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      Are Jan. 6 Hearings Flashy Enough for Prime Time? Late Night Isn’t Sure.

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      “Hanging over the hearings is one question that could define the future of our republic: Who cares?” Stephen Colbert said on Wednesday.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Are You Still Watching?The Jan. 6 committee hearings will be televised beginning Thursday night, but late night hosts wondered if Americans would pay proper attention.“Hanging over the hearings is one question that could define the future of our republic: Who cares?” Stephen Colbert said on Wednesday.“Yeah, it doesn’t have to look like ‘Top Gun,’ but just in case, they’re going to have Adam Schiff and Jamie Raskin play hot shirtless volleyball.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“What they need to do, you want people to watch in America, is you have to spice things up. You know, have a kiss cam going for the witnesses. Yeah, get Shakira to do a halftime show.” — TREVOR NOAH“Americans like entertainment; Congress wants Americans to pay attention to politics. Those two don’t mix. But there is one person who can make political machinations interesting for the masses; there is only one man: Lin-Manuel Miranda.” — TREVOR NOAH“You know who is going to be torn about the coverage of this? Donald Trump. Yeah, ’cuz think about it: On the one hand, he doesn’t want anyone to know what he did on Jan. 6, but on the other hand, you know he would love his hearings to get the highest ratings of all time. You know it. He’s going to be out there like [imitating Trump] ‘Don’t watch the hearings, folks. The fake news is saying I overthrew the government, which I didn’t do. But it was the biggest overthrow of all time, but I didn’t do it.’” — TREVOR NOAH“In other political news, tomorrow night, the Jan. 6 committee will hold a special prime time hearing, which will air live on all the broadcast networks, and it’s being produced by a former ABC executive. And even more exciting, the halftime show will be performed by Imagine Dragons featuring Congresswoman Liz Cheney.” — JAMES CORDEN“The hearing is being produced by a former ABC executive, which is why it’s being marketed as, ‘Extreme Takeover: Capitol Building Edition.’” — JAMES CORDENThe Punchiest Punchlines (Fox News Stays on Brand Edition)“Fox News announced this week that it will not air carry live coverage of Congress’s prime time hearings over the Capitol attack. To focus on more important news like, ‘Would it kill Mulan to wear a dress?’” — SETH MEYERS“Yeah, they’re going to be spending all night talking about the real culprit: [imitating Tucker Carlson] ‘Why is nobody talking about how Congress has too many doors? If there was only one door in and out, this never would have happened. The crowd would have peacefully dispersed after hanging Mike Pence, huh?’ ” — TREVOR NOAH“Fox, by the way, has decided not to carry the hearings about Jan. 6 on their news network tomorrow night. Instead, they will show their new special, ‘Tucker Carlson presents: A Racist Cat Meows Confederate Battle Hymns.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“It doesn’t surprise me that Fox isn’t airing the hearings. Fox is news the same way ‘The Kardashians’ is reality. Just once, I’d love to see an actual reality TV show, something called, I don’t know, ‘A Man Quietly Eating a Cinnabon Because He Missed His Connection at LaGuardia.’” — SETH MEYERS“It’s not a surprise, because Fox constantly says the opposite of what the hearings will say. The committee will lay out the truth of what happened, and Fox will lie. It’s that simple. The hearings will say Jan. 6 was a violent insurrection fomented by an outgoing president who nearly pulled off a detailed plan for an attempted coup to unlawfully cling to power that would have installed him as an unelected autocrat and destroyed American democracy. And Fox will say it was just a pro-freedom, patriot party where everyone peacefully toured the Capitol like they were on a school field trip, having to find items their teachers gave them on a worksheet.” — SETH MEYERSThe Bits Worth WatchingPresident Biden sat down with Jimmy Kimmel for a lengthy conversation about the modern Republican Party, gas prices and gun violence, among other things.What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightDemi Lovato will appear on Thursday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutJuancho Hernangómez, left, and Adam Sandler in “Hustle.”Scott Yamano/NetflixAdam Sandler and Juancho Hernangómez, a Utah Jazz player, star in “Hustle,” a crowd-pleaser about the N.B.A. draft. More

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      Ken Bode, Erudite ‘Washington Week’ Host on PBS, Dies at 83

