I’ve been totally out of the CO Nation loop since late last week, when I found out that my work group was going to be going all online-starting this past Monday. What followed was a hectic, headlong dash toward minimal technological competence on my part.
Over the past 4 days I’ve held over 30 online meetings to train my employees in some new-to-us software, and written and revised supporting documents, with the help of some amazing colleagues. I’m an old dog, and I’ve been learning new tricks, and I’m feeling equal parts exhilarated and exhausted.
Now that I’ve caught my breath, I realize how much I’ve missed the CO nation, and am glad to share a few thoughts on recent events, most obviously the virus and its effects.
I hesitate, though. I don’t mean to make light of the virus – obviously – or anyone who has gotten it – obviously – or who has a loved one who has gotten it – obviously! And since this thing is going to get worse before it gets better, I know that writing anything sarcastic or mocking at this point might be the very definition of “too soon!”
So let me issue a friendly warning.
Not a “trigger warning,” because CO readers are old-school, grown-ass adults and not emotional hemophiliac, infantilized, bubble children.
But a sincere note of caution: if you are not up for reading some of my usual, light-hearted goofiness, please skip this column, and no hard feelings. My stuff isn’t for everyone in the best of times, and in times like this, which are sad and scary for many, my writing might sound inappropriate, to say the least.
On the other hand, birds got to fly, fish got to swim, and I’ve got to make childish jokes at the expense of self-important leftists.
So fair warning, and off we go…
This isn’t a new idea, I know, but the MSM has really covered themselves in shame once again with their politically hack-tastic coverage of the virus.
Exhibit A: “Don’t call it ‘Chinese virus,’ because that’s RACIST!”
Never mind that every empty head on the MSM called the virus either the Wuhan virus or the Chinese virus until the beginning of February. Then Donald Trump said the same thing, so… it’s RACIST!
The knucklehead MSMers seem to think that none of us can remember as far back as a month ago, and that there’s no such thing as video. Or audio. Or the DVR, or the internet.
For extra hilarity, they actually claim that identifying a virus by its place of origin is absolutely unacceptable under any circumstances!
Which is why you’ve never heard of the Spanish flu. Or the German measles. Or the West Nile virus. Or Ebola (after a river in Africa). Or lyme disease (after a town in Connecticut.) Or Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.
Or Washington DC TLABFS (Total Lack of Any Brain Function Syndrome).
Or the IHGS – Illinois Hilarious Genius Syndrome, named after the condition for which I am Patient Zero. (The “Typhoid Marty” of this affliction, if you will.)
By the way, what do you think MERS stands for?
Mindless Erectile Randiness Syndrome? (Many young males suffer from this affliction.)
Malevolent Enduring Ridiculousness Syndrome? (Many old white ladies who imagine themselves to be Indians fall victim. In extreme instances, this can develop into GSD – Grandma Squanto Dementia — and sometimes even late-stage WMNSMHS. Pronounced roughly like “women’s mess,” this is the dreaded “We Must Never Stop Mocking Her Syndrome,” and is virtually always fatal to one’s political career.) (HA!)
No. MERS actually means, “Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome.” So let’s all get our hijabs over our heads and ululate in rage at the unfairness of it all.
Where was I?
Oh, yeah. If we dropped the locational naming, what label could we choose instead?
Would they rather we pull a “Lou Gehrig’s disease,” and search out the first bat-eating dope who started this pandemic, and named it after him? Then we could call it the “Ming Wong virus,” or whatever. Which I suspect would not placate the perpetually aggrieved SJWs among us.
I think I can speak for most conservatives — who are well-meaning people who have no tolerance for racism, or even its dimwitted cousin, Identity Politics – when I say, “Stick it, MSM! We’re not going to play your childish PC games. In fact, we’re going to intentionally tweak your hypocritical pseudo offense-taking.”
So it’s the kung flu!
Or the Wu Flu.
Or the Asian Contagion.
Or the Flu Man Chu.
Or maybe most accurately of all, the CCCUS — Chi Com Cover-Up Syndrome.
As far as we’re concerned, MSM, you all have third-degree SCRID – Socialist Cranial-Rectal Inversion Disease. The best hope for recovery is an aggressive course of reading Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell and Cautious Optimism for at least an hour per day, while symptoms persist.
Surgeon General’s Warning: Side-effects of treatment may include initial discomfort, sheepishness, regret, dawning self-awareness, and vigorous forehead-slapping. Then increased joie de vivre, and euphoria.
Ugh. I can’t let this entire column be about this stinking virus. So let’s turn to a more amenable target, shall we?
