Author: martinsimpsonwriting

A couple of days ago I took as my theme the unutterable terribleness of high-profile Democrats who aren’t running for president.

Unfortunately for us all, the Dems running for president may be even more terrible – a feat I would have thought impossible!    But consider:

Al Sharpton is a truly horrible person.  He made his name 30 years ago as a chubby, oleaginous race hustler who created a long and ignominious resume.  Some lowlights:

• he launched his career by helping an unstable teenage girl named Tawana Brawley (she was the 80’s Jussie Smollett) create a racist hate crime hoax that nearly ruined the lives of NYPD cops and a prosecutor
• later he inflamed racial tensions that resulted in riots and the murder of an innocent Hasidic Jew (Sharpton had called Jews “diamond merchants…with blood on their hands”)
• still later he led protests against a Jewish tenant (whom he called “white interloper”) that culminated it an arson and shooting that left 7 employees dead

In the intervening decades he has changed a lot.

In the sense that he’s lost weight.  Other than that, he’s the same creepy, exploitative grifter that he always was.  Given all of that, any decent political party or employer would totally disassociate themselves from him.

Which explains why he was a candidate for president on the Democrat debate stage in 2008, and has had a gig on CNN for years, and is treated like a respectable man of the cloth by the Left, rather than as the withered, vile homunculus that he is.

I don’t care for the guy, is what I’m saying.e.

So of course between April 3-5 – three days which should live in infamy — the leading Democrat presidential candidates all went to Sharpton’s lair at the National Action Network and kissed his ring, in hopes of getting the support of the holder of the “Most Ironic Use of the Title ‘Reverend’ Award.”  (Jesse Jackson took the silver.)   That act alone should disqualify all of them from seeking the highest office in the land.

But there was Grandma Squanto (#wemustneverstopmockingher), and Skateboarding Doofus (#wemuststartmockinghimtoo), and Spartacus, and the Centenarian Socialist.  Not to mention Hillaries 1 & 2 (Gillibrand and Klobuchar).  Kamala Harris was there too, but some observers think she may have hurt her prospects.  It seems she initially mis-took Sharpton for the equally dessicated sleazeball Willie Brown, and instinctively offered to sleep with him to get his support.  (Even though Sharpton is not married, and therefore not her type.)

Shockingly, in the last week Bernie Sanders may have done something even more egregious than sucking up to Sharpton: admitting that he’s a millionaire.

Since all of Bernie’s socialist followers are the very picture of integrity, they immediately turned on him in fury, demanding that he divest himself of his ill-gotten gains, and give it to the faceless masses whom evil 1%ers like him exploit. Naturally, he did so, apologizing for his greed and withdrawing from public life.

HA!  I kid, of course.  What Bernie actually did is give the most hypocritical justification of financial success since Karl Marx said, “Hey, is it my fault that Freddy Engels’ daddy owned a profitable cotton mill, and he supports me from those profits, so that I don’t have to get a job?”

When a reporter raised the issue of Bernie’s millionaire status, he said the following (and admit it, you’re hearing his ridiculous voice as you read this quote): “I wrote a best-selling book. If you write a best-selling book, you can be a millionaire, too.”

Yes, we know, Bernie, you colossal hypocrite!  We’ve always said that: if you write a best-selling book, or create a useful product, or deliver a useful service, or learn some other valuable skill, you get the chance to be a millionaire.  (I mean, as long as greedy jerks like Bernie Sanders aren’t allowed to gain power and destroy the free market system that allows all of those opportunities.)

But YOU haven’t said that.  You’ve said the opposite of that – that people who earn that much money are evil exploiters who should have their ill-gotten gains taken away from them.  Until you sell a bunch of books to a bunch of dopes who don’t know any better.  Ugh.

 

Which leaves just one Democrat candidate: Mayor Pete.

As you may remember, I was initially willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, when all I knew about him was that he grew up gay, in the Midwest, and had “Butt” in his last name. (And come to think of it, “Peter” as his first name.  Good lord!)  That was enough for me to give him some underdog sympathy.

Don’t get me wrong, he still seemed ridiculously inexperienced.  For most of our nation’s history, presidential contenders were nearly always either military men, or previous governors or VPs.

Then along came Obama, and after 10 minutes in the IL senate, and 7 minutes in the US senate, he became the most powerful man in the world – and world-class example of the Peter Principle in action — as his entry-level executive gig.  After that, it seemed a little silly to object that all of Trump’s executive experience had come in the private sector instead of government.

Which brings us to Baby-Face Pete, whose only executive experience is as mayor.  And not even mayor of a major city.  Running NYC or LA or Chicago might be seen as quasi-equivalent to running a state, given their size and complexity.

But South Bend, Indiana?

Because I take my responsibilities as CORCA seriously, I did a little research on South Bend.  (Cue the 1950’s jumpy-projector educational filmstrip music.)  Located on the St. Joseph River, it’s the county seat of St. Joseph County. With a population of around 100K, it is the fourth largest city in Indiana.  Which, as everybody knows, puts it right behind mighty Evansville – and way ahead of ridiculous Hammond.  (Suck it, Hammond!  South Bend rules!) It has been called “the economic and cultural hub of northern Indiana.”  (Thanks, Wikipedia!)

Now I don’t mean to mock Indiana, or midwestern small towns in general.  I grew up in two of them, and I would gladly choose to be governed by any random 300 midwesterners drawn from a phone book than by the elite in Washington DC (to paraphrase the late great William F. Buckley).  And it goes without saying that anyone currently trapped in the grip of leftist tyranny in Illinois has got to be looking with envy on the green grass of Indiana.

But there’s a reason that most of you know of the titanic struggles between cities such as Rome and Carthage, or Athens and Sparta, but not of the fierce rivalry between Evansville and South Bend.  No A-list actor in a big-budget movie has ever held his sword aloft after kicking an envoy from perfidious Hammond into a bottomless well, screaming, “THIS … IS … SOUTH BEND!”

And no one has ever said, “As goes northern Indiana, so goes the world!”

So Mayor Pete is a little light on the resume, and in a normal world, someone would get him in a headlock (and I have not kept up on gay slang, so if that phrase has any alternative meanings, I truly apologize) and advise him to try running for state senate or governor before he shoots for US president.

But what’s worse is that he’s shown himself to be a moral exhibitionist – and, strangely, a judgmental scold — on the issue of sexual preference.

Instead of appreciating the amazingly fast public turn-around on attitudes toward all things gay, Mayor Pete is going full steam ahead (again, that sounds like it might mean something else – damn you, hip gay slang!), and using the cowed public’s deference to gays as a cudgel to attack mild mannered Mike Pence with.

In a smarmy, near-Spartacus-worthy bit of moral self-aggrandizement, Pete picked a fight with Pence – who as far as I can tell has never been anything but courteous and kind to Mayor Pete – by mounting his high horse (everything is gay!) and pronouncing, out of the blue, “If you have a problem with me being gay, you’ve got a problem with my Creator, sir, not with me.”  (Nice over-dramatizing there! What’s next?  Are you going to have your seconds call on his seconds and arrange a duel?)

By pounding this straw man (everything! gay!), Pete is doing the kind of self-righteous pontificating that the left absolutely hates, when the right does it.

Putting all that aside, I hate this wearing your sexual identity on your flouncy, attention-seeking sleeve.

I think I’m fairly representative of most conservatives in this regard.  Whatever my personal feelings one way or another on sexual preferences, I’m pretty laissez faire about the issue in public life.  I don’t much care, and as a proper, reticent Midwesterner, I’d really rather not know ANYTHING about any of my neighbors’ or co-workers’ or elected officials’ sexuality.  (In fact, I’ve been disgusted for my whole life at the thought that my dad ever had sex with my mom.) (And don’t get me started on my grandparents.)

But there’s a particular kind of totalitarian sanctimony about this on the left.  It’s not enough that people tolerate the sexual morays of others – they must be made to approve of and cater to them in all areas of life.  And everyone has to talk about it — in public and all the freaking time!  Why?!

Is there any reason that when I ascended to the lofty position of CORCA, I was required to let CO readers know that I’m a straight male who identifies as a male?  Is it incumbent on me to discuss the fact that while I’m fond of the missionary position, I’m also open to both regular and reverse cowgirl?  Is it anyone else’s business that my non-cheerleading wife owns a cheerleader outfit, or that I’ve recently acquired a Martacus-style Roman centurion costume?

Perhaps I’ve said too much.

And Mayor Pete definitely has!  Keep it to yourself, P-Butt.  (Ouch!  Note to self: CO is better than you are at coming up with whimsical nicknames, so leave that to him.)

So as I look back over the smoking, noxious tire fire that is the Democrat presidential field, I am faced with one obvious conclusion:

I don’t care what anybody says — Michael Avenatti is still in the top tier of Democrat candidates!

