Man o’ Manischewitz, I leave town for a drive across the country for two weeks, and when I get back everything is on fire, the train is off the tracks, all hell has broken loose, we’re up Schumer creek, and the inmates are running the asylum! Also, the fox is in the henhouse, and the devil is in the details, and the proof is in the pudding.
I know: that didn’t even make sense! But what the hell, people?!
One of the best parts of going on vacation is not following the news every day, and I was mostly successful at that. But I did check the computer for a few minutes each night, and since I got home, I’ve been catching up.
Talk about drinking from a fire hose of weird news!
I’m going to touch on just 3 stories that jumped out at me, and will try to write about some more later in the week.
First, did I dream this, or did Joy Behar – one of the whitest and stupidest people on tv (and that’s saying something) – really lecture Tim Scott – a black and not-at-all-stupid senator – about how he doesn’t understand anti-black racism?
Does no one on her staff have a mirror that could be held up to Behar, so she could then recoil in horror, realize what a gigantic a-hole she has become, and then slink off into well-deserved ignominy?
Second, did someone slip some hallucinogenic mushrooms into my omelette somewhere in New Mexico, or did the CIA release an insane recruitment ad when I was on the road?
Nope, I just looked it up, and it wasn’t a fever dream of mine. This really happened. I quote from a story in the Guardian: “A social media campaign, Humans of CIA, aimed at boosting diversity in the agency—”
Whoa, stop right there. That’s a lot of weapons-grade wrongness in a very small collection of words. Let me count the ways:
First, I don’t want our spy agency to have “social media campaigns.”
Clandestine drone surveillance campaigns? Yes. Infiltration and disruption campaigns? Abso-freakin’-lutely. Counter-Fang-Fang reverse-engineered triple-agent honey-trap campaigns? Sounds like fun.
But social media campaigns? “Here’s a pic of my meal in the CIA cafeteria this morning?” “5 Reasons why Masculinity is So Toxic?” “How to Handle Micro-Aggressions When you are Undercover?”
No bueno, and no gracias.
Second, ”Humans of CIA?” That’s what you named your social media campaign?! As opposed to what? “Inhumans of CIA?” “Amphibians of CIA?” “Deciduous Trees of CIA?” Ugh.
Third,“…aimed at boosting diversity…” Good lord, will this NEVER end?!
We need super-sneaky, bad-ass spies. We don’t need differently-abled, transgender, anorexic, Zoroastrian, little-person Asian-or-Pacific-Islanders! (Besides, that 6-box-checking unicorn is already pulling down a 7-figure income leading a grievance study program at some horrifically over-priced college.)
I mean, sure, if we need to infiltrate a bi-polar, transgender terror cell, recruit with that in mind. If we’ve got a lead on a hearing-impaired Pacific-Islander drug cartel, go find the Samoan Marlee Matlin and coach her up.
But otherwise, can we PLEASE just find some people who like to spy and are good at it?
“I wonder what kind of employee you get, when you begin with that insane set of criteria?” you are not asking, because you already know.
Let me introduce you to a 36-year old Latina CIA officer with a lot of issues. How do I know these things about her? Because she yammers about it throughout the video.
In the first minute of the ad, we learn that she likes Zora Neal Hurston’s fiction (okay), that she’s the daughter of immigrants (who cares?), that “nothing about [her] “is tragic,” (what?), “[she] is perfectly made” (Meh.), and she’s bilingual (I guess that could come in handy pretty often).
Also, she can “change a diaper with one hand, and console a crying toddler with the other.” Um, is this a job interview for a daycare provider?
Then things go seriously downhill. “I’m a woman. I’m a mom. I am a cisgender millennial, who has been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder.”
Oh, no. You want to be a spy, and you have an anxiety disorder?
“I am intersectional, but my existence is not a box-checking exercise.” She says, after spending 59 seconds checking off a dozen irrelevant boxes.
Then she segues into a half-minute of unintentionally revealing “methinks she doth protest too much” guilty defensiveness: “I did NOT sneak into CIA. My employment was not and is not the result of a fluke, or slip through the cracks. I EARNED my way in, and I EARNED my way up the ranks of this organization. I am educated, qualified, and competent.”
Now we’ve gone from daycare to a self-help support group led by Stuart Smalley. (“He’s good enough, he’s smart enough, and doggone it, people like him!”)
But then… the very next sentence: “And sometimes I struggle. I struggle feeling like I could do more… and I struggle leaving the office when I feel like there’s so much more I could do.”
I’m no top-secret spy-training guy, but that sounds like a lot of struggling for someone who wants to get into the exciting field of high-stakes, life-endangering espionage.
“I used to struggle with imposter syndrome, but at 36, I REFUSE to internalize misguided patriarchal ideas of what a woman can or should be.”
And… there goes my gag reflex.
