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» The Mother-of-All Understatements
Bret says that » Hannity in No William F. Buckley.
Now there's an understatement .. if ever I heard one.
» Difficult to Respect
A part of me finds it difficult to respect people who are not able to possess their souls.
I had a boss once who told me, "He who angers you, controls you."
He was talking about himself .. because, once he got upset, he would lose it.
He could see how out-of-control he was.
And he could see how this tendency put him at a disadvantage.
He would still lose his shit from time to time, but he tried hard not to.
He once told me, "I have to bite my tongue so much that it has callouses on it."
At t=4:50 in this video, Mika said, "I knew the president would be tweaked by that. It's alarming how easily this president is played."
I know exactly what she means.
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» If You Leave Now, You'll Still have a Job in the Morning
Remind me to tell you that story about the time that my boss reached into his top desk drawer and pulled out a hammer and held it up and said to this dude who was making one excuse after another for why he did this stupid thing.
My boss said to this kid, "Son, if you leave right now, you'll still have a job in the morning."
But the boy just wouldnt quit.
Blammo! .. the hammer came down on his metal desk, startling everybody working there in the office. Very calmly he said, "I dont know why you're still talking, because you dont work for me anymore."
There are many such colorful stories that I could share. Some people are just characters. They dont necessarily try to be characters .. but they just can't help it.
» When His Beautiful Children Suddenly Became My Assholes
When things were running smoothly, he would say to me things like, "Have you noticed how wonderfully all my beautiful children have been performing lately? Everybody is happy with our staffing this outage. My phone has been ringing all week."
When things were running smoothly, they were all his beautiful children. But the minute one of them screwed up, he would bark at me, "Your assholes are running amuck in there." Instantly they became my assholes.
» Finding Humor in the Absurdity of Insanity
Oh, this made me pee my pants. "Can this really be happening?"
And you gotta see this. Too much. I havent laughed like that since I saw John Oliver blow up 2016.
It made me think of that quote by Hunter Thompson » "If you're going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you're going to be locked up."
Speaking of Hunter Thompson .. I wonder what Matt Taibbi thinks of that video.
» When the Student is Ready
[ In accordance with the ancient saying » "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear." .. I read a book by Hunter Thompson at a key-early point in my life.
He was saying some wild-n-crazy shit that I had trouble wrapping my young head around. But I was very much entertained by his crazy ideas and I could feel them challenging me and stretching me.
I could feel myself growing .. with these concepts that I didnt even know existed.
It wasnt until some months later, after I had finished the book, that I caught myself saying, "He's exactly right."
And I remember thinking how sad of a thing that was. How very sad .. that his crazy rantings were not crazy at all.
In a way, Hunter was the person who took me from a very parochial perspective .. to the beginning of a more cosmopolitan mindset.
And this is why I appreciate Hunter Thompson .. because I feel like he jump-started me. I bet that Alex Gibney knows exactly what I am talking about.
» Hidden Within this Apparent Paradox
You know, Hunter plays that line between insanity and a sober look at the truth. For me, this is the thing that makes Hunter Thompson Hunter Thompson.
"How can this guy be such a nut and be right at the same time?" I wondered.
And somehow these two seemingly incompatible qualities coexist necessarily in him. Hidden somewhere within this apparent paradox was something that spoke to me .. something I could relate to.
No matter how fucked up you might be feeling .. you always feel less fucked up after reading Hunter .. and wiser to the ugly realities that lie hidden not far beneath the surface. How can you not love a guy like that? ]
Oh, this too. "If anybody would like to work on my campaign in an unofficial capacity..."
It really does help when you can laugh at the absurdity of these things that are actually not at all funny .. as I'm sure Zendaya would agree.
» Difficult Times that Come as a Result of Economically Expedient Decisions
Speaking of things that are bad for America, and which have become painfully obvious .. one of the reasons why I like Egan, beyond his skill set .. is because he wrote that book titled » The Worst Hard Time .. about people who survived the Dust Bowl ..
.. which is a story about how the older generation made decisions based on economic expediency .. and which had devastating effects on the younger generation.
My intuition tells me that there are lessons contained in that story that apply to us today.
Ya think? I do. And I'm not the only one. I bet that Henry would agree. And also the folks at NatGeo. I am sure that Michael Kimmelman and the residents of Houston feel me here. I wonder what Cenk and Ana think. Stay tuned for breaking developments.
I dont want to be walking down the corridors of eternity, and coming upon people who ask, "Where are you from, good sir?"
And I say, "I'm from the early twenty-first century."
And they frown and say, "Oh, you were part of that stupid generation .. that ruined everything for everybody."
