104 Comments

It must be nice to get paid real money for basically having a hissy fit and then setting it down in writing.

Expand full comment
Oct 24, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

Ugly hissy, but damn it's a beautiful fit!

Expand full comment
Oct 24, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

Made to measure!

Expand full comment

and Union Made!

By the...

wait for it...

Seamsters Union!

Expand full comment

As a Man Who Sews, I approve of "Seamster" as a replacement for "Sewer."

Expand full comment

Welcome aboard, Brother Steve!

Expand full comment
Oct 24, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

The hissy fit is all standard stuff but sold by the yard. How long a hissy do you need to fit?

Expand full comment
Oct 24, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

I'mo call that dude David Serious Errors French from now on. Oh, and what is it with all these freaks thinking they speak for god? That's some serious errors right there. I advise each and sundry of those spokeswidgets to wait by their telex machine for the real word from the real One, whoever that may (or may not) be...

Expand full comment

I always assumed French Vanilla was the name he raps under.

Expand full comment
Oct 24, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

I was going to say something else but the thinking tired me out (age; some degree of some sort of long Covid maybe) so I'll leave it at this: Why does this even matter, panderers pandering to those who don't care about facts, just that they're paid attention to, get their dopamine hits, and so on and so forth?

I will note, too, that French actually nails it: The GOP primary voters chose the most repulsive candidates possible yet they can still be trusted to deliver. Even the most unfit can be trusted to vote the party line. So of course they now have to vote for them in November. Being told they can't because their candidate is too odious or unhinged or whatever is a no go. Goals gotta be met and all that. Of course, in another cycle or two this won't matter...

Meanwhile, I'm concerned that Roy's overthinking all this and it's, you know, not healthy.

Expand full comment
Oct 24, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

I'm envisioning a sharp-dressed dude in an expansive office setting grabbing his phone-thing and demanding whoever sad sap is on the receiving end to "Get me Overthink!"

Expand full comment

"Otis Overthink, Democratic Party Strategist" has some real possibilities.

Expand full comment

"What if we were to NOT rebut any of the charges the Republicans are making, huh?"

Expand full comment
Oct 24, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

It's like dissecting the scat pellets of an owl, it tells you something about prey species and their number, perhaps a measure of the overall health of the ecosystem, it's not done out of an intense interest in owl shit.

Expand full comment
Oct 24, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

"an intense interest in owl shit"

is the scaffolding for a potentially droll limerick, but it's early...

Expand full comment
Oct 24, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

In troubled times, I hide in the books that have made me happy, before: so I'm once again blasting through "A Confederacy of Dunces": and notices the line about "from her knowledge of the world, Lana thought the bird trade might be lucrative indeed."

Nothing so fowl folks won't make it a fetish: somebody's or other's law.

If you wanted prolixity and a retrograde mindset, we could play "Is it French or Ignatius Q. Reilly". because I see eerie similarities.

Ericsson knows when he's obvious, and doesn't care, professionally.

Expand full comment

Been years since I read it, but wouldn't Ignatius be more Douthat or Dreher?

Expand full comment

Wake up and get to work!

Expand full comment

Actually, the pellets are vomit, not scat. Thus you, and by extension, Roy, are wrong about everything.

Expand full comment

This isn't the first time I've been told I don't know one end of an owl from the other.

Expand full comment

Steve B's new ornithologic bit's

A bust – if his day job he quits

Where the pellets come from

Is the beak not the bum

He has misplaced his interest in owl shits

Expand full comment

Promises made, promises kept.

Expand full comment

[Whiny voice]: "Roy! You let one a them Promise Keepers in!

Cancel 'im! Cancel 'im! Cancel 'im!"

Expand full comment

Just to show I'm not a total ignoramus, I do know that the climate-changing methane emissions from cows that people are worried about actually come from cow belches and not cow farts. So there, Ms./Mr. Smarty-Pants!

Expand full comment

Details 'bout eating and excreting

My second grade class is repeating

And repeating and repeating and repeating and repeating and repeating and repeating and repeating and repeating and repeating and repeating and repeating....

Sorry, where was I?

Oh yeah –

Take a break!

Better yet, take a meeting!

Expand full comment

IIRC, far more methane comes from termites, rather than from bovine burps.

Yes, I get paid to know these things...

Expand full comment

"Termite! Now there's a splendid woody word!"

Expand full comment

Should add that I, for one, Welcome our new Termite Overboards!

Expand full comment

Hey! How is anyone to know that owl isn't hooting Ella Fitzgerald when it's coughing up the remains of its lunch?

Expand full comment

Ah.

