MoU, or Vance’s ceasefire MoU, telling the magazine, “I have never funded, organized, or participated in any effort to undermine President Trump – ever – including his Memorandum of Understanding or ceasefire proposal.”
The conservative digital expert additionally told Time, “The claim that I am coordinating an effort to prolong the war is completely false. The only people manufacturing a conflict between President Trump, Israel, and me are anonymous officials using background quotes to make me the bogeyman.”
Vance did concede to Rogan that indeed, countries other than Israel do try to influence American public opinion as well as our government. “I wouldn’t say they’re the only effective country trying to influence American politics by any means,” he said.
In fact, according to the U.S. Attorney General’s latest FARA report to Congress, in the last six months of 2024 Islamic nations spent more than $46 million for public relations and lobbying in the United States. Israel, on the other hand, spent only $1.5 million in lobbying and public relations, according to FARA. If you add Pascale’s 2025 contract, you can add $4 million more.
According to Open Secrets, an American nonprofit that has long tracked lobbying and public relations by foreign governments, Qatar alone spent over $240 million on FARA-registered lobbying and public relations in the US since 2015. “This includes efforts through firms influencing policy, media, and academia. In 2024 alone, expenditures exceeded $30 million, dwarfing many other foreign entities while advancing Doha’s interests amid regional tensions,” the investigative nonprofit reported.
Vance’s hostility towards Israel appears to be part of an emerging plan by the Vice President to run against Israel in the 2028 Presidential election. In this regard, he’s aligning himself with Tucker Carlson and other conservative voices that are openly anti-Israel.
The only good news is, perhaps, President Trump has lost trust in Vance as his international point person on Iran. If indeed he is sidelining him, that would be good news.
But there are many chapters to be written about the war against Iran. Who knows if Vance will be resurrected within White House national security circles? And will the Vice President be asked against to serve as the President’s lead negotiator with Iran?
For almost four decades, I did expert witness testimony in wrongful death cases. The purpose of such testimony is often to place an affected party in a position of financial indifference between a “before” and “after” event. It’s the same premise for black reparations.
Most enslaved Africans brought to the United States came from Senegambia and west-central Africa, including present-day Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Angola, Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Gabon. I did a calculation that compared wages in these countries today and compared them to current black wages in the US. I then did a present value analysis using a 5% discount rate on the income flows, extending it back 150 years.
The result is: blacks in the US have benefitted by just over $640,000 versus blacks who stayed in those African countries over that period of time. In other words, add up the income differentials for US versus African blacks, discount that wage differential over that 150 year period and US blacks have gained over $640K on average. So, if you are a descendant of a black slave, you owe non-blacks in the US a little over $640K.
On a sticky evening in July, leaders of the surging democratic socialist movement in New York City jumped onto Zoom to begin crafting the next phase of their campaign.
Democratic socialist candidates had just toppled five incumbents, capturing two House primaries in the city and a handful more in state legislative races. But with an off-cycle election year ahead, leaders in the city’s chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America were shifting their focus from winning votes to changing policy.
The group’s next order of business, its members agreed in the nearly hourlong Zoom, is to pressure Gov. Kathy Hochul, a centrist Democrat, to raise income taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers when the state Legislature convenes in Albany in January.
The group had failed to persuade Ms. Hochul to do so earlier this year, settling instead for a much more limited tax on multimillion-dollar second homes in New York City. But with its influence on the rise, the group believes that a broader tax-the-rich campaign may succeed next year, despite Ms. Hochul’s continued resistance.
“We brought the fight to Hochul to tax the rich last session when we had only nine socialists in the State Legislature,” Gustavo Gordillo, the co-leader of New York City’s D.S.A. chapter, said in an interview. “This cycle, our forces will be almost doubled, and there’s a whole new crew of progressive legislators who are going to demand what New Yorkers want, which is for Hochul to tax the rich.”
Since Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral primary win last year, the New York City D.S.A. chapter, active since the 1980s, said it has added more than 7,000 members. Its current membership of roughly 15,000 is spread across the city, often concentrated in gentrified pockets of Brooklyn and Queens (the so-called Commie Corridor), along with Upper Manhattan.
