10th Annual Slip-Me-A-Mickey Awards™®

10th ANNUAL SLIP-ME-A-MICKEY™® AWARDS

The Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® awards are the final award of the interminably long awards season. The Slip-Me-A-Mickey™®, or as some lovingly call them, The Mockeys™®, are a robust tribute to the absolute worst that film and entertainment has to offer for the year.

Again, the qualifying rules are simple, I just had to have seen the film for it to be eligible. This means that at one point I had an interest in the film and put the effort in to see it, which may explain why I am so angry about it being awful. So, any vitriol I may spew during this awards presentation shouldn't be taken personally by the people mentioned, it is really anger at myself for getting duped into watching.

The prizes are also pretty simple. The winners/losers receive nothing but my temporary scorn. If you are a winner/loser don't fret, because this year’s Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® loser/winner could always be next year’s Mickey™® winner!! Remember…you are only as good as your last film!!

Now…onto the awards!

WORST FILM OF THE YEAR

Saltburn – This is a truly atrocious, artistically repugnant film that fails on every single level. The script is horseshit, the direction dogshit and the performances bullshit. A mountain of shit that high makes for a very odious movie.

Rebel Moon – A Zack Snyder Star Wars rip-off…what could go wrong? Well…apparently everything. One of the dullest and dumbest movies in recent cinematic history. But look on the bright side…a sequel is hitting Netflix in just a matter of months. Kill. Me. Now.

Ghosted – Chris Evans has the brains of a Tsetse fly and the charisma of a pencil eraser and Ana de Armas is a beautiful woman but very limited actress who needs to fire her agent immediately. The combination of these two morons matching dim-wits and tossing out flaccid one-liners in an action-rom-com is as lifeless and inert as a crippled eunuch’s loins.

Meg 2 – It’s tough to fuck up a giant shark movie, but the Meg 2 was able to pull it off…the key to their success? Removing the giant shark from the majority of the movie. Way to go you fucking numbnuts!

And the loser is…SALTBURN! I hated this movie. It is stupid and awful and putrid and pathetic. Anyone who liked Saltburn for any reason should be beaten to death with a sock full of month-old, frozen, elephant turds.

WORST PERFORMANCE OF THE YEAR

Adam Driver – Ferrari – Adam Driver is a favorite of many big-time filmmakers and has a cult-like following among fans. But the reality is that Adam Driver is a consistently shitty actor. This doughy, dork-faced doofus talks like Kermit and has the screen-presence of a tumbleweed wrapped a sheet of Saran-Wrap. In Ferrari Driver went full Father Guido Sarducci and managed to turn Enzo Ferrari into the Chef Boyardee of auto racing. He did the same to Maurizio Gucci in The House of Gucci a few years ago. Driver doesn’t just need to stop acting in Italian roles, he needs to stop acting.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge – Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny – Remember how charming and funny Phoebe Waller-Bridge was on Fleabag? I do…but barely. It is tough to remember after watching her suck all the life out of the most recent Indiana Jones movie. That Waller-Bridge has all the athletic grace of a baby giraffe with rickets doesn’t help her thrive in this action role.

Bradley Cooper – Maestro – Poor Bradley Cooper. Dude just wants an Oscar so he keeps making shitty movies about musical guys – first A Star is Born and now Maestro. This time in order to woo Oscar voters he wears “Jew-face” and turns the gay histrionics up to eleven. Yikes. Still doesn’t work. He so wants to be a great actor that he does nothing but ACT in these movies. He ACTS so much that he forgets to actually…you know…act. There’s not a single moment in Maestro where Bradley Cooper (or his co-star Carey Mulligan) seem like actual human beings…not good…not good at all.

And the loser is…ADAM DRIVER – FERRARI – Adam Driver is the 21st Century’s version of Elliot Gould…in case you’re wondering…that is not a compliment in any way, shape or form. On the bright side, in twenty years he can play one of the main character’s dads on a reboot of Friends.

WORST SCENE OF THE YEAR

Barry Keoghan fucking a grave – Saltburn – Yawn.

Barry Keoghan slurping jizz-soiled bath water – Saltburn – Cringe.

Barry Keoghan having oral sex with a menstruating woman – Saltburn – Eye-roll.

And the loser is…IT’S A TIE between all the try-hard, faux-edgy, god-awful scenes with Barry Keoghan doing vile shit in Saltburn. And the real loser in all of this is us – the poor bastards who watched this flaming fucking garbage pile.

MOST OVERRATED FILM OF THE YEAR

BARBIE– Barbie was a phenomenon. Barbie was a blockbuster. Barbie was a critical darling. Barbie was also a fucking atrociously awful movie. A two-hour corporate toy commercial infused with a toxic strain of toddler level feminism that left any person with half a brain in their head wanting to light themselves on fire, and any man with two-balls in their bag wanting to cleanse their palate by killing a Sabre-Toothed Tiger and then dragging some whiny plastic shrew by her hair back to his cave.

It is a testament to how mind-numbingly stupid our culture and populace has become that the insipid and insidiously imbecilic Barbie was so unabashedly celebrated and exalted as a great movie and a work of genius.

SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT IN CINEMATIC MALPRACTICE

EMERALD FENNELL– Emerald Fennel won an Oscar for writing her first film Promising Young Woman. Upon further review that movie is garbage. Upon first view of Saltburn, it is an abysmal pile of amateur-hour excrement. Considering her track record, Fennel shouldn’t even be allowed to direct traffic, never mind a movie. She is an out and out cinematic charlatan who has only gotten a shot because of Hollywood’s post #MeToo addiction to elevating talentless female directors. She has earned this Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® award the hard way…by being devoid of any and all talent.

P.O.S. ALL-STARS

JONATHAN MAJORS– I really liked Jonathan Majors when I first saw him the in the film The Last Black Man in San Francisco. But he is the type of actor that the more you see him the more you see how hollow his work truly is. A perfect example of this is his most recent performance in the Marvel series Loki.

Majors is “acting” so much in this series it made my head hurt and my colon twinge. He is just so obviously desperate to show himself acting so that everyone can say, “wow…look at that guy’s acting!”

The result of all this is that Majors is a major disappointment as an artist.

He’s also a major disappointment as a human being as he got charged with some abusive shenanigans with a former girlfriend and then other former girlfriends came forward and said he was an aggressive asshole and on and on and on.

Then there were the tapes of him comparing himself to Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Good lord.

The bottom line is that Jonathan Majors’ career is, at best, comatose…at worst, dead on arrival. Marvel cut him loose and an arthouse film of his which had garnered some Oscar buzz was completely shelved and if it is ever released will be done so under cover of darkness.

On top of all that Majors gave an interview on Good Morning America that was so catastrophic as to be astonishing as he came across as a completely disingenuous and delusional sack of shit.

Good riddance Jonathan Majors…you will not be missed…but congrats on being a Piece of Shit All-Star.

LIZZO – This rotund retard was the point elephant for the media’s relentless “body positivity” movement. Everywhere you turned Lizzo was there front and center playing a flute or singing and dancing, all while wearing next to nothing with her gargantuan ass hanging out.

The reason Lizzo was shoved in our faces was because our culture and civilization is actively being subverted and our intelligence being assaulted. Up is now down, left is now right, and bad is now good.

The fact that Lizzo is so gratuitously grotesque is the point of it all. The truth is, and everyone knows this, that if you saw Lizzo in your bathroom at 3 in the morning, you’d think your house was haunted. Speaking of bathrooms, Lizzo is so fat she has to shit in the bathtub.

Now, despite the relentless comedic vitriol I am currently spewing at Lizzo, the truth is she should not be shamed for being fat, but she shouldn’t be celebrated for it either. The chances she will die young of a heart attack, diabetes, or choking on a ham sandwich, are astronomical, and we should not encourage her gluttony any more than we’d encourage someone else’s alcoholism or drug addiction.

Speaking of shaming, the reason Lizzo is one of this year’s Piece of Shit All-Stars is because she is being sued by her background dancers for…wait for it…“weight shaming” them. The dancers also alleged that Lizzo harassed them sexually, religiously, and racially. She’s also accused of disability discrimination, assault, false imprisonment, and creating a hostile work environment.

Lizzo sounds like her insides are as repulsive as her outsides…which is quite an accomplishment.

The good thing about all of these charges against Lizzo is that the media is no longer shoving her fat ass in our face and we no longer have to pretend this pig is a beauty queen. A win-win scenario for everyone.

JADA SMITH – Jada is a multi-time POS All-Star and she and her family are lifetime members of the POS Hall of Fame. So why is she on the POS All-Stars again? Well…because SHE IS A GIANT PIECE OF SHIT!

After all the hoopla and horseshit around Will Smith and the Oscars slap and all of that…Jada thought this year was a good time to put out a book and overshare with America about her entire sordid and supremely narcissistic life. I mean…who gives a fuck what she or her fruitcake husband or her truly repugnant children think or feel?

This irrelevant whore was out there shouting from the rooftops about how the love of her life was Tupac, and she basically publicly cuckolded and castrated her husband, and in doing so essentially ended his career…for that at least I’m grateful.

Jada’s addiction to the spotlight, despite her complete allergy to hard work and total lack of talent or skill, is a toxic mix, and the poor public who have her obnoxious, self-righteous posturing imposed upon us by a celebrity adoring media, are the ones who truly suffer.

The reality is that Jada is an absolutely awful person in every single way. My hope is that Will Smith grows a pair of balls and goes semi-O.J. on her by drowning her in a septic tank…at least then they’d become ever-so-slightly interesting.

P.O.S. HALL OF FAME

This year’s sole inductee is the grouping of…

BIDEN, TRUMP, AMERICA’S CORRUPT POLITICAL SYSTEM and THE AMERICAN VOTERS

I am certainly not the first person to say this but WHAT THE FUCK!?!?! There are like 350 million people in the United States and the best we can do for the job of President is these two decrepit dipshits?

Joe Biden is a geriatric, dementia-addled creepy-old man and corrupt swamp creature. It is painful watching him walk on television, never mind try and talk.

This ass-hat is such a limp-dick douchebag as to be astonishing. No one, and I mean no one, with whom I’ve spoken in the last four years has anything but contempt (and occasionally pity) for this incessant failure.

Speaking of contempt, on the other side of the aisle is Trump, who is a carnival barker, rodeo clown, reality television blow-hard and corrupt charlatan.

I don’t know anyone who is excited about this election or either of these candidates. It is a testament to how far along the fall of the American Empire truly is that the populace is simply resigned to the ruling class installing either of these shitheels in the presidential chair.

It’s important to remember that no matter who “wins” the election, nothing will truly change.

Trump is running as an outsider candidate who will drain the swamp, but the last time he was president he filled his cabinet and administration with the swampiest of swamp creatures.

Biden, of course, IS the swampiest of swamp creatures. This twat has never actually held a real job in his entire life. He’s been a politician his entire adult life, and is Trump’s equal, if not superior, when it comes to corruption.  

What you’re really voting for in this election, and all elections, is who will be cast as the lead in the role of President of the United States…a long running, very unpopular reality television show.

In the 21st century we have had a narcissist, silver-spooned, nepo-baby, mental-defective war criminal as president (George W. Bush), and then people elected a smooth-talking, narcissist, CIA created dummy-corp love-child (Obama), followed by a silver-spooned, narcissistic, reality-tv star (Trump), followed by dementia-addled, geriatric, corrupt swamp creature (Biden). This is a murderer’s row of dipshittedness…all of whom ruled with neo-liberal domestic policy and neo-con foreign policy…or as I call it – the worst of both worlds.

The fact that I found it impossible to even tolerate watching any of these fucksticks on television for more than two seconds is a pretty strong indicator that my bullshit meter is finely attuned and that my taste in humanity is much too sophisticated.

Which brings me to the American voters.

Look, I get it, people are stupid or exhausted or a combination of the two. They are also relentlessly propagandized and conditioned to be allergic to critical thinking. But the fact that we are quietly compliant while these two fucktards are hoisted upon us is a scathing indictment of the state of our union and our populace.

And don’t even get me started on the imbeciles and morons who actually buy into all this shit and are fervent supporters of either candidate. If you go to a rally for either one of these fucksticks, you should be lobotomized. Hell, if you even put a Biden or Trump sign in your front lawn, you should be institutionalized.

The bottom line is that regardless of who wins this year’s election, there is one thing we can count on and it is this…all of us will lose….THAT IS GUARANTEED!

