It has been a very eventful few weeks here at the Burke’s Law podcast — so much so that today we’re posting not just one but two episodes, all in this single post! Scroll right to the bottom of this post if you just want to get to the good stuff.
The namesake of this podcast, the ever-fabulous Elizabeth Burke, unfortunately came down with COVID after spending time with her mother as her mother passed away. There’s a tale in this, and Liz tells it — including the fact that she, thankfully, experienced only very minor symptoms and now appears to be completely recovered. We are relieved as we do love her so.
And our fearless and hilarious editor, Michael Houk, has been slammed at his day job for the last few weeks, resulting in the highly unusual backlog of two episodes waiting to be put on the CFR for your consumption — or should we say, “delectation.”
And I, Leonard Jacobs, founding editor of this website that is now on a kind of extended hiatus, have been immersed in my new role as Interim Executive Director at the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, a nearly 50-year-old cultural institution in the Southeast Queens section of NYC, where we are wrestling with the effects of a global pandemic and budget cuts and a thousand other things that challenges us to act in the ways that most arts and culture institutions are otherwise used to. JCAL is blessed with a superlative staff (and I with a gifted co-leader in JCAL’s Interim Artistic Director, Courtney Ffrench), but it’s a lot — and it, too, caused a podcast backlog.
So now that you’ve heard all of the excuses, what will you find when you listen to these episodes? Well, just think about everything you’ve seen and heard in the news over the last few weeks. Or just take last week, for instance. If you didn’t catch the entire Axios interview with President Finito Orangini, we talk about it — the fact that the Russian asset squatting in our White House really is out of his mind, what with his primary-color-coded graphs showing that COVID-19 isn’t so bad here in the US, even as we all know that we’re the worst-hit nation on Earth due to his own horrendous handling of the crisis. What is the dead count now — 140,000? 150,000? 160,000? Feh — “it is what it is.”
And then there’s the ongoing parlor game of who Joe Biden will pick to run as his VP in the election, and how dispiriting it is to see women fighting with women for the role, instead of remaining focused on hurling the Orange Manbaby out of our White House and, if there is a God, into the hoosegow (ideally solitary confinement, death row, or Elba) where he and his crime-syndicate family really belongs.
And then there was Jerry Falwell, Jr., with his open pants, evangelical FUPA and his hands veering into prime side-boob territory with — hey, doesn’t she have a name? Personally, I first thought that woman was Kathy Griffin, perhaps confusing Falwell with her former BFF, the FUPA-resistant Anderson Cooper. And many of us didn’t fully realize that the woman, whoever she is, is also pregnant. Which book of the Bible does this fall under? We recorded these episodes before Liberty University awarded Falwell his, uh, liberty, but what really is the story here? And what is “black water“? Listen to these episodes and you will find out.
And then there’s the life and death of Herman Cain. Yes, the founder of Godfather’s Pizza, the man who came up with the not-brilliant idea of a massively flawed “9-9-9” tax plan for a presidential campaign back in 2012, attended that rally in Tulsa, OK, that Dumb Drumpf held a few weeks back, bragged about not wearing a mask, contracted COVID, lingered in a hospital bed for a few weeks and then died. Because, let’s be real: Trump murdered him. Perhaps we should contrast Cain with the rest of the Republican lemmings, all of whom are apparently unable (get it?) to strike any deal on economic relief with the Democrats, thus leaving it to Dear Leader to issue four executive orders that are illegal and almost certainly unconstitutional and unenforceable.
Gosh, it almost makes you hope that every other Republican in America would follow Cain’s example. It sure would make coping with this pandemic way easier for the rest of us.
So, below are two very special episodes of the one and only Burke’s Law podcast. If you enjoy this podcast, please leave us a review and share this episode on social media. On Twitter, follow Liz at @burkelawNYC and follow CFR at @TheCFReport. And stay safe.
EPISODE OF LATE JULY!
EPISODE OF EARLY AUGUST!
