Let's hope his ass beating comes swiftly, and that he's not able to shake it off. Where his writing once appeared, well, they'll have a blank space, baby.
(OT but Fun Fact. Roy might remember this.) When the NYC transit union, instead of a formal strike, called for a "sick out," its members all called in "sick" one Monday, which crippled the subways/buses/etc. The Daily News headline read: SICK TRANSIT'S GLORIOUS MONDAY. They had headline writers in those days, son...
The sad thing is, you can now show Trumpistas the actual footage of Biden saying "as President" and they will accuse YOU of using doctored material. Similarly, you can show them footage of Trump saying "I kept those classified documents because I think I have a right to them," and his followers will deny Trump ever saying any such thing.
Back during the Depression and WWII, Americans had their political disagreements but nearly everyone had some attachment to reality. Today, more than a third of our population lives in a complete fantasy land built of conspiracies and lies. And every time truth makes even a minor penetration into that fantasy land, yet more conspiracies are hatched to cover over that truth. Just ask JFK jr, who will be making an appearance ANY MINUTE now.
Yeah, this will be the biggest impact of deep fakes, I think. Not in convincing people to believe fake things, but giving all of us an out, any inconvenient truth must be a "deep fake."
This is profound. It's a sort of epistemological jiu-jitsu: It doesn't change what I (think I) know, but allows me to defend it. Or it's like nuclear weapons-as-deterrent. We don't have them to use against you. Rather, we have them so you don't use yours against us.
Science handing us a technology that enables people to live entirely in the darkness of irrational faith.
But once again what gets me is just how many people prefer ignorance. I guess Lovecraft was on to something every time he showed a character glimpsing the truth and going insane.
Or live is shared community of understanding and support. Life itself is a double-edged sword, so why not virtual life? Ignorance is comfortable when you are shielded from the consequences of ignorance, and sometimes is a comfort when you are not shielded from consequences, because it helps you find someone to blame, very important in maintaining peace of mind. Now how much would you pay?
"Back during the Depression and WWII, Americans had their political disagreements but nearly everyone had some attachment to reality"
Minor point of disagreement: the majority of <white> Americans at the time, on either side of the divide, had some attachment to the largest conspiracy theory of all and that is white supremacy — withh all the anti-blackness & anti-Indigeneity and anti-immigration and, yes, anti-semitism appertaining. This conspiracy theory did not need mass media to propagate & warped reality just as effectively & disastrously as anything you'd see on OANN or Newsmax or Xitter today.
I’m reading “The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy” by Robert Jones. It’s harrowing. I thought I knew quite a bit about Native genocide and the centuries of white Christian savagery but it turns out much of it really has been hidden. I didn’t learn much about it in school, but I’ve been reading and learning for the last 50 years, and I am still not up to speed.
Well, to a certain extent, it has always been the case that 'believing is seeing'. My mother knew that Roosevelt was a cripple, but didn't think it was as bad as it was. (She also knew that the project over there in the abandoned squash-court had something to do with The Atom.)
For fun, read numbers of the U. of Chicago "Maroon" from December 1941, as I did for awhile last winter, a combination of momentous events and stuff in the pure {"National Lampoon" (in its good years)}-style inspired generic college newspaperie. President Hutchins, who had been a member of the respectable contingent of the America First Committee, took his time making a statement about Pearl Harbor—and read the blind items to guess which well-known B.M.o.C. was stepping-out on his prominent girl!
(I read these in parallel with "Hitler's American Gamble", a truly fascinating book about how and why Germany decided to declared war on the U.S. 07-11 December 1941…and how Hitler had believed that the Jews who controlled the U.S. would be persuaded to keep us out of the war because he was keeping the German Jews as hostages even as he was murdering Ostjuden, albeit by the Wehrmacht, S.S., and local bigots, this was before the rationalisation ordered at Wannsee.)(It looks like every single player involved was not too sure their ostensible ally would come through as they wanted; in the cases of Vichy France, miffed that the Germans were o.k. with the Japanese take-over of Southeast Asia and the Italian seizure of Nice, and Franco, irritated at Nazi anti-Catholicism, this actually ended-up mattering.)
Benny Johnson is a clown, but the establishment media has been an invaluable ally to the Right in shaping the negative Biden narrative:
Step One: harp on and on about Biden’s age being a huge problem. Highlight all of his gaffes and stumbles. Ignore or play down the fact Trump is only 3 years younger than Biden, has an unhealthy lifestyle, tried to overthrow democracy, is facing 91 criminal charges, argues for the death of his enemies, and has the cognitive aptitude of a bowl of cream of wheat.
Step Two: breathlessly boost data that shows (surprise, surprise!) people are now perceiving Biden’s age to be a big problem.
Step Three (really, concurrent with Step One): insinuate that Kamala Harris, a former Attorney General/Senator of the most populous state and the current Vice President, is somehow not up to the job of stepping into Biden’s shoes Should Something Happen. Why? It’s not really clear – vague insinuations Biden doesn’t trust her, she’s not “well liked,” she’s just marking time, accusations you never see her accompanied by accusations you see her too much.
