The first of our Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebies this week is Thursday morning’s sketch on how the debate might go – which, I am told (too busy working to watch), was not how Thursday night’s actual debate turned out.
I’ve also seen a lot of panic over Biden’s performance -- which may be warranted! But I absent myself. For one thing, the sudden seemingly-bipartisan groundswell on social media for a Biden replacement has united Matthew Yglesias and Megan McArdle, and they both suck shit and always have. For another, the Democratic Party has for decades been deaf to my excellent recommendations and I doubt they’re taking requests at the moment (the moment being June of an election year and the request being the defenestration of the incumbent) from me or anyone else.
Anyway, cope how you will, but I fall back on the counsel of literature, specifically Terry Southern’s fanciful Texas Rangers motto: “Little man whip a big man every time if the little man's in the right and keeps a'comin.” In the final analysis your only weapon is the truth, and the truth is a Trump victory would be catastrophic and render today’s Supreme Court outrages the least of our worries. If you can’t get that across to voters, it won’t be because they’re ineducable, nor because Biden Is Old – it’ll be because they don’t think fascism is a hard no, and if that’s what they think there’s nothing you or our system can do about it. Back to the classics, again: Courage will not save you, but it will show that your souls are still alive.
Speaking of the ineducable, Jonathan Chait this week actually published something entitled, I shit you not, “Why conservatives should vote for Joe Biden.” In our second freebie I treat this nonsense as it deserves, but Chait’s yap is useful if you want to know at least one way things have gone so wrong: Intelligent and well-meaning people trying to recruit defenders of democracy from among its mortal enemies instead of from "the Left."
I think they beat-corrected these? Or maybe I'm just shocked that it still kicks so hard.
This past week at Roy Edroso Breaks It Down we had plenty of the usual political stuff, but our two freebies today for the non-subscribing public (Stop crowding! They’re coming! There’s plenty for everyone!) are about two dead guys. First my reminiscence of the now-late James Chance and the shows he played with the Contortions back when New York City was better because I was young and living in it (and really, is there any other reason people say so? Well, I’ve discoursed on that in one of my evergreens).
The second is for the newly-departed Donald Sutherland and an invitation to comment on your favorite of his performances, and we’ve already gotten great ones from our regular commenters (who are subscribers, get the hint – come on, $7/month is ridiculously cheap!).
It’s too little noted, as Trump tries to convince credulous reporters that he’s reaching out successfully to African-American voters, every single MAGA media outlet like the Examiner keeps giving evidence that they have absolutely no black readers.
Anyway:
The headline suggests typical rightwing Limousine Liberals in Hollyweird Kulturkampf crap, but the dek promises a twist. One wonders: Is he talking about Ron Schneider and Kevin Sorbo? But no, it’s worse than that! After a typically gratuitous swipe at Kamala Harris (these guys never do any other kind; Vice-Presidents don’t do anything to be criticized for, but Henninger’s readers certainly know what party, gender and color KH is, and that’s enough), he gets after Biden making $30 mil at a Hollywood fundraiser rather than stroking the oil industry for a billion dollars like a real American.
Henninger also repeats the latest cheapfake bullshit about Biden looking ga-ga, but unlike the usual lie diffusers he deflects with some pretended sympathy: “We’ll give Mr. Biden a pass on this one. Who wouldn’t be zonked after flying across nine time zones, even for $30 million?” That’s how the prestige-press pros do it, folks!
But then we get to the nub:
Less easy to duck was the impression of a Democratic Party drowning in Hollywood glitz. The party’s public image is almost wholly defined by celebrities, and that’s not good for winning general elections.
As opposed to being almost wholly defined by enraged insurrectionists storming the Capitol and Rudolph Giuliani. At least Rudy’s hair dye runs down his face, not like the fancy stays-in-the-hair dye favored by effete showbiz liberals! After listing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Gavin Newsom as “celebrities,” or at least celebrity-adjacent, Henninger again affects to be reasonable:
The Democrats’ rejoinder is: Give us a break! Donald Trump is the most unalloyed celebrity ever associated with the presidency, or politics. True, but that isn’t the Democrats’ problem.
The list of celebrities joined to the Democratic hip runs forever. But the Republicans? Once past Mr. Trump, no one associates the GOP with shiny people. In the popular telling among sophisticates, the Republicans—whether their elected politicians or followers—could hardly be more out of it.
George W. Bush, elected twice, was derided as a Republican doofus from Texas. Ronald Reagan? A “minor” actor. The traditional Republican set of beliefs is dismissed as beyond the pale on pretty much everything—the culture, race, social values, fashion, even culinary preferences. Can a foodie be a Republican?
