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bountyofbeads · 5 years

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Why Does Only One Party Play by the Rules? https://nyti.ms/2MNdCOX

Why Does Only One Party Play by the Rules?

Thanks to Trump’s deepening dependence on “alternative facts,” the assertion of reality is now a viable campaign strategy for 2020 Democrats.

By Jennifer Senior, Opinion columnist | Published October 25, 2019 | New York Times | Posted October 25, 2019 |

It’s that time of the campaign season when some Democrats are starting to feel — as President Jimmy Carter might have put it — malaise. They’re staring at their 2020 lineup and wondering whether it’s a guaranteed recipe for buyer’s remorse. Joe Biden is too old, Pete Buttigieg is too young, Kamala Harris is too uncertain, Bernie Sanders too unpalatable, Elizabeth Warren too unelectable.

All of which may be right. But I have an additional theory for why some Democrats are the vexed and depleted souls they seem to be these days, waking up with lead in their veins and worms in their stomachs. It boils down to this: They can’t escape the sense that they’re living by different rules.

Let me rephrase that: Democrats are acting as though there still are rules, when in fact they’re living in a political multiverse — with at least one parallel reality containing no rules at all.

What do you do when one party stakes its faith — and ultimately government itself — on observable, measurable realities while the other has made the cynical decision to cast these principles away? How do you strategize? How do you cope?

It’s not just that President Trump serially lies in plain sight. (What’s The Washington Post’s latest tally? 13,435? Whatever: Just imagine a whirring odometer on a shuttle to Mars.) It’s that he’s surrounded by occluders and toadies, nihilist tricksters spun directly from the looms of the Marx Brothers’ imagination. (“Who you gonna believe? Me or your own eyes?”)

A raft of House and Senate Republicans — including (say it with me) Senator Lindsey Graham — learned that Ukraine’s top diplomat had confirmed the Trump administration’s aid-for-dirt caper, yet still insists the impeachment proceedings are a sham. The acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, acknowledged this same quid pro quo in a news conference, only to proclaim later that none of us understands English. Any public servant who dares say that two plus two just might equal four is immediately accused by Trump of radicalism, treason, witch hunting.

Compare that with President Barack Obama’s relationship with those who inconvenienced him. When James Comey, then the head of the F.B.I., made the fateful decision to announce that he’d reopened his inquiry into Hillary Clinton’s emails just days before the 2016 election, Obama could not have been especially pleased. By imperiling Clinton’s chances, Comey was imperiling Obama’s own legacy too. Yet Obama still behaved warmly toward him, according to James Stewart in his new book, “Deep State.” Why? Because “Democrats,” as Jonathan Chait explained in his review of that book, “still believed in institutions and norms.”(See review below)

This idea — that Democrats still believe in norms, customs, the rather crucial notion of checks and balances, in government itself — may be the crux of the multiverse problem. Look at someone like Joe Biden, whose essential pitch (in addition to experience, incremental change, working-class-guyness) is that he can work with the men and women on the other side of the aisle.

But this suggests that compromise is an option. It doesn’t appear that the other side is much interested. You have Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, holding a Supreme Court appointment hostage for nearly a year, blocking almost all legislative debate and passing a bill to protect the 2020 elections from foreign interference only under extreme duress; the world’s “greatest deliberative body” is now a speedway for the Trump agenda. You have the House Republicans informally observing the “Hastert Rule”— named for the former speaker Dennis Hastert, who was carted off to prison for paying hush money to a former student he’d sexually abused — which says bills can come to the floor only if a majority of the Republicans support them. It virtually ensures minoritarian rule.

And you have partisan news outlets with zero interest in reporting the basic facts of Trump’s corruption or the catastrophic consequences of his impulses. We’ve gone from Pax Americana to Fox Americana in the blink of an eye.