I swear, the legacy media and online sites like Politico and Axios want Trump back so bad they can taste it. Why wouldn’t they? He’s dynamite for engagement, and none of his policies will impact their own lives negatively enough to matter.
Zion National Park is warning about toxic Cyanobacteria that can’t be neutralized by filtering or chemical treatment of backcountry water. Sounds exactly like our RWNJ media - the only safe response is to not consume at all.
I don’t care if Trump’s lifestyle is unhealthy, or if he eats nothing but kale and quinoa and competes in Ironman competitions. He’s a malevolent, narcissistic loon careening into dementia. His fast-food-and-golf lifestyle is one of the *least* objectionable things about him!
Over at Slate the other day Christini Cauterucci did a piece that followed this formula exactly. I get so tired of the “Americans overwhelmingly don’t like the choice they’ll be presented with in 2024.” Yeah, well, a lot of that’s got to be because being presented with a binary choice between 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘦 and an avowed fascist is a disquieting proposition. Me, I’d be pleased as punch if Biden had fewer miles on him, and had Donald J. Trump been smothered in his crib, but we don’t live on that planet.
Well, it's like it's 1944 and I say I'm excited at the prospect of Hitler splattering his brains around the inside of a bunker, not saying I'm happy to be in this situation in the first place.
Someone pointed out that a poll taken in September of 1982 found that a majority said that Reagan should not seek a second term, because of his age. Of course, in his case, they were right.
Since my ailing (cold, not COVID-19) mind has been fixed on Robert Hutchins, I'd guess that the older media firms' defence would be much like his defence when he was confronted with the claim that his faculty taught Communism: 'Our medical school teaches cancer, too.'.
My parents still have a Philco fridge in their basement. They keep pop/soda in it. It’s small, inefficient, and weighs as much as a Volkswagen, but that thing has been running for over six decades and never breaks.
I love the names, Philco, Norge, Kelvinator. I've got a Kelvinator badge I bought off ebay (takes up less space than collecting the refrigerators themselves). It's a beautiful piece of cast zinc, painted and chrome-plated. For a while, I was using it as a hood ornament on an old Corolla I had.
IIRC, Monica’s apartment in Friends had an International Harvester fridge. I looked them up online: introduced in 1947 and produced less than ten years. There’s a challenge for you!
Triggering a memory here of the Trib (and Daily News) in its far right prime...
If only FDR was a good Republican, completely unfit for office, and suffering from cognitive decline and, as they said back then, senility. Bet they'd be happy with that, presuming the present is epilog to the past or something.
"Colonel McCosmic," we called him. "The finest mind of the twelfth century." With his cousins Joseph Patterson, who owned the NY Daily News, and Cissy Patterson, who bought the Washington Times-Herald from Hearst.
They never got over FDR defeating Hoover, Landon and Willkie; power was supposed to devolve naturally to newspaper publishers like themselves, not to the icky people.
Actually, it looks like the colonel and cohorts are extremely close to undoing most of the New Deal:
“She has an intriguing origin point for today's afflictions: the New Deal. The first third of the book, which hurtles toward Donald Trump's election, is as bingeable as anything on Netflix. "Democracy Awakening" starts in the 1930s, when Americans who'd been wiped out in the 1929 stock market crash were not about to let the rich demolish the economy again. New Deal programs designed to benefit ordinary people and prevent future crises were so popular that by 1960 candidates of both parties were advised to simply "nail together" coalitions and promise them federal funding. From 1946 to 1964, the liberal consensus — with its commitments to equality, the separation of church and state, and the freedoms of speech, press and religion — held sway.
But Republican businessmen, who had caused the crash, despised the consensus.”
I agree with that POV ~1,000%. The only qualifying I’d do is that the reaction greatly accelerated under or with Tricky Dick Nixon. But, yes, the ultimate goal was born let’s say in the 1930s.
I've been thinking of this analogy for a while. FDR was attacked mercilessly: heinous Racist asshole GA Gov. Eugene Talmadge said a couple of times "I think the President of the United States should be able to walk a 2x4" and was pretty much universally condemned, even in those times. . FDR ill and "crippled" was better than anyone else in his generation for moving the country forward, and, as they can't forgive ol' Joe for the things he's doing and attempting, they will call things normal and accepted under FDR "communism".
I remember enough about Kennedy to recall he sold as "young" "tanned""athletic"(I mean, he and Bobby and Teddy played footbalL) "vital", "virile" while rotten with Addison's disease, adrenal bronzing, hypersexuality and all.
We have had truly disabled Presidents, like Edith Wilson covering up for Woodrow: and the government kept right on going. As the Roman Empire functioned, through the mad Emperors of the preChristian years, our government would run ok, had we not an industry dedicated to making it not work, or to work only for the few, who find their expression in the sort of "news" like your Trib satire.
Fear of a black woman president is something the Dems of yesteryear didn't have to contend with.
I await Diaper Don's public meltdown: which will be spun as merely the acceptable rage of a thwarted tyrant...
Of course you are right: I'm afraid I try to think of Ronnie as little as possible.