See, Democrats are associated with “shiny” people while Republicans are associated with a President so toxic he was never invited to a post-presidency GOP convention and a famous movie actor some unnamed person called “minor.” Even casual readers may begin to smell a rat, so Henninger tries a curveball:
The assaults on Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas may be about legal outcomes, but make no mistake, these attacks originate in the belief that they aren’t our kind of people.
I’ve been trying to puzzle this one out and the only thing I can figure is these judges’ corruption and batshit wingnut wives are supposed to be relatable to the Average Joe. Duck, here comes another feint!
Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearing made that clear.
I can’t even guess.
The Democratic Party’s celebrity dependency has been background noise for decades and not a problem . . . until now.
These people have been associating Democrats with celebrities for decades (remember this McCain ad?). I guess Henninger means it hasn’t been working… but this time for sure!
This presidential election remains closely contested. With the cost of living the No. 1 issue, each swing-state vote deserves attention. In this high-stakes context, the spectacle of the incumbent president jetting from Europe to Hollywood is the kind of look Mr. Biden and his party don’t need. He’s Hollywood Joe.
I thought he was supposed to be Sleepy Joe, even Senile Joe. Suddenly he’s one of the beautiful people? Several grafs of GOP boilerplate ensue (Did you know Trump went to a black church, and there were even a few black people there?) before this whopper:
Mr. Trump himself could help by running off the rails, but he’s been almost disconcertingly pragmatic recently, shaking hands with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and endorsing former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Trump critic, for the U.S. Senate. However improbable, a Trump turn to self-discipline could dilute the Biden campaign’s decision to run overwhelmingly against Mr. Trump rather than on the Biden record.
We’ve been hearing some version of a “Trump turn to self-discipline” since he came down the escalator and even his fans mainly like that he’s obviously deranged and might get mad enough to actually murder some people they don’t like. Normally I’d admire a bullshit parfait with as many layers as Henninger gives this, yet it’s such a slovenly job that I begin to suspect that he isn’t even using real bullshit.
Holy moley, I’m eight days late! (That’s what she said, fnar!) Yes, ‘Round-the-Horn is supposed to be a weekly event, apologies. Fortunately Roy Edroso Breaks It Down, the acclaimed publication which this serves as a feeder stream, is still bumping hard five days a week; with a subscription you get emails (on the regular for paying subs, on free-issue days only for easy riders), so if I forget to remind you here at alicublog you’ll still be in the loop. Come on, you gave your email to CVS!
As it happens, there were no free issues that previous week -- I can’t be giving it away all the time, folks, this is how I keep body and soul together with a minimum of leakage along the seams. But this week we have two very good specimens, still fresh:
1. Part II of the Sam & Martha-Ann Alito vs. The Neighbors!If you missed Part One, it’s still available, though as with The Godfather Part II and all great sequels it’s unnecessary for enjoyment of this one. While the Alitos’ insurrectionary sentiments are not fun at all, there’s plenty of laughs in the fact that their neighbors hate them so much that, despite the traditional viciousness of wingnuts when crossed, the people forced to live near them decided it was worth the risk to rat them out. Grim Fascists don’t Make Good Neighbors, apparently.
Part II comes after the surreptitious taping of these worthies at a conservative event appeared to confirm Mr. Alito’s extremism and Mrs. Alito’s lunacy. Naturally the tribunes of the rightwing press were enraged that anyone should stoop so low as to record the yammerings of these public figures supported by taxpayers dollars and whatever bribes Clarence Thomas hasn’t already hoovered up. “A political activist infiltrated a gala to try provoking Justice Alito and his wife,” sputters The Wall Street Journal, who would much prefer you only hear about the Alitos via Sam himself in the op-ed space the paper so generously extends to him from time to time.
So why is he still a conservative (acceptable media version)? As everyone should know by now, the key to conservative success is that its adherents will endure no end of neglect or punishment so long as the people they really hate get it even worse. I’m sure this con artist prays every day for a Trump victory so that gay and trans people and women who choose not to serve as broodslaves will suffer. A true Christian martyr, he’ll endure a few harsh words for that!
Normally I don’t release “Fun Friday” editions of Roy Edroso Breaks It Down to gen pop, because they’re meant as downtime for REBID regulars after each long week of satire and analysis. (Yes, it’s a five-day-a-week operation, with subscriptions available at the ridiculously low price of $7/month! Sign up now!)