Expand full comment
Oct 24, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

Agreed on preferring Erickson to French. When you piss on my back, I don’t care if you are trying to make me believe it’s rain as long as YOU know you’re actually pissing. But when you’ve also convinced YOURSELF it’s only precipitation, that’s a bit too much to take.

I’ve always said David French and Ross Douthat are the guys who want to chain pregnant women to beds in Birthing Jail just like the other fascists, only they’d feel enough of a twinge to their consciences they’d also lobby for the very best mattresses, highest thread count sheets, and for the TV in the room to provide all the premium channels.

Expand full comment
Oct 24, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

And we all know who they will procure pillows from...

Expand full comment

MyFascist

Expand full comment
Oct 24, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

Except when the bid came in for the sheets, they'd decide the whores can sleep on burlap instead, improves their character.

Expand full comment
Oct 24, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

They'd lobby for the nice sheets and TV, but when their Repub masters handed out sack cloth and the Bible, they would tsk tsk furiously and shrug their shoulders.

Expand full comment
Oct 24, 2022·edited Oct 24, 2022

After I retire, I may get a gig in an assisted-living center leading chair exercise sessions for elderly Republicans. Like that "pshaw" motion people make with their hand to dismiss something ("First with the left, now with the right, now both...) And then of course the shoulder-shrugging, which I expect they will all excel at no matter how elderly and infirm.

Expand full comment

"OK, class. Now picture this: a melanin-enhanced person enters the room and approaches you. Remember your reflex response! That's it –lean your chairs back, lean 'em way back. Little more, little more..."

Expand full comment

The Ballad of David French

The truest of conservatives, his mind is not small,

He generously disdains both sides of the brawl,

A far-center riddle,

He pushes the extreme middle,

He looks down from on high, so above all y'all.

Expand full comment

"all y'all"

2 marks!

Expand full comment

We all know French is well aware he is not fooling himself -- the sign of a true con artist is one that lets you know they are not to be trusted, that their line is utterly fake, yet insists you'll buy it anyway. This the key to Chaucer's Pardoner, whose pardons & relics are absolutely fake—he knows it, he tells you how he cons the people, then launches into his glorious performance, trying to land the sale at the end of it all. No wonder the Host loses his shit at the end. Roy certainly has, ever time DF shows his po-face round these parts.

Thou woldest make me kisse thyn olde breech,

And swere it were a relyk of a seint,

Though it were with thy fundement depeint! (CT, VI.948–50)

[You'd have me kiss your nasty drawers

And swear they were the relic of a saint, [pun: relic means "something left behind"]

Even though your butthole had painted them well!]

"Shit-heels" indeed...

Expand full comment
Oct 24, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

I'm seein' Chaucer's Pardoner as "pawdner" and so of course this follows: "ever time DF shows his po-face round these parts"

2 marks!

Also, thinking of "pawdner" leads me to John Wayne's use of "pilgrim" which in the Chaucer context also resonates, and now I appreciate Wayne just a little bit more...

Expand full comment

John Wayne's character in Liberty Valence is in many designed after the Knights Templar & other militant Christian NGOs that operated in the Middle East, self-appointed to "protect" pilgrims to Jerusalem. I read a great grad student paper about Crusader resonances in the Wild West mythography, with that movie as its focus.

Expand full comment

Thanks for this – I've occasionally felt this vibe about Wayne, which runs counter to my dirty-secret enjoyment of watching (some of) his roles.

Expand full comment

If this was the 10th century, I'd say "Butthole Painters" is a great name for a band of lute-players.

Expand full comment

"decades of patient and courageous pro-life advocacy and democratic participation "

Jesus, reading that sure pissed me off.

I woke up this morning and thought about how quaint and almost cute the Tea Partiers seemed all those many long years ago. And then a bit ago I thought

about how the white gravy was doing a number on Ham Face's arteries and if I could just hang on long enough I'd get to enjoy reading the obituary.

Happy Monday, right?

Good column.

Expand full comment

I know. one of the more depressing of the many things about entering the end game is that so many of these younger wing-nut pundits will outlive me. I want to read ALL the obituaries.

Expand full comment

I need to write some kind of bequest into my will so I can have someone stop by my grave every few months to read the best obits aloud.

Expand full comment

Once again helping to drive politics further right with "hey, at least we're not as bad as the guys who bomb clinics!". And where did I see recently the analysis of "religious freedom" that pointed out it's become "religious domination by Christians"?

Expand full comment

French was on the Morning Joe today, his one useful contribution was to remind us the role that Bible prophecy plays in Trump's support among the Christian fundamentalists, five minutes later he was saying "We need to have room for religion in public life", like he didn't just tell us all that these people are freakin' nuts.

Expand full comment

There's always room at the bottom.

Expand full comment

Have to admit the Tea Partiers were never "almost cute" to me. Because I know that the only reason they formed was because a Black man was in the White House.

