I know I usually post adorable pictures or videos here, but today, something a little different: an adorable story. Specifically, an adorable story about an 8-year-old boy named Dillon Helbig who snuck a hand-written book, Dillion Helbig’s Crismis Adventure, onto the shelves of his local library. The librarians found it, loved it, and asked permission to add a barcode to it so that they could lend it out. It now has a 55-person waitlist to check it out.
“Dillon is a confident guy and a generous guy. He wanted to share the story,” Hartman said. “I don’t think it’s a self-promotion thing. He just genuinely wanted other people to be able to enjoy his story. … He’s been a lifelong library user, so he knows how books are shared.”
The staff librarians who read Dillon’s book agreed that as informal and unconventional as it was, the book met the selection criteria for the collection in that it was a high-quality story that was fun to read. So, Hartman asked Helbig for permission to tack a bar code onto the book and formally add it to the library’s collection.
Dillon’s parents enthusiastically said yes, and the book is now part of the graphic-novels section for kids, teens and adults. The library even gave Dillon its first Whoodini Award for Best Young Novelist, a category the library created for him, named after the library’s owl mascot.
The book was about Dillon “putting an exploding star on his tree and being catapulted back to the first Thanksgiving and the North Pole,” in case you were wondering.
As the parent of an aspiring creative writer myself, this entire story warms my heart.
All Other TV News
Boy howdy, did Whoopi Goldberg just make a mess.
On yesterday’s The View, the women were discussing the recent trend of banning books in schools and libraries, namely one Tennessee district’s decision to ban Maus, a graphic novel about the Holocaust. The panel also discussed how some school districts are trying to ban books about Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ruby Bridges. In what I think was an attempt to contrast the banning of those books to the banning of Maus, Whoopi insisted — over the protests of her co-hosts — that the Holocaust was “not about race,” but instead “man’s inhumanity to man.” Then she doubled down:
When one of her co-hosts challenged that assertion, saying the Holocaust was driven by white supremacy, Ms. Goldberg said: “But these are two white groups of people.”
She added, “This is white people doing it to white people, so y’all going to fight amongst yourselves.”
Yeah, so, the problem here is, of course, the Nazis were operating under an assumption of racial and genetic superiority to the Jews (and the Romas and the Blacks and the differently-abled and the gays and everyone else they found inconvenient, including communists and intellectuals), and so both groups, the Nazis and the Jews, would argue that the Holocaust was very much so about race.
In fact, my own husband’s family was targeted by the Nazis because of race, not religion: my husband’s grandfather was ethnically Jewish and had converted to Catholicism — he married a Catholic woman, they got married in the Catholic church. But the Nazis, they did not care, and my husband’s family was forced to flee the Sudetenland in the 30s for their own safety (with a side stop-over in Dachau).
Racism was central to Nazi ideology. Jews were not defined by religion, but by race. Nazi racist beliefs fueled genocide and mass murder. Learn more: https://t.co/GKmxkKppOm
— US Holocaust Museum (@HolocaustMuseum) January 31, 2022
@WhoopiGoldberg ‘Holocaust–the destruction of European Jews’
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) January 31, 2022
A seven-chapter online course about the history of the #Holocaust.
Links to all chapters below in the tweet below.https://t.co/Law3fQRRMS pic.twitter.com/YJqwbG9ld0
Last night, Goldberg was a guest on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert where she tried to explain that as a Black woman she sees the concept of race through the prism of skin color. Colbert pushed back, noting that maybe the Nazis and their concept of a “Master Race” might have been racially motivated in their efforts to exterminate the Jews. Whoopi seemed somewhat resistant before adding, “I get it. Folks are angry,” she said. “I accept that, and I did it to myself.”
Then this morning on The View, Whoopi opened with a formal apology, saying, “I said something that I feel a responsibility for not leaving unexamined because my words upset so many people, which was never my intention. And I understand why now, and for that I am deeply, deeply grateful because the information I got was really helpful and helped me understand some different things.”
She added, “It is indeed about race because Hitler and the Nazis considered Jews to be an inferior race. Now, words matter, and mine are no exception. I regret my comments, as I said, and I stand corrected. I also stand with the Jewish people, as they know and y’all know because I’ve always done that.”
