Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

When I was faster i was always behind.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you do not.

“woke” is the new caravan.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

How stupid are these people?

Trumpflation is an intolerable hardship for every American, and it’s Trump’s fault.

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

Innocent people do not delay justice.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

You are here: Home / Gun Issues / Ammosexuals / Open Thread: The Man Can’t Help Himself

Open Thread: The Man Can’t Help Himself

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… But the NRA will do its considerable best to do so, because neither of them have better options:

… With Mr. Trump increasingly isolated and hobbled by controversies of his own making, the powerful gun-rights group has emerged as one of his remaining stalwart allies in the Republican coalition: the institution on the right most aggressively committed to his candidacy, except for the Republican National Committee itself.

The association has spent millions of dollars on television commercials for Mr. Trump, even as other Republican groups have kept their checkbooks closed and Mr. Trump’s campaign has not run any ads of its own. The N.R.A.’s chief political strategist, Chris Cox, gave a forceful testimonial for Mr. Trump at the Republican convention; Mr. Trump has repeatedly praised Mr. Cox and the association’s executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre. Allies of Mr. Trump and the association describe their political alliance as a marriage forged out of urgent necessity…

The alliance with Mr. Trump comes at a moment of peril for the N.R.A. and its agenda, as Democrats threaten to take control of the Senate and polls show the public increasingly supportive of at least modest new limits on the sale and possession of firearms…

I assume this is a first for the Secret Service: Not only are they deterring would-be assassins, they have to deter their candidate from encouraging assassins to attack other candidates. And they say Trump’s campaign won’t be remembered in the history books!

Reader Interactions

126Comments

  1. 1.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I’m a little bit kind of embarrassed to do this again so soon, but I’ve written another Gilbert & Sullivan Trump parody (this to the tune of “Tit-Willow” from The Mikado), which some of you might enjoy.

    *****

    On a throne in Trump Tower a short-fingered guy
    Sang “Clinton, oh Clinton, oh Clinton.”
    And I said to the Donald, Wherefore do you sigh:
    “Oh Clinton, oh Clinton, oh Clinton”?
    Has Mike Pence left the ticket, oh Donald? I cried
    Or has something disturbed your ineffable pride?
    With a shake of his tangerine head, he replied,
    “It’s Clinton, it’s Hillary Clinton.”

    He pulled on his hands as he sat on that throne,
    Singing “Clinton, oh Clinton, oh Clinton.”
    And he tweeted some messages using his phone,
    Wailing “Clinton, oh Clinton, oh Clinton.”
    He mugged and he grimaced and patted his hair,
    He squirmed on the seat of that gilt-covered chair,
    And he suddenly let out a cry of despair:
    “I’m losing to Hillary Clinton!”

    It was dreadful to watch this canard à l’orange
    Mutter “Clinton, oh Clinton, oh Clinton.
    I trust only Putin and Julian Assange,
    Oh Clinton, oh Clinton, oh Clinton.”
    I said, Donald, stop digging if you’re in a hole.
    He replied, “It’s too late for your damage control,
    ‘Cause I’m down in the latest Quinnipiac poll —
    Ten points behind Hillary Clinton!”

  3. 3.

    Trentrunner

    Let’s assume Hillary wins.

    Where is all this violent ideation supposed to go?

    What will its target be?

    And, short of violence, how delegitimized will President Hillary Clinton be?

    72% of registered Republicans do not believe or are unsure President Obama was born in the United States.

    The epistemic bubble of the RWNM is the most pernicious, intractable problem on our political scene today, and it’s going nowhere, regardless of Trump.

  4. 4.

    Gravenstone

    With the NRA (predictably) lining up behind Trump, is there any chance he can bring them down too? I know, I know, wishful thinking. But maybe he can indeed lead them over that bridge too far.

  6. 6.

    Gin & Tonic

    Oh, man, I wanted to read that Adam post that was up for about two seconds, as I’m tired and want to go to bed. But I guess I’ll have to get it in the morning.

  7. 7.

    dedc79

    Catch up, Anne. We’ve already moved on to the next outrageous statement. Obama founded ISIS, didn’t you know?

  9. 9.

    Ceci n'est pas mon nym

    I have to be up at 4:30 but here I am watching a recording of the Men’s Gymnastics All-Around. Great stuff.

  13. 13.

