Well, we’re back from Tennessee, and as usual the firehose of ridiculous political news has not let up. So I’ve got a column today, with another one to follow tomorrow.
First though, I read all the comments on my Monday column, but didn’t have time to respond to them. But I appreciate all of the kind words, and am glad that my Yosemite bathroom scenario landed. However, I did not mean to impugn the fine people in the Master Locksmiths community!
On the contrary, I intended to poke a little gentle fun at the hysterical leftists who are suggesting that firing one man with one bathroom key at Yosemite has caused our entire national park system to collapse.
One other bit of business: I have to give a shout out to Robert Desmond and Frederick Beal, two of the finest Americans in this or any other generation.
Am I saying that just because they hit my Tip Jar hard last week? (Which can be found at my webpage, Martinsimpsonwriting.com.)
Maybe. But I also like the cut of their respective jibs, and believe that they’ve demonstrated the kind of class and taste that should be a model for us all. Not to mention their fantastic discernment when it comes to how to spend their political-humor-column dollar. I thank and salute you, Desmond and Beal! (And though I’m no career counselor, that would make a hell of a law or accounting firm name. Or possibly a regionally popular folk music duo.)
Okay, on to the cavalcade of imbeciles on the left over the last several days…
I’ve enjoyed watching the AP getting their gender nonbinary onesies over their heads and throwing a tantrum because Trump is keeping them out of the White House press conferences and off of Air Force One until they call the former Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.
And because this is 2025 in America, when lefties throw a tantrum, it means crying in court. The AP took their complaint to a District Court judge, who ordered an expedited consideration of their lawsuit, while refusing to give them an immediate TRO.
My first instinct on hearing Trump’s name change for the Gulf was that it was a funny trolling of the left – what’s good for Comrade Goose is good for Commissar Gander, after all – but that it was also kind of silly. But now that I’ve seen the left’s reaction to it, the idea has grown on me.
AP has insisted that they won’t bend the knee to Trump on this. Or, I guess, bend the tongue? (For anyone who just made up their own Kamala-interviews-with-Willie-Brown joke, grow up!)
(Also: HA!)
Many people may feel like Trump is bullying AP by trying to coerce their use of his preferred language. But I’ve had long experience with the AP, and that experience leads me to a different conclusion.
Regular readers may remember that I was an English professor for 30 years, before I retired to go into full-time hilarious genius-ing for CO Nation. During much of that time, I used an influential citation and reference work called The AP Style Guide, which set standard usage rules for writers in many fields and majors. As a young prof, many of my department-dictated syllabi required that students buy the AP guide.
But as I gained seniority, wisdom and perspicacity – and the ability to throw around words like “perspicacity” – I also got more control over my syllabi and reading lists. And I stopped requiring students to buy the AP guide. Because it became more and more politically tendentious and hectoring.
(I know: pretty perspicacious use of both “tendentious” and “hectoring,” right? You’re not going to hear those in one of AOC’s or Aunty Maxine Waters’ low-IQ rants.)
Anyway, my point is that AP loves shaming and coercing undergrads into repeating their preferred terminology, using the threat of a lower GPA to force them into a twisted game of “Stalin Says.” (It’s like “Simon Says,” but with more totalitarian humorlessness.)
The AP guide says that when writing about races of people, you must capitalize the first letter of “Black,” but keep the lower case for “white.” It also decrees that illegal aliens should be called “undocumented,” that mothers be called “birthing persons,” and that gender denying mutilations be called “gender affirming care.”
Also according to the AP, we’ve always been at war with Eastasia, and war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.
Oddly enough, AP has happily gone along with various past examples of political name changes, including agreeing to call Mt. McKinley “Denali,” the nation of Turkey “Turkiye,” and Kiev “Kyiv.”
But I guess it’s (D)ifferent when Trump is the one making the name change.
I’m looking forward to seeing how this childish resistance ends. Will the AP stubbornly consign themselves to forever sitting and pouting at the media kiddies’ table, rather than submit to the mean orange man the way they force cowed undergrads to submit to them?
Or will they finally surrender? If so, I hope that Trump really rubs it in. I picture him standing in front of a map of the northern hemisphere with a pointer in his hand, tapping one re-named feature after another.
Trump (pointing to the former Greenland): What’s this called?
AP (mumbling): Trumpland.
Trump (tapping Canada): And this?
AP: the 51st state, America’s Evil Top Hat
Trump (tapping the former Denali): And this?
AP: Mt. McKinley
Trump (tapping a spot in South Dakota): And this?
AP: Mount Trumpmore
Trump (tapping the Gulf): And this?
AP (staring at their shoes and muttering): The Gulf of America.
Trump (cupping a hand behind his ear): I can’t hear you.
AP (louder): The Gulf of America!
Trump: That’s better. Now bend over, and I’m going to give you one stroke on the seat of your pants with this pointer for every day you got that wrong.
And, scene.
I’ve got time for one more brief note, and it’s the feel-good story of the week: the firing of whitey-hating bile spewer, Joy Reid by MSNBC.
You may remember Reid as the mean-spirited racial arsonist who gleefully sneered about “the white tears” of unfairly prosecuted people like Kyle Rittenhouse, non-violent J-6ers, and Catholic abortion protestors.
My smokeshow wife (of Norwegian descent) remembers Reid mostly as a culturally appropriating scammer who adopted an unconvincing version of the blonde hair proudly worn by her Viking ancestors. (“My culture is not your costume!” she may have shouted at our tv.)
Reid’s show, like much of the pap on MSNBC and CNN, has taken a huge drop since the election, losing more than half of its already pathetic audience. On one hand that makes sense, since getting so thoroughly stomped in an election would naturally depress her viewers.
On the other hand, I think the kind of dead-enders who would still be watching Reid’s program before 11/5 would be motivated mostly by race-hatred, bitterness and incipient mental illness anyway, all of which she has catered to after the election as much as she did before.
Most leftist talking heads – as well as Reid herself – blamed… wait for it… racism and sexism for her firing.
Unexpectedly!
But you’d think that her latest horrifically low ratings would give even those blockheads pause. Because in a nation of around 330 million people, Reid has recently had 59,000 viewers in the key demo of 18-49 year olds.
59,000! On what passes for a major tv network! By comparison, on the slowest of nights, the RDN (Ring Doorbell Network) captures 100K viewers, and a recent two-part special entitled, “Latex vs Oil-Based?” on the WPDN (Watching Paint Dry Network) was seen by 70K viewers.
Reid’s final show was the only must-see tv she ever participated in, and then only because she actually cried in the final moments before well-deserved obscurity descended upon her like J.B. Pritzker descending on a giant ice-cream cake. (#putdownthatcomicallyoversizedturkeyleg)
I’m too much of a gentleman to mock Reid’s “black tears.” In fact, she might have actually been comforted to see the white tears I cried as MSNBC tossed her under the garbage truck that Trump drove to one of his campaign events.
Until she realized that those were white tears…of laughter.
Hamas delenda est!
Martin Simpson 