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      Beginning in 1994, he brought to the moderator’s role credentials as a political activist, an academic and a national correspondent for NBC News.Ken Bode, a bearded, bearish former political operative and television correspondent who, armed with a Ph.D. in politics, moderated the popular PBS program “Washington Week in Review” in the 1990s, died on Thursday in Charlotte, N.C. He was 83.His death, in a care center, was confirmed by his daughters, Matilda and Josie Bode, who said the cause had not been identified.Beginning in 1994, Mr. Bode (pronounced BO-dee) coupled congeniality and knowledgeability in steering a Friday night discussion among a rotating panel of reporters about the issues of the day coming out of Washington. His role, as he saw it, was to “bring in people who are really covering the news to empty their notebooks and provide perspective, not to argue with each other,” he told The Washington Post in 1999.As host of the program, now called “Washington Week,” he succeeded Paul Duke, who had helmed that roundtable of polite talking heads for two decades, and preceded Gwen Ifill, a former NBC News correspondent who died in 2016 at 61. The program, which debuted in 1967, is billed as TV’s longest-running prime time news and public affairs program. The current host is Yamiche Alcindor.The program’s loyal and generally older viewers were so brass-bound in the 1990s that when Mr. Bode took over, even his beard proved controversial. He proceeded to introduce videotaped segments and remote interviews with correspondents and bring more diversity to his panel of reporters.He also took more liberties with language than his predecessor.Mr. Bode moderating an episode of “Washington Week in Review.” He hosted the program from 1994 to 1999 while teaching politics at DePauw University in Indiana. PBSEnding an interview with Bob Woodward of The Washington Post about President Bill Clinton’s economic policies, Mr. Bode quoted a British newspaper’s snarky prediction that the president’s impending visit to Oxford, England, would present people with an opportunity to “focus on one of the president’s less well-publicized organs: his brain.” He described a vacancy on the Supreme Court as constituting “one-ninth of one-third of the government.”Still, Dalton Delan, then the newly-minted executive vice president of WETA in Washington, which continues to produce the program, wanted to invigorate the format. He proposed including college journalists, surprise guests and people-on-the-street interviews and replacing Mr. Bode with Ms. Ifill (she said she initially turned down the offer) — changes that prompted Mr. Bode to jump, or to be not so gently pushed, from the host’s chair in 1999.Kenneth Adlam Bode was born on March 30, 1939, in Chicago and raised in Hawarden, Iowa. His father, George, owned a dairy farm and then a dry cleaning business. His mother, June (Adlam) Bode, kept the books.Mr. Bode in his office in 1972, when he was involved in Democratic politics.George Tames/The New York TimesThe first member of his family to attend college, Mr. Bode majored in philosophy and government at the University of South Dakota, graduating in 1961. He went on to earn a doctorate in political science at the University of North Carolina, where he was active in the civil rights movement.He taught briefly at Michigan State University and the State University of New York at Binghamton, and then gravitated toward liberal politics.In 1968, Mr. Bode worked in the presidential campaigns of Senators Eugene McCarthy and George S. McGovern. He became research director for a Democratic Party commission, led by Mr. McGovern and Representative Donald M. Fraser of Minnesota, that advocated for reforms in the selection process for delegates to the 1972 Democratic National Convention. He later headed a liberal-leaning organization called the Center for Political Reform.His marriage to Linda Yarrow ended in divorce. In 1975, he married Margo Hauff, a high school social studies teacher who wrote and designed educational materials for learning-disabled children. He is survived by her, in addition to their daughters, as well as by a brother and two grandsons.After working in politics, Mr. Bode began writing for The New Republic in the early 1970s and became its politics editor. He moved to NBC News in 1979, encouraged by the network’s newsman Tom Brokaw, a friend from college, and eventually became the network’s national political correspondent. In that role he hosted “Bode’s Journal,” a weekly segment of the “Today” show, on which he explored, among other issues, voting rights violations, racial discrimination and patronage abuses, as his longtime producer Jim Connor recalled in an interview.Mr. Bode left the network a decade later to teach at DePauw University in Indiana, where he founded the Center for Contemporary Media. While at DePauw, from 1989 to 1998, he commuted to Washington to host “Washington Week in Review” and wrote an Emmy-winning CNN documentary, “The Public Mind of George Bush” (1992).Beginning in 1998, he was dean of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism for three years and remained a professor there until 2004.Mr. Bode said he retired from broadcast journalism for family reasons. “I was raising my kids from 100 airports a year,” he said. As he told The New York Times in 1999, “I knew then that my problem was, I’ve got the best job, but I’ve also got one chance to be a father, and I’m losing it.” More

