So I was traveling for a big chunk of the last week, and now that the news cycle moves at the speed of light, I feel like I’m a month behind on mocking every public figure in the news. So this is going to be a “lightning round” kind of a column.
First, I think we need a new word to describe the current crop of Democrat presidential candidates.
I’ve always enjoyed the way that English has a bunch of idiosyncratic collective nouns for groups of various animals. In addition to the plain vanilla “flock of birds” or “herd of former first ladies,” there are cool oddities such as a pride of lions, or a murder of crows. (By the way, if we were to apply those kinds of terms to specific parts of the Democrat base, I’d be hard pressed to come up with better options than “a pride of transgenders” and “a murder of abortionists.”) (Not to mention a “warren of Northeastern WASPS.”) (#wemustneverstopmockingher)
I’ve been turning this idea over in my mind, and so far I’m thinking of the following options:
A confusion of Democratic candidates
A scourge of Democratic candidates
An embarrassment of Democrats
What do you think, CO nation? Will one of those work, or do you have any better alternatives?
Let’s take a quick run through the Murderers’ Row of Stupid™ that is the current Dem lineup of declared candidates:
1.Spartacus. Ugh. He announced with a slickly banal video comprised of 73 cliches strung together – children are our future, gluten-free apple pie is great, I like Main Street not Wall Street – whose emptiness is only exceeded by that of the vast vacuum of deep space, and the tumble-weed-occupied hollowness of his own cranium.
I still can’t get over the fact that he called himself – un-ironically, and with a straight face – “Spartacus.”
Not since a young Gordon Sumner announced that he was henceforth to be known as “Sting” has someone so narcissistically renamed himself. It’s a tribute to Sting’s musical talent that he was able to pull that off.
But kooky Cory is no Sting. And he’s certainly no Spartacus.
Look, Cassie the Wonder Dog Simpson did not call HERSELF “the Wonder Dog.” That’s an honorific bestowed by her many admirers and her owner.
And I could not get away with bombastically calling myself Martacus.
Though now that I’ve typed that, I like the way it looks. Maybe when I’m ready to announce my exploratory committee, I run that one up the flag pole and see who salutes…
2. Elizabeth Warren. The gift that keeps on Indian-giving, and she who must eternally be mocked, manages to step in it again. After denying for months that she ever claimed Indian ancestry on official documents, a mid-80’s application to the Texas bar surfaced with her signature on it affirming her Native American ancestry.
To make matters worse, she met with the head of some Indian organization and gave a classic misdirection apology, saying that she regrets clouding the issue of tribal affiliation or membership. As if the problem were that she didn’t properly document the genealogical minutiae that would establish her 1/1024th bona fides, rather than that she’s less Indian than Bjorn Borg!
By the way, if no one has gotten to this yet, can someone please check her high school yearbooks? I’m sure that most of what we’d find is about what we’d expect. Her favorite album was the Beatles’ White Album, her favorite song was Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” etc. (And yes, that’s the deep pull of the day: a Procol Harum reference.) (#neverstopmocking)
But maybe we’d find out the sweetest possible irony: that once, for a Halloween party, she wore redface.
3. Amy “Who?” Klobuchar. This Minnesota Senator made her announcement outdoors, which meant that she warned about how global warming is going to roast us all, while a benevolent and hilarious God sent a snowstorm that threatened to bury her in a neck-deep drift as she read.
Also, within 24 hours of her announcement, reports surfaced that she is one of the worst bosses in DC, with a very high staff turnover rate, due in large part to her tendency to scream, belittle and throw binders at her subordinates. According to reports, she has consulted Hillary Clinton, who advised her that lamps are easier to throw than binders, and that accuracy depends mostly on snapping the wrist on the release.
4. South Bend, IN mayor Pete Buttigieg. Never heard of this guy. But he’s got “butt” right there in his name, so he should fit right in with this crowd. And the bumper stickers will be funny.
5. Former HUD secretary Julian Castro has two things going for him. He can bask in the warm glow of success that we all associate with our nation’s well-run and desirable public housing projects, with their picket fences and spotless elevators and charming small-arms fire. And he’s named “Castro,” which subliminally endears him to leftists who cannot get enough of murderous socialist dictators. As long as the competing ticket of Carl Hitler and Freddy Stalin continue to have fundraising trouble in the Midwest, Castro has the inside track to the mass murderer aficionado slice of the moderate left.
6. Kamala Harris. This gem is seen by many as the front runner, and I can see why.
She doesn’t have “butt” or “Castro” in her name, she’s never called herself Spartacus, she’s never pelted subordinates with office supplies, and she doesn’t have to pretend that she’s not white, because she’s not. She’s also not Hillary Clinton, which is a huge advantage, in life and in politics.
On the other hand, she was a prosecutor, which for a distressingly large slice of the leftist electorate makes her one of those little Eichmanns who crush the noble victim classes under the heel of the patriarchy, or something.
