Month: September 2017

As September begins, I’d like to look back on a column I wrote in February, filled with good advice (if I do say so myself) for leftists who were struggling to find useful ways to respond to the new Trump presidency.  Let’s re-visit my 5 tips, and see whether the left has taken any of them.

Tip 1 was not to over-react to every Trump miscue, no matter how small:  “If you start with the outrage meter pegged to 11 for every garden-variety bonehead comment that Trump makes, you’re going to lose your voice, burst a blood vessel, and be thoroughly ignored when Trump does something truly egregious.”

To put it mildly, the left has not taken that advice.  They built a new outrage meter that goes up to 27, and they have dialed it up and left it there.  Trump compliment’s Macron’s wife?  27!  Trump threatens nuclear war against the Norks? 27!   Trump fires the third cousin of the assistant to the undersecretary of the department of weights and measures?  27!

Maybe the best recent example is shoe-gate.  (27!)  When Trump and Melania walked to the helicopter to visit the hurricane damage at Houston, did the MSM focus on weighty issues like the latest assessment of the storm’s strength, or how efficiently the Trump team was coordinating federal relief efforts?

No.  They were flabbergasted by the fact that Melania wore stilettos across the lawn.  (I’ll pause here so that you can gasp in outrage, and clutch your pearls, and shake your head mournfully.)

Remember when it was the height of sexist piggery to comment on – or even to notice – a woman’s clothes or appearance?  It seems like just last election cycle – because it was just last election cycle – that Hillary’s clothing choices, for example, were off limits for discussion.

If a dashing, insightful male columnist happened to notice that her usual Mao-inspired blocky pantsuit made her look like a cross between a beige, deuce-and-a-half troop carrier and a Soviet brutalist apartment building, that columnist was harshly judged for giving voice to such an improper thought.  (Even though I thought it was a hilarious comparison when I came up with it.)

But Melania’s stilettos were the lead story on all the networks and cable channels for several news cycles.

That’s not just superficial.  It’s also misreading an audience.

Consider: almost half of the American population are males.  And contrary to every sitcom you’ve ever seen, about 98% of those are males are heterosexual. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)  When they watch video of Melania walking away from the camera in a pair of fashionable, snug slacks, do you know what they are NOT focusing on?

Her SHOES!  She could have been wearing combat boots or ballet slippers, and we would not have noticed.

As the CO Roving Correspondent for Affairs (and stilettos) (…er, “stuff”), I am burdened by the professional duty to observe the news, so I forced myself to watch that video of Melania very closely and repeatedly, as if it were the Zapruder film.

On my 17^th viewing, I detected that she has feet.

And I don’t think that makes me an evil, sexist creep.  (Stop laughing.)  Because I can turn the tables.

For all the straight women or gay men out there – do you remember when you saw the scene in which Daniel Craig walked out of the surf in his first turn as the new James Bond?   How many of you were thinking, “I can’t wait until he’s all the way out of the water, so I can see if he’s wearing swim fins or flip flops?”

My point is that if your analysis of Trump’s presidency is at all centered on his ridiculous hair style or Melania’s choice of footwear, no one is going to take you seriously.  And they shouldn’t.

By the way, would you like to see one of the lefty women who criticized Melania’s fashion sense?  Google “Lynn Yaeger,” who is a Vogue fashion writer.  But wait!  Before you do, if you happen to be holding knitting needles, please put them down.  Because you may inadvertently have the defensive, autonomic instinct to plunge them into your eyes.  I’ll wait….

So…yeah.  For those of you who have always said to yourselves, “I wonder what Ronald McDonald would look like if he was halfway through transitioning to a female in his late 70’s, and then had a grand mal seizure in the middle of cutting his own hair, and while he was unconscious on the floor cruel local teens came in and drew black cat’s ears on his/her upper lip?”   Wonder no more, my friends.

And yes, this person does not approve of the way that Melania looks.  So take that, Melania!

 

Tip 2:  “Stop calling yourself The Resistance.  It’s creepy, and self-dramatizing, and it makes you sound like a 15-year old.  (And not a popular, well-adjusted 15-year old.)”

Well they certainly haven’t taken that one to heart, have they?

