Lordy, what a whirl of news this week has been, and me, feeling the crush of unending winter, i.e., mild seasonal depression. This week I’ve been tiring by…10 a.m., lying down to scroll/read/doze for two hours, then rising to have mildly productive afternoons. A strange circadian rhythm, but it is mine.
I hadn’t even had my second cup of coffee this morning when I read that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor had been arrested — or do they say “clapped in irons” there? — for charges related to guess-what, his appearance in the notorious Epstein files. Randy Andy was said to be detained on “suspicions of misconduct in public office after accusations that he shared confidential information with Jeffrey Epstein while serving as a British trade envoy.” So that was his job; I hadn’t known. The problem with royalty is modernity, at a time when most Americans are raised on fairy tales about kings, queens, princes and princesses. We’ve had it pounded into our heads for years that “patronage” is the main job of the core family, i.e. showing up in appropriate clothing to cut ribbons, smile, wave and give short, inoffensive speeches. Even if it doesn’t involve heavy lifting, it can be a grind, so perhaps when no one wants them on boards or at ribbon-cuttings, they get do-nothing job titles like “trade envoy.” No need to negotiate agreements — that’s for the professionals — but maybe mix ‘n’ mingle in places like Davos.
Or at Epstein’s place in New York. And Palm Beach in winter.
Because I am rapidly reaching a saturation point with Andrew — he really hasn’t aged well, nor has his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson — I’m amusing myself imagining him in a holding cell at the Wayne County jail. Maybe requesting a special meal of steak and kidney pie and mushy peas and “dare I ask for spotted dick for dessert?” The jokes, they write themselves.
But a few things are worth noting. One, the Brits are taking this scandal far more seriously than we are. NYT again:
Police in Britain have arrested the king’s brother and are investigating a one-time ambassador to the United States. The prime minister has fired his chief of staff and his communications director. Members of Parliament have demanded answers.
The response from the authorities in Britain to the Jeffrey Epstein files has been far more aggressive than it has been in the United States, where there has been little police action after the Justice Department released three million pages of correspondence involving the sex offender.
A country with a functional judicial system. What a concept.
There was at least some action around Epstein’s former friend Leslie Wexner, now 88 years old and living out his days in his vast exurban mansion outside of Columbus. In what appears to be a comment on his physical frailty or perhaps his fortress of money, the House Oversight Committee came to him, rather than the other way around. Dunno what he told them. His opening statement rehashed what he’s said many times before: Used to know the guy, entrusted him with my money, finally figured out he stole from me, fired him and we never spoke again, and also, I SOLD him that house in New York, I didn’t GIVE it to him.
Of all the odd relationships in this web, Epstein and Wexner is probably the oddest. All I can think is, if Wexner’s account is true, it must be extremely complicated to be a billionaire. There you are, running your retail and real-estate empires, and you still have to think about the quotidian details of your lavish life, like that you want a yacht, but don’t want to mess around with crap like upholstery swatches or the location of the dolphin cam belowdecks. Or a British estate, so your wife, who loves to fire her shotgun in the manner of the gentry, can have a nice place to do it. I always figured the answer was to do a lot of delegating. You have a yacht person. You have a British real-estate person. Your wife can handle some of this, but she’s raising your four children. Inevitably, the wrong person worms their way into the mix. And you remain linked to him for years and years. Doing “gang stuff.”
Wexner has spent millions and millions on philanthropy, mostly in Columbus. His name and his wife’s name are on multiple buildings there, especially at Ohio State University, his alma mater. (His children all matriculated in the Ivies, if Wikipedia is to be believed.)
OK, I’ll stop now, as more is to be revealed. Two pieces of bloggage:
This is, I think, the best NYT piece on Epstein so far, because it takes into account the biggest scandal of all — not this girl or that girl, this big name or that big name, but the silence. The complicity:
Secrecy encircled all of this talk, a dynamic that Peter Attia, the longevity influencer, described in his recent apology for joining Epstein’s misogynist banter. In 2016, Attia wrote a fawning email to Epstein. “The life you lead is so outrageous and yet I cannot tell a soul,” he wrote, while also joking that “pussy is, indeed, low carb.” Now he calls that message “juvenile,” and defends himself as having been naïve and sucked into a world that felt strange and exciting.
“He lived in the largest home in all of Manhattan, owned a Boeing 727,” Attia wrote. “I treated that access as something to be quiet about rather than discussed freely with others.”
And to end on a comic note, the peerless Monica Hesse on the weirdest news in this wild week, the Bobby Kennedy / Kid Rock workout video:
It’s time to stop whatever you are doing, put on your stiffest blue jeans and go to the gym. You are a Kennedy. Kid Rock is already there doing push-ups. Make sure you bring your whole milk. We will be drinking it, as is customary, in the hot tub.