A reader on my Facebook thread defending J.D. Vance’s opposition to capitalism:
We live in an economic “protectionist” world … Free trade will never follow a Idealist Milton Friedman Economic model again as long as there are States that use their economies as weapons to prop up their own economic initiatives like social welfare states or to pursue Global Military and economic dominance against us … Trade imbalances are the tools they use to defeat us ! IMO that is what Vance is talking about … the same as what Trump is now doing … and you don’t see that ? or am I missing something ?
My reply:
If every nation on earth were economically free, tariffs would be unnecessary. Because Americans opt to trade with totalitarians and slave holders like Communist China, Communist Canada and others, our government has to take some steps in self-defense. President Trump’s use of tariffs is an extension of his foreign and defense policy. The need for tariffs and other barriers to oppose bad governments is not a case against the free market. It simply shows how desperately the whole world needs free markets. At home and abroad, government is the problem, not unregulated markets. A better economist than Friedman is Ludwig von Mises; also his student, George Reisman, who wrote Capitalism. I have read all their books.
The faulty premise in what you (and others on this thread) have written is to assume that tariffs are the only or most important issue in human behavior and economics. False. If we didn’t have free markets and the wealth and profits they produce, there would be nothing to tax or impose tariffs on, because the economy would be stagnant. Again, the onus is on J.D. Vance to define his alternative to free markets. And if he is so great, does this mean the Republican Party will no longer be in favor of capitalism? We need Reagan and Thatcher as never before–at a minimum. If the Democrats regain power, as they likely will if their opponent is as weak and contradictory as Vance, then all this will be moot. Mamdani’s policies will be America’s, if we let Democrats anywhere near the federal government again.
Boys to Men: Rourke, Bacon, Barkin and More in Diner
by Rick McGinnis Rick’s Flicks
Barry Levinson’s 1982 film Diner is set in Baltimore at the end of 1959, in the final days of what had been a momentous year, and just before what would be a pivotal decade. The year had begun with the success of the Cuban revolution and its recognition by both the US and Soviet governments, and Barry Gordy’s founding of Motown. Pope John XXIII announced the Second Vatican Council and Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper died in a plane crash in Iowa.
Later in the year China abolished the Tibetan government and replaced the Dalai Lama, NASA introduced the first seven Mercury astronauts, Miles Davis released Kind of Blue and Hawaii was made the 50th state. Nikita Khrushchev was invited to tour the United States by President Eisenhower and, later that same month, met with Mao Zedong in Beijing. The Guggenheim Museum opened in New York City, the Clutter family were murdered by Richard Hickock and Perry Smith in Kansas, Ben Hur topped that year’s box office and Bell Labs invented the MOSFET transistor.
But none of these events are mentioned in Levinson’s film, which concerns itself entirely with a half dozen young men, brought together by the democratizing machinery of the American public school, barely a few years past graduation and living in a holding pattern on the threshold of real adulthood. For a period picture set during the lives of the culturally dominant baby boomer generation, it’s remarkably free of nostalgia; its focus is on these six friends, and Levinson could have swapped the cars, clothes and music with that of any point in time ten or even twenty years on either side of 1959.
Or as Fenwick (Kevin Bacon), one of the friends, wonders aloud to Boogie (Mickey Rourke): “You ever get the feeling there’s something going on that we don’t know about?”
The film begins at a dance in what looks like a church or legion hall, with a local band teasing out the Isley Brothers’ “Shout” to keep the crowd on the floor dancing. We’re introduced to the friends gradually, starting with Modell (Paul Reiser), Boogie and Fenwick, who’s in the basement, drunk and smashing windows. Boogie tells him he’s not being very mature.
“Fuck mature,” Fenwick replies.
Fenwick, it turns out, has sold his date for the night to another young man for five dollars; Boogie, the most emotionally adept member of the group and its designated ladies’ man, convinces the buyer to forget about the transaction and the girl to let Fenwick take her home. After playing a practical joke on his friends by pretending to roll his car – one of the idiotic “smiles” that Fenwick lives for – they convene at the diner on Baltimore’s harbour that is ground zero of their lives together.
Shrevie (Daniel Stern) is the only married member of the group; he sells TVs for a living and defines himself by his record collection. Eddie (Steve Guttenberg) is the next one to go – his wedding is scheduled for New Years Eve but his fiancée Elyse (whose face we never see) has to pass a grueling quiz about his beloved Baltimore Colts or it’ll get called off.
