From “Trump Rally Fizzles as Attendance Falls Short of Campaign’s Expectations”.
“People close to Mr. Trump also said that the lack of regular adulation that he receives from the cheering crowds since the coronavirus lockdowns has left him morose and irritable.”
For right wing reactionaries. Read. The. Room.
Chuba Hubbard starts Oklahoma State boycott after Mike Gundy pictured in OAN shirt.
“The nation’s top running back could lead a boycott against his own coach. Chuba Hubbard, Oklahoma State’s Heisman contender, is threatening to sit out of all team activities after seeing a picture posted of head coach Mike Gundy wearing a t-shirt promoting One America News Network, a right-wing station. ‘I will not stand for this’ Hubbard tweeted. ‘This is completely insensitive to everything going on in society, and it’s unacceptable. I will not be doing anything with Oklahoma State until things CHANGE.'”
If you don’t believe there’s structural racism in the (dis)United States, you may want to think through a little more carefully the t-shirts you wear, what you write, what you say, and whom you associate with. More simply, if you want to keep your job, start reading the room. Which has shifted, markedly, in short order.
As conservatives are screaming, of course Gundy has the right to wear whatever t-shirt he wants when he goes fishing.
And Jemele Hill has the right to tweet the truth:
More specifically, his players are free to not follow his leadership. Or transfer. And recruits are free not to choose Oklahoma State.
In the end, out-of-step right wing coaches are free to field less talented teams, and to lose games, then fans, meaning money.
And in the end, university President’s are free to fire them. If the Presidents’ are not fired first for not reading the room themselves.
Robin Wright in The New Yorker, “Trump’s Vacuous West Point Address and the Revolt Against It.”
Could it be, a faux Conservative Republican losing the military establishment?
Ironically, for being so media savvy, Trump is not an orator. This was further confirmation:
“In contrast to the tradition of big ideas and new initiatives, Donald Trump’s first graduation address at West Point was vacuous—or, as Slate put it, in a headline, ‘West Pointless.’ Danny Sjursen, of the Class of 2005, who is a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and also a former West Point instructor, noted that Trump said nothing to heal a fractured nation. He didn’t address the protests over racial injustice which are taking place in more than two thousand America cities. . . . He didn’t mention a single theatre of U.S. military operations—not Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, or the many places where special forces are deployed or U.S. warplanes have bombed,’ Sjursen, who has chronicled Presidential appearances at West Point since Kennedy, told me.
Trump also offered no words of comfort about the coronavirus pandemic—or thanks to the cadets for the most complicated commencement address ever held at West Point. It was a stark and lonely graduation, because family and friends could not attend. The cadets paraded onto an empty field, in white face masks and their famed gray jackets, to sit on white folding chairs more than six feet apart. Instead of marching onstage to get their degrees, they exchanged salutes with Trump from a distance. It was another Trump photo op—writ large.”
How do you really feel Barry McCaffrey?
“Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star general from the Class of 1964, who taught at West Point, called Trump’s address ‘a collection of awkward, badly delivered bromides. It was dead, disjointed. The good news is that it’s over.'”
Exactly what we’ll say on Tuesday, January 19th, 2021.
“The police were called to the scene initially because Mr. Brooks had fallen asleep on* the drive-through line of the restaurant. The video shows Officer Brosnan waking Mr. Brooks in the driver’s seat of a car and asking him to move the car to a parking space. Officer Brosnan appears to be unsure whether to let Mr. Brooks sleep there or to take further action.”
Unsure whether to let Mr. Brooks sleep there. In his car, in a parking lot. I don’t understand.
*one is “in” a line, not “on” it
A friend, whose politics are different than mine, recently asked me to “keep an open mind”.
He can do the same by spending 27 minutes listening to Dave Chappelle’s June 11th YouTube vid.
Raw. X-rated. Because it will definitely offend some, I chose not to embed it. You can easily find it.
An African-American acquaintance of mine tweeted about it this way:
“Feel how you feel about Dave Chapelle. He isn’t above critique. But this…stand up(?) he just released on YouTube is nothing short of genius.”
I wonder, what will my friend think?
Trump is keeping Andy Borowitz busy:
“Trump listed some ‘telltale signs of Antifa,’ in order to help Americans identify septuagenarian terrorists in their midst.
‘If the person appears to be seventy-five or older, with white hair and a peaceful demeanor, call the authorities immediately,’ Trump said.