Keep up, betas. This is “Secretary Kennedy and Kid Rock’s Rock Out Work Out,” 90 seconds posted to social media Monday by the secretary of health and human services. It is a manly video. Unless you think it’s dumb, and then it was never supposed to be manly, it was always supposed to be a joke, and you’re a blue pill for not getting the joke. #MAHA and also, make sure you are wearing a leather business belt. If you are going to ride an exercise bike in a sauna, it is very important you wear a leather business-type of belt with your jeans.
Kennedy even hits the cold plunge in those jeans, which made me think the whole video was a setup for an extended gay porn loop, the activity that happens when those jeans have to spend 45 minutes in KR’s dryer.
OK, gift links to those. Happy rest-of-the-week to all. Off to the gym in hopes of elevating my mood.
DavidC said on February 19, 2026 at 11:27 am
The sound was off when I saw the video, so I didn’t get the whole experience. I wasn’t too far into it before all I could think was get a room you two.
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Deborah said on February 19, 2026 at 1:53 pm
I too watched that video sound off. So weird, who wears jeans with a belt in a sauna and hot tub? I’m at a spa now with a hot mineral springs pool. No jeans in sight.
Back in the late 90s or early oughts I got a tour of a Wexner named building at OSU, after a marketing solicitation meeting at The Limited for designing an annual report for them. Didn’t get the job and the Wexner building was odd. It was designed by a flash in the pan architect, Peter Eisenman, with not a 90° angle to be found in the whole place. There was also a Maya Linn sculpture in a courtyard that was basically a pile of broken glass. Linn designed the Vietnam memorial in DC, after she had designed it for an architectural project at Yale (which she had gotten a C for) she was a kind of flash in the pan designer too. Haven’t heard much about her in years. Eisenman was a deal for awhile and now he’s pretty much an embarrassment in design circles. He practiced what we call talkatecture, which is mostly theory gobbledegook now.
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nancy said on February 19, 2026 at 2:18 pm
Maya Lin did the civil rights memorial in Alabama, and the 9/11 memorial at Ground Zero. You must have been in the Wexner Center for the something-something arts at OSU, which showcases avant-garde art. Alan and I saw Karen Finley there during her feud-with-Jesse-Helms period. There was an exhibit there that involved hundreds of ears of corn, and moths had hatched out of it — on purpose, I gotta think. I thought it was witty.
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Dexter Friend said on February 19, 2026 at 2:20 pm
Mountbatten is reported to be released any minute now.
The sports world is sputtering and stuttering about the Wolverine men’s basketball team and their coach Dusty May. A mere $10M NIL purse and a nearly complete roster change have the Wolverines clearly the best team in the nation. They kicked Purdue’s collective ass the other night. Purdue was #1 nationally preseason.
I watched Woody’s “Midnight in Paris”, the film about time travel; it was on TCM. Now I can’t get Sidney Bechet’s horn out of my brain. What a great opening of that film. That tune, “Si Tu Vois Ma Mère” is mesmerizing.
Quote: “In the opening of the 2011 film Midnight in Paris, Sidney Bechet plays the soprano saxophone on his 1952 recording of the song “Si tu vois ma mère”. His performance is characterized by a distinctive, wide vibrato and a “huge, nasal, and piercing” sound.”
credit: Commentary Magazine—
Wanna have some fun and a few laughs? Go to YouTube and watch James Carville rip Trump to shreds. James is 81 and sharp as a tack. I’d love to have a coffee with him. He might prefer a stronger beverage…his well-stocked bar is visible in his videos.
And as the old trope goes, fuck me runnin’. I forgot Paczki Day was Shrove Tuesday. I ain’t going to eat no day old or 3 day-old Paczki. Oh well. Nobody needs oversized jelly rolls anyway. But godDAMMITT! It’s only once a year.
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ROGirl said on February 19, 2026 at 2:38 pm
It strains credulity that a billionaire didn’t realize that his “financial manager” was stealing money from him. More like Epstein had copious amounts of dirt on him.
I’ve been wondering if the police gave Charles a heads up about the plan to arrest his schmucky little brother.
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Sherri said on February 19, 2026 at 2:40 pm
So, let me get this straight. Trump is transferring $10 billion of our tax dollars to his vanity Board of Peace, while also assembling a force to prepare to attack Iran, though he hasn’t yet decided what the goal of the attack is. And Congress, which is supposed to be in charge of allocating money and declaring wars, is silent.
Just another normal day.
In better news, after 5 weeks on Zepbound, I’m down 10 lbs and my blood pressure is running in the low 110s, compared to the low 120s before (still on the same dose of Lisinopril.)
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Jeff Gill said on February 19, 2026 at 3:16 pm
I’m down ten pounds but it was norovirus, and don’t ask what my blood pressure is. Surely not lower. But applesauce is good.
