FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE PEOPLE EDITION.

Sure, fuck it, let's go back there.

Happy Easter weekend! Here is my favorite Easter joke, which I will render in all caps because it is meant to be told out loud -- proper capitalization rather spoils it. 

Q: WHAT HAPPENED WHEN JESUS WENT TO MOUNT OLIVE?

A: POPEYE BEAT HIM UP.

Years later I’m still laughing. This past week was sort of a march up Calvary itself, but fortunately for you folks and the health of the nation I have a couple of Roy Edroso Breaks It Down issues to release free to non-subscribers. (I must remind you that I sling this hash FIVE TIMES A WEEK and that a subscription is absurdly cheap, about 35 cents an issue, so you really ought to pony up and not wait around for leavin’s every Friday.)

In the first one, an episode of our political talk show, Received Opinion with Bolt Upright, treats the Ronna McDaniel née Romney catastrophe obliquely – via an interview between Bolt and yet another high-born Republican who changed his name to show conformity with the new order, Trumpy Killthelibs. Much discussion of liberal unfairness commences, as it did when NBC paid off the former RNC chair to go away after even bothsider simps like Chuck Todd publicly blanched at having an insurrectionist at the news analysis desk. 

Like I could give a shit about any of these people. But even when one of them does something resembling the right thing, the prestige press has to make it into a controversy rather than belated due diligence. The palace gossip angles taken by papers like Politico (“The staff revolt at NBC News underscores how the balance of power has shifted away from management”) is bad enough – some of the big rags were pushing the elderly Liberal Bias line.  “NBC fires former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel after internal uproar and blatant anti-GOP bias,” squirts Ingrid Jacques at USA Today, as if there were no difference between a major GOP executive who actively tried to overturn the 2020 Presidential election on behalf of her crooked boss and straight-laced Republican Joes like, say, the Romney relatives McDaniel disowned.  

Neither Jacques nor any other pundit taking this line even acknowledges what was considered so objectionable about McDaniel (“McDaniel's detractors insisted that she was a threat to democracy,” Jacques says, without revealing why), devolving instead into cancelculture crybaby tantrums. I understand why claiming persecution on behalf on rich Republicans who don’t get to be on the network of their choice appeals to the base, who are so addled by their own resentments and grudges they'll sing along with any bitch-and-moaner, but I can’t imagine normal people going for it – which I take as further proof that these people are counting on voter disenfranchisement, ballot tampering, and, when all else fails, January 6 Part II, rather than on the Will of the People, to get back into power.

The second freebie is my essay about the conservative reaction to Baltimore’s Key Bridge disaster – rehearsing some of the batshit conspiracy mongering and racist rants they offered instead of, I noticed, anything like compassion for the victims. Once upon a time they would have at least ginned up some thoughts-and-prayers – but no longer. American conservatives have always been advance men for wealthy interests, and as such they’ve always tried to claw back the gains that less-rich Americans made over the years and redistribute them to their rich donors; but in recent years this meanness has gotten less businesslike and become more like a deep soul sickness – like they’re more excited to see and revel in the suffering of their fellow Americans than they are to grab the cash. I think more than Tubby’s ravings it’s that sickness that makes people worried about them seizing back power.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: HAPPY JANUARY 6 EDITION!

Always liked the tune, had no idea there were lyrics --
let alone sung by Dee Dee Bridgewater!

Hell of a week – but aren’t they all! 

Let’s get to the Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebies, shall we? The first one is Monday’s final installment of the 2023 Year is BS series, called “Unpopularism.” (The title is a gag, I’ll bet at least some of you know, based on the “popularism” peddled by Matthew Yglesias and other dorks back in the day, by which I mean a couple of years ago because tempus fugit is in overdrive anymore.) 

My concept is this: A lot of people like to ask why Democrats don’t brag on their positive accomplishments and policies more – which leads me to believe they don’t get the same campaign mailers I do. 

What I think they mean is, a lot of people don’t know about these accomplishments and policies, not because Democrats don’t brag on them, but because the prestige press leaves them largely unmentioned in favor of “Why Is Biden So Old, Look How Old He Is” stories.

Oh speaking of which: Today in bothsiderism, from AP – 

One attack, two interpretations: Biden and Trump both make the Jan. 6 riot a political rallying cry

Remember that 36 hours or so of general agreement that an attempt to stop the Electoral College count by violence so that the loser of the election can stay president was a bad thing? Sometimes I think I imagined it. Anyone who tells you Democrats are making too much of J6 is running a con; in fact I think the repeated release of the footage has been necessary to keep the facts from being drowned in Republican bullshit like Elise Stefanik's claim that it was all Nancy Pelosi's fault. So far normal people seem to understand, thank God, that it's not a case of "your lying eyes" -- those fuckers did what they did for the obvious reason.

As I was saying: While Democrats work against the tide to get their message to voters, Republicans, on the other hand, don’t seem to even care whether voters like the swill they’re dishing out. I try to explain it, but the short version is: If you’re planning to institute a fascist regime, why would you care what voters think?

The other freebie is one of my sketches, this time situated in the Rectory, a place where rightwing cat’licks like Bill Bennett and Brett Kavanaugh can chew the fat and slurp the uisce beatha. Hijinks, based on current events, ensue! (And when I say based on current events, I mean intimidation of the rummy Trump put on SCOTUS, like so:)

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: GOP RETURN TO RELIGIOUS MANIA EDITION.

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

THE FIRST SPUTTERS OF INDICTMENT SEASON.

At Roy Edroso Breaks It Down, I have unlocked a taxonomy of Trump defenses inspired by his latest indictments. There is no need to explicate the brute brayings of guys like Tim Pool, so I confined myself to complainers who try a little spin – not that the spin makes them any more intelligent or convincing; in fact in some ways they’re more pathetic than the dummies yelling “Civil War!” or “Fix!” or “Kill Biden!” because they’re like precocious kids who have just made their first acquaintance with irony and, seeing how favorably some people react to it, try to emulate it without understanding how it works. 

Some of the operatives are already spinning out of control. Erick Erickson has a real lulu. I mention in the REBID item the chronic bothsider reactions of prestige media clucks; well, Erickson, who after all has been employed by CNN, tries his own version of it:

I don’t think Democrats realize how radicalizing it was for Republicans that Barack Obama sued nuns to force them to pay for abortions. Nor do I think Democrats realize how radicalizing it is now for culturally conservative people across races and political parties that they’re pushing transgenderism as hard as they are. They simply do not realize how much of an existential threat they seem to many voters.