Whereas the more traditional media, whatever their unconscious biases, do try to hold Democrats to account. Sure, let’s stipulate that there are more liberals than conservatives at these organizations. Maybe even a lot more. But it was mainstream newspapers that broke the Whitewater story, which led to an independent investigation of Bill Clinton. It was mainstream newspapers that kept Hillary Clinton’s emails on the front page in the run-up to the 2016 election. This newspaper covered Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine too — in May. These pages also ran an editorial about it. That was in 2015.

Of course Democratic politicians — all politicians — distort, gerrymander evidence, even lie and apply their greasy thumbs to the scales. (What was Bill Clinton doing on that plane with Loretta Lynch in 2016?) The question is whether their sins are occasional or habitual, whether their worldviews are Capra or Chandler. The Trumpkins are firmly in noir territory.

Now you have Trump strafing Facebook with campaign ads popping with falsehoods. Elizabeth Warren, meanwhile, ran a Facebook ad with falsehoods that acknowledged they were false midway through.

Which says it all, really.

So, to repeat: What to do about this? Do you capitulate, sell your soul and resort to the same lawless tactics as your opponents? Or do you take the high road and run the risk of losing?

The only guide we have is 2018. But it’s not a bad one. What it showed was that sometimes it pays to go high. The Democrats just have to aggressively sell an honorable message.

Specifically, what the Democrats should say is: Anyone who’s not in the business of peddling the truth shouldn’t be in the business of government. Or publishing, for that matter. Trump once said that he could probably get away with murder. (And his lawyers recently, surreally, made this same case in a federal appeals court.) That’s what Mark Zuckerberg is doing on Facebook, figuratively speaking, by allowing political ads with demonstrably false content to run on his platform, no matter what other features the company rolls out.

Right now, the Democrats are badly losing the Facebook war. But it’s not too late for them to wage this fight, and in the right way. They could still campaign on the idea of a government that believes in itself — and self-evident truths, like something as basic as the size of an inaugural crowd.

It would be a declaration of values. In the Trump era, that’s not a bad place to start.

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Two Candidates, Two Investigations, One Deeply Flawed Agency

By Jonathan Chait | Published October 25, 2019 | New York Times | Posted October 25, 2019 |

DEEP STATE

Trump, the FBI, and the Rule of Law

By James B. Stewart

During the 2016 presidential election, one of the two major candidates labored under the shadow of a criminal investigation by the F.B.I. That candidate was Hillary Clinton. As we now know, though voters had little reason to apprehend it at the time, there were actually two investigations underway — and, while the probe into Clinton’s mishandling of emails played out in public, the more serious probe of Donald Trump’s secret political and financial connections with Russia remained largely unknown until well after the voting had concluded.

In “Deep State,” James B. Stewart, a columnist for The New York Times and the author of “Blood Sport” and “Den of Thieves,” among many other books, tells the story of both investigations. His account produces few new facts, nor a bold new thesis, that would dramatically alter our understanding of either. Instead, his contribution is to combine the two accounts into a single chronological narrative. He shows how the twin investigations turn out to be closely linked, and not just because an election pitted their subjects against each other.

The F.B.I. agents investigating Clinton’s use of a personal email account realized early on that they would never have a prosecutable case. While Clinton had violated laws pertaining to the handling of classified material, she had apparently done so out of a combination of technical ineptitude and convenience, and the government had never charged an offender without establishing nefarious motives. As a result, the bureau concluded it didn’t “have much on the intent side.”

You might think this decision made life easier for the F.B.I., which would be spared the ordeal of having to insert itself into a presidential campaign. Instead, it made life harder. The reason for this: The bureau contained what some Department of Justice officials considered “hotbeds of anti-Clinton hostility,” especially in the Little Rock and New York offices. Stewart describes how F.B.I. officials encouraged colleagues investigating the Democratic nominee with messages like “You have to get her” and “You guys are finally going to get that bitch.” James Comey, the F.B.I. director during the Clinton email probe, went so far as to tell Attorney General Loretta Lynch, “It’s clear to me that there is a cadre of senior people in New York who have a deep and visceral hatred of Secretary Clinton.” Those agents leaked regularly to right-wing media sources that the bureau was turning a blind eye to what they saw as Clinton’s criminality.

