July 2016
So. It's Her
July 28 2016 10:34 PM
Abso-fucking-lutely. Keep your promises.
And, for chrissakes, don’t screw this up.
DNC Sabotaged Sanders
July 22 2016 06:39 PM
Headline today: "Leaked Emails Suggest DNC Was Working Against Democratic Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders“
Shocker.
Year of The Trump
July 22 2016 05:03 AM
My thoughts on the 2016 Republican National Convention just ended:
Pence
A dangerous dangerous guy with lunatic ideas, especially about women and science. He looks like Race Bannon from the Jonny Quest cartoon series.
Melania
The plagiarism was amusing and telling of a wobbly campaign leadership (especially the way in which they handled the aftermath cough cough coverup). But who cares? Ooops and move on, there’s nothing to see here, folks.
The Trump Kids
Donald Jr and Eric look like the Menendez brothers to me and ooze that same creepy vibe, plus Donald Jr is a repugnant big game hunter asshole who poses next to the dead elephant while holding its severed tail, so I’m obviously predisposed to despise them. Even so, they delivered perfectly fine speeches and the crowd loved them.
My nickname for Ivanka is TNT (‘Teeth ’n Tits’). She got the job done, too. Her dress looked off the rack, though. Sad.
I must have missed the other daughter, the one who doesn’t look like Maria Sharapova.
Barron looks like Damien from The Omen. Seriously.
Christie & Giuliani
Malignant opportunists. Pus sacks with legs.
Celebrity Speakers
I’m not going to write anything snarky about Scott Baio and Company because I’m probably going to be just as embarrassed by the celebrity speakers in Philadelphia next week. Suffice to say, it was a weak and odd lineup.
Ted Cruz
I’m giving simultaneous kudos and dope slaps to the Trump campaign leadership for letting Ted Cruz speak at all, much less on Thursday night, a very gracious miscalculation on their part. They could easily have just shut him out, probably should have, but I think they were desperate and self-deluded that they could turn him—until it was too late.
I’m giving props to Ted Cruz for sticking to his code of honor and his [insane and dangerous] set of ideas, and I’m giving him a HUGE benefit of the doubt that he knew exactly what he was doing, that his calculation is either to pick up the atomized pieces of a defeated and destroyed Republican Party on November 9 or strike out on his own with an independent theocratic third party movement. Otherwise, it was a kamikaze job all the way.
Trump’s Speech
Gotham City dark and unapologetically demagogic. The cornerstone law and order theme seems like a complete miscalculation, a self-serving reading of the moment that isn’t based in reality, but continued terrorist outbursts foreign and domestic could make it work. As a speech you’d really have to say it was too dark and too loud and too long and too late in the evening but, hey, I didn’t quit watching it and I doubt if anyone else did, either.
The Bottom Line
The media and the political establishment are calling the convention a trainwreck and a dumpster fire because the Trump machine didn’t have it on total lockdown, didn’t have it 100% under control. I don’t buy it. Trump supporters don’t care. John Q Public doesn’t care. The media and the political establishment are the only ones who care that the Trump campaign leadership is wobbly. It’s not an issue. No fistfights equals a successful convention in the Year of The Trump.
Too Close For Comfort
July 13 2016 07:41 AM
Artists, writers and poets, musicians, actors (especially actors!), scientists, professional athletes, pretty much anyone and everyone we dub as ‘famous’: the less I know about you, the better. I don’t want or need to know anything about your personal life, no matter how colorful and/or fascinating and/or inspiring and/or deliciously sordid your life might be. All I care about is what you do, your work. You, as a person and as a thing, stand between me and what you do, your work. You are a distraction.
And yet I couldn’t stop myself from reading this piece on Chuck Close in The New York Times Magazine this morning. Everything I don’t like to read, don’t want to read, and don’t need to know. But I couldn’t stop reading. Snobby elitist sensationalist NYC art scene fact-gossip masquerading as journalism. Shame on me.
Some great photographs, though.
Photograph: Christopher Anderson/Magnum, for The New York Times
RBG v Trump
July 12 2016 10:43 PM
Donald Trump must have really pissed off Justice Ginsburg a few weeks ago with his comments about Judge Gonzalo Curiel. She took it as an assault on the judiciary. She took it personally. Rightfully so, you’d think.
Of course she’s right about Donald Trump. And of course she shouldn’t have said it publicly. And of course Donald Trump responds by Tweeting that she is “mentally shot” and should resign. Of course of course of course.
What’s interesting, though, is that the Right isn’t losing its mind over this and going nuclear on her ass. No virtual pitchforks and flaming torches, no concerted outcry from the Republicans, no calls for Congressional hearings, no Fox News meltdown, no nothing. Barely a whimper.
Photo: M.Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO
Sanders Concedes
July 12 2016 06:51 PM
Sanders’ ideas prevailed in the primaries but Sanders himself did not. I can live with that. I will vote for Hillary Clinton in November, I will actively advocate for that Democratic Party victory.