And on that happy note…thus ends the Slip-Me-A-Mickey Awards™®!! I hope everyone enjoys the after-party and that I see none of the losers who these awards next year!!

Thanks for reading and we’ll see you next time…at the Slip-Me-A-Mickeys!!

 Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2024

Cry Macho: A Review and Commentary

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 1.75 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A dismal and disappointing directing effort from Clint Eastwood that features some utterly embarrasing performances and a painfully thin script.

Hollywood icon Clint Eastwood has long been an avatar for America. From the phenomenal spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone to Dirty Harry to his genre closing masterpiece Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood has been an archetypal figure embodying America’s sense of itself and its masculinity.

Eastwood’s new movie Cry Macho, which he directs and stars in, isn’t in the same cinematic ballpark as Unforgiven or Dirty Harry, in fact, it’s a pretty dreadful movie, but that doesn’t mean it lacks archetypal insight.

Cry Macho features Eastwood once again mirroring America, but this time he unintentionally reveals a deeply delusional nation in steep decline.

The film tells the story of Mike Milo (Eastwood), a very old ranch hand hired by wealthy Texan Howard Polk to get his wayward teenage son, Rafo and pet rooster named Macho, from Mexico out of the clutches of Rafo’s drug dealing, abusive mother.

It is important at this juncture to unequivocally salute Clint Eastwood for making Cry Macho. Directing a movie requires a Herculean effort. Starring in a movie takes a super-human amount of energy. Clint Eastwood not only directing but starring in a movie at the age of 91 is a stunning and miraculous achievement.

While I have been highly critical of many of Eastwood’s late-stage films, and rightfully so, that does not diminish in my eyes his singular position in the history of American cinema and the breadth of his acting and directing career.

I respect Eastwood’s continued ambition and work ethic (but certainly question his work style) but I refuse to let sentimentality cloud my judgement of his work.

Eastwood has been starring in movies for 57 years, and while he’s never been a great actor, he’s always been a formidable and compelling screen presence. But Clint Eastwood is 91-years-old, and while he’s robust for a 91-year-old, that doesn’t make it any less delusional that he cast himself as a character that is 40 in the book upon which the movie is based. Hell, Eastwood even turned down this same role back in the 80’s when he was a much more age appropriate.

At 91, Eastwood doesn’t just seem old, but elderly and fragile, as he moves like an extra on Night of the Living Dead. The sight of him breaking horses, dancing the night away and punching thugs, beggars belief.

When a woman less than half his age is so overcome with sexual-attraction she tries to seduce him, and another about half his age falls madly in love with him, it’s utterly absurd.

This aggressive self-delusion is the perfect embodiment of the current state of the American empire, which is in a sorry state but sees the ruggedly handsome Clint Eastwood of 1965 in the mirror instead of the more accurate reflection of the feeble, infirm and geriatric Clint Eastwood of today.

This level of delusion is equivalent to those American voters who convinced themselves that Joe Biden wasn’t a dementia-addled, establishment whore or that Donald Trump was anything but a bloated, bloviating reality tv buffoon.

Like so much of America and American culture, Cry Macho is a cheap, sloppy, dramatically and narratively incoherent venture that features some of the worst acting you’ll ever see. When the best actor in your movie is a rooster, you’ve got serious problems.

Eastwood is famous, or infamous, for shooting minimal takes on his films in order to stay on time and on budget. When his cast consists of all-time greats like Morgan Freeman, Gene Hackman and Richard Harris, as it did on Unforgiven, this approach can work incredibly well. When, in an attempt to cut corners and save money, the cast is loaded with unknowns, as it is on Cry Macho, then the results can be frighteningly amateurish, which is painfully similar to the cast of characters currently starring in the stale drama of American politics. Who among us doesn’t think a rooster would be a significant upgrade from Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or any of the other vacuous and vapid villains inhabiting Washington?

Cry Macho, much like Unforgiven thirty years ago, highlights Eastwood wrestling with the darker side of his uniquely American archetype.

In Unforgiven he grappled with the ramifications of the violence he portrayed on-screen and that the American ethos unleashed upon the world. In Cry Macho the meditation is not nearly as profound, but it’s certainly there.

The teenage Rafo, one of the countless two-dimensional, third-world characters in the film that can either be a sinner or a saint and nothing in-between, is uncomfortably desperate to prove his masculinity, as Mike points out when he tells him how odd it is for “a man to name his cock Macho”.

Eastwood saying the lines “the macho thing is overrated” and “they don’t like that macho stuff in America” to Rafo feels like a frank admission that America has become so hyper-feminized that even Clint Eastwood, the archetype of American masculinity, is now admitting defeat.

But the most insightful dialogue comes from Rafo, who confronts Eastwood’s Mike and rips into him, and by extension, eviscerates the notion of American exceptionalism, when he says, “you used to be tough, now you’re weak…you used to be strong, and now you’re nothing.”

That’s uncomfortably insightful as the decrepit Clint Eastwood of today perfectly reflects the current state of America, as he’s delusional, infirm and feeble. The reality is that America pretending it’s anything but a decadent nation in a death spiral doesn’t change that fact, it just maintains the facade for those too frightened to admit the truth.

This is reminiscent of when Rafo continuously defends his pet rooster by telling Mike, “he’s not a chicken, he’s Macho!” Calling a chicken ‘Macho”, doesn’t change the fact that it’s a chicken, and sooner or later it will end up sliced and diced on the dinner table.

I wish Cry Macho was a better movie because it has something to say and didn’t say it very well, but the one obvious take away is that if the once-great but now over-the-hill Clint Eastwood is the embodiment of modern American masculinity, now is definitely the time to cry macho.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Obama: In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union - Documentary Review and Commentary

New HBO Obama doc is race-obsessed establishment pablum meant to distract from the nefarious nature of American governance

The dull and derivative docuseries chooses hagiography over history and style over substance as it white-washes the sins of America’s only black president.

Obama: In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union is the new three-part HBO documentary that sets out to chronicle Barrack Obama’s rise from obscurity to the highest office in the land.

The roughly five-hour series, which features no new interview with Obama but rather relies on archival footage and a plethora of sycophantic talking heads, premiered on HBO on August 3rd, and on HBO Max on August 4th, the former president’s 60th birthday. What do you get the man who has everything for his birthday? If your director Peter W. Kunhardt you give the gift of a shamelessly reverential, hagiographic documentary.

Obama: In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union is one of those insipid, paint-by-numbers, deferential documentaries that is steadfastly committed to never challenging either its subject or its audience that results in a banal viewing experience painfully devoid of insights.

Designed to do nothing but placate Obama true believers with some ‘no-drama’ nostalgia, the series is resolute in its decision to never give voice to any serious oppositional perspectives. Yes, there are a few talking heads, like the brilliant Cornel West, who delicately air disagreements, but even those are couched in solemn genuflection to Saint Obama.

Not once is someone who actually opposed Obama on principle interviewed or allowed to speak for themselves. The series uses this echo chamber approach in order to appease its target audience of liberals who demand all contrarians and conflicting arguments be purged from their purview, banished forever for their heresy from the kingdom of those “on the right side of history”.

Instead, the filmmakers choose to read minds and project racial animus onto those who fought Obama.

Disagree with Obamacare? Racist! Oppose the stimulus package? Racist!

Ironically, the hyper-racial lens through which the series examines Obama’s meteoric rise and rule is less a monument to America as a racist nation than it is a testament to Obama’s failure and shocking political irrelevance just five years after leaving office, as well as to the intellectual vacuity and lack of imagination on the part of elite establishment liberals.

In this way the docu-series is the perfect revisionist modernization of the Obama myth in that it’s addiction to hyper-racism causes it to be utterly blind to any other topic.

For instance, there isn’t a single mention of Obama’s prodigious use of the Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers, but there is an extended focus on black Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates being mistakenly arrested by Cambridge police.

There’s no mention of Obama’s immigration policy which resulted in massive deportations and routinely placing “kids in cages”, but there is a focus on Trump’s racist demagoguery and birtherism.

Obama’s complicity in the death and suffering in Yemen, Libya and Syria is verboten, but there is ample time spent on Obama’s love of basketball and his black-centric musical taste.

And of course, Obama’s extra-judicial assassination of American teenager Abdulrahman al-Awlaki is memory-holed but George Zimmerman’s killing of teenager Trayvon Martin is highlighted.

This hyper-racial perspective not only allows the filmmakers to ignore Obama’s egregious sins but to also roll out a cavalcade of kiss-ass clowns like Michael Eric Dyson, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Charlamagne tha God, Keegan Michael Key and Jelani Cobb (an executive producer on the series) to spout vapid and impotent inanities about how white supremacy is the DNA of America. The fact that voters, the vast majority of which were not black, overwhelmingly elected a black man to the presidency, not once but twice, would seem to refute that claim.

With its maniacal focus on style over substance, Obama: In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union fits perfectly into the usual establishment approach toward all things political.

Style is how Obama got elected, as his cool, thoughtful demeanor and eloquence were in stark contrast to Bush’s cowboy buffoonery. In turn, Trump’s reality tv/wrestlemania shenanigans got him elected post no-drama Obama, and Biden’s creepy grandpa routine got him elected because he contrasted Trump’s erratic freneticism (speaking of which, Biden is shown in archival footage in the documentary but never speaks, no doubt because that would alert viewers to his steep decline since his halcyon VP days).

But regardless of which specific stylistic mask is worn and by which president, its objective is to cover the never-changing agenda of the American political establishment which is imperialism and militarism overseas and corporatism and fascism at home. No matter who or what party is in charge and no matter how they behave on the surface, that insidious reality will never be challenged or changed, and this is why Obama: In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union exists…to reinforce that duplicitous and distractionary style over substance paradigm.

Obama, the first black president, wasn’t elected to change the substance of American policy, he was elected to distract from it, and this docu-series gives ample ammunition to the gullible and mindless to continue to focus on race and identity politics instead of on the voracious malignancy of U.S. policy, most specifically the cancer of America’s rigged-casino capitalism and the insatiable beast of the military/intelligence industrial complex.

In conclusion, if you’re a “Hope and Change” sucker searching for a short-lived, rather vapid injection of Obama-era nostalgia, then Obama: In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union is definitely the documentary mini-series for you. But if you’re more interested in cold, hard truths and unflinching insights about Obama, his presidency and America, then this is a five-hour waste of time.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Tarantino's Pact With the Weinstein Devil

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 36 seconds

Quentin Tarantino admits many Hollywood stars knew about Harvey Weinstein’s depravity, but like most people, their ambition kept them quiet

Quentin Tarantino said the quiet part out loud the other day when on Joe Rogan’s podcast he admitted that he “knew” of his longtime film distributor Harvey Weinstein’s aggressive sexual depravity.

Tarantino, who went on the Joe Rogan Experience to promote the novelization he wrote of his film ‘Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood’, made clear that in regards to Weinstein, he “didn’t know about the rapes or anything like that” but stated, “I knew he was –  you know – I chalked it up to the boss chasing the secretary around the desk. As if that’s okay. But I mean, that’s how I kind of looked at it. He was making unwanted advances.”

“Unwanted advances” is certainly a way of putting it, as Harvey made lots and lots of “unwanted advances” on women. So many in fact that he’s been sentenced to 23 years in prison for rape, and is still facing other charges. 

Tarantino tried to explain to Rogan how in hindsight, “…I wish I had talked to him…I wish I had sat him down and gone, ‘Harvey you can’t do this. You’re gonna f**k up everything.’”

I suppose that could be classified as a form of regret – misguided regret, but regret nonetheless. Maybe what Tarantino really regrets is losing Weinstein the golden goose: the guy who made movies big hits and Oscar nominations happen, rather than regret for not protecting women from Weinstein the predator.

Tarantino didn’t warn Weinstein that his illicit behavior was “going to f**k everything up” because Tarantino didn’t want to f**k up his fantastically prosperous relationship with the notoriously bombastic bully whom the director calls a “father figure”.

Weinstein didn’t just make Tarantino rich, he made him relevant, and in Hollywood that is the greatest gift of all. And the reason Harvey was immune from consequences for his actions for so long is because he made lots of other people rich, famous and relevant as well.

Tarantino said as much when he admitted that he wasn’t alone in keeping his mouth shut in order to keep the money and awards train running. The director told Rogan that the Hollywood heavy-hitters who say they didn’t know about Weinstein’s predatory behavior are full of it.

