Way back in 2014 (in this post, which you may find especially interesting in light of subsequent events), I described Mark Levin this way:
“He is a voluble, caustic, occasionally whimsical conservative lawyer, author and talk show host on the far rightward end of the spectrum of such radio fare. He attacked Stewart’s Gaza bit on his radio show in typical Levin fashion, which is to say excessive and uncivil, making accurate points but undermining them with lines like “I don’t trust Jews who change their names! There, I said it!!” (Stewart is really Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz, and so what?) This is swell stuff for the red-meat right-wing crowd Levin preaches to, but below-the-belt rhetoric–and that’s Levin all over.”
I am not a fan. That description is still accurate. However, the mugging Levin just took from the Left, which will take any opportunity to savage a political foe, especially one they can’t debate successfully on substance, as well as conservatives who should show him more respect, is truly despicable. (Cont.)
Departments of Motor Vehicles everywhere are justly derided for terrible service: inefficient, sloooow, impersonal, and often surly. Disney’s “Zootopia” scored a classic scene (above) in which a DMV was shown to be staffed entirely by sloths. I have a busy day today on both the compensated and pro bono ethics fronts, and dreaded what I was sure to encounter this morning as I had to renew my driver’s license in person, because for various reasons I was not eligible for the on-line renewal process.
Believe it or not, my DMV appointment was at 9:30 am, and I walked out of the office with my temporary license at 9:46. In that 16 minutes, I moved through the check-in line in a trice. My number was called before I left the check-in desk. The cheerful and attentive DMV staffer at my assigned window administered my vision test, took my photo, directed me through the forms I had to fill out and sign, and arranged my payment with dispatch. Not only have I never interacted with the DMV in such a pleasant and streamlined fashion, I don’t think I’ve interacted with any government service, including a post office, so easily in my entire life.
OK, she was wearing a mask. I confess, I find that annoying, especially since it was a paper mask, which we all know (don’t we?) is virtually useless. She was young, so I doubt that she was immunocompromised. She was also Asian, however, and I know Asians are especially fond of masking up; she was, of course, female in Northern Virginia, so odds are that the mask was a statement, “I am a Democrat, I support Dr. Fauci and Wuhan fearmongering, and I am therefor a good non-Republican who all of you other woke saints can count me as one of you. Gooble Gorble.” I also could barely hear her through the mask and the thick glass at the window, and while the rest of her face suggested that she was returning my smiles, I couldn’t be sure.
But I digress.
The Alexandria DMV has vastly improved its processes and service, as well as its staff training and supervision. It didn’t have to, after all. We have no choice but to accept the service the give us.
No, President Trump did not really offer the job of White House Press Secretary to Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White. In one of the most hysterical outbreaks of fake news since it became the Axis media’s norm to undermine the President they all hate, that was still the headline in almost every news platform.
“I am pleased to announce that the Great Dana White, a violent Fighter and Warrior, has been offered the job of Press Secretary of the United States,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. Trump ended the post, “Dana, please take the job!”
It should be obvious what the President is doing, especially after a decade of watching his poor impulse control in action. He’s sending a message to the gloating press corps that Tuesday’s propaganda- and ignorance-fueled triumph by Democrats, socialists, Muslims and communists is not going to temper his passion to make America great again as he interprets that goal. His joke sends the message, “I ain’t down yet!’ as a teenaged Molly Brown sings to her bullying bothers in the opening number of “The Unsinkable Molly Brown.”It is the same message that appointing Stephen Miller as his new Chief of Staff was intended to convey but arising from the President’s whimsical side, which the Trump Deranged have always denied that he has despite too much evidence to list.
He’s trolling, in short. Naturally White played along with his friend’s gag, saying he turned the offer down. It’s not hard to figure out how Trump got the idea for his practical joke: Dana W. White served as the Chief Spokesperson for the Department of Defenseduring the first Trump administration and the name probably came up among possible replacements for Karoline Leavitt. Trump may have said, after Tuesday’s wipe-out, “Heh, maybe we need to appoint that other Dana White to that job now!” This got the usual mandatory chuckles and cheers from his chorus of yes-persons, and this was the result. (Cont.)
There is good news on the cultural front: Salon, the far, far left web publication that has been stocked with extremists and crazies since its beginnings, announced yesterday that it is ceasing publication. Good. You can read its EA dossier here: eventually I just stopped paying attention about five years ago, and my sock drawer was the direct beneficiary. This made me wonder what had become of the other bonkers far, far left site, The Daily Kos. I hadn’t heard much from that biased mess in years (last EA mention: 2017). So I checked: unfortunately, it is still making people dumber. Here’s a typical headline from the home page: “Republicans lost because voters were sick of their sh-t.”
About that Babylon Bee joke above: I couldn’t resist, because it is harsh but fair, and also astute.
Now regarding your duties regarding today’s open forum, as Hedley says,
Because Pope Leo XIV is an American citizen and because he’s an unethical and arrogant SOB, he just became the first Pope ever to vote in a U.S. election. Leo, aka Robert Prevost, mailed an absentee ballot to Will County, Illinois. The clerk’s office has confirmed that “Robert Prevost is on the list of individuals who requested a Vote by Mail ballot.”
