1.I always appreciate a lampooning of someone who deserves it, and this month I read just such a written mauling. The author was someone called T.A. Frank, the article was, “Please God, Stop Chelsea Clinton from Whatever She is Doing,” and the publication was (mirabile dictu) Vanity Fair. If you like good snark, well delivered, you should read that article.
I can only add a few other thoughts:
First, I generally like to blame Chelsea for nothing, because she had a horrible childhood at the hands of absolutely terrible parents. But she’s 37 now, so c’mon.
Second, how bad must Chelsea be, to drive a leftist writer in Vanity Fair to openly invoke the Deity in the title of an article about her? I know that it’s used ironically, but still.
Third, Mr. Frank, you’ve got to cut out the T.A thing, and just use your name. You must not have heard of Simpson’s Law of Initials (which I am just now making up), which states that people who use their initials usually have terrible names.
Great writer C.S. Lewis’s parents stuck him with “Clive Staples.” The Cummings family – not satisfied with the surname that their son was already going to suffer with – nailed him with “Edward Estlin.” (He was so badly beaten up throughout grade school that even as an adult, he never regained the ability to use capital letters. True story.) I knew an old guy who went by A.M, and that made perfect sense when I later learned that his name was Ambrose Marvin. Ouch.
On the other side of the ledger: Oklahoma quarterback and later GOP politician J.C. Watts? Julius (freaking) Caesar – I am not making that up. He should have never used those initials, because nothing could be cooler than answering your kindergarten roll call with a hearty “Here!” when your teacher called out a Roman emperor’s name. If my parents had blessed me with “Marcus Aurelius Simpson,” do you think I would be going by M.A.? I would not.
Anyway, T.A., if you use those initials, you are risking that we’re all distracted, imagining terrible names that are probably worse than your real name. Like Theodore Aloysius.
Ugh! I couldn’t help myself, and I tried to Google his name, and can’t find it anywhere. Now I’m going to obsess over it. Tenuous Alvin? Thelonius Asperger? (Although “Thelonius” is now eternally cool, since Monk.)
Anyway, Thaddeus Acclimate writes a hell of an article, and you should read it.
My favorite part was a small bit from Chelsea’s book It’s Your World, in which she is quoted thusly: “My mom wouldn’t let me have sugary cereal growing up (more on that later)…” Have you ever read a less enticing use of parentheses? Can you picture anyone reading that line and screaming in frustration, “Later? How can I wait?! You don’t just toss out a tease like that and then leave us hanging!”
On the other hand, if she had said, “My mom wouldn’t let me have my girlfriends over for slumber parties when dad was in town (more on that later)…?” Now I’m hooked. I’m flipping through pages in a blur like the meth just kicked in, scanning random pages before I desperately tear into the appendix, looking for “slumber party.”
2. Laughable MSM bias, exhibit # 11 million. When a racist terrorist murders three random bystanders in Fresno CA, the AP story quoted him as shouting “God is great,” before the killings. But he didn’t say that. What he said was, “Allahu akbar.” Can you detect the subtle difference there? No? Then you might have the makings of a MSM reporter.
Obligatory caveat: I know that most Muslims are fine people, and very few of them go on killing sprees in the name of their religion. But does anyone think we are doing anybody any long-term good by pretending to not notice which group has a killing spree problem?
If I were in charge of students in J-school and at the police academy – and I think we can all agree that I should be – I’d make a condition of graduation taking a one-question common sense quiz:
You get a call to a violent attack in your town. The attacker is said to have driven a truck into pedestrians, or used a pipe bomb or an AK 47 or a machete in his attack, and early reports are that he was screaming something at the top of his lungs while he did so. Is it more likely that he was screaming:
A. Jesus loves me, THIS I KNOW!
B. Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel, I MADE IT OUT OF CLAY!
C. That government is best which GOVERNS LEAST!
D. ALLAHU AKBAR!
Anybody who ponders the question for more than 2 seconds fails. (And takes an executive position with the AP, sadly.)
3. Speaking of the media, a Washington Post/ABC poll shows that if the last presidential election were held today, Trump would beat Hillary, including in the popular vote. I’m not sure how much stock to put in such a poll – it’s a hypothetical, and election losers always lose support in the aftermath – but it certainly undercuts the MSM narrative that Trump is plummeting in the polls, he’s disappointed his base, his defeat in 2020 is a foregone conclusion, etc.
