Okay, there’s no time for small talk. It’s July 8th, and I’m somehow already two weeks behind on July stories, and that’s not to mention the stories I didn’t get to in June. So here we go.
AOC has had a rough couple of weeks. Besides the big things going wrong – the BBB passing despite the fact that she and the other Dems in congress fell on the floor and kicked their feet and held their breath; the Iranian leadership failing to start WWIII after Trump pulled out the MOP (not gay slang) – she’s made some missteps that have hurt her own personal brand.
She’s tied herself to Mamdani in his bid to become NYC’s worst-ever mayor. (And DuhBlasio and David Dinkins were NYC mayors, so the bar has been set high. Or should that be low?) Aligning herself with an extremist train-wreck like Mandami is playing well with the dead-end leftists in NYC, but it will become a big liability if she eventually wants to run for president, God help us all.
The bad news is that Mamdani is a phony. He’s a trust fund baby pretending to be a poor Third Worlder; he’s used more phony accents than Cankles McPantsuit and Que Mala combined; he’s claimed to be black to get affirmative action preference when both of his parents are Indian. (Dot, not Warren.) (#wemustneverstopmockingher)
The worse news is that the things he’s NOT phony about are his worst beliefs. He’s an authentic Jew-hater, and an authentic communist. So…great.
But AOC has also done more to expose her own phoniness, too. Just like Mandami, she’s long pretended to have a much more hard-scrabble, blue-collar background than she actually does. Her motive is obvious – being from an intact, financially successful family and earning good money yourself is a huge handicap for Democrats. Which tells you a lot about the dysfunctionality of the Democrat party.
AOC has always tried to portray herself as a tough Latina “Rosa from the block,” and she’s leaned into her Bronx roots nearly as hard as she’s leaned into the rolling “r” and “s” sounds of her exaggeratedly Spanish pronunciation of “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.” Unfortunately for her, the people who knew her in grade school and high school are only in their mid-30s, and were not all killed by either global warming, net neutrality, or Covid. Also, high school yearbooks from 17 years ago exist.
So the truth is out there. AOC lived in the Bronx until she was 5, after which her family moved to tony Yorktown, in suburban Westchester County. And though records are murky, she apparently caught a case of “WASP nickname syndrome” that may have resulted in a subsequent “Ocasio-ectomy.” Because in high school she was not a chola from the Bronx, but sweet little Sandy Cortez from the ‘burbs.
Not that she didn’t have some hardships in her life. Her dad was an architect who started his own firm, but he died from lung cancer when she was only 19, and her mom did work some blue-collar jobs. So there are some sympathetic aspects to her life story, if only she didn’t exaggerate to give her some non-existent street cred.
For example, in 2018 she said, “My mom scrubbed toilets so I could live here and I grew up seeing how the zip code one is born in determines much of their opportunity.” Except that her own story demonstrates the opposite, since her birth on the mean streets of the Bronx didn’t stop her family from moving to the suburbs before she started school.
Also, “the scrubbing toilets” reference is a nice rhetorical flourish, and sounds much more downtrodden and noble than “cleaning houses.” I don’t want to be a one-upper, but as a landlord for the last 29 years, I’ve unclogged and snaked out more than my fair share of tenants’ toilets, and I know how to remove and re-set one with a new wax ring, too.
And don’t get me started on that time I had to crawl underneath a house to extract a decomposing possum. (Did only part of his body come with me when I pulled on his creepy tail? Do I still re-live that PTSD-inducing experience – including hearing the sounds and smelling the smells – on nights when I can’t sleep? I don’t want to talk about it.)
So I guess I could steer into that skid, and call myself Martino from the barrio, and whine about how Bruce Springsteen hasn’t written a working-class anthem about my heroic rise from flannel-shirt-wearing hillbilly to Dr. Hilarious Genius who wears a full tuxedo around the house most weekdays.
But I have too much stoic dignity for that.
Anyway, AOC has been catching more heat for her fabulist tales of her rough teen years lately, as many Yorktown residents are posting messages saying, “You’re from here!”
One such guy – who I am sure I would love to hang out with – is a retired FDNY firefighter from the Bronx who now lives near Yorktown. He told a reporter, “You can tell right out of the gate that she isn’t from the Bronx. Listen to her! [Then] listen to us! We’ve been out of the Bronx for years but we still sound like idiots! It doesn’t just go away.”