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      Stephen Colbert Will Go Live After Jan. 6 Hearings

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      “They are destined to go down in the annals of live TV like the Watergate hearings, the moon landing, and the time Walter Cronkite was swallowed by a python,” Colbert said.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Not Too ProudStephen Colbert announced that “The Late Show” will go live on Thursday night after the prime-time Jan. 6 committee hearings.“They are destined to go down in the annals of live TV,” Colbert said on Tuesday, “like the Watergate hearings, the moon landing, and the time Walter Cronkite was swallowed by a python.”“Now, here’s the deal: all the major news outfits — CBS, NBC, ABC, MSNBC, CNN — will be covering the hearings live, while the Fox News Channel will stay with its usual prime-time lineup. Well, that’s actually good. No, it’s actually good. We’ll hear directly from the people who planned the coup.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“The Proud Boys are going to be prominently featured during the live hearings on Thursday, because the committee intends to present live testimony from a British documentarian who was filming the group, with their permission, during the riot. Why do you let a film crew follow you while you commit treason? Well, same reason Benedict Arnold commissioned that painting of him handing over the plans.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“I’ve got to tell you, seeing those guys arrested makes this boy proud.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Now, if you’re not familiar with the Proud Boys, that sounds lovely. But as a refresher, they’re a far-right, anti-immigrant, all-male group who take their name from an obscure show tune from the Disney musical ‘Aladdin’ entitled ‘Proud of Your Boy.’ It was actually their second Disney song choice. Originally, they were the Supercalifragilisticexpiali-douchebags.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Going to the Dogs Edition)“According to a new study, dogs are more effective at detecting Covid than rapid tests. I’m glad we’ve reached the point in the pandemic where the C.D.C. is like, ‘I don’t know, dogs?’” — JIMMY FALLON“Knowing the C.D.C., in two days, they’re going to be like, ‘Never mind, it’s actually rabbits, I’m sorry.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Seriously, I have no idea what’s going on. Today, I saw Sarah McLachlan snuggling a person with Covid asking pets to help.” — JIMMY FALLON“Here’s how it works with dogs: If you have symptoms, they sniff your crotch. One hump — one hump means you’re negative, two humps means you’re positive.” — JIMMY FALLON“Apparently, dogs are better at detecting Covid than rapid tests, which explains now when you take an at-home test, the instructions look a little different. Yeah, now the steps are: ‘One, open package. Two, remove at-home Covid test. Three, walk and feed at-home Covid test.’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingSeth Meyers went day drinking with Post Malone on Tuesday’s “Late Night.”What We’re Excited About Wednesday NightPresident Biden will visit “Jimmy Kimmel Live” on Wednesday.Also, Check This OutCustomers in Bookmongers of Brixton, a book store in London. Apps have struggled to reproduce the kind of real-world serendipity that puts a book in a reader’s hand.Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesNew apps like Tertulia are helping avid readers discover new books. More

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      Todd and Julie Chrisley, Self-Made Moguls on Reality TV, Are Convicted of Fraud

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      The couple, who star on the popular show “Chrisley Knows Best,” used money from fraudulently obtained loans on luxury cars, designer clothes, real estate and travel, the Department of Justice said.Todd and Julie Chrisley, the stars of “Chrisley Knows Best,” a reality TV show in which the couple project themselves as real estate moguls who judge PG-rated family squabbles according to strict standards for comportment, were convicted on Tuesday of conspiring to defraud banks out of $30 million and avoiding years of tax bills, the Department of Justice said.After a three-week trial in Federal District Court in Atlanta, a jury found the Chrisleys guilty on all counts — jointly, eight counts of financial fraud and two counts of tax evasion, with Ms. Chrisley also being convicted of additional counts of wire fraud and obstruction of justice.Their accountant, Peter Tarantino, was found guilty of filing false corporate tax returns for the Chrisleys’ company.