Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When I was faster i was always behind.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

Their shamelessness is their super power.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

In after Baud. Damn.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

You would normally have to try pretty hard to self-incriminate this badly.

The willow is too close to the house.

When we show up, we win.

Bark louder, little dog.

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Hail to the Hairpiece / Monday Evening Open Thread: Let It Burn

Monday Evening Open Thread: Let It Burn

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Things these days ain’t like they used to be! The raw, septic core of Trump’s appeal to his supporters, and of the GOP’s promotion of Trump to those supporters. Jerry Lewis is a Hollywood icon, dammit, but Adam Sandler — for all his vast success — gets mocked as a bottom-feeding perennial middle-schooler!

Which scares the (somewhat) smarter members of the Permanent Republican Party, who are torn between acknowledging that 1962 ain’t coming back, and trying to milk every last drop of bile for those bottom-feeding profits…


Speaking of Streep’s ‘principled press’, you can count on the NYTimes to do the Media Village Idiot Very Serious Person job…

Reader Interactions

54Comments

  3. 3.

    Roger Moore

    So … @patrickhealynyt got the president-elect on the phone … after midnight … & asked him about Meryl Streep?

    Sure. If he had asked him about anything serious, there’s no way he’d either A) give an answer or B) take their call again. Access is everything, even if you have to compromise the benefits access is supposed to gain you in order to keep it.

  4. 4.

    JPL

    If Meryl Streep had gone to private schools all her life, rather than public schools in New Jersey, Hillary would have won. Okay that doesn’t make sense, but neither did Meghan McCain’s comment. Meghan McCain will never want for anything in her life, because she was born into a wealthy family.

  8. 8.

    Major Major Major Major

    To be fair, “those damn people who know better than me and are smarter and wiser than me think they’re smarter, and wiser than me, I’ll show them!” was a big factor in Trump’s win.

  11. 11.

    Elizabelle

    @Baud: Yes, it is. And Patrick Healy is one of the people bringing it down.

    I liked Meryl Streep’s speech. I think a lot of people are going to stiffen their spines and resist more openly. Shock gonna turn to anger.

  12. 12.

    Elizabelle

    @schrodingers_cat: Yup. Pretty much. Although Amy Fucking Chozick gives him a run for his money.

    Do you think the problem is the publishing family, or the editorial staff?

    And have we heard if they’re losing subscribers? Because their “US” section is pretty much 70% Trump stuff lately — not like we don’t have a big country — and I would guess there is a limited audience for that.

  14. 14.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    @Elizabelle:

    She shook me out of my torpor. I woke up PISSED OFF this morning, because of her quiet reassuring recounting of how this disgusting creature is a cruel freak and must never be normalized. She reminded me, and a lot of us, that we’re good, and he’s not. I’m making it my mission to put every Trump voter I encounter on the defensive.

  15. 15.

    geg6

    @Elizabelle:

    It’s the village idiot, Baquet (sp?), who runs the joint. He’s an asshole and a puppet. They fired a good female exec editor, who they barely gave a chance to for this dummy. It’s been straight downhill into Judith Miller territory ever since.

  17. 17.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Elizabelle: One of my cousins was a finance guy for NYT in the 80s and early to mid 90s, I should ask him. I think problem is probably with the owners and top management. They set the tone and then Healys and Chozicks are the foot soldiers.

  19. 19.

    EllenH

    Speaking of the resistance, today the Keepin it 1600 guys announced their new media company Crooked Media and a new podcast called Pod Save America.