The panel then spoke with Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League who argued that we need to understand the causes of the Holocaust to prevent another one.
— Whoopi Goldberg (@WhoopiGoldberg) February 1, 2022
Do not expect conservative critics of Whoopi’s to be impressed by these apologies.
Anyway … Happy Black History Month! Here is a guide to Black History programming on the networks, cable and streaming this month.
Amy Schneider has cast her vote for who should host Jeopardy! (Ken Jennings, obviously.)
The Godfather films (well, except for 3) are maybe my favorite movies. And I’ve made it well-known here that The Sopranos is the best TV show of all time. So yes, I did enjoy this amazing supercut revealing all of the Godfather references — obvious and subtle — in The Sopranos.
Rachel Maddow is taking a hiatus from her show for a few weeks to work on the film version of her Bag Man podcast about disgraced former Vice President Spiro Agnew. It’s being directed by Ben Stiller and produced by Lorne Michaels and this is just a lot of weird information thrown together.
New Mexico is going to require actors and crew to take gun-safety classes before handling weapons on set following the Rust incident.
So Tom Brady IS retiring after all. OK. Bye.
This isn’t TV news, but The New York Times is buying your new favorite daily distraction. They say they’re not going to put it behind a paywall … for now.
If I were the NY Times I’d make Wordle free to play but charge 99 cents to post your score on Twitter.
— Hemal Jhaveri (@hemjhaveri) January 31, 2022
I mostly posted this story so that I could brag that I got it in 2 today.
#MeToo
Over on A&E, limited series Secrets of Playboy has been exposing the rot at the core of the Playboy brand, and the rampant — and hypocritical — abuse of founder Hugh Heffner who raped, drugged, and filmed women without their consent at his mansion. It’s not surprising — a lot of this came out before Heffner’s death. But what is special about this documentary is both the sheer volume of stories in one place, and that it reveals how a company that ostensibly stood for sex positivity and liberation established a system of exploitation and abuse against the very women it was supposed to be celebrating. The company has released an open letter vowing that today’s Playboy is not Hugh Heffner’s Playboy, and that they validate and support the women coming forward.
Prince Andrew reportedly wants Kevin Spacey to testify in his case. A+++ plan.
Chris Brown has been sued for drugging and raping a woman on his yacht, which is just shocking behavior for a man known for beating Rihanna.
Chris Noth isn’t in the trailer for the And Just Like That … documentary for some reason. You can watch it below.
Surprise: Bill Cosby’s people aren’t happy with the Showtime documentary, We Need to Talk About Cosby.
Euphoria actress Sydney Sweeney made news when she said she cut some topless scenes in the show that felt unnecessary to her. She also adds that she doesn’t think people paid attention to her acting before White Lotus because of her nude scenes in Euphoria. Not one thing here surprises me.
I’m not counting chickens, but things are not looking great for Matt Gaetz.
People are awful, exhibit 1,903:
@clairesat 🥳🥳 #jeopardy #emotionaldamage #ripalextrebek #trauma #anxiety #funny #fyp #foryou
♬ Emotional Damage vs Pompeii – William Li
So apparently Sean Penn said some things about worrying that men are becoming “feminized” which would be dumb from anyone, but is especially dumb coming from a man who has been repeatedly and credibly accused of domestic abuse. But I’m not going to spend any more time on it because Thandiwe Newton’s got it covered:
In front of your DAUGHTER!? That poor little mite. Thank God her Mum’s so dope. Please stop ruining the brilliance of #LicoricePizza with this nonsense.
— Thandiwe Newton (@ThandiweNewton) January 30, 2022
This week, the right is really mad about Minnie Mouse wearing pants.
This and the anger over the M&M controversy is beautifully explained by a Reddit comment on an “Am I the Asshole” post. The original post was wondering if they were an asshole for telling their boyfriend that they were tired of explaining jokes to him after he didn’t understand why the original poster and their cousin thought it was funny that Tucker Carlson was so worked up over the de-sexification of M&Ms. I thought this comment did a great job of getting to the core of what is going on with all of these absolutely nonsensical and manufactured “outrages” from the right about pop culture:
Renewals
- SEAL Team has been renewed for season 6 on Paramount+.
