CSotD: Beyond the Valley of the Pols
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This may seem like an odd place to start, but it’s actually perfect. In case you missed it, FIFA, the organization that runs the World Cup tournament, recently announced that it has a brand-new Peace Prize and strongly hinted that it will present it to Donald Trump on December 5 when they draw the matches for the upcoming tournament.
What makes this stand out is that FIFA’s history of bribery has usually involved the choosing of sites for World Cups. AFAIK, this is the first time a bribe has involved an already chosen host country, and also the first time the bribe has been given, rather than received, by FIFA.
The point being that, as silly and needless and performative as this apple-polishing act may be, it’s a nice example of how readily Dear Leader can be had in return for a promise of favors and a shiny object. He represents a fascinating combination of the infantile level of impulsive gullibility that had him watch a Clint Eastwood movie and decide to reopen Alcatraz, with the sociopathic personality that left him frozen at his desk while a medical emergency unfolded five feet away.
Now, after several years of insisting that Muslims are terrorists and should be hated and feared, he welcomes a noted Muslim butcher on behalf of the American people, in exchange for a consideration more valuable than FIFA’s ridiculous little statuette.
He’s not fooling anyone, not even among his most ardent supporters in cartooning.
It’s not as if there were some doubt about how that Washington Post writer was murdered and dismembered at whose orders, which Huck combines with the killings at sea of purported drug smugglers who could readily have been captured, charged and given fair trials.
It’s a bizarre bit of camaraderie that, if social media posts are any indication, has not discouraged the MAGA faithful, assuming that they are real people and neither bots or employees of Russian troll farms.
Juxtaposition of the Day
As German points out, the “other side” really does seek justice and isn’t obsessed with party loyalty while, as Marlette suggests, being obsessed with loyalty requires some truly astonishing levels of spending and feats of contortion.
Fair’s fair, and the meeting in the White House required a pretty delicate balancing act by the principals involved, lest they tumble into a pool of blood themselves.
Davies, too, suggests that what MbS and Dear Leader have in common is a contempt for reporters and a free press, both believing that the press should operate as a public relations operation on behalf of rulers rather than an investigative/educational service for the public.
Brown reminds us how Dear Leader answered a question about Trump’s welcoming of a murderer, at least in front of an autocrat he admires.
Similarly, de Adder suggests that Dear Leader may envy MsB’s ability to, shall we say, cut off any questions he doesn’t want to answer, though it’s not entirely clear whether de Adder is depicting Catherine Lucey, the slim blonde Trump called “Piggy” aboard Air Force One, or Mary Bruce, the slim more brunette woman who, in the Oval Office, he told that many people didn’t like the reporter MsB ordered murdered and that “things happen,” as if MsB was cleaning his bone saw and it went off.
What’s clear is that both journalists are female and neither appears particularly “piggy,” particularly when they are standing next to Dear Leader, whose self-reported dimensions have sparked ridicule in the past.
And if Trump seems to clash more with women reporters than with men, it may be because there are more women in White House coverage. After all, he did have Jim Acosta’s press pass pulled for the sin of asking questions at a press conference.
OTOH, he does seem to have a pattern of hiring very good-looking women who don’t question him, though they may be flamingly, gapingly incompetent in their professional capacities.
I was tempted to run an entire day of “Quiet, Piggy!” cartoons to emphasize the outrage with which Dear Leader’s rude, childish outburst has landed.
Stahler pretty much nails it, though Trump was only five or six when he was caught throwing rocks at a screaming toddler confined to a playpen. Still, “childish” is an apt descriptor that gets around the burden of proving an actual psychological condition.
Betty Bowers is right, though “as soon as possible” is a necessary condition, given that they were in an airplane when “Quiet, Piggy” was hurled. But these sorts of events are often followed by a lot of “What I’d have done” declarations, which we can all come up with after the dust has settled, particularly if we weren’t there.
The more important factor is this: A one-session walkout might send an effective message, but it would likely just be spun as a temper tantrum.
And anything more than that? Your delicate ego might be assuaged by no longer covering the president, but tell me how it benefits the nation? If you have a delicate ego, you’re in the wrong damn business.
Every once in awhile, a reporter gets in a good zinger, but most of the time, you have to stand there and take it.
And by the time Dan Rather got in his zinger, the pig was on the spit: Nixon resigned three months later. Brodner doesn’t predict such a dramatic outcome this time around, but he is correct that Trump’s aura of invulnerability has taken some serious blows lately, between defeats at the ballot box and in the courts, and that self-inflicted injuries don’t help.
He’s just taken two massive defeats in the House, one an all-but-unanimous vote to release the Epstein files, the other a unanimous vote to repeal a self-serving GOP provision in the bill that reopened government. Anyone who still believes ending the shutdown was a Republican victory hasn’t been watching the news.
Let’s rein in the irrational exuberance, shall we? We should repeat and reproduce the lessons taught by Jesus, but also remember that it went for him back then much as Woody said it would go today:
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