He warned that Antifa terrorists are infiltrating American society ‘everywhere,’ even on Zoom.
‘If you are on Zoom with your family and an elderly person suddenly appears with a friendly smile, a string of pearls, and the nickname ‘Grandma,’ you have been attacked by Antifa,’ he said.”
“It’s an unacknowledged peculiarity that police are in charge of road safety. Why should the arm of the state that investigates murder, rape and robbery also give out traffic tickets? Traffic stops are the most common reason for contact with the police. . . . Many of the police homicides, such as the killing of Philando Castile happened at ordinary traffic stops. But why do we need armed men (mostly) to issue a traffic citation? Don’t use a hammer if you don’t need to pound a nail. Road safety does not require a hammer.”
2. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar writes as well as he played basketball, and I contend, he may have been the best ever. #UCLA.
“I don’t want to see stores looted or even buildings burn. But African Americans have been living in a burning building for many years, choking on the smoke as the flames burn closer and closer. Racism in America is like dust in the air. It seems invisible — even if you’re choking on it — until you let the sun in. Then you see it’s everywhere. As long as we keep shining that light, we have a chance of cleaning it wherever it lands. But we have to stay vigilant, because it’s always still in the air.”
3. When it comes to Presidential leadership, Mexico just can’t win.
“The numbers were startling: In March, Mexico’s government said, the country’s emergency call centers were flooded with more than 26,000 reports of violence against women, the highest since the hotline was created.
But Mexico’s president brushed aside his own cabinet’s announcement, suggesting, without evidence, that the vast majority of the calls for help were little more than pranks.
‘Ninety percent of those calls that you’re referring to are fake,’ said the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, when asked about the surge in calls at a recent news conference. ‘The same thing happens with the calls the metro gets about sabotage or bombs.'”
For shit’s sake. This from a leftist populist, who won the presidency more than a year ago by promising to transform Mexico into a more equal society. Fool me how many times?
“When Kayleigh McEnany had the temerity to compare Trump to Churchill, one lawyer I know dryly noted: ‘We shall fight them on the golf courses; we shall fight them on Twitter; we shall fight them at Mar-a-Lago.'”
Related. Sarah Cooper. How to bunker.
Orlando Patterson, Professor of Sociology, Harvard.
“. . . sociologists have argued that while some whites may have liberal views, a lot of them are not prepared to make the concessions that are important for the improvement of black lives. For example, one of the reasons why people have been crowded in ghettos is the fact that housing is so expensive in the suburbs, and one reason for that is that bylaws restrict the building of multi-occupancy housing. These bylaws have been very effective in keeping out moderate-income housing from the suburbs, and that has kept out working people, among whom blacks are disproportionate, from moving there and having access to good schools. Sociologists have claimed that while we do have genuine improvement in racial attitudes, what we don’t have is the willingness for white liberals to put their money where their mouth is.
One of the fundamental aspects of the American race problem is segregation. The black population is almost as segregated now as it was in the ’60s. That is the foundation of a lot of problems that blacks face, but it also explains and perpetuates the isolation of whites who grow up in neighborhoods where they don’t see blacks or interact with them. That reinforces the idea that blacks are outsiders and don’t belong.”
And Chris Rock says, “Being a cop is a hard job, it’s a hard fucking job. . . . But some jobs can’t have bad apples. Some jobs, everybody gotta be good.”
If this Dustin Wahl Twitter thread is any indication, maybe Jerry Falwell’s spell on Anti-Liberty University is more tenuous than meets the eye.
Wahl, a 2018 A-L-U graduate, uses his grandfather’s pic as his profile pic.
Related. ‘Does not reflect the God of the Bible’; LU professor resigns after Falwell’s mask tweets.
Dr. Christopher House:
“As an African American man and Christian pastor, I am horrified and appalled that the president of the largest Christian university in the world would knowing and intentionally use images that evoke a deep history of racial terror of people of color in the U.S., specifically individuals who look like me, for the purposes of making a political statement to the Governor of Virginia.
I was brought into LU to generate the kind of dialogue that challenges the ideas, narratives and ideologies that underlie the very images Falwell intentionally used to make a political statement to the Governor of Virginia. Falwell did so at the expense of Black people and Black pain. This is abhorrent, evil and sickening! This does not reflect the God of the Bible!”
A-L-U’s tax exempt status is a travesty.
Pressing Pause 