This pressure drove Comey to make two fateful decisions. First, when he announced that the bureau was not bringing charges against Clinton, he denounced her “extremely careless” behavior, as a kind of middle course between what the law dictated and what Republicans demanded. Second, when an unrelated investigation into sex crimes by the former Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner turned up more Clinton email 11 days before the election, Comey felt trapped into announcing that he had reopened the investigation.

Stewart shows how Comey violated the F.B.I.’s norm of doing everything possible to avoid involving itself in election campaigns, especially at the end. He believed that failing to intervene would lead conservative agents to leak the story — and would result in his own impeachment by the Republican Congress after the election. As a result, Comey told his staff he needed to publicly reopen the investigation lest he create “corrosive doubt that you had engineered a cover-up to protect a particular political candidate.”

This was a catastrophic violation of protocol — and probably a decisive one; as Stewart notes, the new email story led the news in six of the seven days in the final week before the election. But what drove Comey to this error was the refusal of Republicans in the bureau and Congress to accept and follow the rules. Stewart’s narrative shows Democrats still believed in institutions and norms — even after Comey’s extraordinary intervention against Clinton, he was still treated warmly by President Obama and cordially by Loretta Lynch. Comey felt bound to appease the Clinton-haters because they refused to accept any process that failed to yield their preferred outcome.

Notably, the Republican William Barr enthusiastically endorsed Comey’s decision to reopen the case against Clinton, but then — once Comey became a threat to Trump — cited that very decision as grounds to fire him. Barr’s subsequent elevation to attorney general is an ominous development that hangs over the second half of Stewart’s book.

Unfortunately, his account of the Russia investigation is less satisfying. When Comey briefs Trump on the so-called Steele dossier and its litany of supposed ties between Trump and Russia — including the unproven allegation that Trump had watched prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room urinating on a bed where the Obamas once slept — we see the new president give suspiciously unconvincing denials. “Almost to himself, Trump repeated the year ‘2013’ and seemed to be searching his memory,” Stewart recounts. Trump tells Comey he would not need to pay for sex, and links the charges to other women who have accused him of groping them — charges that have high levels of credibility. He insists his well-known fear of germs would preclude him from enjoying such a performance, even though he could easily have done so at a safe distance.

We also see Trump or his agents dangling pardons before Paul Manafort and Roger Stone, the two advisers who had the closest political contacts with Russia and WikiLeaks, leading to both men refusing to cooperate with the investigation. We come to see Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general and supervisor of the Mueller report, as human Jell-O, losing his composure at times to the point of seeming unhinged. Stewart points out that Rosenstein agreed to meet with Trump privately. “Each time, against seemingly long odds, Rosenstein emerged with his job intact,” he notes. “What did he offer Trump in return? What threats, explicit or implied, did Trump bring to bear?”

Stewart also recounts the harsh treatment dispensed to government officials who, as a result of their involvement in the Russia investigation, became Trump’s targets. The Department of Justice publicized an affair between two agents working on the probe. It demoted the Justice Department lawyer Bruce Ohr after he spoke out, and ended the career of the longtime F.B.I. agent Andrew McCabe. All of these things, Stewart writes, “raise disturbing questions about their willingness to stand up to a president and preserve the long tradition of independent law enforcement and the rule of law.”

However, for all the suspicious patterns he reveals, for all the dots he connects, Stewart does not manage to produce a smoking gun that proves misconduct. We never learn the depth of Trump’s involvement with Russia, or whether he or Attorney General Barr applied undue pressure on the department. If these questions have incriminating answers, the people who hold them probably have no incentive to reveal them and possibly never will. What “Deep State” does tell us is that there are ample grounds for suspicion that Trump’s well-documented efforts to obstruct justice succeeded. To what end? That remains a mystery.

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In Tribute to Cummings, Obama Hints at Rebuke of Trump

The former president said that Representative Elijah E. Cummings showed that “you’re not a sucker to have integrity.”