If I could start on a serious note, I really am troubled by the growing hostility between the political right and left in our country.  I want to believe the optimistic clichés — what unites us is greater than what divides us, we can disagree without being disagreeable, we all want the same things, even if we differ about how to achieve them.

And I can meet Democrats of good will half-way, and admit that our side is far from perfect.  I know that Trump has his obvious flaws, and the GOP has betrayed some of key promises that it ran on (repealing and replacing Obamacare and beefing up border security chief among them), and etc.

Bottom line: I really, honestly don’t want to turn into a one-note, leftist-criticizing machine.

But I can’t help it.  Because ALL of the nationally elected Democrats are TERRIBLE!

I know you’re thinking, “Oh come on Martin, some of them are probably oka—”

ALL OF THEM!  It pains me to say it.  Even more than it pains me to use ALL CAPS.  If I weren’t such an urbane sophisticate, I’d stoop to using many poop emojis to express how terrible they all are.

You don’t have to take my word for it.  (Though by now, don’t you know me well enough that you should just reflexively take my word for it?)  Consider the ones who AREN’T running for president, starting with the high-profile fresh faces of 2018:  Rashida Talib, Ilhan Omar and AOC.

These are the new Three Democrat Stooges, only with much less intelligence and ability to entertain.  (And MUCH less Jewishness, coincidentally.)

In a recent speech, Omar said that the terrorism-adjacent troublemakers at CAIR formed their organization in the wake of 9/11.  In fact, it was actually formed in 1994.  But to be fair to Omar, that was after an earlier Islamic attack on the World Trade Center.  (You can see how she might get those mixed up, what with all the attacks by all of the jihadi groups from the Religion of Peace™ going on pretty much all the time.)

But Ilhan’s faulty time-line isn’t what made her speech infamous.  That came from her super-sensitive phrasing: “CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something, and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.”

Ignore that she can’t read a calendar, and that she doesn’t know what it means to lose your civil liberties.  (Though here’s a social experiment that Omar could try:  Walk through any city in any Muslim-ruled country on earth wearing your favorite Star-of-David t-shirt.  What happens next is called “losing your civil liberties.”) (Also, your life.)

“Some people did something?!”  Nice.

Does anyone else think that if Ilhan was around in 1946, she’d say, “Somebody did something in Germany, and now there seems to be a lot fewer Jews in Europe.”?  And that she’d be smiling a truly evil smile as she said it?

When GOP freshman congressman (and one-eyed, bad-ass ex-soldier) Dan Crenshaw joined every sane person in the country in objecting to the hateful little anti-Semite’s grotesque distortion, the Bronx Bartender leapt into action.  After first stepping on three rakes in a row – each of which left her looking a little more googly-eyed than usual, AOC stumbled to her phone and launched a twitter defense of her fellow fresh-faced dimwit.

She blasted Crenshaw for not supporting 9/11-related legislation that he voted for, tossed out a laughably-wrong stat about how right wing extremists are the real terrorist threat, and then challenged him, “Why don’t you go do something about that?”

She really said that.  A woman who spent her adulthood living in mommy’s house and screwing up drink orders, while Dan Crenshaw did three tours of duty fighting the kind of evil people whom Ilhan Omar cannot bring herself to criticize, had the gall to challenge HIS commitment to fighting terrorism!

I only wish the little dope had the integrity to look him in the eyepatch and say that.

Rashida Talib also jumped into the fray, with this little verbal gem accusing Omar’s critics of distorting her meaning:  ““They do that all the time, especially women of color, they take our words out of context because they’re afraid because we speak truth, we speak truth to power.”

Ugh.  Are people really still saying “speak truth to power?”  What’s next, a timely “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too!” reference?

And the “out of context” is almost as stale.  No one took her out of context.  I saw the quote in a half-dozen news stories, and it was always accompanied with context.  And it’s not a subtle statement, Achmed Obvious  – no one has to bring in a squad of code breakers to decipher her sneering point.

But the Malicious Minnesota Mohammedan wasn’t finished.  Apparently stung by normal people taking offense at her obnoxious quote, Omar referenced W’s impromptu bullhorn speech: “The people — and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!” President George W. Bush.  Was Bush downplaying the terrorist attack?”

Good lord!   I don’t know which is worse: if she’s pretending to be this clueless, or if she really is this clueless.

On the off chance that she is capable of learning, I hope that someone close to her will explain the galaxy-wide difference between her statement and Bush’s.  Differences like:

1.He made his speech right after the attacks, when we didn’t yet know for sure which group of evil scumbags were behind it.  (Though the smart money even then was not on Shecky Weinberg and his vaudeville troupe, or the Quaker Resistance Movement.) In fact, if Bush had gone with everyone’s gut instinct and referred to “the Muslim terrorists who knocked these buildings down,” disingenuous hacks like you would have blasted him as Islamophobic.

2. Your speech was last week. Since I know that calendars and telling time are not your strong suits, I’m going to help you out: that’s roughly 18 years after 9/11. And we now know who the “some people” who “did something” were.  You should look into that, Ilhan.

3. Bush wasn’t downplaying the terrorist tragedy the way you were, and when he said that “they’ll hear from all of us soon,” he didn’t mean that he was determined to find a good cell number for them, you idiot. He was threatening them, and the country cheered that statement. Because that’s the natural response when a bunch of hateful weird beards attack your country and murder thousands of innocent civilians.

Yikes.  I was just about to start on the new lows reached by the Dem presidential candidates, but I fear that doing so may make me choke on my own bile.  So I’m going to write about them in a day or two, and instead turn to a palate-cleanser, in the form of a feel-good story in the news.

Julian Assange has finally been arrested!

As a small government conservative, I think there is a place in a free society for whistle blowers who publish truths that the government wants to keep secret.  But as a non-moron, I also know that there is a huge difference between leaks that keep the bureaucrats honest, and leaks that threaten the lives of our soldiers and the people who risk their lives to help us.

I need to learn more about the details, but I’ve read that one of Assange’s leaks gave terrorists classified info that allowed them to thwart US efforts to defuse IEDs, and that others exposed brave civilians who helped us, resulting in their torture and deaths.

If that is true, I think Assange deserves the death penalty.

But since he will likely never get that in our feckless justice system, I like to fantasize that he’ll beat the rap.  Then, when he comes home to his nice apartment, he’ll walk in holding a bag of groceries like Matt Damon at the end of The Departed.  And there he’ll see an ex-soldier, the buddy of one of the guys who got killed because of Assange’s leaks, wearing gloves and booties and carrying a silenced pistol.

On the other hand, as long as I’m imagining happy endings, I’ll bet the South African lion who ate that poacher last week is probably hungry again by now.  Maybe we drop Assange off in that African state park, wearing some Sears Tuff-Skins jeans and with some barbecue sauce rubbed into his hair.

The next day, we give a reporter a tip, and he arrives at the park to find a lion with a red muzzle, picking his teeth with what looks like part of a human femur bone.  This lion, strangely enough, is also Italian, and he sounds just like the guy DeNiro called from the phone booth outside of the diner in Goodfellas.

When the reporter says, “Have you seen Julian Assange?” the lion will say, “Well, we had a problem.  And we tried to do everything we could.”

“What do you mean?” the reporter will ask.

“You know what I mean.  He’s gone.  And we couldn’t do nothing about it.”

“Are those his jeans and skull?”

“No comment.”

First up today, I write in mourning over my beloved home state of Illinois.  Though I left over 30 years ago, most of my family is still there–not to mention CO and COW, for a little while, at least — and I will always have an emotional tie to the Land of Lincoln.  (Who, right this minute, has to be whirling in his grave at a high velocity.)

But the voters of the mostly red state outside of Chicago have always been swamped by the Big Blue Corruption Machine of Chicago.  (Motto: “Al Capone? We’re ALL Capone!”) (Hat tip to Andrew Klavan.)

In 2016 they replaced a GOP billionaire governor who didn’t seem the sharpest knife in the drawer with a Democrat billionaire governor who isn’t even the sharpest knife in a drawer full of smooth, rounded stones.  He’s passed a raft of taxes on everything that moves, so you know that happy times will soon be here again.  (In TN, and TX and Florida, and every other red state that will be accepting the productive Illinoisans who are fleeing the greedy corrupt-a-crats in IL.)

To make matters worse, on April 2^nd Chicago held elections, and the results are not encouraging.

In the mayoral race, Toni Preckwinkle lost to Lori Lightfoot.  And I won’t lie – when it comes to hilarious leftist names, losing Preckwinkle is going to hurt.   (By the way, if you think that “Preckwinkle and Lightfoot” would make a hell of a 1970’s police show, you’re not wrong.) (Would Lightfoot happen to be a by-the-book cop who’s one year away from retirement, while Preckwinkle is a hot-tempered rookie who can’t follow the rules?  I think you know the answer to that.)