After 6 months of the ironically named “Antifa” – they really should be just “fa,” which would have the added benefit of being a word that their members might have at least a shot at spelling correctly – they’ve gone beyond self-dramatizing adolescence, and added thuggish violence to the mix.  You can almost hear many millions of Americans being repulsed all over again by these creeps.

 

Tip 3:  “Don’t think you are going to get any mileage with most Americans by pointing out how badly Trump is treating the press.  Do you not know how despised the press is?“

I didn’t think it would be possible to hate the dishonest media more than we hated them back in February.  But they’ve worked hard to earn even more enmity from all reasonable people, and they’ve succeeded.  Just the words “Don Lemon” make me throw up in my mouth.

I would sooner get a fashion makeover from Lynn Yaeger than believe anything I hear about politics from the MSM.

Tip 4: “Consider not insulting everyone you are trying to persuade.”  I know this one can sound rich, coming from a snarkster like me.  But I’m not insulting anyone who is remotely persuadable.

And after the last six years, the right doesn’t need to persuade any new people.  (I’m not saying that we shouldn’t always be trying to enlarge the conservative base by advancing conservative ideas, which work whenever they’re tried.  I just mean that it’s the Dems who have lost 1000 nationwide seats since 2010, including congress and the WH; they’re the ones who need to change their ways if they want to get back into power.)

The last few months — pre- and post-Charlottesville – have featured leftists doubling down on their campaign strategy of trying to brand all conservatives as Nazis and white supremacists.  You don’t have to know many conservatives to know how ridiculous that is.  I’ve said it before: you could fit all the neo-Nazis and white supremacists in the country into a mid-sized community college gym.  Pretending that half of the country belong to that group is a great way to keep that half of the country voting against you.

Why do you think that millions of people are proud to wear all kinds of “Deplorables” gear?  Because your insults – like your tears in November – are sweet to us.

Tip 5:  “We remember Obama.  And we remember that you spent the last 8 years getting him his pipe and his fuzzy slippers…”  This one was about the left and MSM’s obvious double-standards, and that’s another lesson that they haven’t learned.

After covering for the left 24/7 for 8 years – ignoring Lois Lerner and “voters are idiots” Gruber and Obama promising Vlad that he’d be flexible after his last election, and doubling of the national debt, and Obama’s bumbling, inadvertent midwifing of the birth of ISIS – their over-the-top smears of Trump aren’t fooling anybody who doesn’t desperately want to be fooled.

Crypt-Keeper Pelosi is still out there.  Crazy Maxine Waters is too.  We don’t have Pajama Boy Ossoff to kick around in GA anymore, but the Left’s first string is still on the field.  They’ve got no bench, Kapernick is their QB, and the average age of their backfield is the late 100s.

All things considered, the left should be doing great.  Though the MSM has greatly exaggerated the problems of Trump and the GOP, those problems are real, and they are maddening to the base.  With control of all three branches, they’ve failed to repeal the disastrous flaming wreck that is Obamacare, they’ve not gotten to tax reform yet, the wall is not being built, and the number of White House firings (Comey and Bannon and Mooch, oh my) is dizzying.

Yet while Trump’s numbers are down and the GOP establishment is widely reviled, the left is in arguably worse shape.  Even with Trump’s personal flaws, and the fact that the GOP congress’ best move has been to go on vacation, and my growing suspicion that McConnell is actually a chinless cartoon turtle, can you picture anyone who didn’t vote last time — or who voted for Trump — looking at the Pelosi/Waters/Durbin Dems and saying, “That’s for me!  I can’t wait to vote for the Left in 18!”

Me neither.

So here’s my Top 5 favorite things that happened in the last half of August:

1.I’ve got to start with the obvious.  In a feat of thick-headed leftist insanity that would rival the average Tuesday at CNN, ESPN decided that they could not have one of their broadcasters give color commentary on a UVA football game because his name was Robert Lee.

Never mind that this Robert Lee’s middle name didn’t start with an “E.”  And never mind that this Robert Lee was Asian.  (Fun historical fact: surprisingly few Confederate generals were Asian.)  And never mind that the civil war ended 152 years ago.   They nixed his coverage of the game because he shared his name with a famous Confederate.

Many pundits have had a lot of fun with the stupidity of this move.  But those pundits don’t have my top-secret access to a recording of ESPN’s board meeting at which this programming decision was made.