L Brands has long had a reputation at least around central Ohio for bizarre, even incomprehensible management which still couldn’t stop making money until suddenly it did. By which time the CEO (former CEO, the current board chair would quickly say) had shifted his attention to real estate development which has gone much better for him.
When Eisenman said about his Wexner Center for the Arts that the interior spaces were literally designed and intended to disorient & disturb the visitor, I thought “okay, an architect who has accomplished what he set out to do.” But why? The Lin piece outside is something that, I hope I am being charitable, looks to me like someone (maybe named Les or his agent) said “Maya, here’s a million bucks, it has to fit this oddly shaped leftover space, and we need it in three months.” And at the time she said “well, okay.” Because those bills gotta be paid.
Or, not her best work. IMHO.
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john (not mccain) said on February 19, 2026 at 3:43 pm
Edward seems to have turned out normal, at least as far as princes go. I actually had to google him to be sure I didn’t imagine him. No scandals, just boring local news-level stuff. Good for him.
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Sherri said on February 19, 2026 at 4:38 pm
Mike Luckovich sums it up:
https://bsky.app/profile/mluckovich.bsky.social/post/3mfadzuhkjs2p
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Deborah said on February 19, 2026 at 4:58 pm
All of Eisenman’s buildings disturb and disorient visitors, that I have seen anyway. I’ve only been in two but I’ve seen plenty of photos. I went to a design symposium in one that was very off putting, it was at the University of Cincinnati, it had strange nooks and crannies, odd angles that made no sense (to me).
Nancy, that exhibit you described sounds like one I went to in St. Louis at the Pulitzer art museum, by the artist Ann Hamilton, she did these experiential pieces that take up a large space and have various exhibits that you walk around in, that one involved a vitrine full of Mexican jumping beans among other things, it was very cool. Another one I went to at the Armory building in Manhattan that had these long swings that people swayed on wearing these attractive denim coats, and billowing white fabrics hung around everywhere. I liked the coats so much I bought one that she had signed on a tag inside. I only wore it once, it’s something I wanted to hang on a wall like a painting but I have no where to hang it. So now it just hangs in a closet in our Santa Fe place.
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Mark P said on February 19, 2026 at 5:08 pm
I saw a bunch of Nazis with signs promoting their favorite MTG successor in Rome, ga, I guess waiting for Trump’s cavalcade. It was heartening to see a bigger crowd of anti-Nazis with signs about ICE=Nazis and “pedophile protectors” about a block away.
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Sherri said on February 19, 2026 at 9:12 pm
You know all about Lutnick and Hegseth, Noem and Patel, and Bobby Brainworm. But did you know that Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer fits right in with them?
She instituted a prayer service at the Department of Labor.
She’s been having an affair with a subordinate.
She directs her staff to arrange trips that coincide with places she wants to travel to personally.
She also had staff run personal errands for her.
She took her staff to a strip club, I guess to thank them for all the personal errands.
Her husband has been banned from the department and is under investigation for sexually assaulting staffers.
Prior to becoming Labor Secretary, she served a single term in Congress, and was a city council member and mayor of Happy Valley, OR.
Only the best people!!
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Julie Robinson said on February 19, 2026 at 9:37 pm
Ugh, there seems to be an inexhaustable supply of the *best* people. The Lukovich cartoon is spot on.
Did you know there was a tornado in Bloominton, Indiana tonight? In February?!!! My SIL’s house was right in the path, and from the bathtub she could hear shingles being torn off the roof. Also in the bathroom with her, another sister who is having a colonoscopy tomorrow and was in the middle of prep. So much fun. She doesn’t think the roof is too damaged, but the twin horrors…I guess JeffG can relate.
I’ve lost 25 pounds on Mounjaro but am getting a severe allergic reaction at the injection site, to the point that I’ll be discontinuing when the current supply runs out. Pharmacist says it’s a common side effect, and suggests switching out to Wegovy tablets instead.
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Alan Stamm said on February 19, 2026 at 10:00 pm
Journalist-author Stacey Patton at Substack on the weirdest news in this wild week:
“So essentially, America’s modern public health strategy is two shirtless men marinating in chlorinated water and clinking glasses of saturated fat. . . .
“And of course the whole thing is scored to Kid Rock’s ‘Bawitdaba,’ which isn’t really a song. It’s mostly rhythmic nonsense syllables, a growl stretched over a beat, and a testosterone tantrum disguised as music. . . . Which makes it a perfect aesthetic choice for men who are performing vitality rather than actually demonstrating it.”
https://substack.com/home/post/p-188477078
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Jeff Gill said on February 19, 2026 at 10:38 pm
Wow. Impressively done. If you look on Xwitter, the MAGAverse immediately, universally, with one voice, has this evening taken up the outcry: you SHALL all look over HERE at the nothingburger of chewed over massive tranches of documents online we are about to pour out over your (digital) feet, with a few nuggets therein, about UFOs & UAPs, and THIS ONLY we shall all discuss & froth over . . . and we will all stop, stop now, talking at all about Epstein, his files, or the unprecedented buildup around Iran and the likelihood we’re about to see an expansion of the unitary executive theory beyond anyone’s anticipation, with Congress saying officially, as a body, not a thing, the Article I powers of war safely tucked in a lockbox.