Have you been watching the “Panzers-Through-Belgium” juggernaut that is the Joe Biden for President campaign?
Because… wow! The man is a mess. And even with all of the uncertainty from a virus and an economic and social meltdown that throws everything into chaos, it’s hard for me to imagine him becoming president.
Let’s list the things that we already know are not his strong suit:
Math: He thinks 150 million Americans were shot to death by AR-14s in a decade.
People: He got his wife and his sister mixed up, and he’s forgotten the name of the president he served under (he called him “Bama” and “my president”) and himself (“O’Biden”). He told a guy in a wheel chair to stand up and be acknowledged, and parents to play the Victrola for their kids to improve their education, for some reason.
Dates: He might not know that there’s a Wacky Wednesday, or what day the Fourth of July falls on this year, but he’s all over the importance of Super Thursday.
Geography: He can’t tell the Midwest from the Middle East, or Iowa from the Isle of Wight, or Rhode Island from Rhodesia.
History: He can’t remember the beginning of the Declaration of Independence. Or the Gettysburg address. Or his own address. He thinks he played poker with Nelson Mandela and Bishop Tutu when they wrote a letter from Birmingham Jail. Or maybe that he put a guy in a full nelson while wearing a tutu in Folsom Prison (“that ol’ Amtrak keeps a rollin’, and that’s what tortures me”). Or something.
Basic psychology: Potential voters don’t like to be called “lying,” or “dog-faced,” or “pony soldiers.” Or “fat” or “full of Schiff.” They don’t like it when you challenge them to a push-up contest, or rub their shoulders, or sniff their children’s hair.
So what does that leave? Colors? The alphabet? Who would win in a fight, Batman or Superman?
The guy is like a walking version of that great old Sam Cooke song:
“Don’t know much about history
Don’t know much biology
Don’t know much about a science book
Don’t know much about the French I took.”
“But I do know… um… a red kazoo,
And I know that if… cockatoo,
What a… um… what a…
You know! The thing! The thing that I sing at this part of the song…”
Congratulations, all other Democrat candidates. You were beaten. By. THIS. GUY!
For the first time in my lifetime, the VP choice looks to be hugely important. Back in the day, candidates would pick a VP in the hopes that he could bring his home state, or bring some geographical balance to a ticket.
Northeastern pretty boy JFK picked crude Texan LBJ. Northeastern snoot John Kerry picked the poor man’s Bill Clinton, John Edwards, to give him a chance in the South. (I know what you’re thinking: Bill Clinton IS a poor man’s Bill Clinton. Edwards was a smarmy, cornpone clone of Slick Willie, except that unslick Johnny got caught.) (And yes, Cornpone Clones would be a fine name for a short-lived garage band.)
In recent years, the geographical argument has fallen by the wayside, and candidates usually pick a VP that brings a quality to the ticket that the top guy lacks. So a supposedly callow W picked gruff old gravitas-master Cheney. Decrepit male RINO John McCain picked young, female, seemingly conservative Palin. Obama was black, and glib, and could complete an English sentence, so he picked… stammering, awkward white guy Biden.
But this year, Biden’s pick is crucial. Because no one in Christendom thinks that there’s a great chance that Joey Gaffes lives through a four-year term, at least with his faculties (such as they are) intact.
Which means that we’ve got to be ready to tell the truth about Biden’s VP nominee from day one. And I don’t have to get my famous wizard hat out of its climate-controlled, bullet-proof glass case to go out on a limb and predict that that nominee will be a terrible leftist hack.
Because Joe Biden is going to pick that person.
Let me end on a more hopeful note that you’ve been hearing from various conservative and level-headed quarters: this too shall pass.
The MSM has obviously been hyping the virus because it is likely their best chance to unseat Trump. They have been claiming that the economy is in a freefall, and particularly that the stock market has imploded disastrously. After the most traumatic fortnight in the history of the stock market since at least 1929, on Wednesday the Dow dropped to the level it had been on 11/6/16.
Which should provoke two realizations:
- The MSM has somehow managed not to notice – or report – the market growth under Trump… until this month. A change of 10,000 points as the market was rising drew a big, fat, “No story here, move it along” reaction from the MSM. The exact same change in the opposite direction? Armageddon! The End Times are here! Run for your lives!
- Which means that Trump’s disastrous, unconscionable, incompetent, unforgiveable mismanagement has wrought such existential damage to our economy that it has reduced it to an apocalyptic Mordor-ishness that we haven’t seen since… Barack Obama was president.
Say it with me, people: Stick it, MSM!
Avenatti/ Cornpone Clones 2020!
Martin Simpson 