Soft-Skulled Crabs

 I've had a moment to think over what happened January 6, and even though Trump had been conditioning the Tea Party types out there to prepare for civil war with his rhetoric for some time, and I think I have a pretty good grasp as how otherwise comfortable normies turn into soft-skulled crabs, I'm still pretty bowled over by the number of folks who participated in the melee who took extensive selfies and video of their activity. 

I mean, I get it, Trump's soldiers of convenience are folks like the Proud Boys (the alt-right fight club whose first rule seems to be "Never stop talking about being in a fight club.") But check out the toasty pumpkin spice Karen flashing a peace sign in front of broken glass at the capitol, whose battle cry included "Y'all know who to hire for your realtor. Jenna Ryan for your realtor." 

She thought this was great for her branding? Every single grinning picture ("Felt cute, might insurrect later") is a damning picture of how comfortable people have been with what I've been thinking of as Nazi-adjacency--the phenomenon of seeing someone's swastika tattoos or downstairs weapons stockpile or what have you and going, "Welp--not a deal-breaker." The way Trump's racism and Nazi-adjacency weren't a deal-breaker for voters, being snuggled up to these cats doesn't seem to be a deal-breaker in these folks' lives. Seeing III%-er gear doesn't bug them. And they scream like banshees if anyone suggests there is something "deplorable" about it. 

I mean, take the Klan Poobah over here--

before this yabbo had to explain that he was answering his president's call to be exactly this kind of wanker, this dumbass boychild who needs Whole Foods or his tummy gets a hurty could surely have picked something better than fake Aryan white supremacist bullshit for him to get his Iron John manly bonding on with--but that was what he went with. 

The conservative free speech argument regarding de-platforming people for TOS violations (like terroristic threats!) has been treated with a touch of seriousness that never has been comfortable to me, in a "Methinks you doth protest too much" kind of way. Even attempts to address white supremacist and rightwing extremist domestic terror is met with country-club pearl clutching or minimization. "Sniff! The so-called 'tolerant left!'"--because "some people" think things like abortion-clinic bombing and mass-shootings are actually, um, bad. Or because "some people" are concerned that eliminationist rhetoric will get turned to eliminationist actions.

That group of "some people" should be called "our society". There needs to be a reckoning not only with the way Republican party operatives involved themselves in these events, but with the way right-wing media has siloed the information-feed of their listeners, viewers and readers, and sent some of them down a cattle-chute to mayhem or madness. Maybe when conservative groups think they are "owning the libs" by inviting extremists to share their spaces, they aren't being edgy, but playing themselves and telling us more about them then they even knew. (And what about all the dark money that keeps the alt-right going?)

I don't know how to play "Can't we all just get along?" when real estate Karen and the Qanon Quinoa Kid out there are seriously claiming the holes in their heads and the right wing outhouses built over them are reason enough for the president to pardon them, and they have a point, because they really were led to believe they were exactly where the president said they should be. They shouldn't be pardoned because they should have known better, but they aren't wrong about what they were told.

An Interesting, um, Argument

A Ringo song does not make a defense of kiddie-touching, Joel. And why does CNN have a Breitbart editor on their program, anyway? Just stop it!https://t.co/WR8NHrajuT

— Crooks and Liars (@crooksandliars) November 27, 2017

I take it nothing came to mind from the Gary Glitter catalog? It's mind-numbing that any old reason, whether it makes sense or not, can justify a pervert in a Senate seat, so long as he happens to be the right sort of perv.

Roy Moore Won The AL Senate Primary Despite Trump's Strange Endorsement

It's easy to look at the picture of Roy Moore, above, and just see a man with a big flag, a tiny gun, and a middling hat. But he is a genuinely fascinating creature in that he seems to be entirely the worst of old-fashioned Bible-banging demagoguery. He's virulently anti-gay.  He seems confused about geography, current events, religion, and law, despite once upon a time being a judge.  He's of course anti-choice when it comes to women's reproductive choices, and he's also a creationist who even considers the teaching of evolution incompatible with the Constitution.  He is mostly known as the judge who took on the "Establishment clause" regarding religious speech to the effect of basically offering himself up in service to a graven image, which sort of cluster-fuckedly makes a mockery of both the First Commandment and the First Amendment. He thinks the 9/11 attacks were a punishment from God (which I think would align quite nicely with what Osama Bin Laden thought, too.) And he has nice words for Vladimir Putin. 