“Everybody who was in his orbit knew about it, there’s nobody who said they didn’t know who didn’t know… that includes all the big actors he palled around with… they all knew.”

There were a lot of people in Harvey Weinstein’s large orbit who owed the producer a great deal and who are implicated by Tarantino’s claim ­– Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Meryl Streep, Martin Scorsese, Oprah Winfrey, Lena Dunham and even Bill and Hillary Clinton to name a few.

These people, and many others, may have never seen first-hand Harvey do anything aggressive with women, but it’s impossible to believe they hadn’t heard about Harvey’s notorious behavior. Hell, I’m an absolute nobody and I’d heard about Weinstein’s disgusting reputation.

Weinstein’s depravity, like that of fellow scumbags Brett Ratner and Bryan Singer, wasn’t so much an open secret in Hollywood as a running joke. But since these three deplorables made lots of people money, people laughed instead of spoke up.

As easy as it would be to get indignantly outraged at the inaction of Tarantino, who despite his writing and directorial genius is an easy target, the reality is that, unfortunately, most people would keep their mouths shut, too, if put in a similar position.

The devil’s bargain Tarantino and so many others made with Weinstein is the same bargain many ‘regular’ people make for even less-substantial reasons.

The two most common side-effects of desperation and ambition are hypocrisy and a recurring blind eye turned toward what could stifle your ambition and agitate your desperation. As Orwell once wrote, “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle” and the reality is that being able to see the truth and actually admit it to yourself in real time is extremely difficult when your livelihood or emotional well-being depends on you not seeing it.

This is why Bill Clinton supporters didn’t believe Juanita Broaddrick, but believe all of the women accusing Donald Trump of sexual assault. And why Trump supporters dismiss claims against him but believe Tara Reade, and in turn why anti-Trumpers dismiss Ms. Reade’s claims against Joe Biden. 

This isn’t to say that all sexual assault and rape claims are equal. We shouldn’t ‘believe all women’, as women are just as capable and likely to lie as men. Nor should we ignore due process to satiate our thirst for revenge.

We also shouldn’t celebrate the emotionalist-fueled, vapid and vacuous hysteria that is the #MeToo movement, which infantilizes women, removes from them even the slightest bit of agency, and weaponizes female regret at the expense of diminishing the suffering of actual rape victims.

What we should do is remind people, be they Hollywood stars tainted by their silence regarding Weinstein, or Trump supporters ignoring his sexual conduct or Biden voters brushing aside claims against him, that their loyalties lie not with the truth, but with their personal or political ambitions, and therefore they have no moral clarity and are to be distrusted.

In conclusion, once upon a time in Hollywood, an uncommon talent at writing and directing revealed his cowardice by keeping silent about a powerful producer’s sexual depravity, thus revealing himself to be a painfully common, and very flawed, human being… just like the rest of us. Sounds like an interesting movie idea. I wonder who’ll direct?

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

The Asinine and the Absurd 78th Annual Golden Globes Awards

Hollywood once again proved itself to be the moral authority of our time when a bevy of stars took to the stage Sunday night at the 78th annual Golden Globes Awards to rail against President Joe Biden’s unconstitutional, murderous air strikes in Syria, his caging of illegal immigrant kids, and his failure to fight for a $15 minimum wage, Medicare-for-All and a $2,000 stimulus check during this calamitous coronavirus lockdown.

Just kidding.

With the bad orange man gone from the White House it was back to Hollywood business as usual at the painfully lackluster, socially-distanced Golden Globes where there was a lot of performative virtue signaling regarding diversity but no actual political courage on display.

The Golden Globes have long been a running joke as the Hollywood Foreign Press (HFPA), a collection of 89 “foreign entertainment journalists” who vote on the awards, notoriously care less about artistic quality than lining their pockets, corporate swag and basking in star power.

The L.A. Times recently did a searing investigation of the organization and, shock of shocks, found them to be corrupt…I think Captain Obvious was the reporter who broke the story. 

Hollywood’s big takeaway from the L.A. Times story though was that the HFPA is racist because it has no black members.

This was highlighted throughout last night’s show as flaccid comedy duo Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, as well as numerous presenters, made snide comments about the racial “scandal”. This led to one of the more riotously funny moments when an Indian woman and Turkish man who are members of the HFPA had to grovel on live tv about how bad they were for not having black people in their group. Diversity!

Ironically, after all the bemoaning of HFPA racism the three of the first four awards given out went to black actors, Daniel Kaluuya for Judas and the Black Messiah and John Boyega for Small Axe, and to the first black led Pixar film Soul.

Later in the night the Best Actor and Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama awards also went to black artists, the late Chadwick Boseman for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Andra Day for The United States vs. Billie Holiday.

Stupid Golden Globes can’t even stay on brand when it comes to their own racism.

One of the few bright spots in previous Golden Globes has been comedian Ricky Gervais serving as ornery host. Gervais’ scathing opening monologues at the Globes are some of the best comedy of recent years. Never one to pander or genuflect to his star-studded and empty-headed live audience, Gervais instead consistently eviscerated the cavalcade of self-satisfied and self-righteous stars luxuriously partying before him.

Unfortunately, this year Gervais wasn’t hosting so instead of his uncomfortably honest and gloriously cutting comedy we were stuck with the insipid nice girl comedy of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler.

Another redeeming quality of the past Golden Globes awards has been watching celebrities get drunk at the dinner party style affair. Sadly, this year’s show was “socially distanced” so random shots of sloppy drunk celebs were replaced with awkward moments on zoom. .

Sans Gervais and drunk celebs the Golden Globes were reduced to being nothing but a handing out of awards no one, even the people winning them actually care about.

Besides the endless babbling about diversity and inclusion, the political talk was pretty minimal. Sure, Borat made some stale Trump and Giuliani jokes, and Mark Ruffalo bemoaned the “hideous dark storm” of Trump “we’ve been living through” and Aaron Sorkin mentioned democracy being under siege, but that was about it.

What is so striking is there were ample opportunities for Hollywood heavyweights to speak up about current issues, but they refused.

Sean Penn, one of my favorite actors and activists, was there, and besides looking like Moe from the Three Stooges, he didn’t do much of anything except display a shocking lack of testicular fortitude. He could’ve spoken up about Biden’s illegal attack on Syria, like he had done about the Iraq War…but he didn’t.

Jodie Foster won best Supporting Actress for her work in the film The Mauritanian, a movie about the injustice of a prisoner held in Guantanamo Bay for fourteen years without charge. But Foster never mentioned Guantanamo Bay, injustice or the immorality of the War on Terror in her acceptance speech.

Famed anti-war activist Jane Fonda, who once went to North Vietnam while the U.S. was at war with them, was awarded a lifetime achievement award but never mentioned Biden’s illegal airstrikes in Syria, or his support of murderous tyrant Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, or the continuation of the “kids in cages” immigration policy. She instead just regurgitated the usual woke pablum of diversity and inclusion.

Chloe Zhao won best director and best drama for her film Nomadland, which examines those crushed under the boot of American capitalism. Yet she never once mentioned Biden’s failure to push for the $15 minimum wage, Medicare-for-All or a coronavirus stimulus check which he promised, three things which would immeasurably help the suffering people featured in her film.

With Trump gone and the corpse of Joe Biden being the one obliterating Syrians and caging kids at the border, Hollywood elites are now all too happy to lose their stridently socially conscious rhetoric in favor of status quo cheerleading and social justice ass-kissing.

In 2017 in the wake of Donald Trump’s election Meryl Streep “bravely” spoke out in defense of immigrants at the Globes, which was curious since she had been completely silent during the previous 8 years when Obama set deportation records and put “kids in cages”.

It seems Hollywood is following in Queen Meryl’s faux-noble footsteps by deciding to stay quiet now when speaking up would take courage.

Everyone knows Hollywood is not exactly filled with the bravest souls that are driven purely by integrity and their commitment to principle. But the amount of self-righteousness mixed with craven cowardice on display at the Golden Globes last night was remarkable even by Hollywood’s depraved standards.

In conclusion, if the Golden Globes are any indication, awards season is going to be filled with the most venal, vacuous and vapid posing and preening imaginable, but it won’t feature any principled protests against Biden administration policies, no matter how abhorrent they may be.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

The Surreality of a Reality Czar in Post-Reality America

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 39 seconds

The establishment wants a Reality Czar in order to crush dissent and control people, not to unite us around a common truth.

The mainstream media and ruling elite really hate conspiracy theories and misinformation…except when they don’t.

On February 2nd, which ironically enough is Groundhog Day here in the U.S., the New York Times published an article titled, “How The Biden Administration Can Help Solve Our Reality Crisis”.

It seems a very bad sign that America is now relying on Joe Biden, a geriatric Washington insider suffering from dementia, to solve a “reality” crisis.

In the article, writer Kevin Roose spoke with “experts” who offered suggestions about how to unify Americans around “reality” by stamping out “conspiracy theories” and “misinformation”.

One of the suggestions was that Biden should create a “Reality Czar” to oversee the dismantling of “disinformation” and the surveillance of “conspiracy theorists”.

That sounds like a great idea…I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

The problem with a “Reality Czar” is that America is a post-reality nation. Our culture has gone so far to the extreme in regards to embracing subjective experience over objective reality that some blow hard bureaucrat is not going to be able to tip the scales back towards the rational.

And of course, that is the point. The Biden administration doesn’t want to return America to objective reality, they want Americans to embrace the establishment’s reality…those are two very different things.

The establishment reality is the neo-liberal, corporate controlled, Military Industrial Complex reality that loathes being held to account for its continuous misdeeds and misinformation.

The establishment reality demands we accept the absurdly incomplete official story regarding the spate of assassinations in the 60’s (JFK, MLK, RFK) while refusing to declassify and un-redact the millions of government files on those topics it won’t let us see.

The establishment reality lied about the Gulf of Tonkin incident and gave us the hell of the Vietnam War.

The establishment reality lied to us about Iran-Contra and the death squads in Latin America. It also lied about its complicity in the drug trade while it the manufactured a War on Drugs.

The establishment reality refuses to declassify documents surrounding 9-11 and refused to investigate the funding for that attack. It also unleashed George W. Bush and Dick Cheney’s “Dark Side”, which included the War on Terror, torture, massive surveillance, Gitmo, rendition and the Patriot Act.

The establishment reality was the one that told us Iraq had WMD’s and gave us the Iraq War, and continues to give us the War in Yemen and the carnage in Libya and across the globe.

It is often said that daylight is the best disinfectant but we are continuously kept in the dark, and the establishment, regardless of which party is in power, is a gangrenous limb and their lies and disinformation are much more toxic to America and the world than anything some Q-Anon clowns can conjure in their fever dreams.

It is pretty rich that The New York Times is running this article calling for a reality czar and bemoaning disinformation as they have long aided and abetted the establishment in their concealing of truth and distorting of objective reality.

Whether it be Walter Duranty and his lies for Stalin, or Judith Miller and her lies for Bush, the Times has proven over and over again that it isn’t a news organization, but a Praetorian Guard meant to protect the tyrants, oligarchs and aristocrats from the masses.

The establishment’s hatred of conspiracy theories is particularly amusing in light of what transpired over the last four years.

Am I the only one who remembers the Russiagate hysteria? Stories of dastardly Rooskies hacking into power grids and voting booths and using microwave weapons to attack Americans have been commonplace in the Times and across the mainstream media, and yet those “conspiracy theories” were not only accepted but embraced.

Would the new Reality Czar hold the Times accountable for those idiotic stories? Would MSNBC be chastised for Rachel Maddow’s conspiratorial ramblings? Would CNN be reprimanded for their “mostly peaceful protests” disinformation?

Would the Reality Czar target the scientists and medical experts who publicly proclaimed that it was ok to gather in large groups during the pandemic to protest for Black Lives Matter but not to protest against lockdown?

How about the trans activists who distort and contort both science and reality?

Would the Reality Czar target the new White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki, especially considering her laughably ridiculous press conference from 2015 where with a straight face she stated the U.S. has a “long standing” policy against backing coups?

Of course not.

Like a paranoid schizophrenic, our political and media elite of both parties are constantly trying to convince people that their own devious delusions are the one true reality.

The Reality Czar would not be meant to actually squash misinformation and conspiracy theories, only the misinformation and conspiracy theories the establishment doesn’t like.