Expand full comment

Ran into a couple of those jamokes early on and it was fun to point out that if they and Obama were in a room together he would be the only adult.

Expand full comment
Oct 24, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

"Look at what you made me do!" ad infinitum does not a political philosophy make.

Expand full comment
Oct 24, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

Abusive narcissism is a *kind* of ethos.

Expand full comment
Oct 24, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

"You can't blame me! I live in a Hall of Mirrors!"

Expand full comment

A Hardyocracy, if you will.

Expand full comment
Oct 24, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

No, David, I don't expect Republicans to vote for Warnock, and nobody else does either. What I do expect is that some small number of people (and possibly an election-deciding number of people) will STOP being Republicans and THEN vote for Raphael Warnock. Is that clearer?

Expand full comment
Oct 24, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

Thanks for Readers Digesting these assholes for me so I didn’t have to spend any minutes of the last warm weekend of the year reading them. All these guys have two arrows in their quiver: lies and projection. That 50% of Americans can’t see that says more about the quality of American education than any ACT scores.

Expand full comment
Oct 24, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

Soon to be a diagnosis per NIH: Readers Indigestion

Expand full comment
Oct 24, 2022·edited Oct 24, 2022

The epidemiologists are still debating whether it's in the pandemic or endemic stage.

Expand full comment

Personally I prefer pandas to endos.

Expand full comment

Dunno, if a doctor ever comes after me with a pandascope...

Expand full comment

Better scene in the original black and white...

Expand full comment

Sorry, but more and better education just means you're better at crafting bullshit justifications for doing whatever the hell you wanted to do anyway. French is a prime example of that.

There's actual research on this, which I've read because other math teachers keep telling me that people fall prey to these lies because they didn't get the math education they need. The research shows people turn off whatever math they have to avoid coming to conclusions that contradict their opinions.

Expand full comment

I’m terrible at math but knowing enough to ask “sources, please” when presented with bullshit came from my 11th grade American history class, not AP calculus. Statistics, of course, should be taught starting in 2nd grade, so adults grow up knowing how probabalistic the world is and don’t fall for false certainties.

Expand full comment

The key is WANTING to see more info when you're shown something that tickles your prejudices. Why would I want to see more, when you've already given me what I need?

A related trend from the fact-checking column in Google News: "Merrick Garland Fired, Replaced by Rudy Giuliani (video)" that links to a video of 20 minutes of stock footage from NewsMax, no references to Garland or Giuliani. Nobody watches the video, and why would they when the headline alone has already given them the orgasm they were craving?

Expand full comment

Probability and statistics are two different but related things. Much of the problem with statistics is not understanding probability. The other major problem is not worrying about assumptions -- which also a major problem with much economics

Expand full comment

For the record, the "serious errors" found in the 1619 project by a "group of America's leading historians" boil down to a number slightly smaller than two, and the leading historians are some guys who have failed to abandon the feelgood Whig history that ruled in the 1950s, led by Sean Wilentz: it's Nikole Hannah-Jones's allegation that "preserving racial slavery was a prime motivation for declaring American independence,"which she defended by citing planters' fear that Britain was going to abolish slavery after a London judge ruled in 1772 that a slaveowner called Charles Stewart could not send his slave James Somerset to be sold in Jamaica because "chattel slavery has no support in English common law."

I'm not going to give you the whole story, but a wonderful essay by William Hogeland shows conclusively that whether or not Hannah-Jones is wrong (that's complicated), Wilentz's rebuttal is both wrong and deeply dishonest. You can read it here https://newrepublic.com/article/160995/consensus-approach-history or check out my summary http://yastreblyansky.blogspot.com/2021/01/lectiones-american-historiography.html

Expand full comment

Thanks for the link to Hogeland's piece. I'm getting ready to read "The 1619 Project" book, and reading Hogeland's piece in TNR is a nice palate cleanser. It's a long, well thought-out piece - the tl,dr is that history is always an interpretation and framing of actual facts, and not the actual facts themselves, and almost always in service to some kind of political agenda, despite protestations from historians that they are purely objective observers, and often leaves out certain "facts" that are inconvenient to promoting a certain narrative, while elevating other "facts" which may have been more peripheral to our understanding of the past, but more important to affirming that narrative.

Expand full comment

Oh, and I was Today Years Old when I learned that the CIA was behind the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. Is no place free of Satan's clutches?

Expand full comment
Oct 24, 2022·edited Oct 24, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

“But they’re not even offering us anything, in exchange for voting against the depraved moron we nominated!” So French is asking us to believe that principle or tradition teaches us that the worse our candidate is, the more the opposition should abandon its own ideals. Needless to say, he doesn’t believe this; nobody could possibly believe this. If it were true, then the path to victory for progressive legislation would be clear: Democrats would just nominate doctrinaire Stalinists who’ve been convicted of child murder, and the GOP would then be forced to support Medicare for All in exchange.