The indelible moment for me is when Ronnie, asked a question at an airport about hostages "When are we getting them free?" And he goes bluescreen and Nancy feeds him his line through clenched teeth, softly "We're doing the best we can," and Ron reboots and repeats...
Ha! Nancy's astrologer was why I got one of the few wins when my mom, an evangelical missionary after she retired, started in on me and the late wife: Mom had begun on "New Age" stuff, how it was evil and satanic: the late ex was sometimes inclined to claim to be a witch (which might explain much) and was about to go off on her.
I was able to slip in "yeah Mom, I saw Nancy Reagan's astrologer on Phil Donahue the other day? Do you believe folks buy into that?"
She deflated, and went on to tell us something else we were doing wrong.
I’m not surprised the Chicago Tribune was in bed with Hitler, so was the NYT’s; downplaying the anti-semitism and threat Hitler posed. Media was an old boys club back then, and now it’s new management, the same as the old management, except corporations have filled in for the oligarchs.
So much for “all the news that’s fit to print! You can count on the NYT’s, except when the stakes are high or democracy is in peril.
Nazi Sympathizers during the 1930’s
The Iraq War
Withholding a story on illegal NSA surveillance in 2005
The rise of Trump
The legitimizing of Trump
When it comes to the media, It always about the Benjamin’s.
I don’t know who this Benny Johnson guy is, but he’s not alone in legitimizing Trump, continuing to treat him as “fit for office” and justifying all of his indefensible positions and ludicrous agenda for Trump and his minions.
As for their treatment of Biden, his biggest problem is he’s boring, and boring doesn’t sell. He’s not charismatic like Trump (to those that don’t find him appalling like the rest of us), and he doesn’t command the stage.
However, not to quote the charlatans in the MAGA movement, but I will, since they only can comprehend slogans on bumper stickers:
Biden gets things done.
Trump sycophants say he does, but did he really? Unless you count not building a wall, which Mexico didn’t pay for. Not passing an infrastructure bill, even though we had an infrastructure month year after year.
And then of course, he did accomplish an insurrection, which ultimately failed. He did try to steal an election, which ultimately failed. He did monetize the Presidency. He did weaponize the DOJ and IRS to do his bidding against enemies real and perceived.
And finally, he did accomplish two things that no other president had ever done: he managed to get impeached twice, and add over $8 trillion to the national debt in just four years.
Perhaps his new slogan on bumper stickers should read:
“Vote for Trump, the king of debt. He’ll do to America what he did for his businesses; send them straight into bankruptcy!”
Yeah, it was added back in I think 2020 to deal with the election and COVID bullshit. Jean Baptiste Emanuel Musk hasn't trashed it yet for some reason.
Thanks, I wonder how it works? There can't be an actual human who says, "Think this one needs a 'Readers context' added to it", I'm sure Musk fired all those people long ago.
The Trib published "FDR's War Plans!!!" (War Plan Orange, passed to them by a friendly colonel) two days before Pearl Harbor. The Justice Department seriously considered seizing the paper and locking up its editors for treason--never mind the Constitutional violations. (That would have been interesting.) Supposedly FDR himself talked them out of it.
OK, just hear me out: What if we just flooded the zone with "Joe Biden is so old..." jokes? Yeah, he's old as shit, he's so old when he was a kid he didn't have candles on his birthday cake because they didn't have fire yet!
You know, like a guy with a larger-than-average nose, his pals nickname him Schnozzola, takes the sting off. After a while it's an endearing character trait.
A few years back I read a trilogy treating FDR’s record as a wartime leader. The books were adulatory to the point of fulsomeness (and, interestingly, raised Roosevelt’s monument on a towering plinth cemented together from the rubble of Churchill’s reputation), but by the author’s account, the president’s condition began a steep decline beginning at the end of 1943. He wasn’t gaga, but as the months wore on he wasn’t “there” much of the time. Aides learned that if there were critical decisions to be made they would have to be presented to him for the couple of hours each day that he was his old self.
Of course, by that time FDR had long since assembled an administrative apparatus that was running our nascent empire’s affairs (according to the diaries of Adolf Berle, one of his inner circle, his aides privately referred to their chief as “Augustus,” and wouldn’t 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 have made Colonel McCormick’s head explode) without the need of his punctilious oversight.
I'm in the middle of Truman by David McCullogh and EVERYONE around Roosevelt knew the VP selected for the 4th term was going to be President sooner rather than later. According to McCullogh (a somewhat unreliable narrator) no one knew why Truman got the nod, other than he was less objectionable that every other option.
Says a lot that nobody's bothered to do a parody called Les Deplorables, ending with the storming of the Bastille/Capitol. Just shows once again that there are no good right-wing artists.
There's something to be said for believing in government as a useful tool for accomplishing practical things, which leads you to hire actually competent people. As opposed to believing in government as a thing to be looted and then drowned in a bathtub, which leads to hiring incompetent cronies and putting your idiot son-in-law in charge of pandemic response.