    Ceci n'est pas mon nym

    @Gravenstone: Actually, that was my first thought too when I read that those particular rats are jumping ONTO his sinking ship while so many others are fleeing.

    We can hope.

  16. 16.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @schrodinger’s cat: Honestly, I’m not worried about dumb loud angry white guys with guns. All the police have to do is pretend that these asshole Sons of the New Confederacy are black kids wearing hoodies. Problem solved.

  18. 18.

    Arm The Homeless

    Trump and his remoras will eventually slink back into their gold-plated spider holes, but his riled up menagerie of rubes, marks, bigots and the criminally insane will be with us for decades.

    With a cowed press and an unrepentant Conservative movement, how do we retard the emboldened White Nationalists and neo-Nazis? If Sherman wasn’t allowed to finish the job, who will have the patience to see that the hordes are de-programmed this time?

  21. 21.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    Trump says he’s winning and maybe that’s not a lie. He could be winning if he’s not playing the game we think he is. I don’t think he’s that smart or that good a strategic thinker but you have to consider the possibility.
    I can’t hang out tonight. Have to get up early and make my way from San Jose CA to Detroit. Have a good night all.

  22. 22.

    FridayNext

    And they say Trump’s campaign won’t be remembered in the history books!

    Citation needed.

    I don’t know ANYONE who has said that.

  24. 24.

    dedc79

    @schrodinger’s cat: I would guess his thought process went something like this

    “Isis is honoring President Obama.” (Hmmm…didn’t get quite the crowd reaction I was hoping for. Better escalate.)
    “He’s the founder of ISIS.” (Yeah, that’s more like it. Better repeat it a few times to make sure everyone heard.)
    “He’s the founder of ISIS.” (Yeah, that’s the good stuff. One more time just for emphasis)
    “He’s the founder.” (Ok, now who am I running against again? I should probably say something about her)
    “I would say the co-founder would be crooked Hillary Clinton.” (Man, I’m just the best at this. How am I losing? They love me.)

  27. 27.

    Major Major Major Major

    You know what? I’m having a shitty week. Something in my apartment is biting me, I have to move in a month (AGAIN), I’ve of course convinced myself I have bed bugs (I don’t), and my back hurts, and to top it all off, somebody’s wrong on the Internet. I’m going to watch Stranger Things and play Warcraft and stay up late because I’m working from home tomorrow.

    Ugh all of my mobile ads are for bug poison, of course

  28. 28.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Gravenstone: The NRA is both more and less powerful than they are believed to be. They have been riding on a large membership, around 4 million, for a very long time. But a lot of those are lifetime memberships and its unclear that they remove someone when they die. So the actual size of the membership is likely over estimated. They also have a tendency of annoying the 2nd Amendment absolutists. They are gun shy when it comes to engaging in 2nd Amendment litigation because they’re hyper conservative and worried that they could be ruled against by the courts. They repeatedly tried to sandbag, disrupt, and stop both the Heller and MacDonald cases because they were worried both cases wouldn’t be one. It was the 2nd Amendment Foundation(SAF) and Alan Gura who pushed those cases, including against NRA attempts to get them thrown out. So there’s a high level of cowardice to their activism. As in they talk a good game, but don’t actually have a game. At the state level there is a lot of heartburn over what some of their state level reps actually achieve. Many see them as being too willing to compromise or lobby for unacceptable legislation regarding the 2nd Amendment at the state level. Their real power is through the NRA-Institute for Legislative Affairs (NRA-ILA), which is run by Chris Cox (not the former Congressman) and is the lobbying shop. NRA-ILA is very good at holding members of the House and the Senate to the NRA’s line.

    But the real power in moving the needle has been the Second Amendment Foundation and Alan Gura. The real extremists are Larry Pratt’s Gun Owners of America (GOA). The manufacturers trade group and lobby group is the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which also does a lot of training and safety stuff (as does the NRA, which is its historic mission prior to the mid 1970s). The least effective is the National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR), which is both linked to/shares mailing lists with Senator Rand Paul’s campaign, but also appears to simply be a fundraising organization. As in sign up and send money and become one of “our patriots” and we’ll send you a hat, sign you up to win this rifle, and put your name on our petition…

  32. 32.

    Mnemosyne

    @Gravenstone:

    I heard a piece on NPR today where the president of Gun Owners of America was basically bragging that the gun lobby was single-handedly blocking Merrell Garland’s appointment to the Supreme Court. Any breaking of that lobby’s power can’t happen soon enough.