He's almost a parody of fringe right-wing whackadoodledom, and was endorsed by Ben Carson, Steve Bannon, Sarah Palin, and not by the actual US President, Donald Trump, who gave a rally for "Big Luther" Strange.

I don't pretend I know what this means. This is Alabama, which is not my neck of the woods at all. But if Moore's genuine unfitness* for anything at all could be adequately articulated, I'm thinking this culture war grudge-vote against the "DC establishment" might have maybe made a Doug Jones win vaguely possible? He's a civil rights lawyer and seems like a real stand-up guy.

*No, I am serious, this guy should not be a Senator.

UPDATE: Trump is purging Tweets about his support for Strange like a sad loser-baby:

UPDATE ALSO, TOO: Roy Moore was also a Birther, just so we can fully take in his up-fuckedness.  But that, at least, he has in common with Trump.

Steve Bannon is kind of "Tales of the Crypt" right?

yikes pic.twitter.com/ZcdF4ioATn

— Ashley Feinberg (@ashleyfeinberg) September 10, 2017

I've lampooned Steve Bannon on his appearance before, even though maybe even the original picture I was lampooning was a 'shop. I don't even know. Who can tell? A mess by any other name would still be a dude who was dissolving things with acid in his bathtub, which is pretty fucked. But if a person's brand was "twice the popped collars, all the embalming fluid" we'd just about cracked Bannon's "lewk". Could he do his white supremacism looking a little bit less like he was fished out of a river after a week of rugged whitewater floating? I'm just asking.

Bye-lo!

So, apparently, if someone unearths easily-Googled video of a person saying something that is heinous after that person's having said and written lots of heinous things, in about 24 hours, this can result in that person losing a speaking opportunity at a hard-right political conference, have one's current employment under question, and lose a book deal. 

Note: it's not like he changed or something--that was who he already was.  It's just everyone knowing that's a problem. I also note with some interest Twitter comments calling this an example of a liberal double standard. Because he was invited and disinvited to CPAC? Because Simon and Shuster thought he had an interesting point of view until it became a financially uninteresting one? Because fellow Breitbart writers think he's a problem right now?

Okay, whatever.

Milo Yiannopoulos to Keynote CPAC

Oddball Breitbartian queer fetish-object Milo Yiannopoulos, recently seen on Real Time with Bill Maher, has been selected to be the keynote speaker at CPAC, a conservative shindig that pretty recently wasn't even cool with the Log Closet Cabin Republicans a mere two years ago. But after the reputed "smooth sailing" experienced by even the LCR last year, it's really quite something to have a very out British non-straight person actually as a feature, and not some weird kind of bug. Right? Progress! Big-ass tent. Room for Caitlin Jenner and all that.

I don't even know what to think about this. I actually think I should think nothing about it at all, and just make sure I have ample popcorn handy while viewing YouTube videos of what he has to say.

Now, there has been some question about whether Yiannopoulos is a supporter of pedophilia based on a certain video. . If Milo Yiannopoulos was a victim of pedophilia as a minor as he infers in that exchange (by a cleric in particular), and also in his Facebook disavowal of any support of pedophilia, I am prepared to support him in that disavowal as a supporter of victims' rights--

But he's proven over time that he has a slippery set of ethics in his reporting about various things. He mostly seems to be stunting, rather than having an actual intellectual point. His mishpacha refer to people being pedos either for the lulz or for great justice with no apparent commitment either way.  It's like "Jackass", but for Right-Wing ideology.

The Role of the Press

I guess it's been pretty well documented that the package of KellyAnne Conway and Steve Bannon added to the Trump campaign at it's quasi-ebb was probably a gift from the Mercers. This is why it isn't any real surprise to find them on the same page about something like what the media ought to do--like shut their word holes! KellyAnne Conway put this a little bit more diplomatically, by just suggesting that the journos who were "wrong" about Trump (by probably just reporting things that actually happened that were negative, because OMG, yeah) should be fired. As in, said things that were negative but pretty accurate about Trump. Right. Steve Bannon has referenced the media as the "opposition party". So does Trump--it seems a little paranoid, maybe?

