FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: THROUPLE FOR THE NON-SUBSCRIBERS EDITION.

This is a dopey song but you know what, Ruth Brown could sell "Mairzy Doats."

It’s a pretty reliable subscriber boost every four years, I’ll give it that, but still there are all kinds of things about presidential election season that I hate. For one thing, everyone who talks on the subject turns into a little campaign advisor, and 99% of their recommendations are some variant of the “savvy” menace that has afflicted our politics – like, how can we bamboozle Americans into voting for our candidate? Case in point (this guy’s talking about Trump):

It’s the M.K. Brown “Whistle Stop” cartoon all over again (“Do you suppose actually seeing the candidate eat the rat could cost us the election?”). They seem to think you just have to fiddle with the diopters until the candidate looks good to the electorate, notwithstanding the candidate is a demented gorilla. They seem to forget that the purpose of the election is to choose leadership in pursuit of a direction for the country. 

I know, I should talk – but here’s my two cents: I love that the Harris people are running like they’re proud of what Democrats are supposed to stand for instead of trying to safe-legal-and-rare it like a bunch of candy-ass neo-libs. Don’t act apologetic about inflation – cap food prices! Let the GOP holler about communism — even their own voters don’t know anything about it except it has something to do with their Beloved Leader’s Russian boss.

Well, as Marty Di Bergi said, enough of my yakkin’. Or rather, on to my yakkin’ at Roy Edroso Breaks It Down – and get this: after last week’s parsimonious one-freebie serving, this week you get three! That’s like three-fifths of what regular subscribers get in a week! And at $7/month, which is $1.75/week, that’s $0.70 worth of copy. OK, it doesn’t sound like much but what I’m telling you is a subscription is cheap and you should buy one, in fact buy two in case the first one breaks.

First one is a bagatelle in the “how would it be different if Trump were trying (and failing) to get bad coverage from the Prestige Press?” category. Doesn’t it seem that way, though? It’s like Trump’s “economic” address, in which he put a bunch of groceries on a table and then proceeded to yammer about Mexican rapists, and the papers all acted like it made sense. “Trump Lays Out Economic Plan,” the Prestige Press reports from an alternate universe.

Second is “It’s a Wonderful Life” as reimagined by the Wall Street Journal. I know it’s an old rightwing shtick to riff on capitalism-skeptic classics like that movie and A Christmas Carol as if pre-conversion Scrooge and Henry Potter were the heroes, but this one is inspired by a WSJ piece about how Opinions Vary as to whether it’s good that Tim Walz doesn’t own stocks and bonds and is not (by modern political standards anyway) a rich fuck like his opponent. One of the Journal’s interviewees says a Vice-President should be “someone who’s dipped his or her toes into all different elements of the financial world that Americans have to navigate” – which makes it sound as if most of the 61% of Americans who own some form of stocks (including retirement savings accounts) are living off compound interest rather than working people who have an IRA. I suppose some people so strongly identify with their economic masters that when the market dips they go, “what’s the matter, boss, we sick?” But speaking for myself I think it’s great that for once we may get a normal guy in high office.

Last, we have J.D. Vance taking lessons in how to woo the lay-deez. Special guest appearances from the Roy Edroso Breaks It Down stock company! Even this creep’s fellow he-man woman-haters are trying to explain him away — “JD Vance’s demeaning remarks don’t help this valid cause,” moans Ramesh Ponnuru at the Washington Post, who like all old-line “pronatalist” conservative frauds believes in limited government except when it comes to making women pump out more babies. (Ponnuru is also an anti-abortion absolutist, you will not be surprised to hear.) “In an individualistic country such as ours, [pronatalism] risks coming across as bossy, or just plain weird — which is what Democrats have started saying about the Republican ticket since Vance was chosen,” Ponnuru notices, so the obvious solution is to get guys like Vance to “stay far away from demeaning adults who have not had children” – that is, to disguise the contempt they clearly feel and reflexively express for them, perhaps by some variant of the Ludovico Technique. Good luck moving those diopters, guys! 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: MY FATHER'S WALZ.

I'm a sucker for this sort of thing.