Because I love the members of CO nation – especially Gail Patty, and she knows why – I give you the transcript of that meeting:

CEO:  “What a mess!   How did we even hire Robert Lee in the first place?”

Minions around the table look at each other sheepishly.

Minion 1 (squirming):  “We never noticed the name.  I mean, come on, you’re looking at an Asian guy, you don’t think, ‘I wonder what Confederate general he’s named after.’”

CEO (loudly):  “I guess that’s how we ended up with Stonewall Chang scheduled to anchor the half-time coverage?!”

Minion 2:  “We probably should have caught that one.”

CEO: “What about Nathan Bedford Wong, who was all set to do on-field interviews in the same game?!”

Minion 3 (shrugged helplessly):  “We made a few mistakes…”

CEO:  “A few?  A FEW?  Help me out here.  Remind me who was in the lineup on the desk in New York?  The guys who would be anchoring our day-long coverage of ALL of college football?!”

The minions all stare at their hands.

CEO: “Remind me!”

Minion 1 (clearing his throat, and keeping his eyes down):  “Jeff Hitler, Tommy Stalin, and Keith Bin Laden.”

CEO:  “That didn’t send up any red flags for anybody?!”

Minion 2: “I mean, in retrospect—”

CEO:  “Ugh.  Nevermind.  Lee is out.  Who can we sub in for him?”  Minion 2 raises a hand, but the CEO fixes him with an icy stare.  “If you say Billy Gosnell, I swear to God…”

Minion 2 slowly lowers his hand.

CEO:  “Great.  I’m surrounded by idiots.  Everybody OUT!”

As the minions file toward the door with slumped shoulders, the CEO stabs a button on his intercom.  “Get me Fred Mengele from the PR team.  We’ve got to do some damage control!   Who’s the new hire in social media?”

Intercom voice: “Bobby Goebbels?”

CEO: “Yeah, I’ve heard good things.  Get him, too.”

And, scene.

 

2.  Trump’s Afghanistan speech. Even though Lindsey Graham praised it – usually a benchmark of all that is crappy – I liked it. He explained why he had changed his mind – from wanting a complete pull-out, to seeing the wisdom of leaving a big enough force to prevent the kind of dangerous collapses that have happened in Syria and Iraq.  He also had the common sense to defer to his generals, and he gave a verbal rib kick to Obama’s decision to put a timeline on a withdrawal, rather than letting conditions on the ground dictate future moves.

By the way, that’s another idiotic mistake of Obama’s that the MSM has somehow managed not to notice.  When he announced his surge in Afghanistan, he said that he’d also be pulling the troops out again in 18 months.

You don’t have to be a military genius to know how stupid that is.  If you’re facing a determined guerilla force that cannot oppose you in fixed battle but can only hope to out-wait you, you don’t announce a new force deployment while at the same time saying, “Oh, by the way, you only have to wait for 18 months, and we’ll be leaving.”

Thanks, Barack von Clausewitz.

 

3.  Speaking of idiotic decisions, some publishing house inexplicably paid Hillary Clinton to write a book on her spectacular failure in the last election. If you haven’t seen that book yet, take a look at the cover:  The top half says, “What Happened,” and the bottom half says “Hillary Rodham Clinton.”

May I suggest that if you put a question mark after the first half, the cover of the book is a question that answers itself?

Anyway, the first excerpt from this horrible book focused on her reaction to Trump during one of her debates.  She says what a “creep” he was, and how he “loomed” over her, and made her “incredibly uncomfortable” by “invading her space.”

And she knows what she’s talking about.  Because she spent 8 years in the White House with a huge creep looming all over the place, invading intern’s spaces (among other things) with a cigar (among other things) and making any female within groping distance “incredibly uncomfortable.”

Don’t you love it when leftist gender feminists proudly proclaim what strong women they are, but then get the vapors and stagger toward the nearest fainting couch when a big mean man gets too close for their fragile sensibilities? Put on your big girl pantsuit, Hill-dog!

The best part of this story:  guess who they got to read the book for the audio version?

Gilbert Gottfried was apparently unavailable.

Fran Drescher wasn’t returning calls.

All of the teenage girls who sprinkle their speech with “like” were too busy taking selfies.

Crows – who can caw in just the right grating, unpleasant manner – cannot read English.