This kind of denial that Trump does anything wrong ever and that people can't actually see what he's doing because of the smokescreen is quaint, but I need to direct your attention to this funny bit of WH propo:

One senior administration official explained the ground rules to reporters gathered at the White House and listening on a conference call, then said: “With that, I'll turn it over to a senior administration official.”

“Thank you,” the other senior administration official said before beginning a 45-minute defense.

Their overarching message: Everything is going exactly according to plan, nothing has changed since the order was signed, and the news media need to calm down their “false, misleading, inaccurate, hyperventilating” coverage of the “fractional, marginal, minuscule percentage” of international travelers who have been simply “set aside for further questioning” for a couple hours on their way into the greatest country in the world.

Hi, I'm a grown adult with a history of reading newspapers and voting--are the massive protests and ACLU suits and all that really that dismissible if we were to presuppose a USA that still had Constitutional rights? Because in my world, it looks to me like Donald Trump took an oath of office to the Constitution with no faith in it at all. Are WH staffers really supposed to just take an open crap on the First Amendment like that?

Press Secretary Sean Spicer was heard not that long ago vowing that the press would be "held accountable" for what they do.  It's the other way about--the job of the press is to hold elected officials accountable to the public they supposedly are here to serve. So they can't just pretend all is well. The many protests at airports all over are not normal and are not just some kind of liberal flash mob.  This is about who we are as a nation, and the so-called SJW's, the lawyers and civil liberties types, the bleeding heart pink hats and multiculturalists and immigrant-lovers--

Are America, too. Yeah, this is the crowd that didn't vote for Trump. But hey, he lost the popular vote, didn't he? Maybe listen to the immigrants, and the vets , and the descendants of immigrants, and the people who have done contract or missionary work in those arbitrary seven countries. Try to listen to the narratives that bubble up from the media, who are just trying to tell the story of the day.

Silence is violence, Conway, Spicer, and Bannon. People need to know what is being done in their name. When Iraqi interpreters and their families are detained and submitted to questions they should not be asked about their allegiance, when little kids and disabled elderly Muslims are held for hours at a time, when they could be of no threat to anyone--how is this going well?

This is not well, or normal at all, and if no president ever was faced with so many well-attended protests so early in his term of office, let it be admitted into the record that Trump earned his disapprobation via the hard work of the bigoted villains he let run his shop.

How A Trump Administration Will Look

As the President-elect Trump has not yet been sworn in, I'm trying to take the chatter about what his cabinet will look like with a grain of salt--I'm not saying I've never given in to speculation about it before, of course. It's just that some of what I'm hearing is so, so...really seriously awful.  I mean, we're looking at Rudy Giuliani or John Bolton for Secretary of State. One (Giuliani) I've regularly castigated as an abject racist, and the other (Bolton) I've whole-heartedly called a "blood-thirsty loon".  This is a picture that doesn't make me hopeful that we will see a Trump cabinet that is full of win.

I'm basically gritting my teeth about Trump settling for the "guys (mostly male) that he can get". So, take the idea that Steve Bannon of Breitbart moves from his position as the Trump Campaign CEO to senior advisor and Chief Strategist. There is this little problem called "He's known as a white supremacist". Like, this is a staffing decision the KKK and American Nazi Party endorse.  And whom one former Speaker of the House decided to say was not either anti-Semitic because he worked in finance and the media, which actually is itself kind of anti-Semitic.

But maybe Trump might feel beholden to someone who gave so much free internets publicity to his campaign and mitigated the other right-wing opposition against him?  Of course, Trump is going to think about rewarding his friends. Like Sen. Jeff Sessions.  You could probably try to complain that he doesn't even know exactly how his presidential responsibilities work--but he's going to catch on, you know. Executive experience and all that.

I just tend to think that a Trump Administration will look like the Trump Campaign. And even though it won the electoral college, gosh! I think it will be terrible. There are exactly zero things that make me think it could be otherwise.