The days are discernibly shorter; summer begins its swoon; soon comes the harvest, and maybe some of us will also be stripped from the vines. Catch those rays while you can – after the spectacular late Democratic bloom we’re heading into the dogshit days, with Republicans reaching deep in the bag for old Swift Boat dirt clots to throw at Tim Walz. Will that sway our fellow Americans? If they know any among the tiny percentage who serve in the National Guard, will they just thank Walz for his service, or buy J.D. Vance’s argument that he didn’t serve it right? My guess is these answers are predetermined for most people, who either want fascism or don’t, and we have to hope the minority who can still be persuaded – democracy’s saving remnant, as it were – will see though it. I think normal people are sick of Tubby and the fake outrage of his transparently phony fash sidekick isn’t enough to change that, but maybe that’s just me trying to wring some more cheer from the summer wine. We’ll see! 

Here’s the week’s Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebie. (Yes, just one – come on, subscribe, what are you saving that seven bucks a month for, your grandchildren?) It’s Bolt Upright and the Received Opinion crew trying to make sense of the Walz appointment – though, by the look of things, they’re way behind the curve. (Again, maybe it's just me having a hopium cascade but it could be that, after the Prestige Press' latest self-abasement before Trump and the pushback it has inspired, people are starting to catch on.)

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: WEIRD SCENES INSIDE THE GULLED MINE.

Keep it simple, stupid.

The two Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebies for the week (sure, let’s get right to them, it’s a busy weekend with Artscape and all) are related. 

First one is about the now-widespread reference to conservatives as “weird.” As I say in the essay, I’ve been on this beat for a while, and while the post speaks for itself I would add this: 

All political actors are gonna be at least a bit weird (though some, like Obama and Reagan, are particularly good at masking it), but conservatives have a head start, both generally and specifically in 2024. Generally, for the last 50 years at least American conservatism has been about scaring Americans out of asking for what they want (and have a right to expect as citizens of a big rich nation) with a variety of boogeymen – communists, hippies, Black Panthers, Bill Clinton’s penis, Arab terrorists et alia – and into accepting, in place of their birthright, a false sense of moral superiority. Since this is an intrinsically negative approach (sometime papered over with propaganda like “Morning in America,” sometimes amplified with propaganda like “American Carnage,” but always based on fear and self-righteousness), it requires its operatives to employ a version of the Camp Counselor with a Flashlight Under Their Chin routine to keep the bad vibes coming. 

This is exhausting for perpetrator and audience alike, and every so often the act gets stale enough that their opposition gets the chance to call bullshit and reverse the flow. But conservatives soon rev up the hate machine again and summon the voters back.

Th “weird” campaign is meta in that, instead of directly confronting the rightwing panic of the day – in this case, so near as I can tell, trans women and migrant caravans – which may or may not work but would be in any case very tiresome, the Democrats have decided instead to call attention to what years of pulling this act has done to the people who pull it – that is, made them sour, brain-damaged freaks like Trump, Vance, and whoever steps up on any given day to be the Bugfuck Crazy Republican of the Moment --  and to ask Americans if they want to be associated, never mind led, by people like this. The approach has its upsides and downsides, and I’ll be writing more about it in weeks to come, but for now the cries of hit dogs hollering across the nation shows it’s at least a provisional success. 

The second freebie is another episode of Received Opinion with Bolt Upright, showing how the Prestige Press reacts to Trump vomiting racist bile in front of cameras – that is, protectively, since 1.) the PP has been trained from years of ref-working to excuse every Republican lunacy as something they couldn’t have possibly meant and 2.) Trump is their ticket to clicks and engagement so they want him to win. Whether these chucklefucks will be able to drag Tubby across the finish line like they did in 2016 remains to seen. He sure isn’t making it easy for them. (Maybe this is the demented old bastard’s final power play – making himself fatally obnoxious so that his dedicated media enablers finally make themselves look so foolish caping for him that nobody, not even the legacy liberals who haven’t gotten the message, can trust them anymore.)

SATURDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: HARRIS 'N' PARIS EDITION.

A Nugget.

What a week, huh?