  33. 33.

    Amir Khalid

    @Gravenstone:
    I’m not too optimistic about that. as an organisation rather than an individual, the NRA seems better positioned to survive Trump’s likely political downfall than Trump himself. At worst, it can always find some other politician to make a champion of.

  34. 34.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    I really don’t know how the hell this is all going to end. I know how I think it’s likely to end, with Clinton blowing Trump away. But I don’t know. Will he go away quietly? Will he stoke up his voters to begin rioting? Will he slink off in embarrassment? Who the hell knows with this guy. Shit. I don’t even know if he’s going to make it to election day as the nominee.

    Well, this is what happens when you wind a bunch of ignorant assholes up every election for 50 years and then stiff them whenever you win. Sooner or later, they get sick of getting fucked over and taken, and they take over the party. I can’t begin to guess what happens after this.

  36. 36.

    Feebog

    Maybe not all fifty states, but I’m beginning to believe Clinton may garner over 400 electoral votes.

  37. 37.

    burnspbesq

    @Manyakitty:

    He needs to lose all 50 states.

    Would be nice, but even if Texas flips, I don’t see Trump losing Idaho, Wyoming, North Dakota, or Mississippi. Would be happy to be wrong.

  40. 40.

    Ken

    @FridayNext: I have seen a few people speculate that if Trump is elected, there will be no more history books. They may have been joking; on the other hand, this was before the revelation about his nuclear weapons briefing.

  41. 41.

    TheMightyTrowel

    OT: I’m deputy editor of a major archaeo journal with a major anniversary next year. Been pulling together a special reviews section for the anniversary issue since Dec. Finally got it done and submitted today. Huzzah!

  42. 42.

    Arm The Homeless

    @redshirt: Appreciate the kind words, but after a night of muting a bunch of fascists on Twitter, my faith in Americans’ disgust with them is waning

  43. 43.

    dmsilev

    @Mnemosyne: I’m sure they’d like people to think that, but Mitch McConnell and his crew are certainly capable of holding up the nomination out of pure partisan dickery, with no need for any assist from any issues group.

  49. 49.

    hovercraft

    “He’s the mutant offspring of a church revivalist and an improv performer.” Robert George formerly of the NY Post Editorial page. Referring to Trump referring to Obama and Clinton as the co-founders of ISIS, for which they are revered by ISIS. So I guess that’s going to drive tomorrows news cycle.

  50. 50.

    Wag

    @Manyakitty:

    If let him have Alaska, Idaho, and Wyoming. 10 electoral votes and it may trigger some thought about consequences if we make an example of those three states.

  51. 51.

    Mnemosyne

    @randy khan:
    @dmsilev:

    No, I’m pretty sure the gun lobby is doing a major assist in keeping the rubes riled up and urging the Repugs not to cave. I mostly thought it was an interesting admission that, yes, Garland is liberal enough that the gun lobby is afraid of him being appointed, given all the BS from the left about Garland being a seekrit conservative.

  53. 53.

    dmsilev

    @Feebog: Getting to 400 takes some doing. Playing around with 270towin.com, giving all of the toss-up states to Clinton (including GA and AZ) gets her to 374. After that, it becomes pretty hard to see additional possibilities. MO, perhaps. If you think TX is plausible, that would certainly do the trick.

  57. 57.

    Ken

    Read: This is becoming a head ache and it’s not fun anymore.

    Why, yes, being President is actual work and often is not fun. You’d have to be an idiot, or pretty detached from reality, to think otherwise.

  58. 58.

    Arm The Homeless

    @TheMightyTrowel: Congrats! Being married to an academic who oversees a mildly well respected journal has given me new respect for the amount of work that goes into something, that to a layperson, seems banal. Best of luck and I hope all the work is worth it and know that some folks respect yours, and your associates’ efforts

  59. 59.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    Idiots don’t kill campaigns, idiots kill campaigns.

    I’m not sure which of those is Trump and which is the NRA. Let the post-election pundits sort em out.

  60. 60.

    Adam L Silverman

    @TheMightyTrowel: I have also sorts of good stuff, with pictures, about archeological sites in Iraq if you want something special about identifying and preserving archeological sites in a war zone.

  61. 61.