They literally sued a bunch of nuns to force them to pay to murder children, which is what abortion is to a great many people.

I don’t think Republicans realize how radicalizing it was for Democrats to see the “character counts” GOP come out for a twice-divorced serial adulterer…

There is blame enough to share, quoth Erickson, between the Trump fans and the baby-murdering nun abusers! Anyway, because he can’t help himself, Erickson repeats the threat popular among his ilk (“Hell is coming for Democrats, most particularly for Joe Biden and members of his family and cabinet. Republicans will pay them back in kind”) and then tries on the Solomon robes and proposes a solution:

The old man on the right must stop trying to get back into the office. And the old man on the left must pardon the old man on the right and bring all pressure to bear on the two state prosecutors, both of whom are Democrats, to stop their prosecutions too.

It’s like a glitchy AI version of The West Wing. Eventually even Erickson stops pretending to believe it could happen and starts raving about Civil War. Once again I must ask: Do these guys even know any normal people?

"MY CLIENT CAN'T POSSIBLY GET A FAIR TRIAL -- EVERYONE SAW HIM DO IT ON TV!"

The headline is from a wonderful old Willy Murphy cartoon which, alas, I cannot find online; but I could as well have used Groucho Marx or any one of number of shyster double-talk comedians to represent the latest lawyerly conservative defenses of Tubby against his indictment for trying (as we all fucking saw) to overturn the 2020 election. 

The ridiculous National Review defense is what inspired today's Roy Edroso Breaks It Down item, which imagines without difficulty NR applying the same logic to an earlier celebrity defendant. (Free to non-subscribers! Live it up!) 

But there's plenty more where that came from, by other conservatives who portray Trump as an innocent victim being persecuted for his Free Speech, e.g. "Jack Smith’s dangerous criminalization of dissent" at the rightwing pennysaver Washington Examiner. "Smith has plenty of evidence that Trump was told he was wrong but scant evidence that Trump believed what he was told," the editors plead, as if Trump's many documented and witnessed attempts to foist fake ballots on the Electoral College, and, in the last ditch, try to murder Congress were OK because he was rilly sincere about it. 

The "not a criminal, merely a dangerous lunatic" defense may comfort MAGA choads but it ain't fooling normal people, which is why Trump and his patsies are screaming to get his trial moved from DC, where his crimes were committed, to some dismal holler whose citizens might consider it their solemn duty to nullify on behalf of white supremacy.  It's no crazier nor more desperate than anything else they've tried -- and they're only going to get crazier and more desperate, and quickly, so we all better watch out. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: JULY 7, 2023.

Let's class the joint up a little!

Last week I skipped ‘Round-the-Horn – AGAIN. Apologies. The move that never ends formally finished with the clearance of our last effects from our previous home, but the house remains unsettled as the missus applies the Klotski method to her goods and chattels, plus we still have in-laws aboard. Leisure is at a premium. And they told me old age would be mainly a matter of finding ways to fill my time! 

But though I come late I also come laden with free Roy Edroso Breaks It Down editions. For one, there is the resumption of Sam Alito’s Wall Street Journal column, answering the complaints the thin-skinned old bastard, in my imagining, could not help but notice after the shit decisions he and his fellow wingnuts lately foisted on America. I expect to see him on Joe Rogan one of these days, sputtering over the loss of respect SCOTUS has suffered, and how unfair it is, when all he and his mates have done is rule so that, were the 18th-Century slaveholding plantocrats who founded this nation to come back from the dead, they would feel right at home.  

The next is inspired by the coke cache found in the White House, and how a certain onetime habitué might interpret its meaning. (Fans of the “Formula” series may appreciate the callback.)

On to other outrages. I’ve been telling you people for years that David French is a fraud, a rightwing religious maniac whose winsome NeverTrumper act has fooled many centrists including the ones who hire columnists for the New York Times, and his latest column runs true to form. He inveigles non-MAGA readers by agreeing once again that Trump is no good, but then goes on about how his deluded fans feel not merely “rage” but also “joy” at Trump's events, in his presence, and even gazing upon the insane videos and memes that celebrate him as a buff avenging American Messiah. The dread-and-circuses “give MAGA devotees a sense of belonging,” French says. 

This may seem to some of you like a clever angle – we talk about how crazy they are, but let’s bothsides this, can’t we just admit that they’re also full of joy! (And let’s not refer to it as “mania” or a “mood swing” because that would be Very Bias. Also, these are French’s neighbors and friends back in old Tennessee, so it would also be impolite.) 

But as usual with French this is just a sneaky way to pitch liberals on giving in to the obnoxious ideas that he and the Trumpkins actually share (i.e. most of them, stripped of the unpleasant frankness of MAGA viciousness), and ends with something resembling a plea for understanding and more: 

During the Trump years, I’ve received countless email messages from distraught readers that echo a similar theme: My father (or mother or uncle or cousin) is lost to MAGA. They can seem normal, but they’re not, at least not any longer. It’s hard for me to know what to say in response, but one thing is clear: You can’t replace something with nothing. And until we fully understand what that “something” is — and that it includes not only passionate anger but also very real joy and a deep sense of belonging — then our efforts to persuade are doomed to fail.

What “something” are we supposed to offer these people? The lives of one of our more vulnerable minorities? A do-over in states where he loses next time? Furthermore, why should we offer them anything? They advocate terror, treason, and bigotry. They represent a third of the country and demand violent reprisals against the other two-thirds. Fuck those guys. They want to kill me. There's nothing to discuss. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: MEMORIAL DAY 2023 EDITION.

He had no one to fall on but me.

What was once a somber tribute of our fallen men is now, whee, a three-day holiday weekend! This strange dichotomy plays on my mind and I write about it now and then; here’s the latest iteration. Whatever it means to you, I hope you get to enjoy it.

Also unlocked from Roy Edroso Breaks It Down (my premium site, and subscriptions make a lovely gift!) is another dispatch from Bolt Upright and Received Opinion, celebrating the Republican Vice-Presidential I Mean Presidential Candidates of Color. As I’ve said many times, the as yet unannounced Rep. Byron Donalds is only national-profile GOP POC who’d be an asset to the inevitable Trump ticket – he’s as evil as Scott, Haley, and Ramaswamy, but unlike them competently emulates normal human behavior. Scott in particular is a beaming, slow-witted goofus – exactly the sort of person Trump would hate too much to entertain – so naturally Peggy Noonan thinks he’s swell: 

“He is a breath of fresh air,” former Sen. Rob Portman told me by phone.