“When you lie, cheat and steal, justice is blind as to your fame, your fortune, and your position,” Keri Farley, special agent in charge of the F.B.I. in Atlanta, said in a statement.The Chrisleys could each be sentenced to as much as 30 years in prison. U.S. Judge Eleanor L. Ross of the Northern District of Georgia set sentencing for Oct. 6.“Disappointed in the verdict,” Bruce Howard Morris, a lawyer for Todd Chrisley, wrote in an email on behalf of the couple. “An appeal is planned.”Lawyers for Mr. Tarantino did not immediately reply to requests for comment.Despite the Chrisleys’ self-presentation as self-made businesspeople, their wealth depended in large part on fraud, according to the indictment against the couple.They obtained loans, for example, by using a bank statement saying they had $4 million at Merrill Lynch when they did not even have an account with the bank, the indictment said. Mr. Chrisley directed his accountant to perform actions he himself suggested would be “crooked,” and Ms. Chrisley repeatedly used glue and tape to falsify documents, according to the indictment.The couple used money from loans for “luxury cars, designer clothes, real estate, and travel,” the Department of Justice said, even as they also filed bankruptcy and walked away from more than $20 million in loans. They did not pay the Internal Revenue Service in a timely manner for the 2013 through 2016 tax years, the indictment said.NBC Universal announced last month that “Chrisley Knows Best” had been renewed for a 10th season. The network also said that “Growing Up Chrisley,” a spinoff starring two Chrisley children, Chase and Savannah, had been renewed for a fourth season, and that a new series, “Love Limo,” a dating show hosted by Todd Chrisley, would begin next year.The release described “Chrisley Knows Best” as USA Network’s “most-watched current original series,” with an average of 1.8 million total viewers.A spokesman for NBC Universal declined to comment on the verdict or on the company’s plans regarding any of the shows. The second half of Season 9 of “Chrisley Knows Best” is still scheduled to air starting June 23.Following a proven American formula, the show depicts a family with traditional values and a down-home style of self-expression who just happen to be fantastically rich.In the show’s trailer, Mr. Chrisley describes himself and his wife as people from a “small rural town” who now live in a “gated neighborhood” outside Atlanta alongside “celebrities.” Their “main home” is 30,000 square feet, they spend at least $300,000 per year on clothes and Mr. Chrisley earns “millions of dollars a year” — but the Chrisleys still face the same issues as families making $40,000, he says.Mr. Chrisley plays the controlling and fastidious patriarch, the sort of father who responds to his son’s misbehavior by throwing his laptop into the pool. His wife’s role is to comment sarcastically yet forgivingly about her husband’s foibles.The Chrisleys join a growing roster of reality TV stars who have gotten into legal trouble.In 2018, Michael (The Situation) Sorrentino, an actor in MTV’s “Jersey Shore,” was sentenced to eight months in prison for violating federal tax laws, and in 2014, Joe and Teresa Giudice, two stars of “The Real Housewives of New Jersey,” were sentenced to prison after pleading guilty to bankruptcy fraud, among other charges.Eduardo Medina More

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      Review: Sarah Silverman’s ‘Bedwetter’ Musical Has Sprung a Leak

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      The comedian’s memoir was funny. But when the new show based on it tries for something deeper, it sinks into bathos.Zingy, 10-year-old Sarah Silverman (Zoe Glick) isn’t a natural fit for the town of Bedford, N.H., where sour, flinty fatalism is the norm. “May all your dreams come true,” one local says at a birthday party. “Mine did not.”The Silvermans, who anchor the new musical “The Bedwetter,” are defiantly nonconformist: all id, all the time. Sarah’s lately divorced father, the proprietor of Crazy Donny’s Factory Outlet (Darren Goldstein), encourages her to wow her new classmates with the dirty jokes he’s taught her. Dipso Nana (Bebe Neuwirth) thinks Sarah’s bartending skills are a better bet to impress. And if Sarah’s mother, Beth Ann (Caissie Levy), expresses herself by spending days in bed watching old movies, Sarah, taking the family’s let-it-all-out mojo perhaps too far, does so by wetting hers at night.Still, she is cheerfully resigned to being a misfit, taking no offense even when her sister, Laura (Emily Zimmerman), wanting nothing to do with her in public, sings a song called “I Don’t Know This Person.” And to beat her new fifth-grade classmates to the punch, Sarah pre-emptively tells them, in “I Couldn’t Agree More,” that she’s “eww-y” and “Jewy.” Not only are her arms “so hairy,” but “You should see my back.”The musical depicts one year in the life of 10-year-old Sarah, who quickly manages to make frenemies of three new classmates.