But not as much as Chicago is going to hurt, with what looks to be yet another 4 years under a mediocre leftist mayor.  (Although to be fair, both finalists were apparently far lefty knuckleheads, so the election result likely won’t make much difference.)

Lightfoot has never held office before.  But she is black, and female, and gay.  So… she’s got that going for her, I guess.

On the other hand, because she’s the walking embodiment of the Identify Politics trifecta, there is virtually no mistake that she can make for which she can be held accountable.  In fact, you are a terrible racist, sexist, homophobe for suggesting that it’s even possible that she CAN make a mistake.  You ought to be ashamed of yourself.

On the bright side, Preckwinkle and Lightfoot (cue the 70’s synth-heavy theme song, as they race out of a police building and slide across the hood of a 72 Gran Torino) (it’s Preckwinkle’s undercover ride.) defeated another Daley, the scion of the old corrupt Democrat machine.  I’m not sure how that was allowed to happen.

In any event, you’d think that a Daley losing would have to be a step in the right direction.  But you would be wrong.

Because the results were arguably even worse in the city council elections, in which – and I quote a headline: “Socialists Surge to Victories.”  That’s right, five or six fresh new faces are bringing their fresh new ideology to the City of the Slumped Shoulders.

Sorry, that should be “City of the Big Shoulders.”  Or maybe it shouldn’t.

How about, “Dog Butcher for the World?”  (Yes!  That’s a Carl Sandburg/Venezuela joke that four people in the world got, but it fills me with joy anyway.)

Anyway, buck up, Chicago.  Just because the last 114 attempts at socialism have produced nothing but gulags and grinding poverty and firing squads and terrible folk music and Bernie Sanders doesn’t mean that this time won’t be different.

 

On a less depressing note, I know that many of you have probably been sitting around asking yourselves, “What is the most vapid, millennial, first-world-problem complaint that has ever been made in the history of the world?”

I give you the Notorious AOC, in a deadly serious tweet that she posted last week:

“Croissants at LaGuardia are going for SEVEN DOLLARS A PIECE 😱 Yet some people think getting a whole hour of personal, dedicated human labor for $15 is too expensive??”

What is wrong with that tweet?  I count at least 7 things:

1. It was written by a sitting US congressperson with a degree in economics who has never heard of supply and demand.
2. Using ALL CAPS does not make your argument more convincing.
3. If you do decide to use all caps, the capitalized letters better spell out something like, “WWIII BEGINS!” Because “PASTRIES ARE TOO EXPENSIVE!” doesn’t cut it.
4. She followed the all caps with an emoji of a shocked cartoon face. Serious people do not use emojis. There’s a reason that Patrick Henry wrote, “Give me liberty or give me death!” instead of “Poop emoji, Union Jack, Thumbs Down, Noose, Middle Finger, Frowny Face.”  And it’s not just because emojis weren’t invented yet.
5. Her choice to connect expensive airport bread to a complaint that the minimum wage is too low is what we sane people call a non sequitur. It makes no more sense than if I tweeted, “Lobster goes for MARKET PRICE, yet no one will paint a reasonably priced oil portrait of Cassie the Wonder Dog in an ermine cape holding an orb and scepter for the wall of my study!”
6. Everything at LaGuardia is expensive because it is run by a kleptocrat government monopoly. You know, like the way you want the entire country to be run, AOC. (Which reminds me: “When I win a Monopoly Beauty Contest I only win 50 DOLLARS!  Yet some people think I should have to pay 3 times that when I land on Park Place with a hotel on it!  Frowny Face emoji, #fightboardgameinequality!)
7. Hey Sweet Pea, what do you think will happen to the price of croissants if you force the Croissant Hut to pay their low-skill employees higher wages? Here’s a hint: “Croissants at LaGuardia are going for FIFTEEN DOLLARS A PIECE!  Yet some people think that paying someone $30 an hour is too expensive??

 

 

Ugh.  Leftists destroying Chicago, leftists destroying New York, San Francisco is hip-deep in human waste, crazy old white ladies who identify as Indians are running for president (#wemustneverstopmockingher) against trust-fund Irish beta males who identify as Hispanics (#let’smockhimtoo).

I know what you’re thinking: Are there no feel-good stories that Martacus can leave us with to start our Monday off on the right foot?

I’m glad you asked.  Because I was reading the South African papers with my morning coffee last week (as one does) when I came across this headline: “Suspected Rhino Poacher Killed by Elephant, Then Eaten by Lions.”

As a lover of animals – but not in a creepy, Joe Biden way, where I sneak up behind them and stroke their muzzles and sniff their manes – I always enjoy a good “Poacher gets his thorax gored as he zeroes in his rifle on a newborn gazelle” story.

And this one is pretty sweet.  Some low-life would-be rhino poacher sneaks into a national park with four miscreant buddies.  Annnnnndd… the buddies tell his family he was killed by an elephant.

So the family tells the cops, and they launch a search that finds, and I quote, “”Indications… suggest[ing] that a pride of lions had devoured the remains, leaving only a human skull and a pair of pants.”

You’d have to have a heart of stone not to laugh at that detail.  A skull and a pair of pants?!  I think the lions were taunting the authorities.  (“Take the cannoli,” one unexpectedly Italian lion said.  “Leave the skull and pants.”)

The only disappointing thing about the story is the name of the guy who runs the national park where the glorious story unfolded.  I was hoping for a sweet, African name like Umgabi Lopopo, but no: it’s Glenn Phillips.

But Mr. Phillips has a way with words.  He’s mastered the press release understatement: “Entering Kruger National Park illegally and on foot is not wise.”   You don’t say.

He went on to express condolences to the family, “It is very sad to see the daughters of the [deceased] mourning the loss of their father, and worse still, only being able to recover very little of his remains.”

“Worse still,” Glenn?!  You really think that the worst part was that they only recovered the skull and pants?  You think maybe they’d feel better if they’d retrieved more of his wardrobe and organs?!  “Oh thank God,” his wife would say, “at least we have his suspenders and two-thirds of his trachea.”

To which his daughters would reply, “Yes! And we’ll always treasure his prized pair of poaching spats, and his partially chewed uvula!”

(By the way, a young punk band looking for a new name could do a lot worse than “Partially Chewed Uvula.”)

The only thing I don’t understand is why the authorities are blaming an elephant for the killing.  I mean, it’s not like they recovered a torso with elephant-foot-shaped trample marks on it.  The guy is a skull and a pair of pants soaked in lion saliva!

Unless they have surveillance video of an elephant trunk-whipping the guy to death in a parking lot and then fist-bumping an approaching lion as he leaves the scene of the crime, I find the elephant-blaming very suspicious.

This sounds like a case for… Preckwinkle and Lightfoot!

 

 

I come before you all today with an idea that you may find surprising.  I had a chance to look at Beto O’Rourke’s policy menu on his website, and I was surprised to find several ideas that were not as lame as I’d expected.  I’m not going to say that I can picture a Dem ever being my first choice in an election, but I think that if he does get the nod, I wouldn’t necessarily rule out voting for him, especially if Trump drifts to the left on the budget.

HA! Of course I’ve started the column with an April Fool’s joke.

Actually, I had intended to extend the charade for several paragraphs to see if I could catfish anyone.  But even typing those few sentences made me throw up in my mouth, and April 1^st is no holiday for that kind of behavior. (That would be St. Patrick’s Day.)

So let me start the column again:

Those who know me, know that I don’t throw around the word “hero” lightly.  But Brad Aulf and Mary Rogers are real-life heroes, in the truest and noblest sense of the word.

Is that because they both generously hit my Tip Jar at Martinsimpsonwriting.com, you ask?

Yes.  Yes it is.

They may be heroes for other reasons too.  Because they are members of CO nation, we know that they are necessarily several standard deviations above the average person in terms of intelligence, discernment, and physical attractiveness, for example.  They probably have other fine qualities too, as I would know if I knew them personally.

But all I know about them is that they read the CO site, they have a keen eye for razor-sharp sarcasm, and they hit the tip jar hard.  So I salute you, Brad and Mary!  In fact, your generosity has motivated me to write a first-ever three-opening column.  So let’s get to opening #3:

April has begun, and you all know what that means: time to look back at March, and pummel a few lefties who almost escaped un-pummeled.

For example, how about that corrupt Chicago Smollett-enabler, Kim Foxx?

Regular readers of this site have already noticed the red flag about her: she demonstrates Simpson’s Law of Stupidly Spelled Names™ — i.e. those with irrationally spelled names usually have more than the usual character flaws (see also, “Jeh” Johnson and  Brett “Fav-ruh”).  Spelling the last name “Fox” with two “Xs” is only permissible if the so-named is either a stripper or has co-starred in a film with Stormy Daniels.  Possibly on a double bill with the Kamala Harris-Willie Brown story. (Tagline: “The electorate has never been polled like THIS before!”)