And he should know! 

…[Scott is] from South Carolina, a frisky conservative state, and watched his fellow senator, Lindsey Graham, be batted about for independence on various issues and early opposition to Mr. Trump. It left Mr. Scott cautious. 

Or “cowardly.” That works, too. Noonan on DeSantis is even worse:

On transgender issues, it is hard to resist a destructive ideology while maintaining, in public ways, respect and affection for those who are wrong. And who don’t necessarily want your respect and affection. But you have to try anyway. Because it’s right and nice, and we’re human beings, and people can see good faith, sometimes in time and often reluctantly. And because it keeps those you’re opposing from arguing, persuasively, that you’re just playing a culture-war card and they’re only road kill on your highway to victory.

Maybe I’m not giving the old bat enough credit – maybe she knows full well that DeSantis is definitely not going for “right and nice,” nor “human being” nor “good faith.” He has never said a good word about LGBTQ people and never will, because he believes that what the Republican base has been missing is overt permission to hate those people and slur them out loud. That’s what the whole trans thing was about, and why it segued so quickly and smoothly to attacks on drag queens (who are not by and large trans) and why MAGA shitheads are now smashing up Gay Pride displays at Target. Like smart people have long been saying, they were never going to stop with trans people. 

So it’s possible Noonan is trying to be ironic. Haha, who’m I kidding? Her real kung fu is describing the lives of trans people as a “destructive ideology” while insisting Republicans act nice to them. There’s the Riefenstahl of Reaganism in action. 

WHO WOULD JESUS STRANGLE?

I have a rare Monday Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebie out today, featuring Bible Stories for Conservatives, including the Parable of the Good Samurderer. This is inspired by the recent tendency of conservatives such as Ron DeSantis and the Wall Street Journal editorial board to call Subway Strangler Daniel Perry a “good Samaritan.” 

Many other people have noticed what an insane reversal that is. But it’s to be expected nowadays: First, notwithstanding I know some righteous Christians, the kind you see on TV and in the news – and the many Republican pedophiles chronicled by @antifaoperative and others, and of course holy-rolling propagandists like Erick Erickson – are mostly vicious bastards. When put in a position to be actual Good Samaritans by an influx of immigrants escaping poverty and prosecution, these Christians instead gleefully ship the confused refugees up north and then laugh at the chaos it causes. (At the same time, they constantly holler, over the clatter of their collection plates, that they’re the ones being persecuted.) I tell ya, if I see a crucifix or a Jesus fish on a guy, he’s not getting anywhere near my loved ones or my wallet. 

Also, the prestige press colludes with the idea that killing a guy for yelling on the subway is a rational response – for example, by referring to the Strangler’s actions as “restraining” rather than killing, as if the guy were still alive laughing about how he got away with it like on a cop show. As I’ve said before, many times on the subway I’ve seen tense situations defused by normal common-sense conflict resolution, and none of these ended in death. But for your average suburbanite, who goes from McMansion to SUV to office park and back without ever encountering another human being, let alone a homeless one, it's easy to imagine that the only way to deal with an obstreperous street guy is to kill him. You see these choads online going HE WAS THREATENING and bragging about their gun collections, and you wonder what kind of fucked-up padded existence they live.

UPDATE. Speaking of fake Christians, David French is at the Times to tell us all how dangerous the subway is and how you gotta understand why Penny felt like he had to kill Neely and then EIGHT GRAFS DOWN:

There is no evidence that Neely assaulted anyone...

Nonetheless "The best way to resolve these problems isn’t through jury trials of those, like Penny, who take it upon themselves to intervene" blah blah blah horseshit. These fucking people. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: 3/3/23.

Hey, it's happy hour and this is just nice.

Another hard week for America, folks, but at least some of us get the weekend off! Not me, though – I’ll be busy on the weekend getting a head start on next week’s Roy Edroso Breaks It Down issues. Speaking of which, let me unload the freebies for the week just passed – first, the Dilbert Diaries, the next logical step in Scott Adams’ career; I am convinced he’s convinced that the full fascist takeover is imminent, and he wants to be New Hitler's Court Jester. 

He may not be wrong! Ron DeSantis has been tearing it up, declaring himself Lord of Disneyland, and planning his destruction of the press and continuing his persecution of trans, gay, and educated people (the Democratic base!) in his mosquito-gator-and-mortgage-fraud kingdom. I half believe that he and Trump are working together, and the governor’s lunacy is meant to make the ex-president look less dangerous so when they nominate him some of the independent voters (the dumb ones who ruin everything) might say, well, he’s not so bad.  

Conservatives don’t see the downside, though, and except for a few apostates they’re all in for the full fash. I actually think they’re excited by it – I mean, Trump was a blast for them, but he only shat on Latinos and foreigners – this guy is a literal queer-basher!  (Fun project: Try to find any DeSantis assurance that he’s not attacking LGBTQ people with these programs. He simply doesn’t do it. What does that tell you?) 

I was directed to Hot Air, which had been an unremarkable wingnut site for so long that I hadn’t even looked at it for years. They got a guy there now called David Strom who has a post about gay and trans stuff called “The Hershey Highway to Hell.” OOOH HOW EDGY. Also he calls the trans woman Faye Johnstone “he,” always a sign of moral clarity/dorkism. (Imagine him among normal people; I put the time between his first deliberate misgendering and his ejection while shouting I’M BEING CANCELCULTURED at about two minutes.) At one point Strom gets after the trans lady’s non-profit:  

“Supporting youth-serving organizations across Canada.” Literally, the only phrase that makes sense in the entire business description is about getting access to children. On that point, alone, is the description comprehensible. Access to kids.

Ever notice how it’s always about the kids? These trans folks don’t like HAVING kids, but they apparently like being with them quite a lot. Preferably with as few clothes on as they can get away with.

There is nothing in fact or reason supporting this slur, but yelling groomer is what they do now instead of lectures on limited government. Oh, and elsewhere at the site addressing the DeSantis Don’t Say Gay bill is an old alicublog figure of fun:

This really, really bothers some people.

Most of the bill concerns the rights of parents, which really, really bothers some people, too.

