34 Comments
Oct 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

(Was wondering what Rush The Farting Fascist Limbaugh had warbled but then remembered that he considers anything else competition for the entertainment dollar.)

Expand full comment
Oct 2, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Rush The Farting Fascist

Lived by the sea,

And traded in unwholesome lies

To advance bad policy.

He liked Trump The Moron

And helped make him President

To bad for Rush his life caught up

And God to him cancer sent.

Expand full comment
Oct 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

My favorite post-debate surrogate was Pennsylvania’s own Rick Santorum, always a colossal dummy, who tried to spin by plaintively explaining the president COULDN’T disavow the Proud Boys because racists and white nationalists are his base. I know they’ve been saying the quiet part out loud for ages now, but it’s hard to imagine a more perfect own-goal.

Expand full comment
Oct 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Ahh, Santorum, the frothy mix of ... never mind.

Expand full comment
Oct 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Congratulations on winning first place in the 2020 Bulwer Litton Contest (William F. Buckley division)!

Expand full comment
Oct 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

"...the President said something that sounded to this dispassionate observer like 'Fun is knickers'..."

So great a line, I almost LOL. (I realized the other month that while I'm often amused, I almost never actually laugh out loud at funny stuff. Maybe just another to a very long list of human defects.)

Expand full comment
author

Maybe I'm just not that funny.

Expand full comment
Oct 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

No - that's not it. I LOL at your shit in the mornings all the time.

Expand full comment
Oct 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Funny how? You mean like a clown?

Expand full comment
Oct 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

I can easily believe this of the party that went crazy for eight years (and are still trying to shock life back into it) the "Whitey" Tape. "We refuse to believe anything we don't have a use for, thanks."

Expand full comment
Oct 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

"You know, there's supposedly a tape of Michelle Obama using the term 'whitey' to describe White people. Isn't that horrible? How could anyone ever vote for such a racist!"

[Actual videotape of Donald Trump repeatedly using the N-word when talking about how Black people are subhuman and should probably be exterminated]

"You know, it's just a liberal media mischaracterization of Donald Trump to say he's racist based on just these few hundred incidents or to judge his heart based on the things he says and does. You liberals are the REAL racists for even noticing!"

Expand full comment
Oct 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

StaffmonThe Apprentice were often shocked by how frequently Trump used awful language when talking about POC and Jews among others.

Expand full comment
Oct 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Wish they had come forward. If I had a coworker who said such things and ran for president, I would either come forward or sign for a bale of cash delivered by FedEx.

Expand full comment

Anyone who breaks Mark Burnett's NDA would wake up encased in carbonite.

Expand full comment
Oct 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Sublime

Expand full comment
Oct 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Just swell. Wait'll the 3rd debate, when Trump lashes out at "clitoral rage theory," which he claims to personally know a lot about, "some people say maybe too much."

Expand full comment
Oct 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

All he knows is Melania is always pissed because he can't find it.

Expand full comment

Probably, because by repute he's terrible in bed, but whenever I see a 'bad person has bad sex' claim the Just World Hypothesis Alarm goes-off in my head.

Expand full comment

Fun Fact: Hyman Hitler's real, given name was Adolf Schickelgruber. A lot of people don't know that not many people know that.

Expand full comment
Oct 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Actually, it was Adolf's father, Alois who changed his surname to Hitler. And Josef Stalin's surname was actually Jughashvili. Stalin means "steel" in Russian.

Expand full comment
Oct 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Actually actually, he tried to change his name to Heidler, and the clerk at the names dept wrote down Hitler for reasons unknown. My guess is that the clerk took one look at Alois's frowny mad mug and thought, "Ach, I'm going to wind this asshole up by misspelling his new name." All across Germany today Heidlers are thanking that clerk.

Expand full comment
Oct 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

Never heard of him or from him. He never calls. Never writes. What am I? Chopped gravlax?

Expand full comment
Oct 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

"While those who watched the debate without prejudice certainly saw it exactly as I did" That's the Con mindset in one phrase.

Expand full comment

Pitch-perfect as usual, but nah gonna happn. People mistake Trump's sloppy language for lack of self-discipline or competence, but it's a combination of a lifetime of being surrounded by yes-men and an old con artist's instinct for preserving (im)plausible deniability (his "the bleach thing was sarcasm! Don't you people know sarcasm when you hear it?" ). His deliberately sloppy language is both his impression of a "regular guy" and part of his Lord of Chaos schtick. I don't think it's accidental at all. I think the Trump in your vignettes (which I pray will make it into a book/play/miniseries/movie someday) is much closer to what you'd hear in private.

Now deliberately dropping the bomb, that's a different story. If that was the point, I retract everything.

Expand full comment
Oct 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

I thought that was a missed opportunity for Biden at the debate, when Trump made the "sarcasm" remark, to say "Sarcasm? You mean, like a joke? You think 200,000 people dead is something to joke about?"

Expand full comment

Why not joke about them? They're just suckers and losers.

Expand full comment
Oct 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

No disrespect, Roy, but how can you make up a weirder name than Tobias Hoonhout? https://www.nationalreview.com/author/tobias-hoonhout/

Expand full comment
author

These days satirists can only get close. But there is precedent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._J._Rushdoony

Expand full comment

I've lived in Armenian neighbourhoods most of my life, and started to learn Dutch in 2000—Nov., so neither seems that odd to me….

Expand full comment

I remember Nat. Lampoon's "Ellbore Whippet's Washington" and it's article on Fed Chair Alan Greenspan and his seminal article "the Enema: is it more blessed to give than receive?" Whippett bore a striking, nay, complete resemblance to marginally funny guy Jeff Greenfield.

Expand full comment

Not to threadjack, but I wanted to pose a hypothetical question for any experts in copyright law we may have here: is it possible for a piece of mockery to be SO spot on that ceases to be satire and becomes a kind of plagiarism?

Expand full comment
Oct 1, 2020Liked by Roy Edroso

The media's obsession to get Trump to denounce white supremacy seems pointless to me. It's been obvious for decades that this is what he is (and we should just say it, constantly - he's a racist). His own fucking cult would know it was bullshit if he did say what the punditocracy so desperately needs to hear! Just point at him and say, "Our president is a racist."

Expand full comment

I've been saying this for years. "What else does he have to do or say to make you see him for what he is?" Although the fact that he is categorically unable to lie and just say, without equivocating about BLM and Auntie Fa, "OK, yeah, Proud Boys, KKK, White Supremacists, bad" (although he apparently did to Hannity, before the 'Rona took hold) speaks vouches.

Expand full comment

Volumes, damnit.

Expand full comment