    Mike J

    @burnspbesq:

    Would be nice, but even if Texas flips, I don’t see Trump losing Idaho, Wyoming, North Dakota, or Mississippi. Would be happy to be wrong.

    He’ll lose Mississippi long before he loses Tennessee. MS is 37% black, TN only 17.

  62. 62.

    Pogonip

    @Major Major Major Major: If your building allows pets, even if you don’t have any, it could be fleas. Fleas bite in clusters. Bedbugs bite in a straight line; in Italy during WW II GI’s called three bites, the most common pattern, breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

  63. 63.

    dopey-0

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    It was dreadful to watch this canard à l’orange
    Mutter “Clinton, oh Clinton, oh Clinton.
    I trust only Putin and Julian Assange,

    SiubhanDuinne has WON THE INTERNETS for rhyming a word with “Orange”. This is yuuuge, never ever done before in the entire history of the English language! We have the best people, the very very best people working on it at Balloon-Juice!

  64. 64.

    Adam L Silverman

    @catclub: These people don’t riot. Among his extremist supporters in the KKK and the Aryan Brotherhood and American NAZI Party and the III Percenters and Oathkeepers, etc what we’ve seen is those folks make a lot of noise in comments threads and on twitter and facebook and will try to be intimidating one on one. But when push comes to shove they either don’t really show up (Malheur Refuge Occupation) or when they do (Bundy Ranch 2014) they immediately start infighting over who’s in charge, who’s tougher, and who’s version of the ideology is correct, fall out with each other, and go home. When they tend to become violent, they do it in smaller groups or as individuals.

  65. 65.

    Mnemosyne

    @Pogonip:

    Good point. Major^4, you may need to check Samwise for flea dirt. Run a fine-tooth comb through his fur and if you get a bunch of little dark specks, your boy has fleas and you need to consult a veterinarian.

  68. 68.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Pogonip: it’s most likely some errant fleas, yes. Still annoying.

    EDIT: he had them once before, Mnem. Similar enough to be suspicious. I laid out the usual remedies and haven’t seen any bites since Sunday but I’m paranoid. It’s not like last time, which may just mean I nuked them early enough. I’ve got a vet trip scheduled anyway but his posterior appears normal.

  74. 74.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mnemosyne: I’m not sure that libertarian is the word you want. Individualistically atomized is, perhaps, better. Americans, by and large, aren’t joiners. The more you get to the extreme, the stronger the dynamic of not joining becomes.

  75. 75.

    randy khan

    @Mnemosyne:

    I think you need to ask why the gun lobby’s assistance would be required. It’s not as if it’s a hard sell for most of the Senate Republicans not to vote on Garland, and McConnell certainly isn’t going to change his mind absent some really significant sign that he’ll be worse off if he doesn’t.

  76. 76.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Miss Bianca:
    @dopey-0:

    LOL you guys. I was lucky to have the French pronunciation to play with (for a while I was trying to work in “mélange,” but “Assange” seemed funnier).

  77. 77.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Major Major Major Major: Remember the story of the Exodus? The part where my distant ancestors looted just about everything in Egypt that wasn’t tied down on their way out? They took the cats too! I’m amazed someone didn’t try shove a pyramid into a napsack. What I really want to know is if they had the time to burgle every building and domicile in Egypt, why exactly there wasn’t time for the bread to actually rise? I’m constantly flabbergasted every year at Passover when the Exodus story is recounted how there’s no time to make bread, so we have to eat this wretched matzoh, but there was plenty of time to loot an entire country.

  81. 81.

    hovercraft

    So State Rep. Stacey Abrams of GA is mapping out a strategy for Hillary to win GA.
    She says she would need 23 – 26 % of the white vote, 98 % of the AA vote, and 80 % of the other POC, she could win.
    NC 70 % White 21 % AA 6.5 % Latino in 2008
    White and AA percentages are of active voters, Latino and Asian are gen. pop.
    GA 58 % White 29-30 % AA 9.5 Latino 4 % Asian in 2016
    I’m still skeptical, but hey there must be an outside chance since the campaign seems GA curious. The fact that the percentage of white voters is so much lower than NC, is encouraging. Oh and RMoney won 6 % of the AA vote in GA, but Trump is doing so much worse. So I guess she’s saying there’s a chance.

  83. 83.

    jl

    @Adam L Silverman: Lewis Black says they are just stories that the elders told the people out in the desert with no air conditioning to keep the yahoos in line. Shouldn’t worry about it too much.

