CSotD: Fools, knaves and victims
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Someone recently said that the Internet has ruined April Fool's Day by pummeling us with a constant barrage of untruths for no apparent reason.
I had a friend who would cheat at anything, which made some less-than-admirable sense when he had his kids lie about their ages to shave money from ticket prices, but made very little at all when we were playing Monopoly in his livingroom, which we kind of quit doing because he was such an inveterate cheat.
And then, as Agnes says, there are the political operatives, but she's wrong about the derisive catcalls peppered with bursts of mirth, because they never crack a smile, their motivation being to gain power.
Which is, after all, a motivation, just as most of the bogus statements on the Internet are not pointless cheating but "Like Farmers" working to cash in on our boundless gullibility.
The days of honest April Fool's pranks are fading under a deluge of cynical lies, and Agnes isn't the only one ready to give up on trying to top the stuff that comes down the pipes every other day of the year.
In this semi-interview with a gossip website, John Oliver bemoans the Trump administration because it makes bad jokes easy and good ones nearly impossible:
People, in a really well meaning way, say, ‘Oh yeah, your whole show is written for you,’ and that would be true, IF we wanted our show to be terrible. But this is harder. It’s less fun… it’s less fun going through things that are already laughable but are inherently poisonous.
Case in point:
Candorville often simply offers deadpan reporting, and, really, what on earth can you say about this situation other than "Who are these idiots?"
A quick Google search turns up a rightwing group of turncoat screwballs who, for instance, come out against family leave because it burdens employers who would, they're sure, give their employees, male and female alike, gigantic raises if costs were not so high.
There is, so far as I know, no equivalent of "Uncle Tom" for women, and the only attempt to create one that I know of failed.
For that matter, there was a time when exploitive depictions in media were apt to get tagged with "This Exploits Women" stickers, but that wave of feminists had to edge over and make space for "lipstick feminism" and I have several theories one of which is that you should never miss a good opportunity to shut up.
As Lemont learned, this is certainly one of those.
Anyway, it's like criticizing PETA: The only way IWF awards get publicity beyond their own True Believer colony is if others recoil publicly.
Nobody wants to be criticized, and, as today's Non Sequitur points out, sometimes the best you can do is to agree with them that nothing is actually their fault and then hope for the best.
Mind you, if the team loses, that pitcher is going to be furious with the press for reporting the final score, because that's fake news.
And if Lemont failed in his attempt at rational criticism, his creator, Darrin Bell, certainly hit the target with this one, and I'll give him kudos on two levels:
One is for simply sitting through an entire Sean Spicer briefing. I don't watch a lot of TV most days, but I was folding laundry and got to watch the little weasel argue and whine and manipulate and deny and shift focus and thank god it's not part of my job to listen to him on a daily basis.
The other is that he captures some actual history in that John André, Benedict Arnold's contact in the British army, was indeed waylaid by some self-proclaimed "patriot militia" who were more in the line of muggers and intent on robbing him when they discovered the incriminating papers hidden in his boot.
Although, while he's right that Spicer would rather pursue the leakers than the traitors whose secrets they betray, at least his 18th Century Spicer is relying on facts.
Yesterday, Sean the Sheep was diverting questions not with "spin" but with bare-faced lies, including the lunatic fringe rumor that Hillary Clinton sold uranium to the Russians and the nonsensical misquoting of Evelyn Farkas, and then pretending not to get the point of questions and deliberately answering with trivial irrelevancies nobody had asked him about.
There was a time when catching the president's press secretary in a lie was a news story, but, just as John Oliver says it's hard to make good jokes about someone who is a joke, the real scoop for a White House reporter would be to trap Spicer into telling the truth.
As for the question, "Is he a fool or a knave?" he can't possibly believe the nonsense that pours out of his mouth, but he also can't possibly think anyone else would believe it, either, so the question is like one of those Escher pictures that only seems sensible if you don't examine the whole thing.
While the liars and fools are playing games in the White House sandbox, Soup to Nutz continues to win the Home Run Derby, as it has for the past week or two, with a gag that isn't the least bit funny.
The armchair experts understand the homeless — they're lazy good-for-nothings who would rather sponge off the system than get an honest job.
I wish I were sheltered enough or dumb enough to share their heartless certainty.
When I see panhandlers, I think of people I've run into who, for one reason or another, didn't have control of their lives. Some are mentally ill, some are what we used to call "junkies" but you really can't dismiss them so easily, now that the pharmaceutical companies have begun mass-producing them.
Babs is right, and, although there are loving families who try their damnedest not to be lost, it doesn't always work out.
Now here's your moment of zen
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