We're Sticking it to Those Penguins, Though

 

The funny/not funny thing about Trump's "reciprocal tariffs" is the way the White House apparently just willy-nilly came up with a plan to suit the ill-informed whims of a mentally ill man who doesn't know what he's doing.  The places being tariffed are internet domains, the alleged tariffs the location have on us is somewhat fictitious, and the formula for levying a "reciprocal" tariff is a bit of slap-dash treating a trade deficit like a tariff and, hoo boy. 

This is "nuking the hurricane" territory.  His sycophants are arguing, "Well, we have to trust him! He's Mr. Art of the Deal, right?"

(Um. No, he isn't. He's a glorified failure who cheats.)

Anyway, at least we are sticking it to those very duplicitous thieving Heard Island penguins, whose exports include, per their trades minister, Binky: "bit of extra fish", "shiny pebble" and "piles of poo for some reason, you weirdos." 

Isn't that a kind of grim satisfaction in the teeth of losing a healthy economy?

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!

Eating Babies is Not Okay

President Trump attacked Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez after a speaker at her town hall went on a bizarre rant about how eating babies is the only solution to the climate crisis.

Turns out, the stunt was staged by a pro-Trump conspiracy group.https://t.co/24aaLyVlxL

— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) October 4, 2019

There's several shades of fucking whacko going on here, not the least because RW media seemed to have taken this episode to infer the environmental lefties are just fine with the idea of people eating babies. Like, what? People pretty naturally go quiet when someone around them says really screwed up things because you never know when they might set off a batshit bomb and get some on you. That silence definitely does not signify consent to a program involving soylent green infant formula--made from real infants!

LaRouchies are a bit of a weird group, and their claim that their anti-environmentalism hoax is a take-off on Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal sits a bit poorly with me. The 1729 proposal was intended as a dig at the exploiters who already took so much from impoverished people that what was left but blood? The anti-environmentalists' take doesn't point a finger at exploitation, so much as revel in it. It seems to exist in a cosmos where human life isn't already considered cheap by those who continue to pollute our planet.

But there's also something darker, there. The anti-choice right wing has recently made up and promoted a terrific lie regarding the compassionate care of neonates with poor survival prognoses, referring to it as a form of abortion. This kind of lie holds within it echoes of the monstrous "baby parts" hoax that influenced the mass shooter Robert Dear. (This has blossomed into aspects of the anti-vax movement, which alleges that vaccines are bad because they contain baby parts, and the even funkier idea that baby parts are used in food additives.)

But for the folding of the satirical concept of eating babies lifted from Swift and whipped into frothing nightmare fuel, you've got your guano-brains du jour, Q-Anon, serving up heaping helpings of adrenochrome. This is, apparently, the scared-child sauce that elite liberals have been drinking to stay looking so amazeballs and vigorous. It's basically Pizzagate with a vampire twist, and has its origins in one of the oldest and most bigoted conspiracy theories (which has killed countless innocent people) on the books--the Blood Libel.

It's batshit with a pedigree. Call the group you wish to destroy "child murderers"--say they eat babies--and watch it excite the part of the brain that wants to, quite rightly, desperately protect their young. Unleash the meme on people who already dislike this group. Watch as the people exposed to said unfounded slander decide that the claim is too grave to further investigate and action must be taken at once.

I'm not sure how this sort of bullshit is supposed to still be working in 2019, but here we are. As for me, I think eating human babies is horrendous. They have no muscle tone and their diets are grotesquely bland. The meat is fatty and without flavor. Children are best eaten at about the age of ten. They have active bodies and are not yet pubescent. Puberty hormones makes the meat far too gamy and unpleasant. And yes, I am joking. Who even owns such large cookware these days? It's nonsense, and the people who push these things in all seriousness should be laughed into obscurity.

Rep. Devin Nunes is Suing an Internet Cow

Amazing, isn't it, how some characters fall out of the TrumpWorld plot for a little bit, who at one time seemed so integral. I can't actually say that Nunes was missed, but for crying out loud, who doesn't like a little bit of comic relief with your national tragedy? So I am somewhat cheered to present a story that has Rep. Nunes suing an internet cow, Liz Mair (no, she's not an internet cow, she seems okay), Twitter, Inc., and a parody account of Devin Nunes' mama, because she served as his campaign treasurer, which is a whole other thing. 

That seems pretty bizarre, but his side of the story is pretty compelling--people are mean to him on the internet, and he isn't getting nearly the likes and retweets he ought to, and some of the stuff said about him are lies!! And...

And this is a grown man who went into politics on purpose. Every politician takes hits on Twitter, just like they do on talk radio, cable news, blogs and other assorted websites. Does he think people genuinely didn't think the Devin Nunes' Mom and Devin Nunes' Cow Twitter accounts were satire?

What if--?

Scene:

NUNES (looks up from keyboard, eyes damp with tears): Mother, how could you?

DIANE (peering over his shoulder): We've talked about this, Devin. Not everything you see on the internet is real.