Sadly, the second X in her name arises only because she is “eXecrable” at her job.  First she announced in a press conference that prosecutors in Chicago regularly offered accused criminals the kind of deal that Jussie (have I mentioned Simpson’s Law of Stupidly Spelled Names™?) Smollett got.

Then she immediately texted her entire staff (in a message that someone immediately leaked), asking them to research any previous cases where someone as obviously guilty as Jussie was given a “get-out-of-MAGA-country-free” card.

Two of her staff members suffered PTSD from the request.  It turns out that both of them had previously worked for Liz Warren’s campaign, and they had received an infamous, nearly identical text from Grandma Squanto: “Hey guys, I’ve made a career out of claiming to be American Indian, and now people are starting to ask questions.  Can somebody hit Ancestry.com and see if you can dig up any Cherokee connections for me?  If it helps, my great-grandfather Howard Worthington Warren used to have a wooden cigar store Indian in his entry hall.  Also, I could use some crab-based recipes for a cookbook I’m working on.  I’m going to call it “Pow Wow Chow!”  What do you think?  There’s no way that will make me look like a total idiot, will it?” (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

While not fruitlessly researching non-existent legal precedents, Kim Foxx’s staff also had to do damage control after another of her press conferences.  They finally came out with a statement printed in crayon on a piece of notebook paper made into a paper airplane and thrown out a third-floor window: “When Ms. Foxx said that she had recused herself from the Smollett case, she meant that colloquially.  ‘Colloquially’ is Latin for ‘opposite day’.”

“Also, when she said that she only sealed the records of the case accidentally?  Funny story.  She had the records all stacked and ready and slipped neatly into a big manila folder, so that she could hand them over to the press.  But then she accidentally knocked over a bottle of super glue that was precariously perched on the end of her desk, and it fell on the envelope, and before anyone knew what had happened, the records were sealed.”

“Also, Jussie thought the two Nigerian muggers were white redneck Trump supporters because they were in white face, and a thick Nigerian accent sounds surprisingly like a conversation between extras on Dukes of Hazzard.”

Chicago mayoral candidate Toni Preckwinkle (whom I am not making up) had no comment on the Kim Foxx situation.

Then why did I bring her up?  Because I could not resist her last name, which is one vowel change away from hilarity!  Please, somebody introduce her to Anthony Weiner, because any children they have who could survive middle school would embody a huge Darwinian step forward in toughness!

 

Speaking of sexual impropriety, the story of Robert Kraft’s getting caught up in the post-Super Bowl massage parlor scandal has left me with mixed emotions.

As a Christian, and one prone to all the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to (thank you, dead white male Shakespeare!), I sympathize with him.  As a football fan who is more than a little sick of Patriot Super Bowl victories, I’m a little less sympathetic.

My favorite moment in the scandal was reading the oddly formal legal account of his arrest, which included the description that at one point the masseuse (and if her last name has less than two Xs in it I am going to be sorely disappointed!) – and I quote – “manipulated his genitals.”

I love the English language!  Reading that, I can’t help picture the masseuse – recognizing that Kraft’s genitals don’t feel very good about themselves – cleverly taking advantage.  Before they knew what had happened, Kraft’s genitals had bought a time share, changed their long-distance carrier to Sprint, and joined the Church of Scientology.

Oh, the manipulation!

Ouch.  I hope that after that little digression, Brad Aulf and Mary Rogers are not reconsidering their generous donations!

 

Moving on.

How about that Babs Streisand?   In a March interview she opined on Michael Jackson’s child molestation victims: “You can say ‘molested,’ but those children, as you heard… they were thrilled to be there. They both married and they both have children, so it didn’t kill them.”  She also shared some of her keen insights about MJ’s pedophilia: “His sexual needs were his sexual needs.”

When all morally sane people condemned her general horribleness, she showed herself to be the master of leftist PR pseudo-contrition.  She rushed to “clarify” her comments – which, inconveniently for her, were already crystal clear – saying that “the words as printed do not reflect my true feelings.”

“As printed?!”  Your words “as printed?”

Do you mean your words, exactly as they came out of your big, stupid mouth, and then were accurately transcribed?  Don’t blame Gutenberg, you terrible crone!

After reading that interview, I found myself fantasizing that one of those grown victims will some day cross paths with Barbra. (By the way, do you notice the missing “a” in her name?  More vindication for Simpson’s Law of Stupidly Spelled Names™!)  And that he will land a crisp right jab right on that gigantic proboscis of hers.

And do you know what I’d say if asked my opinion of his actions?  “His pugilistic needs were his pugilistic needs.  It didn’t kill her, did it?”

Always remember that leftist celebrities are our moral betters, and we should be grateful when they lecture us on right and wrong.

 

Finally, I’d like to end this column on a lighter note.  Like, for instance, how much I love Spain.

That statement may surprise those who know me.  Until last week, my only encounter with anything Spanish was a painful stint in high school Spanish class, during which I learned a grand total of two sentences in Spanish: “Silencio, por favor, Martino.” And “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir?”

I tried out the second of those sentences on a cute female classmate of mine, when my alleged best friend told me that that was how to ask, “Would you help me study Spanish?”

Her response was not what I hoped for:  “Not if you were the last guy on earth!  And you’re not as funny as you think you are.  And that was French, not Spanish, you moron.”

So I’ve never been a huge Spain fan.  But that changed last month, after Mexican socialist president Obrador called on the Spanish king to apologize for Spain’s 500-year-old conquest of Mexico.

By the way, how can you tell that the Mexican president is a socialist?  First, have you seen the vibrant Mexican economy, humming with socialist productivity and efficiency?  Second, instead of minding his own business, El Presidente spends his time pouting and demanding apologies for things that happened when Ruth Bader Ginsburg was in high school.

But the king of Spain is apparently not Barack Obama, Joe Biden or Beta O’Rourke.  Because instead of apologizing and groveling, his government responded forcefully.  First, they “firmly reject[ed] the request,” explaining that, “The arrival of Spaniards 500 years ago to present-day Mexican territory cannot be judged in light of contemporary considerations.”

Then they dropped the other pinata, saying that Spain is “obviously” not going to offer such an “extemporaneous apology…. Just like we are not going to ask the French Republic to apologize for what Napoleon’s soldiers did when they invaded Spain.  Or like the French are not going to ask the Italians to beg forgiveness for Julius Caesar’s conquest of Gaul.”

The only way to improve that answer would be to point out that before the Spaniards arrived, Obrador’s ancestors were a bunch of bloodthirsty Aztecs, sitting around pyramids of human skulls and ripping the hearts out of their local passersby in an effort to ensure a good corn crop this year.  So how about Spain apologizes to the Mexican government right after the Mexican government apologizes to the descendants of the neighboring tribes that they colonized?

Oops, that’s right – you killed all of them!

Silencio, por favor, Obrador!

So I’m sitting in my book-lined study, listening to Bach’s Cello Suite 1 in G, with T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” open in front of me.

Because I’m classy like that.

Eliot’s familiar last lines go, “This is the way the world ends/ Not with a bang, but a whimper.”

In this most schadenfreude-tastic of weeks, I want to borrow Eliot’s theme, and focus this column on Things That Have Ended with both a Bang and a Whimper:

First, let’s get the easy joke out of the way — Kamala’s “job interviews” with corrupt and crusty old Willie Brown.   Bang. Whimper.  Here’s your no-show job, Kamala.

Second… of course… it’s Mueller time!

I know that CO and COers have already done an admirable job with this the story, but I can’t resist a few comments of my own.   And to properly set the mood for that, I must ask you to go to Youtube and call up the video of Ray Charles and the Voices of Jubilation singers doing, “Oh Happy Day.”  Please use that as your soundtrack as you read the rest of this column.

(Also, as a bonus: if I were somehow turned into an African-American woman in a red dashiki, my expressions while I was channel surfing the MSM Monday would look exactly like the lady at 2:13 in that video.) (And if that sounds too far-fetched to get your mind around, consider that I am a lot closer to being that woman than Liz Warren is to being an American Indian.) (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

First, does it make me a bad person if I’m enjoying watching the disappointed lefty true believers cycling between shocked despair and full-blown denial in the wake of Mueller-geddon?

If so, I’m a very, very bad person.  I surfed from one channel to another, savoring the stammering, yammering boneheads.  John Brennan is backpedaling like a scared cornerback lined up across from Willie Gault in 1985.  (Yes, that’s a 34-year old Bears reference.  What’s your point?)

Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo – from the “Help! I’m trapped in an airport with no other viewing options!” network – wobbled around like they’d been pole-axed.  Lemon started a rambling sentence about Russian collusion that somehow ended with “…the easy fix, is to just release his tax returns.”

Um, what now?  Does Lemon “think” (scare quotes intended) that Trump had a write-off labeled “collusion expenses?”

