Now, Let's Play "Do You Hear What I Hear?"

 

Having a hard time coming to any conclusion besides the obvious one about what Rich Lowry catches himself blurting out here pic.twitter.com/PFHQMCS8UP

— Madeline Peltz (@peltzmadeline) September 16, 2024

Now it's time to play the inciting new game show, "Do You Hear What I Hear?" where the contestants try to make out whether it's the word we are not supposed to say, or just a terrible, terrible slip of the soft palate. In our clip today, we have Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, on Megyn Kelly's show, which I guess is a thing, extremely butchering the word "migrants" or "immigrants" until it sounds like....

Well, you be the judge. 

OK, time's up, audience. So, as is the catch phrase of our show: "Did you hear what I hear?"

No. You actually don't need more time for this. I don't know what part of NR or Megyn Kelly or Rich Lowry confused you about whatever is "in their heart". The actual answer is--the reason people are hearing it isn't about whether it has been said out loud, it's about this dumb dance we are doing around immigration trying not to make it about---that, when we know damn good and well it is. 

You can actually not use that one word and still be saying that word more than you know. That's the  whole answer. We don't need a whole lot more episodes. 

So those of you who got the right answer here, you win a lifetime supply of the baggage of knowing about it, and for those you who didn't know, you get the parting gift of probably figuring it out but most likely not from this blogpost. 

Thanks for playing everybody! And let's meet again probably sooner than we think we should right here in the 21st century but apparently not!

UPDATE: Here's a bonus round, Christian supremacist edition:

The Mirror Universe View

 

Just to get this out of my system: it's sad that we creep along in the country from continuing resolution to continuing resolution. We should be able to just get some kind of a budget going. That we just hover on the edge of a government shutdown every couple months is appalling and no damn way to run a country. And I feel the same way the most recent one--hey, no government shutdown, but it only gets us to MARCH. These people have calendars, right? They can count how many days they will even be in Washington to vote, right? 

It would be great to manage a deal on immigration reform, too. There's clearly more to the issue than what I sometimes think of as "the barrier method" (the border wall, a decade-old condom in a ripped wrapper). It would be great to get beyond the stupid GOP rhetoric about an "open border" that simply isn't. 

The Denialism Vortex

 

Just to refrain from linking to any of the stupid Twitter comments that got me to thinking about the denialism problem, I'm just going to link to Josh Marshall on the latest dumb thing the MAGA folks are doing: denying that the Ukraine war...is real.  Like somehow, Ukraine has snowed us all into thinking there's a war, and Russia is even playing along with this, and all of Europe and the US, etc. are somehow just pretending there's a war?

As if Wag the Dog were a documentary? It just doesn't seem plausible to me that this is being posited by anyone in good faith, but I don't think denialism is about that--although some people will buy it. It's about the debate. Exhausting, proof-pulling, stupid debate.

Think about how from stupid little acorns of bad faith, mighty conspiracist oaks grow--like with Andrew Wakefield's bad science that grew into the anti-vaxx movement that has since spawned actual terrorism threats.  Or people who can't accept any demonstration that the voter fraud that has them so furious never existed. Or think about climate science denialism and how people want to believe it's all a hoax started by people who want you to sit in a freezing room and eat bugs. (No, that's Brexit, dear....) And this "fake Ukraine War" canard seems like an outcropping of Russiagate--the denialism that Putin is a really bad guy who fucks with elections and has imperialist aims.

The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

 

 I have explained the terrible compulsion behind some of my posts--unless I post about whatever stupid thing is gnawing at me, I don't get to move on to other business--and here this weird thing is, still nibbling at my neocortex:

A queer music artist did a dance performance in a devil Hallowe'en costume and right-wingers decided Hollyweird was shoving Satanism down their throats. 

There's a long history of regarding Satan and music, especially popular music, as connected and it's certainly been written about before, so I don't need to hash out the secular and profane aspects of modern music. But this isn't really about that, or not quite.

In a climate that has tried to start a "satanic panic" over Drag Time Story Hour that has since boiled its way down to getting books banned and even removed from schools--it isn't Satan that's the problem. Sam Smith isn't a satanist, they are queer. And it isn't Devil's Advocacy on my part to point out what I think is the real problem folks like Matt Walsh or Ali Alexander have: The real problem is they are homophobic, transphobic grifters--the hate dollar keeps them going.

