People with serious misconceptions about who they are dealing with.

Person number one:

This lady who has worked for Rand Paul and Scott Walker, among others.

Remember: You may be a religious agnostic and not from the pro-life part of the party. But there is no chance in hell that pro-lifers will shrug their shoulders and say "meh" if a kid dies tomorrow. That is actually your route to impeachment. https://t.co/1e8F2bJRK5

— Liz Mair (@LizMair) June 20, 2018

I'm sorry, have you ever met a "pro-life" Republican? When have they ever given a single fuck about a kid who has already been born?
Did you see a lot of "pro-life" activists demanding action after children were slaughtered at Sandy Hook? Or any of the other schools at which children have recently been slaughtered?
When US drone strikes kill children, do you see a lot of "pro-life" people demanding an end to the policy of indiscriminate bombing?
Did any "pro-life" Republican speak out after Tamir Rice was murdered by a cop? Or after any black or brown person was murdered by police?
Of course you didn't. Because they don't give a single good god damn about actual kids. They only care about forcing women to carry pregnancies through to term. If a Mexican child dies from heat exposure in a Trump tent city, they will ABSOLUTELY shrug their shoulders and say "meh." Then they'll lay out all the reasons why it was the child's own fault, or the fault of the parents, or Barack Obama's or anyone's fault other than Trump and then line up to vote for his re-election.
If you think "pro-life" people actually care about the life of anyone outside the womb, you are sadly mistaken. Delusional even.



Person number two:

Whoever keeps booking Rick Santorum on CNN

Look, CNN person, they are never going to like you. The right is never going to like you no matter what you do. They aren't even going to not hate you. Even if you keep trotting out 10 lbs of scum in a 5-pound bag Rick Santorum, they are not going to change their minds.
Did they like you when you hired loathsome conservative shit-poster Erick Erickson?
Did they like you when you gave Glen Beck his break on tv on your CNN Headline News channel?
How about when you made Republican campaign strategist Ana Navarro a fixture on your network?

No.
And this isn't going to change. It won't change if you sold your network to Rupert Murdoch, gave Bill O'Reilly the 6am to 10pm slot and changed your name from CNN to the Heil Trump Network.

For two reasons.

One. The right's hatred of you isn't rational. It isn't something that can be addressed by making changes, by kissing their asses, by reaching out - nothing will change this because they have already decided that you are the enemy and nothing will ever make them reconsider that stance.
These are not rational people. You spent the entire 2016 election season fawning over Donald Trump like teenyboppers swooning over Elvis and what did it get you? Trump calling you "fake news" and his imbecile followers calling you the "Clinton News Network."

The other reason that there is nothing you can do to make friends with these people is that no matter who you allow to soil your airwaves, no matter how many Republicans you showcase, they won't know because they will never ever watch you. They don't need to. They have FOX. And every day, they sit there and listen to the FOX  troglodytes complain about how CNN has some sort of huge lefty bias and is dishonest and is fake news and is an enemy of the state, and so on and so on and so on. So you might as well start booking Noam Chomsky, Ralph Nader and the Chapo Trap House crew, because the reaction from the right will be exactly the same as it is now that you're trying so hard to placate them.


Person number three:

Any of the countless people on Twitter and Facebook and other social media reacting to Trump's hideous family separation policy by saying "this is not America," or "this is not who we are!"

Oh, please. This is exactly who we are.

How can people stand there on land that was taken by force from Native Americans, that was tilled and harvested by generations of enslaved Africans, where police officers shoot unarmed black and brown people with impunity and, with a straight face, claim that child prison camps somehow violate "American values?"

You want to know if this ghastly policy is out of character for the US of A? Ask an Indian. Ask a black person. Hell, ask a Japanese American who was alive during World War II. This is exactly what we are.
And I'm not saying that to make a case for accepting this atrocity. We should absolutely be fighting tooth and nail for these kids. I'm just saying that it isn't realistic to pretend that race-based monstrosities don't reflect the fabric of our society. We should be working to ensure that they no longer represent who we are, not pretending that they don't.

Did Bill Clinton Seriously write a Novel?

Yep!