Peter Baker

Oct. 25, 2019Updated 3:52 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON — Former President Barack Obama, who has remained largely silent amid the convulsive impeachment debate now gripping the nation, offered a tribute to a late Democratic congressman on Friday that sounded to some listeners like an implicit rebuke of President Trump.

Speaking at a service for Representative Elijah E. Cummings, who died last week, Mr. Obama never mentioned the president by name but seemed to draw a contrast between his successor and the congressman whom Mr. Trump denigrated last summer.

Mr. Obama said that Mr. Cummings showed that being strong meant being kind and that being honorable was no flaw.

“There’s nothing weak about kindness and compassion,” Mr. Obama told a packed hall at New Psalmist Baptist Church in Baltimore, which Mr. Cummings, a Democrat, represented in the House for the past 25 years. “There’s nothing weak about looking out for others. There’s nothing weak about being honorable. You’re not a sucker to have integrity and to treat others with respect.”

Warming to his topic, Mr. Obama pointed to a sign behind him referring to “the Honorable” Mr. Cummings.

“This is a title that we confer on all kinds of people who get elected to public office,” he said as the largely African-American and Democratic audience responded with knowing applause and laughter. “We’re supposed to introduce them as honorable. But Elijah Cummings was honorable before he was elected to office. There’s a difference. There’s a difference if you were honorable and treated others honorably outside the limelight.”

As chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, Mr. Cummings, 68, had become a major thorn in Mr. Trump’s side and was one of the leaders of the drive to impeach the president for abuse of power. Last summer, Mr. Trump lashed out at Mr. Cummings, calling him “racist” and “a brutal bully” who had done “a very poor job” representing a district that he described as a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.”

Mr. Obama was part of an all-star lineup of speakers and guests at the Friday’s service, including former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Elizabeth Warren.

But much of the attention was focused on the 44th president, who has largely avoided weighing in lately on his successor even as Mr. Trump lately has repeatedly accused Mr. Obama of illegally spying on him while in office and blamed the former president for various policy setbacks.

Mr. Obama made no reference to any of that, but did call on his audience to step up as Mr. Cummings did. “People will look back at this moment,” he said, “and ask the question: What did you do?”

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Elijah Cummings’s Funeral Draws Presidents and Thousands of Mourners

Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton spoke Friday at the service for the longtime Maryland congressman.

By Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs | Published October 25, 2019 Updated 3:39 PM ET | New York Times | Posted October 25, 2019 |

BALTIMORE — Representative Elijah E. Cummings was firmly rooted in Baltimore, but for decades his voice extended far from his brick rowhouse on the city’s west side. On Friday, the legacy of his tireless advocacy brought powerful leaders from Washington and elsewhere to his city.

Mr. Cummings, a Democrat who rose in prominence in recent years for his unwavering pursuit of President Trump, died at 68 last week in the city he called home, the same one in which he was born and lived all his life.

Two former presidents, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, were among the prominent cast of politicians, mentees and relatives who spoke at his funeral on Friday morning. Others included Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator and presidential candidate.

Mr. Obama roused the congregation, extolling Mr. Cummings’s values and saying that the congressman had earned the title, “the honorable.”

“This is a title we confer on all kinds of people who get elected to public office,” Mr. Obama said. “We’re supposed to introduce them as honorable. But Elijah Cummings was honorable before he was elected to office.”

“There’s a difference,” Mr. Obama continued, his voice rising as many in the crowd stood up and clapped. “There’s a difference if you were honorable and treated others honorably — outside the limelight, on the side of a road, in a quiet moment counseling somebody you work with.”

Mr. Cummings’s success validates the concept of the American dream, Mr. Obama said, and his compassion and empathy were a lesson that kindness can be a sign of strength.

“There’s nothing weak about looking out for others,” Mr. Obama said. “There’s nothing weak about being honorable. You’re not a sucker to have integrity and to treat others with respect.”

