NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the Presidential debate prep -- that is, rightbloggers trying to prepare Americans for the idea that facts are bullshit and it's just the exhilarating hatred Trump makes you feel that matters.  I used last week's ridiculous fist-shaking over Samantha Bee as an objective correlative, but I could have picked any of several dozen equally stupid controversies, including Zack Galifianaki's “Between Two Ferns” interview with Hillary Clinton, much in the manner of the one he did with Obama that enraged rightbloggers in 2014. The effects of the Hillary int were similar. Take Nick Gillespie of Reason, for example: “‘Between Two Ferns’ is a comedy bit, so nobody's expecting anything remotely tough,” he said in a brief moment of clarity, before lapsing into “but for it to actually be funny there's need to some edge…” Libertarianism and culture war -- the worst of both worlds! Others, like The Liberty Beacon, seemed not to know what they were looking at (“Hillary Furious after Comedian makes her Look Ridiculous in Interview!… Comedy and sarcasm have never been so poignant”).

Or I could have used the opening of the new Museum of African-American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., which inspired Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media to list “Exhibits You Won’t Find in the New National Museum of African American History and Culture.” Among these: “Martin Luther King Jr.’s womanizing, plagiarism, and communist advisers,” “Unpatriotic black sports figures,” “The Democratic Party’s history of slavery,” etc.  In a follow-up, Kincaid answered the common charge that slaves built the White House by pointing out that in the War of 1812, slaves helped burn it down, so really it all evens out.

In any event, I have to say I'm in some sympathy with the debate commission's Janet Brown and her much-derided comment on big facts and little facts. Whatever the moderators might do to keep things honest, wingnuts will litigate the hell out of it -- like they did in 2012 with Candy Crowley, whose fact-check on Romney they continue to blame for his defeat -- in fact, their butthurt over that led to the GOP debate reforms that, one might argue, led to the nomination of Trump. So Brown's in a tough spot. This is what happens when you're forced to do business with shitheels. Here's hoping the voters have not ceased to recognize such people for what they are -- and, if they do, revile rather than identify with them.