TWEETS TRIP JOE PICK FOR BUDGET CHIEF
New ‘Dead’ episodes reflect life in pandemic
WASHINGTON — President Biden’s nominee for budget chief ran into a wall Wednesday as Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders indefinitely postponed a vote on the nomination, as did the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Biden’s pick for director of the Office of Management and Budget, Neera Tanden, has attracted criticism from the left and right for her sharply worded tweets attacking everyone one from former President Donald Trump and his supporters to Sanders’ acolytes.
She has apologized and deleted many of the tweets.
Earlier this month, Tanden promised to leave partisan politics behind if confirmed.
“I know there have been some concerns about some of my past language on social media, and I regret that language and take responsibility for it,” she told a Senate committee.
When asked if Tanden would ever get a vote, Sanders retorted, “I don’t know what the answer is to that.”
Tanden’s nomination to be Biden’s chief numbers cruncher ran into trouble last week when West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin said he would not support her, citing her partisan tweets. For Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, it was all too much.
He declared Wednesday that he “strongly” supports Tanden.
“For four years I’ve heard senators walking around saying ‘I don’t read the tweets.’ Now all of a sudden, tweets seem to be driving a particularly important appointment,” Wyden said.
The concept of a zombie apocalypse caused by a virus seems a little less outlandish these days.
But at least one lead star of “The Walking Dead” — which returns for a bonus batch of Season 10 episodes this weekend — thinks being on the run from the undead is a walk in the park compared to the real-life pandemic we’re going through.
“The thing about the show is, it’s people coming together to get through something,” Norman Reedus — long-haired loner Daryl Dixon on the hit post-apocalyptic horror show — told the Daily News. “The only way you could do it during a pandemic for real is do it by phone or by Zoom or text message. You’re not really seeing people now, so it’s very isolating. It’s different.”
The extra six episodes kicking off Sunday at 9 p.m. on AMC were the show’s first that were filmed during the pandemic. Season
10’s initial 16 episodes wrapped up in October when the last one aired COVID-19-related delays.
Melissa McBride, who plays Daryl’s best friend Carol among their group of survivors, sees some similarities between the coronavirus pandemic and the fictional lives of after production the show’s protagonists.
It’s not lost on her that the toilet paper and paper towel shortages brought on by stay-at-home orders put shoppers in a similar position to the series characters making “runs” for hard-to-find food and supplies while constantly dodging “Walkers” and living villains.
“My mind goes to worst case scenario all the time,” McBride told The News. “I think, ‘What if there’s larger pocket outbreaks and then there’s a kink in the supply chain,’ which happened in a few places. Then it’s, ‘Where am I going to get my information from? I want to know what’s going on. I want to know what the statistics are, I want to know what the guidelines are. What if we’re unable to get information?’ “‘If I have to get out and make that one run, what am I gonna get? What’s most important that I can get in a hurry?’ There was a lot of equating in the beginning ... people saying, ‘I feel like I’m going on a run.’ But it’s interesting, and you can’t not think about it,” she added.
The friction between Carol and Daryl will come to a head in the upcoming episodes. The pair has always been tight, with some fans even wishing they were romantically involved, but their relationship has been strained since Carol’s quest for vengeance led to the disappearance of Connie, a deaf survivor who Daryl was also close to. “He definitely blames her for that but always thinks, ‘I bet I could have done something to stop it,’” said Reedus, 52. “He’s that type of a guy that, ‘If I’d just went a little extra inch, maybe I could have stopped it.’ He just doesn’t give up, that guy. So, it’s definitely her fault, but there’s a little bit of blame somewhere in there, which is also super sad.”
McBride, 55, said Carol “is justified for what she did and realized that there were consequences and she’s just determined to make things okay somehow, some way.”
The coming episodes come on the heels of the action-packed battle between Daryl and Carol’s group and The Whisperers, survivors who sported the skins of zombies to blend in with the undead hordes to carry out the commands of their evil leader. Now that The Whisperers are out of the picture, there’s more time for character development.