It's the funniest part of the culture war--on our side, we talk about Poe's Law, where outrage among the religious right is so daft you can't tell parody from their actual genuine product. But I always suspect it's because the genuine product itself is so adulterated with self-conscious schtick. 

On their end, they think we are feeding babies to Satan (allegedly) when most of us cultural left folks really don't believe literally in the biblical bogeyman. The saying that the greatest trick the devil pulled was convincing people he didn't exist isn't quite right. The greatest trick ever pulled was telling people there was supernaturalism behind their actions, and therefore they had to listen to priests and other jumped-up demagogues instead of thinking for themselves. 

Our sin is scoffing at their "deeply held beliefs"--which is their only basis for anyone going along with them. And I also scoff at them for getting all exercised over a singer in a shiny little top-hat with  horns.

Give me a break!

It's a Gas, Gas, Gas!

 

So, the freakout on the right today was a panic that The Man was coming for your gas stoves because the avocado green of your best-loved steak-cooking appliance wasn't green enough for the uncanny valley of our future dystopia. Or something like that. 

This is a thing that isn't happening. Jack-booted Bidenistas are not going to confiscate people's kitchen appliances. What the whole entire heck? 

But no, there was much ado:

So much signifying. They'd rather fight than switch, etc.--which no one was asking them to do. People just wanted to look into the idea that maybe gas ranges were giving kids asthma. I am so sorry that one's ability to properly sear pork chops is more important to them than whether their kids have asthma, but I guess I have to respect your deeply held Maillard-reaction traditions and pass the Albuterol. 

Now because I am class-conscious, I get that one is not always at cause over one's kitchen appliances. You might just rent, for example.  I have a thirty-something year old Magic Chef gas stove that my husband complains about because he can't get a proper flame from it. I hate it personally because the oven doesn't work right and cleaning it is gross. One of the burners goes out occasionally and I am 50 years old and still light a pilot like I want to duck and cover.

Take my gas oven you fucks! Give me a nice clean new induction chrome MF than makes me feel like a real woman! Why can't the government interfere in my kitchen just this once? 

But look, if you right-wingers want to get misty over the blue flame of freedom, you just go on ahead and follow Catturd's example:

Turn on all the burners.  Don't turn them off. Leave them going as an eternal flame for all the things they took from you. Your guns. Your Bibles, Hot teachers who didn't have temporary hair colors and piercings. Breast milk cheese. Um, Burgers with real meat. Movies where white dudes are the only good guys and are definitely virile and like, getting it. Make a shrine. Put up drapes around your gas stove, which is totally all burners going at once. Rip out that carbon monoxide detector. It's a green new deal fink. Gather the children in to see your spectacle and make them take deep breaths of freedom. 

Now you're really cooking with gas, friends. Look! I'm shedding real tears! You win!

UPDATE: I guess it could be stupider, like if right wing world got riled up over whether the M&Ms were sexy enough, and not obese feminist candies or whatevs.  Or, like, if Dr. Suess got unironically cancelled for wokeness after conservatives got all pompous about how woke was censorship over actually--Dr. Suess. No really. Totally a serious political movement and not a bunch of slackjaws trying to figure out where the cool kids table is. 

Putin Overreaches

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed papers to formally, but illegally, annex four regions in Ukraine — an area the size of Ohio — after what the West calls “sham referendums.”@nickschifrin reports. https://t.co/AuNEXtbqGD pic.twitter.com/Two8benxUN

— PBS NewsHour (@NewsHour) September 30, 2022

It's a funny old thing, Putin claiming he has possession of these regions and that they are inviolately Russian. The regions in question don't even really think that. Putin held a "gun to the head" referendum and forced an agreement to maybe consider Russia in charge of certain regions so that the people living there don't die. 

Much of his speech sounded like it was about culture war stuff crafted to appeal to a certain segment of the West--the kind that looks up to someone like Giorgia Meloni, or like Trump. He actually sounded a bit like he was jealous of Orban and his welcome at CPAC. No one should think what he is doing here boils down to concern about pronouns or liberal decadence.

It is a naked power grab and his claim to this area is without any merit at all. 

UPDATE:

Apparently, CPAC Tweeted, then deleted, a post referring to the territory Putin just illegally annexed as "Ukrainian-occupied" and the military aid the US is giving to Ukraine as "gifts".  The idea of the "free world" means nothing to them.