Earlier in the service, following a psalm read by Ms. Warren and a song from one of Mr. Cummings’s favorite singers, BeBe Winans, Ms. Clinton took the stage and thanked members of Mr. Cummings’s district “for sharing him with our country and the world.”

Ms. Clinton said Mr. Cummings never backed down in the face of abuses of power or from “those who put party ahead of country or partisanship above truth.”

“But he could find common ground with anyone willing to seek it with him,” she continued. “And he liked to remind all of us that you can’t get so caught up in who you are fighting that you forget what you are fighting for.”

Ms. Pelosi asked attendees how many had been mentored by Mr. Cummings, and at least a dozen raised their hands. She recalled that he had sought to mentor as many freshman representatives as he could after Democrats took control of the House in the 2018 election.

“By example, he gave people hope,” she said.

Ms. Pelosi had spoken at another funeral in Baltimore on Wednesday for her own brother, Thomas D’Alesandro III, a former mayor of the city.

Earlier in the morning, thousands of grieving Baltimoreans stood in looping lines as the sun rose outside of New Psalmist Baptist Church, which seats 4,000 people and filled up shortly before 10, with many still outside. It’s the same church where Mr. Cummings sat in the front row most Sundays even after he began using a walker and wheelchair.

Mr. Cummings’s body lay in an open coffin at the front of the church on Friday, his left hand resting on his right as mourners passed by and a choir sang gospel music. An usher stood nearby with a box of tissues in each hand.

Elonna Jones, 21, skipped her classes at the University of Maryland to attend with her mother, Waneta Ross, who nearly teared up as she contemplated Baltimore’s loss.

“He believed in the beauty of everything, especially our city,” Ms. Ross said. “It’s important we’re here to honor a civil rights activist who was still around in my generation.”

Ms. Jones, a volunteer coordinator for a City Council candidate, said Mr. Cummings had motivated her to pursue a role in improving her city.

“As a young, black woman in Baltimore who wants to be in politics, he inspired me,” she said.

Mourning residents stood in black coats, hats and heels and sang Mr. Cummings’s praises as the police corralled the extended lines of people who woke up early to pay their respects. Above all, attendees noted, he always looked out for his city.

“He never forgot who we were,” said Bernadette McDonald, who lives in West Baltimore. “He was a son of Baltimore and a man of the people.”

The big names on the service’s agenda, the television cameras lined up outside and the large crowd belied the way many attendees interacted with the devoted congressman, who lived in the heart of West Baltimore and would simply give a knowing nod to those who recognized him on the street. He carried himself like anyone else when running errands or taking a walk around the block.

“If you didn’t already know him, you wouldn’t know who he was,” Ms. McDonald said.

Mr. Cummings saw his profile rise in recent years as he consistently sparred with Mr. Trump, determinedly pursuing the president, his businesses and his associates as head of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. Mr. Cummings became a leading figure in the impeachment inquiry and was said to still be joining strategy discussions with colleagues from his hospital bed.

Rhonda Martin, who works at a local high school, said Mr. Cummings had inspired the next generation of Baltimore’s leaders by speaking to students in schools around the city.

“He brought a message of hope and told students that he did it, and they can do it, too,” Ms. Martin said.

Mr. Cummings, whose parents were former sharecroppers in South Carolina, graduated from Howard University in Washington and earned a law degree at the University of Maryland. He was first elected to Congress in 1996 and never faced a serious challenge over 11 successful re-election campaigns.

On Thursday, Mr. Cummings’s body lay in state in the Capitol, the first black lawmaker to do so, and Republicans and Democrats praised his integrity and his commitment to his constituents.

Over more than two decades in Congress, Mr. Cummings championed working people, environmental reform and civil rights. He served for two years as the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus and frequently spoke of his neighborhood while pushing legislation to lower drug prices, promoting labor unions and seeking more funding for affordable housing.

Even in his war of words with the president, the battle made its way to Baltimore when, in July, Mr. Trump called Mr. Cummings’s district a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” and appeared to make light of a break-in at Mr. Cummings’s home, during which the congressman scared an intruder away.