  88. 88.

    Mnemosyne

    @Adam L Silverman:

    That seems to have changed over the years, though. The KKK’s biggest membership years were when they spread across the country and had thousands of members in the Midwest openly marching in the 1910s and 1920s. I’m also thinking of the racist mobs that destroyed Black American communities in the same time period. So something seems to have changed — or changed back, and that period was an anomaly?

    I don’t know if you’ve ever seen or heard the soundtrack to Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins, but it has some really interesting things to say about the mindset. One thing that really struck me was that the lone political assassin has been replaced by the lone mass murderer in most cases (there are still outliers, like the attempt on Gabrielle Giffords’ life).

  90. 90.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @burnspbesq:

    I think it might be possible to do an entire “little list” song using only his GOP primary opponents.

    I’m not going to do it … but one could.

  91. 91.

    Gaffa

    @randy khan:

    Speaking as a native North Dakotan, North Dakota traditionally sends Republicans to the White House and Democrats to both houses of Congress (exceptions, as always, occur).

  92. 92.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Feebog: It looks to me as if Clinton’s post-DNC/Khan rise has topped out. I suspect she has an EV ceiling somewhere around Obama ’08 levels (365 EV), which she is not that far from now.

  93. 93.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mnemosyne: I’m aware that the KKK’s dynamics have changed over time. If Sondheim’s Assassins is a musical I have not see it or heard it. As I’ve indicated before, other than opera, I don’t do musicals.

  98. 98.

    Suzanne

    @SiubhanDuinne: Eminem made some notable comments about rhyming with “orange”. You and Marshall Mathers—this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

    I want Trump to be so humiliated in his loss that it breaks the party. I have always had an over-developed sense of fairness and I always want people I dislike to not only fail at things but then to also feel existential self-loathing for being losing losers (fortunately, I get to witness’s his right now w/r/t my ex-husband). I want Repunlucans everywhere to not only lose and lose big, but lose so convincingly that it leads them to realize that they lost because they suck at America.

  99. 99.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Mnemosyne: In those days, potentially violent racists were actually the majority of people with political power, so they didn’t have to be the type of fringey people who were socially atomized; they were pillars of the community, the Chamber of Commerce.

  100. 100.

    Mai.naem.mobile

    If Texas flips the GOP can just raise their hands and surrender. Shut the party down and have a massive going out of business sale. Texas is a bigger prize than Florida.

  102. 102.

    Villago Delenda Est

    It figures that the NRA is among the last of Drumpf’s committed supporters…it is, after all, this country’s most prominent and powerful terrorist organization.

  103. 103.

    Calming Influence

    @Mnemosyne: Plus, tap flea comb on wet paper towel. Brown flecks instantly turn into red spots of BLOOOOD! (unmistakable evidence of fleas.)

  104. 104.

    Prescott Cactus

    @Adam L Silverman: Went to the one NRA Convention / Show. Free admission if you were a member and you could sign up for a free 3 month membership and still get in free. Total cost was parking.

    They kept us as active members for over 3 years. Still get an occasional “we miss you, do you want to come back” letter.

  106. 106.

    Matt McIrvin

    electoral-vote.com has a nice page that allows you to compare the evolution of their EV estimates in every election since 2004 (I wince at the term “statistically tied,” but otherwise it’s nice).

    Just eyeballing the charts, what this election actually resembles more than any other is 2012, but with a slightly bigger margin for the Democrat. Romney was never in the lead, but he managed to get it closer in the state counts than Trump ever has on multiple occasions (strangely, none of them connected with his party convention).

    It’s interesting to see how close 2008 actually was until Wall Street melted down, and Sarah Palin’s idiocy became apparent to all. Obama ended up with a hefty electoral margin, but he only really ran away with it at the very end.

  107. 107.

    Mnemosyne

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Sondheim writes musicals for people who hate musicals, so you may end up liking it. John Hinckley and Squeaky Fromme have a love duet.

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Good point. I often wonder if the rise of fascism in America was actually that sudden rise of countrywide, organized, institutional racism, but nobody noticed because it mostly affected African-Americans. Most of the Jim Crow and strict segregation laws weren’t put into place until the 1890s through the 1910s, not post-Civil War.