But this week is something special as Tubby got fingered, so here is the latest. For me the best part of the verdict is this: Usually, when wingnuts rage and threaten after a Trump-related reversal (as they do frequently, since rage and threats are mainly what they’ve got), I confess to feeling at least a little dread; but since a normal process has yielded a normal result that did not magically exonerate the piece of shit, today they seem completely laughable. Clowns can be frightening, but in the final analysis they're just clowns.
I usually imagine McMegan’s gunning for Peggy Noonan’s job, but now I think she may aspire to be the next Senator Susan Collins. There are no good Republicans, people, and that goes double for libertarians.
Sliding into Memorial Day weekend, hurrah! I’d like to ignore political stuff for a while, but I can’t let pass the Prestige Press’ latest Trump in-kind contribution: Tubby gave a speech in The Bronx, which the PP takes to mean New York is in play. Some of them just echo Trump’s bullshit:
You’ll still get nudniks on social media (and of course at Fox) going “there were a lot more when I was there nice try libs” but there have been so many fake Trump rally shots they can’t even back it up with Photoshop.
Another exhausting week but at least I’ve managed to do a proper Friday ‘Round-the-Horn! Or I will have when I follow this paragraph with several others, put in the links, pick a video header, think of a clever dek… you know what, sounds like too much work, forget it. (No, Roy! Think of the chirren!) Speaking of which:
Why you trollin' like a bitch? Ain't you tired? Tryna strike a chord and it's probably A-Minor
I hear a lot of weak comparisons of popular music to venerable artistic forms but if you ask me some diss tracks are up there with British poets’ feuds.
Anyway, for immortality (because if you take care of the present, immortality takes care of itself):
Before I get to the Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebies, I have to touch on a subject I was not able to treat at that venue because it came in too late: The absolutely bugfuck crazy story of Mrs. Sam Alito and the Upside-Down Flag. Three things make it even crazier: First, that Justice Alito ratted out (or passed the blame onto) his own wife to the Times; second, that per Sidney Powell’s testimony Alito was lined up to assist the Jan. 6 insurrection that his distress flag portended; and third, that Alito ran back to the Times to bitch that his wife had to wave the insurrection flag because one of his neighbors put up a sign with a swear word on it.
I mean this one has everything we’ve come to expect from wingnuts: Evasion of responsibility; butch he-man woman-hater guys hiding behind ladyskirts; snowflakey sob stories about how liberal incivility forced them to go nuts; and treason.
Anyway, on to the REBID gifts. First is Yet Another NYT Editorial Version of Am I Out of Touch, No, It’s the Students Who Are Wrong. These fuckfaces annoy me for infinite reasons but the real craw-sticker in the crap essay that inspired my parody was the implication that, while it’s bad (they guess) that colleges and their donors/cat’s-paws are punishing the speech of their students, we should all remember caaaancel cullllture woo woo woo. Brother, no one believes that bullshit anymore; Bill Maher couldn’t even get Bill Burr to pretend he believes it and that’s the subtext of half his shtick. It belongs in the basement pantry with “CRT” and “groomer” and all the other gibberish viruses these idiots have tried to transmit to normal people via their rubes, but as long as Bari Weiss draws breath I guess we have to put up with its irrelevant intrusion in every First Amendment discussion.
The other freebie is Unwoken Comedy Caveman Jerry Seinfeld. I don’t get it – why are these old comedians so pissy that the kids don’t like them? When I was in college you didn’t hear Georgie Jessel complaining that the Student Activity Boards weren’t booking him. Why can’t he just relax on his piles of money with a cocaine diffuser like the rest of them?
UGGGH guys, I know, I’ve blown another deadline but you have to understand I was just on a (far too brief!) vacation back in the homeland, and it was glorious – saw friends and familiar faces and places, and absorbed the life-giving 220V jolt of big city living -- but my first week back here was so nerve-shattering I couldn’t manage a Friday post or even a Saturday one. So Friday-‘Round-the-Horn is two days late. Please forgive me.
Anyway my Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebies, despite the hectic pace of national news, are still worth a look! First, we have my essay on Peter Baker laying the tattered credibility of the New York Times over a blood-puddle and helping Peggy Noonan to step over it – as fitting an image of the complete collapse of the prestige press as any I can think of: a NYT made man and a venerable WSJ received-opinion diffuser collaborating to tsk-tsk-tsk college kids for having the nerve to denounce senseless mass slaughter of Palestinians by an American client state. I'm not sure what Pete ‘n’ Peggy are thinking -- maybe they fantasize themselves representatives of U.S. interests (or U.S.-based business interests, anyway) and may, indeed must, justify any sins committed on those interests' behalf, like Daniel Day-Lewis in Spielberg’s Lincoln, when he thunders, “I am the President of the United States, clothed in immense power!” – though their version, whatever their imaginings, is prissy and passive-aggressive, and supports a thuggish foreign belligerent rather than emancipation and American liberty. Well, as long as they feel they've done their bit.