  20. 20.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    Here’s a funny story. My sister and her husband went to play tennis at an indoor club last week, in Chatham, NY. As they walked in, standing at the reception desk, were four people – a woman and three of her tennis partners. The woman was pointing at each of her tennis partners in turn and saying loudly, “FUCK YOU” “FUCK YOU” “FUCK YOU”. She then turned to the receptionist and said “don’t ever pair me with these Trump voting assholes again”. She turned back to the woman and said “you’re a woman! how could you vote for that freak? you should be ashamed of yourself!” She then turned to one of the men and said “he made fun of a disabled person – what the fuck is wrong with you?” The man said he didn’t believe it, and didn’t see it. The angry woman said “bullshit. It was all over the news. Bullshit”. Then she turned to my sister – a complete stranger – and demanded “who did you vote for?” My sister threw up her arms like a gun was pointed at her and said “I’M WITH HER!!”. Which she is.

    Whoever that woman is, she’s my spirit animal.

  23. 23.

    Elizabelle

    Just googled “inauguration Trump.”

    The top 3 stories:

    ** Trump drops longtime announcer Charles Brotman who’s done them all since … (CNN)

    ** Notable figures not attending Trump inauguration (photo of Justin Trudeau) (KRCR), and — best for last

    ** Vladimir Putin to sing at Trump’s inauguration? From snopes. com

    And from a CNN recap on who’s performing at the inauguration, and the Talladega Marching Tornadoes are the only new additions (as of January 8 story):

    Re the Rockettes:

    Several members of the Rockettes came forward to talk about their concerns with the group taking part in the inaugural festivities, and eventually one member leaked a recording to Marie Claire of a discussion between members of the Rockettes and Madison Square Garden executive chairman James Dolan.

    As Dolan tried to explain his decision to have the Rockettes perform for Trump, one dancer said, “It sounds like you’re asking us to be tolerant of intolerance.”

    Dolan responded, “Yeah, in a way, I guess we are doing that.”

    Before closing the meeting he offered something in the way of a “sound bite,” saying, “We’re celebrating a new president, not necessarily this president.”

    That’s gonna get back to the Tweeter in Chief.

  25. 25.

    Roger Moore

    @seejanerun:
    I don’t think the NY Times needed any encouragement. They’ve felt inferior since the Washington Post broke Watergate, and they’ve wanted to get the Clintons since the 1990s. Putin isn’t responsible for that.

  26. 26.

    Kathleen

    @schrodingers_cat: We have to cut them slack. They don’t have Hilary or Obama to demonize or marginalize anymore. They’re kind of flailing here. Maybe we should offer them a pool of new objects of their derision. Sunday morning shows in crisis!!! Chuck, David Brooks, Ruth Marcus and Wilmer have serious discussion on pros and cons of Democrats they want to demonize, framed in their usual horse race narrative. I think there’s a sketch here somewhere.

  27. 27.

    glory b

    @Elizabelle: I heard last year that the Koch brothers have been making large donations to many small, struggling historically black colleges.

    I wonder if a donation had something to do with the Talledega College performance.

  28. 28.

    Mnemosyne

    @Elizabelle:

    No disrespect to the Rockettes, who are talented dancers who work hard at their jobs, but that’s who you call when you can’t get any actual name performers to show up.

    ETA: In fact, you usually call them to back up a name performer.

  31. 31.

    Elizabelle

    @glory b: Hmmmm.

    @Mnemosyne: Interestingly, the Rockettes have only previously done the 2001 and 2005 inaugurations. Could W have been facing the same problem, albeit more quietly?

  33. 33.

    hovercraft

    Conservative groups plan to spend $10 million on bullying Democrats to vote for Trump SCOTUS pick

    By Joan McCarter
    Monday Jan 09, 2017 · 8:30 PM EST

    Groups like the Judicial Crisis Network have already invested something like $7 million into securing the Supreme Court, but that was just a downpayment. The plan now is to spend at least $10 million to target Senate Democrats who are up in 2018, hoping to sway them to vote for whatever popular vote loser Donald Trump gives them.

    Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) vowed this month that his caucus will oppose high-court nominees that are not “mainstream”—adding that he would “absolutely” try and keep the seat vacant. Republicans hold 52 seats in the Senate and will need at least eight Democrats to break a filibuster on a Supreme Court nominee. […]
    But JCN believes it can go around Schumer by concentrating its fire on his members who must win over Trump voters in 2018. Ten Senate Democrats are up for reelection in Trump states.

    “We are preparing to launch the most robust campaign for a Supreme Court nominee in history and we will force vulnerable Senators up for re-election in 2018 like Joe Donnelly and Claire McCaskill to decide between keeping their Senate seats or following Chuck Schumer’s liberal, obstructionist agenda,” said JCN’s chief counsel Carrie Severino.

    JCN is just one player in a larger, multi-faceted effort outside the halls of the Capitol to confirm a new conservative justice, sources planning the strategy said. The push will also include paid advertising, earned media, research and grassroots outreach from JCN and several other prominent conservative groups. JCN’s paid advertising will likely concentrate on Democrats like Donnelly of Indiana, McCaskill of Missouri and Sens. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Jon Tester of Montana, who all hail from states that Trump won overwhelmingly.

    Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), sure they can probably get him. In fact, they aren’t even going to run ads against him. But picking up eight more? To rubber stamp Trump and wreck the Supreme Court for who knows how long? That’s going to be an awfully heavy lift. Particularly since they’d be abandoned by all of the left—the grassroots, donors, interest groups—if they give in.

  34. 34.

    Mnemosyne

    @Elizabelle:

    Could W have been facing the same problem, albeit more quietly?

    Almost certainly. God knows most non-country performers hated W.

  36. 36.

    Mnemosyne

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Wilmer is doing a CNN town hall tonight! Paul Ryan is doing one on Thursday.

    Hmmm. I’ll give Wilmer this, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of the Speaker of the House doing a national townhall before. Perhaps Ryan is feeling a bit of the sting as well.

  37. 37.

    schrodingers_cat

    OT Music Break
    The movie has been panned by critics but I love its title track, especially the panchakshara* stotra, the female voice in Sanskrit interspersed with a rapid fire, rap-like (in Hindi) description of Shiva.

    Panchakshara == 5 letters (na ma shi va)

    nam = name
    shiva

  38. 38.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Mnemosyne: Trump’s not going to do it. For whatever reason they aren’t putting Pence on TV much. Yertle is inaudible. I don’t see who else can plausibly pitch the agenda for them.

    ETA: maybe this is part of Wilmer’s new outreach post?

  39. 39.

    hovercraft

    Rev. William Barber leads ‘Moral Resistance’ rally in D.C. against Jeff Sessions’ AG confirmation

    We must also defend ourselves and our neighbors against attacks on our constitutional principles of equal protection under law. Because of our love of neighbor and country, people of faith from across the nation join together today in moral resistance to Donald J. Trump’s nomination of Senator Jeff Sessions as Attorney General of the United States.

    ETA: Khizr Khan is appalled by Sessions, and wrote to the Judiciary committee.
    dailykos.com/stories/2017/1/9/1618634/-Khizr-Khan-It-is-shocking-to-even-consider-someone-like-Jeff-…

  41. 41.

    hovercraft

    Sorry another link to GOS

    Office of Government Ethics ‘lost contact’ with Trump team after election, even as conflicts mounted

    Office of Government Ethics Director Walter Shaub emailed Trump aides in November to lament that despite his office’s repeated outreach, “we seem to have lost contact with the Trump-Pence transition since the election.”

    The perils for White House staff were even more severe, Shaub argued, because they might begin their jobs without crucial ethics guidance, raising a risk of inadvertently breaking federal rules.
    “They run the risk of having inadvertently violated the criminal conflicts of interest restriction at 18 USC 208,” Shaub wrote, citing a federal conflicts law in an email to Trump Transition aide Sean Doocey.

  42. 42.

    randy khan

    @hovercraft:

    I wonder if they’re dumb enough to target Brown in Ohio. It’s a Trump state, but he’s about as likely to flip on the Supreme Court as Ruth Bader Ginsburg is to join the Klan.