Apparently, the former president has teamed up with James Patterson, he of the dime-store detective books, to pen a putative thriller called "The President is Missing." Is it any good? Oh, my - I wouldn't think so. But maybe? I wasn't about to buy it, and if the library even has it yet, it's probably wait-listed, so I went searching for excerpts on line. This is what I found:


So the titualr president, Jonathon Duncan, is also the first-person narrator of the book. His name is Jonathon Duncan because "Will Sminton" was nixed by Patterson. I assume. He is, as you would assume, meant to be a stand-in for POTUS 42, and he says very realistic, natural-sounding dialogue like "Everything I did was to protect my country. I’d do it again. The problem is, I can’t say any of that." 
and
 “All I can tell you is that I have always acted with the security of my country in mind. And I always will.”
and
"I lash out and whack the microphone off the table. I knock over my chair as I get to my feet."

 

Referring to a potential cyber-attack from a terrorist organization, another character gives us this pearl of wisdom:

"One of the great ironies of the modern age ... is that the advancements of mankind can make us more powerful and yet more vulnerable at the same time.” And why? “The reason is reliance. Our society has become completely reliant on technology" 

Oh my God! I never thought of it that way! Is what I would say if I had just awakened from a 20-year coma and have no memory of the Y2K panic of 1999. 

There are timely references, like the description of a hacker who is  “a cross between a Calvin Klein model and a Eurotrash punk rocker”.

And this completely tone-deaf description of an assassin:

“Sexy”, and “allowing just enough bounce in her girls [sic]”, as she strides around in her knee-high chocolate leather boots, she names her favoured weapon “Anna Magdalena ... a thing of beauty, a matte-black semiautomatic rifle capable of firing five rounds in less than two seconds”.

Because now is exactly the time in our history that you want to be fetishising guns!


There's this proof that the fictional president is, after all, just a regular all-American guy at heart, when he attends a baseball game and says:

 “Ordinarily I’d be like a kid in a candy store here. I’d grab a Budweiser and a hot dog. . . there is no finer beverage than an ice-cold Bud.” 

Christ, this guy can monetize anything! A beer commercial in the middle of your novel? Part of me wants to applaud, part of me is nauseous.

But regular guy or not, this president is woke AF!


“I know that there are bad cops, just as there are bad actors in every profession. And I know that there are cops who think of themselves as good cops but, even if unconsciously, see a black man in a T-shirt and jeans as more threatening than a white man dressed the same way.” 

Woah. . .heavy! That's like a real like Marxist critique of the system or something, man! Although he feels it necessary to temper that scathing criticism of the biases in law enforcement with this bromide:

“I know that most cops, most of the time, do the best they can” 

Courageous!

Anyway, my computer is acting up, so let's skip to the conclusion of a review in the New Republic:

To boot, the book ends with the revelation that the villain all along was feminism. The following is a spoiler, so look away if you wish to read The President Is Missing with all bells and whistles intact. “How could you do this?” the president asks the traitor in his midst, once he’s figured it all out. The answer, when it comes, is a surprise to him. The traitor’s face is “twisted up in agony and bitterness,” full of resentment. “Says the man who gets to be president,” she replies. “Says the man who didn’t see his political career tanked” over one little mistake.

Oh, my God, the villain is Hillary!
This man wrote an entire novel in which his wife is the villain.
The woman who is resentful because she doesn't "get to be president?" 
The woman who is bitter that her political career was torpedoed by "one little mistake? (emails? 'Deplorables?' Killing everybody in Benghazi?)" 

That sounds like Hillary. Or a caricature of Hillary, anyway. A caricature that a shitty husband might make of his wife. This entire novel is just a setup and the punchline is "take my wife, please!"

I forgot the best part!

Re: yesterday's post, about the fake movie trailer designed to cajole Kim Jong Un into making some sort of a deal with the US, I forgot the best feature of the whole thing.

It's in English!

Every word is in English. Does Kim even speak English?

Do you know how easy it would be to find someone fluent in both English and Korean to translate the script and read it in Kim's native tongue? I mean, you might have to go to Los Angeles, but if you're making a foray into film production, you should probably go there anyway.

How do you not have it in Korean? It's mind-boggling!

Move Over, Plan 9 From Outer Space!

Sometimes a bad movie can be more fun than a good one. You get a group of friends together, have a couple drinks and mock a cinematic trainwreck like Anaconda, or A Gnome Named Gnorm.

            
            
Or any of the fine motion pictures featured on  "How Did This Get Made?"

But try as you might, I doubt you will ever find another movie as laughably bad as the one that someone made for President Cartman to give as a gift to Kim Jung Un.




It's hard to decide what I like best about this amateur-hour fiasco.