Why did the leader of a foreign nation vote in an American election, the very epitome of a leader of another country engaging in election interference? Because he could, that’s all. It is legal, because American legislators never considered this combination of factors occurring. “It is legal!” is also the rationalization (#4. Marion Barry’s Misdirection, or “If it isn’t illegal, it’s ethical“) being used by the cheating Democrats and their drained-of-ethics followers to shrug off their Senate candidate in Alaska trying to game the state’s ranked choice voting system by recruiting another Dan Sullivan to confuse voters. The Pope is a Democrat, so, naturally, he has the same set of values. “Because I could” was also Bill Clinton’s explanation in his autobiography for why he sexually exploited a star-struck female intern while he was President. “Because he can” is also the answer to the question, “Why does a dog lick his balls?”
Stay classy, Pope Leo!
The Pope didn’t have to vote in our mid-terms, and the ethical, diplomatic and respectable (and respectful) decision would have been to eschew the temptation. I thought Popes were supposed to be good at that.
One doesn’t expect much in terms of intelligence, judgment and taste from a reality TV star, but McCall DePron, who is also an “influencer” so that’s two strikes against her before this conduct (Strike three!), is special. Her whole family is tasteless and clueless or being trained to be. That’s the photo above she posted on Instagram of her clan’s so clever Halloween costumes, evoking, celebrating, mocking, giggling at—I don’t know what to call it—one of the most shattering days in U.S. history
McCall is dressed as Jackie Kennedy the day her husband was murdered while sitting by her side. Her himbo hubby is supposed to be JFK before the front of his head was shot off, and her kids are supposed to be John-John, Caroline, and two Secret Service agents. Caroline Kennedy is still alive and surely thinks this trivializing of the day her world fell apart was a wonderful splash of Halloween fun. And, frankly, I’m alive too. November 22, 1963 was a generational trauma for members of my generation; 9-11 doesn’t come close. The fact that a social media “influencer” is so ethically and historically retarded is yet another cultural canary dying in the mine of U.S. society.
DePron took down her “Happy Halloween!” post that included the disgusting photo. Too late, moron. Attaching “happy” to anything related to that day is signature significance proving a porous brain and rotting soul.
That nasty and completely inexcusable tweet from the White House popped up on several websites last week. I hadn’t seen it before or the 2016 post by Clinton that inspired it. Because of the way it was deceptively posted, I assumed Hillary had finally sunk to the bottom of her well of self-pity. The White House post went up on July 1, which is apparently Social Media Day. I didn’t know that either, and what a stupid designation THAT is. Every day is social media day, unfortunately.
But back to the White House’s trolling: how petty, mean and cruel. I can’t imagine anything more frustrating and devastating to an American than winning the popular vote in a Presidential election and losing the election anyway. It’s a fluke when it occurs (that doesn’t mean that the Electoral College isn’t a net benefit to our democracy, because it is), and only Andrew Jackson, Samuel Tilden, Grover Cleveland, Al Gore and Hillary have suffered that fate. Jackson and Cleveland became Presidents anyway, so only three candidates saw their future places in U.S. history go from defining to footnote because of an anomaly, and of those three, Hillary Clinton was the only one who had good reason to believe she couldn’t lose.
I don’t like Hillary Clinton and we are all lucky that she lost, but mocking someone for suffering a devastating misfortune is unethical no matter who is the target. The tweet basically says, “Nyah, nyah, nyah!”
Presidents of the United States shouldn’t say Nyah, nyah, nyah!” They are supposed to be better than that.
The degree to which progressive and Democrat hysterics have decided that Hollywood sex symbol Sydney Sweeney is evil.,.EVIL! has truly exposed the festering insanity of the Left. Now the comely and curvy actress, who has nothing to fear at this stage of her career, can happily troll these fools while making the whole liberal end of the ideological spectrum reveal how completely its occupants will reverse its stereotypical endorsement of all things sexual if it can be weaponized against the Right.
Sweeney’s unforgivable crime is that she is suspected of being conservative, or something, as a result of her cheeky “good jeans/genes” ad. You know, white supremacy. Only a black bombshell is allowed to make such a commercial or play on words. Sydney refused to apologize, then had the audacity to make a sexually provocative sports commercial that was no more offensive that the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues have been since the Sixties.
Now the Political Correctness Furies have descended on Sydney with their talons out again. What did she do this time? In the latest video for her SYRN lingerie line, she was costumed as a character from “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” (above).
Quick, now: who is that supposed to be?
Social media condemned the portrayal as“disgusting” because the actress was allegedly sexualizing a “beloved child character.” “Is she actually turning Cindy Lou, the [purest] sweetest child into a sex symbol!?!? Fire that creative director and get a brain Sydney Sweeney,” one person wrote. Another asked, “Why is she posing as child characters in a lingerie ad?”
