I never thought I’d write this, but I’m thinking it might be time to abandon Trump. He’s governed more conservatively than I’d feared he would, and he’s definitely been a better president than a certain Clydesdale-Ankled harridan would have. But his interminable press conferences are driving me crazy, to the point that I think Nancy Pelosi has been offering some reasonable criticisms of him. I’m not thrilled with Biden, but it may be that if he can spend this quarantine time to rest up and prepare himself, he might turn out to be—
Ugh! I was going to try to write a longer April Fool’s opening to this column, but I couldn’t force my recalcitrant fingers to type one more sentence of tongue-in-cheek tripe, just to spring the hoary old “April Fools” jibe. In fact, I’ve got such a bad taste in my mouth from even typing that first paragraph that I need to pause and gargle with some purely medicinal Scotch.
(By the way, while others are doing valiant work on testing treatments such as chloroquine and z-packs, I am conducting my own rigorous research trials into the virus-suppressing qualities of Scotch. I’m not ready to publish yet, but preliminary results are encouraging, even though more testing is needed. I’m going to soldier on with this, because as most of you know, I am all about the empirical method.)
Moving on, I’ll just mention a few of the good, bad and the ugly parts of my experience so far during this quarantine.
THE GOOD: 1. I’ve always enjoyed the chance to write for CO’s site, but it’s been especially gratifying over this past month, because this social isolation has started to make me cranky. And the best cure for crankiness is the opportunity to vent. Last Friday I posted a column that was pure catharsis for me, and while I haven’t had the chance to respond to your funny and gratifying comments, it really warms my heart to know that so many of my fellow citizens share my total disdain for the self-satisfied, virtue-signaling celebrities who tortured us all with their smarmy rendition of the terrible lyrics to “Imagine.” You’ve all restored my faith in humanity!
2. I’m also glad to see how much of our nation can pull together in a crisis. Despite being the boogeymen (“boogey-persons”?) of Bernie’s fevered socialist imagination, some private sector businesses have turned to making masks and ventilators, and others are using ingenuity and hard work to explore experimental treatments and crank up the search for a vaccine and other treatments that will eventually allow us to triumph over this threat. Many truck drivers and delivery people and employees of various businesses are keeping things moving, and health care workers of all stripes are going above and beyond the call of duty.
Closer to home, my wife’s work group virus-tested over 2200 seniors last week, and she’s back at it this week. (Only a small number of them had the virus, which is encouraging.) We had our 31st anniversary about 10 days ago, and the fact that it involved social isolation, carry-out and Netflix did nothing to dim my appreciation for how far up I married. I met her when I was a young man, which meant that I could not see much beyond the fact that she was a total smoke show. Imagine the pleasant surprise when I find out that she’s got character, and intelligence, and a work ethic, and trivial stuff like that!
3. Some enforced down time has given me the chance to do some more reading, and some home improvement projects, along with listening to some music on the computer. When I heard that John Prine has the virus, I went on a Prine music bender, and can’t recommend him highly enough. Also, the Bare Naked Ladies have written some fine pop songs, and a young woman named Kina Grannis can carry a tune, and Youtube has a bunch of Tom Petty live performances, all of which make me miss him even more.
4. I was amused by a story in the Miami Herald that had a picture of totally empty store shelves, except for one section that was still fully stocked. The catch: it was stocked with various vegan choices. There were several heartening details in the story, including one guy’s quote that, “The people have spoken and it is a resounding “Hell No!” We would rather starve in a pandemic before eating plant-based meat!” The writer also observed that, “despite living in desperate times, we’re still not desperate enough to eat a tofu hot dog.”
Amen! While Venezuelans are eating housecats and shoe leather (“Thanks, socialism!”), and some Chinese are chowing down on civets and bats, Americans are still a proud people. It’s going to take a little more than a worldwide pandemic to drive us to eating Satan’s turducken, i.e. a tofu hotdog stuffed into a Wuhan bat crammed into a Caracas calico.
And yes, I did get to see Satan’s Turducken open for Spinal Tap at Alpine Valley in 1991. Changed my life!
THE BAD: 1. Even I am tired of hearing me say it, but our mainstream media are absolutely horrible. One whingey little pajama person after another, pestering Trump with dishonest smear after tendentious question after rhetorical gut punch. As annoying as I often find Trump’s boorishness, as long as he continues to routinely Hillary-slap various leftist hacks posing as journalists, he’ll have my enthusiastic vote.