The “reality” is that the ruling elite are pushing the notion of rampant right wing domestic terrorists and the danger of conspiracy theories in an attempt to conceal their crimes and squash dissent, not to help objective “reality” flourish.

As Orwell told us, “Who controls the past, controls the future, who controls the present, controls the past.” The establishment wants to control the present, the past, the future and most of all you…and a Reality Czar is just the beginning.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

The Musical Performances at the Biden Inauguration Highlight America's Bankrupt Culture

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 38 seconds

Big music stars performed to ring in Joe Biden’s presidency, but they were just as unoriginal and underwhelming as he is.

In a grand ceremony worthy of a dementia-addled aristocrat, geriatric Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States yesterday.

America has had an inauguration for the president every four years since 1789, making yesterday’s event the 59th in U.S. history. I believe Joe Biden is the only man to have attended every single one of them.

Four years ago, Trump’s low rent inauguration celebration featured Toby Keith, Three Doors Down and Lee Greenwood, which wasn’t a murderer’s row of talent so much as a ‘makes-you-want-to-kill-yourself’ lack of it.

I think we can all agree the last thing this country ever needs to see again is Lee Greenwood serenading the masses with his flag fornicating hit from the Paleolithic era, “God Bless the U.S.A.”, a heinously malignant earworm that makes me not just ashamed to be an American, but a sentient human being.

Not surprisingly, the stars came out in full this year to salute Joe Biden, who had considerably more star power on-hand to ring him into office than Trump in 2017.

Case in point, Lady Gaga sang the national anthem at the swearing-in ceremony. The glorious Gaga, who has the voice of an angel and a face made for radio, arrived looking like she just came off The Hunger Games set. Her dress appeared to be a tribute to a venereal disease polyp designed by Oscar de la Herpes.

Gaga gave her all…but the problem was that it was just way too much. Her heartfelt performance quickly devolved into an overwrought vocal spectacle that looked and sounded like a drag queen Brunhilde wrestling an amusement park Bugs Bunny.

A short while later Jennifer Lopez strutted out to sing “This Land is Your Land” and “America the Beautiful”. If you needed any more proof that America was a vast cultural wasteland, just consider that Jennifer Lopez is now the Woody Guthrie of our era.

J-Lo also gave her all but unfortunately it wasn’t nearly enough. Unable to utilize her most valuable ‘asset’, Ms. Lopez’s lack of vocal prowess was left as exposed as her backside was covered.

Biden loved the performance though and as J-Lo walked past he quickly smelled her hair and declared, “I Love you, Charo!”

The final performer at the ceremony was Garth Brooks, who kept it country…Walmart country, by wearing jeans that were two sizes too small, a belt buckle the size of a Ford F-150 pick-up truck, a black blazer and a shirt with no tie.

Good old boy Garth sang “Amazing Grace” in his usual banal country twang and proceeded to remind viewers that only in America can a minimally gifted, chubby, cowboy poseur become a chart-topping music mega-star.

Biden was deeply moved by Garth’s song and proclaimed he was “so proud that Gene Autry could be here today at my First Communion.”

Later that night the heavy hitters came out for a made-for-tv inaugural celebration titled ”Celebrating America”.

The show opened with Bruce Springsteen doing an acoustic version of his song “Land of Hopes and Dreams” at the Lincoln Memorial. For nearly fifty years Springsteen has been the genuine voice of working class America and is such a national treasure he should be named poet laureate emeritus. His performance was solemn, soulful and stirring and perfectly encapsulated this dire yet determined moment in American history.

The show went precipitously downhill from there.

Tom Hanks, America’s everyman if everyman were a sanctimonious, self-satisfied, holier-than-thou billionaire, was the master of ceremonies.

Hanks was the perfect choice since his filmography looks like a greatest hits of Pentagon and Intelligence community propaganda, as his film’s routinely sell flag-waving revisionist history and muscular American militarism, imperialism and corporate colonialism all under the guise of honor and duty-bound niceness…just like Joe Biden.

Hanks turned the smug all the way up to 11, maybe in an attempt to stay warm, and did his best to reassure his “friends and neighbors” that all was well and life is now back to normal thanks to Biden.

The highlights of Celebrating America were easily the aforementioned Springsteen as well as the Foo Fighters – who played a striking rendition of “Times Like These”.

The lowest of lowlights was Jon Bon Jovi lip-syncing to his cover of The Beatles “Here Comes the Sun”. Bon Jovi’s performance was as odious as the rancid air in Elizabeth, NJ along the turnpike. Jovi’s nasally vocals were so abysmally, egregiously, hellaciously awful it was utterly astonishing. The fact that he was lip-syncing only made it all the more embarrassing.

Lip-syncing dominated the festivities, with Ant Clemons and Justin Timberlake, Tyler Hubbard and Tim McGraw, Demi Lovato, Katy Perry and maybe even John Legend, who Biden thought was his old friend Corn Pop from the mean streets of Wilmington, all lip-syncing or being greatly electronically aided in their vocal efforts.

Lip-syncing does make sense in this context though since the contrived performances perfectly encapsulate the charade that is our corporate-controlled democracy.

Speaking of charlatans, presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama appeared on the show, apparently from The Hall of War Criminals. They each said that despite their political differences that they were able to come together and kill people across the globe and crush the working class…and we should do the same now in the name of unity. Yay unity!!

If the inauguration ceremony and ‘Celebrating America’ - with all its insipid, manufactured performances and star-spangled sappiness honoring our elderly president who’s only capable of muttering or shouting incoherent inanities - are any indication, we are an artistically, intellectually and politically bankrupt nation…and we are truly doomed.

My solution….Springsteen/Grohl 2024!!

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Only in a Nation Detached From Reality Would Tulsi Gabbard Be Denigrated and Kamala Harris Celebrated

Estimated reading Time: 3 minutes 39 seconds

In an age of where lies are worshiped and cowardice celebrated, Tulsi Gabbard is despised for her bravery and loyalty to truth.

Tulsi Gabbard, a four-term Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, is currently being attacked by liberals for introducing The Protect Women’s Sports Act, which seeks to protect women’s athletics by recognizing that different sexes are born with different physical abilities.

Reasonable and rational people realize that men and women are biologically different. Reasonable and rational people also realize that on average, men are bigger, stronger and faster than women, and that just because someone born a male now subjectively “identifies” as a female, that doesn’t alter the objective fact that copious amounts of testosterone were pumping through their body as it developed, thus making their competing against biological girls and women in sport not only unfair, but dangerous.

These should not be controversial statements as they are obviously factually and scientifically true. But objective truth is anathema in our age of subjective insanity. Which is why Tulsi Gabbard’s introducing of the Protect Women’s Sports Act is a brazen act of bravery.

This is why it is so perversely ironic that on the same day Tulsi Gabbard was being made a pariah for courageously speaking plain truth and supporting common sense, Time Magazine was announcing that the empty pantsuit and monument to tokenism, Kamala Harris, and her chauffeur in the corporate Democrat clown car, Joe Biden, were being honored as the Person of the Year.

If America were a sane place, Tulsi Gabbard, not Kamala Harris, would be the darling of the supposedly liberal Democratic Party.

Gabbard is an intelligent, principled and charismatic woman of color, something the devotees of diversity claim to desire.  Her progressive bona fides are unquestionable as she vociferously supports Medicare-for-All, a Universal Basic Income and wants to end the war on drugs and private prisons. She is also a courageous anti-interventionist in addition to being a respected Army Reservist and Iraq War veteran.

In contrast, Kamala Harris is a corrupt former “top cop” in California who brutalized the poor by being a proponent of the war on drugs yet let white-collar corporate criminals skate. She is also a neo-liberal militarist who opposes Medicare-for-All and a Universal Basic Income.

And yet, despite, or more likely because, of all of these things, Tulsi Gabbard is persona non grata among the dupes, dopes and dullards in the Democratic party and media, while the sellout and raging sub-mediocrity Kamala Harris is celebrated.

This is not surprising as Gabbard and her fetish for truth have long been a thorn in the establishment’s side, especially with her contrarian foreign policy beliefs, most notably regarding Syria and Bashar al-Assad.

In 2017 Gabbard committed the cardinal sin of going against establishment orthodoxy when she expressed skepticism regarding dubious claims of chemical weapons attacks by Syria in Khan Shaykhun, and, despite being right, was quickly labeled an “Assad apologist”.

She also made the egregious mistake of speaking truth when she said that the U.S. had been “waging a regime change war in Syria since 2011”. Nothing will get you a scarlet letter from the establishment faster than telling the truth regarding America’s thuggish empire.

As for compliant Kamala, speaking truth to power is not a sin with which she is intimately familiar. Kamala is more of a kiss up and kick down kind of girl. She “kissed” up to former Speaker of the California Assembly and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown and kicked down by trying to jail poor parents of truant kids.

Another glaring difference between Tulsi Gabbard and Kamala Harris is that Gabbard is guided by principle and Harris is guided by blind partisanship and personal ambition.

For instance, besides the Protect Women’s Sports Act, this week Gabbard also dared to cross the aisle by introducing the Break Up Big Tech Act, that supported Trump’s initiative to repeal Section 230, which gives legal immunity to large social media companies. Gabbard did this because it is the right thing to do, even if Trump supports it.

As for Kamala, she is allergic to principles beyond personal ambition. Kamala will not take on big tech, as they are her donor base and she is a junkie for their money and a whore for corporate power. One should not expect a Biden-Harris administration to move in any way shape or form against Silicon Valley.

Another argument in favor of Gabbard’s superiority over Harris is that the one time the two women went head-to-head was in the Democratic primary debates, and Gabbard eviscerated Harris so decisively that it stopped Harris’ campaign dead in its tracks.

This week’s state of affairs proves that America is a madhouse, and the media, Time Magazine and their ridiculous and grammatically incorrect “Person of the Year” selection included, are funhouse mirrors used to further distort our already deranged sur-reality.

In these United States of the Insane, the inmates are running the asylum as American militarism and corporate power are now deemed benign, it is declared gender doesn’t exist, and Kamala Harris is worthy of celebration while Tulsi Gabbard is deserving of denigration.

America always gets the leadership it deserves, and when Joe Biden falls, or more likely gets pushed, down a flight of stairs and Queen Kamala ascends to the throne, we will get what we deserve. And that certainly isn’t a person of quality and worth like Tulsi Gabbard, that’s for damn sure.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

Trump TV Will Be Biased and Journalistically Depraved...Just Like the Rest of the Mainstream Media

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 27 seconds

Trump will be out of the Oval Office but may not leave the spotlight as rumors swirl of a new Trumpian television venture meant to exact revenge on Fox.

Donald Trump has apparently lost the presidential election to Joe Biden, or at least that is what the allegedly benevolent, unbiased and omniscient television networks are telling me.

Trump’s humiliation at losing to a decrepit, dementia-addled Washington war horse and Wall Street whore like Joe Biden is made more acute by the fact that Fox News, Trump’s supposedly staunch media ally, has abruptly turned their back on him. Fox even went so far as to call Arizona, a state still in dispute, for Biden early on election night despite other “liberal” networks refusing to do so.

In the wake of Fox’s treachery, Trump is no doubt thinking, “Et tu, Rupert?”

Much like Trump set his sights on winning the presidency after he was publicly humiliated by searing jokes told at his expense by President Obama at the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner, rumors now swirl he will focus his fury at Rupert Murdoch and Fox for their seditious election betrayal by starting his own tv network...Trump TV.

Many will scoff at this idea, but under-estimating Trump is how he won the White House in the first place. The truth is that Trump TV is bursting with ratings potential. 

I’m sure Trump could convince his old friend, the bloviater Bill O’Reilly, to come out of forced retirement for The O’Reilly Factor 2.0, and could poach the sycophant Sean Hannity and the boozy belligerent Judge Jeanine to jump the Fox ship and join Trump TV.

But what would make Trump TV a ratings goldmine is that it would undoubtedly become TNN…the Trump Nepotism Network.

Ivanka Trump and her empty-suit husband Jared Kushner would undoubtedly be put in charge of the day-to-day operations of Trump TV and fill the network’s lineup with Trumpian news, entertainment and reality shows that would be the most electrifying line-up in cable television history.

For example, Donald Trump’s youngest son, Baron Trump, could star in a reboot of Silver Spoons, playing the role that made Ricky Schroeder famous back in the 80’s.