Hint hint. There are all kinds of ways to call your enemies groomers, and Jim Lileks, being an old-fashioned type, really, really prefers the really, really eyebrow-waggle. 

Hey, but let’s lighten up – here’s another REBID bit, this one about movies you saw when you were younger that take on whole new resonances when you see them later in life. I did Night Moves, but you can do your own in the comments. It’s a community, see; you really ought to subscribe (cheap!).

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN ON A SUNDAY: 2/26/23.

Yum.

•  Sure, why can't "Friday 'Round-the-Horn" happen on a Sunday? We had one on a Saturday once, remember? Wasn't that crazy? We're pretty quirky and unpredictable here. Sky's the limit! 

•  Anywho: The major freebie from Roy Edroso Breaks It Down from last week is this one about a Zoom meeting between the GOP leadership and their policy chief. I notice that in recent weeks the alignment of the Republicans with Russia is getting tighter. Maybe you saw Matt Gaetz's House resolution calling for the U.S. to stop helping Ukraine repel its invaders. (It's actually called the "Ukraine Fatigue Resolution," as if their House propagandists didn't bother to change the name from the talking point that inspired it.) And you may have seen that preeminent conservative intellectual CatTurd2 advanced the theory that he Ukraine war is actually some sort of false flag operation ("Biden fake air raid sirens and one famous actor or politician a day happily prancing around Kiev with Zelenskyy with no helmets"), to the approbation of his millions of fans. 

And last week the Head Defenestrator in Charge himself, in announcing his withdrawal from the START Treaty, gave what amounts to a 2023-style U.S. Republican campaign speech:

Look what [Western nations] are doing to their own people. It is all about the destruction of the family, of cultural and national identity, perversion and abuse of children, including pedophilia, all of which are declared normal in their life. They are forcing the priests to bless same-sex marriages...

But here is what I would like to tell them: look at the holy scripture and the main books of other world religions. They say it all, including that family is the union of a man and a woman, but these sacred texts are now being questioned. Reportedly, the Anglican Church is planning, just planning, to explore the idea of a gender-neutral god. What is there to say? Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

Ron DeSantis couldn't have done it better! And the rubes are eating it up: the account in the hard-right Trumpist Christian Post, for example, tells the story from the Putinist POV ("Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a stark warning over what he called religious attacks from Western culture Tuesday...") I keep making jokes about Putin following Orban to CPAC, but at this point I'm expecting him to speak at their next National Convention. 

•  Whew, that's depressing. So here, here's a straight-up fun thing from REBID, about books you don't read so much as graze. Got any like that? Tell it to the comments box! (And subscribe -- it's cheap!)

•  Finally I want to thank the universe for the gift of laughter, courtesy of Scott Adams telling the world what he thinks about those pesky black people and getting his "Dilbert" thrown out of a bunch of newspapers. Guess he decided 2023 was a good time to go full racist -- the Bund will remember and reward him comes Der Tag. 

Adding cream to the jest are all the cancelculture crybabies like Thomas Chatterton Williams and Cathy Young rushing to tell us that oh, no, Adams getting chucked for his beliefs isn't cancelculture because race hatred is something we all condemn -- you know, like trans health care. I predict Bari Weiss' next scam will be a guide to which firings and dismissals qualify as cancelculture and which don't -- and no one will realize it's just the Republican national platform. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Late entry, song of the year.

 As we hurtle into the holidays (I refuse to say “Christmas” because I’m a godless snowflake whoops oh no I said it by mistake WAAAHHH MUH PRONOUNS) I’m dishing out one (1) free installment of Roy Edroso Breaks It Down – a mere bag-o-shells about that ridic Burton Swaim essay in the Wall Street Journal on how liberals are oppressing conservatives – yes, that old paranoid wheeze, but Swaim’s angle is they’re oppressing rightwing guys like him by being in charge of everything everywhere. No, he doesn’t mean they run bodies of actual political power like the Supreme Court, the House of Representatives, the Senate (most of the time despite having less voter support), and most state legislatures – that’s still conservative territory – but liberals have cultural power, because he sees them on TV, in the movies, everywhere he looks all the time -- as when the average conservative “attends a concert by the local symphony orchestra and has to listen to a four-minute lecture about systemic racism or climate change before the music starts” – why, it’s like Russia, and not the good Putin kind either! Anyway, free funsies, you’re welcome.

I expect they're throwing up shit like this because normal people are fleeing the Republicans like they were plague carriers (which they are, actually!). The New York Post, Rupert Murdoch's prime poison diffuser stateside, just unleashed on Trump's NFT scam in an editorial -- and on Trump himself: "Fool us once, shame on you," they close; "Fool us 1,438 times, and it may finally be too much." They don't say anything else about the 1,438 times -- which is presumably a conservative estimate that does not include the thousands of times Murdoch has gone to bat for the old bastard, from his early John Barron days to approximately yesterday. As House Dems line Tubby up for charges, you're going see more of his old friends bailing out on him, and I just pray that he acts true to form and takes them down with him. 

And speaking of which -- oh, alright, I’ve been trying to avoid the subject because who needs more of it, but this morning I did have something about Elmo and since it’s me and I’m special you may find it rewarding, so that one’s free too!  It’s not so much about the runaway train of recent events with which Elmo mesmerizes the Twitter people – like throwing non-suck-up reporters off the platform for nothing but not sucking up – as it is about the gestalt, the meaning of Elmo.

But on that subject I mainly want to say that, out of all the recent commentary, it’s hilarious to see Elmo's Twitter Files cat’s-paw Bari Weiss trying to have it both ways – promoting the Elmo-promoted propaganda that shutting down hate speech accounts pre-Elmo was “gaslighting” while admitting that Elmo is now basically running Twitter as a giant vanity project and almost admitting (at least insofar as her grift allows) that it’s not exactly the “free speech” project he – and Weiss – have been promoting it as. Like the old Gore Vidal joke had it: Every attribute of a dog, except loyalty.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Ever heard a steel drum band play
Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor?

I kicked out a few Roy Edroso Breaks It Down items about the election – here’s the most recent. Maybe that will be a.) of interest to you, or maybe you’re b.) sick of that shit already. Don’t blame you if b.)! 