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSatisfying as the standup rhythm is, “The Bedwetter,” which opened Tuesday at the Linda Gross Theater, is sometimes, like its title character, a bit of a misfit. Based on the real Sarah Silverman’s 2010 memoir, subtitled “Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee,” it works best when it aims for the comic highs of that charming if gangly book. As long as it sticks close to young Sarah’s resilience as she tries to make friends without revealing her mortifying condition, “The Bedwetter,” an Atlantic Theater Company production, is a potty-mouthed pleasure. But in jimmying the original into a more serious musical format as it proceeds, it achieves only a middling geniality.It starts out promisingly enough, establishing the main characters efficiently and with good humor. The songs, with music by Adam Schlesinger and lyrics by Schlesinger and Silverman, have the cheesy irreverence and synth-y disposability of period television jingles — the period being the early 1980s. Donny’s numbers, performed with schlubby insouciance by Goldstein, are a highlight, including one, whose refrain can’t be printed here, that explains how he knows all the other girls’ mothers. Perhaps you can imagine what rhymes with “along.”But a little of that sound goes a long way, just as Silverman’s naïve inappropriateness, so effective in her standup, works only the first few times onstage. When Sarah, introducing herself to her class, mentions a brother who died, her reflex not to seem piteous makes her explanation weirdly funny: “He was just like a baby, so it wasn’t sad or anything.” But when that death — and a lot of other dark material — comes to the forefront, the laughs wear thin.If such moments don’t feel out of place in Silverman’s memoir, that’s in part because its episodic narrative leaps froglike through 40 years of her life, quickly dispensing with even the most disturbing events. And though it makes sense that the musical’s authors would narrow the focus and shorten the time span, the book by Joshua Harmon (“Bad Jews”) and Silverman overreaches; in attempting to backfill the story with drama to justify the addition of songs, they put too much pressure on the one year it depicts.That’s the year in which Sarah arrives at McKelvie Middle School, manages to make frenemies of three classmates and, at the end of the first act, in an unconvincing scene involving diapers, finds the one thing she had hoped to keep private revealed. The second act deals with Sarah’s resulting depression — a state uncomfortably reminiscent of Beth Ann’s — as well as Nana’s mortality and a minor character’s suicide.The music, and especially the lyrics, cannot support this turn toward “Fun Home” territory. (In her black wig, Glick, a very talented 14-year-old, looks like she’s already playing the young lead in that show.) What works well in the lighter material — like the earwormy title song, which sounds like “Day Tripper” being covered by the Partridge Family — feels flimsy in the heavier material, especially Beth Ann’s overdramatic arias. (Levy sings them beautifully, though.) As a result, the show seems to spring a leak, losing all its giddy energy as it sinks into the serious.That’s a shame — the more so because Schlesinger, having died from Covid-19 complications in 2020, was not able to finish developing the musical with his collaborators. (The songwriter David Yazbek joined the team as a “creative consultant.”) Schlesinger’s songs for the 2008 stage version of “Cry-Baby” (written with David Javerbaum), as well as his experience in the pop-rock band Fountains of Wayne, demonstrated a quick ear for neat hooks but not yet the kind of complexity needed to carry theatrical emotion. And his lyrics with Silverman too often wander in search of a rhyme, then, sighting one in the distance, botch it.Glick, outnumbered by her meds, in the show.