Modell is the designated wiseass; Reiser only had a few dozen lines in the original script but his background in stand-up allowed him to improvise and Levinson eagerly expanded his part. Fenwick comes from a family with money – not a lot, but enough to give him a hundred dollars a month until he’s twenty-three and allow him to be jobless and alcoholic. Boogie works at a hair salon and goes to law school at night, but he has a gambling problem that’s put him deep in debt to the local bookies.
The only member of the group who’s escaped Baltimore is Billy (Tim Daly), who goes to school in New York City and has come home for the holidays to be Eddie’s best man. Boogie, Fenwick and Shrevie meet him at the train station and catch up at the diner just before the sun rises; you know for sure that they’ve been doing this almost every day since they had enough money to pay for a plate of fries with gravy and a coffee.
Billy catches up with Eddie later that morning; the groom lives with his parents, a grown man living in a boy’s room, tormenting his mother for as long as he’s still living under her roof. Billy, on the other hand, is the smart, apparently level-headed one, a favorite of everyone’s parents.
Levinson was a veteran of TV and movie comedy, with a resume that included Mel Brooks pictures (Silent Movie, High Anxiety) and the Carol Burnett Show. He got an Oscar nomination for his script for Norman Jewison’s …And Justice For All (1979) and did uncredited work on the screenplay for Tootsie; that probably explains how he was able to get $5 million in backing from MGM/United Artists for his first picture, an autobiographical story starring a cast of unknown actors. Or perhaps it says something about Hollywood in the ’80s, still coasting on the fumes of the risk-taking, renegade ethos of the previous decade.
Ever since it came out, Diner has been a favorite of screenwriters and directors, and the way Levinson introduces his main cast and sketches in their shared backstories is textbook character-based movie making. In a 2012 Vanity Fair article about the movie for its 30th anniversary, New Yorker TV critic Nancy Franklin writes that “Levinson should get royalties any time two or more men sit together in a coffee shop.”
The main cast came to the film with varying degrees of experience, though they were all in the struggling phase of their careers – Bacon was sleeping on a piece of foam in a New York SRO hotel. Stern had the most onscreen experience, making his film debut in Breaking Away (1979) followed by small parts in picture like Stardust Memories, One-Trick Pony and Honky-Tonk Freeway.
Guttenberg came a close second with small roles in Rollercoaster and The Boys from Brazil before starring alongside The Village People in Can’t Stop the Music. Bacon had his film debut in Animal House before roles in Starting Over and Friday the 13th; while Mickey Rourke had just made a big splash in Body Heat after bit parts in 1941 and Heaven’s Gate.
For Daly (the brother of actress Tyne Daly) and Reiser Diner was their film debut. Ellen Barkin, who plays Shrevie’s neglected wife Beth, had just one uncredited role as “Woman Playing Guitar” in Cheech and Chong’s Up in Smoke on her resumé.
The hardest part that Levinson had to cast was the diner. The youthful experiences that inspired the film took place at the Hilltop Diner in Northwest Baltimore but it had been turned into a nightclub and a substitute in the city fell through when the owners kept asking for more money. Levinson and cinematographer Peter Sova were driving around the city when the director saw an empty lot by the water with the Domino Sugar sign on the far shore and decided it was perfect.
The director and executive producer Mark Johnson discovered a “diner graveyard” in New Jersey and arranged to have an old diner from Long Island trucked to Baltimore and placed on site. It was so convincing that production crew had to wave off truckers who tried to pull up at night when they were shooting.
When shooting was over they returned the diner to New Jersey but it had become so important to Baltimore that WBAL, the local radio station, bought it for $34,000 and had it parked two blocks from city hall. Initially it was to be run by the city to help train students in the hospitality trades but it lost money consistently and the Hollywood Diner now sits empty, maintained but unused except for occasional rentals as a film location.
It’s not hard to see how the film’s cast all went on to subsequent fame; Levinson handed each of them at least two or three great scenes from which they could build a career. Rourke was the obvious standout – his Boogie not only had the most compelling character but the most to do, from the infamous “popcorn box” scene to his desperate decision to sleep with Beth to win a bet and avoid a beating.