I saw the headline that Maxine Waters was having a meltdown over it, and of course my first thought was, “Don’t over-react — her face always looks like that.”  But when I watched a little video, and saw that the melting has indeed spread from her face to her brain.  In a rambling response, she said, “This isn’t the end of anything.” (pause) “Well, it is the end of the Mueller report…”

Yep!

One of my favorite moments was seeing CNN president Jeff Zucker defending his network’s getting everything wrong for two years.  (If you’re not sure which one Zucker is, he looks like a dishonest, giant human thumb, with glasses on it.)  In an email to the NYT, he pronounced himself “very comfortable” with CNN’s coverage of the non-existent collusion conspiracy.  (Which tells you that he is a very much opposable thumb.) (HA!)

His best line: “We are not investigators.  We are journalists, and our role is to report the facts as we know them, which is exactly what we did.”

Hey Thumbkin, if you don’t do any investigating, how do you learn the facts that it is your job to report?  Do you just stand on a street corner in Atlanta until some bum who’s out of methadone stumbles up to you and whispers out of the side of his mouth that he saw Trump groping Natasha Badanov while her husband Boris conveyed marching orders from Putin?

(And before you can object, I know that “bum” is politically incorrect language.  But I can’t keep up with the terminology.  Is “vagrant” acceptable?  How about “hobo?”  “Member of the Poop Map Contributor Community?” “The Democrat Base?”  Someone please help me with this.)

Anyway, Tom Thumb says that it’s not his reporters’ job to investigate anything.  They just report whatever facts come through from the fillings in their teeth, I guess.

One last hilarious detail: since the Mueller report came out, CNN’s ratings have cratered, and I’m sure that Zuck-ster and his team are sitting around a big table, trying to understand.  I mean, they’re not investigating, or anything.  But they’re looking at each other with vacant, Cuomo-esque stares, wondering what this all means.

I’ll tell you what it means: One, two, three, four, we deplorables declare a thumb war!

Third in our “bang and whimper” list is the latest in the Jussie “don’t call me Jessie” Smollett case.  The inexplicable decision to depart from all usual procedure and dismiss the rock-solid hate crime hoax charges against the Trump-hating obscure actor appears to be a whimpering end to the case.   But the black police chief and the law enforcement rank and file are furious, and even Rahm “dead-shark-eyes”  Emanuel has felt compelled to blast the dismissal.  With any luck, another shoe will be dropping with a bang shortly.

Fourth, the execrable Southern Poverty Law Center has been imploding over the last several weeks, and it couldn’t happen to a better bunch of political arsonists.   Creepy founder Morris Dees was fired on March 14^th with a vague statement to the effect that he had “failed to meet standards.”   Ten days later, president Richard Cohen resigned, and rumors about endemic racism and sexism in the SPLC headquarters for decades are running rampant.

In other words, so far two big bangs, and a chorus of whimpers at SPLC.  By the way, that misnamed group has always reminded me of the old saying about the Holy Roman Empire – it was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.  The Southern Poverty Law Center mostly aimed to raise funds from guilty Northern liberals, accumulated great wealth, and was totally lawless.  Good riddance!

Fifth, no bang-and-whimper list would be complete without the immolation of the Creepy Porn Lawyer Michael Avenatti.  (Insert your own Stormy Daniels joke here.) (Um, maybe “insert” was not the right word.)  A year ago this guy was flying high, appearing on CNN hourly (and thus being seen by literally dozens of people every day), and being taken seriously by some Dems as a potential presidential contender.

And now, he’s been fired by Stormy, kicked out of his law offices, and charged with multiple counts of extortion.  Which means that he would now be no better than the fourth-most-impressive Dem presidential candidate.  Oh, how the degraded have fallen… one or two steps lower than he already was.

Sixth, March 26^th was the best day in the US Senate in decades.  Cocaine Mitch McConnell finally forced a vote on the Green New Deal (also known informally as the “Titanic-Hindenberg-Edsel-New Coke-Dumpster-Fire-Act of 2019”).

The result?  0 yeas, 57 nays and 43 voted “present.”

So close!

“But Martin,” I can hear you saying, “Hasn’t every Democrat senator running for president praised the Green New Deal, ranting that if we don’t pass it, we’re all going to, like, die in only, like, 12 years or something?”

Yes.  Yes they have.  And yet every last one of them — Hillary 1 and 2 (Klobuchar and Gillibrand), Squanto Warren, Bernie, Kamala, Spartacus – voted “present.”

Along with, of course, every other spineless leftist in the Senate, including Schumer, Dick “nobody ever calls him Richard” Durbin, Richard “everybody secretly calls him Dick” Blumenthal and the other assorted Merkleys and Markeys.

Not since a herd of squishy RINOs got elected promising to end Obamacare and build a wall has a political party so betrayed their voters.  Let the lefty whimpering begin!

 

Finally, I’m happy to end with a story that is all bang and no whimper: the Israeli response to Hamas terrorists firing rockets into Israel.  When the fine folks from the Religion of Peace™ managed to reach Tel Aviv with a super-peaceful rocket (result: shrapnel wounds to 7 civilians, including a woman in her sixties, a 12-year-old girl, and two infants.), Israel responded with some vigorous diplomacy.

HA! I kid.  They conducted 80 air strikes against dozens of terror installations in Gaza, leveling most of them.  My favorite line from the reporting involved the administrative headquarters of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, which before the strikes was a three-story building. (Now it is less than one story.)  The line referred to the building as Hamas’ “secret headquarters.”

Secret’s out, Ismail!

What’s the over/under on how long it takes Ilhan Omar to criticize Israel for attacking an innocent terrorist headquarters building?

What a week!   Mueller nukes the conspiracy fever dreams of the left, Avenatti heads for the Big House instead of the White House, and Morris Dees gets the poop-map-contributor’s rush.  (Get it?) And then the Dem senators get a chance to vote for the vital, “stop the end of the world now” act that they sponsored, and the whole rotten lot of them vote Present!

Look at the end of the “Oh Happy Day” video again, because I’ve stopped identifying with the lady in the red dashiki.  (Don’t mis-gender me!) Watch when the big bald guy escorts Ray Charles away from the organ toward the end of the song, while Ray rocks that mile-wide smile, pats both side of his face, hugs himself, and does that weird little squatting, knee-slapping dance.

Call me Ray “Martacus” Charles, because that was me this week, dancing around my living room watching the MSM imploding, while Cassie the Wonder Dog pranced around me, barking with joy.

I have been spending some free time pondering the possible Democratic presidential tickets.

I know what you’re thinking: is he still on those narcotics?  (If you missed the story, I recently had a pain-med adventure that involved a dentist who literally went at me with hammer and tongs.) (But at least it wasn’t a hammer and sickle, which is what we’ll get if Bernie gets control over our health care system.) (HA!)

I am thinking about the various combinations of Dem Prez/VP combos because I find them all fascinating.   And by “fascinating,” I mean simultaneously hilarious and horrifying.

I trust that the sophisticated CO nation understands the horrifying part.  If any of this crop of ne’er-do-wells wins next year, tuning in to that inauguration is going to be like watching a baby carriage rolling in slow motion directly into the path of a speeding 18-wheeler on the interstate.

(For those of you who may not have majored in Interpretive Dream Symbolism, in this analogy the baby carriage would be my beloved United States, the baby would be an actual, adorable human baby – although she’d be clutching all of my hopes and dreams in one of her pudgy little fists, and my 401K in the other – and the speeding semi would be the doomsday administration of whichever leftist loon the Dems and MSM — but I repeat myself — managed to drag across the finish line.)

But as horrible as the general election would be if the Dems were to win, their primary debates are going to put the “high” in “high-larious.”  I can’t wait!

The black ones will be sneering at the white ones, and the women will be scowling at the men, and Beta will come rolling in on a skateboard like a doofus.  Bernie will lose a hearing aid, and Biden will grope a moderator. Either Amy Klobuchar or Kirsten Gillibrand will call Liz Warren “Sitting Bull” under her breath, and because Lizzie can’t tell the two of them apart, she’ll start calling them “Hillary 1” and “Hillary 2.”

Which will be fighting words, so with any luck, a three-way white-lady wrestling match will break out.  Cory Booker will command them to stop, but as he stands astride them with his hands on his hips, yelling, “I am Spart-“ he’ll be interrupted by one cankle shooting out of the scrum and catching him in the crotch, after which he’ll hobble off stage like Spartacus’ cowardly manservant, a character so nondescript that his name is unknown to history.

Harris will sidle up to Bernie and offer to sleep with him if he’ll put her on his ticket as VP – a political stratagem that is known in California political circles as “pulling a Kamala” – but he’ll be shaking his hearing aid in frustration, and won’t hear a word she says.

