Category Funny

A little something for the holidays

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

Let’s play a holiday game: I’ll describe someone we all know without using their name, and you see if you can guess who I’m talking about.

Crybaby.  Coward.  Liar.  Loser.  Cheater.

YES!  You got it…who else do we all know who can be recognized by all of those descriptive nouns?  I found a fun story about the first of them in today’s Chicago Sun-Times where columnist Gene Lyons cites the former guy’s “holiday message,” hoping that several adversaries would “rot in hell,” as another indication that he is “the world’s biggest crybaby.”

Donald Trump’s MAGA movement is fundamentalist at its core — with fundamentalism being understood as a psychological rather than a religious concept.

Pretty much every large-scale public movement, secular or sacred, has its share of extremists, and as the religious columnist Paul Prather has argued: “Remove the labels, close your eyes and quickly the fundamentalists in one group start sounding uncannily like the fundamentalists in all other groups, as if they were reading from the same script.”

It’s another word for fanatic.

Most Trumpists call themselves “conservative,” which used to signify a belief in limited government, low taxes, free trade and freedom of conscience but which under Trump signals tribal loyalty and revenge.

This explains what some see as the central paradox of the MAGA movement: that a congenital braggart who embodies what Christianity has traditionally called the seven deadly sins — greed, lust, envy, sloth, gluttony, pride and wrath — has come to seem the totem of faith for millions of Republican evangelicals.

(snip)

Prather credits David French with defining fundamentalism’s essential nature. French argues that whether religious or political, all fundamentalist cultures exhibit “three key traits: certainty, ferocity and solidarity.” He says certainty is the key to the other two traits.

“The fundamentalist mind isn’t clouded by doubt,” French has written. “In fact, when people are fully captured by the fundamentalist mind-set, they often can’t even conceive of good-faith disagreement. To fundamentalists, their opponents aren’t just wrong but evil. Critics are derided as weak or cowards or grifters. Only a grave moral defect can explain the failure to agree.”

To add to the many examples (very many) of the former guy’s cowardice, add this one: the recent cancellation of his planned campaign appearance by an Iowa college – an Iowa Christian college, mind you – was because he refused to take questions directly from the students:

[Dordt University] opted to cancel the event after the Trump campaign disagreed about what the format for the event should be, according to a statement released Thursday.

The university opens events up to all presidential candidates, regardless of their political affiliation, to allow students to engage in a questions-and-answer style forum with candidates during the primaries. However, the Trump campaign desired a format similar to a traditional presidential rally, according to the statement released by the university.

“These events are intended to be educational in nature, including questions directly from Dordt students to the candidates. The Trump campaign started the process of lining up a campaign stop but desired a rally format,” the statement reads.

It’s not hard to find long lists of words used to describe you-know-who, but I was happily surprised to discover this list from Rupert Taylor on Soapboxie in which he reminds us of that famous, insightful visionary presidential musing: “I know words.  I have the best words.”

As a professional writer for more than 50 years, I also know words and have written several articles here about words for each letter of the alphabet. Those previous offerings have featured random words; this time out they are themed around TFP and they are not intended to praise him.

A is for … agnotology. TFP would frequently refer to everybody not him as that body part hidden between the butt cheeks, but we can do better than that. Abrasive, absurd, and abysmal come to mind. But here comes “agnotology,” for which TFP would be a prime exhibit under the microscope. Agnotology is the study of ignorance about provable things for which doubt has been spread by misinformation.

B is for … bankruptcy. Our subject has developed an extraordinary skill at taking $413 million from his father, according to the New York Times, and turning it into six bankruptcies.

(snip)

D is for … dog-whistle politics. TFP is skilled at sending disguised messages to white supremacists that he is on their side.

E is for … epizeuxis. The forceful repetition of a word or phrase is a favourite of TFP’s rally pronouncements. “The election was stolen.” No it wasn’t.

F is for … falsiloquence. We will set aside TFP’s favourite off-camera F-word when dealing with his staff and go for something more eloquent. Falsiloquence is the use of deceitful and lying speech. “I won the 2020 election in a landslide.” “We had the biggest audience in the history of inaugural speeches.” “I am a very stable genius.” Plus 30,570 other falsehoods during a four-year presidency.

The list goes on; do yourself a solid and have a look.  And in the meantime, here are a few nuggets I’d like to share.  Happy holidays!

https://twitter.com/AnnieForTruth/status/1740370002094821884

https://twitter.com/kangaroos991/status/1732868491504734318

https://twitter.com/jilevin/status/1732476044643364910

https://twitter.com/AnnieForTruth/status/1732403223519260843

https://twitter.com/kangaroos991/status/1739075321918628305

And now, a public service announcement on behalf of America’s sanity

Pat Ryan 1 Comment

It is the midst of winter here in the Northern Hemisphere…right now forecasters are forecasting their asses off about a major ice storm aimed at a hunk of the South.  The days are still comparatively short, and with the cold weather that has accompanied a lot of rain in our part of the world (is the drought over yet?) I am not alone in looking for more indoor distractions until golf weather returns.