  109. 109.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Prescott Cactus: I get letters from them all the time, not quite sure how they got my address. I get the NAGR stuff multiple times a day because I once, on a lark, signed up for a raffle of gear they were running. I also, about once a quarter, get an email from Senator Rand Paul via NAGR. All of these emails, NAGR’s, their state affiliate, and Paul’s are fundraising requests. Its basically an automated, electronic grift.

  110. 110.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mnemosyne: Again: I do not like musicals. I do not like them set in Oklohoma. I do not like them when I have pneumonia. I do not like Cats. I found it annoying as gnats.

  112. 112.

    Luthe

    @Adam L Silverman: Where does the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) fit into this? They are, I believe, a trade lobbying group for the gun industry (and happen to be headquartered in Newtown, for the ultimate irony).

  114. 114.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Luthe: That appears to be the missing part of the sentence after is right before NAGR. I’ll go back and edit.

  117. 117.

    frosty

    @SiubhanDuinne: You rhymed “orange”!!!! (although it was the French pronunciation). Even so, kudos. The only other one I know of was Kurt Vonnegut:

    Sitting ‘neath a roof of orange*
    While my life swung like a door hinge.

    * Reference to long-gone Howard Johnson’s

  119. 119.

    different-church-lady

    I’d love to be a fly on the wall during a Trump/Secret Service “chat”:

    SS AGENT: “Mr. Trump? I represent the people whose job it is to take the bullet if some whack-job tries to shoot you.”

    TRUMP: “Why would anyone do that? People love me. Everybody loves me! Believe me, there’s nobody who doesn’t love me. Believe me. Beli…”

    SS AGENT: “Sir, I know you’re not good at this, but right now you really need to be quiet and listen to *me* talk for a bit…”

  120. 120.

    Anne Laurie

    @Major Major Major Major: Pro tip about fleas: If you eat brewers’ yeast, it changes your scent just enough that fleas stop recognizing you as food. Problem is that you have to eat it for several weeks before it becomes effective. Works for cats (& dogs, too) — if you can get Samwise to eat the stuff, by sprinkling it in his food; some cats love the stuff & some won’t get within a yard of the dish.

    I think I first heard about this trick from a friend in San Francisco — rental units there had an ongoing flea problem 30 years ago, and it sounds like they still may!

  121. 121.

    Anne Laurie

    @Adam L Silverman:

    If Sondheim’s Assassins is a musical I have not see it or heard it.

    It is a musical but not, for obvious reasons, tremendously popular with theatre groups & school performers:

    …. The play opens in a fairground shooting gallery where, amid flashing lights, human figures trundle past on a conveyor belt. One by one, a collection of misfits enters the stage, where the Proprietor of the game entices them to play, promising that their problems will be solved by killing a President. (“Everybody’s Got the Right”). Leon Czolgosz, John Hinckley, Charles Guiteau, Giuseppe Zangara, Samuel Byck, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, and Sara Jane Moore are given their guns one by one. John Wilkes Booth enters last and the Proprietor introduces him to the others as their pioneer before he begins distributing ammunition. The assassins take aim as “Hail to the Chief” heralds Abraham Lincoln’s offstage arrival. Booth excuses himself, a shot rings out and Booth shouts, “Sic semper tyrannis!”…

    Apart from the warm & family-friendly topic, the songs are written in the pop styles of the various eras during which the original assassinations took place, which makes it complicated to find capable performers.

    If you were going to watch one Sondheim musical, though, you’d probably prefer the one that’s even less popular — Pacific Overtures:

    …The show is set in 1853 Japan and follows the difficult Westernization of Japan, told from the point of view of the Japanese… Built around a quasi-Japanese pentatonic scale, the music contrasts Japanese contemplation (“There is No Other Way”) with Western ingenuousness (“Please Hello”). The score is generally considered to be one of Sondheim’s most ambitious and sophisticated efforts

    Given the unusual casting and production demands, Pacific Overtures remains one of the least-performed musicals by Stephen Sondheim. The show is occasionally put on by opera companies….

  122. 122.

    Cat48

    Trump would have to get a lot worse for Texas to flip. Too many Texans are into conspiracy theories.

  123. 123.

    Central Planning

    @Anne Laurie: My wife and I recently (within the past year) watched a documentary/biography of Sondheim on Netflix (or maybe Prime). I thought it was pretty interesting and didn’t realize the number of songs and scores he wrote/co-wrote. If anyone is a Sondheim fan they should check it out.

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