And speaking of received opinion, here’s the second freebie, in which our Sunday morning political TV talk show tackles (or rather dutifully if ineffectually gums) the subject of pathetic Veep-spot scrambler Kristi Noem of South Dakota and her puppy-murder. Noem, like all these fuckers, is so full of shit I doubt she even had a puppy, but whatever the backstory I do believe she meant her lurid tale to pique the interest of King Shit with its pseudo-countrified cruelty. (Her last-minute “You city slickers don’t know what it’s like on the farm!” gambit suggests she hoped newspaper dummies would buy that real rustics shoot coon hounds and barn cats like they was a-swattin’ flies. Sadly, for her, no one thinks that.) I still believe Tubby will go for a black man who can call Kamala Harris a bitch and a ho and set a few million Cletuses howling with delight. But who knows? Maybe he'll just nominate one of his kids, or a horse. It's not like his rubes give a shit.
I stopped paying attention to this guy early. That was a mistake.
I skipped last week’s “’Round-the-Horn” because I was rushing into a much-needed holiday, which is not yet quite ended but I figured I’d just pop in and let you know I’m still part of the warp and woof of American life. (“Norma Desmond? I thought she was dead!”)
Hey check this out: Protesting for good causes is good and protesting for bad causes is bad. Simple as. Occupying a campus building to pressure your school to divest from the military industrial complex and to register your horror over our country's dogged complicity in an ongoing genocide is an unequivocal good. Reasonable people can disagree about this you might be thinking? No they can't! Finding moral clarity on this matter is one of the easiest things a person could ever do.
Being an elderly Democratic simp I understand why Biden is doing his pro-Israel difference-splitting bit: He knows if he loses in November we’re all cooked, and believes this is the politically expedient path out of the crisis as by the election most voters will have forgotten it and Tubby’s troops will be screaming about Messicans and tranny-sexuals and (because they can’t help themselves) describing in lurid detail how they will murder their enemies, which Biden reasonably thinks may invigorate his base. Not how I would do it, of course, but then my own presidency would probably end like The Phantom of the Opera and be no good to anyone.
It’s sad and infuriating that we even have to deal with an influential-out-of-all-proportion minority of American voters (and a majority of rich fucks) who have the temperament (we can’t really call what they have “politics”) of Judge Holden in Blood Meridian. If you see a way out, please provide in comments.
But alas, the hilarity is not unmixed – and I don’t refer to the execution of Cricket, which I’m not sure even happened. Going back to Romney’s rooftop dog gambit, Noem’s story was obviously meant to show what passes for toughness in the sick word of conservatism, but as often happens the promulgators of the shtick had no idea how normal people would react to it. I’m afraid it’s Judge Holdens all the way down.
I have said more than once that the New York Post is Rupert Murdoch’s primary stateside lie-diffuser – more than even the Wall Street Journal, since people who can barely read can still comprehend and consume the Post’s retrograde and racist bullshit -- and the tendency of journalists to laugh it off just because it has funny headlines (“Headless Body in Topless Bar, chortle chortle gotta love the Post”) is a key example of the profession’ disgusting dereliction in the face of far-right institutional capture.
But the trial is also funny because Trump lacks impulse control and indeed any sense of decorum other than that which he believes is owed to himself; so even on trial, with his freedom at risk and the eyes of the world upon him, he farts and mutters and nods off.
Our other freebie is a parable, if you will, of the NeverTrumpers and JustTheTipTrumpers drifting down the Amazon in fading expectation of, any moment now, reviving the Good Republican Party. The inspiration here is a ridiculous Times op-ed proposing that non-MAGA conservatives “create a Republican Party in exile, a counterestablishment dedicated to recapturing the party from the outside,” the possibility of which falls somewhere between the return of Bonnie Prince Charlie and a Carlist revival. One want to say, “face it, guys – this Id Monster is of your own devising, and if you won’t own up and help get rid of it you’re complicit” -- but that suggests some kind of involuntary false consciousness (like that targeted by the 60s slogan “if you’re not part of the solution you’re part of the problem”); the reality is these guys know they’re full of shit and wish to play both sides against the middle. If Tubby II is not effectuated, Bill Barr, who just ended a long run of Trump criticism by endorsing the man he said “shouldn’t be anywhere near the Oval Office,” will just shrug and quietly reseat himself among the Good Conservatives who expect to be treated as the Loyal Opposition. I say let’s not.
