dinner party

Where Are You Sitting This Week?

Every Friday in New York’s Dinner Party newsletter, senior writer Tirhakah Love plans a seating chart for the week’s main characters and asks us all to consider: Where would you sit?

This is a weird one, no doubt. There’s always a distinguishing question for our weekly seating chart, and today it’s simple: Who’s got the most to celebrate? Each table has a celebrant. Maggie Haberman is probably one of the first actual journalists to be featured here — and from the New York Times no less — but she’s earned her place having poked pubs like Politico with her new book on Trumpworld. Riling up the talking heads is always a win.

She sits alongside Aaron Judge, who is no doubt the MLB’s home-run king – at least of players currently in the league, as fans of baseball are getting quite contentious about his place in the pantheon of all-time sluggers. Now I’m not a diehard or anything, but I know I’ll take Barry Bonds, ’roided or not, over pretty much any other cat in history. Still though, 61 home runs is a lot of destroyed baseballs, so a couple pints with the slugger would probably be lit as hell. Black Oprah is a Black Twitter joke, IYKYK. But all I must say is that Caresha has a solid shot at it; not necessarily as a billionaire talk-show host but definitely someone whose show the sisters, the queers, and birdies can all chirp to. We love it.

Across the way, Trevor Noah is celebrating seven years at The Daily Show by cutting ties with The Daily Show. And he’s celebrating cutting ties with The Daily Show by swapping spit with Dua Lipa, who we can see here making eyes from a few tables over. Congrats are in order on both accounts, though I can’t tell you a single thing that happened during his run. Ryan Murphy’s hold on the queers seems to be loosening, as his recent show Dahmer has rubbed Black people in the wrongest of ways. It’s fair to remember that this show does showcase queer and trans writers of color as well, but it doesn’t really take away from the unnecessary bloodletting — even if it does attempt to focus on his victims. All of it is too dark for a shindig like this. Ravyn Lenae, who’s recent performance on the COLORS show was quite remarkable, shouldn’t have to deal with this dude. We’re sorry, Ravyn.

Speaking of separations, though, shouts to Perry Greene, who emancipated himself from the clutches of his election-denying bozo of a wife, Marjorie Taylor Greene. After like 27 years of marriage, having to clap the cheeks of a white supremacist must’ve just become too much for him to handle. Or maybe he’s down with the cause but just got tired of hearing her harangues about Trump’s preeminence? That’d be enough for anyone to drive themselves into an ocean. You go, Perry.

Denmark’s queen is here not because we’ve all of a sudden become royalists but because she actually cut off her grandkids from the whole royal lineage thing and said that they have to make something of themselves without the use of the crown. This isn’t exactly what we meant by redistributing wealth and power, but this shit is very funny because it definitely seems like she looked over at Lizzie’s kids, then back at her own, and was like, I’ll be damned. Paramore dropped a new video, ahead of a new album, ahead of a new tour. So you can bet your ass that one of America’s greatest racial unifiers has got all the goth girlies poppin’.

A little peek behind the curtain: I put Freddie Gibbs and Brett Favre at the same table because I thought Gibbs would be the perfect person to help me beat Favre up. His alleged fraud of like $8 million from Mississippi’s welfare program is not about to go unheard. And though I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s scapegoated as that corrupt government continues to steal from its constituencies, I would absolutely love to see him go down. Or at the very least get his ass beat.

But to be honest I’d rather not fight at this Dinner Party. I’m tired and just wanna shake my ass to celebrate someone else’s big wins. And that’s why Table 1, for the second week in a row, wins it.

Where Are You Sitting This Week?