Baron could also dip his toe into the fetid swamp of reality tv with Livin’ in Slytherin, a show that chronicles the ups and downs of the Draco Malfoy look-a-like’s life while attending Hogwarts and living at Slytherin House.

Baron’s mom, and Trump’s current wife, the delightfully milfy Melania, could star in an Eastern European accented reboot of Desperate Housewives, and also be the main attraction on the runaway reality hit Almost Real Housewives of Mar-a-Lago.

First-born son Donald Trump Jr. and his gal pal Kimberly Guilfoyle could host The Screaming Hour - Brought to You by Meth Amphetamine, where the odd-couple incoherently shout Trumpian platitudes until they pass out from dry mouth. Another working title for the show is Crossfire on Cocaine.

Guilfoyle, the taut-faced tart who is the former wife of California Governor Gavin Newsome and a one-time Fox News firebrand who was sacked for sexual harassment, could also have her own game show titled Shameless, where she chooses moderately famous men to sleep with in order to desperately hold on to any sort of relevancy.

The intellectually challenged Eric Trump could host his own cooking show that would be a cross between The Great British Baking Show and Fear Factor, titled, Eric Trump Eats His Own Boogers, where Paul Hollywood looks on incredulously as the dim-witted Eric gobbles his own snots.

The only Trump offspring not to have a show on Trump TV will be poor Tiffany Trump, but in keeping with her least-favorite-child status she will, Cinderella style, work at the network in janitorial services.

Venturing out of the Trump family to his administration also opens up some ratings possibilities.

There could be the Kellyanne and George Conway Variety Hour, where, like Sonny and Cher on crack, America’s least favorite couple and their attention seeking teen daughter, Claudia, could bicker and have breakdowns between musical numbers and comedy sketches.

Anthony Scaramucci could host 10 Minutes with the Mooch, which would last 10 minutes - one minute for every day he worked as Trump’s Director of Communications. Scaramucci would spend the 10 minutes trying to figure out which way the political winds were blowing and then licking the proper boots.

Vice president Mike Pence could host his own art show that would be like the wild-haired Robert Norman Ross’ old PBS program The Joy of Painting, except Pence’s version would be The Joy of Ass-Kissing. Pence and his wife Karen could also star in a remake of Will and Grace.

Of course, the biggest draw of Trump TV would be The Donald himself.

Unlike Fox, CNN and MSNBC, which once upon a time gladly milked Trump’s bizarre star power to enhance their own ratings but now actually refuse to cover his speeches or cut away from them mid-sentence, Trump TV will proudly cover all of The Donald’s rabid rallies and rants in their entirety.

The funniest thing about my imagined version of Trump TV is that if this inane network ever actually comes to air it will have just as much journalistic integrity as the phony, flag-waving fools at Fox and the insidious, mendacious, sanctimonious clowns on CNN and MSNBC.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

Joe Biden Has Defeated Trump - Meet the New Boss...Same as the Old Boss

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 07 seconds

Biden’s electoral victory has been met with cheers, proving that gullible Americans are eager to get fooled once again.

A few hours ago I was startled by a collective shout that went out across my neighborhood here in Los Angeles. I had no idea what all the noise was about, but people were making quite an exuberant ruckus. After checking the news I quickly realized the cheers were due to the fact that all the networks were officially calling the presidential race for Joe Biden.

I haven’t heard that much happy screaming since a few weeks ago when the Dodgers won the World Series, and before that when the Lakers won the NBA championship.  It is apropos that Angelinos would cheer Biden’s victory the same way they celebrated their sports team’s titles…as all of these events are nothing but a function of empty tribalism and vacuous emotionalism that in the long run don’t actually mean a damn thing.

For the fools here in the City of Angels celebrating Biden’s victory, nothing will fundamentally change in their lives, for good or for ill. They will still have to step over hordes of homeless people and used needles and human excrement as they navigate this sick, venal, miserable third world shithole trying, and usually failing, to scratch out a living and to make ends meet.

Biden’s rapturously received electoral victory is a vacant win for nothing but a stylistic change. The hysterically happy masses around me are overjoyed because Biden isn’t as much of a boor as Trump, not exactly a high bar. That said, Biden will certainly be more of a bore than Trump. 

On substance, Biden is, like the Orange Man liberals love to loathe, a shameless corporatist who will bend over backwards to fill the coffers of the fat cats in board rooms and on Wall Street, all while screwing over poor, working and middle-class people.

Biden’s ascension to the American throne is akin to the dreadful sitcom Two and a Half Men replacing Charlie Sheen with Ashton Kutcher. The obnoxious Sheen and his “tiger blood” were gone, but the show still really sucked…and Kutcher was annoying jerk in his own right.

As far as Biden replacing Trump goes, for people like me, things will only change on the surface and the sitcom that is American politics will still suck.

For instance, those who think public college should be tuition free for the working class and student debt cancelled, meet Joe Biden, the man who was instrumental in getting a bankruptcy bill passed that made it impossible to discharge student debt, thus damning generations to indentured servitude to pay back school loans over-inflated through government interference.

For people who think we should have universal health care, meet Joe Biden, an architect of Obamacare, that insidious bill written by insurance companies that fleeces Americans by forcing people to buy their abysmal product at exorbitant prices under force of law. Biden, similar to Trump, has even promised to veto any universal health care bill that would ever come to his desk.

For those opposed to Wall Street socializing losses while privatizing gains, meet Joe Biden, who will, like Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump before him, populate his administration with nefarious Wall Street shills and despicable devotees of the Goldman Sachs cult who will hungrily devour any taxpayer bailouts that they can get their hands on. 

For peace loving people who think America should be less militaristic, belligerent and bellicose abroad, meet Joe Biden, the man who voted for the Iraq War that killed millions, and is a poodle to the Pentagon with an itchy trigger finger to get tough with America’s adversaries, be they real or imagined, across the globe.

For those who think the drug war and criminal justice system are an abject failure, meet Joe Biden, the man who wrote the 1994 Crime Bill that has given America the dubious distinction of having the highest prison population rate in the entire world.

For working class folks that have repeatedly gotten screwed by Washington’s corporate friendly free trade policies that decimated the manufacturing base in America and eventually led to the rise of Donald Trump, meet Joe Biden, the NAFTA-loving narcissist who pretends to be a man of the people but is really the lap dog of big money interests.

For those who despised Trump for his war on the press, meet Joe Biden, who was vice president for Obama, the man who waged more than a Trumpian rhetorical war on the press, but an actual war on the press by using the Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers more times than every other president in U.S. history combined.

For people outraged by Trump putting “kids in cages” as part of his crackdown on illegal immigration, meet Joe Biden, who was vice president during the Obama administration which aggressively deported more immigrants than Trump and who also put “kids in cages”.

For every emotionally triggered simpleton so gloriously giddy over Trump’s demise and Biden’s rise…meet the new boss….same as the old boss. You are all being fooled. Me…I won’t get fooled again.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

2020 Election: The Horror Show Meets the Decadent Death Spiral

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes 27 seconds

Here are some random dispatches from the shitshow that is 2020 and the turd sandwich that is the election…

SPOOKY SEASON

Halloween, my favorite holiday, has sadly come and gone with barely a whimper due to coronavirus restrictions here in the City of Angels, where Mayor Nepotism furiously banned trick or treating but shrugs when it comes to “protesting”…i.e. rioting and looting. Unfortunately, spooky season isn’t in the rear view mirror just yet though because the real horror show is on Tuesday - Election Day.

THE MONSTER MASH

This election is between two creatures. First there is Biden - Frankenstein’s monster, built in a lab in Washington over the course of a dismal forty-plus year career. Like Frankenstein’s monster, Biden hides in a basement, can’t really speak, has a malfunctioning brain and touches little girls inappropriately. Unlike Frankenstein’s monster, Biden won’t turn on his creator - Washington and Wall St., because he is as corrupt as the day is long.

I DON’T DRINK WHINE

The other creature is Trump, who is a vampire of the highest degree. Like a vampire, Trump is all about satiating his immediate desires and impulses. Like Dracula, Trump acts like low-class royalty with a crumbling real-estate empire (Carfax Abbey was a shithole - and so was Dracula’s dilapidated Castle!) and has an army of Renfieldian sycophantic minions who slavishly do his bidding. And also like Dracula, he feeds on humans…except in Trump’s case it is on human attention. Trump gorges himself on attention and has transformed the public, friend and foe alike, into slaves who react to his every act or utterance - no matter how absurd, thus injecting attention - his lifeblood, into his veins.

What is so striking to me about our current time is how thoroughly the populace has been inducted into this Vampyric Cult of Trump….and it isn’t his supporters I am talking about. The anti-Trump people…be they butt-hurt establishment Republicans or absolutely anyone on the left, are the ones who are totally under the sway of the monster they love to loathe.

It is utterly astonishing how obsessed Trump’s foes are with him. Every liberal and moderate Republican I know hates him with the fury of a thousand suns…but they never stop thinking or talking about him. Trump dominates American consciousness like no other person, president or otherwise, before him.

I know scores of liberals who are literally physically repulsed by the sight and sound of Trump but still religiously and masochistically watch every one of his speeches, debates or rallies. It is the strangest sort of masturbatorial self-harming imaginable. And accompanying this Trump addiction is TDS - Trump Derangement Syndrome, which is the most fervent pandemic ravaging the country today. Trump Derangement Syndrome has real world consequences as it turns once rational people into emotionally unstable and logic impaired lunatics. If I had a nickle for every time Trump made some statement that liberal friends of mine actually agreed with, but because Trump said it they actually change their minds to embrace the polar opposite belief, I’d be a millionaire.

UNDEAD VS RE-ANIMATED

I have stayed as far away from this election and its media coverage as I could. I have not watched a single second of any of the conventions, debates, speeches or rallies. I have not watched a second of cable news, or any other news, since coronavirus broke in the Spring. I have basically stopped reading op-eds in all of the major newspapers I peruse everyday because they are so dreadfully predictable.

The only thing I have watched is political entertainment (although all politics is entertainment, but that is a discussion for another day) like the abysmal Saturday Night Live, Bill Maher and John Oliver - and I’ve only done that because I have to for my work.

Having been in this election coverage quarantine has given me a unique perspective that is devoid of Trump triggering and fueled not by animosity but genuine curiosity. This curiosity has led me to the most basic of questions…can the nefarious Nosferatu of Trump be destroyed by the Biden Frankenstein’s monster? In other words, can the undead be defeated by the re-animated?

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE JOKER

As long time readers know, I have a wave theory…the Isaiah-McCaffrey Wave Theory (IMWT) that uses social, cultural, economic and historical data points to measure trends in order to predict public behavior.

The IMWT accurately predicted the 2016 election. In trying to use it to predict the 2020 Democratic nomination, it was wrong - or more accurately…I was wrong in interpreting the timeline. The data in 2019 and early in 2020 clearly indicated two things…that there would be tremendous civil unrest and upheaval ahead, and that an outsider candidate would be successful in 2020.

The unrest certainly happened…the outsider candidate did not…at least not in the Democratic primary.

As for the unrest….in my October 7, 2019 review of Joker, I wrote, “Joker is unnerving to mainstream media critics because it shines the spotlight on the disaffected and dissatisfied in America, who are legion, growing in numbers and getting angrier by the hour. As I have witnessed in my own life, the rage, resentment and violent mental instability among the populace in America is like a hurricane out in the Atlantic, gaining more power and force as every day passes, and inevitably heading right toward landfall and a collision with highly populated urban centers that will inevitably result in a conflagration of epic proportions.”

I ended that review by writing “Joker is a mirror, and it reflects the degeneracy, depravity and sheer madness that is engulfing America. Joker is an extremely dark film, but that is because America is an extremely dark place at the moment.”

In the light of what has happened thus far in 2020, those observations from the Fall of 2019 seem prescient.

According to the IMWT, Joker was the most important film of 2019, as it was the only film to be in the top ten in domestic box office and nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. Joker was despised by establishment critics, but that was because they hated the uncomfortable truth about what was brewing just beneath the surface of America.

Now of course, being victims of their own sub-conscious and the collective unconscious, these same elites cheer the rioting, looting and violence in the streets because they think it is righteous. The angry clowns burning down Gotham in Joker, which elite critics despised, felt the same way.

The second most important film from 2019 was Parasite. Parasite won a remarkable four Oscars, Best Picture, Best Foreign Language Film, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. Parasite was the ultimate outsider. It is a Korean film, and, like Joker, directly addressed class dissatisfaction and violence as a result of that class divide.