This is the Kind of Thing: Part Two

So, regarding the "Democratic operative" who seems to have spilled the beans about planning to bring an aura of violence to Trump rallies: Sigh, it was a former Occupy Wall Street guy. Who apparently has been conspiring to bring this bs for more than a minute, with Breitbart.com, which is where the Trump Campaign's CEO Steve Bannon comes from. Oh. So dudebros who like white privilege more than actual social and economic justice is actually a thing, and not all "Democratic" activists are actually supporters of democracy?

Huh. Good to know. Thanks, Project Veritas. We will keep this in mind. I still think the "Donald Ducks" thing is pretty funny though.  Donald Ducks showing his taxes. Heh! I don't know how many bloggers thought chicken-shit candidates should be followed by some activist in a chicken costume, but it was more than a couple. I feel like if you consider that level of campaigns-manship "too rather" for your blood, you might want to relegate your time to bingo or something.  Was this collusion or "great minds thinking alike"?

I mean really? Ducks! The Trump campaign and super-PAC probably don't want their potential involvement level similarly challenged--is the feeling I have. Such meh.

The Speech Where Clinton Did It All

This speech in Reno was a defining speech for Hillary Clinton, as a reaffirmation of her values, and defining for Donald Trump, in that she took the campaign he had been running so far and looped it around his neck like the stinking, rotting albatross it should be. The transcript reads just as well as her measured and presidential demeanor in the giving of the speech. And Donald Trump can cry at this late date, that she is manipulating the optics and using the tired tactic of labelling someone as racist--but really, is that the problem? Or is it the verbatim quotes of how Mexicans were supposedly racists and criminals, and the comments about black people that were right out of a Ron Paul newsletter, and an immigration policy that, despite whatever changes he has been polling his shrinking crowds about, would have to be absurdly cruel and desperately un-Constitutional. She defined him by wrapping him up in his words and deeds and spelling out the narrative and context of his associations with the former head of Breitbart.com, and conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones. She highlighted their fringe nonsense. And she connected homebrewed fringe nonsense, to the international problems of fringe nonsense people getting power.

It was damn effective, IMHO, because she used a kind of political akido to use his strength against him. I thought it was all rather well done on her part, and being followed by revelations that alt-right CEO new-hire Bannon was accused of wife-beating just hammers home how rotten Team Trump is.

What does Trump do? Madly try to disassociate from current connections and disavow all previous racialist statements? Or tell the establishment to screw off and cling tighter to the fringe than he ever clung to the cushion.

Both are likely vote-losers. There is no needle to thread, here. Clinton put the evil eye on, and it isn't ever coming off.

And he can yell that she's a bigot now, if he wants, and if he knows what that word means. But the "I'm rubber you're glue" shit doesn't play in this schoolyard. Nah, son. We saw you hugging the website that lynched ACORN for registering black people and tried to ruin Shirley Sherrod. WE know what birther Donald Trump was doing several summers ago.

She read his ass for dirt and dirt it will stay. Amen.

So The Pivot isn't Ever Coming

There has been discussion of whether Donald Trump would ever pivot from the primaries and try to embrace a sober-sided realist version of politics that acknowledges that there are people who don't find that his messaging appeals to them, and want to see him flesh out a real campaign. The jettisoning of Paul Manafort as a frontline campaign manager makes sense as a way to diffuse a particular scandal,. but the Trump machine seems to have framed changing campaign managers as having more to do with whether Trump was "feeling it".  To wit: Manafort made him feel "boxed in" by trying to make him act like a legitimate adult regarding things like his dumb Cinco de Mayo taco Bowl Tweet. And Trump didn't wanna be an adult, and Manafort wasn't his real dad, and screw you, old man!

So, Steve Bannon is going to at least share Trump's vision of how a campaign should work (Bannon has never run a campaign before) by cheerleading whatever Trump does (based on the recent Breitbart work-product). And this is how you know the idea that Trump is going to "pivot" to appeal to a wider audience is bosh. Breitbart is not centrist or even moderate rightist fare. They've been getting sort of alt-right since before Andrew Breitbart signed off forever.

Kellyanne Conway, another recent addition, becomes campaign manager, and she is supposed to be able to translate conservatism to woman-speak. She never did figure out how to rehb Akin, though. Part of her charm for Trump is likely the ability to relate to children. This is not a good sign.

