Kill switch
The Prestige Press kinda sorta acts like ICE did murder. Bolt and the gang discuss!
BOLT UPRIGHT: Good evening, I’m Bolt Upright and this is Received Opinion!
[Sound of a thousand out-of-tune violins bowed with bandsaws. On the screen behind UPRIGHT, repeat slow-motion footage of the murder of Alex Pretti. Caption: GIVING IT ANOTHER SHOT.]
In a development we haven’t seen since the days of George Floyd, American media outlets have apparently been given permission to admit that agents of the state murdered someone just because they felt like it.
[Background switches to montage of front pages and screen grabs of fink outlets providing the kind of coverage UPRIGHT describes, e.g. the Washington Post editorial “The unjust killing of Alex Pretti marks a turning point in Trump’s second term.”]
The New York Times, the Washington Post, AP, Reuters, CNN, even CBS News all indicated with varying amounts of grudgingness that Alex Pretti’s slaying in Minneapolis by an unidentified masked member of ICE was neither excused by just cause nor motivated by anything like a genuine concern for law and order.
[Times story “Most Fox News Reporting on Minneapolis Shooting Supports Official Version” is featured.]
The Times even ran a story about how Fox News’ coverage of the murder is full of shit — something Joe Kahn once told me would be a firing offense at the Good Grey Lady!
[Background switches to silent montage of ICE and Border Patrol in Minneapolis beating, gassing, and generally brutalizing people.]
Things sure have changed since ICE agent Jonathan Ross murdered Renee Good just blocks away from this latest slaying, and everyone pretended she ran her killer over with her car before he pumped three bullets into her, despite irrefutable video evidence to the contrary.
[UPRIGHT strolls to the small interview desk where we find seated a slight, rabbity man of about 30 wearing a grey Fox Brothers flannel suit, vanilla shirt, blue tie, and Alexander McQueen Cuban stack ankle boots. He holds an iPad Pro.]
To tell us what’s changed, let’s hear from our media analyst Twerp Bellend. Twerp, whattaya know.
BELLEND: Excuse me?
UPRIGHT: It’s an expression. You know, I’m something of a loose cannon —
BELLEND: Really.
UPRIGHT: Yes, and I have to say it feels like something has really changed in our business. I suppose you heard me call this a “murder” instead of a tragic incident or a disturbing turn of events. Repeatedly I called it that, just now!
BELLEND: [Pulling out AirPods] Sorry, I was listening to a podcast.
UPRIGHT: Yet no one came flying in from the front office to try and pull me offstage. But with Renee Good it was more like, oh well, shit happens. What do you make of it?
BELLEND: Well, Bolt, the consensus among industry insiders is, it’s what they call “BS Fatigue.”
UPRIGHT: Hmm.
BELLEND: After the Good incident, the —
UPRIGHT: Murder.
BELLEND: Excuse?
UPRIGHT: Or, killing at least. But please! Incident?
BELLEND: Well, after Good was [nodding at UPRIGHT] gunned down by ICE, there was a great wave of, let’s just say, administration-friendly coverage that mirrored their contention that Good had brought it on herself. Even though the videos were as dispositive as the ones with Pretti.
UPRIGHT: I see.
BELLEND: It seems news consumers as well as news producers are trained to accept this kind of thing, But! Not so much of it at one time — especially with footage of federal agents [gestures toward background screen] rampaging through Minneapolis playing all the time. Which goes to credibility, you see —
UPRIGHT: What are you waving at?
BELLEND: The background screen.
UPRIGHT: How do you know what’s on it? Because I can never tell.
BELLEND: Oh, well —
UPRIGHT: [points at iPad] Is it on that thing?
BELLEND: Yes.
UPRIGHT: I’ll be damned.
BELLEND: Know what else I have here? I have charts, really impactful charts like on CNN, I can get them up on the screen in a second if you’ll just say the word.
UPRIGHT: Oh yeah?
BELLEND: The suits told me you don’t want it but I refuse to believe that a great and innovative newsman like you would turn his back on —
UPRIGHT: OK, kid, you got me hard, c’mon, let’s see.
[BELLEND taps the screen and a chart appears. HEADER reads BS RISING, and two dark graph bars are shown emerging from a pair of bull’s hindquarters.]
BELLEND: [Frantically tapping his screen] That’s not it, that’s not it, that’s wrong, that’s wrong!
UPRIGHT: [Laughing] First goddamn chart I ever saw that was worth a damn!
[Background image switches to a photo of someone of BELLEND’s size and build wearing a fox furry outfit and getting his dick sucked by what looks like a large badger. UPRIGHT roars. BELLEND powers down the iPad and flees.]
Kid’s got moxie! OK, let’s go see our friends at the Decision Desk.
[A sound like if human bodies could be tuned like pig’s bladders and played with baseball bats as UPRIGHT visits the Decision Desk, at which are seated PEONI DOYENNE, wearing a white Armani women’s silk crepe tuxedo with a cream turtleneck and ballet flats, and CHAFE DRAMATURGY wearing this ensemble from the Armani Spring 2026 Men’s Collection.]
Peoni, I know it’s a challenge but I have faith you can find some way to spin this for the administration.
DOYENNE: Bolt, try to imagine how alone the President of the United States must feel in this moment of crisis, beset by the press and also beset by those he thought were his friends.
UPRIGHT: Aren’t those the same people, Peoni?
DOYENNE: One thing we know about Trump is he responds very badly to criticism. So it may be that when Miss Good and Mr. Pretti ran down and shot those flawed but very human officers who were only, tragically, trying to protect us from foreign rapists and Medicaid cheats, they will instead have forced the President to unleash a new wave of terror and violence against his enemies. This is one of the great ironies of history, that —
[DOYENNE trails off. Pause. UPRIGHT takes out a light pen and looks in her eyes.]
UPRIGHT: Did you have a procedure today, dear heart?
DOYENNE: [Dreamily] How impolite of you to notice, Bolt.
UPRIGHT: [Snaps off the light pen; to DRAMATUGY] Chafe, what do — holy jumping Jesus, what is that you’re wearing?
DRAMATURGY: Armani, Bolt. It’s their newest thing.
UPRIGHT: You look like a plate spinner my sister used to go out with. Time’s nearly up, let me have ten seconds of temporizing.
DRAMATURGY: [Rushing] The time for temporizing is over, Bolt, all people of goodwill are stunned by this tragic overreach and we must investigate the training to which these brave but tragically undertrained brave men and women —
[UPRIGHT makes a buzzer sound with his mouth.]
UPRIGHT: When we come back, Kyle Rittenhouse will tell us how he taught Jonathan Ross to blubber on the witness stand.
[Cymbal crash; reality flutters like a flipbook riffled by a child, then closes and goes dark.]
Peoni's ensemble is VERY Peoni. Thank god Chafe finally binned the skinny pants, but I've rarely seen a men's jacket with a more unflattering silhouette. Poor Chafe, the hapless bastard can never get it right. He'd do better if his fashion sense matched his anodyne centrist opinions: "well if THIS happens then it's possible THAT will happen in response, and then who can tell where the lion's share of blame resides? BOTH SIDES."
Twerp Bellend is a name worthy of P.G. Wodehouse via Dickens. And your scene and action descriptions are as entertaining as the dialogue. Which is a remarkable feat considering the subject du jour.
As surreal as a badger fellating a fox on cable TV might be, I saw clips this weekend of the Murder Munchkin, Gregory Bovino, praising his agents for saving their colleagues from the massacre that Alex Pretti clearly intended to perpetrate, so I was prepared for it.