But I love the poll just because it makes me think about all of those lefties sitting around the Post, realizing that they’d commissioned this poll, and they were going to have to publish it. If ever a situation cried out for the Hitler-screaming-at-his-generals from Downfall meme, this one is it!
4. Ossoff doesn’t quite win. Pajama Boy is all grown up – or as grown up as he’s going to get, anyway — and he’s running for congress. The Dems pony up over $8 million, a bunch of celebrities throw in their support – because that always works! – but the empty suit wunderkind comes up short of the majority he needed, which means that he’ll likely lose to the GOP nominee in June.
The best part of the story? When Ossoff talked to the press, he called his almost-not-losing – and I am not making this quote up – “A victory for the ages!”
Call me crazy, but that phrase makes me think of many events — Cannae (Hannibal vs. the Romans), Austerlitz (Napoleon versus everybody else), Vienna (Christian Europe v. Muslim Ottomans), or Gettysburg (Lincoln’s Republicans vs. slaveholding Democrats).
You know what battle I DON’T think of? Unknown metrosexual vs. a dozen unknown Republicans that results in a run-off for a Georgia House seat. But I guess the Dems need to take their victories where they can get them. Which is somewhere other than Georgia, apparently. Cue the sad trombone.
5. The UN votes Saudi Arabia onto the Women’s Rights Commission. Ugh. I think we all know what should happen next, right? Nikki Haley marches into their chambers, her stilettos echoing on the marble floors, cracking a whip over her head as her dark eyes flash angrily… Um, that is what we were all thinking, right? No? It’s just me? Fine.
So let’s just get straight to The Simpson Method of Determining Membership on a Women’s Rights Commission (copyright now, by me) which involves asking the applicants three wickedly subtle questions:
1. Are the women in your country not allowed to drive a car?
2. Are gay women in your country stoned to death?
3. Are women who are raped in your country then stoned to death?
Anyone who answers “yes” to any of those questions does NOT get onto the Women’s Rights Commission. Problem solved, and you’re welcome.
6. When it comes to Trump’s Wall, I thought I’d heard every possible leftist objection: it’s racist, it’s Not Who We Are, it’s expensive, it’s not gluten free, etc.
But this month, some “scientists” pointed out a new problem, which the MSM then picked up with gusto: it will harm various migratory animal species. I have to admit that I hadn’t thought about that, and at first blush it certainly seemed plausible, and as an animal lover, that bothered me. Until I read that those soon-to-be-devastated creatures included “108 species of migratory birds.”
Now it’s been a long time since I won that Nobel Prize in Ornithology – bilingual ornithology, if I can be allowed to toot my own horn — and I haven’t kept up on recent developments in the field. But if I remember correctly, many birds can fly.
Sure, a few can’t. You’ve got your chickens, your ostriches, your emi. (Not many non-ornithologists know that the proper Latin plural of “emu” is “emi.” Again, you’re welcome.)
But are those leftist Chicken Littles (HA!) really expecting us to believe that there are hundreds of bird species out there who migrate ON FOOT?
They will stop at nothing to tug at our heartstrings, and I’ve got to admit that that PSA almost writes itself: Sarah McLaughlin sings softly in the background, while endless hordes of bedraggled birds trudge along through scorching sand, wincing at every step, until they bonk into a big black wall that looks like Sauron built it. Then they stack up like cordwood at the base, quacking and bleating and making whatever other sounds they make (I didn’t really get a Nobel in Ornithology), while Trump and Ryan laugh from atop the wall as they start to tip over huge cauldrons of boiling oil onto the hapless birds.
And not for the first time do I wish that Sam Kinison was still with us, because you know that he’d bust into the middle of that PSA and start berating the birds: “Have you been WALKING across this freaking desert? Really?! Your feet have either tiny claws or webs on them – doesn’t that tell you something? I’ve got an idea: how about you USE YOUR WINGS!! They’re right there on your backs. FLAP THEM! OH! OOOHHHH!”
We miss you, Sam. We don’t miss Harry Reid, or Obama, or Hillary. But we miss you.
Martin Simpson 