CSotD: Hits, Misses and Madness
Skip to comments
In the debate over whether Dear Leader is a knave or a fool, Peter Brookes chooses the latter, aping Rembrandt’s painting, though I use the term “aping” advisedly.
I like the pun on Homer, but it would be a cheap gag if it weren’t accompanied by the self-satisfied smirk on the face of the other dunce in the picture.
Normally, this would be the time to point out that the difference is that Dear Leader has the nuclear codes, but one of the brilliant aspects of Homer Simpson is that he has been given a job for which he is spectacularly unqualified and in which his imbecility can do, and on occasion has done, serious damage to the people of Springfield.
Which makes the difference between them mostly an issue of scale, if we assume as Brookes does that Dear Leader is genuinely foolish and not a genius pretending to spout ridiculous things.
There’s a lot of premature bragging and chest-beating going on. Gary Varvel says the Democrats have no response and no defense, but he hasn’t noticed that they’ve started going to court to have illegal, unconstitutional decrees barred and overturned with an encouraging degree of success.
Granted, it’s hard to get to court faster than industrial cowards begin bowing, kissing and surrendering. And don’t look to the military to keep things on an even keel: They’re already instituting non-fraternizing rules for their female and minority members.
Though the NSA, which covered up displays honoring women and minorities at its museum, rectified the problem and their director explained, “They were on rapid fire to move very quickly and be responsive. We are being as responsive as we possibly can. Some of these [executive orders] have short deadlines.”
Short deadlines and short lives, unless the McConnell Court steps in and erases a few Amendments.
Which brings us to this head-scratcher from Mike Lester, in which hiring people based on their performance and, therefore, their merit, is declared to be racist.
I suppose, to be generous, that his point might be that claims of performance are false, but the Jeopardy clue clearly states that the airline hires based on demonstrated qualification. Perhaps the word merit is being turned on its head, the way “entitlement” has stopped meaning something to which you are entitled and the way “literally” now means “figuratively.”
The major disconnect for those attacking DEI is the assumption that women and minorities are chosen in preference to more talented and qualified white male applicants, rather than the stated requirement in which the urge to have a diversified group is used as a tie-breaker.
No doubt the applicant in this Pardon My Planet panel will go home complaining that he lost the job despite his sterling qualifications because the system is unfair, but intangibles matter, and sometimes the employer’s decision isn’t entirely based on your resume.
Performance is a significant indicator of merit, of course, but anybody who has ever hired someone for more than grunt work has needed to employ tie-breakers when measures of merit are roughly equivalent.
Some opinions are made without a bit of objective logic and judgment. If you’re looking for a case in which racism, or at least xenophobia, is employed rather than facts, Mike Beckom‘s absurd, toxic exaggeration of the threat of migrant criminals is an excellent example.
His use of the word “all” makes it sound as if six rape/murders over a period of 11 years is a crime wave.
This graph from the Real-Time Crime Index doesn’t go back far enough to include the 2013 assault and murder of Shayley Estes, but starts in 2018 when Mollie Tibbetts was killed, so you can get the sense of how wildly out of proportion six murders per decade is when the lowest annual total is midway between six and seven thousand.
As has been reported by those not invested in xenophobic hyperbole, undocumented migrants commit proportionally fewer crimes than native-born citizens.
But who needs facts?
Juxtaposition of the Day
I don’t know which is worse, that Lisa Benson believes transgender women still have testicles or that the hero leading the crusade to keep men out of women’s dressing rooms is someone who committed sexual assault in a dressing room and brags about barging in on dressing rooms of unclad teenaged women?
At least the roughly 530,000 athletes at NCAA colleges can feel safe from the fewer than 10 transgender individuals competing, though the NCAA did not give a precise number or say how many of those fewer-than-10 were competing as women or how many of them had transitioned post-puberty, a factor in physical development.
Who cares? We’re here to hate, not debate. If anyone wanted to argue, the NCAA could have stood up for its student-athletes rather than dropping to one knee and kissing the ring.
The 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles will also be compliant with Dear Leader’s ruling, at least for the American athletes, but maybe some foreigner will offer a dissenting moment.
Assuming that foreigners show up. The way we’re charming our friends and neighbors these days, it may come down to a three-way competition among American, Russian and Hungarian athletes.
Which brings us to Gaza. There has been a slew of cartoons in the form of travel posters sarcastically exalting Dear Leader’s grandiose plans for the site, once the rubbish and the Palestinians have been cleared out, but Rob Rogers makes the point that immediately crossed my mind when the announcement was made.
Well, wotthehell, why should Tel Aviv have all the car bombs? I wonder if Trump will put a tariff on Imported Explosive Devices (IEDs)?
Ben Jennings offers more than a travel poster, creating a mashup to emphasize how Dear Leader is winning hearts and minds, just like in the Good Old Days.
And as Garth German suggests, there’s no reason to limit our ambition to Gaza when there’s a whole world out there just begging to be ours.
I hope Dear Leader can issue his next Executive Order changing our National Anthem in time for tomorrow’s Super Bowl.
It’s easier both for us to sing and to live up to.
Comments 2