But, please God, not this: American journalism outlets and associated information-providing avenues, would ya stand down on the perpetualization of the campaign for president of the United States!  Stop with the assumption that there is nothing more important to talk about, nothing so critical for me to know about, than who is favored and disfavored by people responding to public opinion polls.  Even if those people are telling the pollsters the truth, who cares right now?!  So much can happen in the months and months before anyone casts a meaningful ballot that these results are pointless; they only serve to keep funds flowing to the political-industrial complex.

It is too early.  It is soooo tiresome.  Even the primaries and caucuses that happen more than six months before the general election aren’t helpful in learning about candidates.  The whole thing has become a proxy for the on-going national food fight on “cultural issues” (that really aren’t even about culture) and not about administering government operations or even on providing leadership on issues.

And, at this point a year away from the first voters voting in the next national election, what you are telling us has proved to be, so often, so very wrong.  In Politico, Jeff Greenfield reminds us that in most recent years the “favorites” at this point do not win the contest.  You remember Howard Dean trouncing John Kerry in 2004, right?  And 2008, when Rudy Giuliani blew away John McCain while Hillary Clinton obliterated that senator from Illinois with the big ears?

The point here is not to argue for a vow of journalistic silence in the long slog leading up to the actual contests; it’s to put that part of the process into context, along with a serious dose of humility. Yes, Trump looks weakened, but are we really ready to anoint Ron DeSantis the nominee before he proves himself on the big stage? Yes, Biden is an octogenarian whose approval rating has been underwater since August 2021, but is anyone in his party really about to challenge his hold on the White House?

If you need something civic to worry about, worry about the government debt ceiling and the on-going budget deficits; give some thought to how our country can help our allies stifle threats from Russia and China; consider the real causes for and possible humane solutions to the humanitarian crisis at our southern border and the budget crisis it’s created for federal and state governments.  You could engage in the speculation about which team will win the Super Bowl or who will be selected as the next head coach of your favorite NFL team.  You could even talk to your friends about who will win The Bachelor, but please promise to do that verrry quietly so the rest of us can’t hear you.  But please leave the next race for president alone for now.

And if you need something to keep you warm on these cold winter days and nights, curl up with The Columbia Journalism’s Review of how American journalism handled coverage of Donald Trump.  There’s something here to warm the hearts of media-haters everywhere.

If I had a nickel for every time I was asked that

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

There’s a lot of bad news out there these day:

  • Ukraine is being assaulted hour after hour, unprovoked; millions of its citizens are refugees, thousands are dead, Putin’s Russian army commits war crimes against a helpless civilian population,
  • and a former American president, the one that a federal judge publicly says has “more likely than not” committed a federal crime related to his on-going lie to the world at large about the integrity of the 2020 election, chooses just this moment to suggest that the Russian war criminal in chief should supply information on an imaginary crime by the son of the current president
  • that former president is the whining, pouting poster boy for the current wave of a revolting trend of the rich and famous being treated like they’re above the law; they are not, and the sooner that we see signs that Donald Trump and Mark Meadows and Ginni Thomas and the others (and you know who they are) are being investigated for the crimes that they appear to have committed, then the sooner the rest of America will stop believing that justice is for sale
  • (a bit of encouraging news on this front: a judge has held certifiable bad actor Alex Jones in contempt for refusing to comply with court orders to be deposed by the families of Sandy Hook shooting victims who are suing him for defamation for his despicable insistence (since recanted) that the whole thing was staged—step in the right direction!)
  • Bruce Willis is suffering from aphasia, a medical condition impacting his cognitive abilities to the extent that he’s announced he is giving up acting
  • in what should be no surprise to any sentient being anywhere, a medical clinical trial has found no sign—no sign at all—that there is any medical benefit whatever from the use of the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19; woe be to the masking-and-testing deniers who were confident that unconventional therapy was the only kind worth trying

Pick up any newspaper or news app and you’re sure to find more of the same.  It’s discouraging.  It’s depressing.  It’s all real and it’s out there, and it feels like it’s coming in here, where I’m trying to stay safe and warm.  But something else entirely has really got me wondering about the sanity of the world out there, something that’s not in the papers.

Earlier this week I stopped at a local franchise of a national fast food restaurant for lunch, and the total was $9.95; I fished out a five and five ones and handed them to the young man at the cash register.  Yeah, he looked at me sideways a little, I think, probably for having the audacity to pay the tab with folding money instead of my debit card…reminded me of the times I’ve faced a teenager at the till who’s had a helluva time counting out the right change.  But not this guy; he knew precisely what was owed back, and he fished a single coin out of the drawer and held it up to show me, and he said, “Do you want the five cents back?”

