56 Comments
Mar 10, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

All right, Roy, what doucments described in what obscure doctoral dissertation from an Ivy League school did you dig that text out of?

Expand full comment
Mar 10, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

Brilliant. Just... brilliant.

Expand full comment
Mar 10, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

Brilliant stuff, Roy. Your grasp of the '40s vernacular is sterling -- I heard it in my head being read in Humphrey Bogart's voice, which made it pure perfection. Yeah, Bogie was a bit of a commie, but it still worked, LOL

I especially liked the eternal rightwing schtick of goalpost moving: first they tell you the bad thing will never happen, then they tell you the bad thing might happen but it isn't *really* so bad, and when it does happen they tell you the bad thing is really a GOOD thing, actually. Today, Ross Douthat is a master of that grift.

Expand full comment
Mar 10, 2022·edited Mar 10, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

My kind of column! Full of Mugs and Good time Charlies. Hobos and Bunko Artists.

Chumps and their floy-floy need a one-way ticket to Palookaville is what I'm sayin'.

Expand full comment

Top drawer stuff, my friend. In the contemporary vernacular I think they call this 'relatable content', at least it is if you're up on your world history. Trebles all around!

Expand full comment
Mar 10, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

#ClivedenSet

Expand full comment
Mar 10, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

That gave me chills, and not in a good way.

Expand full comment
Mar 10, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

"...the place was a mess — plenty of crime and inflation, and full of Bolsheviks and fancy-pants artistes and fallen women and lady-boys..."

Oh, come on. You stole that from the latest RNC talking points, didn't you?

Expand full comment
Mar 10, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

Having grown up with the Depression and WWII generation, I can say that there were many Americans who thought like your characters before and during the war. They hated Roosevelt, blamed him for the Depression (I know, I know), thought he provoked the Japanese to get the US into the war, was a Jew who was only against Hitler because Hitler exposed the Jewish Rothschild banking conspiracy. They thought America should join with Hitler in attacking the Soviet Union, shouldn't do anything about Japan and should expel all the Japanese and Chinese in the US. Some hoarded ration stamps, some hoarded gasoline and fuel oil (a friend's back yard had to be removed a few years ago because the WWII owner had stored illegal fuel oil in an underground brick cistern that leaked), some had secret deals with farmers for rationed food items. I could go on. Some of these things various family members believed but more were tales they told on their neighbors. The Greatest Generation had a lot of weasels, fascists and sociopaths, and don't you forget it, buddy! We sanitize all parts of American history, not just slavery and the Civil War, but the genocide of indigenous people, our imperialism, our anti-intellectualism, and our phemomenally dysfunctional, illogical and corrupt system of justice. The true history of America during the Depression and WWII is much darker than we are led to believe.

Expand full comment
Mar 10, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

"sexed-up snail-eaters on the Seine"

2 marks! Tho a bit too je ne sais quoi for a band name.

The photo is cherce, too. That was a flick too far for some folks...

Expand full comment
Mar 10, 2022·edited Mar 11, 2022

Roy, are you a prophet? Or a wizard or something? I just can’t fathom how you continually marry biting, clever satire with an uncomplicated, entertaining prose that frankly embarrasses my own modest efforts. Like I managed not to spill soup on my keyboard today, and that’s a win

Expand full comment

Hate to click "Like" on something that's so Sad But True. Great writing is what I'm trying to applaud.

Expand full comment

LOL a child's garden of 1940s-isms!

Expand full comment

We're absolutely headed towards a "Plot Against America" scenario. It seems pretty unlikely that Ukraine will win their war with Russia by themselves, or that the US, NATO, and the EU will intervene in the only way that will win that war in time for Ukraine to survive, by getting involved in the fighting. That will leave the recriminations over this lost war to sour and divide our politics for the 2024 election. "We should have been more involved and maybe Ukraine would have survived." some of us will say. The response will be, "All your do-gooder interventionism managed to do was to sucker Ukraine into the mass pointless deaths in Kyiv after it was encircled and starved out. Better to have never gotten involved at all someplace we weren't going to really start a war with Russia over, and really, what place should the US risk nuclear holocaust to defend, other than the US itself?". Of course the latter argument is going to have to cover its inherent cowardice by blaming it all on the Jews or some other scapegoat. It was really Zelensky's fault, him and Soros, for unnecessarily provoking the Russians.

Expand full comment

Never heard of Lord Haw-Haw until now...thank you, Roy!

Expand full comment