Having taken note of of the pummeling endured by The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times for showing all the backbone of two clawless fiddler crabs when it came time to take a stand in the 2024 pestilential erection, Mother Times struggles up out of her rocker on the Saturday before Election Day, squeaks out a fart, and plops back down.
“That’ll show ’em,” she mutters before falling back into a fitful snooze.
Ho, ho. I beat the rush to the exit after The Washington Post‘s management stepped on its editorial dick by declining to endorse a candidate in the pestilential erection. I had already canceled my account based on the plummeting value of their homepage, not the cowardice of the ownership.
Not long ago the WaPo was beating The New York Times like a dusty rug when it came to good, old-fashioned, nut-cutting hard news. Now they pretty much both stink, but at least Mother Times offers some good recipes to take the vile smell out of your nostrils. Plus she still employs a friend of mine.
So I’ll try to forget that the topside of today’s homepage is spattered with shit like “25 Jump Scares That Still Make Us Jump,” “What’s It Like to Tail the Vice President?,” and “Nobody Told Me This Would Happen to My Body in My 40s.”
I’d serve up a critique of the content, if I had clicked on any of it. Alas, I moved on with great haste.
At least the NYT doesn’t start bullshitting you right up there in the flag, like the WaPo. “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” me bollocks. What management does in the darkness you can see in the balcony at any adult theater. Tidy up afterward and check the phone to see if anyone Bezos has business with has invited you to a cocktail party. No? Might as well go lay off a few columnists, if they haven’t all quit already. Only one opinion counts at the newspaper in the nation’s capital, even if it’s mostly being expressed from mansions in Miami, SoCal, or low earth orbit.
Of course, if Jesus Hitler prevails on Nov. 5, it won’t mean much to the WaPo’s owner. Bezos is a podium billionaire, runner-up on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. And when JH (No. 432) croaks any and all contracts with Blue Origin because Elon (No. 1) was the last guy in the Oval Office to kiss his ass when the deal went down, well … maybe the internment camps can double as Amazon fulfillment centers.
Hey, a dollar isn’t red or blue. It’s green, baby.
The New York Times has a piece headlined “The Star-Making Machine That Created ‘Donald Trump,'” which I decline to read or link to, because I suspect Mother Times doesn’t take credit for her own heavy lifting on that project (see “But her emails!”, etc.).
If you have a greater interest in the Who Gives a Shit? File than I do, you’ll have to do some hunting to find the thing, because the NYT yanked it off the top of the homepage and buried it on page three of a search under his name after the carny barker found himself in the shooting gallery again.
Now, I am not in favor of summary execution of those who commit golf, not even TFG. Some unbalanced types insist on playing with their little white balls in public, and for most an extended period of confinement in a psych ward or correctional facility should restore them to a semblance of mental health, or at least keep them off the lawn in what should be public parks, available to all free of charge.
Anyway, for the Clown Prince of Mar-a-Lardo it’s not even about “playing” golf, which is just something else he lies about and cheats at. It’s another day at the office, a fundraising opportunity.
As Billy Penn once said, “The tallest trees are most in the power of the winds, and ambitious men of the blasts of fortune.”
And thus the Clown Prince finds himself as a supporting character in a new reality series, “Duck & Cover,” in which a conga line of heavily armed loons has a go at a maniac masquerading as a presidential candidate on the campaign trail.
Bit of a comedown, from star to second banana. Oh, well, it’s a living. Awaiting a blast of fortune indeed.
“Stick to cycling!” the critics would howl whenever one of my columns or cartoons drifted off the back of racing or retailing and into the gutter of politics.
But cycling and politics are inextricably linked. With the right people at the helm, if you’re lucky, maybe you get peace and prosperity plus bike paths, open space and crosswalk push-buttons that you can reach from the saddle (and that actually work).
Ever negotiated with The Authorities while promoting a bike race? That’s politics. Sought cyclist-friendly safety improvements at a dangerous intersection? That’s politics too. Ditto dealing over e-bike access to — and speed limits on — bike paths, where most of the motors run on carbohydrates and water.
Thus my retort was inevitably something like: “You don’t like my work? Don’t watch. Plenty of other stuff to read around here. Now stand back and let The Big Dog bark.”
Well. That was then, and this is now.
I still feel as though I should be writing more about politics. But damme if it isn’t a long pull into a stiff wind.
No matter what else is on my mind, it’s always there in the background, ticking away. Could be an old analog clock; could be a time bomb. Only way to find out is to have a little look-see.
Last night it was a three-hour (!) YouTube stream of a school-board policy-committee meeting. Tonight it’s the steel-cage death match between Komrade Kamala and Felonious Punk.
As debates go tonight’s action seems likely to be less lofty than in the word’s modern definition (a regulated discussion of a proposition) and more like its two-fisted past (the Anglo-French debatre, from de- + batre, to beat, from the Latin battuere).
Jaysis wept, etc. Who wouldn’t rather write about cycling, given the choice? In another corner of this little shop of horrors I’m 300 words and counting into a post about Herself’s 2006 Soma Double Cross.
But Charlie Pierce had to go and pull my chain. Actually, he was pulling A.O. Furburger’s chain for not letting The New York Times call a fascist a fascist.
Wrote Chazbo:
He is a mentally unraveling out-and-out fascist and he is within a whisker of the White House again. He is a mortal threat to everything that is vital to the survival of this republic as we know it. To write about him as such, and to write about him as such every damn day from now until the first Tuesday of November is the proper, truthful, and, yes, the objective thing to do.
Talk about a long pull into a stiff wind. ’Tis a flick of the elbow Charlie is giving us so. I don’t propose to make every post about politics, but I feel as though it’s only proper to lay off the wheelsucking and stick my snout in the breeze now and then.
Above you’ll see the latest example of what The New York Times finds consequential this morning.
At upper right on the homepage was more Pulitzer bait: “Should you delay your morning caffeine? Some influencers say that doing so can offer benefits. We looked at the evidence.”
Well. Shit. I thought we had a couple-three wars, the trial of a former president, and some vigorous debate over whether Supreme Court justices are answerable to anyone who isn’t a yacht bro going on. But I remain slightly muddled by the Snotlocker Surprise and may have missed a memo.
This other bullshit — what the hell, let’s add “Hundreds of readers told us their favorite soundtracks. Which came out on top?” — is strictly from the Whisky Dick Department; soft and useless.
It’s bad enough that editors are assigning this shit and parking it up top on the homepage and app. If people are actually burning 17 minutes of their day reading it we’re in more trouble than I thought. Especially if they haven’t caffeinated yet.
Back to you, Charlamagne.
Mad Blog Media 