I have that trilogy (by Nigel Hamilton) and you're right--FDR considered himself the "Indispensable Man". Thus the 1944 Vice Presidency/Succession Plan was slapdash, almost casual; FDR was *touring war plants* at the time of the convention. The only thing everyone could agree on was that Henry Wallace should not be a potential President.
I don’t count myself a Truman devotee (it’s odd to think that he, Churchill and Stalin, the principals at Potsdam seven years earlier, were all in office at the time of my birth), and there are things to admire about Henry Wallace, but particularly in view of his sometimes erratic conduct before and after 1944, I’m not sure that Wallace had the temperament—as these things were measured then, of course; the bar has descended to subterranean levels these latter years—we would have wanted to see in that office.
I've stopped reading at "much like a baby or an imbecile," to rush here to propose that as a terrific refrain for a romantic ballad, possibly in the bossa nova mold.
The MAGAts have one advantage. When you show them video of Trump saying "we would be in World War Two very quickly if we’re going to be relying on [Biden]", or that Americans need voter ID to buy bread, or how he beat Obama in the 2016 election, they won't see anything wrong since everyone knows it's all true. Besides, only commies would think the difference between WW Two and Three is a big deal -- he was only off by one.
Maybe my own reality is slipping away, but wasn't DJT falling & slipping like every week while in office. I remember there was shitposting about it, but it wasn't like a major point of big media reporting.
Maybe I'm wrong & need to get back to my 20-hour shift in the sugar mines of our giant ant overlords...
Ickes and Wallace were turncoat Republicans, so even worse.
Years later Cissy Patterson confessed that on the day of FDR's death she and her dinner guests were too embarrassed to drink the champagne they had been saving, so "we drank Montrachet instead. . ."
As always, amazingly well done!
Benny Johnson needs his ass beat. He'll get his once the Swift Revolution remakes the country.
Let's hope his ass beating comes swiftly, and that he's not able to shake it off. Where his writing once appeared, well, they'll have a blank space, baby.
Well done! I can see an overlapping skill set between " Derelict" and " Antihero."
Swift Transit Gloria Mundi
(OT but Fun Fact. Roy might remember this.) When the NYC transit union, instead of a formal strike, called for a "sick out," its members all called in "sick" one Monday, which crippled the subways/buses/etc. The Daily News headline read: SICK TRANSIT'S GLORIOUS MONDAY. They had headline writers in those days, son...
The only way this could be better is if the headline-writer was wearing a fedora.
The sad thing is, you can now show Trumpistas the actual footage of Biden saying "as President" and they will accuse YOU of using doctored material. Similarly, you can show them footage of Trump saying "I kept those classified documents because I think I have a right to them," and his followers will deny Trump ever saying any such thing.
Back during the Depression and WWII, Americans had their political disagreements but nearly everyone had some attachment to reality. Today, more than a third of our population lives in a complete fantasy land built of conspiracies and lies. And every time truth makes even a minor penetration into that fantasy land, yet more conspiracies are hatched to cover over that truth. Just ask JFK jr, who will be making an appearance ANY MINUTE now.
Yeah, this will be the biggest impact of deep fakes, I think. Not in convincing people to believe fake things, but giving all of us an out, any inconvenient truth must be a "deep fake."
Always was the plan, yeah.
Half his fans will say the video of him shooting someone on 5th Avenue is fake, the other half will say it's real but the guy was askin' for it.
This is profound. It's a sort of epistemological jiu-jitsu: It doesn't change what I (think I) know, but allows me to defend it. Or it's like nuclear weapons-as-deterrent. We don't have them to use against you. Rather, we have them so you don't use yours against us.
It's the logical end state of a digital/virtual/metaverse. Choose your own adventure! Who you gonna believe, me or your lyin' eyes?
Science handing us a technology that enables people to live entirely in the darkness of irrational faith.
But once again what gets me is just how many people prefer ignorance. I guess Lovecraft was on to something every time he showed a character glimpsing the truth and going insane.
Or live is shared community of understanding and support. Life itself is a double-edged sword, so why not virtual life? Ignorance is comfortable when you are shielded from the consequences of ignorance, and sometimes is a comfort when you are not shielded from consequences, because it helps you find someone to blame, very important in maintaining peace of mind. Now how much would you pay?
Pay? Just keep hunkering in the basement and keep mom busy shoving food under the door...
Ah, the old saw "Hell is other people" -- now with its new ignoramus subsaw, "Except when you need someone else to blame."
"Back during the Depression and WWII, Americans had their political disagreements but nearly everyone had some attachment to reality"
Minor point of disagreement: the majority of <white> Americans at the time, on either side of the divide, had some attachment to the largest conspiracy theory of all and that is white supremacy — withh all the anti-blackness & anti-Indigeneity and anti-immigration and, yes, anti-semitism appertaining. This conspiracy theory did not need mass media to propagate & warped reality just as effectively & disastrously as anything you'd see on OANN or Newsmax or Xitter today.
OK, so major point... :)
I’m reading “The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy” by Robert Jones. It’s harrowing. I thought I knew quite a bit about Native genocide and the centuries of white Christian savagery but it turns out much of it really has been hidden. I didn’t learn much about it in school, but I’ve been reading and learning for the last 50 years, and I am still not up to speed.