Not even poor, pedestrian Chelsea Clinton, whose terrible childhood at the hands of horrible parents has drained every bit of life force out of her, was up for this task.

No.  The publisher’s staff — saddled with a book filled to the brim with leaden, dishonest, mind-numbingly banal, sludge-like prose – decided to steer into the skid when choosing a reader for the audio book.

They picked Hillary Clinton.

Ugh.  Imagine that voice.  And then imagine listening to that voice, reading those badly written thoughts, from that mediocre mind.

This book raises so many questions.   Such as, “Why on earth did she write it?”  And, “Who on earth is going to buy it?”

And, “What difference, at this point, does it make?”

 

4.  After the last two weeks, I think it’s time to start commissioning a bunch of new confederate statues. Who’s with me?

No one?  Really?  Wait — hear me out.

Did you notice anything that the MSM did NOT mention during the entire Charlottesville statue kerfuffle?  Here’s a hint, in the form of the news copy that I would write about this story, if I somehow had a job as a journalist:

“Over the past several weeks, crowds have been outraged by various slavery-supporting Democrats commemorated in hundreds of statues and memorials throughout the southern states.  Protesters have called for the removal of artwork that honors Democrat Robert E. Lee, and Democrat Stonewall Jackson, and Democrat KKK-founder Nathan Bedford Forrest, among many others, every last one of them Democrats.

A few of these statues were put up by Democrats after their slaves were freed by Republicans after the Civil War, but many more of them were put up by Democrat mayors and town councils and governors in the 1920s, when Democrat-invented and -enforced Jim Crow laws held sway.  Many were also put up and/or celebrated in the 1960s — by Democrat politicians and racists such as Orville Faubus (D), George Wallace (D), Al Gore Sr. (D), and Bull Conner (D) — angry about the Civil Rights movement.

We reached out to all of the national Democrat leaders who had total control of the White House, House and Senate from 2008 – 2010 and yet did not say a word or lift a finger to do anything at all about the plague of Confederate monuments dotting our landscape.  But all of those Democrats were all unavailable for comment.”

Do you see the subtle theme?

So let’s move all of those statues – and maybe make a few more – and display them all in a grand building called “The Hall of Famous Democrats.”  I hear that Hillary had a huge presidential library half-built, until November 9^th happened.   That sounds like the perfect venue!

 

5.  Finally, a great story about academia!

After what seems like decades of stories about spineless administrators capitulating to leftist loon professors and know-it-all brainwashed undergrads, and Antifa thugs preventing free speech, and safe spaces and trigger warnings and infantile demands that various privileges be checked, there comes a story that starts the same way.

But oh, how this one ends!

Several years ago, a handful of ne’er-do-wells and jack-a-napes and cranial-rectal-inversion sufferers at the University of Missouri got it in their heads that Mizzou was a hotbed of hateful racists devoting their lives to oppressing the perpetually oppressed types.

The details are not important, because they are well-nigh universal in these morality plays: some folks from the wrong group looked askance at those from another group, and complaints were made, and administrators groveled, and a creepy ginger leftist prof solicited male students to assault people who were filming the protest.  The mediocre school football team (“the Fightin’ Kapernicks”) said they wouldn’t play again until confessions were forced and demands were met and reparations doled out.  And all of that happened, and it wasn’t enough, and spineless administrators were fired, and the whole world was watching.

And the part of the world who were Mizzou alums and benefactors said many words of Anglo-Saxon derivation, and sent some of those words to school officials in emails and letters and phone calls.  And then they closed their wallets, and kept them closed.

The delicious, satisfying result?  Google it, and behold the headlines and details:  “Mizzou Misery.”  “Catastrophic 35% Drop in Mizzou Enrollment.”  “Seven dorms closed, 400 positions lost.”  “Tumbleweeds rolling through empty campus.”    “Mizzou Alumni: Why didn’t Administration listen to Martin Simpson, and break out the tear gas, rubber bullets and industrial drums of Whup-ass in response to student protests?”

All but the last two headlines are real.  And they should be.

The moral of the story: the next time a bunch of faculty and student crybullies try to take over your campus, stand up to them.  Fire the profs, expel the students, and toss them off campus like you were John Wayne running the town bully through a pair of swinging saloon doors and pitching him out into a muddy street.

Or else prepare for your school to be crippled by idiots.