The president’s insults still anger Baltimore residents. “See? We’re not all trash and rats,” one congregant said as she sat down in the church on Friday.

Mr. Cummings responded to the president by saying it was his “moral duty” to fight for residents in his district. “Each morning, I wake up,” he wrote, “and I go and fight for my neighbors.”

Jennifer Cummings, one of Mr. Cummings’s two daughters, recalled early morning calls from her father on her birthdays and the ice cream they shared in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.

Reading from a letter to her father, Ms. Cummings said her father had taught her to “love my blackness” by insisting on buying her dolls with brown skin and telling her to appreciate her lips and nose.

While she was proud of all the titles he held over his life, “perhaps the most important title you held in your 68 years on earth was dad,” she said.

One of Mr. Cummings’s brothers, James Cummings, said that in one of their last conversations, the congressman spoke of his heartbreak over the unsolved killing of James’s 20-year-old son, Christopher Cummings, in Norfolk, Va., in 2011.

The killing “haunted Elijah for the rest of his life,” James said.

Adia Cummings, the congressman’s other daughter, said Mr. Cummings always challenged her and her sister to be better people. And even though he would nudge her about owing him money, he rarely turned down her requests, even recently making sure that she could attend a concert for the rapper Cardi B.

“He didn’t really know who she was, but he went out of his way, even from his sick bed, to make sure I could go see her,” she said.

Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, Mr. Cummings’s wife and the chairwoman of the Maryland Democratic Party, gave a fiery speech that brought multiple rounds of applause and many congregants to their feet more than once. And while she did not cite President Trump by name, she invoked him clearly, saying her husband’s work had become “infinitely more difficult” in the last few months of his life when he “sustained personal attacks” on him and his city. “It hurt him,” Ms. Cummings said.

Looking at Mr. Obama, she recalled that Mr. Cummings had stood with the former president early and proudly. “But you didn’t have any challenges like we have going on now,” she added with a smile, as Mr. Obama nodded and responded with an appreciative chuckle.

Ms. Cummings said she felt as if people were trying to tear Mr. Cummings down, and that the celebrations and outpouring of love this week had assured her that he was sent off with the respect he deserved.

Two days before Mr. Cummings died, his wife said, the staff at the Johns Hopkins Hospital had wheeled him up to the roof to see the sun and look over the city he never left.

“Boy, have I come a long way,” he said, according to Ms. Cummings.

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lynchgirl90 · 7 years

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@TVGuideMagazine @Kyle_MacLachlan & @DAVID_LYNCH on the long-awaited return of #TwinPeaks.

When David Lynch and Mark Frost’s surreal Twin Peaks debuted on ABC in April 1990, the nascent World Wide Web was not yet a delivery service for instant feedback—or spoilers. Audiences found themselves frustrated yet intrigued with having to wait, week after week, to learn clues about the trippy show’s central mystery: Who bumped off small-town bad girl Laura Palmer (played by Sheryl Lee)? But even in today’s era of information overload, Showtime has unveiled only the most cryptic of teasers about the much-anticipated 18-episode revival, leaving fans waiting yet again.

Returning star Kyle MacLachlan, who revisits his lead role as unorthodox FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper, also has remained mum on what Coop’s beat will be. Is there a new murder? Is java-loving Agent Cooper still seeing apparitions? Will anyone’s deceased soul find its way into a drawer’s knob? (Yes, that actually happened—along with jazzy dance breaks, soul-stealing supernatural entities in jean jackets and lots of ebullient appreciation of doughnuts and sandwiches.) “I wish I could tell you more,” the actor says with a laugh. “I’m just incredibly excited about what people’s response is going to be.”

Here’s what’s known: It’s now 25 years after the Northwest community of Twin Peaks parsed out the demise of homecoming queen Palmer, with her last seven days rumored to provide a crucial clue to the new narrative. Lynch is directing and cowriting—with producing partner Frost—all 18 installments of the limited series. So how was it to be back in the director’s chair? “Close to heaven on Earth,” says Lynch (below, with the late Miguel Ferrer). “It’s like a feature film divided into parts, so in order for it to hold together, it should be [made] by the same bunch.”