Hope for the best, expect the worst.
Well, to a certain extent, it has always been the case that 'believing is seeing'. My mother knew that Roosevelt was a cripple, but didn't think it was as bad as it was. (She also knew that the project over there in the abandoned squash-court had something to do with The Atom.)
For fun, read numbers of the U. of Chicago "Maroon" from December 1941, as I did for awhile last winter, a combination of momentous events and stuff in the pure {"National Lampoon" (in its good years)}-style inspired generic college newspaperie. President Hutchins, who had been a member of the respectable contingent of the America First Committee, took his time making a statement about Pearl Harbor—and read the blind items to guess which well-known B.M.o.C. was stepping-out on his prominent girl!
(I read these in parallel with "Hitler's American Gamble", a truly fascinating book about how and why Germany decided to declared war on the U.S. 07-11 December 1941…and how Hitler had believed that the Jews who controlled the U.S. would be persuaded to keep us out of the war because he was keeping the German Jews as hostages even as he was murdering Ostjuden, albeit by the Wehrmacht, S.S., and local bigots, this was before the rationalisation ordered at Wannsee.)(It looks like every single player involved was not too sure their ostensible ally would come through as they wanted; in the cases of Vichy France, miffed that the Germans were o.k. with the Japanese take-over of Southeast Asia and the Italian seizure of Nice, and Franco, irritated at Nazi anti-Catholicism, this actually ended-up mattering.)
Benny Johnson is a clown, but the establishment media has been an invaluable ally to the Right in shaping the negative Biden narrative:
Step One: harp on and on about Biden’s age being a huge problem. Highlight all of his gaffes and stumbles. Ignore or play down the fact Trump is only 3 years younger than Biden, has an unhealthy lifestyle, tried to overthrow democracy, is facing 91 criminal charges, argues for the death of his enemies, and has the cognitive aptitude of a bowl of cream of wheat.
Step Two: breathlessly boost data that shows (surprise, surprise!) people are now perceiving Biden’s age to be a big problem.
Step Three (really, concurrent with Step One): insinuate that Kamala Harris, a former Attorney General/Senator of the most populous state and the current Vice President, is somehow not up to the job of stepping into Biden’s shoes Should Something Happen. Why? It’s not really clear – vague insinuations Biden doesn’t trust her, she’s not “well liked,” she’s just marking time, accusations you never see her accompanied by accusations you see her too much.
I swear, the legacy media and online sites like Politico and Axios want Trump back so bad they can taste it. Why wouldn’t they? He’s dynamite for engagement, and none of his policies will impact their own lives negatively enough to matter.
Coincidentally(? I think NOT!) I'm researching cyanobacteria, and the EPA description closely matches Benny and ilk:
"floating mats of bad-smelling, decaying and gelatinous scum"
My new go-to descriptor!
Hard to go wrong with "gelatinous".
Don’t forget oleaginous and putrescent!
Bonus noun for the day: cadaverine.
Fetid!
Yesterday the judge in the Trump fraud case in New York came up with a good one: "obstreperous"!
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23991865-trump-ny-fraud-ruling
(See page 10)
THERE ARE NO COINCIDENCES
Have we ever SEEN Benny and cyanobacteria in a room together? Think about it!
They try to stay out of one another's way, out of professional courtesy.
Zion National Park is warning about toxic Cyanobacteria that can’t be neutralized by filtering or chemical treatment of backcountry water. Sounds exactly like our RWNJ media - the only safe response is to not consume at all.
Oh yeah? Give me a bucket and a hose and this one weird thingamabob that you can get at any hardware store, and...
If you make that contraption work we'll all be blue-green with envy.
Sorry, forgot the three feet of copper wire, can't do ANYTHING without that!
If you make that contraption work without 3ft of copper wire we'll know you are lying.
"accusations you never see her accompanied by accusations you see her too much"
Yes, that's how it's done. Like "Senile, drooling criminal mastermind."
Geezer-savant.
I don’t care if Trump’s lifestyle is unhealthy, or if he eats nothing but kale and quinoa and competes in Ironman competitions. He’s a malevolent, narcissistic loon careening into dementia. His fast-food-and-golf lifestyle is one of the *least* objectionable things about him!
I'm for whatever diet increases the chance of a massive heart attack while on the shitter.
+1 velvet Elvis
Over at Slate the other day Christini Cauterucci did a piece that followed this formula exactly. I get so tired of the “Americans overwhelmingly don’t like the choice they’ll be presented with in 2024.” Yeah, well, a lot of that’s got to be because being presented with a binary choice between 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘦 and an avowed fascist is a disquieting proposition. Me, I’d be pleased as punch if Biden had fewer miles on him, and had Donald J. Trump been smothered in his crib, but we don’t live on that planet.
Honestly, I'm pretty excited about the prospect of beating Donald Trump a second time.
Even if I know five chambers to be empty, I’m never going to be keen to play Russian roulette. And next year half the chambers 𝘸𝘰𝘯’𝘵 be.