Bacon teases the self-loathing barely concealed behind Fenwick’s self-destructive behaviour and Levinson even drops a broad hint that he’s hiding real intelligence when we see him ace every question while watching GE College Bowl. Shrevie and Eddie seem like the most unformed and emotionally stunted of the gang, the latter with his obsession with the Colts (who would leave Baltimore for Indianapolis the year after the movie came out) and the former willing to pick a fight with his wife when she misfiles his record collection.
“This is important to me,” he shouts at her. “You never ask me what’s on the flip side… Every one of my records means something to me. When I listen to my records they take me to some place in my life.” When you consider that this life spans barely two decades this sounds like an unwitting cry for help, and it’s likely that anyone writing Shrevie today would probably take the easy and terribly contemporary way out and place him firmly on the autism spectrum.
You don’t need to have known your share of serious collectors – I’ve known more than I can count – to recognize the anxiety about change and fear of time’s passage that informs Shrevie’s rant, but Barkin is heartbreaking in this scene, baffled by his oversized rage and what seems like a wholly inappropriate reaction.
Barkin bears a heavy burden in the picture as the only woman with a character drawn with similar depth to the half dozen men at centre stage. Billy has a deep but platonic friendship with Barbara (Kathryn Dowling) that’s threatened by a pregnancy after their one-night stand earlier that fall, but she doesn’t have much to do but reject his offer to “do the right thing” and in any case Daly’s Billy is the least interesting of all the boy-men in Levinson’s film.
He’s presumed to be the point of view character for the audience, and in a “making of” documentary produced for the film’s twentieth anniversary most of the cast speculate that Billy was Levinson’s surrogate. Ultimately, though, he’s less crucial to the picture than Reiser’s Modell, the group’s most vestigial member and the smallest part on paper when filming began, but the performance that helped Levinson commit to film the banter that he admitted was the real point of a movie where story and plot took a distant second place.
“I wanted the piece to be without any flourish, without anything other than basically saying, ‘This is all it was,'” Levinson told Vanity Fair. “These conversations that can go on endlessly through the night – bets over the stupid fucking things that you can bet on – is it. Without gimmicks: nothing. Without gimmicks. This is it. Period.”
The Vanity Fair piece goes so far as to call Diner the most important film of the subsequent decade – its reliance on dialogue over action and plot a direct line to Seinfeld, The Office and the films of Quentin Tarantino and Judd Apatow: “More than any other production, Diner invented … nothing. Or, to put it in quotes: Levinson invented the concept of ‘nothing’ that was popularized eight years later with the premiere of Seinfeld.
“In Diner (as well as in Tin Men, his 1987 movie about older diner mavens), Levinson took the stuff that usually fills time between the car chase, the fiery kiss, the dramatic reveal – the seemingly meaningless banter (‘Who do you make out to, Sinatra or Mathis?’) tossed about by men over drinks, behind the wheel, in front of a cooling plate of French fries – and made it central.”
Writing about the film in Baltimore magazine three years ago, Max Weiss notes that the film doesn’t get the attention it once did and wonders if a film about six young men hasn’t slipped to the far side of acceptable subject matter. “I have no patience for the phrase ‘They couldn’t make this film today'” she writes. “Of course, they couldn’t! Norms change. Sensibilities change. You need to put films like this in their proper historical and cultural context and stop judging old films by modern-day standards – it’s a recipe for missing out on a lot of great art.”
There’s a lot of behaviour in the picture that would be flagged as “toxic masculinity” now – mostly by viewers whose knee-jerk reaction is the only one they trust, but Weiss insists that “it’s important to make a distinction between depiction and endorsement. Diner is very explicitly about the fact that these guys are afraid of growing up – and women come to represent one of two things to them: an object of lust to be chased or a potential wife, i.e., a jail sentence to be avoided at all costs. (They view Shrevie as a bit of a cautionary tale, even though he seems to hang out with the boys as much as ever.) They cling to each other, to the diner of their teen years, to their jokes and their games and their banter, as a way to fend off the inevitable.”
This contemporary reaction is notable considering how disappointed MGM was with the finished film. “The studio didn’t like it,” recalled Johnson in an oral history of the movie in another Baltimore magazine story. “They wanted it to be one those screw-around movies, they wanted it to be Porky’s – those crazy kids in Baltimore, trying to get drunk and laid, driving around. And it wasn’t one of those at all. They didn’t know what to make of it.”
