It should be good news for Dominion’s defamation lawsuit against Fox News that several Fox News “personalities” talked about what a crock Donald Trump’s claims of a stolen election were even as they were repeating those lies on the air. But, as Amanda Marcotte notes, Fox viewers aren’t mad – they think they’re in on the con, because once Our Glorious Elites use people like a wet dishrag, what can they do but imagine that they and their thought-leaders are the heroes of ever-crazier stories? Fox News spokeshacks, naturally, say that media reports are taking Messrs. Carlson and Hannity out of context, leading us to wonder, as usual, what conceivable “context” could redeem their dreck.
Count me as opposing rewriting Roald Dahl’s childrens’ books for a “new era.” Of course there’s no natural relationship between being a bad person and a great artist, but making the Oompa-Loompas gender-neutral is no way to deal with that truth head-on, and as Mikhail Iossel has pointed out, you don’t go changing books like this, because we need to study the past as it happened – we need to study people as they lived and thought, regardless of how we feel now about how they lived and thought. I’d have much been happier with new books on similar topics written by a Dahl obsessive. It’s not like that’s unprecedented or anything.
So Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (E-GA) thinks we should have a “national divorce” where blue states and red states live completely apart from each other? Of course, the logistics of such a divorce are prohibitive, and I say this as someone who still dreams of ejecting Florida from our union. How does she propose relocating liberals and right-wingers out of their respective states to friendlier ones – for example, liberals from Texas to Massachusetts, and right-wingers vice versa? How does she propose dividing up states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin? I kid, of course – like she’s thought of anything but the drama!
What is the lesson from James O’Keefe’s ejection from Project Veritas, ostensibly because he stole money but maybe also because he treated everyone there like crap? That right-wingers constantly cannibalize each other in a never-ending drama? Or that activists who get unearned notoriety eventually corrupt themselves out of a job? I’ve got a different lesson: our “liberal” media should stop pretending people like James O’Keefe are “serious people” with “serious points to make,” and start treating drama as drama.
I’ll admit I didn’t expect Rep. George Santos (E-NY) to say all his lies weren’t really about “tricking the people” but about getting “accepted by the party here locally.” Essentially he blames Republicans for demanding the sort of drama he’s delivered. I guess you could say it’s a real chicken-egg problem. Still, having his amount of privilege – and he may be gay and Latine, but he’s also a man and a Republican – he should be able to avoid this level of moral corruption, let alone all the other kinds he may be guilty of.
Finally, Alaska House Rep/Oath Keeper/election denialist, upon being confronted with a study asserting that every instance of fatal child abuse costs society $1.5 million, suggests that maybe fatal child abuse actually saves society money, since “that child is not going to need any of those government services that they might otherwise be entitled to receive and need based on growing up in this type of environment.” Turns out we call that “devil’s advocate” for a reason! Kid gets beaten to death and so never gets to change the world for the better, but someone’s got to bright-side it! Ever heard of David Eastman? Me neither. Now let’s never speak of him again.
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