On October 14, 2019, I wrote in my review of Parasite, “Parasite is a brilliant examination of the frustration and fury that accompanies being at the bottom of the social rung in a corrupt and rigged capitalist system. The only way to get ahead and get out of the prison of debt, and it is a prison, is to lie, scheme and cheat. If that means throwing other poor people under the bus, then so be it.”

I concluded my review by writing, “My recommendation is to go as quickly as you can to the art house and see Parasite…it is that good. And after that, head to the cineplex to see Joker…again, and then when you get home watch Shoplifters (I see it is now available on the streaming service HULU)…because they are that good too. If you want to know what is coming for America and the world, and why, go watch those three movies.”

I stand by that review…and the one of Joker. It is worth noting that the titles of those two films, Joker and Parasite, would be a perfect starter set for a collage of buzzwords to describe Trump.

THE OUTSIDER WITH THE INSIDE TRACK

As for the 2020 election, what troubles me…and has troubled me since Biden’s selection as the Democratic nominee, is that, as the success of these two films, Parasite and Joker, clearly represent, the fundamentals of the IMWT haven’t changed much, if at all. They still point, very clearly, to an outsider winning the election. But while Biden is certainly out of office, he is the consummate Washington insider, and is selling himself as such

On the other hand, Trump’s greatest political accomplishment is that he has been president for four years and has still managed to maintain his status as an outsider. The political and Washington establishment hate him. The media hate him. The elites across the board hate him. Trump, despite his residence at the White House, is the archetypal outsider…and that should be disconcerting to those who want to see him lose.

I should disclose at this point that I will not be voting for either Biden or Trump. I have never voted for any Republican or Democratic candidate, and considering the shit show on the ballot, I am not going to start this year.

With that said…the signs in the IMWT do currently point to Trump winning re-election. I know this is aggressively contrary to conventional wisdom and the polls and the media coverage. But the theory says what it says even if it isn’t saying it nearly as strongly as it did in 2016.

Maybe the theory is wrong, that is certainly a possibility as this year has been an odd one in which there is a paucity of cultural data due to the film industry essentially being shut down due to the coronavirus. It is very difficult to measure movements in public sentiment through box office receipts when people can’t go to the movies.

That said, what little data we do have for 2020 does lean towards Trump. Without getting into the weeds on all of it, just consider that the number one film at the U.S. box office this year is Bad Boys for Life. That is such a pro-Trump title it could be his campaign slogan.

I won’t get into the nitty-gritty of the IMWT just because it can be pretty tedious, but if Trump does win I will write a separate article detailing all of it. If Biden wins, I will eat my crow and go back to the drawing board.

ANECDOTAL

In early August I thought it was impossible for Trump to win. The pandemic was raging, the economy collapsing, the country awash in civil unrest. In addition, I knew absolutely no one who was voting for Trump, and like famed film critic Pauline Kael, I thought, how can Trump win if no one I know is voting for him?

Then I started making some calls and reaching out to people from across the country and most specifically in swing states. The anecdotal information I got from these discussions was eye-opening.

The word on the street…again entirely anecdotal…was that Trump had a large groundswell of support in swing states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Surprisingly, I was also hearing a lot of anecdotes about Latinos being strong Trump supporters.

Of course, anecdotal evidence is not worth a damn, but I found it striking how vociferous the pro-Trump sentiment seemed to be. I definitely heard from people who were voting for Biden too, but none of them were voting FOR Biden, only against Trump - once again highlighting how Trump dominates the collective consciousness.

UNIMAGINABLE TRUMP

Trump currently being the center of the cultural universe has created a situation where it is impossible to imagine him winning while simultaneously impossible to imagine him off of center stage. This is Trump’s power and his greatest asset…he forces you to feel forcefully about him…be it love or hate. And by doing so, makes himself psychologically indispensable.

Everything that is said or done nowadays is said or done in response to Trump. He is the straw that stirs the drink, as well as the glass that contains it and the concoction within it.

Trump is like coronavirus…he is everywhere, so much so that it is impossible to remember a time before the disease descended upon us. Everyone yearns for the time before but few can remember it. The myopia brought about by both coronavirus and Trumpism (and TDS) brings with it a suffocating paranoia and ever increasing delirium.

This is another reason why I think Trump will win…and that is because the entirety of our media suffer from this Trump/coronavirus myopia, paranoia and delirium, and therefore have a totally distorted perspective on reality here in America.

The media hate Trump so much but they desperately need him. Trump is their lifeblood just like they are his.

NAME THAT COUP TUNE

I have noticed something very disconcerting in the months leading up to election day, and that is that the media have been amplifying voices and narratives that seem eerily familiar to me. The voices and narratives highlighted talk incessantly about Trump stealing the election, not leaving office if he loses, and doing all sorts of nefarious authoritarian things.

One of the most repeated claims I hear is that even if Trump wins on election night, he isn’t really the winner. That it will take weeks and maybe a month to figure out who won. This is accompanied by claims that Trump will declare himself the winner on election night as part of his plan to steal the election.

Why I find all this unnerving is because this is so blatantly taken from the CIA’s playbook when they run a coup in Latin America, South America or Eastern Europe. A brief perusal of the recent coup in Bolivia where Evo Morales was ousted is a prime example.

The intelligence community is gunning for Trump no less than they went after Kennedy, and I think they aim to steal the election from him. I know most readers, particularly the liberal ones, think the exact opposite, that Trump is going to steal the election, but that is also part of the CIA’s mind game.

The intelligence community’s fingerprints are all over multiple anti-Trump operations from the get-go…be it the farcical Russia-gate or Ukraine-gate or the multitude of other scandals plaguing this inept administration. This is not to say that Trump is some squeaky clean scapegoat, it is to say that the intelligence community is actively working to undermine and, in a 21st century way…politically assassinate/eliminate him.

I don’t like Trump…and in fact have despised him from way back in the 80’s when he first started selling his bullshit in public. But that doesn’t mean I will turn a blind eye when the intelligence community is running disinformation and destabilizing operations within its own country.

When stories driven by anonymous sources come to the forefront declaring that USPS mailboxes are being removed, and Russians are penetrating voter rolls and the winner on election night isn’t the winner, understand that this is CIA manipulation through and through.

Keep your eyes and ears open on election night and in the days and weeks following…the game is on and will be hiding in plain sight.

RIOT TIME

If Trump wins…this country will lose its mind and you can expect an unprecedented and massive amount of rioting, looting and violence in the streets of American cities both big and small. These riots will be epic and make the George Floyd riots seem like a church picnic.

If Biden wins, there will be only sporadic rioting…like after a team wins a championship. People will celebrate, it will get out of hand and shit will get looted. Whereas if Trump wins…expect volcanic and violent chaos for weeks and months on end. And expect the media and elites to endorse and support this violence and chaos just like they did over the summer.

As for Trump supporters rioting in the wake of an electoral defeat…I don’t think that will happen. Trump supporters are not in urban areas, for the most part, which makes it difficult to gather en masse to riot.

CONCLUSION

Biden is selling an image of America (and himself)…gentle, neighborly, soft-spoken…that is a lie. And ironically, Trump is selling the truth. Trump is the manifestation of the madness that has descended upon America. This is a narcissistic nation of bullies and blowhards, cowards and con-men. Trump is not what America hopes to be, or what it deludes itself into thinking it is…he is simply the embodiment of America’s reality. This is why he will win. And even if he loses, that won’t change the reality of America, only the power of its delusions.

And understand, Biden is not a “return to normal” as there is no “return to normal”…only getting used to the new normal. A Biden presidency will be America’s dementia made manifest. This election…even if Biden wins…will change absolutely nothing. The dye is cast…the worm has turned…the American experiment, the American Empire, and with it its house of cards economy…are disintegrating. This country is in a decadent death spiral and no election, and particularly not one between two elderly, mental defectives who even in their primes were sub-mediocrities, like Trump and Biden, will alter that trajectory.

This election - which like every election of my lifetime has been dubbed the most important election of all time, is nothing but a vacuous pissing contest between oblivious elites eager to see who gets to captain the Titanic.

©2020

Coronavirus Thoughts and Musings

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes 27 seconds

With the coronavirus currently kicking us all in the ass and with Dear Leader announcing that the “self-distancing” protocols will stay in effect for at least another month, now seems as good a time as any to throw out some thoughts regarding this entire viral nightmare that has become our reality.

One of the benefits of being stuck in self-imposed isolation is that it gives one time to reflect and ponder on things. What follows are some of my reflections and ponderings.

PSYCHOLOGY OF A PLAGUE

The psychology of coronavirus is pretty fascinating to observe, in others and in myself.

In the weeks leading up to March 12th, when all hell broke loose in America when the NBA and NHL postponed their seasons over Covid-19 marking a new stage in the seriousness of the pandemic, I spoke to a bunch of people living across the U.S. to ask them what they thought about the coronavirus story.

At that time, every single person I spoke with told me that the coronavirus story was overblown or media hype. Not a single one of them took it even remotely seriously or adapted their lifestyle or began preparing for a prolonged pandemic.

I bought into the coronavirus story pretty early and was genuinely concerned about it, enough so that I stocked up on food and supplies back in February. When I spoke with people about coronavirus, I did not try to convince anyone else to change their opinion, but instead only listened to their perspective. I was keenly aware that to challenge people on their coronavirus beliefs of the moment could be interpreted as “judging” them, which was not my intention. I was only aware that human psychology being what it is, if I pressed people on their beliefs that would only engender defensiveness and further strengthen the belief I was questioning.

What I discovered through these conversations was that the consensus of doubt appeared to be a manifestation of both denial and cognitive dissonance.

What further bolstered this finding was that when I stopped to examine my own journey regarding coronavirus, I quickly discovered that I too went through some stages of palpable denial fueled by cognitive dissonance.

Proof of my cognitive dissonance shows itself in the fact that my concern regarding Covid-19 was so striking that I actually prepared my home for quarantine back in February and at the same time even began lobbying my wife (unsuccessfully) to pull our young son from pre-school, but despite all of that I still engaged in foolish and dangerous behavior anyway.

For example, in the first week of March, even though I was deathly frightened to do so, I still went to two concerts. On March 4th I took crowded public transportation to the Staples Center and saw Kiss, and then four days later went to the Saban Theater to see Buddy Guy. I was hyper-aware of the risk, and was vigilant in avoiding touching things and my face and every fifteen minutes or so doused my hands in Purell, but still, going to those concerts was incredibly reckless.

My thinking when deciding whether to go to these concerts or not was this…”well, I already paid for the ticket so I don’t want that money to go to waste.” This thinking, which my good Irish friend Liam called “Potato Famine Mentality”, is utterly insane. In my mind I was risking my life to go to these concerts, but still went out of not wanting to “waste money”. This is denial in action and shows the power of my own cognitive dissonance.

On March 9th, the day after I attended the Buddy Guy show, consensus was finally reached in the Politburo of my household and so we pulled my son from school, and my wife stopped going to work. This was one full week before all of LA and LA schools were shut down and three days before the NBA and NHL shut down. So basically my family has officially had a one week head start on wrapping our head around the very difficult-to-grasp concept of quarantining. From this vantage point it has been enlightening to see other people go through the same mental gymnastics we did, just a week or two after us.

For instance, days after I pulled my son from school both LA and New York City began debating whether they should shut down schools. The arguments they used were, like my Potato Famine Mentality, utterly insane, such as “kids don’t die from the disease” or “parents can’t stop working to stay at home with kids” or “kids get their meals from school”. These statements may be true but they are entirely irrelevant when dealing with a deadly pandemic. LA and NYC schools were victims of their own cognitive dissonance and stuck in denial because to acknowledge reality was too heavy a burden to bear. The officials in LA and NYC were simply incapable of wrapping their heads around the gravity of the situation because it was in their own personal best interests to not do so. Thankfully, they eventually came to their senses and a week after I made the same decision, they closed schools.

President Trump, the federal government and some state governments, have gone through that same roller coaster ride of denial, until reality crashed upon their heads and it could no longer be denied. Trump, ever the American id, sometimes goes through masturbatorial episodes of cognitive dissonance and denial even in the course of a press conference or in the answer to a single question.

The biggest lesson I learned from my struggle with cognitive dissonance and denial was that people really are entirely resistant to the concept of their own vulnerability and massive upheaval and change.