Well, it's like it's 1944 and I say I'm excited at the prospect of Hitler splattering his brains around the inside of a bunker, not saying I'm happy to be in this situation in the first place.
In terms of Hitler’s defeat and suicide, we’re as yet somewhat in advance of the Battle of Stalingrad, I’m thinking.
Sure, it's a statement about the desirability of a given outcome without making a statement about the likelihood of that outcome.
Someone pointed out that a poll taken in September of 1982 found that a majority said that Reagan should not seek a second term, because of his age. Of course, in his case, they were right.
Since my ailing (cold, not COVID-19) mind has been fixed on Robert Hutchins, I'd guess that the older media firms' defence would be much like his defence when he was confronted with the claim that his faculty taught Communism: 'Our medical school teaches cancer, too.'.
"wasters" clearly spell-doomed from "wastrels"?
And sign me up for the Philco!
My parents still have a Philco fridge in their basement. They keep pop/soda in it. It’s small, inefficient, and weighs as much as a Volkswagen, but that thing has been running for over six decades and never breaks.
I love the names, Philco, Norge, Kelvinator. I've got a Kelvinator badge I bought off ebay (takes up less space than collecting the refrigerators themselves). It's a beautiful piece of cast zinc, painted and chrome-plated. For a while, I was using it as a hood ornament on an old Corolla I had.
IIRC, Monica’s apartment in Friends had an International Harvester fridge. I looked them up online: introduced in 1947 and produced less than ten years. There’s a challenge for you!
Well, I once owned a John Deere bicycle, so I may be up to that challenge!
Kelvinator? I don't have no Kelvinator. We don't need no Kelvinator! I don't have to show you any STEENKIN' KELVINATOR!!
Both are accurate
Dunno, "wastrels" sounds like they should be caroling outside my door.
Wat'sailing you?
Do the wastrels include urchins?
Hold on a minute – I'll look and sea...
Or waifs and gamins?
Sounds like a breakfast cereal for old women who live in a cottage way out in the woods.
Marketing wants to try a new variation: "Oops! All Gamins!"
Triggering a memory here of the Trib (and Daily News) in its far right prime...
If only FDR was a good Republican, completely unfit for office, and suffering from cognitive decline and, as they said back then, senility. Bet they'd be happy with that, presuming the present is epilog to the past or something.
"Colonel McCosmic," we called him. "The finest mind of the twelfth century." With his cousins Joseph Patterson, who owned the NY Daily News, and Cissy Patterson, who bought the Washington Times-Herald from Hearst.
They never got over FDR defeating Hoover, Landon and Willkie; power was supposed to devolve naturally to newspaper publishers like themselves, not to the icky people.
Actually, it looks like the colonel and cohorts are extremely close to undoing most of the New Deal:
“She has an intriguing origin point for today's afflictions: the New Deal. The first third of the book, which hurtles toward Donald Trump's election, is as bingeable as anything on Netflix. "Democracy Awakening" starts in the 1930s, when Americans who'd been wiped out in the 1929 stock market crash were not about to let the rich demolish the economy again. New Deal programs designed to benefit ordinary people and prevent future crises were so popular that by 1960 candidates of both parties were advised to simply "nail together" coalitions and promise them federal funding. From 1946 to 1964, the liberal consensus — with its commitments to equality, the separation of church and state, and the freedoms of speech, press and religion — held sway.
But Republican businessmen, who had caused the crash, despised the consensus.”
Via https://kottke.org/23/09/democracy-awakening-notes-on-the-state-of-america-by-heather-cox-richardson
I agree with that POV ~1,000%. The only qualifying I’d do is that the reaction greatly accelerated under or with Tricky Dick Nixon. But, yes, the ultimate goal was born let’s say in the 1930s.
Bravo!
I've been thinking of this analogy for a while. FDR was attacked mercilessly: heinous Racist asshole GA Gov. Eugene Talmadge said a couple of times "I think the President of the United States should be able to walk a 2x4" and was pretty much universally condemned, even in those times. . FDR ill and "crippled" was better than anyone else in his generation for moving the country forward, and, as they can't forgive ol' Joe for the things he's doing and attempting, they will call things normal and accepted under FDR "communism".
I remember enough about Kennedy to recall he sold as "young" "tanned""athletic"(I mean, he and Bobby and Teddy played footbalL) "vital", "virile" while rotten with Addison's disease, adrenal bronzing, hypersexuality and all.
We have had truly disabled Presidents, like Edith Wilson covering up for Woodrow: and the government kept right on going. As the Roman Empire functioned, through the mad Emperors of the preChristian years, our government would run ok, had we not an industry dedicated to making it not work, or to work only for the few, who find their expression in the sort of "news" like your Trib satire.
Fear of a black woman president is something the Dems of yesteryear didn't have to contend with.
I await Diaper Don's public meltdown: which will be spun as merely the acceptable rage of a thwarted tyrant...
We have had truly disabled Presidents, like Edith Wilson (Nancy Reagan) covering up for Woodrow (Ronnie)....
Of course you are right: I'm afraid I try to think of Ronnie as little as possible.