But there’s still some comedy to be wrung from the situation. Remember back during the primaries, when some Democratic campaign committees ran ads letting Republican voters know how thoroughly MAGA candidates like Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, Dan Cox in Maryland, and John Gibbs in Michigan were – the idea being, let such nuts as love that shit nominate these nutjobs in the primaries and the normal voters would reject them in the general? And remember how Conservatives with Good Taste blubbered over it, saying not only that it was dirty politics to which such as they would never sink, but also that it meant when these lunatics won it would be the Democrats’ fault?

My favorite was Megan McArdle. As I described it at the time:

Megan McArdle is first among equals in mendacity here, dudgeoning that Democrats are willfully making it more likely that the worst Republicans (that is, the ones that are 5% worse than the second-worst) might win if the Democrat loses, and that this shows -- say it with me now -- Both Sides Are The Same ("Democrats can stop asking how Republicans could have sold out their principles and their country in a pathetic grab for some evanescent political advantage. Because now they know"). This will come in handy when McArdle inevitably pimps Yang's Forward Party as the Choice of People Who Want Clean Hands When DeSantis Becomes Dictator.

Well, as it happens, all of these and most of the other Trumpy candidates lost, and now all the rightwing big-bugs from Dame Peggy Noonington on down are crying that Trump must be ousted for the good of the party. Even Salena Zito, long the biggest Trump suck-up under cover of journalism, has turned: “The chickens have come home to roost for Donald Trump in Pennsylvania,” she announces, digging up no fewer than three Republican strategists (but no Republican electeds!) to say things like “I see golf courses and a rocking chair in his future.” (This being Zito, there’s also “a Pennsylvania father of two grown men of voting age… who asked not to be named.”)

It is to laugh, but wait’ll it comes time for prominent Republicans to decide whether or not to endorse Trump; then we’ll see who’s got any guts.  I'll bet not many! 

A HYPE IS NOT A "HOME."

Ross Douthat is a menace on so many levels – to our politics, to English prose and reason, and so on – that one would think if the Times allowed him to bring in a couple of ringers to help they would vitiate his awfulness. No such luck!  Bad as his columns are, their partisan/theocratic intent is at least more or less unconcealed. But in this “roundtable” collaboration with a couple of other nudniks he tries to portray himself as the friend of the “Politically Homeless” -- in fact the thing was titled “Politically Homeless is Not Politically Hopeless” before it got switched it to “The Midterms Look Very Different if You’re Not a Democrat or a Republican” – as if it weren’t just a Republican recruiting tactic dressed up as high-mindedness.  

Maybe someone at the Times realized some readers would notice that “Politically Homeless” is a red flag signifying that rank bothsider fuckery is coming – the sort indulged by Andrew Yang’s ridiculous Forward Party, and by stray dummies who think “the left wants to censor us because they reject creativity” (??) and thus are no better an electoral choice than people who literally compare them to literal Satan. This is bothsiderism with an extra helping of woebegone and winsome: People who apparently can’t deal with the stresses and hard choices of everyday life -- try to imagine them picking an internet service provider or a wedding dress – and, faced with shitty democrats versus stark raving fascists, choose not to vote for the side less likely to kill them, and instead complain that neither side is serving them so they’ll just sit and cry about it. 

But at least those guys seem sincerely childish. Even without the warning label, you can smell the wingnut shtick Douthat and his collaborators – Reason’s Stephanie Slade, and Tablet’s Liel Leibovitz – have concocted a mile away. Leibovitz:

I came to this country, like so many other immigrants, because I care deeply about two things — freedom of religion and individual liberties. And both parties are messing up when it comes to these two fundamental pillars of American life, from cheering on law enforcement spying on Muslim Americans in the wake of 9/11 to cheering on social media networks for curbing free speech.

On the one hand, Republicans using the actual government to spy on Muslim-Americans (and, under Trump, to keep Muslims out of the U.S. entirely – though maybe Leibovitz doesn’t mind that); on the other, Democrats not doing whatever the fuck they’re supposed to do when Twitter (not a branch of the U.S. government) enforces its Terms of Service on users. It’s bothsides bingo because they’re both “cheering”!

Though Liebowitz is supposed to represent the “left,” he gives no positive defense or endorsement for any liberal or left principle – he just makes the same scared noises about Trump as any Republican milquetoast might. Also he says he’s going to vote for GOP New York governor candidate Lee Zeldin, who’s a literal 2020 election denier – but that, too, is cool with Liebowitz, who actually finds it a reason for a “very big dose of – dare I say it? -- hope”:

Voters are gravitating toward candidates who are telling them coherent stories that make sense. To the political classes, these stories sometimes sound conspiratorial or crazy or way removed from the Beltway reality. But to normal Americans, they resonate.

I guess Big Lie bullshit is OK because it's resonant, and shows independence from the reality-based beliefs of the Beltway elite.

As for Slade, she’s a libertarian, and (as I long ago observed) that means a conservative with social anxieties so, sure enough, while she professes an “almost unimaginable abhorrence… toward some of the Republicans who would have to win in order for the G.O.P. to retake the Senate,” she nonetheless favors them to win the House because

… the sheer economic insanity of the Biden years — amounting to approving more than $4 trillion of new borrowing, to say nothing of the unconstitutional eviction moratorium and student loan forgiveness — is mind-boggling to me, so almost anything that could put the brakes on some of this stuff seems worth trying.

So, she’s mad that the Democrats gave people trillions in COVID financial aid, and hopes to return to power the other party that gave them trillions in COVID financial aid. (Douthat says this makes her sound “like a swing voter”; I’d give him points if I thought he actually knew what that meant.)

The whole thing’s preposterous, but craziest thing is this from Liebowitz:

…I look at the Democratic Party and see a lot of energy I love — particularly the old Bernie Sanders spirit, before it was consumed by the apparatus. I look at the Republican Party and see people like Ted Cruz, who are very good at kicking up against some of the party’s worst ideas. There’s hope here and energy, just not if you keep on seeing this game as red versus blue.

Douthat professes interest in this “Bernie-Cruz” coalition. I would pay a few dollars to see this roundtable reconvened so that the participants could explain what that coalition would be like. Democratic Socilaism without the Democracy and Socialism, but Owning the Libs? Hey, maybe that’s Tulsi Gabbard’s plan! 

Long story short, you should always be suspicious of crypto-non-partisan come-ons, and when it's peddled by post office wall fixtures like Douthat definitely hold onto your wallet.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

You never lose with Dr. John.