NUNES: But what about...this? (pointing fiercely at the screen)

DIANE: Oh for heaven's sakes, how would she even work a keyboard?

(Disclaimer: I'm not saying this happened. I'm being satirical.)

Anyhow, if this goes on, I'm clearly on the side of the cow. 

UPDATE: This is already working out very well for Nunes on social media.

UPDATE, ALSO, TOO: This looks like the type of lawsuit a lawyer might take on if it certainly could not make their reputation any worse, and is probably mostly intended to be a Very Expensive Annoyance (probably donor-funded) to discourage people from saying Mean Things About Dev.

It's dumb but also very vindictive.

This isn't Art, and Not a Good Point

I guess, arguendo, different people will have different ideas about what constitutes "art". Art is something like porn was for Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart: You know it when you see it. This is a definition that doesn't satisfy, and as every good internetizen knows: YMMV. (For what it's worth, if you just put the search words "porn" and "potter" in a search engine now, you will be confronted with pages of Harry Potter porn links. Some of them might conceivably be at least a little artistic, porn and art not being mutually exclusive.) But I think the standard where an image of the red-headed comedian holding aloft a fake-blood-covered Donald Trump mask in an imitation of a beheading falls a bit short of art, and seems a bit more like political porn.

There is a stuffiness about discussing "redeeming social value". Art isn't always redemptive--it can sometimes be cynical and stark as all hell. But points have to be given on the basis of whether a piece effectively conveys what was intended--and I can't say that this does. The "Trump" imagined by Kathy Griffin's pose is, perhaps, a gorgon:

Or a dragon or a giant or a lamia or any other sort of beast that can be beheaded in a legend without our considering that entity as human, but fully monstrous. In a profession where targets are "roasted", audiences are "killed", and failing acts "bomb", this over-the-top symbolism might make sense: It was comedy that killed the beast. (After the tagline of most renditions of King Kong--substituting "comedy" for "beauty".  Contra Keats, what is beautiful is not always true, but comedy usually works because of a kernel of truth. Truth, reality, is the anti-matter to a lying regime. But it only works if the joke doesn't need to be bloody explained.)

We don't live in such times where we are dealing with mythological creatures in a way where an audience accepts legend as our referent. Donald Trump is, whatever his faults, a human man, and the worst thing we can say about his policies is that they are centered in dehumanizing others: criminalizing immigrants, privileging some religions over others, encouraging punch-down violence. Where, then, is the sense in dehumanizing him, and making violence a matter of smirking exultation?

It was misguided, and not supported by most liberals, and Griffin herself has now apologized. As a bad bit of art that should be and was rubbished, that should be that. And yet we now have a counter-example to whatever violent image fuckery we on the left mean to decry-- "But Kathy Griffin". This is absurd, and completely expected.

It should not take the sting out of factual claims about what is happening on the right, however. The gorgon's head was never meant to shock us liberals, you know. Attention-sponge and thirsty-comedian Kathy Griffin was pushing RW buttons. And I would be afraid to wade in into her social media mentions right now, because that woman is probably getting cause to call the authorities--and that? Is as well worth talking about as her satire-misfire. I believe she intended no threat (does anyone seriously think even a D-list celeb is going to be a fence-jumper?) and is probably just being nearly Ted Nugent-levels of shit-talking stupid.

But if you come to "But Kathy Griffin" at me, I will "but BLM" forever. Or "but queer-bashing" forever. Or "but Portland" forever.  Because a ham-fisted visual message isn't the same thing as actual physical violence, any more than eating a menu is just as good as eating a sandwich. And while Griffin's message was botched, she wasn't actually trying to get anyone killed.

Another Trumpworld Grab Bag

I just want to point out that this weekend is another weekend where President Trump visited a couple of his golf courses to hit the links and schmooze in familiar surroundings, like he does most weekends since he became president, and Fox Mushroom Farm is being a little less than honest in pretending that he literally spent the whole weekend at the White House. There is photographic proof he did not. Just because he went to the golf course that he owns closest to the White House does not mean he worked at the White House. He smacked a little white ball around. And I get that Republicans have very little trouble with Trump always being golfing. So Eisenhower! Very suburban! Oddly, they never liked to see Barack Obama smacking little white balls around.

But you know, this is Fox News, after all, the official sponsor of saying stuff out loud that Trump doesn't want folks to know came from him, except that you do. Sean Hannity, a very special Fox News personality, got told by one Ted Koppel just what he thinks of him. He's bad. (I note that Sean Hannity came off a bit defensive and threw a "with all due respect" in there like we don't know what that means--bless his heart.) It shouldn't be anything but transparent that Hannity is not merely an opinion-journalist (if you want to call it journalism) but an extreme partisan (and if you want to call that "propagandist", in my book, you go on ahead). I am reminded of the time Jon Stewart told Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala that their version of "Crossfire" wasn't helping anything at all. Except Koppel isn't a comedian who does news, but a guy who did straight news his whole career. And if Hannity wants to pretend this is some so-called "liberal media" figure he just dissed, nope. Just nope.