I’ve been relieved since I heard the news. The main reasons are obvious: Biden was weak on the trail and the Prestige Press was making it worse, whereas his logical replacement, the VPOTUS, has the jam and charisma to do a better job of it and also offers the PP a fresh enough story that maybe they’ll lay off a bit. Also, the Democratic message is a winner (and not just the Stop Trump part -- but, to paraphrase Sam Spade, if all that doesn’t mean anything to you then forget it and we’ll make it just that), but it was getting obscured before and now it’ll be clearer. 

There are other advantages. Kamala Harris for President is driving Republicans nuts. Despite what their capos are telling them, any astute observer can sense their racist and misogynist instincts seething under the surface – and a few of the MAGA made men are already letting it all hang out. I think it’s already helping: In the absence of Tubby himself, who has gone to ground, J.D. Vance is getting smacked around on his sexist bullshit and he can’t help but make it worse because, as a Republican he-man woman-hater, he can’t let himself be seen to back down for the sake of women’s feelings no matter how many votes he flushes in the process. It’s great when you can make them soil themselves just by existing. 

Plus there’s the couch thing. 

On that note, this week’s two freebies from Roy Edroso Breaks It Down: First, Monday’s episode of Received Opinion with Bolt Upright, in which the Prestige Pressies sputter as the Kamala Express breezes past them; and, second, my essay on why the Harris nomination is really and truly good news.

There’s plenty else worth remarking on – like the shitfit Christers are throwing over the spectacular épater-les-bourgeoisie Paris Olympics opening ceremonies. They’ve been digging up nonsense to be mad about forever, but social media just makes it worse – it's like a million windows on a madhouse. I’m especially touched by all the backwoodsmen saying they’ll never visit the City of Light now. 

I don’t drop Dreher as much as I used to but his sputterfest on the occasion, “The Paris Olympics Go To Hell,” has some choice bits:

This is all satanic. You know that, right? Straight-up satanic. Remember how you read in this space two weeks ago about a conversation I had in Paris with a young man whose former girlfriend is a Paris artist, and through whom he got drawn into the Paris art scene. He told me that it is deeply and widely occult. If memory serves, the darkness he witnessed caused him to break up with his girlfriend and turn to Catholicism.

Well, that’s solid proof right there! No need to cite any actual occultism (has Beetlejuice The Musical opened in Paris yet?). Dreher presents himself as an aesthete yet I doubt there’s an arts scene anywhere in the world that wouldn’t qualify as “widely occult” in his view, possibly barring the Eureka Springs Passion Play. In this post he also cites his buddy who called an exorcist on his wife, a welcome reminder of this classic. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: CHEST-BEATER BLUES EDITION.

Who says it has to mean anything at all?

Another shitty week! The fash mob in Milwaukee seems to have achieved its purpose of getting the Prestige Press dummies to yap about Trump the unifier/healer while ignoring the MAGA crews' repulsive rhetoric and election denialism. The brethren are stroking hard for post-convention buzz, but I doubt it will mean much to normal people; the Trump vote is already topped out. Consider conservatives’ enthusiasm for Hulk Hogan’s embarrassing Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Camacho routine:

The commenters seem to think Hogan telling the turkeynecks to do the hammerlock will draw new voters to MAGA and away from stoopid libs with their faggy social justice: 

But, really, what fan of geriatric fake macho display isn’t already voting for Trump? It's like they misread the famous salesman's advice as hunting where the dicks are. 

But let’s stop horsing around, I know you’re all here for the Roy Edroso Break It Down freebies so without further ado: Another episode of Received Opinion with Bolt Upright, about the press pleas for Democrats to be civil about the Republican who shot another Republican (about which no one other than credentialed flame-fanners appears to give a shit); and the latest of my celebrated segments on “Hardcore” (our term of art for ragebait emails that lure your senile relatives to rightwing garbage sites), this time focusing on the brethren’s excitement over J.D. Vance and rage at those who would attempt to unfairly smear him with his own words.  Enjoy! 

FRIDAY ‘ROUND-THE-HORN: PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERLY BIDEN EDITION.

The AC/DC cover is sweet but I like this whole album.

Sorry I missed you last week; I actually had a bit of a July 4 long weekend, which, I know, it’s out of character for your hard-working boy but Editor Martin got me away from the desk and onto a sailboat. We knocked around Boston and P-town and if you get up that way before September 2 see the Firelei Báez show at the ICA and thank me later. She can draw, she can paint, she can assemble, she can smash colonialism. Massive! 