But as the video above shows, the Trump campaign might not really be looking at signs (like polls) that traditional campaigns do. They might be, for all I know, just be going by Breitbart web traffic.

But no, that pivot is never, ever happening.

Donald Trump and The Snake

It has come to my attention that Donald Trump has made a habit of reading the lyrics to Al Wilson's The Snake at his rallies, and I find that really fascinating. It works for Trump's message because it is a simple and multipurpose allegory--a woman takes pity on a frozen snake, who revives and bites her, saying "You knew damn well I was a snake when you took me in." He can apply it equally to Syrian refugees or immigrants--by implying that we can't show sympathy to those people, because we should already be aware of the dangers of being "bitten".

It fascinates me because it vaguely reminds me of the relationship Trumpism has to the Republican Party. Tomorrow, it looks almost certain that Marco Rubio will be sunk off the coast of Florida wearing Trump's popularity like a pair of cement shoes, and John Kasich could very well find himself in a similar predicament in Lake Erie, notwithstanding Mitt Romney's heartfelt suggestion that Republicans extensively employ strategic voting in a bid to rid themselves of this meddlesome billionaire.

Notwithstanding, by the by, a week that might have clobbered the credibility of virtually any other candidate for office, ever. Trump at around this time last week stood next to steak, wine, and water with conspicuous "Trump" labels (or conspicuous labels advising they were not possibly true Trumps) as if to, neurotically, display that, as with the rumor of his stubby fingers, he certainly had no problem in the "brand" department. (Is that so? Because it looks to me like he's got more problems than, um, expired meat.) And then of course there is the escalating violence, which Trump appears to actually be encouraging rather than discouraging, and which he appears to condone against protesters and even journalists. And then there's the peculiar way he accuses protesters of being ISIS. I wouldn't be in a big hurry to accept as POTUS some guy who can, straight-faced, repeat unchecked garbage conspiracy theory bullshit, and defend himself with "All I know is what's on the Internet."

But the Republican Party knew damn well what Donald Trump was when they took him in. His flirtation (which seems to have been legit, and well as hella racist) with birtherism should have absolutely barred him from serious political consideration--especially after his humiliation at the 2011 WHCD, where President Obama savaged his birtherism hours before it was revealed that an operation to take out Osama Bin Laden was successful. He looked, then, like an outclassed smacked ass. But as we all know, the GOP tucked poor wounded Trump into their bosom because his endorsement was so pretty.  He gave crazypants sizzle and had mad donor stacks--what's to hate?

I don't know--who he is and what he does? What any competent oppo research on him would show?

But now the Republican establishment and even conservative media is basically bitten. They knew what he was. They handled him--dealt with him--anyway. And who knows? When he recites that little allegory, maybe he knows he's the snake, too.

A Belated Comment on Ben Shapiro's Race Thingy

I've been linking a lot to TPM lately, but there you go: fangirl, thing I do. But I want to punctuate this thoughtful comparison of Jonathan Chait's slightly flawed long piece on conservatism and race and Ben Shapiro's much shorter and dumber piece on Colbert's parody of conservatism with an observation. When I read Chait's piece, even if I thought he was bending over backwards to not depict conservatives and specifically the GOP party message all this while as racist per se even if the results tend that way in practice in terms of income inequality and legitimate claims of inequality of access to the ballot, education, etc., I understood he was well-intentioned.

When I read Ben Shapiro's piece, I was overcome by the black face picture of Al Jolson. Seriously? Whose editorial decision was that picture? (Does, um, Shapiro have editorial control over his thing over there?) Because when Shapiro makes the claim that Stephen Colbert's satirical representation of conservative thought is a minstrel-show of it which should revolt any conservative watching, I kind of tended to recall that some conservatives watched the show and thought it was great fun because they took it at face value. Indeed, there is an Internet concept of Poe's Law--where it is known to be impossible to distinguish between true extremism and parodies of same, because extremists are so very. And parodies are supposed to depict the so very--so they have considerable overlap.

Still Being A Pimp.

I think it has been a hard week for Young James at the pimping game. He has not yet understood that pimping has to be non-egregious and if not beneficial, at least, be nontoxic to the communities it services. But he is not adept at following the simple rules of conscious pimping, Apparently.