Is it the trite, overwrought language? "only a few will make a lasting impact!" "only a few are called upon to make a difference! But what difference will the few make?" "Two men. Two leaders. One destiny!"

The weird pseudo-religious overrtones? "out of the darkness can come the light!"

 Is it the narrator explaining Korean history to the President of North Korea?

The bizarre suggestion that most of the world has been living in "prosperity" the last several decades?

Is it the faulty logic?  "There can only be two results - one of moving back or one of moving forward!" (Or, things could, you know, stay the same as they have for the last 65 years?)
"The past doesn't have to be the future." (Literally, it can not be.)

The weird choices of words and phrases? "Their story is well-known. But what will be their sequel?"

Maybe it's the world's most inappropriate dramatic pause. "what will he choose? To show vision, leadership. . . [dramatic pause] . . . Or not?" Was that pause just the narrator trying to think of something insightful to say? Then just giving up and tossing out "or not?"

No, I think my favorite part is that the illustration for the reult of moving forward is literally film being run in reverse. Missiles leaving the sky, being sucked back into their silos.

Other highlights include "friendship and respect" being illustrated by a photo of Il Douche and Sly Stallone giving each other weird looks, the B-roll footage of random people and places - Big Ben! Machu Picchu! An . . .airport, I think?

Just the whole condescending attitude towards Kim - "will this leader choose to advance his country and be part of the new world?" (The New World, by the way, consisting of a waterslide and cross-country skiing for some reason). "Will he shake the hand of peace?" (Peace being personified by Cheeto Mussolini, obvs.)

Gawd, it's astounding. Watch it for yourself, it's only about 4 minutes long. You might want to have a drink before watching, you'll definitely want one after, but don't pass up this opportunity to see the Troll II of international diplomacy.

Megan McArdle will always stick up for the Overdog.

A defense of Roger Goodell

by Megan McArdle

Because you know who really needs defending? A guy who makes $31 million dollars a year doing. . . nobody really knows what exactly he does, but he's sort of the president of football? Or something? Minly his job seems to be completely mis-handling the issues of domestic violence and player concussions. But you can always trust McArdle to stick up for the little guy!

Whatever you think of Roger Goodell, commissioner of the National Football League, you should recognize that he’s trying to solve a genuinely hard problem.

No, he isn't. It's only hard because he's making it hard. Easy solutions could be: let the players express their views as they see fit, or stop demanding shows of patriotism before sports games. It's a god dman football game, why is everyone expected to show their respect to the flag beforehand? It's not a swearing-in ceremony or a celebration for new citizens or something. It's a game.

. . . he’s trying to solve a genuinely hard problem. Or rather two problems. On one hand, he’s trying to maximize the audience for NFL games. At the same time, he’s also trying to negotiate the same fraught racial politics that our nation has been struggling with for centuries, but in miniature, and in prime time.

 Um, if you want to maximize the audience for NFL games, make the games better. Maybe don't spend twenty minutes arguing the finer technicalities of what does and doesn't constitute a catch? Or maybe don't have so many damn games on each week that you need to trot out annoyances like Jon Gruden or Phil Simms as front-line commentators?

And no one has asked Roger freakin Goodell to solve the problem of racism is this country. All he needs to do is nothing. Just stay out of it, let the players express their views or not express them as they see fit, and let fans react however they like. If they really like football, they aren't going to stop watching because of what happens during the national anthem. Hey, here's an idea - just don't televise the anthem! There, solved it. 31 million dollars, please!

Nearly 70 percent of NFL players are black. Why wouldn’t those players want to use their privileged position to highlight one of the most pressing problems facing their community today?

What? Megan, are you okay? Do you have a fever?
Something is clearly not normal with you if you are acknowledging the fact that the players actually have a legitimate beef. What's next? Acknowledging that racism exists?

But the last time the Nielsen Year in Sports report broke down the numbers, in 2013, football’s viewership was 15 percent black but 77 percent white. Only 35 percent of whites are sympathetic to the Black Lives Matter movement, which seems a reasonable proxy for their sympathy for the kind of in-your-face protest that refusing to stand for the national anthem represents.

Wow! That was a quick recovery. There's the old Megan McArdle we all know and loathe!
Look, your people may be getting gunned down on the streets for no reason, but have you ever considered that maybe white people don't want to hear about it? And if people are not sympathetic to your cause, you certainly shouldn't demonstrate to try to call attention to the injustice. You should only protest things that the majority already agrees with you about. That way you don't make people uncomfortable, and isn't that what free speech is really all about?