Biden will trip over Beto’s skateboard and fall into Bernie, and both of them will immediately break a hip.  Beto will take advantage by stepping through the mass of writhing idiots to the microphone, where he’ll begin gesticulating wildly as he recites a word salad made up of equal parts of randomly selected paragraphs from Jack Kerouac, a madlib of socialist talking points, and AOC’s dream journal (but I repeat myself).

It’s going to be like 4 months of Christmas, mixed with Wrestlemania 25 (“This Time It’s Personal – and the Personal is Political!”) and April Fool’s Day!

Once the primaries are over, and the Democrats have chosen a “winner” (and never have scare quotes been any scarier), the VP derby will begin.

Traditional political analysts, when mulling presidential tickets, consider ideology (a hard-liner and a centrist might be the most electable combination), age (a combination of older/experienced works well with younger/energetic), or geography (a VP from a key battleground state might tip the balance if he could bring along his home state).

But not me.   Because at times I’ve been called @hilariousgenius, and at other times Martacus, and at still other times, Martino.  (Okay, that was only in high school Spanish class, where I may have been called a lot of other names too.  But I wouldn’t have known that.) (Because I don’t speak a word of Spanish.)

But I have NEVER been called a traditional political analyst.

Which is why I have my own, idiosyncratic ways of choosing a dream ticket.

For example, I am tempted to pull for the Whitest Ticket In History combo: Warren/Gillibrand.

Or the best alliteration ticket:  Biden/Beto.

Or the least ethnic putatively African-American ticket: Kamala/Spartacus.

Or the double-barreled ethnic fraud ticket: Beto/Warren. (an Irish Hispanic and a translucent Iroquois) (#wemustneverstopmockingbothofthem)

Or the “never-worked-an-honest-day-in-their-lives” ticket: Sanders/Beto.  (But also, really, most of them.)

 

But perhaps my favorite dark horse ticket would come down to the coolest-sounding pairing: Hickenlooper/Buttigieg.

“Hickenlooper” is so goofy-sounding that I admire the guy just for having any career at all.  Because a name has traditionally made a huge difference in how someone is perceived.

You expect a woman named “Sophia Loren” or “Brigitte Bardot” to be smoking hot.  You expect a guy named “Michael Stonebreaker” to play linebacker at Notre Dame.  You expect someone named “Albert Einstein” to be the intellectual opposite of AOC.   (Also, in a coincidence that I’m almost too modest to point out, you expect a guy named “Martin Simpson” to be a smoking hot, linebacker/genius.) (Take that, tropical-disease-name-sounding Idris Alba!)

It usually works in the opposite direction, too.

Nobody was going to watch a tough-guy western starring Marion Morrison, so he became John Wayne.  Women weren’t likely to swoon over Archibald Leach, so he became Cary Grant.   No one was going to vote for Willard Romney, so he became Mitt.   (As it turns out, not enough people voted for him anyway, but that’s probably because “Mitt” is not such a great name.  Also, he’d had his spine surgically replaced with a slinky, which did NOT help.)

And before you can raise the Arnold Schwarzenegger objection: he’s the exception that proves the rule.

(Fun Historical Naming Fact Digression: Hitler’s dad was the illegitimate son of a woman named “Shicklgruber,” and he and Adolph came very close to being stuck with that name.  Which would have changed history, because no gang of rowdy Germans in a beer hall could ever have plausibly been induced to shout out the salute, “Heil Schiklgruber!”)

Where was I?

Oh yeah: Hickenlooper’s little buddy, Buttigieg.

Wow.  I don’t know anything about the guy, except three things: He grew up gay.  In the Midwest.  And his last name started with “butt.”

Therefore, he’s got to be tough as nails, and I want to like the guy. Not since the great Johnny Cash told the story of the Boy Named Sue has there been a name as guaranteed to get a youngster toughened up.

So as I was writing the above, I thought that I’d research Buttigieg a little, because maybe he’d be a Dem who might not be awful as president…

Aaaannnnnndddd nope!

First of all, I was devastated to learn that his last name is disappointingly pronounced something like, “Boot-edge-edge.” (Though I’d probably say that too, if my name had an obvious “butt” in it.)  At least his first name isn’t “Jeh.”   (Because if you spell someone’s name to look like “Jeh Butt-a-gig” but insist that it’s pronounced “Jay Boot-edge-edge,” I don’t care if he’s the newly discovered son of Ronald Reagan – I’m out!)

Secondly, he’s another cookie-cutter leftist, supporting the usual disaster-producing policies: Medicare for all, the Green New Deal, forced increases to the minimum wage, etc.

So we’re back to square one: all of the Dem candidates are as crazy as outhouse rodentia, as we used to say in my small Midwestern town, when parents were in earshot.

But the primaries are going to be all the more entertaining because of it.

Hickenlooper/Buttigieg 2020!

 

So March is off to an iffy start.  I just had a little visit with an oral surgeon who removed a cracked tooth.  If I weren’t a stoic, Spartan type of guy – as some of you may know, my close friends often call me Martacus – I would guess that he used a mining drill, and possibly a few shaped charges.  There was definitely smoke involved.

I’m going to end up getting an implant several months from now, and to that end, the dentist put in a cadaver bone graft.  And yes, before you can ask, I checked with him beforehand to confirm that the cadaver involved was not from Egypt.  Because I don’t want to suddenly find myself slurring my words, and wildly gesticulating with dessicated mummy hands, going all Nancy Pelosi.

At one point, the assistant warned me that the doc was going to be “manually raising the sinus floor” (which has to be one of the greatest euphemisms ever), and to that end, I would hear some – and I quote – “tapping.”

This was followed by some concussive hammering on my upper jaw with what I can only assume was a 24-ounce waffle-faced framing hammer.  (I’ve done a lot of home renovations over the last 20 years, and I stand by that guess.)

I would like to take this opportunity to once again thank a benevolent God for inventing anesthetic.  Because although I was bouncing around in the chair like Ted Kennedy’s date on the ride home, I didn’t feel a thing.  Not until 3 hours later.

Anyway, long story short, I’m taking an assortment of antibiotics and some sweet pain meds.  And I’ve always found that the best time to write about the actions of various leftist boneheads on the national scene is when I’m hopped up on goofballs.  So here goes…

I’m sure you all really enjoyed the Oscars, and neither did I.  Instead of watching the cavalcade of America-hating prima donnas, I checked out the Daily Wire podcast about it, on which Ben Shapiro summed it up best: gay black guy story beat out several regular black guy movies and several other regular gay person movies.   And evil Cheney movie was nominated, but couldn’t win due to a shortage of disabled transgendered people of color in the cast.

My favorite part was that after the leftist witch-hunters drove off anyone willing to host, the anemic ratings actually went up about 9%.  I just like the message that that sends to Jimmy “waah” Kimmel: after two years of you doing the hosting job, you were replaced by nobody.  And nobody did a better job.

Terrible bartender and juvenile thinker AOC continues to amuse.  She’s lost her patience with people always picking at tiny little details that she gets wrong – such as $93 trillion deficits, and the fact that you can’t build a railroad to Hawaii, and the fact that you can’t replace cars with a national system of thousands of miles of slip-and-slides, and that there’s not supposed to be any Murphy’s Oil Soap in a scotch and soda.

She finally snapped in an interview.  Responding to skepticism about her Green New Deal, she threw down the gauntlet, demanding to know why no one else has come up with a plan to fix the world’s climate.  Because I wasn’t there, no one said, “Because real scientists are debating nearly every aspect of the myriad factors that influence global temperatures, and what steps humans might be able to take to affect even a few of those factors.  Also, a planet’s ecosystem is a little more complicated than a Long Island Iced Tea.  Which, by the way, is not supposed to have lye and pepper in it, so please take this back.”

She worked herself up into a perfect, pre-teen snit, sneering that “no one else has even tried” to deal with the climate, and ending in a finger waving, “like”-infested rant:  “So people are like, oh, it’s unrealistic.  Oh, it’s vague. Oh, it doesn’t address this little minute thing.  And I’m like, YOU try!  You do it!  Cause you’re not.  You’re not.  So until you do it, I’m the boss!  How bout dat?”

You’ve got to see it and hear it to get the full inanity of it all.  She’s like that “Cass me ousside, how bout dat?” girl from some daytime talk show.  Only she has the ability to propose legislation, and deter multi-billion dollar companies from opening a branch in a blue state.  (HA!  Take that, Cuomo and Schumer!  The illiterate and innumerate chickens are coming home to ROOST! (How bout dat?)

And the other fresh faces in the new Democratic congress aren’t faring much better.  In particular, two new Muslim congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib have stumbled from one anti-Semitic and anti-American gaffe after another, including mocking Mike Pence’s Christian faith, and altering a map to show the state of Israel replaced by Palestine.

If you throw in scandal-prone abuser Keith Ellison, the Democrats have gone 0-for-Islam so far.