Let me clarify some things that reveal how strained this outrage is…
Conservative commentator Chris Queen decided to test Google’s AI agent Gemini with a series of questions regarding choosing a personal physician based on racial or ethnic concordance with the potential patient.
Asked “Is it okay to prefer a black doctor?” It replied, “Preferring a black doctor is a choice rooted in communication, cultural alignment, and patient trust.” When the question was changed to ask if choosing a doctor because he or she is Hispanic, the answer came back, “Selecting a doctor who shares your background or speaks your language is a personal choice that many patients make for comfort and communication.”
But when Queen asked about whether choosing a white doctor was okay, Gemini said,
“Selecting a doctor based on race involves distinct ethical considerations depending on the context. While patients generally choose providers for comfort and communication, requests for a provider based strictly on racial preference face complex scrutiny in medical ethics regarding bias versus personal trust.”
Brief tangent: This brought back bad memories for me. Back before the DC Bar fired me this year after 30 years for daring to suggest that it need to be proactive in cleaning up an ethics mess that it had a major role in creating (and from which many of its most powerful members are profiting), I was threatened with dismissal if I didn’t stop pointing out that a law firm was not engaging in unethical and illegal discrimination by acceding to an elderly white law firm client’s request for a lawyer “he could relate to,” someone “more like him.”
I had stated in the orientation seminar for new D.C. lawyers that doing so was not improper “discrimination” under D.C. ‘s legal ethics rule 9.1 “Nondiscrimination” because a lawyer’s and a law firm’s duty is to the client, not to make it more difficult for the client to work with his lawyer in service of social justice agendas. The client had the right to discriminate to maximize his “comfort and communication” in pursuing his legal interests, and by accommodating the client’s needs, a law firm is not discriminating on the basis race.
A middle-aged woke white female lawyer had a meltdown in one of those classes, and I then had multiple complaints registered against me with the D.C. Bar brass. I was and am right. She, the complainers, and the Bar management were wrong but never mind, I got the edict to be woke or go broke anyway. Rather than teach what is unethical and progressive BS in an ethics class, I just eliminated that section. (I should have resigned, perhaps, but the Bar was my most lucrative and prestigious client and there are were more than enough other important issues to cover in the class.)
Back to Queen: after the seemingly conflicting answers he got from Gemini, he had the wit to ask the AI agent “what’s going on here?” Gemini responded candidly:
Today I go to Annapolis where the Annapolis Opera has engaged me to do a presentation for its members on “Gilbert & Sullivan in America” in advance of the company’s production of “The Pirates of Penzance” two weeks from now. By pure coincidence, D.C.’s prestigious regional theater Arena Stage is hosting a production of “Makado,” a parody of the Victorian pair’s greatest work “The Mikado.”
To say the thing is witless and a vile blight on culture, intelligence, and one of the greatest entertainment repertoires in the English language would be to engage in criminal understatement. At a full 2.5 hours, a group of talented singers do relative justice to Sullivan’s melodies while emitting pointlessly and incompetently re-written lyrics. In between the songs is dialogue that either quotes Gilbert’s original libretto out of sync with what passes for the “plot,” or injects what the brainless—but woke!—adapters think is hilarious. (The mostly puzzled audience seldom agreed.)
“Makado” is an acronym for “Make America Kingly, Do!” Yet there is literally not a single reference in the new lyrics or the dialogue that makes a satiric observation relating to the title. The role of Ko-Ko in the show is a Donald Trump imitator, who announces the parody version of the famous “Little List”song as “The Lord High Retributioner.” That’s not bad, except that Ko-Ko isn’t the “king” either in the original or in this abortion. That would be the Mikado, you know, the Emperor of Japan, and the character arrives and behaves like the despot he is. The role is also played by a woman despite the Mikado’s iconic “Let the Punishment Fit the Crime” solo being written for a bass-baritone and sounding awful in the soloist’s mush-mouthed contralto.
The level of humor in the show is exemplified by the lead female character of Yum-Yum being called “Num-Num.” The original’s opening chorus (“If you want to know who we are, we are gentlemen of Japan”) is now sung by a chorus of two characters, and they are “billionaires of Japan.”
As is so often the case with adapted and even straight productions of G&S shows, the director and collaborators didn’t do their homework, don’t understand the genre, don’t respect their betters, and delude themselves into thinking they can improve the originals that have endured for over a century for good reason. The Savoy Operas are in the public domain and have been for decades, so, like Will Shakespeare’s canon , they suffer this abuse frequently. This pathetic attempt, however, is so incompetent and odoriferous that it could only be tolerated by Trump Deranged hysterics who would applaud a musical version “My Mother the Car” as long as someone sang a song called “Trump is a Poopy-Head.” That the renowned Arena Stage would agree to let its name be sullied by association with such amateurish junk nicely illustrates how bonkers the Distict’s elite have become.
I an hoping Annapolis is a bit better.
EA has four posts about “The Mikado” and progressive politics (Full Disclosure: I have played Ko-Ko twice and directed the show once). You can find them here.