Let’s be clear: Whites should be more sympathetic to the problem of racial inequities in the criminal justice system. If cops treated whites the way they treat blacks, white people would not be arguing that crime is a real problem, and that profiling is just statistics; they’d be frantically calling their legislators and muttering about the Second Amendment.

Um, first of all, racist white people spent the last 8 years muttering, shouting and screaming about the Second Amendment. This is now the normal reaction for white people when they don't get what they want. Let's don't act as though this is somehting that could theoretically happen if white folks were treated as badly as black folks are by police. This happens when white folks don't like the outcome of an election.

 

But few human beings of any color are as keenly alive to the suffering of others as they are to their own travails. So however desirable, it seems unlikely that white America en masse will suddenly muster towering outrage about a problem that doesn’t much affect them. Not even if they see athletes protesting it on national television.

So really, there's no point in even trying. If a problem doesn't directly affect a person, you really can't expect that person to give a shit. I mean, what is he supposed to do, care about a person that is not him? I mean, the very idea is laughable! I mean, if I don't personally have cancer, why would I ever donate to cancer research? What's in it for me? And when I see the commercials on TV about the starving children, well I just run toi my fridge and make sure there's food in it. As long as there is, I certainly have no reason to worry about hunger! Especially hunger in some far-off country that doesn't even threaten to affect me.

Which leaves Goodell with a problem. Some sizable fraction of his audience views American criminal justice overreach as less worrying than disruptive protests of same.

And those people must always be humored. Their feelings must always be taken into consideration, and no one must ever intimate that maybe those people are. . . wrong? A little?

And, by the way, what you call "criminal justice overreach," the rest of us call unarmed citizens being shot dead for no good reason. Or, more succinctly, murder.
Is it "overreach" to shoot a 12-year-old kid dead for playing with a bb gun? Is ti "overreach" to strangle a man to death for possibly maybe having sold loose cigarettes? Do you think "overreach" is an adequate description of an unarmed man being shot in the back for the crime of selling CDs?

Also, if your business is dependant on keeping happy the kind of people who are more offended by kneeling athletes than by innocent people being murdered by police, maybe it just isn't worth having that business. Or maybe you could just say "we'd rather make a couple million fewer bucks a year than cater to that kind of scumbag." You'd still be highly profitable, even if every one who was actually that bothered by peaceful protest decided to tune out or stop buying tickets, and it would probably be a bit easier to sleep at night.

They get very angry when football players hijack their leisure viewing to deliver an unwelcome political message.

They're fine having the Blue Angels fly over games. They're fine with military color guards presenting the stars n stripes. They're fine with salutes to returning troops before sporting events. But if they see a single god damn opposing view. . . well it's just too much to ask of these fragile flowers. How are they to enjoy 3 hours of crippling collisions if they know that some of the players are unhappy that guys who look like them are routinely targeted by law enforcement?

And even some who believe that police brutality is a large problem are made uneasy when protesting it involves refusing to honor a symbol of American national unity.

Is it? Is that what the flag symbolizes? National unity? I have to think that the flag symbolizes different things to different people. If you're Native American, for instance, it might symbolize the people who murdered your ancestors. If you're a black person, it might symbolize the people who enslaved yours. I don't know, it just seems like you're declaring it to be a symbol of a certain thing and then just assuming that's how everyone else sees it too.

Look, I'm a white guy. I'm the guy whose ancestors would probably have nothing bad to say about the US (except maybe the ones who were still in Germany during World War One.)  And you know what makes ME uncomfortable? Flag-waving patriotism. Demands that people "honor the flag." the worship of the "troops." That sort of thing has always made me uncomfortable. I don't like the fact that they sing the National Anthem at ballgames, and I certainly don't like the fact that everyone is expected to stand respectfully, had over heart, hat in hand, gazing solemnly at Old Glory before we can watch the game. But I suck it up and I buy tickets the one weekend the Giants come to town each year because I like baseball, and by the time the first pitch is thrown, I've forgotten all about my discomfort. If I can power through it, so can the assholes who are so terribly bothered by athletes kneeling.

And you know what else? I'm really sick of this whole "of course people have the right to protest, but not like that!" bullshit. Like, you certainly have the right to express your opinion, but not in a way that could possibly make any middle-class white people uncomfortable. You can certainly speak out against injustice, but not if you're going to inconvenience anyone.

Meanwhile NFL viewership is down 17 percent since 2015. Attendance and public perception about the NFL are also hurting.