Rejoice, my non-paying customers, there are two free editions of Roy Edroso Breaks It Down for you this week. One is sort of an invitation to offer your own explanations for the ever-perplexing phenomenon of Cancelculture Crybabies. I can understand why rightwingers push this bullshit -- they want to portray themselves as attractive victims of Orwellian Woke Repression, even when the "victims" in question have their boot-in-the-ass coming or have actually "deplatformed" themselves. I can even understand why squishy liberal simps would push it -- it makes them feel like they're being "even-handed," which to them is more important than sticking up for what's right or even for themselves. But I'm confused by normal people who feel sorry for these obvious frauds -- though I did offer my own ideas. 

Also, slightly related: Here's a rundown of stories for a proposed New York Times magazine devoted to bothsiderism -- which would be a great way to isolate the virus from the rest of the paper. 

Long week and I'm tired, but I do want to mention an idea that's advanced this week by two old-fashioned conservative hacks, Rich Lowry ("Liberals Should Welcome Ron DeSantis’ Rise") and Jim Geraghty ("Whom Does the Mainstream Media Want the GOP to Nominate in 2024?"). The basic idea is: You liberals say Trump is extraordinarily bad because he tried to murder Congress and steal the election, so why don't you help Ron DeSantis beat Trump for the 2024 presidential nomination by saying nice things about him? Lowry:

The DeSantis-hating opponents of Trump are effectively saying, “Sure, Donald Trump led an insurrection and represents an ongoing threat to American democracy, but hey, that other guy refused to let schools impose mask mandates on kids — he’s much worse.”

Progressives have to decide two things. One is if they really want Trump gone, or if they want him as a foil for the duration.

If it is the former, they should welcome DeSantis as a potential vehicle for ending what they believe is the ongoing state of political emergency represented by Trump. If it is the latter, DeSantis could spoil everything.

I don't have to point out the disingenuousness here -- as I've said a thousand times, since Trump these guys have not had to even pretend to advance serious arguments, and neither they nor they audiences are even able to recognize anymore when they're not -- but I will note that "refused to let schools impose mask mandates on kids" is typical of Lowry's sunny interpretation of every element of DeSantis' government-by-rightwing-rampage. Even the governor's Don't Say Gay law and other LGBTQ persecutions  Lowry spiffs up as "prevent[ing] kids from being taught about sexual orientation and gender identity in public schools in grades K-3," as if he were protecting them from nude queer rubdowns instead of forcing both teachers and students to deny the very existence (and, by inference, right thereof) of gay people.  Plus DeSantis is "a sharp political player" and "a voracious consumer of information" -- no Trumpian boor, he! 

One might get the impression that Lowry and Geraghty were never-Trumpers instead of total Trump suck-ups. But face it; in the coming days, all actually prominent conservatives (I mean besides the public lunatics who grift money and attention on YouTube and TruthSocial) will be playing at never-Trumper (well, really, per my glossary, Just The Tip Trumper); they see Trump's flaws and know that DeSantis, though he apes the thuggish delivery of the Former Guy in order to sway the mouth-breathers, will support all the fascism modern American conservatism has come to stand for and, even better, (probably) avoid sabotaging his own/their cause out of petulance and stupidity. So their argument boils down to "Look, we both get something out of this -- DeSantis won't try to overturn the will of the people (unless he thinks he has a clear shot at it, and with the way our judges are working it he just might), which you should enjoy, and he definitely will make America more like Hungary but with more racism, which we'll enjoy. If you won't take that deal, you're the Real Obstructionists™!" Expect David French to lay a bouquet any day now.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

She had a syndicated afternoon talk show back in the day.
I bet her life's a story.

• Look, I told you guys already, I need more paying customers, not the Love of the People -- I'm like the Democratic Party in election season, except I actually deliver! So there's just one (1) free Roy Edroso Breaks It Down issue this week. Admittedly, it's a good one about a signal feature of the Dobbs blight: vicious scumbags pretending to be nice in the (I think) mistaken belief that if they talk about how much they love mommies and babies, you'll miss that they're stealing your rights. 

Of course increasingly these people aren't even bothering to pretend, as Akiva Cohen caught this morning in a Josh Hammer column:

Hammer later stealth-edited the quiet-part-out-loud about rewarding friends and punishing enemies, but it's still clear what his idea of justice is. One of my favorite targets, ham-faced pundit Erick Erickson, is too stupid to conceal or retract his similar views:

Those of you who are screaming about the Supreme Court this week can, in your words, check your privilege.

(Note the traditional portrayal of liberals "screaming," an old conservative NLP trick, and the use of "check your privilege" as Babylon Bee-grade humor. Also Erickson titles this page "Best Pride Month Ever" for added prickishness, a trait to which outspoken Christians are generally inclined.)

Conservatives have spent over fifty years watching the Supreme Court give you everything you demanded, including a novel right to kill children unheard of in American jurisprudence until 1973. When those of us on the right operated through the nation’s democratic and republican institutions and the elected bodies of our nation, we saw the Supreme Court repeatedly snatch those wins away from us for you...

You people have been able to rub your SCOTUS genie and get court imposed wins that no one could challenge democratically and now you can’t do that anymore. We’ve worked democratically to make sure of it. Now, to win again, you’re going to have to do what we did — change hearts and minds in places as varied as Alabama and Iowa. Why? Because we are a republic and states matter, not just people. We have fifty states and 350 million people. Your coalitions of angry rich white people on MSNBC won’t work anymore.

Set aside the claim that what this Court has produced comes of conservatives "working democratically" -- which is rich because half of the rogue Justices were appointed by a president who lost the popular vote, and the whole conservative bloc's decisions are highly unpopular in general and in the particular with Americans. "Coalitions of angry rich white people on MSNBC" didn't produce the eight million vote majority Biden won in 2020. (It's amazing what some people will write when they think nobody with any brains will read it.)

But Erickson's main idea, if we can so dignify it, is that liberals got what they wanted for a while and now conservatives should get a turn. This is worse in a way than his fraudulent claim of popular support -- though it also relies on that lie -- because like Josh Hammer thesis it's purely instrumental and anti-democratic, and assumes that the bauble of power is what's important rather than the will and welfare of the people.