A particular recent low point was the way the MSM played the story of the old couple who took Trump’s medical advice and drank some chloroquine, and the husband died, and the wife nearly did. She was quoted warning everyone that nobody should believe a word the president says. The “journalists” hammered that story for an entire news cycle, lambasting Trump’s dangerous lunacy and the threat it poses to all of us.
Then the real story came out. The old couple didn’t have any symptoms, but after (presumably) listening to MSM coverage for a week, they were scared out of their wits, so they heard Trump mention chloroquine, and they rummaged through their pantry until they came across some aquarium cleaner called “chloroquine phosphate.” So they drank the aquarium cleaner – I’m sure we’ve all done that — with terrible results. Bottom line: Trump mentions a possible virus treatment, couple sees aquarium cleaner with a similar name and drinks it, and the MSM blames Trump.
Similarly unbiased brilliance has also been on display in the way the MSM has reported every Trump word about the virus: no matter what he says, it is wrong and dangerous. My favorite examples are the way they covered Cuomo and Trump saying the exact same thing:
Trump: We’re hoping to get 20,000 ventilators to NY ASAP.
MSM: Why aren’t they already there? Will that be enough? Isn’t this a governmental failure that will kill many Americans?!
Cuomo: We’re looking forward to getting 20,000 ventilators ASAP.
MSM: Brilliant leadership! Look how calm and focused and in control he is.
Trump: We’re going to defeat this virus.
MSM: Aren’t you spreading false hope? The American people deserve to be told the truth. Stop lying to them! You’re killing them!!
Cuomo: We’re going to defeat this virus.
MSM: (swoon) That’s the kind of can-do New York spirit that we need! Inspiring! When Joe Biden turns out to have died in his sleep in February of 2019, you must become the Democrat nominee!
THE UGLY:
Dem pols in several states have been letting all kinds of criminals – including those accused or convicted of violent crimes — out of jail, claiming that the jails can’t handle thugs who might catch the virus in the joint. But those same pols have also been threatening any law-abiding citizens who resist their orders to stay inside their houses 23/7. Violators are subject to hefty fines and… wait for it… jail time!
My advice: if the beleaguered police force of some petty leftist bureaucrat catches you out mowing your lawn or jogging, run to the closest neighbor or stranger and immediately assault him or her. Boom: get out of jail free card!
Kathy Griffin did her part to smear the president, when she went to the hospital and then tweeted that the hospital “couldn’t test me… because of CDC (Pence task force) restrictions.” The fright-wigged (some might say “fright-faced”) alleged comedian had already damaged her “career” by posing with a simulated severed Trump head in 2017, but she has apparently not learned her lesson.
It turned out that Griffin was lying – shocker – and that she wasn’t tested because she didn’t have corona-like symptoms. Instead she was experiencing “intense abdominal pain, vomiting, and diarrhea” – eerily enough, these are the exact same symptoms reported by people who have been unlucky enough to catch Griffin’s “act.” She did manage to get released from the hospital before she drank any aquarium cleaner, so I’m sure we’ll be hearing from her again in the future.
But for sheer recent ugliness, no one can top the Wicked Witch of the West Coast, Nancy Pelosi. She flew into DC (insert your own “Surrender Dorothy!” joke here) in time to try to stuff the $2.2 trillion relief bill with money for every leftist cause under the sun: taxpayer-funded abortions for all, unemployment pay for life, strong-arm take-overs of any desperate business who takes government bail-out money, etc. When that proved to be too much even for the MSM to cover for, she pivoted from attempted “Grand Theft: Cheops” (for my money, the finest ancient-Egyptian-themed video game on the market today) and started blaming Trump for “fiddling” while the virus struck.
Never mind that she had lambasted Trump’s January travel restrictions on the Chinese as “xenophobia!” while also going to Chinatown on February 24th and begging people to “please come and visit and enjoy Chinatown.” The nearly lifelike hypocrite waved her burial-wrapped arms and said, “We know that there is concern surrounding tourism, traveling all throughout the world, but we think it’s very safe to be in Chinatown and hope that others will come,” she said. “It’s lovely here. Try the bat foo yung.”
The only part of that quote that I made up is the last sentence.
So as April begins, and the fools in the MSM persist, I hope that this month will be the turning point in this crisis. Stay safe, CO nation! Spend time with the family, listen to some good music and read some good books, and be ready to hit the ground running when this current unpleasantness is over.
Avenatti/Satan’s Turducken 2020!
Martin Simpson 