For example, baby boomers seem to be in deep denial about the dangers of coronavirus, and have been very slow to grasp the dire nature of the situation. Added on top of that is their denial of the reality that they are, in fact, elderly. It seems the vast majority of that generation are oblivious to the danger of Covid-19 and to the fact that they are not invincible, and have acted recklessly and selfishly in an act of adolescent defiance. You’d expect the delusion of invincibility from teenagers whose brains haven’t even fully developed yet, but not from 70 year olds with a lifetime of experience.

The baby boomer’s delusions of invincibility as well as their coronavirus denial fit nicely into American’s overall persistent inability to grasp that things can and will change, and will do so in a hurry. The one basic rule of life is this…things will not always be the way they are now. The aggressively delusional nature of our entire culture is stunning to behold when you step back and take a good look at it….and right now we all have time to step back and take a look at it.

Speaking of the delusional nature of our culture…

THE POLITICS OF A PANDEMIC

The coronavirus is a black swan event that is obliterating expectations across our culture and throwing everything, be it the economy, politics, entertainment, sport, you name it…into chaos.

As I argued in my last piece, crisis is always an opportunity for change, but the things that need to change in America won’t, and the things we shouldn’t change will…but for the worse.

Which brings us to the presidential election. My first thought regarding the election is I wonder if it will even happen.

There have been some epidemiologists saying that they believe that Covid-19 is a seasonal disease. This is good news and bad news…the good news is that it means that the disease will recede in the summer which will give people a much needed break from isolation.

The bad news is that being seasonal means it will return in the fall…right around election time. So if it returns in early November, that means that polling places could be a prime place for transmission and the pandemic could intensify over the winter beyond the nightmare through which we are already living.

If coronavirus returns earlier than that…say in early October, that could be even more troubling, as there is a distinct possibility that the election could be “postponed”. I know that sounds alarmist…but does anyone think that Trump would hesitate for one second to postpone/cancel the election if it were to his benefit? Does anyone think the Republicans in the Senate and the House, or conservatives on the Supreme Court would challenge him on that? No way.

It would also be difficult for Democrats to make a compelling case against this action since they will no doubt spend the campaign slamming Trump for having not done enough to prevent the coronavirus crisis in the first place or to fight it when it arrived. Trump would of course frame the “postponed” election as a preventative measure and would then turn the issue onto Democrats who are being reckless with America’s health.

Of course, this is all just speculation, and I hope the virus is soon eradicated and life returns to some semblance of “normalcy”. But normalcy seems much farther away than tyranny at the moment.

As far as the candidates go, due to coronavirus, they are not as set in stone as we might think they are. Both Trump and the presumptive Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, are in their 70’s and not exactly the picture of health. It is certainly not out of the realm of possibility that Trump or Biden or both, could get sick and ultimately die from the disease….or something else.

Trump dying from Covid-19 (or another health issue), would, depending on the timing, presumably put Pence on the ballot. It would also kick off a furious civil war within the Republican party that would obliterate any chance for their victory in November. Trump and his personal ambition are the foundation of the Republican party right now, and without his cult of personality, the party will crumble.

Even Pence being the VP choice is tenuous at the moment. Even though he is one of the most aggressive sycophants of the Trump era who has brought shameless ass-kissing to new lows, I could totally see Trump just kicking him to the curb for Nikki Haley or someone else.

Even though Trump has been excruciatingly awful in his handling of the coronavirus crisis and in leading the country through it, his poll numbers are skyrocketing (for him at least) so he may not have to cancel the election to win it. Trump is greatly aided by the fact that the Democrats seem to be rolling the dice with Joe Biden, who looks as though he reeks of formaldehyde. it is hysterical to me that Democrats chose to make their decision in the primary on “electability”, and landed on Biden, who is an absolute disaster of a candidate. He is obviously suffering from dementia, and appears to be having a stroke almost every time he is on camera.

In the early weeks of the coronavirus crisis Biden was totally MIA. In recent days he has come out of hiding and everyone now wishes he was back to being MIA.

Biden persistently appears like a doddering old man who has just awoken from a very long and disorienting nap. Even with the absurdly soft treatment he gets from the media, the incoherent Biden still looks so physically and mentally frail that it is painful to watch.

Beyond Biden’s age and health limitations, he is also just a dreadful politician, and always has been. He is exactly what we don’t need or want at this moment. He is a corrupt establishmentarian who believes in absolutely nothing except his own advancement. A brief glimpse at his long track record reveals a target rich environment where selling out isn’t just a recurring theme, but the only theme.

It is very apparent to me that Trump is not up to running the country, but it is also very apparent that Biden is not up to running for president. I think even the dipshits at the DNC can see that he is not up to a grueling campaign. I believe there is a decent chance that at, or before, the convention, Biden steps down, or is pushed…in fact I’d put the odds of Biden being the nominee in November at less than 50%.

There is a lot of speculation afoot that the current “savior of the moment”, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, or as I call him, Rudy Giuliani with a Prostate, may be foisted upon the nation at the convention. I have an intense dislike for Andrew Cuomo, who is an absolute piece of shit and one of the biggest assholes we have in public life - quite an accomplishment.

Governor Cuomo is out there now bitching and moaning about a lack of hospital beds and supplies in New York needed to fight the plague of coronavirus, but it is his policies, including gutting medicaid - which he is still doing even during a pandemic - that have closed hospitals and removed 20,000 hospital beds from the state. Once again a politician makes it rain outside then complains about the weather.

Andrew’s brother Chris, who just tested positive for Covid-19, is a CNN host and may very well be the dumbest human being to ever walk the face of the earth. I sincerely hope that Chris recovers in full, if only because I hope to meet him one day, call him “Fredo” and then beat the few brain cells he actually has out of his stupid, dopey head.

It has been well established that Chris Cuomo is Fredo Corleone…but make no mistake, that does not make Andrew Cuomo - Michael Corleone…or even Sonny or Tom. No, Andrew Cuomo is Phillip Tattaglia…and just like Tattaglia, Andrew Cuomo is a skeezy pimp.

Besides Cuomo as a Biden replacement, there have also been rumblings that Hillary Clinton would, like a nasty strain of chlamydia, resurface once again. This is unlikely, but considering it is such a catastrophically bad idea, the DNC might just do it.

Regardless of who the candidates are, there is one thing we can count on…the American people are going to get fucked over six ways to Sunday by whichever douchebag wins.

PLAYING PANDEMIC DURING A PANDEMIC

Ten years ago this April 14th, my good friend Ben Morris died from cancer. Ben’s death was a staggering blow to all of us who loved him.

Ben battled the disease for over two years before it took his life. In those years, where he was more or less stuck in his brother Jem’s apartment in Los Angeles or at his parents house in Seattle, Ben became interested in, and sort of obsessed with, high end board games.

Ben, Jem and I would play these pricey board games for hours and hours on end. Games like Catan, Puerto Rico, Die Macher, Princes of Florence and many others were on the menu for our marathon sessions.

Board games were perfect for us because playing them was a social act, we could converse and joke and actually look at one another as we played, unlike with say video games, where there is very little human connection.

Ben and I got so into board games we actually designed our own, which I have to admit was a pretty cool game. Sadly, a mutual friend (former friend actually) stole the idea after Ben died and is now trying to sell it as his own. Rest assured, if I ever see this cunt again I am going to kick him in the mouth so hard his teeth will fly out his asshole, and then I’ll decapitate him with a wooden spoon and throw his empty fucking head into a septic tank.

Sorry…I got distracted by rage…what was I talking about? Oh right…board games.

Anyway, one game that Ben really got into when he was sick was Pandemic. Pandemic is a board game where you work as a team to try and stop a series of disease outbreaks across the globe. It is a pretty cool game.

Ben went through a period during his illness when he was obsessed with Pandemic…so much so that he would play solitaire games of it for hours on end. The psychology of someone battling cancer being obsessed with a game where you are trying to stamp out disease popping up across the globe is fascinating. It seemed obvious to me that Ben was using Pandemic as an avatar for his own battle to stamp out the disease in his body.

Which brings me to today and the coronavirus pandemic.

When Ben died Jem gave me a lot of the board games we all used to play. Not being much of a social entity, I have not played the games a great deal over the last decade. But when the coronavirus pandemic hit I immediately thought of Pandemic and went to try and find it. I couldn’t though. The game is somehow missing from my collection. So I searched online and found a video version of it instead that only cost $4.99…which is a huge bargain since high end board games can run $50 or more. So I bought Pandemic online and began to play it on my own.

I can now fully understand how the fear of dying from a disease can fuel an obsession with Pandemic. There is an urgency and profound meaning to every game I play. When I lose and the pandemic runs out of control over the earth, my heart sinks as I ponder the chance of that happening in the real world. My mortality doesn’t just feel inevitable, but impending.

When I actually win the game, which is maybe 1/3 of the time, I find myself being much, much more optimistic about the coronavirus pandemic and how bad it will get and how soon it will end. After wins I find myself gravitating to more positive news regarding our own pandemic…away from death counts and toward cures, vaccines and optimistic timelines and such.

I think my current fascination with the game Pandemic is just another extension of the denial I mentioned earlier. In the coronavirus pandemic we all feel hopeless and helpless and there is nothing we can do…but when I play Pandemic it feels like I am doing something. The thing I am doing is, every time I win at least, purging my anxiety, and when I lose it is an exercise in embracing humility in the face of a gargantuan existential problem.

Beyond that, I have no further insights on coronavirus at the moment, so I will conclude my rambling by telling you to stay safe, stay healthy and stay alive.

©2020

Thoughts and Musings: Featuring Fredo, Bed Bug, Lady Kicker and More!

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes 12 seconds

FREDO AND THE BED BUG

A story came out a few weeks ago that was my favorite story of the year, the millenium and maybe of all time. The story was really nothing more than a video…but my Lord that video was absolutely magnificent. The video is of CNN host Chris Cuomo, son of former NY Governor Mario Cuomo and brother to current NY Governor Andrew Cuomo, getting all chesty with some guy at a summer party because the guy called him “Fredo”. Sadly, the video, which is in my humble estimation the very best movie of 2019 so far, has been scrubbed from youtube….but here is a news report on it.

Cuomo was incensed at being labeled with the disparaging name Fredo, which refers to Fredo Corleone of the Godfather movies, who is the incompetent and weak Corleone son especially when compared to his brothers, Michael, Sonny, and Tom Hagan. Cuomo went so far as to say that Fredo is the equivalent of the “n-word” for Italians. Brilliant.

A couple things here…first…Cuomo is a silver-spooned, spoiled brat and recipient of the Lifetime Achievement in Nepotism award who may be the dumbest person to ever speak on television. Anytime I’ve ever seen Fredo Cuomo on television I am constantly distracted by the overwhelming sound of wind whistling through his empty fucking head. If Fredo Cuomo weren’t part of New York political royalty, my guess is he would have been diagnosed as being officially mentally retarded and sent to an institution where he could eat paste all day and play with his, and others, poop, rather than have gotten a job on television. Although to be fair, tv is a great place to put a mental defective and intellectual midget like Fredo Cuomo as he fits right in with the rest of the vacuous dipshits in that business.

In the video in question, Fredo Cuomo acts tough by telling the guy who called him “Fredo” to be a man and own up to what he said and also threatening to throw the guy down a flight of stairs. The guy in the confrontation is little more than an irritant and Fredo gets to do and say what he wants with impunity and only really tries to escalate things when he is being held back by his sycophantic posse.

Here is the thing…Chris “Fredo” Cuomo has lived the entirety of his life much like Donald Trump, in a protective bubble where he is immune from consequences. Well, if I ever have the pleasure of being in Chris Cuomo’s presence I vow I will call him Fredo over and over and over and over and over again, and I hope he tries to do something about it because I won’t put my tail between my legs…I will do the world a favor and smash his stupid, entitled fucking face in. There is a legitimate reason for people to call Chris Cuomo, “Fredo”, it is because he is, just like Fredo, stupid, worthless and weak. In fact, Chris Cuomo is way worse than Fredo…Fredo at least was banging cocktails waitresses two at a time out in Vegas, a bit of multi-tasking of which Chris “Fredo” Cuomo is no doubt incapable. Calling Chris Cuomo “Fredo” is not an insult to Cuomo…but an insult to Fredo.