“The episodes came out very intimate, which was a good break from the craziness of the Whisperer war,” Reedus said. “We kind of get into everyone’s head a little bit.”
This week I lost my hero and best friend, Edward J. Louis. Let me tell you about this extraordinary man. My father, from as long back as I can remember, would load a gun and quietly leave the house to hunt down criminals. To me, he was like Batman, but much cooler: no cape, but he carried a club and a pistol.
Ed Louis was born in Harlem in 1934 as a son of immigrants — his parents came from Trinidad and Tobago in the early 1920s — and grew up playing basketball in Mount Morris Park in the 40s and 50s, and graduated from Boys High School.
Even after we left the projects and moved to the suburbs, my father would take me back to Harlem, where it seemed like everybody on the streets — cops, shopkeepers, derelicts — knew him.
As my hero’s sidekick, I would shine his shoes, clean his blue-green Pontiac, and run to the store to buy the Daily News and the New York Times for him. At least once every week, I would watch in awe as he put himself through a grueling calisthenics session, knocking out set after set of pushups, sit-ups, jumping jacks and a round of shadow boxing while I tried (and mostly failed) to keep up.
My father had been sickly as a boy; over the years, he made his body lean, tough and powerful through sheer force of will. A teen boxer, he fought in Golden Gloves competitions, winning a sub-novice trophy in 1951. Although he suffered from asthma and bronchitis, he never owned or used an inhaler; as far as I could tell, he simply battled the illness out of his lungs.
He never drank, smoked or sipped a cup of coffee, and took up distance running In his late 40s, completing the New York City marathon three times. He eventually cut meat from his diet and followed a vegan diet.
My father had a complete indifference to pain. One of the very few times I saw my mother furious with him was the winter night he came home with frostbite, the tops of his ears blackened as if they’d been cooked in a fire. It turned out that my father, an NYPD cop, had been leading a street detail and simply stayed out in the cold too long, only noticing a problem when one of his men pointed out that the snow on his ears wasn’t melting.
From February 1956 to October 1986, he worked in some of the city’s toughest neighborhoods, and eventually was named commander of his own precinct, the 73rd in Brownsville, Brooklyn.
I’ll never forget the night in July 1977 when a lightning storm knocked out a transformer and plunged New York into darkness. With our house lit by candles, we listened by transistor radio as the news dispatches grew more and more dire: the entire city was without power, and looting had begun.
My father quietly packed a suitcase and headed to work, even before the commissioner issued an all-hands-on-deck call mobilizing the full department. He was gone for several days. When the smoke cleared, more than 3,400 people had been arrested and more than 500 cops injured.
He never said a word about where he was or what he’d done.
But those difficult days were outnumbered by sweet, happy times.
Waiting for hours at a parade with my sisters so we could wave and scream “Daddy!” when he marched past.
Pedaling down a quiet street and realizing he was jogging next to me, no longer holding my bike, and that I could finally ride on my own.
Watching him and my mother laugh and twirl at one of the many dinner-dances thrown by the Guardians, the fraternal order of black police officers. My folks grew up in East Harlem during the musical revolution of the 1950s, and were original salseros.
Eating, joking and dancing with our Trini cousins to James Brown, the Mighty Sparrow and the Isley Brothers.
As a cub reporter, I once saw my father in action at his command in the 73rd Precinct in Brownsville, leading a small security detail at a community garden while I was covering Mayor Ed Koch.
“The mayor’s here to plant a tree,” my father explained. “I’m here to make sure nobody plants the mayor.”
Even on a city salary, he and my mother carefully built a solid financial future for our family, using old-school rules: save money, live below your means, avoid debt, buy real estate and take care of it. I live in a brownstone in Crown Heights my father bought in 1956.
I wish I had more room to tell you about this proud son of Harlem, this protector of our city. He was a mentor to many, a loyal friend and a loving man who took care of his family.
A life well-lived, and worth celebrating.
A wake and funeral service for Inspector Ed Louis (Ret.) will be held at the Barney T. McClanahan Funeral Home in New Rochelle at noon on Thursday, Feb. 24.