Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Elections aren’t won by handwringing, cowering, and/or bashing your own candidates.

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

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

Come on, man.

The republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

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

President Biden is doing good where he can, and getting it done.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

Donald Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Nothing worth doing is easy.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 / Late Night Open Thread: Ohio Man-Child Apologizes

Late Night Open Thread: Ohio Man-Child Apologizes

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Remember the ‘sunburned dude in backwards ball cap’ video clip replayed endlessly last week?

Well, he has the excuse of being a high-school senior — and he’s apologized. (Even though he doesn’t have coronavirus himself… that we know of.)

… Brady Sluder said he has realized he’s not invincible after all.

“I wasn’t aware of the severity of my actions and comments,” Sluder posted in an apology on his Instagram account March 22. “I’d like to take this time to own up to the mistakes I’ve made and apologize to the people I’ve offended.”…

The clip has been used to highlight crowds of spring break partiers defying stay-at-home suggestions – which have since turned into stay-at-home orders for several states. The video aired on various national media outlets, including in a story Thursday, March 19, on NBC’s Today Show. His quote also has appeared in USA TODAY and the Washington Post…

“Our generation may feel invincible, like I did when I commented, but we have a responsibility to listen and follow the recommendations in our communities,” Sluder wrote. “I will continue to reflect and learn from this and continue to pray for our well-being. I deeply apologize from the bottom of my heart for my insensitivity and unawareness of my actions.”…

In the caption for his post, he added: “I’m not asking for your forgiveness or pity. I want to use this as motivation to become a better person, a better son, a better friend, and a better citizen…Don’t be arrogant and think you’re invincible like myself.”

Thank Murphy the Trickster God that the internet wasn’t around in the early 1970s. I was around his age when I wore a home-made Shanna the She-Devil costume to one of the earliest NYC ComicCons, so… I don’t agree with his actions, but I understand.

Let’s try to be kind with one another. Does not apply to professional Republicans or their media stenographers, of course!

Reader Interactions

109Comments

  1. 1.

    joel hanes

    I did a great many very stupid things when young; some of them while drunk.
    That I survived and suffered no very serious legal consequences I can only attribute to large helpings of both privilege and pure luck.

    I am powerfully glad that ubiquitous video recording was not a thing then.

  4. 4.

    NotMax

    @joel hanes

    Adjusted for personal circumstances (and high tolerance).

    I did a great many very stupid things when young; fewer of them while drunk.

    ;)

  5. 5.

    Hungry Joe

    Sincere or just covering his young tuchus? No way to know, so I say give him a pass and let it go … unless he does something else outrageously offensive, in which case resurrect this clip and hang it around his neck forever.

  6. 6.

    cain

    @Hungry Joe:

    Does it matter? He apologized and did it unequivocally. There wasn’t a lot of parsing there. I mean would what you want him to do to make up for what was clearly a drunken convo? It’s not like not 80% of here didn’t have such things. I mean, jeez he’s 18.

  7. 7.

    Anne Laurie

    @NotMax: To the best of my knowledge, no pics survive.  (Early 70s:  I had a single Polaroid of me in costume, taken by a friend with no framing skills, which has long since degraded into a series of blotches.)   Since, as a brick-shaped size 12, I really didn’t have the figure to carry off my lack of tailoring talent, I doubt even the ComicCon preverts took any private stills, to be honest.

    And, yes, I am *very* grateful for the primitive state of then-current technology!

  8. 8.

    Mary G

    Someone has got through to him, and he seems sincere, or else he has a rich Republican daddy who hired a crisis management person to write that for him, but in terms of who I want to be angry at, he’s way down the list. Just the redness in his face and back said to me that he was both drunk and developing a sunburn from hell. That’s punishment enough.

  11. 11.

    Chetan Murthy

    Good for him.  And hopefully he’s sincere.  But hey, as Vonnegut says, “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

    I know I’m alone in this, but I’ve *never*, *ever*, *ever* done something while drunk (or young) that I later regretted.  Nosirreee, not me!

  12. 12.

    HumboldtBlue

    I was him a thousand times and it resonates how dysfunctional what we call news is when the focus turns to the immature and inexperienced as the example of bad behavior instead of the supposedly mature and deliberate adults who fucked this up from the git-go and while they fucked it up made sure to enrich themselves in the process.

    Here’s a distraction. Led Zeppelin meets Beethoven. On a ukelele.

  13. 13.

    Mary G

    News:

    #BREAKING: The White House and Senate leaders struck a major deal early Wednesday morning over a $2-trillion package to provide a jolt to an economy struggling amid the coronavirus pandemic, capping days of marathon negotiations that produced the far-reaching measure.— Manu Raju (@mkraju) March 25, 2020

  14. 14.