Hmmm. I don't suppose that could have anything to do with the growing understanding that football players are suffering brain damage with every hit, every block, every tackle that is leading to early-onset dementia and suicides? It can't be that that is making it a bit harder to enjoy watching the games.
It couldn't be that the NFL is just completely over-exposed, with two games each Sunday afternoon, a Sunday night game, a Monday night game and a game every Thursday night. (And Saturday games once the college football season ends).
It couldn't be that expansion has watered down the talent pool.
It couldn't be because video games have gotten so good, so realistic, and so affordable that many younger people would rather play Madden 18 than passively watch a game.
No, it must be the fact that for about 60 seconds before each game, a few players kneel, showing less than the required amount of reverence for a nation in which they will always be treated as less than equal. That has to be it!

There’s a robust debate over whether the protests are contributing to the decline, but we’ll sidestep that, since I know little about the sport, and the opinions of people who do know something largely seem to be conveniently correlated with their opinions about the protesting players.

Oh for God's sake.
You've been writing this whole column and NOW you bring up the fact that you know nothing about the subject matter?

Suffice it to say that football is facing a lot of problems, all at once. Cord-cutters. A glut of football games that makes them less rare and special, and therefore, one less thing that millions of Americans still watch together. A CTE crisis that is cutting into youth play (and eventually into future viewership) and makes many adults queasy about watching healthy young men systematically destroy each other’s brains.

The decline of football may simply be inevitable. But even so, it’s probably a bit much to expect an NFL commissioner to say “I guess we’re doomed” and seek meaning in the impending death by sending the league on a suicide charge against racial inequality.

Wait, what?

Seriously?
Not penalizing players for expressing their views on racial inequality is, how did you put it - "sending the league on a suicide charge against racial inequality?"

What would you have said to Branch Rickey? "Sure, it would be the 'right thing' to do to call up Jackie Robinson to the the Dodgers, but do you really think it's a good idea to go on a suicide mission against racism? Because, as we all know, challenging racism is a pretty quick way to find your sport tossed aside onto the dustbin of history."

The solution that the league’s owners actually chose was the kind of mushy compromise America used to specialize in, designed to please no one but satisfy everyone.

via GIPHY

Nope. That's not a thing.
There is no compromise that pleases no one but satisfies everyone. That's just a figment of centrist mythology that absolutely does not exist in the real world.

So what is this "mushy compromise" that you think should be satisfactory to everyone?

Teams will be fined if their players kneel during the anthem, but players are allowed to stay in the locker room if they don’t want to stand.

That's it? That's the compromise? You are not allowed to silently, peacefully protest where anyone can see you, but if you really want to, you can just stay out of sight where no one has to see you so that there will be no chance that anyone accidentally has any sort of a thought about your message! THIS is what you think should satisfy everyone?

It won't.

Why in the hell would you think that the players should be satisfied with that? What do they get out of it? This would only make sense to someone who was stupid enough to think that the players were protesting the song, and no one is that stu. . .oh, right. Sorry, Megan. But seriously, this has no chance of being acceptable to the players, and if you think the anthem hawks are going to be okay with this, if you think they aren't going to keep track of which players stayed in the locker room, if you think for one second that these "flag hags" (h/t Simpsons) are going to pass up an opportunity to take umbrage at rich black men who aren't behaving in a way pleasing to them, you obviously don't know your own readership.

Except the America where that type of agreement once worked no longer seems to exist;

GOOD!
I, for one, have to think thatr's a positive development.
I, for one, have to think that it's a good thing that people are no longer willing to compromise on people's rights. You know, during the civil rights era, it was a common theme for well-intentioned liberals - "go slow." You can't expect to have ALL your rights at once. Baby steps! Eventually, maybe your children or your grandchildren will have the full rights of citizenship, these things can't be rushed, you'll make people uncomfortable!

Nina Simone wrote a song about it.

Don't tell me
I tell you
Me and my people just about due
I've been there so I know
They keep on saying 'Go slow!'

But that's just the trouble
'Do it slow'
Washing the windows
'Do it slow'
Picking the cotton
'Do it slow'
You're just plain rotten
'Do it slow'
You're too damn lazy
'Do it slow'
The thinking's crazy
'Do it slow'
Where am I going
What am I doing
I don't know
I don't know

But I know. You're going to insist on being on the wrong side of history. And you want to take the NFL with you. Fine. Good luck with all that.