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMuch of this might have been improved had Schlesinger lived. And much could still have been camouflaged by a strong staging. But “The Bedwetter” doesn’t get that, at least in this incarnation; the usually acute director Anne Kauffman, working on an awkward set by Laura Jellinek, seems to be going for a middle-school aesthetic to match its milieu. Even at two hours, the show feels needlessly elongated by switchovers from one vague locale to another — and by numbers, including one about Xanax, that extend well past their welcome.About that Xanax: It’s a bizarre omission in the musical that it does not highlight, as the book clearly does, the role the massive over-prescription of that drug played in Sarah’s depression. (By age 14 she was taking 16 pills a day.) Perhaps this was a choice to make the drama more emotional than pharmaceutical but, in any case, it further burdens what is already a weak plot about a weak bladder. But then many of the show’s choices, like the promotion of a Miss New Hampshire character (Ashley Blanchet, suitably lovely) from cameo to mascot, seem similarly random. That’s true of Silverman’s comedy in general, built as it is on apparently aleatory mismatches of tone and content.If that kind of randomness can be a convincing aesthetic in some art forms, I’ve never seen it work in musicals, where “that seems weird enough to work” never does. A show that operates on that principle may still hit a few highs; Neuwirth, dry and suave, certainly knows how to find them. The song in which she tells Sarah, warmly but practically, “You’re beautiful — to me,” is one of the few serious numbers that lands. Too often the rest of “The Bedwetter,” at least when aiming for tears, feels merely wet.The BedwetterThrough July 3 at the Linda Gross Theater, Manhattan; atlantictheater.org. Running time: 2 hours. More

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      ‘Being BeBe’ Review: Reaching for Drag Superstardom

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      Observing its subject with a clear eye, this profile of Marshall Ngwa, who performs as BeBe Zahara Benet, is a breath of fresh air.In the perspicacious documentary “Being BeBe,” the director Emily Branham seems to have taken a page from Janet Malcolm. Within her profile of Marshall Ngwa, who performs drag as BeBe Zahara Benet, Branham tucks lucid insights about the codes, ethics and art of cinematic biography.Branham, who gathered footage of Ngwa over 15 years and became his dear friend, frames the movie as a reminiscence. It opens in 2020 in Ngwa’s Minneapolis home, where he watches clips that Branham captured years earlier and reacts to the scenes in real time. These segments intermix with an overview of Ngwa’s life and his campaign for drag superstardom. Special attention is paid to his affection for his family, and the grace with which he navigated their shifting feelings about his embodying BeBe.
      In a sea of glossy celebrity bio-docs, “Being BeBe” is a breath of fresh air. It observes its subject with a clear eye, and does not shy away from positioning Ngwa’s triumphs, such as his exciting win on the first season of “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” within a context of artistic, financial and social struggle.Perhaps most powerful of all is Branham’s intermittent presence in the film. Sometimes she queries Ngwa from behind her grainy video camera, or he addresses her. In other moments, she interrupts her representation of Ngwa to stage a broader survey of homophobia in Cameroon. With her feature debut, Branham exposes her hand as filmmaker, and reminds us that “Being BeBe” is only a snapshot of Ngwa’s persona; the real thing is so much richer.Being BeBeNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      Late Night Anticipates Jan. 6 Hearings

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      Late-night hosts poked fun at Louie Gohmert, the Republican congressman who complained about not being able to lie to the F.B.I. about Jan. 6.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Louie Lou-lieThe Jan. 6 committee hearings will be televised beginning this Thursday — or, as Stephen Colbert referred to it, “America’s Got Treason.”On Monday, late-night hosts poked fun at Louie Gohmert, the Republican congressman from Texas who spoke out against the indictment of former Trump adviser Peter Navarro by complaining Republicans can’t lie to Congress or the F.B.I.“Gohmert is upset because some of his fellow Republicans are getting hit with contempt charges for refusing to cooperate with the committee investigating the insurrection on Jan. 6, and what he’s upset is they’re not even allowed to lie about it.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“At least he’s not lying about how upset he is about not being allowed to lie, I guess. Small victory.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“This statement used to be the kind of thing that could ruin a person’s political career, but now that we’ve been MAGA-tized it barely even makes a dent.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“[imitating Gohmert] Nowadays you can’t even lie to Congress or lie to the F.B.I. or hot wire a car, then drive that car to a bank and grab all the money at gunpoint, then head to the nearest zoo to throw rocks at the pandas? There’s a two-tiered justice system: one tier for people who obey the law and a whole different one for people who break the law. How is that fair?” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (‘Holo-Grandma’ Edition)“That’s right, Britain marked the queen’s 70-year reign with four days of parades, parties and celebrations. Yeah, four days. Basically, the queen is like your annoying friend who insists on celebrating their birthday month.” — JIMMY FALLON“Lilibet took the throne at age 25, on Feb. 6, 1952. So naturally, the Brits are celebrating her 70th anniversary in June. They were aiming for London’s annual day of sunshine.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Now, 70 years makes it the queen’s Platinum Jubilee, so I believe the traditional gift to give her is Africa.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Yep, the queen celebrated 70 years of sitting on the throne. When he heard, your uncle who does The New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle said, ‘Challenge accepted.’” — JIMMY FALLON“It was a star-studded event with performances from Elton John, Rod Stewart and Ed Sheeran. Yeah, when Ed first walked out, the queen was like, ‘Oh, Harry, you’re back.’” — JIMMY FALLON“During a parade over the weekend honoring her Platinum Jubilee, a hologram of Queen Elizabeth was shown in her Gold State Coach and whatever you think of the queen, her duet with Tupac was amazing.” — SETH MEYERS“Nothing says you’re healthy and doing fine like resorting to technology from Disney’s Haunted Mansion.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“The crowd sang ‘God Save the Queen’ as the holo-grandma passed them by. At this point, God must be like, ‘Enough already with the song, I’m doing it. She’s 96 — do you not see me saving the queen?’” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingBobby Brown sat down with Trevor Noah on Monday’s “Daily Show.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightTig Notaro will appear on Tuesday’s “Late Late Show.”Also, Check This OutJoel Kim Booster at Akbar in Los Angeles. He said that before filming of “Fire Island” started, he thought, “This is either going to change my life or it’s going to be the biggest flop of my career.”Michael Tyrone Delaney for The New York Times“Fire Island” star Joel Kim Booster reflects on making the rare romantic comedy that puts gay Asian-American men at its center. More

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      A Woman Who Says Bill Cosby Molested Her as a Teen Begins Testifying

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      Judy Huth, who is suing Mr. Cosby on sexual assault grounds in a civil case, took the stand in California to begin describing an encounter with the entertainer that took place decades ago.Judy Huth took the stand in Santa Monica on Monday to describe a moment in 1975 when, as a teenager, she said she met Bill Cosby in a California park where he was making a film.Days later, at his invitation, she said, she and her friend went along to his tennis club and then ultimately to the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles.“It was an adventure,” Ms. Huth said. “We were kids. He was a celebrity.”But later that day, the man she had admired as a famous comedian molested her, she said, after taking her to an isolated room at the mansion. Ms. Huth said she was 16 years old at the time.Mr. Cosby has denied he sexually assaulted Ms. Huth or any of the other women who have come forward in recent years to accuse him of sexual misconduct. He has said any relationship was consensual.But Ms. Huth, 64, has sued Mr. Cosby for sexual assault, and her account, which was not finished on Monday, is the centerpiece of her case against the entertainer, which completed its fourth day of testimony. Ms. Huth testified that she and her friend had been impressed when they saw Mr. Cosby — along with other movie stars — in a park in San Marino on the set of the film “Let’s Do It Again.” According to her account, Mr. Cosby gave the two teenagers alcohol at a house where he was staying, telling them to drink if he bested them in a game of pool, and then asked them to follow him in a car to the mansion. The Sexual Assault Cases Against Bill CosbyAfter Bill Cosby’s 2018 criminal conviction for sexual assault was overturned, the first civil case accusing him of sexual misconduct has reached trial.The Civil Trial: Judy Huth has accused Mr. Cosby of assaulting her as a teenager. She sued in 2014, but the case had been on hold while he was criminally prosecuted.Criminal Conviction: In 2018, a jury found the disgraced entertainer guilty of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand at his home near 14 years earlier,His Release From Prison: After the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned the conviction, Mr. Cosby was released from prison on June 30, 2021.The Ruling: The conviction was overturned on the grounds that prosecutors violated Mr. Cosby’s rights by reneging on a promise not to charge him.