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Sunday, July 28, 2019

Starving the Beast

Ho-hum, another week, another set of openly racist tweets from Captain Shitposter. What are the odds that he washes his tiny, tiny hands after each and every rage-dump? What are the odds that any number of important stories will be obscured in the coming week by tedious "debates" over whether he is or he isn't? We already knew the answer to that long ago. There is no point in watching the nonsense, engaging with it on any level, arguing with people who for whatever reason still support this fucker, none of it.

H.L. Mencken's old newspaper of record did have a quick and noteworthy response, which may as well have ended with and the horse you rode in on. Victor Blackwell of CNN had an on-air response that was, to be sure, sincere and poignant, and well worth watching. But it wouldn't be surprising if, in the next segment or today or tomorrow, CNN turns around and has Kellyanne Conway or Seb Gorka or some other pock-faced turd sitting there explaining the vampire's point of view as part of some panel of interchangeable shitheads.

The corporate media need to portray their dereliction of duty as the very opposite of that:  we're doing our jobs, because when the chief executive says something, it's news. And so it is. But when what that fucking thing says is clearly racist, it is then the responsibility of said stenographers to point that out with clarity and conviction, not mealy-mouthed qualifiers such as racist-tinged or racist-infused or a slight hint of racism with hints of oak and french fries and stale cheetos.

Les Moonves and Jeff Zucker weren't lying when they said it was good for business. Because they don't really have much of a revenue model anymore. It's easy to forget that by 2015 most major media outlets were in full-on panic mode -- newspapers especially were going the route of laying off the young and handing a few golden parachutes to the lifers, if they were lucky. But even the cable outlets were shitting a collective brick by the time Fatboy waddled down his fucking escalator that barmy June morning and threw his wig into the ring.




They love this shit, right up until they get him re-elected and he repays their kindness by putting them up against the wall first. Maybe that's an exaggeration, maybe not. It's worth noting that in the weeks since that scabby cunt Huckabilly Slanders finally admitted that she was stealing her paycheck from the taxpayers and went off to her new career as a Twitter peanut-gallery seat-filler, nothing has changed. No press secretary -- but then, the last press briefing was some two or three months before Huckabilly finally resigned, so there's no need for a press secretary. Now they just gather like the herd animals they are, in the White House driveway, noised out by the prop-wash of Mister Man's waiting helo, while he yells lies through his dentures about whatever it is they ask him. Fucking pointless, but it gives them their panel points for the week.

They're scared of him, and they shouldn't be. Nobody should be scared of this preposterous grifter. He's a fucking idiot, and he thrives on their fear. It empowers him. If everyone stopped quivering for a moment, and just pointed out how fucking ridiculous he is and has always been, he'd have a fucking rage-stroke.

Instead we're going to get a butt-load of "fact-checking cuz" clarifiers pointing out that not only does Elijah Cummings' district have a higher median income than the national average, it also has Fort McHenry, not to mention most of Failson-In-Flaw's slumlord ratholes. Or that any number of the congress-crackers that support Trump have plenty of constituents who live in filthy shacks and gobble opioids like candy. None of it matters. People know which side they're on, and no one's mind will be changed by any of this. A handful of supporters will feign some micron of performative disappointment, and then reluctantly declare that sociamalism is so much worse, so they'll keep supporting the racist. The main thing is that they'll sell another week of ad time pretending to discuss it.

And that's the best of them -- just in the past couple days, elderly spinsters Maureen Dowd and Peggy Noonan have both publicly whined about the tone of discourse these days, both invoking desperate references to -- get this -- the French Revolution. Ladies, I don't how to break it to youse, but there is a slight difference between a handful of Twittards telling you to kindly go fuck yourselves, and actual violent revolution where people get hurt and things get broken.

Really, though, as brown people are starving and dying in desert concentration camps, taunted by goons as they are forced to drink from toilets, as the so-called leader of the free world goes on extended rants about those people and how they live, it's good to know these hard-working columnists have their priorities straight. I do hope the heels are kicky and the chocolates are tasty.

This is purely anecdotal, but I'm willing to bet it jibes with many of your experiences as well:  I've discussed politics over the years with friends and acquaintances across the spectrum -- liberal, conservative, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, gay, straight, reactionary Jesus freaks and crunchy granola hippies. And not one of them has ever said, Hey, didja read what fuckin' Maureen Dowd wrote the other day? Same with Peggy Noonan, and Bret Stephens, and Bobo Brooks, and the rest of these useless tools. They are talking to each other, about the same things they talk about when swilling their appletinis in their Georgetown condos or whatever. They are so completely walled-off from the other 99.9% of their fella 'murkins they might as well be in a literal bubble.

And they are so insular that no one is in a position to point this out to them. Nobody fuckin' cares what you think, lady -- about Hillary Clinton, about Donald Trump, about the fuckin' French Revolution. Nobody cares about MoDo's twenty-years-past-the-sell-by-date bon mots. Nobody cares about Nooners' drunken slobbering on Reagan's ancient knob. Nobody but your editors and your party pals and the panel-show rats. Nancy Pelosi will turn eighty next March; sooner or later she will retire, and her replacement will not worry about arranging "interview" time with some tired-ass hack who literally equates mild internets criticism with violent decapitation.

Whatever and ever, amen. Just remember, he gets the inspiration for these racist tweet-bombs from whatever Fixed Noise was showing an hour before. So what can we do to bankrupt the Murdoch family, what can we do to put CNN out of business, the New York Times, all of them?

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