But so far, AOC has not been dissuaded. She recently made things worse for herself when she tried to engage Trump in an insult battle. To be fair, Trump started it, by referring to her as “one of the dumbest people in Congress,” which as a president he shouldn’t do.
On the other hand…Fact Check: true.
(In fact, the quote I’m about to share with you isn’t even the dumbest part of her tweet. That was her accusation that his taking out the Iranian nukes was “betray[ing] the American people… by illegally bombing Iran and dragging us into war.” Annnndddd…the “war” was over before she could spell-check and post her tweet.)
But AOC had to take a closing shot at Trump’s roots in Queens: “Also, I’m a Bronx girl. You should know that we can eat Queens boys for breakfast.”
Now you may remember that Que Mala kept using the line, “I eat ‘No’ for breakfast!” until she was mocked out of it, on account of how stupid it sounds. But you’ve got to give the Cackler this: at least it didn’t sound uncomfortably sexual.
Regular readers will know that I’m not up on gay slang. And at my age, and after nearly four decades out of the dating game since I conned a Norwegian smoke-show goddess into becoming my smoke-show wife, I don’t even know much straight slang anymore.
But I know enough to recognize that a female boasting that she can eat Queens boys for breakfast is not coming across like she wants it to come across. (Phrasing!) Because here’s the bottom line (phrasing!): If a guy from Queens is about to go on a date with a young lady from Yorktown, and he hears that she recently bragged about Yorktown gals being able to eat Queens boys for breakfast, he’s going to be…how can I put this?… NOT offended.
Perhaps I’ve said too much. So let’s move on.
If you’re like me, you’ve been following rapper 4XTRA for years now.
What’s that? You’ve never heard of him? Really? So you’ve never seen his “No Jumper” podcast, or heard any of his hit “songs,” such as “Gang Slide,” “Off the Bacc,” or “Who Imma Call?” (I think that last one is a Sinatra cover.)
Okay, let me fill you in. He’s a large African-American fellow (unexpectedly) who is a rapper and “influencer” in LA. He’s had a few run-ins with the law, but who hasn’t? (I first met CO, Alan Paterson, and Jamie Galioto when we were all in the same cell block, and had to jump in and help Mark Teufel and Christopher Silber out of a jam. My “thug life” knuckles didn’t tattoo themselves, people.) His last arrest came in April, only a few days after he’d gotten out after a previous arrest.
But he’s a patriotic guy, so naturally, he was excited about the Fourth last weekend. He even recorded a short video for his fans, during which he was showing off a couple of impressive-looking M1000 fireworks. In what I’m sure was just some light-hearted joking, he said he was going to use those against some of his rivals, in a 20-second video which featured around a hundred uses of the “N” word. And I don’t mean “narwhal.”
But let’s pretend for a minute that I do.
Saith 4X: “Imma ‘bout ta blow a narwhal up. Friend all the narwhals…. I’m blowin’ a narwhal up! See these, narwhal? I’m throwin’ em in yo house. I’m throwin’ em atchya, narwhal!”
Annnndddd… a few hours later he blew two of his fingers off. Unexpectedly!
Reports that his last words before the premature detonation were, “I AM bein’ careful! Narwhal, please! Hold my blunt and watch this, narwh—YOWCH!” have not been confirmed.
On the bright side, he can now use his influencer experience in a campaign to influence youngsters to not blow their fingers off with powerful fireworks.
On the downside, he is allegedly a member of the Rollin 40s Crips street gang. I know even less about gang signs than I do about gay or straight slang, but I’m hoping for his sake that the gang signs for the Rollin 40s don’t involve the use of the two fingers he no longer has.
Great. I used over 1600 words, and I only got to two stories. Just between you and me, I thought I’d knock AOC around (phrasing!) for 3-4 paragraphs – I’m way too immature to pass up that “eating Queens boys for breakfast” line – and then I’d be on to more stories.
But I got on a roll, and Ocasio-ectomy popped into my head, and what’s a fella to do? When God sends you a big wave and you’re on a verbal surfboard up on the crest, you ride that baby all the way into shore.
In other words, this looks like it might have to be a five-column week.
Stay frosty, my narwhals.
Hamas delenda est!
Martin Simpson 