Expand full comment
Oct 24, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

"Democrats would just nominate doctrinaire Stalinists who’ve been convicted of child murder, and the GOP would then be forced to support Medicare for All in exchange."

Interested in your ideas, newsletter, subscribe, etc.

Expand full comment

I am given to understand from our fine, observant conservative pundits, that EVERY candidate the Democrats put up are, in fact, doctrinaire Stalinists. One wonders why we don't have M4A yet.

Expand full comment
Oct 24, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

Well, sure, they're all Stalinists, get back to me when they've checked off the "convicted of child murder" box.

Expand full comment

The Deep State won't ever convict them of child murder

Expand full comment

worth a try

Expand full comment

Why, it's just crazy enough to work!

Expand full comment

Yeesh! I picked up an actual physical newspaper yesterday (I know, right?), I think our local Saturday fishwrap, and the big story above the fold was a proliferation of right-wing tweets from The Usual Suspects denouncing the Dems for Satanism and paganry and kicking dogs, hell of a thing to see two weeks before the midterms. Wonderful indicator of decent politics in the 21st Century.

Expand full comment
Oct 24, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

Saw the same thing, it's interesting that so much of this language is religious in origin, but the suggestion that organized religion might be playing the teensiest role in its spread is in "can't be printed" territory.

Expand full comment

Right. The whole “life begins at conception” axiom is supported only by a theological or ancient metaphysical argument that the soul animates the ovum when fertilized. Philosophically, this is way past its point of obsolescence- to paraphrase Robert Graves paraphrasing someone else, scince is not truth, but a philosopher who ignores it is a fool. Since scientific inquiry involves falsifiable experimental processes, one would expect that there would support for instant proposition in the research literature demonstrating some sort of proof, when the anti-choicers assert that “science” supports them. Alas, much like GOP pols talking point that “Democrat policies will ruin our country!”, or that “the left is oppressive ang authoritarian”, no factual support is proffered other than “fingerprints at 6 weeks!” or other factoids that somehow no actual scientist has put in a peer reviewed paper. Science doesn’t have a definition of life, so where would one even begin?

So the only basis for the assertion that life begins at the magical moment a soul-bearing spermatozoan infuses the passive empty-vessel ovum with its charge, is religious.

It’s amusing how Meatball son of Meatball totally mangles and pretzelizes logic with his “argument” that “they are pretty adamant that life begins at some point about which they are uncertain and they cannot be guided by their faith in making a decision on when a child can live or die.” As if that question is obviously only to be decided by some clerical council of suitable theocratic ideology. He seems pretty adamant too! He may have a bad argument; he may have no argument at all! Bet he’s never in doubt!

Expand full comment
Oct 24, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

The worst are full of passionate intensity, etc.

Expand full comment
Oct 24, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

‘Tis fact that philosophers solve

So themselves they can absolve

But big thinkers whinnyin’

Without thought Darwinian

Eventually must evolve

Or die, their choice...

Expand full comment

So, you finally had your coffee and put your nose to the poetical grindstone, I see.

Expand full comment

Yeah, to hell with the thinking cap – just gimme my drinking cup.

Expand full comment

For some reason "suitable theocratic ideology" reminds me of "One less Philadelphia lawyer".

Expand full comment

Kicking dogs? Well, it beats killing dogs like Dr. Oz did.

Expand full comment
Oct 24, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

“Is It A Sin to Vote For That Party?”

I have to tell you, that dog whistle is giving me tinnitus.

Back in the before-times, when the Former President Barack Obama was running for his first term, I had an epiphany that my dear ole' Dad with his innocuous racist jokes I'd been hearing all my life, was actually an unreconstructed racist. I had suspected for years he was a closeted Republican't, in a family of liberal Democrats, but something he said cinched it: "I cannot vote for THAT man!"...

Expand full comment

Oof.

Family.

Oof.

Expand full comment

Shorter French: Herschel Walker is a brain-damaged imbecile, so shame on Dems for not making it easier to not vote for him.

Expand full comment

Is there any question he can't answer with "Well, the Democrats..."?

Expand full comment

I guess he thinks the Democrats should have nominated Kelly Loeffler instead of Warnock?

Expand full comment

Erick bin Erick wants to be Rush Limbaugh when he grows up. David French is pro-slavery.

Expand full comment

I'm with EbE on this one: Limbaugh's dead.

Expand full comment

Extra love for the subhed!

Expand full comment

Yeah me too. Best Use of Conniptions This Week award.

Expand full comment