 

But even considering all of this leftist smorgasbord of stupid, my two favorite lefty stories from last month came from lesser known Democrats.

First, Lamar, South Carolina mayor Darnell Byrd-McPherson, an African-American female (despite being named “Darnell”) has been on the lookout for MAGA-hat wearing deplorables committing hate crimes.  On February 7^th, this knucklehead announced in a press release that the racists had struck:

“The incident happened last night. Even though I drove my car today, I thought it was pollen. My husband and our neighbor noticed the cars looked like someone had spray painted on both our vehicles, which were parked in our front yard.

As an aside, during the 70s, crosses were burned in the yard of our home when my mother was involved with the civil rights movement. On this very same corner in this very same front yard!

Again, we are grateful the person or persons did not try to take our lives but the culprits will be identified and prosecuted.

Love conquers hate and my husband and I refuse to be intimidated by those who perpetrated this act of vandalism which I classify as an act of hatred. ”

Byrd-McPherson referenced how bills are being introduced to address hate crimes in the South Carolina General Assembly. She added hate crimes are on the rise in the state.

The incident remains under investigation.”

The give-away is in the first line: something that appeared to be pollen was found on her car.  Naturally, she immediately thought about Klansmen (whom I must point out were Democrats) burning crosses on her yard.  As one does. From there it’s only a hop, skip and a smear to people trying to kill her, and her not being intimidated, and by the way she’s introducing more hate crime legislation.

As it turned out – you guessed it – there was pollen on her car.  In South Carolina.  During pollination season.

But don’t give up, Darnell.  How do you know that your property is NOT surrounded by racist trees and shrubs?  Trying to kill you, or hold you down, or mess up your cars?  Not to mention making you sneeze and wheeze?

In fact, only a few minutes of research revealed to me that in your region, you are surrounded by such suspicious trees as WHITE pines, WHITE firs, and WHITEbark pines.  Not to mention the Torch Pine!  I don’t think I need to remind you who was fond of carrying torches: Democrat klansmen!

And don’t get me started on lynchberry bushes or Jim Crow kudzu!

So look alive, mayor.  I’m already hearing rumors that many white supremacist trees are colluding in a conspiracy – reports indicate that this will happen in October — to drop millions of leaves on the heads of unsuspecting minorities, possibly injuring them, and definitely clogging their gutters.

 

Not to be outdone by idiot leftist politicians, idiot leftist vandals also had their moment to shine in February.   This story happened in North Carolina, where some unknown miscreants continued the recent trend of vandalizing statues of Civil War figures by trying to light a statue of Robert E. Lee on fire.

They encountered two problems.  First, the statue is made of marble, which is not famous for being flammable.  Fun fact: of all of the buildings that burned to the ground in the great Chicago Fire, roughly zero of them were made of marble.  Which is why you may not have been taught in school about how Mrs. Leary’s cow was slipping and sliding around in her marble barn when the fire started.

Second, it turns out that the carved marble figure was not in fact Civil War general Robert E. Lee, but World War II Major General William C. Lee, who was known as the “Father of the US Airborne.”

To be fair to the vandals, both Lees are white males who identified as males, and to many idiots, we all look alike.

On the other hand, Robert E. Lee had a cool beard, and wore a Civil War era uniform, and is virtually always depicted on a horse.  Whereas William C. Lee is clean shaven, wearing a WWII uniform (with a 20^th century military hat, uniform and boots) and is not sitting on a horse.

Note for those who may have learned their history from blue-state, unionized public school teachers: the Civil War did NOT happen in the 20^th century.  Also, one of the main reasons for the Confederate defeat was NOT how ineffective their air force was.  Finally, surprisingly few WW II airborne assaults were conducted by soldiers parachuting out of the back of airplanes on horseback.

Although it does make me smile to picture a squad of German soldiers in Normandy on June 6^th, looking up in terror at a sky filled with airborne troops carrying six shooters, on the backs of descending horses with murder in their equine eyes.

“Mein Gott!” I pictured those Germans screaming, “a million American bad asses are descending on the back of a million Hillary Clintons.  Beware the hooves and cankles!  We surrender!”

Okay, I think that last paragraph can only mean one thing: it’s time for me to take more narcotics.

Martacus out!

Several events have started me thinking more about fathers lately.  For one, my mom was down for a visit last week. She’s 80 now, and dad has been gone for 4 years, which makes the time we get to spend with her even more precious.  We never get together without thinking about him a lot, and the great legacy he left for us.

On the other end of the spectrum, my youngest daughter turns 17 next week, and that shocking indication of the passing of time has a way of sobering one up.  It’s a cliché for a reason: it seems like just a year ago she was a defenseless infant, and just a week ago she was a prickly pre-teen.  And now when I have a tech question about my website or cell phone or wifi, I go to her, and she condescends to help me.  Plus, I get to try out some jokes for my column on her, which means I get to see some world-class eye rolling. (On the downside, she has been as reluctant as my wife to address me as either “@hilariousgenius” or “Martacus.” Which is disappointing.)

Regular CO readers have heard of some of my great parenting techniques, but for new arrivals, here are a few tips.

First, to be an adequate father, you don’t have to do that much: marry the woman you are going to have kids with, then stick around, earn a little, love them, don’t vote for leftists.  (That last one is not just for dads – it’s a requirement for all functional adults.)  If you’ve got daughters, keep them off the pole.  If you’ve got sons, don’t let them play soccer.  It’s not that hard.

To be a world-class dad, I would suggest devising a few additional monkey tricks for the kids that you teach them when they are very tiny, and then have them perform those for visitors.  That gives them self-esteem.

For example, in addition to my call-and-response routine with my first daughter when she was still in diapers (I’d say, apropos of any terrible story on the news when we were together, “Who do we blame that on?” and she’d respond with an adorable, “The Democrats!”), I also came up with a couple of other crowd-pleasers.

When I asked her, “Which is your favorite of Aristotle’s logical fallacies?” I taught her to say, “Post hoc ergo propter hoc.”  (This usually came out “procto hoc,” which is close enough.)  I’d follow up with, “What does that mean in English?” To which she would reply, “After this, therefore because of this.”

My closer would be to ask her, “When you are on the court, what kind of Supreme Court Justice will you be?”  She would answer with, “A strict constructionist!”

Her pronunciation wasn’t always perfect when she was two, but the answer still always killed.  The only exception was when she spoiled the moment after her answer by pointing to her diaper and saying, “I made poop.”

But I saved the day by pointing out that that was in fact her eerily accurate Ruth Bader Ginsburg impression.   Then I said, “Now do your Hillary Clinton!”  And she’d screw her adorable little face up into a frown and screech, “CAW, CAW, CAW!” at the top of her lungs.

Good times.

But enough about my terrific parenting skills.  I’d like to point to another dad who is doing it right: Donald Harris, father of Kamala Harris.

Hear me out.

I know that your first instinct is that he probably failed as a father.  He split up with her mom years ago, and although Kamala did manage to stay off the pole, she did something arguably much worse, sleeping with creepy old (married) Willie Brown to launch her career.

And anyone whose child ends up in this dementia of Democratic candidates (hat tip to, I think, John Gabris?  And all the other COers who chimed in with collective nouns for the Dem hopefuls) has been a less than super successful parent.

On the other hand, in response to one of her recent idiotic interviews (you need a scorecard to keep track with this bunch), he displayed the nuclear option of fatherhood: public shaming.

Some idiotic radio interviewer asked Kamala if she has smoked pot, she responded, “Half my family’s from Jamaica.  Are you kidding me?”

This answer was part of a painfully awkward pattern of leftists trying to appeal to millennials by pretending to be young and hip.   Hillary pretended that she carries hot sauce everywhere she goes, and she once said, “I’m just chillin’ in Cedar Rapids,” with a straight face. Squanto Warren (#wemustneverstopmockingher) pretended that she likes to crack open a cold one in her kitchen like a real-life Peter Griffin. RBG pretends that she’s a feminist spokesperson, and that she has a pulse.

In the same vein, Kamala came out with an execrable “mood mix” selection of music, and claimed that back in college, she used to get high listening to Snoop and Tupac songs.  (Fact check: those two haven’t ever actually produced anything that could technically be called “songs.” Also, neither of them produced an album until 6 years after Kamala graduated from college.) (So liar, liar, big floppy rasta hat on fire.”)

Anyway, Kamala’s dad was not happy with his daughter’s crass reference to the heavy-toking Jamaican stereotype.   He wrote a public letter saying, “My dear departed grandmothers…, as well as my deceased parents, must be turning in their grave right now to see their family’s name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity being connected…with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker and in pursuit of identity politics.”

Ouch!  Daddy no like!

I love this for two reasons: he called her out on the kind of pernicious racial stereotyping the leftists deploy against conservatives but never pay a price for themselves.  And he also slammed her for playing identity politics, which I think is one of the most destructive trends in our public life right now.