The indelible moment for me is when Ronnie, asked a question at an airport about hostages "When are we getting them free?" And he goes bluescreen and Nancy feeds him his line through clenched teeth, softly "We're doing the best we can," and Ron reboots and repeats...
That’s when she knew it was time to call in the astrologers.
Ha! Nancy's astrologer was why I got one of the few wins when my mom, an evangelical missionary after she retired, started in on me and the late wife: Mom had begun on "New Age" stuff, how it was evil and satanic: the late ex was sometimes inclined to claim to be a witch (which might explain much) and was about to go off on her.
I was able to slip in "yeah Mom, I saw Nancy Reagan's astrologer on Phil Donahue the other day? Do you believe folks buy into that?"
She deflated, and went on to tell us something else we were doing wrong.
Explosion averted.
I liked that moment in the debate where he got lost on a highway in California.
And his headlit deerface during the Iran Contra reveal presser.
I loved his vivid memories of exciting life experiences which were actually scenes he played in movies.
Flix and it DID happen!
Calvin Coolidge slept his way through his presidency and no one noticed any difference.
And when he died, Dorothy Parker asked, "How could they tell?"
They gave him a Scobie.
I’m not surprised the Chicago Tribune was in bed with Hitler, so was the NYT’s; downplaying the anti-semitism and threat Hitler posed. Media was an old boys club back then, and now it’s new management, the same as the old management, except corporations have filled in for the oligarchs.
So much for “all the news that’s fit to print! You can count on the NYT’s, except when the stakes are high or democracy is in peril.
Nazi Sympathizers during the 1930’s
The Iraq War
Withholding a story on illegal NSA surveillance in 2005
The rise of Trump
The legitimizing of Trump
When it comes to the media, It always about the Benjamin’s.
I don’t know who this Benny Johnson guy is, but he’s not alone in legitimizing Trump, continuing to treat him as “fit for office” and justifying all of his indefensible positions and ludicrous agenda for Trump and his minions.
As for their treatment of Biden, his biggest problem is he’s boring, and boring doesn’t sell. He’s not charismatic like Trump (to those that don’t find him appalling like the rest of us), and he doesn’t command the stage.
However, not to quote the charlatans in the MAGA movement, but I will, since they only can comprehend slogans on bumper stickers:
Biden gets things done.
Trump sycophants say he does, but did he really? Unless you count not building a wall, which Mexico didn’t pay for. Not passing an infrastructure bill, even though we had an infrastructure month year after year.
And then of course, he did accomplish an insurrection, which ultimately failed. He did try to steal an election, which ultimately failed. He did monetize the Presidency. He did weaponize the DOJ and IRS to do his bidding against enemies real and perceived.
And finally, he did accomplish two things that no other president had ever done: he managed to get impeached twice, and add over $8 trillion to the national debt in just four years.
Perhaps his new slogan on bumper stickers should read:
“Vote for Trump, the king of debt. He’ll do to America what he did for his businesses; send them straight into bankruptcy!”
"I don’t know who this Benny Johnson guy is..."
Yeah, this is the first I've heard of him. Sadly, with the "skills" he's demonstrating here, it probably won't be the last.
Like Domenech, a broken plagiarist reinvented as a rightwing lie diffuser https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2017/report-benny-johnson-was-accused-of-plagiarism-again/
“Rightwing lie diffuser”—Aces.
That "Readers added context that they thought others should know", is that a Twitter thing?
Yeah, it was added back in I think 2020 to deal with the election and COVID bullshit. Jean Baptiste Emanuel Musk hasn't trashed it yet for some reason.
Thanks, I wonder how it works? There can't be an actual human who says, "Think this one needs a 'Readers context' added to it", I'm sure Musk fired all those people long ago.
Also, when your lies are so obvious that fuckin' Twitter feels the need to call them out, that's really sayin' something.
The Trib published "FDR's War Plans!!!" (War Plan Orange, passed to them by a friendly colonel) two days before Pearl Harbor. The Justice Department seriously considered seizing the paper and locking up its editors for treason--never mind the Constitutional violations. (That would have been interesting.) Supposedly FDR himself talked them out of it.
Thank you, I did not know that...:)
No, that would violate the Constitution! Let's pack a hundred thousand Japanese-Americans off to the internment camps instead!
Oof. I knew/was friend of several of them...
Not to mention the Italian Americans who were prohibited from driving the coast highway after dark...
Thanks for the excellent links, especially to Olmstead's book.
OK, just hear me out: What if we just flooded the zone with "Joe Biden is so old..." jokes? Yeah, he's old as shit, he's so old when he was a kid he didn't have candles on his birthday cake because they didn't have fire yet!
You know, like a guy with a larger-than-average nose, his pals nickname him Schnozzola, takes the sting off. After a while it's an endearing character trait.
Biden's so old he might start World War Two!
Deliver it in a Rodney Dangerfield style and you’re into something.
One of my favorite Dangerfield gags: "This woman was so old, when she was in high school, they didn't *have* history!"
I think it's funnier with "might start World War One" but you work with the material you got.
Biden's so old...
[How old is he?]