Friend of mine alerted me. This is the kind of goofy shit I love.
Yeah, I missed last week’s edition. I offer no apologies. It’s been a long time between vacations – last time I got four nights of rest was my pancreatectomy a year ago – and between the straight job and the five days of week dishing out premium copy at Roy Edroso Breaks It Down I’m to' up and worn out.
And speaking of Roy Edroso Breaks It Down, I know some of you missed the free issues I usually hand out on Fridays like NutraSweet gumballs. Well, a got a couple for you today.
The other freebie is a brief bit of counsel on Tubby’s attempt to back away from his own anti-abortion record – namely, don’t get caught up in his bullshit, just say “he’s lying like always” and walk away. I wrote it before the Arizona Supreme Court shit the bed with its pre-civil-war forced-birth cosplay, but the basic message not only still applies to Trump, it self-evidently also applies to all the panic-stricken wingnuts who mired themselves in that policy. Kari Lake’s mealy-mouthed pro-choice turnaround is hilarious – like Franz Liebkind trying to distract from his Nazism by singing “I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy” in The Producers – but even better are the hardcore anti-abortionists trying to make their panicked troops hold the line, like the editors of National Review:
Republicans can put [Democrats] back on the defensive for their extremism on abortion and make a case that the law should protect life at some stage of pregnancy — but only if they put old grievances aside and offer voters a practical alternative.
“Look, we’ll let you subhumans murder your preborn angel-babies for a couple of weeks, tops, but after that we lock you in the birthin’ sheds. C’mon, bitches, we’re meeting you halfway!” One is tempted not to tell them how badly they’re fucking up, but I actually think they know and can’t help themselves, which just makes it funnier.
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.)
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.
If you were to. knock me down. I'd just get up again.
Been a wacky week around America. I know a lot of people are getting a kick out of Tubby’s hunt for the $474 million bond he’ll need to post if he doesn’t want his assets seized. But to me it just looks like more evidence that there are never any consequences for our biggest criminals. For one thing, Trump’s getting a $3 billion payday for the IPO on TruthSocial/TrumpMedia – a value proposition I absolutely do not understand, and apparently neither does anyone else, as CNN tells us “experts say the market is drastically overvaluing Trump Media based on the company’s fundamentals,” so he may not be able to cash out easily. But he’s got a great backup plan: The Republican Party, which has agreed to let him take a nice cut for himself on any Presidential campaign fundraising he does. The guy will never pay a dime nor serve a day. I wonder if Peter “Fall Guy” Navarro sees the irony. George Carlin tried to tell him it's a big club and he ain’t in it, but these guys always believe that doesn’t apply to them, even when they get bounced.
Freebie #2 is our latest entry in the category of Hardcore, our term of our term of art for ragebait emails that lure your senile relatives to rightwing garbage sites. This time, though, instead of trawling the Mariana Trench of less-well-known wingnut equities, we focus on the work of two conservative icons whose recent gibberings have won them Hardcore status. First is Candace Owens, who just today got de-partnered by the Daily Wire, though probably for allegedly antisemitic content rather than the loony “French President’s wife is a man” thing she’s been pushing; second is one of our longtime fave figures-of-fun, Rod Dreher, who has risen to the latest ultraracist rightwing talking point that Haitians are cannibals bent on invading America and eating up the white people, and attributes this to voodoo and the fruit of its poisoned tree, the liberation of Haitian slaves in 1804. It’s a doozy, and I see Br’er Rod’s on a streak:
I admit it, I love music that you'd hear under a "sinister dance club" scene in a movie.
A little late off the mark today -- Substack was down for a while so I couldn't set up the freebies for non-subscribers. (You know, an actual subscription is absurdly inexpensive - $7 a weekmonth (whoops, I mistyped -- it's cheaper than I said!) even less when you do the annual plan, and that gets you five [5] issues every week. It's almost insane not to subscribe.)
Anyway: Freebie #1 is one of my Mar-a-Lago Throne Room sketches, this one speculating on what the next step might be after Tubby's total nepo-takeover of the GOP. Trump's yammerings, in real life as well as in my artistic renderings, just get weirder and more sinister every day, but democracy' loss is satire's gain.