“Are you girls ready for your surprise?” he said, according to Ms. Huth. “I had no clue what it could be,” she said. Her lawyers showed the jury a photograph of Ms. Huth standing with Mr. Cosby in the game room at the mansion, taken, she told the court, “before he molested me. It happened 15 minutes after.”Ms. Huth’s testimony was interrupted by the end of the court day before she was able to discuss what she has, in court papers for her case, accused him of doing: placing his hand down her pants and then forcing her to fondle him.The impact of that event, her lawyers have told the court, included depression and anxiety. She had experienced a happy childhood, she said, growing up in Temple City, Calif. But her lawyers said that the incident had derailed her and that she didn’t earn her high school diploma until she was 60.Mr. Cosby’s lawyers have disputed Ms. Huth’s account, suggesting that their meeting actually happened years later, when she was an older, and willing, visitor to the mansion who by her own account did not flee after the encounter but stayed on for hours, swimming in the pool and watching a movie.Ms. Huth’s lawsuit, filed in 2014, was largely on hold while prosecutors in Pennsylvania pursued Mr. Cosby, 84, criminally on charges that he had sexually assaulted Andrea Constand, a former Temple University employee.But Mr. Cosby’s 2018 conviction in that case was overturned last year by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on due process grounds, and Mr. Cosby walked free after serving nearly three years of a three- to 10-year sentence.Mr. Cosby, flanked by two of his lawyers, outside his home in the Philadelphia suburbs after being freed from prison last year. Mark Makela/ReutersEarlier on Monday, Mr. Cosby’s lawyers had cross-examined Donna Samuelson, Ms. Huth’s friend who accompanied her to the mansion. She had told the court last week that Ms. Huth had been distraught after her encounter with Mr. Cosby but that Ms. Samuelson persuaded her to stay.Mr. Cosby’s defense tried to undermine the credibility of that account, suggesting that the two friends had coordinated their stories before Ms. Huth first went to the police in 2014. (Prosecutors ultimately declined to file criminal charges because the statute of limitations had passed.)But Ms. Samuelson said she had simply misremembered when she had initially reported to authorities that Ms. Huth was 15 at the time, not 16 as Ms. Huth now says.Mr. Cosby’s lawyers showed a layout of the game room at the Playboy Mansion and said that Ms. Samuelson had been wrong to say a person could access the bathroom only through an adjoining bedroom.Mr. Cosby’s lawyers also said it was impossible for Ms. Samuelson to have played the arcade game “Donkey Kong” there in 1975, as she has testified in a deposition. The game was not released until six years later.Ms. Samuelson said she meant that she had played a game like Donkey Kong.She denied that she and Ms. Huth had coordinated their accounts before Ms. Huth went to the police in 2014. “We were not putting anything together,” she said. “We were just telling our memories.”Jennifer Bonjean, a lawyer for Mr. Cosby, also brought up the subject of race in a way that suggested Ms. Samuelson was motivated to take down Mr. Cosby because he is Black. She said, for example, that Ms. Samuelson, in her pre-trial deposition, had described the décor of his house in Los Angeles as “jungly” and “African,” referring to the leaf print on the wallpaper.“It wasn’t atypical for people in your friend group to use racial slurs like the N-word,” the lawyer asserted.Ms. Samuelson said she never did that.“I am not racist,” she said.One of Mr. Cosby’s lawyers, Jennifer Bonjean.Lucy Nicholson/ReutersMr. Cosby’s lawyers have noted in court proceedings that Ms. Huth’s recollection of when her encounter took place has changed: While she initially said it had happened in 1974, when she was 15, she more recently concluded it was in 1975, when she was 16. The law in California classified a 16-year-old as a minor. In disputing Ms. Huth’s account, Mr. Cosby’s lawyers have suggested they met years after the time she said they did, when she was no longer a minor.Last week, Ms. Huth’s legal team introduced two other women who testified about encounters with Mr. Cosby. Kimberly Burr testified that she was 14 years old when he tried to kiss her in his trailer on the set of “Let’s Do It Again” in 1975 as well.Margie Shapiro testified that she was 19 that year when Mr. Cosby met her at the doughnut shop where she was working and invited her to the set of another movie he was filming in Los Angeles. Later that day, according to her testimony, she went to his house and then they went to the Playboy Mansion, where, she said, he drugged and assaulted her, an accusation that Mr. Cosby denies.Mr. Cosby is not expected to testify at the trial, having asserted his Fifth Amendment rights. But lawyers for Ms. Huth deposed him several years ago, and a portion of that testimony is expected to be presented in court before the conclusion of the trial, which is expected to last through the week. More