So I salute you, Mr. Harris.  But I have to confess that I’m not as upset as you are that Kamala is a pot-smoking joy seeker.

I just wish she wasn’t a pot-smoking office seeker!

Martacus out.

(See.  I can be as faux hip as any Dem candidate.) (If I had a mike, I’d drop it.)

The responses to my last column once again prove that the CO nation is full of some witty people, with impeccable taste.

You all answered the call with some more suggestions for a collective noun to describe Dem presidential candidates.  A “dementia of Democrats” and a “failure of Democrats” were particular favorites, though I can’t discount the alliterative fun of “clown car of candidates” and “gaggle of goofballs.”

The positive response to the title of “Martacus” is growing on me.  Just this morning, I was standing in front of a full-length mirror in a toga (as one does), testing the sound of it.  Cassie the Wonder Dog stood by watching, and she seemed impressed.

On the other hand, John Gabris suggested that the ultimate test of the new name will be whether my wife will use it.  Early results are NOT encouraging.  On the other hand, she has inexplicably not taken to calling me “@hilariousgenius,” either, no matter how nicely I ask.  So I may have to disregard her opinion on this, as on a few other things.

We’ve got a new addition to the declared field of Dem candidates…and never has a “dementia” of Democrats more aptly applied than it does to Bernie Sanders.  The socialist dictator-enthusiast threw his hat into the ring on the 19^th.  Comically, it was a bicorne hat (like the one Napoleon wore), which was very fashionable in the early 19^th century, when Bernie was a young man.

(Speaking of which, I know that “octogenarian” describes people in their 80s, and “nonagenarian” people in their 90s.  But what word describes a guy in his late 100s like Bernie?  I want to say “centurion,” but I know that that’s one of those Roman soldiers.)  (Speaking of which, call me Martacus!)

(See what I mean?  It’s growing on you, too.)

I remember reading in 2015 about Bernie’s checkered past: kicked out of a commune for being too lazy (How is that even possible?!), no consistent job until he got elected at age 39, composer of amateurish pornography.  But the most shocking story was that as a young adult, he stole electricity from a neighbor when his own utilities were cut off due to lack of payment.

I wasn’t shocked that a leftist was stealing what belongs to others. Because, duh!

I was shocked that electricity had been invented when Bernie Sanders was a young adult.

It should be fun to watch Bernie wheeze his way around the track one more time, forcing the other candidates to move even farther left to counter him.  Assuming that they won’t already be so far left that they are barely visible, far out on the horizon.

 

But all of the fun this week has not come from the presidential candidates – it has also come from unstable types like Jussie Smollett and AOC.

I knew that the Smollett story was fishy, for several reasons.

First, Simpson’s Law of Ridiculous Names obviously applies in the case of “Jussie.”  Oddly spelled names have been scientifically proven to be associated with shaky character — you need look no farther than Obama flunky Jeh Johnston for evidence.  We can accept a “Justin,” and we can accept a “Jessie,” but “Jussie” is a no-go.

Also, he wanted us to believe that Trump supporters do the following: live in Chicago, recognize an obscure actor from an obscure tv show, hang out at 2 a.m. in a polar vortex with a bottle of bleach in one gloved hand, and a noose in the other.  (Someone has to say it: it was a FAKE NOOSE!  HA!)

Smollett’s tired, hackneyed leftist talking points in interviews were so boring that I started to believe that the only reason the cops didn’t point the finger at him earlier was that he wasn’t interesting enough to be a “person of interest.”

Finally, for a leftist, anti-white/anti-conservative/anti-common sense media, the story was too good to check, which always means that it should be taken with a grain of salt.

Cochise Frigidaire (the dentally-challenged Native American Vietnam-era refrigerator repairman who fantasized about conservative white kids screaming “build the wall” at him) was lying, but the MSM fell for it.  As was frequent-flyer but terrified-of-flying baby-talker Christine Blasey-Ford.  As were a variety of other atrocity-committing MAGA-hat-wearers who turned out to be imaginary.

If you are wondering if the MSM will ever learn, don’t hold your breath. Especially in a polar vortex.

 

But the award for most entertaining lefty of February has to go to AOC (Annoying Oblivious-Cortez).

Her roll out of the Green New Deal was a thing of beauty, combining all of the standard elements that we’ve come to expect from her party: utopian assumptions, laughable misunderstandings of the way the world actually works, and breathtaking incompetence.

Let’s lead with the incompetence.  (She certainly did!)

Remember when FDR pushed ambitious legislation that turned a temporary economic downturn into the Great Depression, or when LBJ started a War on Poverty that poverty won by a TKO in the 10^th round, or when Obama promised shovel-ready jobs that turned out to not be so shovel-ready?

Or when Obama promised that you could keep your doctor and your plan, and that you’d save $2500 on your health care costs, but it turned out that you could keep neither your doctor nor your plan, and you had to sleep with creepy old Willie Brown to get an appointment with your GP?

Wait, maybe that last part was just Kamala “bury me in a Y-shaped coffin” Harris.  (Hat tip to Black Adder.)

Well, AOC’s GND was just that kind of FUBAR CF, served with a side of WTF and another of STFU. (Acronyms are fun!)

First, she released a FAQ (and yes, the “F” stands for the same thing it did in the previous acronyms) describing the plan.   But the plan was so breathtakingly stupid – let’s confiscate the earnings of hardworking people to pay people who are unwilling to work, and then ram corks into the ends of cows that do not moo, and then replace air travel with trains! – that she immediately had to start backtracking.

She tweeted – and I quote – “There are multiple doctored GNC resolutions and FAQs floating around.  There was also a draft version that got uploaded + taken down.  There’s also draft versions floating out there.”

So the documents are “doctored,” but also draft versions, which were presumably not doctored, but were only preliminary and thus invalid, even though they don’t contradict the essence of later versions, which are no less dumb than the earlier versions.

Also, the dog ate my homework, eyewitness testimony is unreliable, my email was hacked, and table 3 clearly ordered the pitcher of kerosene served in breadbowls that I brought them.

In a 2/7 morning interview with NPR, AOC was asked, “Are you prepared to put on the table that yes, [conservatives] are actually right, what this requires is massive government intervention?” Her answer, which I am not making up: “It does.  It does.  Yeah, I have no problem saying that.”

Until that same evening, when she had a big problem saying that.  This time the interview was on MSNBC, and her response was subtly different:  “One way that the Right does try to mischaracterize what we’re doing as though it’s, like, some kind of massive government takeover.”

Anyway, after a few days of walking around in circles and stepping on rakes, AOC was finally knocked unconscious.  Her staff then leapt into action, telling reporters from the Hill that, “…while doctored FAQ documents are circulating on the internet, the one [we] released was an unfinished draft that [we] had not intended to publish.”

In related news, Carlos Danger (and why isn’t THAT guy a declared presidential candidate, by the way?) released a statement of his own:  “You know all of those pics of my genitalia that I sent to all of those underage girls?  I did not intend to publish them.  Sooooooo… can I be in Congress again?”

But the hijinks didn’t stop there.   Chinless cartoon turtle “Cocaine Mitch” McConnell plodded into action, proposing a vote on the GND in the Senate.  And leftists politicians cheered, eagerly climbing over each other to get in front of cameras and take credit for this visionary legislation.

Ha!  I kid.  They actually ran for cover, because even they know ridiculous it is.

But AOC was not deterred.   She touted the amazing benefits of the GND, saying that it can be a new “moon shot.”

When I first heard that, I thought that she might be planning to drop her pants and expose her rear end in the next House debate.  Which might be her best chance to distract the electorate from what is in the GND.

On the other hand, if it works, it might encourage DMH (“Dessicated Mummy Hands” Pelosi) or Hillary to try the same tactic.

So, please God, NOOO!!!

The encore to the GND launch was the Amazon kerfuffle.

True to her socialist hatred of all things prosperous or successful, AOC led the charge to prevent Amazon from bringing high paying jobs and a gusher of tax dollars to her constituents.  When Amazon agreed not to inflict these benefits on her district, AOC exulted, “Anything is possible!” and celebrated the victory over “corporate greed” and “worker exploitation.”

That’s the kind of “can’t do” spirit that made the left great.

Some of her supporters – who were all standing around with nothing to do in the middle of a work day – said, “Yay?”

Also, “I was told there would be a free lunch.  And afterwards a moon shot.”

From her interviews, it became clear that AOC thinks that a “tax break” means that New Yorkers would have to GIVE Amazon $3B, rather than agreeing to take $3B LESS up front (and then many billions more later ) than they would have otherwise received, if any hypothetical company was masochistic enough to invest in a hostile blue state.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: as a political thinker, she makes a hell of a bartender.

Thus spake Martacus!

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.