I saw a column that you wrote a month or two ago that said that the apocalypse was not right around the corner. And I thought, "I hope he knows something that I dont know."
» Why is This So Difficult?
July 21, 2017 - Speaking of Bret Stephens, he is a new columnist there at the Times .. who came over from the Post. (Probably as part of the columnist exchange program.)
He got my attention right away. He is supposedly a conservative type. (Like my friend Jedediah.)
I just read this thing by him titled » Is the News Media an Existential Threat? .. where he is responding to stupid shit proclaimed by Dennis Prager the radio guy. (I dont listen to talk radio myself. I have enough voices in my head already.)
I love this shit where people publicly call out dumb ass bullshit that stupid people say. And then they proceed to tell them why the stupid shit that they said is so ignoraneously stupid.
[ This is sort of Krugman's signature technique. And Krugman is not shy .. particularly in economic matters. Tho Proverbs says that we shouldnt try to teach fools .. because they will despise and scorn your wisdom. ]
And I found myself agreeing with much of what he had to say. Near the end I caught myself saying, "Why is this so hard?" .. to call bullshit on such obvious bullshit .. even if the stupid shit happens to be coming from someone of a similar political bent.
In other words, you dont give glaringly obvious dumb-shit a pass .. just because the person is supposedly on your team.
If the captain is headed straight for a gigantic iceberg, you dont pretend like he's doing a good job. Because he will take you down with him. Is not this obviously obvious?
» A Reason Why Calling Bullshit Might be So Difficult
Well .. if people are getting paid money, then that would definitely be a reason why calling bullshit could be such a difficult thing.
If people said to me, "If you keep calling bullshit on our patron, then we will stop paying you." .. how many people are strong enough to say, "Take your money and go fuck yourself." ?
Not many, unfortunately. This is why the problem of the wealthy putting money into the greedy hands of our elected officials has become our nation's signature defect.
This is why our eleted leaders are so eager to help corporations, who are already flush with cash .. and not very interested in helping anyone else.
Actions speak louder than words.
Stephen touches upon to this thing where actions speak about and reveal a person's true motivations when he talks about the thing that caused Gary Cohn to quit.
Certainly Cyrus Vance knows what I am talking about here. He is yet another example of how justice in America comes out perverted.
Sad .. for the weak and the poor and the helpless. But good news for the rich-n-powerful .. for whom the rules do not apply. I bet that Wilbur knows exactly what I am talking about.
I bet that Hillary and Donna Brazile and Debbie the Disgraceful know exactly what I am talking about here.
Probably Sharon, too.
» Burning the World in Revenge
Speaking of how the rules do not apply to the rich-n-powerful .. check out this paragraph from Lindy West (5th paragraph):
Donald Trump, our predator in chief, seems to view the election of Barack Obama as a white man being fired. He and his supporters are willing to burn the world in revenge. This whole catastrophic cultural moment was born of that same entitlement, of Trump's paws and Weinstein's unbelted bathrobe, of the ancient cycles of abuse that ghostwrote the Trump campaign's real slogan: If I can't have you, no one will.
I dont think that I have ever read another paragraph quite like that. Have you? It reminds me of a line in that Yeat's poem that says:
The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
» Full of Spite
Speaking of passionate intensity .. Blow calls Trump the Chieftain of Spite. The term spite is defined as:
- A disposition to thwart and disappoint the wishes of another; ill-will; malevolence; malice; grudge; rancor.
- Malicious ill will prompting an urge to hurt or humiliate.
- Ill will or hatred toward another, accompanied with the disposition to irritate, annoy, or thwart; a desire to vex. injure, or trick-fuck.
This speaks to another common observation about President Donald .. is that he only seems to be against things. He is not really for anything .. beyond the degree that he is against the flipside of that thing.
Do you think that Trump has a sense of decency?
Olbermann says that (t=0:35) Trump's policies make sense if you keep asking yourself, "What would have happened here in this country if the Germans had won World War II?"
Food for thought.
» Some Clout
Oh, look .. now they are not going to give Hannity the award. That's some clout. I bet that Sean wants to kick his ass in the worst way.
He is a Pulitzer winner. All Pulitzer winners are studs. I am sure that Socrates would concur.
I could feel myself analyzing the way he balanced respect with disgust. That seems to a key variable in such pieces.
Sometimes certain things disgust me .. and I find this disgust difficult to conceal. It can be difficult to play it off as mere disappointment. Particularly when they should know better.
Is he really a "denier of anthropogenic climate change"?
I have a good story along such lines .. but I cannot tell this story.
Here is a socialist site calling him a neocon and lamenting the Times for hiring him.
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