  43. 43.

    NotMax

    @Elizabelle

    Before closing the meeting he offered something in the way of a “sound bite,” saying, “We’re celebrating a new president, not necessarily this president.”

    Uh-huh. And if you eat only the parts around the E. coli, you can still enjoy the steak.

  44. 44.

    NotMax

    @Major Major Major Major

    Pence is too busy staffing the administration. Quick back of the hand calculation is that around 75% of the names announced thus far are either from Pence’s inner circle or have close ties to him.

  45. 45.

    hilts

    @Baud:

    Patrick Healy is a flagrant douchebag and the rest of the NY Times’ political reporters suck big time. The one thing about the NY Times that I still find worthwhile is its Sunday Book Review.

  46. 46.

    NotMax

    @efgoldman

    Not a cat fancier by any stretch of the imagination, thank you very much.

    Conway came from Pence’s Rolodex. Presume she’d be in the 25% not smarter than he.

  47. 47.

    zhena gogolia

    @seejanerun:

    I really think they did. The day they had the headline that Putin was personally involved, right below it they had a “news analysis” by one Scott Shane that was all, “Well, the unclassified report doesn’t say how the FBI, NSA, and CIA concluded that Russia was involved, so we’re just supposed to trust them, and that’s not enough for skeptics.” So why don’t you do some reporting yourself, huh? It reminded me of that article they ran before the election about how there was nothing nefarious in Trump’s relationship with Russia EVEN THOUGH WE NEVER SAW HIS TAX RETURNS SO WE DON’T KNOW, DO WE?

  48. 48.

    NotMax

    @zhena goglia

    Kee–rist on a crumbly cracker.

    On the top of every single page of the unclassified report is a notice which essentially says that it does not reveal the methodology from the fuller classified version which supports the conclusions and that those conclusions are firm, agreed upon without demurral and supportable.

  49. 49.

    Anne Laurie

    @seejanerun:

    Maybe the Russians hacked the NYT and came up with some blackmail material.

    Quite possibly they did hack the NYT, or its publishers. But if you look at the NYT‘s history during the 1930s and 1940s, the controlling family has always had a strong bias in favor of ‘getting along to go along’. Putin’s hard men wouldn’t need to pressure them explicitly, because they could be trusted to ‘get in line’ once Trump’s electoral victory was assured.

    And frankly, that’s a bigger disgrace than being blackmailed, isn’t it?

  51. 51.

    shortribs

    @EllenH: Thanks for the heads up, was wondering why the Keeping it 1600 folks hadn’t updated their feed in a few weeks. Also, I think you forgot to close a link, the reply button your comment goes to the crooked media website.

  53. 53.

    Miss Bianca

    @the Conster, la Citoyenne: Here’s my problem: it’s not just every Trump voter, for me.

    I spent the evening at the Democratic Central Committee meeting in my county, listening to the sotto voce comments of the white Wilmer-bros behind me about how we ran the wrong candidate. Then listening to a video conference with a woman running for the chairmanship of the state Democratic party – who I actually rather liked – talking about how the Democratic party needed to “change”. Then the same Wilmerbro talking about how great Wilmer was and how much we needed to “change” the Wilmer Way. Then I couldn’t stand it any longer and I grabbed the mic and listened to all the breath sucking in behind me as I said that Wilmer didn’t speak for me, and his wasn’t the kind of “change” I was looking for. And wishing I had the courage and presence of mind to say that the biggest fuck-up the DNC had made as far as I was concerned was to allow a non-Democrat to hijack the party to run for President, then whine about how corrupt the party was when he didn’t win, and how *that* had helped elect and normalize a President Trump.

    tl:dr version: I’m not ready to make nice. I’m still mad at my supposed allies. Help, Miss Manners! How do I get past this in the name of “uniting against the real enemy”?

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