But on the third hand, she was apparently a mediocre prosecutor at best, so she might be able to argue that she was secretly undermining the system from within by being terrible at her job.
On the fourth hand, she slept with creepy old San Francisco mayor Willie Brown to get two of her first jobs in politics. She was 29 at the time, and he was 60. And married. And not exactly Idris Alba. (Who you may remember as the guy who narrowly edged me out for People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive last year in what many have called “a very suspicious result.”) (And by “many” I mean “me.”)
So you know it was true love. Because the heart wants what it wants.
And apparently what the heart sometimes wants is a $72K per year no-show job on the California Medical Assistance Commission.
There’s a name for someone who does what Kamala Harris did with Willie Brown to launch her political career.
And it rhymes with the last name of Cory Booker.
But as hilarious as the announced candidates are, other Democrats have been even funnier this month. I want to talk about AOC (Annoying Oblivious & Callow) in my next column, but I cannot ignore the amazing shenanigans in the top echelon of the Virginia Democratic party.
Apparently the equivalent of “business casual” for Democrats in the 1980s was walking around in black face. Two of the top three state officeholders turned out to have blackface pictures in circulation, and the third leftist stooge only managed to avoid that fate by being African-American, which seems to be what it takes for a Virginia Dem to resist the inexplicable draw to go full Jolson.
Unfortunately for him, he is also something of a Bill Clinton/Ted Kennedy old school Democrat (genus: “grope-a-saurus rex”), and has thus been credibly accused by two different women of rape.
And these weren’t Blasey-Ford-esque – “I only know that it happened sometime in the 1980s and somewhere in the Western hemisphere, and there were no witnesses and no corroborating evidence of any kind” – type of accusations. These were made by credible women, who had dates and details and supporting contemporary accounts, and with whom the creepy pol admitted having sex.
And so naturally, the MSM and Democrats (but I repeat myself) have not said a word about this guy. Thus launching the “Who? Me too?” movement, when the accused perv in question is a leftist.
Ironically, none of the above details about the Governor Blackface scandal are the worst part.
Even the picture of Gov. Northam was not the worst part.
(And you’d think that it would be hard to get worse than having your staff fidgeting in a meeting, until one of them clears her throat and say, “So… boss… Were you the one in blackface, or the one in the klan hood?” And then you notice that your p.r. person has her fingers crossed as she whispers, “klan hood, klan hood, klan hood.”)
The worst part was that just before the blackface scandal broke, the Governor revealed the leftist nonchalance about abortions up until the moment of birth, and – in his case, apparently – afterwards, too.
If I were hired to advise Democrat candidates (HA!), I would advise my clients to keep some old pics of themselves in blackface from their high school production of Porgy and Bess. That way, when they get caught taking a bold pro-infanticide stance in an interview, they could leak those pics to the press, and hastily call a press conference to explain that they’ve always been admirers of George Gershwin’s work, and those were different times.
It’s a damage-control cliché for a reason: When the talk turns to baby killing, roll out the shoe polish.
Which brings me to my defense of dressing up as a member of another race.
I know. But hear me out.
Of course I would never defend actual, old-style, racist minstrel show blackface. That’s the perfect example of the kind of issue I used as teachable moments as I raised my children: if I saw a report on a blackface story as my then-2-year-old daughter was toddling by, I’d ask her, “Who do we blame that on?”
And she’d look at me angelically and say, “The Democrats!”
And I’d give her a hug and a cookie.
But enough about my fantastic parenting skills, and my thriving young adult daughter.
Blackface is obviously offensive and wrong. But going to a costume party dressed as a favorite character of another race is the opposite, if it is meant to emulate and compliment, not denigrate. White kids who look up to black celebrities might go to a party dressed as Michael Jordan or Bruno Mars, or – if they have not been raised properly – as Barack Obama, with makeup to match.
Even leftist hypocrites have been forced to implicitly admit that that is not offensive. They’ve given passes to people like unpleasant professional shrieker Joy Behar (who once dressed up as a “beautiful African woman”), and Jimmy “Waaaah” Kimmel (who dressed up like Karl Malone and spoke in a parody of Ebonics).
Obviously, the purpose of a costume party – at Halloween or any other time – is to wear a costume. If you’re dressing as someone, you want to try to look like that person. If that person has different hair, you wear a wig. If that person has a beard, you get a fake beard. If that person dresses distinctively, you try to find similar clothes.
And if that person has a different skin color than yours, you try to match that. Otherwise, no one at the party is ever going to guess that the white girl in the dress is supposed to be Beyonce, or the white kid in the suit is supposed to be Obama, or the black girl in the hideous pantsuit and the prosthetic Clydesdale ankles is supposed to be Hillary. (By the way, if you are thinking that “Prosthetic Clydesdale Ankles” would be a good name for a punk band, you are not wrong.)
Which would lead us to the perfect world designed by humorless leftist poke-noses: a world in which everybody would go to costume parties dressed exactly like themselves. Hooray!
I am Martacus, and I approve this message.
Martin Simpson 