Biden's so old he's 59 years past his sell date!
Biden's so old his vice president isn't born yet!
Biden's so old he thinks twitter is for the birds! Oh, wait...
Biden's so old when he was a teenager he was dating Carbon!
For our English Lit friends: “He knew the Venerable Bede when he was just the Tot Bede.”
He knew Pitt the Elder back when he was Pitt the Younger!
There’s a Blackadder bit there. Pitt the Even Younger. Pitt the Glint in the Milkman’s Eye.
Biden’s so old, he was born exactly a week before Jimi Hendrix!
Biden's so old guitars were made of stone and never caught fire!
Back when he was born NOBODY was experienced!
2 marks to all yinz!
That one is true
...but it is so well written!
A few years back I read a trilogy treating FDR’s record as a wartime leader. The books were adulatory to the point of fulsomeness (and, interestingly, raised Roosevelt’s monument on a towering plinth cemented together from the rubble of Churchill’s reputation), but by the author’s account, the president’s condition began a steep decline beginning at the end of 1943. He wasn’t gaga, but as the months wore on he wasn’t “there” much of the time. Aides learned that if there were critical decisions to be made they would have to be presented to him for the couple of hours each day that he was his old self.
Of course, by that time FDR had long since assembled an administrative apparatus that was running our nascent empire’s affairs (according to the diaries of Adolf Berle, one of his inner circle, his aides privately referred to their chief as “Augustus,” and wouldn’t 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 have made Colonel McCormick’s head explode) without the need of his punctilious oversight.
I'm in the middle of Truman by David McCullogh and EVERYONE around Roosevelt knew the VP selected for the 4th term was going to be President sooner rather than later. According to McCullogh (a somewhat unreliable narrator) no one knew why Truman got the nod, other than he was less objectionable that every other option.
Coincidentally, Les Objectionables was the original title of Les Miserables, but was rejected by Vic Hugo's* publisher as "trop mou".
*Prominent upon the "People with 2 first names" list
Says a lot that nobody's bothered to do a parody called Les Deplorables, ending with the storming of the Bastille/Capitol. Just shows once again that there are no good right-wing artists.
There's something to be said for believing in government as a useful tool for accomplishing practical things, which leads you to hire actually competent people. As opposed to believing in government as a thing to be looted and then drowned in a bathtub, which leads to hiring incompetent cronies and putting your idiot son-in-law in charge of pandemic response.
I have that trilogy (by Nigel Hamilton) and you're right--FDR considered himself the "Indispensable Man". Thus the 1944 Vice Presidency/Succession Plan was slapdash, almost casual; FDR was *touring war plants* at the time of the convention. The only thing everyone could agree on was that Henry Wallace should not be a potential President.
I don’t count myself a Truman devotee (it’s odd to think that he, Churchill and Stalin, the principals at Potsdam seven years earlier, were all in office at the time of my birth), and there are things to admire about Henry Wallace, but particularly in view of his sometimes erratic conduct before and after 1944, I’m not sure that Wallace had the temperament—as these things were measured then, of course; the bar has descended to subterranean levels these latter years—we would have wanted to see in that office.
I've stopped reading at "much like a baby or an imbecile," to rush here to propose that as a terrific refrain for a romantic ballad, possibly in the bossa nova mold.
Oooo...yeah...maravilhosa!
muito parecido com um bebê ou um imbecil
você fica por aí e arruina minha vida
quanto mais cedo você sair da cidade
melhor será o mundo
Must tell you I ran this through Google Portuguese-to-English and got:
much like a baby or an asshole
you go around and ruin my life
the sooner you leave town
the world will be better
Just the way I composed it (almost)
I was inspired by Leila Pinheiro's "Como Uma Onda no Mar."
The MAGAts have one advantage. When you show them video of Trump saying "we would be in World War Two very quickly if we’re going to be relying on [Biden]", or that Americans need voter ID to buy bread, or how he beat Obama in the 2016 election, they won't see anything wrong since everyone knows it's all true. Besides, only commies would think the difference between WW Two and Three is a big deal -- he was only off by one.
He was two thirds of the way to the right war! I say we round up and give him 100%
Sorry, a hundred percent of what, now?
Maybe my own reality is slipping away, but wasn't DJT falling & slipping like every week while in office. I remember there was shitposting about it, but it wasn't like a major point of big media reporting.
Maybe I'm wrong & need to get back to my 20-hour shift in the sugar mines of our giant ant overlords...
To what address should the soiled diaper drawings be sent? Asking for a friend.
>Ickes
The Colonel forgot Morgenthau, Baruch, and (to lighten things up) Wallace; perhaps he is getting old….
Fun fact: When F.D.R. died, the Colonel paid for pickup trucks to roam Chicago with young people in them whooping it up. Classy!
Ickes and Wallace were turncoat Republicans, so even worse.
Years later Cissy Patterson confessed that on the day of FDR's death she and her dinner guests were too embarrassed to drink the champagne they had been saving, so "we drank Montrachet instead. . ."
They don't make rich people like they used to! No, wait, they make them EXACTLY like they used to.
The old fashioned way!