Holding hands

I admit it, I don't understand the (relatively new) concept of emotional support fetish objects.  For adults.  Small children need their stuffed toys and older ones may cherish an item of jewelry or a baseball card, but there comes a time to put off childish things, no?  Unless it's something you can keep in your pocket "for luck" like an Indian head penny or a four-leaf clover, leave it home.  Don't be a nuisance, is all I'm saying.

The cherished American right to assholery has become so pronounced in recent years that steps have been taken to regulate it.  You can no longer bring a peacock on a plane, for instance, even if you buy him a ticket.  Imagine, being forced to respect the rights of the other passengers not to put up with your screaming, shitting bird from New York to Los Angeles.  Well, what about a life-size cardboard peacock?   Who could possibly mind, other than the cabin crew?

Which bring me to Nelson Gibson of Port St. Lucie, Florida.  He has to have dialysis three times a week, which is pretty unpleasant, and he can't face it without his life-size cardboard Trump.  Six foot three with his lifts in his shoes and approaching three hundred pounds, this is a real obstruction for the dialysis unit, which finally put its foot down and said no, we can't have this.  Could Mr. Gibson possibly go back to the smaller picture he brought before?  His son is concerned about Freedom of Speech and so forth, and Dad may discontinue his treatment and just die instead, which would teach everybody a lesson.

Subtext time.  No matter what the administrators and doctors think, hospitals run on the labor of people who are far worse paid and frequently female:  nurses, nurses' aides, technicians, therapists, orderlies, kitchen staff, etc.  Often these people are African American or Latina, or come from other countries.  Mr. Gibson's table-top Trump wasn't annoying them enough, so he invested in the big one, the better to stick it to "those people" who won't let him wear his MAGA hat while he's getting some of the toxins vacuumed out of his blood.  If you think I'm exaggerating, you don't know how mean old Florida crackers can be.  But hell, if this is the hill he wants to die on, they tell me it takes less than a month.

In other idiot medical news, Tom Cotton (R-Pellagra) announced with no proof that the coronavirus is a biological weapon developed by the "Chinese Communist Party."  Because he can just tell.  How maladroit of them to kill more than a thousand of their own citizens to date and barely a half-dozen elsewhere, not to mention hamstringing the world economy.  This is the standard response of the ignorant to every frightening disease as far back as the Middle Ages, when Jews were accused of causing plague and witches were held responsible for unexplained deaths.  In 1918 both sides blamed the other for the influenza pandemic that killed more people than World War I.  People with no reason to trust the US government even before the Tuskeegee "study" became known are still convinced that the military created AIDS in a laboratory.   Cotton speaks for the party that is rolling back every Obama-era regulation on poisoning air and water it can find, so people sickened by industrial effluent and "beautiful clean coal" will know who to blame -- next time, with science.

Hitler declared the 1936 Olympics open and then sat down and shut up, but Trump can't resist haranguing a multitude.  Just as he began, Fox Sports Network cut away for a commercial.  (Priorities, man.)  Worse, it was a Bloomberg ad, as most of them are these days.  Were the faithful pissed at being denied The Word?  What do you think?  The Daytona 500 is getting death threats as I type.