- Mayor of Kingstown has been renewed for a second season on Paramount+.
- All the Queen’s Men has been renewed at BET+ for a second season.
In Development
- An Urban Cowboy series is in development at Paramount+ OHMYGODDDDD
- Up Here, a musical romantic comedy series, has been greenlit at Hulu.
- An untitled comedy about the witness protection program is being developed at Fox.
- The Don Lemon Show is coming to CNN+.
- Brett Goldstein has signed an overall deal with Warner Bros. TV Group.
- Teresa Hsiao has signed an overall deal with Sony Pictures Television.
Casting News
- Jennifer Beals is joining Law & Order: Organized Crime on NBC.
- Marisa Davila, Cheyenne Isabel Wells, Ari Notartomaso, Tricia Fukuhara, Shanel Bailey, Madison Thompson, Johnathan Nieves, Jason Schmidt, Maxwell Whittington-Cooper, and Jackie Hoffman have been cast in the Rise of the Pink Ladies on Paramount+.
- Joseph Morgan, Franka Potente, and Lisa Ambalavanar have joined the cast of Titans on HBO Max.
- Cynthia Bailey and Reginae Carter have been added to the cast of Terror Lake Drive on AllBlk.
Mark Your Calendars
- Killing Eve returns on BBC America and AMC+ on February 27.
- South Park returns on Comedy Central tomorrow.
- And Just Like That… The Documentary will premiere on HBO Max on Thursday.
- Disenchantment returns on Netflix on February 9.
- everything’s gonna be all white will debut on Showtime on February 11.
- Take Note will premiere on Peacock on February 24.
- Transplant will debut on NBC on March 6. Weakest Link will return the same night.
- Now and Then will premiere on Apple TV+ on May 20.
- Frederick Douglass: In Five Speeches will debut on HBO Max on February 23.
- Swimming With Sharks debuts on Roku sometime in April.
- The Taste Buds with Rhett & Link comes to Food Network and Discovery+ later this year.
- Adam Eats the 80s premieres on History Channel on February 27.
R.I.P.
Moses J. Moseley, Walking Dead actor
Donald May, Edge of Night actor
Bob Wall, Martial arts master who acted alongside Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris
Carleton Carpenter, TV, film, and Broadway actor
WATCH THIS
Pam & Tommy: This new limited series tells the true story of the leaking of the Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee sex tape. Series premiere. Hulu
Late Night with Seth Meyers: It’s Late Night‘s 40th anniversary, and the guy who started it all, David Letterman, swings by to celebrate. 11:30 p.m., NBC
The Real Housewives of New Jersey: A video about Luis leaks, creating drama for Teresa’s summer party in the season premiere. 7 p.m., Bravo
Raising Dion: Season two. Netflix
The Resident: Bell is faced with a devastating diagnosis in the season premiere. 7 p.m., Fox
My Best Friend Anne Frank: A film about the real-life friendship between Anne Frank and Hannah Goslar, and their tragic reunion in a concentration camp. Netflix
Late Night:
- Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon: Liam Neeson, Jenny Slate, Joshua Ray Walker
- Late Night with Seth Meyers: David Letterman, Adam Duritz, Hayley Brownell
- The Late Show with Stephen Colbert: Faith Hill, Clarissa Ward
- The Late Late Show with James Corden: Johnny Knoxville, Nick Offerman, Tolliver
- Jimmy Kimmel Live: Lily James, Sebastian Stan, Quinta Brunson, Eric Bellinger
- The Daily Show: Bakari Sellers
- Watch What Happens Live: Teresa Giudice, Bob Harper
TUES. | 7:00 | 7:30 | 8:00 | 8:30 | 9:00 | 9:30 |
ABC | Judge Steve Harvey (new) |
Abbott Elementary (new) |
black-ish (new) |
Abbott Elementary (repeat) |
black-ish (repeat) |
CBS | FBI (new) |
FBI: International (new) |
FBI: Most Wanted (new) |
CW | Superman & Lois (new) |
Naomi (new) |
Local |
FOX | The Resident (new) |
The Real Dirty Dancing (new) |
News/Local |
NBC | American Auto (new) |
Grand Crew (new) |
This Is Us (new) |
The Wall (new) |