So, let's talk about Veritas acting like a gun for hire to get an inconvenient pol (GOP) out of the way.  That is pretty interesting. Making intraparty hits could either be seen as an act of integrity, or, an in-house drive-by. That's only a little sketchy though.



But here's a slam by a Texas court over some pretend journalism trying to prove some voter fraud:

The judge dismissed a complaint that arose from an incendiary video made by O’Keefe’s organization, which purported to show illegal activity by Battleground Texas, a Democratic group that’s working to register Texans to vote. The judge acted after investigators derided the video as “little more than a canard and political disinformation.” 

The news is a win for those looking to expand access to the ballot in the Lone Star State—and for state Sen. Wendy Davis, a Democratic candidate for governor there.

It's like people are seeing right though him! That pimp suit doesn't only fit the B-roll of Young James' ACORN hit piece. His life is about pimping.

I'm not even really outraged by the Breitbartlets anymore.

Deep down, I guess this doesn't really jerk either of my liberal knees. The idea behind Photoshopping former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's head on Miley Cyrus' body has a pretty clear editorial intent with which I disagree, but then again, I disagree with the Breitbart folks in principle and practice and renounce all their works pretty much all the time.

This genuinely looks to me like a bid for attention and a kind of deliberate poking of the liberal bull in the hopes of getting a figurative goring. It's pretty poplar with the kind of people who might be attracted to the work-product of the Breitbart Team to feel like they are transgressing the liberaltariat political correctness regime, or some such thing. I dunno. The ad is kind of a classic projection of sexist tropes about female submissiveness/whorishness which strikes me as being about as edgy as safety scissors, but meh. Yeah, whatever. We see you.

Tabloids Photoshop pretend-shocking shit all the time. I just can't get it up for this.

Show Me the Plane Ticket

What a weird, birther-y week it's been. We've had one CO US Representative, Mike Coffman, indicate that he didn't know where Obama was from, he just wasn't an American. We've had the Secretary of State of, where else, but Arizona, Ken Bennett, imply that President Obama might not be on that state's ballot because he considers Obama's birth certificate to be suspect, following in the footsteps of the great detective, one Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose evidence consists of "read a book saying its' suspect", "WND", and "oh look, shiny thing". And then there was the journalism find of the week from the Breitbartlets (complete with "non-Birther, no really, we're just raising questions and presenting evidence" disclaimer): the smoking brochure, where apparently someone at the literary agency repping Obama mistakenly indicated that he was born in Kenya.

This is supposed to be proof that people surrounding Barack Obama have been carefully cultivating an Obama myth to obscure the Real Obama. I think it's proof that agents more or less skim the books their authors put out.

But it's not a bad theory: there we have Barack Obama, poised to embark on a political career that will ultimately take him to the White House; and there's the literary agency, conspiring to help him by dishing out a nugget of disqualifying information....Wait, what?

The narrative breaks down just a bit more in John Nolte's response to the Obama Campaign's response.

Apparently, Barack Obama Went to Harvard, and Was Awesome.

The above clip was leaked by Buzzfeed in advance of the Breitbartians' big reveal on Hannity. Oh. My. There's young Barack Obama, sounding quite a lot like the effective political speaker he is today, introducing Professor Derek Bell at a protest regarding getting tenure for a black woman professor to encourage diversity at Harvard University.

I'm not entirely sure what part of all this we're supposed to get upset about. He gave a warm introduction to a respected scholar regarding Harvard being open to voices that broadened the educational vistas of the university's students. Is it that Dr. Bell is supposed to be a "racialist"?  If so, that's really not shocking in the least. We ought to be able to recognize the difference between "racism" and "racialism"--it should not be considered beyond the pale to discuss issues of race. A bias against people on the basis of race is inappropriate--but discussion about the construct of race and how it impacts society is a meaningful field of study.

Dr. Bell was a proponent of critical race theory and advanced the importance of exposure to the narrative voices of people of color to enhance understanding of the relationships of different people within the context of their lives and the law. Critical race theory involves recognition of the intersection of race socially, economically, and in terms of how dominant groups in society can use law to reinforce privilege.  To put it simply; if the privilege of white (or straight, or male) people can be reinforced by the law, then they will totally use the law to reinforce their privilege. I don't think this idea is radical at all--I find it axiomatic. Taking a look at civil rights cases today: from voter ID laws to marriage equality, intersectionality and the law clearly show where privilege and bias play roles in preventing equal protection and access to the benefits of our legal system.

