I keep the telephone beside me all the time
It’s been one of those weeks where the bright side and the dark side are one and the same – namely, that the shitheels are not even pretending they’re not shit and the polls show the voters have smelt it. How’s this, from Tubby’s FCC factotum on CBS’ firing Stephen Colbert on his orders, for some fascist display:
Quintanilla’s question, BTW, is as close as any Prestige Press reporter has gotten to directly asking the administration whether they’re doing what they’re obviously doing. But, as with the Epstein thing, the cowardice of the kept media isn’t bamboozling people as effectively as once it did. It’s mind-blowing to see Tubby ranting and raving that maybe his letter to Epstein is a forgery – I mean, not even the MAGA-est good ol’ boy down t’ klavern is gonna buy that, even with the reporters all nodding politely. And they’re not gonna buy it when Ghislaine Maxwell cuts a deal to get out of prison in exchange for her “cooperation.”
Of course, Tubs will get away with it, and the big downside to him getting away with it without even the simulacrum of popular support he once had is that some people will get discouraged and cease to push back. Which I guess leaves it to those of us who still have free souls (which leaves out the Columbia finks) to push back twice as hard.
Speaking of discouragement and encouragement, one thing I want to say about the South Park thing: It’s pretty funny and good for them, but when I see people acting like Trey Parker and Matt Stone joined the Resistance I must raise a demurrer. Don’t mistake what they did for principle. The best thing about these guys, and generally the only thing I still like about them, is that they don’t give a fuck about anything – they knew tweaking Tubby would draw some needed attention to their aged franchise, and they’re still milking it.
Stone and Parker accomplished with South Park what only a very few satirists have managed: They convinced the audience that it isn’t really satire, at least not of anything they actually believed in. Back in 1907 Booth Tarkington and Harry Leon Wilson were surprised to find that a boorish character in their innocents-abroad play The Man From Home – who announced from the stage that he wouldn't “trade our State Insane Asylum for the worst ruined ruin in Europe” – was taken as a hero by American audiences; “they didn't laugh at him forgivingly,” Tarkington wrote; “they applauded thunderously. In all such matters they felt as he did." Stone and Parker figured this angle out quicker, and have been slapping their audience in the face with it for decades. What is MAGA, after all, but a nation of Cartmans?
And like I said: good for them! Writing’s a hard dollar and satire a handicap; Swift had his deanery to fall back on. And we can always use a laugh. But what will turn the wheel is outrage, and there’s no outrage without morality. Seek it elsewhere.
Speaking of which, the Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebies: first, another episode of Received Opinion with Bolt Upright, Peoni Doyenne, and Chafe Dramaturgy going "Whither Epstein"; and a little essay on what some of the regime's word games reveal about their view of the world.
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