Speaking of which, Freebie #2 is a brief review of prestige press thumbsuckers that show how big a leg-up they're giving Trump, in part by concealing how openly racist and authoritarian he is, so voters just view the election as a couple of celebrities competing for a prize. This has become a popular topics in liberal circles, sometimes advanced by people who seem only to have acknowledged the problem very recently. Regard Lord Saletan:
Sounds miffed, doesn't he -- as if he'd thought: surely by now Republicans should be rising up and showing us all what good citizens they are! Tsk tsk, so disappointing; still, you have to admit Joe Biden is old.
I was too busy with work to watch the State of the Union, but from the clips I’ve seen Biden was far from the doddering dotard Republicans and the prestige press (but I repeat myself) have spent years painting him as. Apparently their “pivot” is that Biden was on drugs!
Given that the Trump White House pharmacy under the leadership of Dr. Ronny “Feelgood” Jackson was throwing around uppers and downers like beads at Mardi Gras, and that Tubby himself is an obvious user, you might say it’s projection, but I begin to think it’s the only explanation they can fathom. For why, in their view, would anyone get so excited about traditional Democratic policies that help less fortunate Americans get ahead? It’s got to be drugs!
A psychiatrist who has worked with elderly dementia patients said President Biden exhibited signs of stimulant use to mask cognitive decline in his amped-up, aggressive State of the Union speech on Thursday.
Mr. Biden, 81, often raced through his remarks with the speed of an auctioneer, loudly shouting his words despite having a microphone in front of him.
Speed and volume of speech can be a sign of using Adderall or another amphetamine, said Dr. Carole Lieberman, a forensic psychiatrist based in Beverly Hills, California.
You can find Lieberman elsewhere on the internet calling herself "America's Psychiatrist" and posting gibberish like this:
As Lorenzo Semple DuBois said in The Producers: They try... ok, how they try!
Readers of Roy Edroso Breaks It Down know that for years I’ve been doing sketches in which “The Formula” – a mix of cocaine, Adderall, ketamine, and Lord knows what – is used by Trump’s handlers to keep him upright. (I’ve even got a few with Biden in them; here’s one I think you might enjoy under the circumstances.)
The cherry on the SOTU Sunday was Senator Tradwife’s rebuttal. As has been pointed out, her delivery is only bizarre if you’re unacquainted with the “fundie baby” voice with which evangelicals project winsomeness to cloak their theocratic intentions. But maybe now that ordinary Americans have gotten a load of it on national TV they’re starting to realize how fucking weird that whole crew is.
I mentioned Roy Edroso Breaks It Down, which is a subscriber service – but as usual on Fridays I have a few free issues for you joy-poppers. Feast your eyes!
First, another of my recurring features – political talk show Received Opinion with your host Bolt Upright – in which Bolt asks whether Kyrsten Sinema’s departure from public life (the less-remunerative non-lobbyist part of it, anyway!) is yet another example of the sad death of comity and compromise in Washington, which in Bolt’s view and the view of all network chuckleheads are values to be treasured above democracy, equity, and everything else.
Also: My annual Oscar predictions! Yes, once again I’m indulging my sick interest in this festival of glamour and hubris! I’m already getting cold feet about my Adapted Screenplay pick, but by and large I think I’ve got something worth risking $5 in a pool. (That statement implies no responsibility if you lose the house! Wager responsibly!)
It's still funny to me that this kind of music can qualify as "a tune that's been running through my head" as if it were some pretty Tin Pan Alley number.
Happy March! The deeper we get into political campaign season (what, you didn’t know? It started after the consultants got back from their post-election vacations in 2023) the more fucked up things look.
Sorry, kid, our base demands child broodslaves! Either the smart Republicans can’t control these nuts or smart Republicans don’t exist. Or they think binding the small core of nutcakes who can be counted on to vote/insurrect on their behalf is so important that they have to back up whatever lunacies they demand, and count on voter suppression to carry the day for their candidates in elections.
I will also remind you aesthetic types that I’m doing my annual Oscar movie reviews – with my latest that’s all ten Best Picture nominees sorted, with all of those essays free to non-subscribers, so if you want to prep for the big show March 10 now’s your chance. I also intend to watch and report back on some of the other nominated films. Watch that space!
Around all these years but I can't recall hearing them before. This'n's a banger!
Happy nearly almost spring, folks! Sunset’s more than an hour later than it was in the depths of winter, so have hope!