We’re gonna get a banquet of shinies shaped like saucers (or tic tacs, or whatever the current preferred alien spacecraft shape is), and I think it might work. The bombs will probably start dropping about the time of the end of the Closing Ceremonies, and I hope everyone in Cortina & Milan come Sunday afternoon will be fine staying put a while. Airspace may get complicated Sunday night. And Les can go back to endowing chairs of gynecology without irony.
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Sherri said on February 19, 2026 at 11:01 pm
Meanwhile, shitfaced Lindsey Graham (R-Closet), goes to Munich reeking of booze at 11 AM and insults our allies, and it barely makes a ripple.
The Paper Of Record went out of its way to make AOC look bad, though, recording every um and ah in its quote of her. Wonder why they never quote Trump in such a fashion?
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Sherri said on February 19, 2026 at 11:11 pm
It’s the oligarchs that are the danger.
https://open.substack.com/pub/wendy664/p/every-card-is-face-up-thats-how-illicit
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alex said on February 20, 2026 at 11:24 am
The Supreme Court slapped down Trump and his tariffs. Yay.
I saw the Croaky & Kid Rock video without sound and just assumed the whole thing was AI spoofing them. Too funny.
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Icarus said on February 20, 2026 at 12:09 pm
Dexter, you can get Paczki year round, at least in most Polish-populated cities. You can probably even order and have them delivered to your doorstep…for a fee.
I actually thought about getting ashes for the first time in ages on Wednesday but the LOE didn’t seem worth it. In Chicago, there were churches I could just go to, get my ashes and go on with life. down here I probably have to sit through a mass and I’m just not ready to do that again.
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Deborah said on February 20, 2026 at 12:53 pm
Icarus, what does LOE stand for?
I must be the last person to find out that SCOTUS ruled against POTUS announced this morning on tariffs, 6-3.
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Icarus said on February 20, 2026 at 12:55 pm
Deborah, it probably stands for a lot of things but in this case it was meant to be Level of Effort.
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Suzanne said on February 20, 2026 at 1:49 pm
This!
https://bsky.app/profile/kevinmkruse.bsky.social/post/3mfam5xslys2f
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basset said on February 20, 2026 at 4:40 pm
And Hunter S. Thompson took his own life on this day in 2005. Don’t necessarily believe his alleged daily consumption, but it could be true and that’s enough: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/33487/hunter-s-thompsons-daily-routine
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Sherri said on February 21, 2026 at 12:47 am
My husband came home from work tonight with the news that someone he worked with in the past died last night of a heart attack in his 40s. They were in different parts of the company now, but had stayed in touch, getting together monthly to talk. He was just a good guy, and a lot of colleagues were devastated today. Too young, and leaves behind a family.
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Jeff Gill said on February 21, 2026 at 8:30 am
“Wexner told the questioners he did not remember if he had a prenuptial agreement with his wife, Abigail, either. The couple married in 1993.”
That’s . . . implausible. To say the least.
https://www.newarkadvocate.com/story/news/local/2026/02/20/what-questions-did-les-wexner-not-answer-about-jeffrey-epstein/88769960007/
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Julie Robinson said on February 21, 2026 at 1:14 pm
Sherri, I’m so sorry, that is way too young and I bet people feel shaken by it.
JeffG, was that before or after Wexner’s attorney told him he would effing kill him if he answered questions with more than five words?
The town next to where I grew up is replacing its pool, and some clever person in the Parks department ran a naming contest. The people have now spoken. Old name: Hopkins Park Pool. New name: Hopkins Park Pool. It may interest you to know this pool is located in…Hopkins Park. Snort.
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alex said on February 21, 2026 at 3:15 pm
Julie, I don’t know if you were still in the Fort when they had the naming contest for the local government office plaza and the runaway winner was the Harry Baals Center. This of course got torpedoed by city officials who christened it Citizens’ Square, a name not chosen by the citizens.
Harry Baals, in case anyone wonders, was a long-ago former mayor. He had a street named after him but people kept stealing the signage so they stopped putting it up anymore. A local brew pub commemorates him, though, with its Harry Baals Stout. They also serve an IPA called Wicked Pisser.
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Julie Robinson said on February 21, 2026 at 3:41 pm
Don’t remember if I was in town but I followed it with glee. Harry’s wife? Minnie Baals.
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