CSotD: Cultural cancellations

Loretta Lockhorn (KFS) offers an apolitical commentary on the cancel culture, which lets us open the topic gently before diving in.

“How dare they?” being the operative connection, and, if you want to trace its political applications back far enough, it becomes “How dare they offer medical care and food and mortgages to people who can’t afford them? That’s socialism!”

Eventually, you sink into a morass of whining over participation trophies, kids who weren’t spanked like we were, safe spaces on college campuses and why children don’t die of preventable diseases the way we did.

Okay, I haven’t heard that last one, but, rephrased, it’s part of complaining about offering medical care to more people.

And about wearing masks, and we learned the other day from our Congressional leaders that, while they don’t mind sheltering to avoid being shot, hanged or beaten to death with fire extinguishers, they still object to masking up in confined spaces to avoid the coronavirus.

Anyway, they’re all in favor of free enterprise and laisser-faire capitalism until they realize they’ve let Wall Street become a co-equal branch of government and now it’s large enough to start enforcing its own rules even when the shoe pinches the delicate feet of those who benefit from its dark money.

 

Hence Kirk Walters (KFS) cites the new conservative catch-phrase “Big Tech,” which he accuses of “censorship” and compares to the Spanish Inquisition, which, as we all know, nobody expects.

Though the intro to that Monty Python skit (which is about all most of us know about the Spanish Inquisition) was someone greatly exaggerating a simple inquiry.

I imagine that, if you were a Jew in 15th Century Spain, you probably did expect the Spanish Inquisition, at least in the sense that the Frank family expected the Nazis: You hoped they wouldn’t come for you, but you lived in constant awareness of the possibility.

It seems a great deal more of a surprise to high ranking conservatives to find their fellow plutocrats suddenly demanding that they play by the rules.

Which reminds me of a favorite moment in “War and Peace,” in which young Nicholai Rostóv experiences his first battle and is unhorsed:

“Who are these men?” thought Rostóv, scarcely believing his eyes. “Can they be French?” He looked at the approaching Frenchmen, and, though but a moment before he had been galloping to get at them and hack them to pieces, their proximity now seemed so awful that he could not believe his eyes. “Who are they? Why are they running? Can they be coming at me? And why? To kill me? Me whom everyone is so fond of?” 

However, I’ve heard people from the other side of the aisle say, what if they start enforcing those rules against us?

It’s worth remembering that the Chicago 8 were dragged into court over a charge of conspiring to cause a riot and mostly got off because of governmental incompetence and over-reach.

And that being loved is not the same thing as being invulnerable.

 

We can take some comfort in Matt Wuerker (Politico)‘s observation that the crazies now being hunted down by the FBI and banned from social media are motivated by insane misinformation.

So far, deliberate lies and incitement to violence are what get you banned.

The Chicago 8 only planned to be heard, not to take the place over. And they certainly didn’t believe that Pigasus had won an actual nomination. (He wasn’t old enough.)

By contrast, wasn’t it entertaining, if a bit chilling, to hear an actual US Senator ducking, bobbing and weaving when asked if he accepted that Joe Biden had won the election? (Whoops, see comments)

He conceded that Biden would be the next president but refused to renounce the idiotic lie that the election had been fixed.

Add the real vote count to the list of things Jim Jordan doesn’t know about.

I’ll admit I didn’t listen to the entire puppet show yesterday, but I did hear some of the 197 Republicans who voted “no” explaining that they held some of the beliefs in Wuerker’s lineup of loonies.

Which they may only claim in order to curry favor with the loonies who sent them to Washington.

It occurred to me that everyone could have been out of there a lot sooner if they had asked for unanimous consent to revise and extend their remarks, which is the usual practice when you’re simply composing a love note to the folks back home.

It also strikes me that, if anybody deserves a kick in the ass, it’s the five cowards — all Republicans — who didn’t vote at all, neither in person nor by proxy.

One of whom is named “Daniel Webster,” which fact raises his reward to two kicks in the ass.

He claimed a “family medical emergency,” but so did Russell Crowe, convincing as always in his comedic portrayal of a posturing blowhard, and Russell managed to vote by proxy.

Not ol’ Daniel Webster. I reckon the devil made him not do it.

Well, as a great politician and an outstanding president once said, “Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out. He’s fired. He’s fired.”

 

Metaphorical Juxtaposition of the Day

(John Cole – Times Tribune)

 

(Drew Sheneman – AMS)

I wonder if Jon Stewart ever wishes he’d trademarked his McConnell turtle image so he’d get a dime each time someone used it? He’d make Zuckerberg look like a panhandler.

Cole and Sheneman both employ the metaphor to comment on McConnell’s loss of the speakership, which is a major change in our government, though currently overshadowed by riots and impeachment.

Cole, I think, misapplies his chelonian metaphor, but manages, unlike Sheneman’s turtle, to land on his feet: The turtle on a fencepost is sometimes a portrayal of helplessness, but it’s more specifically a symbol of something that obviously didn’t get there on its own.

Which certainly applies and if nobody figures out how he got there, we’ll see a replacement sooner than we’d like.

As for Sheneman’s cartoon, it’s certainly good news, but let’s not get overconfident about things.

Them sumsabitches stick together.