Not that politics makes it easier, especially with all the bullshit being generated over the Alabama Supreme Court’s lunatic IVF ruling, which I covered in a Roy Edroso Breaks It Down item available to non-subscribers for free. Like I said, the outrage isn’t only about the fate of in-vitro for the people who need it to have children – it’s about the “fetal personhood” concept on which the ruling is based, which is exactly the concept on which Republicans base their drive to ban abortion nationwide – which is also why Republican “moderates” like Nikki Haley and Larry Hogan are doing such a tortured pee-dance over it: They know their bullshit ain’t getting over like it used to.
Of course, back then their factota on the U.S. Supreme Court had just pushed Dobbs out and Republicans were feeling feisty – everything’s coming up Roeless! But after several state ballot ass-beatings showed that nobody is fooled, they’re shitting themselves and running for cover. We have to make sure they don’t get it.
Hey, here’s a Humpday treat – a rare mid-week release of a Roy Edroso Breaks It Down issue FREE to gen pop. It’s the latest episode of our Washington Insider news talk show Received Opinion with Bolt Upright, this time focused on the Truckers Attack/Richies Forsake New York bullshit being spread by Republican operatives via credulous prestige-press journos.
But it really goes back farther to what I call GOP Butch Cosplay – like the Hard Hat Riot of 1970 and the whole “Joe the Plumber” scam of 2008, it involves rightwingers acting all rough and tough and threatening to shut everything down if they don’t get their way.
At least the hardhats actually beat up some hippies, though – these guys just yell and pose like WWE wrestlers and take selfies and expect the world to fall at their feet, but have to make do with dumb reporters and whatever half-wits believe them.
But, as I’ve also said before, MAGA types have been trained to despise New York as a symbol of everything they hate – different kinds of people living together, public services, culture, soap and toothpaste -- and will believe any crap they’re fed about how it’s all going to collapse any day now. I’d feel sorry for them if they weren’t dangerous lunatics.
Always liked these guys, glad they got back in the game.
Listen, I’ve never kept a dollar past sunset so I can be pretty tight-fisted, especially when it comes to giving out freebies to my bread-and-butter Roy Edroso Breaks It Down site. [Subscribe! Cheap!] But this week your cup runneth over – partly because I want you non-subscribers to get acquainted with some of that publication’s adorable features.
First, I’ve unlocked today’s installment of Fun Friday, which has become a regular week-ending post that prompts subscribers to talk about a specific type of pleasure in comments – for example, a moviegoing experience that the hecklers in the audience made memorable. Today’s edition is about things you love mainly or even simply because they’re old – or, rather, because their antiquity spurs nostalgia, either for your past or a past you never experienced. The real joy of these things – and this week is no exception – is our commenters, REBID’s secret weapon. Throw in your own comments if you like!
Also, every year around this time I watch all the Oscar Best Picture nominees before the big show and write about them; this year I’m making all those essays available to non-subscribers. This week it’s on The Zone of Interest – and the post has links to the all my other open-access reviews as well. Nine down, one to go!
RIP to a real one. I met Mojo back in the day, and he wasn't putting it on, that was really him. I told him that when I came down South for the Memphis Jazz Fest I ate so much barbecue I didn't take a shit for a day and a half. He referred to me thereafter exclusively as Hambone.
I missed a ‘Round-the-Horn last week, sorry! But here, let me offer you a Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebie from that timeframe which is still good, or will be till after the Super Bowl: My as-usual behind-the-scenes look at how Tubby and his team plan to fight back against the Taylor Swift menace. I know, there’s been so much written already about the rightwing meltdown over the pretty white girl with a football hero boyfriend who for some reason doesn’t love enraged Nazi incels, but mine’s funny. If you ain't read it yet, it's news to you!
And look, it’s gotta be better than Ross Douthat’s plea for conservatives to embrace Taylor Swift because “the cultural valence of the Swift-Kelce romance... [is] normal and wholesome and mainstream in an explicitly conservative-coded way” – Ha! One images the wispy-bearded doofus trying to pitch that to a mob of howling conservabros and getting his ass hitched to a Ford F-30,000 and hauled out of Burlyman Camp in response. You can't reason with them, Father Ross!
Of more recent vintage is my other freebie, inspired by the latest in a series of prestige press Trump-wanks: A “guest essay” in the Good Grey Lady by Kellyanne Conway, the Trump bullshit firehose temporarily disguised as a disinterested observer of the American Scene, who asks, “Who Should Be Trump’s #2?” I expect the next such essay will be Stephen Miller asking, “Aren’t All You Regular Volk a Little Tired of Untermenschen Questioning Der Fuhrer?” We’ve gone way past the well-observed “working the refs” phenomenon, whereby rightwingers scream about “bias” until milquetoast liberal journalists are exhausted/intimidated into waving through all their bullshit; now it seems well-trained bigtime editors look at every single political event or issue and ask themselves, How is this good news for the John McCain Donald Trump?