In fact, fan faves such as Mädchen Amick (Shelley), Sherilyn Fenn (Audrey), Kimmy Robertson (Lucy), Harry Goaz (Deputy Andy), Dana Ashbrook (Bobby) and James Marshall (James) are all back. “We’d see each other, and within seconds it’d be like no time had passed at all,” says Lynch, who also reprises his role as comically hard-of-hearing FBI Chief Gordon Cole. Plus, a bevy of new faces in secret roles adds star power to the 217-person cast, including Jennifer Jason Leigh, Naomi Watts, Richard Chamberlain, Ashley Judd and Laura Dern.

This incarnation also marks a TV milestone: The first two parts are making their debut this month at the Cannes Film Festival, the first time in the fest’s 70 years that series television will be shown alongside glitzy gala movie premieres.

“I love revisiting the world and the characters of Twin Peaks,” Lynch says, noting the reboot might not all be set in the town we once knew. Given the various celebrations and fan sites in the show’s honor, so do many viewers. How good is your recall on Twin Peaks?

Here’s your ultimate A-to-Z guide to the seminal drama—including some cool trivia. Cherry pie and cup of joe optional. (Additional reporting by Jeff Pfeiffer)

Angelo Badalamenti The American composer nabbed a Best Pop Instrumental Grammy in 1991 for Twin Peaks’ haunting main theme. Another fun fact: He’s scored six of Lynch’s films and even has a small role in one of them: 2001’s Mulholland Drive.

BOB, aka Killer BOB This evil ghoul from the supernatural realm (Frank Silva, left) possessed Laura’s tortured dad, Leland Palmer (Ray Wise), and eventually, per the final moments of the ABC series, Agent Cooper. Lynch cast Peaks’ set decorator Silva in the pivotal role after spotting him in a mirror’s reflection, which would later—prophetically—become BOB’s creepy visual signature.

Carlton Cuse The Bates Motel cocreator admitted, “We pretty much ripped off Twin Peaks” to capture the tone of the Psycho prequel. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!

Diane Keaton The Oscar-winning actress directed the not-very-well-received Season 2 episode “Slaves and Masters,” which wrapped up shady businessman Ben Horne’s (Richard Beymer) bizarre delusion that he was a Civil War hero.

Emmys Peaks won a pair of trophies (for costuming and editing) but was nominated for a whopping 18 total, including drama series, leading actor (MacLachlan), leading actress (Piper Laurie as Catherine Martell, the town’s sullen saw mill proprietor) and supporting actress (Fenn, as teenage seductress Audrey Horne).

Fire Walk With Me The maligned 1992 big-screen prequel film—which has since developed nearly as much of a cult following as the series—starred Lynch, Kiefer Sutherland and singer Chris Isaak as agents investigating the murder of Teresa Banks (the show’s other initial murder case) and tied into the last week of Laura Palmer’s short life.

Great Northern Now known as the Salish Lodge and often flocked to by superfans, the rustic inn seen in the lush opening credits has been renovated into a chic resort and spa that overlooks the Snoqualmie Falls near Seattle.

Horne’s Department Store Audrey’s job at her dad’s retail outlet in Season 1 led from her becoming a swoony Lolita-type into a full-fledged spy, infiltrating his secret brothel after discovering that salesgirls were being lured into prostitution. Scandalous!

Invitation to Love The faux soap opera watched by several Peaks characters often mimicked the series’ own storylines, including one involving a twin cousin. (Lee also played Laura Palmer’s more demure, brunette cousin, Maddy Ferguson.)

Johnson, Shelley After auditioning for the role of winsome high schooler Donna (played by Lara Flynn Boyle, who is not returning for the revival), newcomer Amick (now starring on Riverdale) so wowed the producers that they created the role of put-upon Double R Diner waitress Shelley just for her. She quickly became adored by fans.

