Surrounded by liars

If the International Olympics Committee continues its tradition of awarding the games to dictatorships, no one should be surprised if reporters get strongarmed or the host dictatorship tries to polish its image through dishonesty.  China sent out a cross-country skier it claimed has Uyghur connections to light the torch, hoping that the world would forget about the concentration camps and the forced sterilizations.  That's only one feature of life in this weird Communist/capitalist hybrid, but it's the most egregious.  Almost as egregious is the echoing silence of the Islamic world.  

The key to successful lying is a complete absence of conscience.  For instance the Salt Lake City conclave of the RNC has pronounced Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney anathema, and in a proclamation rich with "therefores" and "herebys" states that the violent terrorists who attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, were "ordinary citizens" engaged in "legitimate political discourse."  Don't stare too long into that abyss or it will stare into you.  

At around the same time Mike Pence took his life in his hands and told the Federalist Society, "President Trump is wrong.  I had no right to overturn the election."  Possibly he was inspired by CNN airing  video of an ordinary citizen calling for his decapitation and, worse, using "treason" as a verb -- along with language that would shock an east Tennessee school board. 

Woodside, California, is a Bay-area suburb of Silicon Valley richbastards which doesn't want multi-dwelling housing -- not because the homeowners dislike less-rich people but because they're deeply concerned about mountain lions.  It's all right for them to build replicas of imperial Japanese palaces in the animals' habitat, but not for the middle class with their hot tubs and barbecue pits.  Possibly even basketball hoops.  Won't someone think of the pumas?

What could be worse than having Trump crash your wedding reception to rant about the election?  How about having him pick the music?  You booked Mar a Lago, serves you right.

I don't have a strong opinion about Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and others walking away from Spotify to protest Joe Rogan's misinformation blitz about covid.  It's just a market.  Art Spiegelman hasn't pulled his books off Amazon because they also sell the works of Josh Hawley or Glenn Beck.  If customers choose to boycott Spotify it's a different matter.  But I was certainly shocked to learn that Rogan speaks fluent N-word and compares Black people to apes.  Of course he was "taken out of context."  They always are.  

A man rammed his truck through the gate of Michael Bloomberg's Colorado ranch apparently in search of his daughters.  He settled for kidnapping the housekeeper and holding her at a Cheyenne hotel until arrested by police.  I have a feeling there is more to this.

As Southwest prepares to resume alcohol service, Delta is asking the Justice Department to help it set up a no-fly list of passengers who have assaulted flight attendants and other passengers and damaged the planes.  Or as the RNC calls them, ordinary citizens engaging in regularly scheduled air travel.

Wasn't Sarah Palin a beauty pageant contestant?  I don't feel like looking it up.  And I don't want to suggest that all of them are dangerously ditzy, but damn.  Former Miss California Carrie Prejean Boller (2009) is going up to people without masks in department stores and rewarding them with nice new five-dollar bills.  Worse, she's telling the children, "You're a leader.  You're the next Rosa Parks.  You're the next Martin Luther King."  Because the civil rights movement was about the right to spread disease, no matter what you learned in history class back when history class could mention civil rights.  I guess it's better than invoking Anne Frank.  Thanks for giving the Holocaust a break, Carrie.

Which is more than I can say for Jimmy Carr, whose Netflix show contains a profoundly unfunny joke about the Roma and Sinti people murdered by the Nazis.  The show has been available since December 25 but apparently no one heard it until now, which should tell you something.  Carr says he intended it to be "educational" -- "People say 'never forget,' well, this is how I remember."  The worst thing Carr has done is fuel efforts by the Tory culture secretary Nadine Dorries to create a law penalizing platforms like Netflix for streaming offensive material.  Questioned about her 2017 statement that "leftwing snowflakes are killing comedy, " Dorries sniffed, "Well, that's not comedy."  Next up, the Who-Gets-To-Define-Comedy Act, which would prosecute the people who laughed at Carr.  

  

I don't judge people on their appearance unless they deserve it.  This is Christina Pushaw, press secretary to Ron DeSantis.  Too much work or not enough?

What is critical race theory?  Nobody knows, so it's everything.  Some Alabama parents thought it was a good reason to cancel Black History Month because, you know, it has the divisive word "black" in it and would necessarily make white children feel guilty and sad.  Like if they had to use a library which contains a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird or Becoming by Michelle Obama.  Eric Mackey, the state superintendent of education, has assured them that children will hear nothing more incendiary than one line from Dr. King ("I have a dream," of course) and maybe The California Raisins.

Bebelplatz, Berlin, May 10, 1933.  The first book-burning but not, as you might think, the work of Marx, Freud or Heinrich Heine.  They burned the library of the Institute for Sex Research (Institut fur Sexualwissenschaft).  It always starts with the "dirty books."  (Thanks to the World's Most Dangerous Beauty Salon for the reminder.)