Do I want the five cents back?  Do I want MY five cents back?  As my father might have said in such a circumstance, is the pope a Catholic?  Does a bear live in the woods?  Why wouldn’t I want my five cents back?  It is, after all, my five cents.  I can’t get a gumball for a nickel like I used to—it isn’t even made of much nickel any more—but it is still negotiable currency.  He didn’t ask if I wanted to donate the change to a charity, and he didn’t say (in so many words) that he meant to keep it for himself.  He seemed to sincerely just want to know if I wanted to even be bothered dropping the coin in my pocket.

What would you say to a question like that?

How P.J. O’Rourke helped me understand life, one week after he died

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

It’s been a particularly busy time for me lately.  I don’t know if it’s an increased rate of work-related nonsense, or the pounds of mail I’m sorting through each day from friendly, helpful folks who just want to make sure I’m aware of the value of their particular Medicare supplement plan, but it feels like I’m never getting in front of things.  Not even on top of them, really; more just hoping to hold on and be dragged along.  It was already midday today, after a morning physical at the doctor’s and a trip to the office to refresh my memory of how to get there, when I got to the morning paper and found this essay by Christopher Buckley on his friend, the conservative writer, satirist and commentator P.J. O’Rourke, who passed away last week.

I recall first noticing the name P.J. O’Rourke in the masthead and bylines in National Lampoon of the mid 1970s.  Among that group of friends, we believed NatLamp in this time to be the funniest thing alive, or National_Lampoon_(magazine)_cover_–_January_1973perhaps ever to have lived, and certainly that ever would live, and any of the persons who was writing what we were reading there was a gift from the cosmos.  Because it was always funny, and because its targets were everyone and everything, no sacred cows allowed, I assumed that all those people writing those things must surely believe in all the things I believed in.  It was at first a great surprise to me years later (the 80s or 90s) when I read something by O’Rourke and realized he had been a conservative all those years before; according to his Wikipedia entry, “Many of O’Rourke’s essays recount that during his student days he was a leftist, anti-war hippie, but that in the 1970s his political views underwent a volte-face. He emerged as a political observer and humorist rooted in libertarian conservatism.”

O’Rourke’s political philosophies weren’t in lockstep with either of the major political parties in this country.  Clearly not a Democrat, but he did not offer non-critical obeisance to the Republicans, either: as Buckley notes, O’Rourke believed Hillary Clinton was “wrong ‘about absolutely everything,’ except in one regard: She wasn’t Donald Trump.”  That’s pretty much why I voted for her in 2016, too, and have felt like I’ve been dogged by Joe Btfsplk’s cloud ever since when it comes to questions of politics and government.

Buckley says “P.J. O’Rourke’s death marks the end of a particular and an essential sensibility. He found humor everywhere and in everything, especially in his PJORourke-tributes-newsfellow Republicans,” and he makes a good case for today’s Republicans having no sense of humor at all.  I agree: how could anyone who takes Donald Trump seriously see the humor in anything else?  But it was this line from Buckley that really caught me: “The Trump era could have been one great big enormous sandbox for P.J. to play in. Instead, he found it dispiriting, a pageant of stupidity, boorishness and coarseness.”

Dispiriting.  A pageant of stupidity, boorishness and coarseness.  Gawd, how on the nose.  Thank you, P.J. O’Rourke, for inspiring your friend Christopher Buckley to put into words the feelings I’ve been fighting for years now.

April showers

Pat Ryan 1 Comment

If what they say about the rain at the end of the year’s first quarter is true, we here in southeast Texas are going to be lousy with buds and blooms any time now.  It has been a day better spent inside in thoughtful contemplation: there’s still the whole weather radarCOVID-19 thing but it feels like it’s getting better, and still disagreement about whether to get vaccinated or not (just do it; I did) which then forks off into another look at the drama of the American political dichotomy, coming along right as the new president passes a milestone day in office.

Yeah, not gonna do it.

Unless…unless I could get someone else to do the hard work.  Someone funny; someone Canadian; someone with a YouTube series I could share with you for free.  Yeah, then I’d do it…I mean, do this:

I say it’s worth subscribing—he doesn’t publish too frequently so you don’t burn out, his pieces are short, and to my mind invariably funny.

Now, while getting this set up I had one of those great ideas I sometimes get…just seconds before I forget why I thought it was such a great idea.  In this case I had a very specific connection from Casually Explained to a particular Tom Lehrer song, right up until I couldn’t remember which song it was.  So now, before I get lost online listening to Tom Lehrer songs, here’s one for you to enjoy…