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 9th 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.
Martin Simpson 