I would also say that the Warren-Rehnquist Court decisions conservatives hate mostly furthered unacknowledged rights -- those of arrestees, prisoners, women, LGBTQ people -- while the Roberts But Really Thomas Court decisions are about taking these rights away and then some.  Though abortion rights as such are the big cause and I don't doubt the disapproving majority thinks "put it back, thief" (further polling suggests so), I think the extreme high-handedness of the Court is something of which normal people will also take notice and disapprove. At least I hope so, and that they get the chance to show their disapproval before the Court delivers the coup de grace to democracy with Moore v. Harper. 

FURTHER NOTES ON THE APOCALYPSE: IT'S REICHSTAGGERING!

Just wanted to note one or two things about the situation after Roe. First, let me remind you of this particular sub-plot of the January 6, 2021 coup attempted, as reported in the Washington Post last January:

Within days of President Donald Trump’s election defeat, Stewart Rhodes began talking about the Insurrection Act as critical to the country’s future.

The bombastic founder of the extremist group Oath Keepers told followers that the obscure, rarely used law would allow Trump to declare a national emergency so dire that the military, militias or both would be called out to keep him in the White House...

In an interview with The Washington Post last February [2021], Rhodes acknowledged his group had a cache of weapons outside the city, saying such a quick-reaction force was “only if the president calls us up.”

“We thought antifa might try to storm the White House,” he said, without evidence. If such a thing happened, he argued, D.C. gun restrictions would no longer apply, because “we would have been part of the military.”

The plan, it is clear, was to either cause or fake an "antifa" attack, which would immediately be taken at face value by the brethren after all their caterwauling about the the George Floyd "riots," and use that as an excuse to declare martial law and keep Tubby in office. But they couldn't raise even a piss-on of a Reichstag Fire, and the plot failed.

Just as clearly, they're trying to do something similar now, this time by claiming pro-abortion people who protest the Dobbs decision are part of an "insurrection" that can be violently put down. I mentioned National Review's recent contribution to this fraud in my last post, and there are plenty of other rightwing professions of fake concern over fantasies of pro-choice violence, such as this emission from Ted Cruz claiming "multiple Democrats" (unnamed) are "encouraging" it.

There are other plants, ranging from the sinister...

...to the stoopid:

But really, even though it is indeed quote stoopid, Insurrection Barbie's tweet portraying a normal occurrence of building materials as riot fodder is also sinister. As I've said many times, conservatives no longer feel obliged to make sense, because their frequently-false claims are not offered as evidence, in the usual sense, but as way of showing that their impunity goes beyond law and politics and straight into logic -- that is, their claims don't have to make even basic sense because, as the Bush people used to say, conservatives "make our own reality." 

That's also why the odious Tim Pool was showing pictures of that truck running down pro-choice protestors in Cedar Rapids as protestors "attacking cars." George Constanza famously told Jerry "it's not a lie if you believe it," but modern conservatives have shown that, for them, it's not a lie even if no one could believe it. 

I will not follow by saying please don't riot over Roe, because even doing that feeds this bullshit. I will say that the "Jane's Revenge" graffiti on fake pregnancy centers, plastered all over the rightwing press before the ruling, is incredibly sus, and none of these monsters deserves the benefit of any doubt because they lie, as Vince Foster said, without consequence, and the truth does them no favors. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Yes, apparently it's supposed to be played this fast.

•   I originally had only one Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebie to offer you this week -- this one about bullshit liberals (and others) who think you’re getting too worked up about the end of abortion rights. But today I was in a generous mood and thought, screw it, these guys have been working hard all week and, after they’ve trudged home on Friday covered in coal dust and sweat, they would enjoy the refreshment of my new post about some other junk on the Internet. Generous as I am, please remember subscriptions are what make my world go around, and buy one for a friend while you’re at it -- they’ll be non-plussed to receive such high-quality prose five times a week in their inbox, and all honor with redound to you. 

•   I have mixed emotions about the disastrous recent polling on the Supreme Court:

A Morning Consult-Politico poll taken Tuesday found that “relatively few voters believe the ruling should be reversed entirely (28%). Half of voters said Roe should not be overturned, up from 45% who said the same in December.” Furthermore, “voters are more than twice as likely to say abortion should be legal nationally than that it should be illegal. … Relatively few voters believe abortion should be illegal in all or most cases (35%).”

Worse, from the justices’ perspective, a mere 14 percent say they have a lot of confidence in the court. Support for expanding the court is up, with 44 percent strongly or somewhat favoring the addition of justices. That’s nothing compared with the 67 percent who strongly or somewhat support term limits. In addition, 74 percent support imposing a mandatory code of ethics; 63 percent favor an age limit; and 59 percent would like the court to have an equal number of Democrats, independents and Republicans (having dispensed with the fraud that the partisans in robes aren’t political). 

Part of me of course finds this hilarious. SCOTUS has been a nest of partisan ratfuckery for years, and it’s about time its stench finally reached the nostrils of the American people. Clarence Thomas, husband of the insurrectionist Ginni, blustering about the respect owed the Court is so rich that if I didn’t know better I’d swear it was some kind of inside joke to show the rabble just how out of touch he and his fellow wingnut operatives are.  As it is conservative commentators, who have been so insistent about defending justices from the merest show of displeasure at their actions, have not to my knowledge acknowledged the contempt their actions have brought upon the Court, and that the proles now want their Black Robed Masters term-limited. Gotta admit, that’s funny!

On the other hand, though, this could be seen as a troubling new development in a decades-long trend. Conservatives have been methodically spreading contempt on government since before Reagan, rightly figuring that the more citizens mistrusted their own government, the easier it would be to elect Republican con artists who could loot the Treasury of behalf of their contractor donors via privatization. Better still for their malign purposes, it also deprived those voters of the expectation that government could render them any meaningful assistance, making it far easier to cheat them on services and safeguards, leading to the landscape of collapsed bridges, delayed and denied justice, and general resentment with which we are now cursed.

The raspberries their Respect for the Court yap is getting now from normal people shows they probably didn’t anticipate that their Drown It In The Bathtub ethos would also affect government institutions that they themselves need healthy and respected in order to further their grift. 

And it won’t stop there: Think about the curses conservatives been casting at the “woke” military, ostensibly because they have normal diversity programs but really because they failed to support the Trump program -- including the attempted coup. This is undoubtedly a big part of the reason why the military’s poll numbers are down among Americans. It’s not nearly as bad as SCOTUS’ collapse, but after a few more years of wingnut hit squads screaming that soldiers are too friendly to the people they hate (i.e. women and minorities) and too unfriendly to their Russian buddies, who knows what might happen. 