Now I’m back at my accursed post and see the country is still going down the drain: Joe Biden remains Old, and the Prestige Press putzes have abandoned all attention to Trump’s ravings (ha ha, just kidding they weren’t paying attention anyway) for the death watch. Like all true sons of liberty I’d vote for a corpse before ushering in Tubby’s Terror II but I’m not sure that’s a majority view (though it’s close!). 

Which brings me to the first of my Roy Edroso Breaks It Down releases to the general population: The latest installment of my “Hardcore” series, in which, as regular readers know, I survey ragebait emails that lure your senile relatives to rightwing garbage sites. Many of these low-end content mills have jumped on the AlteBiden beat, and with their limited English skills are ineptly working it. This edition features an appearance by Waxy Jim Rickards, who has made a habit of predicting Biden’s impending resignation as part of a conspiracy to destroy America – and then showing you how you can profit from it! 

Swindle, comrade! 

Higher up the chain, the grifts of the Prestige Pressies are slicker but no more noble. But I have to give Megan McArdle credit: A conservatarian claiming she wants Biden out because his sad plight reminds her of her own family’s struggles with aging – and that she would “like it to end” despite tweeting non-stop about it for weeks -- is such a breathtaking display of chutzpah that one can only applaud, regardless of politics. Speaking of aging, when Peggy Noonan finally keels off her perch you know McArdle will be right there with a ladder. 

The other freebie (I tell ya, subscribe! It’s so cheap it’s silly not to) is about the coalition victory in France and the pants-pissing among the usual suspects over the “radical left” implications – though if you showed the program of the allegedly fringe coalition partners to your average American I’m pretty sure they’d prefer it to what our own parties are offering. It’s getting so when you see the world “chaos” in a Prestige Press headline you know someone’s trying to run a con on you. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: WHEN ALL ABOUT ARE LOSING THEIRS EDITION.

Oldie, goody.

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." 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: A LITTLE RESPECT AND A LOT OF B.S. EDITION.

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!).

Since we’re short of REBID poli-scorn, let me say a few words upon an exemplary piece of hackwork from the Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henninger. The thing ran on Juneteenth – which reminds me, get a load of this shit:

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. 

SATURDAY ‘ROUND THE HORN: I REFUSE TO LET THE NEIGHBORS RUN MY COURT EDITION.

Pure pop for now-and-then people.

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. 

2. Yet another David French “why are my fellow conservatives so mean to me, a conservative?” blubberfest. Longtime readers know of my contempt for this pious fraud – a complete rightwing evangelical, anti-abortion, anti-contraception, and anti-LGBTQ, with all the pathologies pertaining thereunto, but because he’s mastered a winsome can’t-we-all-get-along shtick, he’s promoted by prestige media saps like the New York Times’ leadership. Now the MAGA majority in his own movement are coming at him hotter than usual – not only slurring him for adopting a black child, but getting him kicked off a Christian event – and once again he complains that the leopards he fed and nurtured for so many years continue to find his face delicious.  

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!

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: FROM THE WHITE HOUSE TO THE BIG HOUSE EDITION.

Fuck'im.

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. 

This applies not only to the fringe goons screaming for revenge, but also to the dainty SensibleModerate conservatives who find softer ways to say the same nonsense, like Megan McArdle:

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. 

Also for your REBID freebie pleasure: Behind the scenes after Trump’s Libertarian Convention debacle, and why rich dopes keep pushing AI art on us. Deathless prose at rock-bottom prices! 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: FROM THE MEMORABLE TO THE MISERABLE EDITION.

Evergreen.

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:

Others add “analysis” – that is, echoing Trump’s bullshit in high-toned language:

I understand the grift – I covered Tea Party rallies in New York for the Village Voice and the GOP tried the same routine back then, including claims that the rallies were (as Fox News says about this one) “massive, historic” – I always got waves of commenters demanding I revise my crowd estimates upward.  Sadly for Tubby’s troopers, there was a helicopter shot of his Bronx bomb:

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. 