The film was such a low priority for MGM that they couldn’t be bothered demanding changes or re-editing the picture, opting ultimately to cut their modest losses and bury it without a trace. But thanks to a bit of luck – Johnson’s mother happened to be best friends with Pauline Kael, the New Yorker‘s wildly influential movie critic, who gave it a rave review – MGM was shamed into a wider release. Still, if you want some idea of what the studio wanted you only have to look at the Italian poster for the film, released there as At Dinner with Friends.
(As a footnote, Mel Brooks told Levinson to watch Fellini’s I Vitelloni when he suggested he write a script based on the stories Levinson told him about his friends. But Levinson couldn’t find a copy. “Back then it wasn’t like you could pull it up on streamers.” Regardless, it’s the film Diner is compared to more than any other.)
My reasons for defending the picture are personal. I saw Diner when it came out, just as I was graduating high school, and couldn’t ignore how much it resonated with my own life, even if the characters were a few years older than me. I had spent the better part of my last few years at St. Michael’s College School in a group whose personalities and dynamics were remarkably like Levinson’s gang of friends.
We were a strange assortment of boys from different backgrounds (but all Catholic), and while I’m not sure we had our own Boogie we had at least two Fenwicks and swapped the roles of Shrevie, Eddie and Modell depending on the time of day and subject. It’s fun to speculate on what the future held for Levinson’s boy-men; it’s hard to imagine Shrevie and Beth making it but Eddie and Elyse might have stood a chance. Billy’s visits to Baltimore will probably be more and more infrequent until they’re finally reserved for funerals.
One of our Fenwicks has wholly reformed, the other just enough to make it to the verge of senior citizen discounts relatively unscathed. Some of us have moved away; others have fallen into distant orbits and a few new members have joined but we still get together several times a year for dinner and the same easy ball-busting and banter. If we ever had our diner it closed many years ago.
In a scene in a strip club near the end of Diner Billy confides to Eddie that “the whole thing with girls is painful. And it seems like it’s getting more painful instead of easier.” My first serious girlfriend once told me that she didn’t think men made real friendships but, looking back, I don’t know that she knew much more about men than I knew about women. But I do have a circle of friends who remember when we shared this kind of confidence, and from over forty years’ distance I’m confident enough to disagree with my old girlfriend.
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This is said to civilized men who are to venture into countries where sacred cows are fed, while children are left to starve – where female infants are killed or abandoned by the roadside – where men go blind, medical help being forbidden by their religion – where women are mutilated, to insure their fidelity – where unspeakable tortures are ceremonially inflicted on prisoners – where cannibalism is practiced. Are these the ‘cultural riches’ which a Western man is to greet with ‘brotherly love’? Are these the ‘valuable elements’ which he is to admire and adopt? Are these the ‘fields’ in which he is not to regard himself as superior? And when he discovers entire populations rotting alive in such conditions, is he not to acknowledge, with a burning stab of pride – of pride and gratitude – the achievements of his nation and his culture, of the men who created them and left him a nobler heritage to carry forward?”
“In New Hampshire. [AOC’s] the number one Democrat candidate in the country in New Hampshire. That’s today’s poll. I think she’ll run for president. I don’t think she will run for Senate. But I’m going to make a prediction for you, Sean. My prediction is comrade Mamdani will be the next Democrat senator from New York. That Mamdani will replace Schumer. I think Mamdani is the single most powerful Democrat in the country. And I got to say, by the way, there are some Republicans that are celebrating. This is great. Our opponents are crazy. That’s going to help us. I want to say for the record, I’m not celebrating. I think this is bad for the country. I think this is unhealthy…
…I want to see two normal parties that are not filled with crazy people who can actually do something reasonable and who actually love the country,” he added. “OK, if a Democrat likes some higher taxes and higher regulations, I don’t like that. But could we start with the premise that you love America? And the problem is these communist radicals, they not only don’t love America. They hate America. If you’re a small business owner, they hate you. If you’re a Christian, they hate you. If you’re a Jew, they hate you. That is dangerous. And I don’t like to see — look, in history, we’ve always had a pendulum from one party to the other. Unfortunately, there’s going to come a time when the Democrats are back in power. And I think it’s really dangerous if the Democrat who gets back in power, and I hope that’s not for a very long time, it’s dangerous if that Democrat is an open communist who aspires to be Mao or Stalin or Fidel Castro. These are the people driving today’s Democrat Party.”
THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 