A grim thought: Neither the Court nor the military is directly answerable to voters.

BEEN AWAY, WHAT'D I MISS?

I’ve been off the grid this week, seeing to some family business in London. I’m not in a position to get around much but can still enjoy some of the usual London advantages of density, argot, real beer, and other marvels. Also I can semi-forget about the garbage that is America and to semi-remember the garbage that is Britain. They’re as fucked as we are, maybe even more so, seeing as their Trumpian buffoon & oligarch’s cats-paw is still in office despite having shit the bed in, of all things, a social distancing scandal. This I had assumed was only promoted because such clown-shows distract from Boris Johnson’s real crimes, both those traditionally conservative and those uniquely his own, but now it appears the rightwing British press (which is even shittier than ours, if such a thing can be imagined) is letting it drag him down because they figure they can do even worse with someone else after watery neolib Keith Starmer inevitably steps on his own dick. 

Nonetheless I get glimpses at the homeland madness. I see one of our vat-bred Trump judges reversed the mask mandate on domestic flights (not applicable to foreign airline flights coming back home, thank God). Most Americans don’t agree with it, but our asshole press is going with the Everything Back to Normal fantasies, flogging tales of the jolly singing flight attendant and owning the libs. The U.S. 14-day new case rate is up 47% and once again Cassandra is smacking her forehead.

Oh, and yeah, I heard about Dreher. Talk about get off the cross, we need the wood! But whatever schadenfreude might be spurred by his impending mortal sin of divorce (I know, he’s not in that religion anymore -- say, maybe this is why!), it has to be blunted by the fact that, despite this back-of-wrist-to-forehead performance, he probably isn’t really suffering much -- after the nine years he’s allegedly been struggling with this, it’s probably a relief. It’s a cinch Dreher will learn no kind of charity or humility from the experience and if anything will push his customary bigotry and fascism with renewed zeal, confident that God has removed his erstwhile helpmeet to free his hand to more viciously smite liberals, gays, blacks, trans people, et alia.  The problem with these guys being monsters is, anything that might make you or I question our life choices merely makes theirs worse. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

 Sure, insistent bass and jangly guitars, why not, still cool 

Here’s a freebie from Roy Edroso Breaks It Down, about the new thing on the right wing, which is GROOMERS -- that is, yelling it at people who oppose anti-gay laws like the Don’t Say Gay mess in Florida, or at Disney for having cartoons with gay characters. 

If you’re a normal person you understand this to be an accusation that the person or company is trying to get children to have sex with adults. This is a very serious charge indeed, and one that normal people would be unlikely to believe without substantial proof -- that is, something considerably more than registration in the Democratic Party and a belief that gay people are normal and what’s actually perverse is acting like their very existence is a threat to children. In fact, normal people would probably find making such charges absent proof to be a repulsive act, and wonder what the hell is wrong with the accuser. 

If, however, you are a QAnon type, as about a quarter of Republicans are, you believe all Democrats are part of the Spirit Cooking Pizzagate Sex Perv Conspiracy, and these accusations will excite you to vote and march and perhaps commit violent crimes. 

This is why you’ve seen conservatives spreading the accusation in weird stories like the Fox News testimonial of one Kristan Hawkins -- a concerned mom and, coincidentally, president of Students for Life of America -- that the cartoon Turning Red, with its symbolic allusion to a girl’s first period and its tween crushes (it's rated PG, for parental guidance), “grooms children for abortions and sexual promiscuity… Disney leadership is actively pushing children out of Neverland and directly into an adult’s sexualized world, where they can be groomed for others enjoyment.”

As you might imagine, Rod Dreher is totally out of control on this -- here are some of his allusions to grooming from just the past week:

Mickey Mouse is a groomer...

Most people are uncomfortable with gender ideology now, but a generation or two raised on woke Disney, and all of woke Disney’s allies in the Cathedral, will likely have been tamed, co-opted, and groomed...

Most Americans do not want their little kids groomed by woke classroom ideologues to embrace a queer identity...

Americans are broadly tolerant of trans people, but they correctly draw the line at grooming children. I hope that the suits at the Walt Disney Company, the leading corporate groomer of children, are soiling their pants over these poll numbers...

If we as a country and as a society cannot protect our children from having their minds colonized by these groomers, what use are we?...

UPDATE: Groomers. They are all groomers...

Etc. Perhaps the most rancid thing about this is the way the slur-throwers insist they’re not really saying what they’re clearly saying and hoping their loony followers will believe -- Dreher, again, in his story (I’m not even kidding) “Democrats: Party of Groomers”:

About the term “groomers”: it’s usually used to describe pedophiles who are preparing innocent kids for sexual exploitation. I think it is coming to have a somewhat broader meaning: an adult who wants to separate children from a normative sexual and gender identity, to inspire confusion in them, and to turn them against their parents and all the normative traditions and institutions in society. It may not specifically be to groom them for sexual activity, but it is certainly to groom them to take on a sexual/gender identity at odds with the norm. And it’s working…

The passive locution “it is coming to have a somewhat broader meaning” suggests Dreher believes he has Humpty Dumpty power over the general understanding of common English words, which given his ineptitude as a wordsmith is rich. But you don’t have to be particularly skilled to throw shit, though it does help if you can keep people from noticing that your hands are covered with it. 

COURT AND STARK.

I have released today’s Roy Edroso Breaks It Down, which manages to convey all the thrills and much of the bullshit of the Ketanji Jackson Brown hearings in just a few minutes. 

As I mentioned earlier on Twitter, Republicans have brought culture war gibberish to SCOTUS confirmation hearings before, but the level of it in these hearings is off the charts, and I know why: Because if conservatives revealed in these hearings what they really want out of the Court, normal Americans would recoil in horror. (In fact, outside the chambers, Republican Senator Mike Braun denounced Loving v Virginia and Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn denounced Griswold v Connecticut; it was as if they compelled to expose themselves -- or to test the waters.)

Thus they wave children’s books and quiz the judge on female anatomy to distract from their malicious judicial agenda. Their rubes, instead of complaining that their Senators didn’t stop this black lady from furthering darkening the Court, will feel satisfied that they made a big stink against Wokemob Cancelculture, and (they hope) ordinary people will only notice that the usual dull yammering noise about the usual stupid topics is going on, and ignore their more sinister purpose.