Anyway, if you’re here for Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebies, out of the week’s five entries (yes, I churn it out five days a week – you oughta subscribe, best deal on Substack!) I am releasing one: My version of what really happened with the Alitos and the Upside-Down Flag. Since that came out I see another Alito insurrection flag has come to light. I already knew he was fash from his jurisprudence; with his buddy Clarence pissing on Brown v. Board of Education, I’d say we hardly need flags to know which way these guys blow. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: HATE RALLY 'ROUND THE FLAG EDITION.

No, actually, I like cheeseball electropop.

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?  

SUNDAY ‘ROUND-THE-HORN: TWO DAYS LATE AND A DOLLAR SHORT EDITION.

Albini RIP.

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. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: JUST GOT BACK FROM LOST WAGES EDITION.

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!”)  

As Roy Edroso Breaks It Down was also on hiatus last week, I have no free samples to give away. I did read the papers, though, and like (I’m sure) many of you I noticed how heedlessly many institutions of higher learning showed their ass during the recent student demonstrations on behalf of the persecuted Gazans, and how conservatives all ran the “durr hurr ‘mostly peaceful’ protests” routine when it was self-evidently the cops and Proud Boys (but I repeat myself) who did 99% of the violence (as often). I hardly need to supply links but Luke O’Neill says it well: 

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.

Well, at least some recent news is hilarious:

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. 

Oh well. Back on the job Monday. Subscribe, why don’t you? 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: YOU-PROBLEM EDITION.

Went down a K hole the other night.

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. 

Nonetheless, one wishes the Plantonic Post that the trimmers imagine really did exist, so it could headline the Trump trial with SCUM SLEEPS. The trial is disturbing for a lot of reasons – for example (speaking of the prestige press), the heedless dissemination of the jurors’ identities so Tubby’s goons can muscle them, and the defendant’s continual, unpunished flouting of court rules, which aids the Trump project of delegitimizing all authority that is not exclusively under his control. 

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.

If you follow Roy Edroso Breaks It Down you know his self-control issues are reminiscent of our sketches about The Formula, the pharmaceutical blend that keeps Trump afloat. So the first of this week’s freebies for non-subscribers is a session with Dr. Ronny “Feelgood” Jackson to get the mix right for Tubby’s trial. Hijinks ensure! Enjoy. 

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. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: ANTI-CHOICE WITH A (REALLY BAD) EXPLANATION EDITION.

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.

First is one of my little playlets – longtimers will know I have a whole little REBIDverse with settings like the Mar-a-Lago Throne Room, the Decision Desk at Received Opinion with Bolt Upright, etc. This week it’s X Headquarters in San Francisco where America’s favorite supervillain/buffoon reacts to some bad publicity. It’s been a hard couple of weeks for Elmo the Unready – a $6 billion haircut on Tesla, the collapse of his ridiculous court action against the Center for Countering Digital Hate, and, perhaps most ignominiously, the exposure of his embarrassing testimony in a separate case. One can only imagine how this must chafe his famously sensitive self-image – or rather, one needn’t, because I have! Enjoy.

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. 

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: WEAKLY WORLD NEWS EDITION.

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.

Speaking of current events, this week’s Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebies are pretty timely. #1 is Governor Abbott’s meeting with his border-jumper bounty hunters. Right after this one came out a Fifth Circuit panel slapped a stay on the nutty law that gives Texas its own immigration department (with the blessings of the Trumpified SCOTUS), but Abbott is fighting back and if he gets his way several other states in the Shitheel Belt have signaled they want to throw immigrants out, too. It all makes me think back to the 1984 centenary of the Statue of Liberty, when every conservative from Reagan on down kvelled over Lady Liberty and her golden lamp and what immigration had done for America. Bad as they always were, conservatives can always find a way to get worse.   

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:

He was always weird but divorce really put the zap on his head. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: COME ON AND SUBSCRIBE ALREADY EDITION.

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 week month (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.

FRIDAY ‘ROUND-THE-HORN: BIDEN GETS THE FORMULA EDITION

Absence of Malice!

 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! 

UPDATE. All the rightwing talking heads are getting into the act. Erick Erickson claims Biden's speech was "supplement fuelled." And get this, from the Washington Times:

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!)