Imposter syndrome?! You’re supposed to be a spy! Do you know what the operational definition of a spy is? (Cue Sam Kinison wearing a James Bondian tuxedo.) AN IMPOSTER!! OH! OHHH!
You pretend to be a gardener on the grounds of a ChiCom training base, or a caterer for a gathering of Hamas big shots, or a secretary for a handsy Russian general who gets a little chatty after his third vodka. And when Comrade Grope-ski gets a little flirtatious, you give him a sultry look and a third vodka, not a lecture on how he better keep his patriarchal mitts off your strong Latina cis-gendered butt, lest you report him to the CIA HR!
I cannot imagine anything more comforting to our enemies than watching a recruiting ad like this!
And in case you’re wondering, yes I do have an idea for a better CIA recruiting ad, thanks for asking:
We open on a dark screen that stays dark throughout. We hear a hoarse whisper, voiced by Clint Eastwood, or possibly Tom Waits.
“Hey. If you were an enemy of the United States, this is all you would ever see of me. I might be shadowing you in a crowded public place, or behind you in line for a cab, or sitting beside your bed as you sleep.
I could be there to inject you with a drug that causes a heart attack, or to install some malware on your computer, or put a listening device in your bedside table, or a small explosive charge in your cell phone, so that you next time you call for an Uber you get your head blown clean off.
Or maybe I’ll just slide this very sharp, very thin blade between two of your ribs and into your heart or liver. Both of which will hurt. A lot. So maybe you should re-think that, “Let’s screw with America,” plan you’ve got going.
I’ve got imposter syndrome. Because I’m an imposter. Which is why you won’t suspect that I’m the guy who’s going to get you and your fellow bad guys imprisoned or killed or both. But I am. And I will.
And this is all you’ll ever see of me.”
Then the following words appear on screen: “If this sounds good to you, contact the CIA. We’re hiring.”
In keeping with my renewed appreciation for America after my cross-country road trip, I thought I’d end today on a feel-good story in praise of one of my favorite things about our country: the second amendment.
This charming little educational story appeared on Breitbart on May 6th, under the headline, “Alleged Intruder Armed with Knife Takes Fatal Head Shot.”
Already you know that this story is going to be great, but it turns out to be like an onion, in that it has many layers. And also because it will make you cry. With laughter, I mean.
The first layer of the story: 54-year-old idiot with an active Domestic Violence Injunction against him stops by his kids’ mom’s house to do her harm, kicks his way through the front door and grabs a knife, and goes through the house until he finds her in a back bedroom. She depended on the powerful government injunction to protect her. But also a pistol. (Belt and suspenders, people.) She shoots him in the head, and he wins first prize in the “Assume Room Temperature” challenge.
But wait. There’s more.
It turns out that mom had some kind of a security cam outside her front door. So in addition to the dry police narrative of events, we get an audio/visual presentation too.
The 30-second video opens with violent idiot stomping up to the front door, and then giving it a backwards kick, as he makes a cogent appeal to be let into the house. To wit, “You want to friending play, b**ch? Friend!” Then he punches the wall near the door. “You want to friending play? Let’s PLAY! Friending b**ch!”
Then he gives the front door six more kicks, until it breaks open. He stomps through it, and we can hear his voice getting fainter as he starts moving through the interior of the house. “Let’s friending play! Let’s friending play!”
Sadly, the video ends there, before he found out she had a gun, and uttered his last words.
Which I can only hope were, “What the friend? I immediately regret my decision! I don’t want to play anymo—” BLAM!
The third layer: I love the way media report on crime. The story called the idiot the “suspect,” and said that he, “allegedly kicked in the door.” Also that he “allegedly made threats against the woman.”
You don’t say? We just watched the video. There’s no “suspect,” and no “allegedly.”
Even when the story links to the video, it says that the police “posted video showing the suspect allegedly kicking in the door.”
Way to go, journalists!
Let’s go back to basics: an “allegation” is a claim that somebody did something. The actual definition of the adverb “allegedly” is “used to convey that something is claimed to be the case or have taken place, although there is no proof.”
It makes NO sense to say that a video shows someone doing something for which there is no proof that he did! Go back to J-school, you idiots!
And now, for the final layer of the onion – which, I warn you, will make you cry. (again: with laughter.)
Where do you think the violent dope was going when he took a detour to his baby mama’s place to play a spirited round of “taking a knife to a gunfight?” Was it:
- The monthly meeting of his local Mensa club.
- Weekly Bible study.
Or…
Wait for it…
- Anger management class.
You can’t make this up.
Look at the bright side, folks. This guy graduated at the top of his anger management class, and in the same way that Joe Biden is governing.
Posthumously.
Many thanks to our Founders, who provided the lady in this story with a very effective way to de-escalate a tense situation, and simultaneously to ensure that her ex will never lose control of his temper again!
Avenatti/Valedictorian of the Anger Management Class, 2024!
Martin Simpson 