It can’t last, so let’s all ride this MAGA Declares War on Taylor Swift thing to clicksville while the iron’s hot, shall we? Here’s a rare midweek freebie from Roy Edroso Breaks It Down, with a ripped-from-today’s-headlines account of the anti-Swift nerve center at Mar-a-Lago. Strictly for laffs!
As I repeatedly remind you folks, conservative politicians and political writers have entirely abandoned policies and even normal constituent service in favor of lunatic culture war crap like this. Entertainers most of us think of as That Guy In that Movie or That Girl on Spotify are to them as demons sent to Make Everything Woke. This goes for the rightwing intelli-ma-lectuals like Victor Davis Hanson as well as humble clickbait farmers (“The Top 5 Most Overrated Liberal Comedians”), but also for bigtimers like the New York Times' David French, one of those conservatives who liberals simps think is OK, and author of a hair-raisingly weird Prince obituary (“For conservatives, Prince was ultimately just another talented and decadent voice in a hedonistic culture. He was notable mainly because he was particularly effective at communicating that decadence to an eager and willing audience…”).
I didn’t think this Swift thing could get any nuttier but I hadn’t counted on Rod Dreher. I’d more or less stopped paying attention to him since his nervous breakdown and departure from The American Conservative, but my attention was called to his latest Substack item, “Among the Swifties” – and if you sense a reference of Bill Buford’s Among the Thugs there, claim your prize because Dreher does indeed compare the young female fans of Taylor Swift to the soccer hooligans in Buford’s book:
Here is Buford himself, reflecting on what he learned about crowd dynamics by watching a thug leader he calls “Mutton Chops” at work…
This is interesting. It says that we cannot entirely blame Donald Trump, Taylor Swift, or any other “leader” who holds sway over a crowd; the crowd’s latent desire for someone to create them manifested in those individual figures being propelled to leadership. Don’t misread Buford here; he’s not absolving crowd leaders of their actions…
Someone should ring Buford and ask him if he absolves Taylor Swift of her crimes.
To put it in Buford’s terms: there was a huge crowd of young females who shared a common emotional experience (“the collective female unconscious”) that settled on Taylor Swift, a supremely gifted creator of pop songs, as their leader. Taylor Swift played her role, of course, but Buford would say that Swift was summoned by the latency within the crowd that would later become Swifties.
I bet Dreher imagines “Swifties” as rampaging Valkyries doing Wokeness to the innocent. The thing’s full of howlers, with patented Dreherisms like his regret that he cannot experience the “liberating pleasure of ego death” he imagines sports, Swift, and Trump fans enjoy – “The only time I’ve ever had that experience as part of a crowd was at the U2 concert in Baton Rouge…” The jokes just write themselves! Nonetheless I had a go at REBID, if you can use a chuckle, however mordant.
UPDATE. Finally realizing that maybe this has all been a terrible mistake, some of the conservative Shuck Troopers are trying to turn it around. Washington Times:
We're not nuts, you're nuts! Well, on their readership it could work. Also Erick Erickson is trying his insufficient best:
Never mind that it hurts Donald Trump. Never mind that it makes the Republicans look deeply unserious. Never mind the political fallout. On a day that Cori Bush has been targeted by the Justice Department, a Democrat progressive targeted by Joe Biden's Justice Department, we're all having to talk about the Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce thing because of what these idiots have done online.
Oh, I'm sure none of them will mind that the Swift Purge is distracting from the fact that the DOJ, which conservatives constantly accuse of being politically weaponized against Republicans just because they did some so-called "crimes," is investigating prominent Democrats like Bush and even charging Democratic Senator Robert Menendez as well. Screening out inconvenient facts is as important to their whole paranoid vision as the manufacture of lunatic fantasies.
UPDATE 2. Lol, I forgot that conservatives have been raging at Swift for at least ten years now. Here's my 2013 post on the Power Line proto-Catturd Hindrocket doing close analysis of Swift wearing a onesie -- is it a comment on Pajama Boy?? And get a load of all the anti-Swift articles at rightweing rat's nest The Federalist: Imagine going to an editor with a pitch like "Taylor Swift’s Disappointing Arc Is Generationally Representative" and having her slam the desk and cry, "THAT'S GOLD, JASHINSKY! GOLD!" Finally, lest we forget: Mark Hemingway's sad boomer review of Swift. Now that's funny!