Kiana Lodge The Poulsbo, Washington, locale was used for the Great Northern’s interior shots and as the Blue Pine Lodge, which was a residence shared by Catherine, her goofy fisherman husband, Pete (Jack Nance), and the sultry Josie (Joan Chen), a Chinese émigré with a dodgy past who famously kept a low profile in the industrial township.

Log Lady The recently departed Catherine E. Coulson’s memorably deadpan mystic—who shared a very special connection to her beloved wood—helped Cooper by giving him clues throughout Laura’s murder investigation. The Log Lady (seen right) was famously spoofed in an episode of the Rob Morrow series Northern Exposure.

Man from Another Place, The As the key resident of Cooper’s dream-induced Red Room, Michael J. Anderson’s scary-cool “dancing dwarf” spoke in backward riddles and proclamations. (Our favorite: “That gum you like is going to come back in style.”) He later inspired a memorable bit on The Simpsons.

Northwest Passage This was the original name of the pilot script written by Lynch and co-creator Frost. Not as catchy!

One-Eyed Jacks Owned by Ben Horne and run by madam Blackie O’Reilly (Victoria Catlin), this casino was best known for peddling drugs and hookers and, most importantly, for being one of the last places its young employee Laura Palmer was seen alive.

Project Blue Book Agent Cooper was briefed on this real-life 1950s–1960s secret probe into UFOs conducted by the U.S. government, which he was told included activity around the perimeter of Twin Peaks—hence all the ghostly goings-on.

Queen of Diamonds The famous playing-card royal served as inspiration for Audrey’s outfit at One-Eyed Jacks on her first night as a new hostess…which almost ends with Audrey’s being “broken in” by the owner, who is (gasp) her father!

Roadhouse The show’s biker bar hosted several clandestine rendezvous, as well as Cooper’s meeting with the Giant (the main figure in Cooper’s many dream states), the ill-fated Miss Twin Peaks pageant and musical performances by Julee Cruise’s ethereal house chanteuse (who also sings Peaks’ main theme, “Falling”).

Silent curtain runners High-strung town weirdo Nadine (Wendy Robie) served as its resident inventor too, including this unusual solution for the screech heard when opening draperies.

TV Guide Magazine Twin Peaks placed No. 20 in our 2004 countdown of TV’s Top 25 Cult Shows. (Yes, we know it should have been higher!)

Uproar What happened when fans didn’t find out who killed Laura in the Season 1 finale or even the Season 2 premiere. BOB’s deadly deed was finally revealed in the November 10, 1990, episode, but by then, the low ratings proved more lethal than he was.

Violence Despite the fact the primetime show was on a broadcast network shackled with standards-and-practices regulations, eyebrows were routinely raised for its unflinching portrayals of domestic abuse, electroshock torture and, indelibly, the signature image of Laura Palmer nestled in a body bag.

Wrapped in Plastic This same image in the show inspired the title of rocker/devoted fan Marilyn Manson’s 1994 song about dysfunction, which also samples Laura’s screams from the series finale. A meta treat for fans.

X-Files Before the truth was out there, David Duchovny (left)—then dating actress Robertson, who plays baby-voiced police secretary Lucy—made his television debut portraying trans FBI agent Denise Bryson.

Yamaguchi, Fumio The actor credited with playing Season 2’s mysterious Japanese real estate investor “Mr. Tojamura” turned out to be a fake! All along, it was series regular Piper Laurie’s believed-to-be-dead Catherine in full-on Mission: Impossible–level disguise. Had us fooled!

Zen It proved to be the preferred mental state of dogged crime fighter Agent Cooper, whether he was calmly dictating into his prized tape recorder or hanging upside down to meditate. Will he still be as cool 25 years later?

Twin Peaks, Series Return, Sunday, May 21, 9/8c, Showtime

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#Twin Peaks #Kyle MacLachlan #Agent Cooper #David Lynch #Showtime

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