Danny Meyer, founder of the Shake Shack burger chain:

“Tipping is actually one of the biggest hoaxes pulled on an entire culture, the American culture,” Meyer said. “The restaurant industry, as well as the Pullman train car industry, successfully petitioned the United States government to make a dispensation for our industries that we would not pay our servers. But it wasn’t considered slavery because we would ask our customers to pay tips.

“Therefore, no one could say they were being enslaved,” Meyer added. “And no surprise, most of the people who were working in service professional jobs and restaurants and Pullman train cars were African American.”

Whoa.

If you’re as obsessed with Hamilton as I am, this is a must-listen. Especially if you’re interested in the creative evolution of a piece of art.

R. L’Heureux Lewis-McCoy, writing for Ebony about “a comprehensive study of Black males who have excelled at college and beyond”:

The overwhelming majority of stories and studies that are concerned with Black males, from cradle to the grave, tend to look at what’s “wrong.” This type of approach is known as a deficit model because it assumes there is something wrong and often assumes that the problem lies within Black males. Deficit approaches usually pay lip service to social inequalities like poor schools, disproportionate policing, and an unstable job market. Yet these theories tend to suggest that once Black men get their act together, they can have the same access and opportunities as other Americans. This approach does little, if anything, to move Black men from the lower ranks of American society.

The CSREE study begins with an alternative perspective – a strength based approach. Rather than document ad nauseam what ensnares Black male mobility, the report asks what do Black males, their communities, and their schools do to ensure success? From this approach we see not just what is going right but how to expand these practices so more can excel.

Lindsay Peoples, writing for The Cut:

In an unprecedented event, nine black women were elected as circuit and district judges in Jefferson County, Alabama, this November. For a predominantly Republican state, the Democratic sweep came as a surprise, as Alabama is one of the few states that judges still have to run on party lines to get elected.

Remarkable, not just for the fact that it happened in Alabama, but also that in 2017, it’s a story at all to have black women judges.

As one judge notes,

There’s never been an African-American woman on either the Alabama Supreme Court or the United States Supreme Court, so if President-elect Trump wants to invite me to do so, it would be a great honor. But I’m afraid that’s a bit far off in our nation’s history. Maybe I’ll be wrong; hopefully I’ll be wrong. But that’s where we are.

Columbia Journalism Review:

While the Constitution protects the freedom of the press, it doesn’t dictate how the president must honor that; regular press conferences aren’t enshrined in the document.

But while you have every right to decide your ground rules for engaging with the press, we have some, too. It is, after all, our airtime and column inches that you are seeking to influence. We, not you, decide how best to serve our readers, listeners, and viewers. So think of what follows as a backgrounder on what to expect from us over the next four years.

It goes on to list eight “ground rules”:

• Access is preferable, but not critical.
• Off the record and other ground rules are ours—not yours—to set.
• We decide how much airtime to give your spokespeople and surrogates.
• We decide how much airtime to give your spokespeople and surrogates.
• We’ll obsess over the details of government.
• We will set higher standards for ourselves than ever before.
• We’re going to work together.
• We’re playing the long game.

That last one is my favorite:

We’re playing the long game. Best-case scenario, you’re going to be in this job for eight years. We’ve been around since the founding of the republic, and our role in this great democracy has been ratified and reinforced again and again and again. You have forced us to rethink the most fundamental questions about who we are and what we are here for. For that we are most grateful.

Enjoy your inauguration.

Brutal.

CNN headline following the first White House press briefing, where the press secretary outright lies several times:

White House press secretary attacks media for accurately reporting inauguration crowds

And from the article itself:

“This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period,” Spicer said, contradicting all available data.

Aerial photos have indicated that former president Barack Obama’s first inauguration attracted a much larger crowd. Nielsen ratings show that Obama also had a bigger television audience.

Spicer said, without any evidence, that some photos were “intentionally framed” to downplay Trump’s crowd.

He also expressed objections to specific Twitter posts from journalists. And he said, “we’re going to hold the press accountable,” partly by reaching the public through social networking sites.

His statement included several specific misstatements of fact in addition to the overarching one.

What’s remarkable to me is all the ways CNN tries to say “he lied” without once using the word “lie”:

• “for accurately reporting”
• “contradicting all available data”
• “without any evidence”
• “specific misstatements of fact”
• “In fact”
• “actually”

At some point, some major media publication will have to use the word “lie”, clearly and directly, in reference to this administration’s blatant and demonstrably false statements.

Also:

The CNN television network made a choice not to broadcast the Spicer statement live. Instead, the statement was monitored and then reported on after the fact.

This is how the media will have to deal with this administration: To the extent possible, don’t televise live anything coming out from the White House. Wait, fact check, and then broadcast, indicating the lies where necessary.

Can you imagine the 45th president being this playful, this serious, this charming, this… cool?

Yeah, me neither.

Sorkin, to his wife, and 15 year old daughter Roxy, following Trump’s win:

Here’s what we’ll do…

…we’ll fucking fight. (Roxy, there’s a time for this kind of language and it’s now.)

I originally quoted three paragraphs, but that seemed unfair. Go read the whole thing.

On a totally unrelated note, I miss Jed Bartlet.