Anyway, this could only look like inflammatory material to someone who thought like Breitbart--whose endorsements of O'Keefe's mildly racist ACORN smears and the selectively edited Shirley Sherrod video definitely indicate a confusion of racism/racialism and distrust of multicultural perspectives. Alas, Breitbart is not here to properly set us up for why any of this is controversial. I'm sure his comments would be most....enlightening. Mostly about the psyche of Breitbart. As it is, coming at the same time as the sexist melt-down of Rush Limbaugh, maybe this isn't the best time for conservative media to reflect "Yeah, but we have serious race issues, too!"

Of course you do. I prefer to note that President Obama didn't need a teleprompter to introduce Professor Bell, was warm and well-spoken, and was apparently a significant campus leader way back in 1990, which must cause no small amount of chagrin to birther types who need verification that Obama even has school transcripts.

The passing of Andrew Breitbart is noted.

I think it says something about Andrew Breitbart's legacy that when the news that he had passed on was posted at Big Hollywood, some people approached it with a bit of trepidation: Was this possibly a hoax? Is this some kind of ultimate troll? It's a reasonable thing to be skeptical of--43 just seems so young for a man to die so suddenly.  It's a tragedy for his family and friends. But in a way, the promoter of the ACORN and Shirley Sherrod videos gave some, especially on the left, reason to be distrustful of his media outlets. Shortly after his death was confirmed, rumors began about whether he was "rubbed out" by Chicago-style politics.

Rumors on the Right, skepticism on the Left. I'm not sure what it all means exactly--that's just what I noticed.

I try not to be the sort of person who eagerly queues up for the funereal rumba line, but felt it was necessary to note his passing as a figure who was fairly influential in the world of political commentary.

There are people who will miss him, and I am not unmindful of that fact.

"Dick jokes" have been updated to "Dick News".

Well, contrary to my first guess, it turns out that Rep. Weiner actually was dumb enough to use social media that way.  And then to think lying about it was going to make it go away. 

However, I think the real takeaway here is that for 20 years, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas failed to report his wife's income on financial disclosure forms, and should recuse himself from any case that involves the Health Care Reform act for conflict of interest.  And I hope anyone bringing up this mess feels free to point that out every time it comes up.  Because the timing.  Ah. The timing.  Also, because--one of these things effects the country we live in, and the other involves dicks.

Also, Andrew Breitbart may have received some honest to goodness dick news, but it's still dick news.  And he is still Andrew Breitbart.  As a very small left-wing blogger, I will just rely on others to point out why the initial response when we hear "Breitbart" is total skepticism.

Seriously? They've got dick jokes?

This weekend's blogular distraction comes from Breitbart and his goofy gang of pranksters:

So, what seems to have happened is a picture of an erection ensconced in a pair of drawers was uploaded to something called Yfrog and then Tweeted, apparently from Rep. Anthony Weiner's account and supposedly to one of his Twitter followers.  Yes....seems.  The picture was then seized upon by an apparently clairvoyant Teahadist and linked to Big Government. For a minute, the story was all about why wasn't the congressman making a legal case out of the apparent hack--well, now he is. Which I would like to think means that if this was a set-up (ahem...if...ahem) some jack-ass feels some repercussions.

So, to recap, a US Rep. seems to have been spoofed in a childish way, an innocent Twitter-user has been harassed by jerks, and you can't believe everything you read on the Internet--although we kind of knew that last bit. Also, really, going after Rep. Weiner? Is it because he regularly tells it like is it in moments like this? Or on the Clarence Thomas conflict-of-interest issue? (More of that sort of thing, and I'll be calling him my boyfriend, too. Y'know, just like George Clooney & Keith Olbermann. As if.)

I dunno. I'm still wondering whose vanilla, laundered-shorted crotch-shot that really is. But then, I'm just a speculative old thing, really. Easily distracted, you know.  (But really--"Weiner?" A dick joke? On the order of trying too hard! Huh huh huh, I said, "hard".)