CSotD: Priorities and Thoughtful Insights

We’ll start our discussion of priorities here, as Steve Brodner poses the question.

Others have chided people for chortling over drowning billionaires, and that is a fair objection, but it’s also a bit of a red herring, at least in Brodner’s view. We ought not to chortle over anyone’s death, and, while it’s fair to ask “What the hell were you thinking?” the question should be open-ended and allow for an answer.

They wanted to see the Titanic and they could afford to and it seemed like fun.

And, if they’d made it, we’d have never heard about it, except for their Facebook friends who would be inundated with photos for a week or two, some of them on the dock, some of them in the sub and some of them back on the dock.

Which is where a somewhat muted whoop-de-doo factor comes in, but I feel that way about a lot of other people’s expensive vacations.

Harry Burton offers a more thoughtful priority, and I’d note that he had this out before the sub went down, so it’s not an issue of competing tragedies but, rather, an issue of why other people weren’t marking the sinking of a Pakistani refugee boat in Greek waters?

Which brings us back to Brodner’s front page, in which the small number of local folks get three-quarters of the attention and the refugees are a footnote.

Thus was it ever, and a school bus flipping over on a California highway is going to get more attention in American media than a ferry sinking in Bangladesh, and I would assume — hope — that the opposite is true.

Still, it’s not an issue of who gets more as it is a question of who gets any. If it bleeds, it leads, and if it happens in America, to a famous person, it becomes an obsession.

And let’s add this factor: “They wanted to see the Titanic and they could afford to and it seemed like fun” is a weak noodle motivation next to “They were starving, unemployed and in danger from gangs and desperate to get to Europe.”

I’m not saying don’t cover the missing sub, but maybe flip the coverage, because, while that ship may have been in Greek waters, it’s not like we don’t have desperate migrants taking massive risks to get here.

Or hadn’t you noticed?

At the opposite end of the scale, but still getting 24/7 attention, is the outcome of the Hunter Biden investigation, as seen by RJ Matson. A major part of the bathos is that James Comer is the Barney Fife of investigations, his latest pratfall being a big expensive scary scary revelation for which he has no evidence and the guy who did is missing and might be dead but he’s sure not here.

Barney carried a bullet in his pocket; Comer carries one of those pocket-sized copies of the Constitution.

Just in case.

Chip Bok (Creators) is well-known for failure to do his homework, but this is both a massive fail and a good example of what the right wing is looking for: Failure to pay taxes is not a particularly rare crime and is usually resolved, as in this case, by the person paying their taxes.

The issue with Capone was what he failed to pay taxes on, which was illegal activity that turned up in the bookkeeping though they were having trouble connecting him to it on the street. I don’t expect Bok to go to law school, but he might go watch a Kevin Costner movie.

In any case, Hunter failed to pay his taxes for a couple of years, and the IRS said “Pay your taxes” so he did, which usually ends the problem but, in this case, a president’s son was held to a higher standard, which I think is appropriate.

But there’s no standard high enough to satisfy a lynch mob.

Joe Heller gets a well-deserved chuckle for this insight, given that not only do MAGAts oppose background checks and permits for guns, but have actively worked to cut funding for the IRS in order to prevent it from uncovering tax cheats.

Fortunately, most of them won’t figure out the conflicts in their thinking. Such as it is.

Gary Markstein (Creators) runs through the alibis, the excuses and the whining — he must have watched Brett Baier’s bizarre, expert interview — and, dogs aside, the point remains that we wouldn’t be in this slog if the fool had simply returned the documents when they asked. Or at least when they subpoened them.

But he’s never been wrong; he’s never been held accountable. He’s like the kid whose parents insist he didn’t throw the rock when the principal has a video clearly showing that he threw the rock. And the conversation stops being a conversation and becomes an expulsion, but there’s another school across town that will accept him, and his parents’ donations.

You can even fake your way through college that way if your parents stand behind you, but at some point you have to behave like a grownup.

I think. We’ll see.

As Michael Ramirez (Creators) points out, Trump’s advocates are perfectly willing to hang Jack Teixeira out to dry for more or less the same thing Trump is accused of, the difference being (perhaps — I’m not 100% sure) that Teixeira was making off with digital copies while Trump was stealing originals.

And showing them off at his golf course to impress his friends and a biographer of Mark Meadows, which means the knucklehead knew there was a recording going and notes being taken, which makes him far more foolish that Teixeira.

Which is a damn tough standard to meet!

And, Clay Jones notes, the good, reasonable people who want Trump pardoned because, after all, he only betrayed the nation, are far more militant about what ought to happen to Hunter Biden and his old man, and they intend to lock them up just as soon as Jim Comer’s missing dead guy whose college roommate’s wife’s cousin’s brother-in-law has the proof rises out of his grave with the necessary documents.

His commentary is worth your time.

In the meantime, as Jen Sorensen assures us, we will still be fully able to conduct constructive, worthwhile conversations and straighten things out.