More On Epstein

Interestingly, the New York Times has a lot of news about Jeffrey Epstein on its homepage website today. First and foremost: a really good editorial, that walks the reader through all that has gone on, but puts forth a strong opinion about the importance of not letting the Epstein please drift away. Here is the NY Times oped piece on Epstein. I recommend reading it.

Then the Times has a slideshow of photographs released by the Democrats of the Epstein estate of Eptein’s estate on one of the islands he owned. They are hard to look at; because when I did, I imagined the horrors that happened in those rooms, and the lives destroyed by privileged men.

Additionally, the paper reports that Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime companion of Jeffrey Epstein who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking, plans to ask a court to release her. Her request gave no reasons as to why she should be released. She’s already been moved to a less secure and more cushy prison, which upset many because of the horrific crimes that she committed. Why this is coming now is anyone’s guess--part of me wonders if it is a set up for Trump to pardon her. If he were to do that, it would cause an incredible uproar across party lines. I think it would be immoral, and stupid to do that. But good for Democrats.

There was a special election in Tennessee yesterday, and while the GOP won this house seat, they did not win by a very large margin. This is something to notice, because the race was in deep Trump country, where Trump won by more than 20 percentage points in the past. This special election is an example of a trend lately where even when the Republicans win, they are winning by far less. Trump is driving Democrats to the polls to vote against him.

That’s all the news I have for today. I want to share some images of something I’m working on right now. I was asked to speak at the New York Public Library in a few weeks about my research that I did at the library for my book Very Funny Ladies. I’m honored to speak there and I’m enjoying putting together the PowerPoint.

These are the permission cards I had to get in order to do the research in the special collections room. The New Yorker archives are housed in the library, and you have to request boxes of material every day that you think might be of use. The librarians bring them up for you and you spend spend days going through the boxes in that special collections room. You never know what you’re going to find. It’s time consuming but it’s also very exciting.

All this research was done before the Internet was readily available to the likes of me! Below is a letter that David Remnick wrote me, supporting me in writing the book. It was very kind of him.

And this is a box of my research from my studio.

When I did this research back in 2004 for the first edition of my book, it was one of the most interesting times of my career. I loved uncovering information from those boxes, living in the history of the magazine from its early years.

I wanted to show you some letters that I read In some of the boxes, correspondance between a cartoonist and her editor….but I think legally I can’t do that, unfortunately!

Anyway that’s it for me today thank you so much for being here. I hope you have a nice Wednesday evening! See you tomorow.