My greatest hope going forward is that all Americans can put aside petty political and cultural squabbles and come together around this singular issue and make the unified commitment to always and every time call Chris Cuomo, “Fredo”, whenever within earshot of this vacant-eyed douchebag. Now, If you are so lucky as to be in Fredo’s presence but you think it is an inappropriate time to call him Fredo, if, say, he is visiting sick kids in a hospital or something…don’t let that bother you…it is always the PERFECT time to call him Fredo…BECAUSE THAT IS HIS FUCKING NAME FROM NOW ON!

To mimic our wondrous jackass of a president…I hereby declare that forthwith, Chris Cuomo is officially to be known as “Fredo”. Go forth Americans and make me proud and torture this needle-dicked clown by calling him Fredo to his face in perpetuity! And for extra credit call his brother Andrew...The Gimp.

There was another instance of supposed rude behavior in the public sphere this week when Dave Karpf, a professor at George Washington University, sent out a tweet that called NY Times columnist Bret Stephens a “bed bug”. Literally seven people read the tweet, but somehow word got to Stephens and he sent off an email to Karpf inviting him to his house to see if he would dare call him a bed bug after meeting his wife and family. The email is mildly threatening in a “say that to my face” kind of way, but nothing egregious. No, what makes Stephens actions in this case egregious are that he sent the email not only to the “offender” Karpf, but to Karpf's boss, the provost of GWU. Obviously Stephens was trying to get this guy fired for his snarky tweet.

What makes all of this even more repulsive is that Stephens is constantly calling out people to be more thick skinned and for snowflakes to grow a spine and all that jazz. Well…what is good for the goose apparently is not so good for the gander. Stephens is a repugnant little neo-con, chickenhawk character who is always willing to send other people to fight, especially for his beloved Israel, for whom he is a shameless shill. Stephens’ writing is nothing if not derivative, vapid and banal, and as recently as this past June I wrote about how he lied about the attacks on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf in order to drum up war against Iran for Israel.

In keeping with his character, Stephens went on MSNBC in the wake of Bedbug-gate and tried to play the Jewish victim card by saying authoritarians (read: Hitler!) often call people bugs in order to dehumanize them and claimed he didn’t email people at GWU and wasn’t trying to get the guy fired. Of course, after Stephens MSNBC appearance it came out he did email the provost at GWU…and was obviously trying to get the guy axed all for the sin of disrespecting the great Bret Stephens, defender of civility.

To his great credit, Stephens later in the day made the bold and courageous decision to quit…twitter. Wow…what courage.

How about this Mr. Bedbug…how about you make the invitation to come to your house and call you Bed Bug in front of your family to me…and then I gleefully beat you senseless, knock all your teeth out, blind you with a can of Raid, walk out to your garage, borrow your bow saw, come back in and cut your empty fucking head off and leave it on the front porch as a jerk-o-lantern as a reminder of what happens to neo-con, chickenhawk Bed Bugs? Sound good?

Seriously…what the fuck is wrong with people? I get hate mail ALL THE TIME! People say nasty shit to me day in and day out…shit they would never say to my face. You know what I do about it? Nothing. I may want to reply and tell someone to fuck off, but I don’t because it is counter-productive and totally a waste of time and energy. Why would I indulge in that sort of thing and why would I give my power away to complete strangers who I don’t know and don’t care about? I am an absolute nobody and I have the self-discipline not to engage in mindless internet battles with other nobodies…Bret Stephens writes for the New York Times…the New York Fucking Times…and he literally spent time not only searching for a tweet that disparages him, but then tracking down the tweeter’s email address and the address of his boss, then writing an email and sending it. What the fuck is wrong with this limp dick jackass? And as an aside…why in the world is anyone on Twitter? Or any social media for that matter? I do not understand the appeal of any of it.

My advice to Bret Stephens is to stop being a mealy mouthed twat and start being some semblance of a man. Oh…and my directive to every American and every person in the world…is to call Bret Stephens “Bed Bug” always and every time. Thank you for your cooperation.

One final thought while we wait for Bed Bug Bret Stephens and Fredo Cuomo’s testicles to drop…my now number one dream is that someone makes a buddy action comedy about Chris Cuomo and Bret Stephens and titles it “Fredo and the Bed Bug”. It could be a cross between Kafka’s Metmorphosis and Tango and Cash. You’re welcome Hollywood.

LADY KICKER

There was another video making the media rounds this week…this one of US Women’s soccer player Carli Lloyd kicking a 55 yard field goal during a Philadelphia Eagles practice. The video received enormous amounts of media and social media attention and stories swirled about whether Lloyd would kick in an NFL pre-season game. Lloyd got into the mix as well declaring that teams had reached out to her and she was seriously considering the offers. Over on ESPN, America’s Human Resources Sports channel, across the board all of the talking heads thought this was a terrific idea and that Lloyd “of course” could do it.

Take a look at the video.

Lloyd does hit a 55 yard field goal…this is true…but the story is utter nonsense. Watch it again and notice that Lloyd takes like seven steps running up to the ball and then faces no wall of 300 lb men impeding the ball’s progress. Carli Lloyd is a great female soccer player…she is not going to play in the NFL. Because we watch the game on television and it seems like a video game, we regular people are numb to the size, strength and speed of NFL players. The men playing in the NFL are as close to super-human as we have on the planet. These guys, who are most likely greatly aided in their physical and athletic development and performance by PED’s, are gigantic or lightning fast or both.

If Carli Lloyd were to try and kick a field goal like regular kickers have to…namely with a maximum of three steps to the ball and over a wall of giant men trying to block it, she would not fare very well. Lloyd has a strong leg…for a woman…but anyone who has the slightest grasp of biology understands that Lloyd’s leg is not as strong as the men she would compete against. Her leg is no doubt stronger than mine, and the vast majority of non-kickers in the world…but she wouldn’t be competing against me…she’d be up against the best of the best.

This story, just like the USWNT equal pay story, is manufactured nonsense and is a sign of the madness of our age and the delusional nature of wokeness. Carlie Lloyd is not as good a kicker as the men in the NFL just like the USWNT are not as good as even an elite boy’s high school team nevermind the USMNT. Enough with this woke posturing and posing and virtue signalling and pandering. Enough, enough, enough. Maybe we can put all this nonsense to rest if we let Ms. Lloyd kick in a real NFL game and then the kick is blocked and we have to watch her be absolutely and utterly obliterated by players scrambling to get the ball or block for someone returning the kick. That sight would be horrifying but also clarifying…which is maybe why we need to see it happen so all of these girl power clowns can understand that they are not physically equal to male athletes…and never will be.

GRANDPA BIDEN

My father was a true blue conservative who voted Republican almost always, and on the very rare occasion he didn’t vote Republican he voted third party and not Democrat because he really hated the Democrats. In 2016 my father faced a conundrum because he absolutely loathed Donald Trump, and had for the entirety of Trump’s public life, but he also had a searing hatred for Hillary Clinton. My father avoided having to make a decision in the 2016 election by dying, exactly three years ago today. In many ways his death felt more like a getaway than a passing, as I am sure on some level he was thrilled to not have to live in a country with either Trump or Hillary as President.

During a conversation with my father in his final months, I asked him if there was any Democrat he would vote for against Trump, and he said he would definitely vote for Joe Biden if he were the nominee. I have thought of that conversation often as the 2020 campaign has staggered to its start.

Biden is certainly the establishment and centrist favorite. His main selling point is that conservative people like my father, who was born the same year as Biden, would cross the aisle to vote for him. I wonder if my father would feel the same way about Biden now that he did three and a half years ago though?

Biden, to me, looks extremely feeble and frail. I know he leads in the polls and everything, but the fact is he looks really, really old and not entirely there mentally. Biden’s cognitive ability is reminiscent of a punch drunk boxer who has convinced himself he has one more great fight in him….think Ali taking on Larry Holmes (although Biden is no Ali…and Trump is no Larry Holmes...I guess it is more the equivalent of Gerry Cooney taking on Butterbean).

It isn’t just the gaffes with Biden that have raised red-flags for me, it is the far-away, cloudy look in his eye…he looks not all there, like a doddering old Grandpa haunting a holiday party. The standard pundit counter point on Biden’s age is to say that Trump is also in his 70’s, so age won’t be a factor. I despise Trump, but the cold, hard reality is that Trump may be crazy, but he sure doesn’t seem old and frail. In fact, Trump’s manic madness makes him seem, in a terrifying way, sort of vital, present and engaged. Sanders is older than Biden and Warren is also in her seventies, but neither of them seem frail or cognitively impaired in the slightest, in fact they are both full of piss and vinegar.

I was talking to my French-Canadian friend, “Spider” Geau-Geau, about this recently and he made a surprisingly astute observation about the cognitive difference between Trump and Biden…he pointed out that Trump not only doesn’t drink alcohol…but never has. I thought this was a very insightful point, especially from a raging alcoholic, and an alcohol induced rage-a-holic like Monsieur Geau-Geau. As someone who is sober for more than a quarter century, I can attest to both the dangers of alcohol to the brain and the remarkable mental and cognitive benefits of sobriety.

At the end of the day, I think Biden will absolutely wilt as the campaign goes on. If Biden makes it all the way to the general election as the nominee, I think he will completely wither under the demands of running for the presidency at his age and in his condition, and for this reason I think that Biden is, counter intuitively, a bad choice to take down Trump.

As of this moment I have Trump as the odds-on, hands-down favorite…but things could certainly change.

CHAPPELLE

I watched Dave Chappelle’s new stand up comedy special on Netflix last night and thought it was very good. I wouldn’t consider myself a Chappelle super fan, for instance, as remarkable as this is to say, I have never seen his iconic sketch comedy show Chapelle’s Show. When some people learn that fact about me they are stunned and startled because apparently the show is right up my alley. I didn’t skip the show during its run out of malice towards Chappelle, but because when the show was running I either did not have a tv, or I did not have cable (the show aired on Comedy Central). I have caught Chappelle’s last bunch of stand-up specials on Netflix over the years though, and I think he is very funny and I am notoriously difficult to please when it comes to comedy. What struck me about Chappelle’s most recent routine, and the reason why I am writing this, is that he and I seem to have very similar political and cultural opinions. In fact, a couple of times our opinions were so similar he even told jokes based on the same ideas I have tried to articulate in my writing over the years.

I am not saying that, like Little Bill Maher’s flaccid and impotent staff, Dave Chappelle is scouring my writing trying to poach my ideas and insights…all I am saying is that Chappelle and I share much in our world view. The only recognizable difference I can discern between us being that I think I casually say the “n-word’ considerably more than he does. (Relax…that is what the young people call a “joke”)

In all seriousness, I don’t know if Chappelle is a reader of my work, but…he certainly could be…and appears to be a fellow traveler…and that is enough for me. Anyway, if you get a chance to see Chappelle’s new Netflix special, and I do recommend it, you’ll get to hear some of my political and cultural views expressed in much more comedically satisfying ways.

Speaking of alleged plagiarism…I wrote a widely-read and well-received op-ed for RT last week titled “Celebriphilia epidemic sweeps US: Forget knowledge and wisdom, get guidance from the stars”. The piece was about America’s irrational adoration of celebrity…which I named as celebriphilia…and how people turning to celebrities for medical advice is asinine. My article ran on Monday, August 19th at RT…and the New York Times ran a remarkably similarly themed op-ed on Friday, August 23rd titled “Who Cares What Celebrities Think About Vaccines?” by Carolyn Lylstra. Once again it seems I am ahead of the New York Times, and the paper of record is reduced to simply putting the veneer of domestication onto my feral ideas. This is not the first time this has happened…and I am betting it won’t be the last. Readers should be extremely unnerved that a freelance dope like me is setting the agenda for the New York Times editorial page and thus the world media!

My advice to the New York Times, which I offer for free, is to fire that thin-skinned, neo-con, chickenhawk with the perpetually bunched panties, Bed Bug Bret Stephens, and hire me to infect the minds of Americans from the lofty perch of the most respected newspaper in the world. I won’t shill for Israel (which seems to be a requirement at the Times), won’t regurgitate the establishment line…ever, and will be a relentless thorn in the side, if not a fist in the face, to the nefarious people in power in this country…including those on the New York Times payroll…but on the bright side, I won’t get into twitter spats with people who call me mean names. My good friend Thomas Friedman has my contact information, so I look forward to hearing from you…or from Bed Bug Stephens who will no doubt be shocked and horrified by the uncivil nature presented in this column.

©2019