    Mary G

    @Mary G:

    “Ladies and gentleman, we are done," White House legislative affairs director Eric Ueland said right before 1am after leaving Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's office following negotiations that have spanned around the clock since last Friday. "We have a deal."— Manu Raju (@mkraju) March 25, 2020

     

    Ueland: “We have a deal … Much of the work on bill text has been completed. And I’m hopeful that over the next few hours we’ll finish what’s left and be able to circulate it early in the morning.”— Manu Raju (@mkraju) March 25, 2020

    I put a thing in the last thread about a WH legislative guy getting fired and thrown off the premises an hour or so ago. Hopefully he’s leaking to somebody in a bar right now.

  15. 15.

    Jay

    @Mary G:

    naw, a Pro would write a non apology apology. This was an apology.

    next comes Mitigation/Amends. He can provide social support for some of the people who live in his neighbourhood, use his youth and sense of immortality to hump kitty litter, source toilet paper for those who need the help.

  16. 16.

    Eunicecycle

    @Mary G:  Yay! I hope we didn’t give in too much. Of course nothing is really final until there is an approving tweet from the Orange Menace.

  17. 17.

    mrmoshpotato

    @cain: Points off for this douchecanoe not identifying as a douchecanoe in his apology.

    (And I’m assuming seeing as I won’t watch it.)

  18. 18.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Jay: Hump kitty litter?

    Is that a Canadianism we Yanks don’t know?  Even with the cold winters… ?

  19. 19.

    NotMax

    Willing to give him the benefit of the doubt unless he demonstrates it ill suited.

    And lay off the sauce until you’re legal, kid.

  20. 20.

    Mary G

    WaPo story has some details and procedural obstacles might still come up:

    The House of Representatives is currently out of session, and it would be tricky for House members to return en masse to Washington to vote. Democratic aides said they were optimistic that a strong bipartisan Senate vote would make it possible to pass the bill by unanimous consent in the House — a process requiring only two members present in the House chamber. But that would require every lawmaker to agree — a tall order for a $2 trillion bill touching every part of the U.S. economy.

    “The easiest way for us to do it is to put aside our concerns for another day and get this done,” Pelosi said Tuesday on CNBC. “My goal always has been to bring this bill to the floor under unanimous consent.”

    However, any lawmaker of either party could object, and in an early warning sign Tuesday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) voiced concern about the legislation over Twitter, writing that despite “vague statements” no one had seen text of the legislation that “seems to give a *HALF TRILLION DOLLARS* away to big corporations, w/ few worker protections.”

    Among House Republicans, there is similar reluctance to commit to approving a still-unseen bill, according to GOP aides familiar with internal conversations. Besides potential policy objections inherent in a $2 trillion bill, members might also resist passing a bill of that magnitude without a formal vote, the aides said — thus requiring most lawmakers to return to Washington.

    If unanimous consent is not possible, aides of both parties said the most likely scenario would be a day-long vote where members would be encouraged to spread out their trips to the floor and not congregate as the vote is taken.

    At least two House members and one senator have tested positive for the coronavirus, while others remained quarantined, and multiple lawmakers have voiced trepidation about returning to the Capitol.

    Tuesday’s progress on the massive legislation followed four straight days of negotiations on Capitol Hill, with a deal seemingly in reach each day only to elude completion. Tempers flared on the Senate floor Monday as senators got into a near shouting match over the delays.

  22. 22.

    Mary G

    ???

    Asked how much reservation he has spending $2 trillion on the relief package, Trump says, "It’s not really spending because a lot of it is helping companies."— Shirley Cruelty Is Not Wit (@lacscully) March 25, 2020

  24. 24.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Mary G: Yeah!  I’ll get it back in stock dividends, so who cares?

    ETA – also can you put ass emojis before the clowns?

  27. 27.

    TS (the original)

    @NotMax:

    And lay off the sauce until you’re legal, kid.

    I find it weird that you can be old enough to vote but not old enough to drink alcohol. My part of the world the drinking age has been 18 since forever.

     

  30. 30.

    Jay

    @mrmoshpotato:

    it’s an owned by pets, ( cats) thing. I use biodegradeable stuff, but with 2 cats, that means that roughly once a month, I have to haul a 20kg bag half a mile. As there is a lovely 73 year elderly woman as a neighbour working on her Cat Lady Starter Collection, that means 60kg, once a month.

  31. 31.

    NotMax

    @TS (the original)

    As do I. It was 18 when I was undergoing what was whimsically called growing up. But it is what it is.

    Chronologically 18 and intellectually 18 are not necessarily synonymous. Just sayin’.

  34. 34.

    CaseyL

    @TS (the original):  The legal drinking age was lowered to 18 back in the 70s, during the Vietnam war, when the argument was “I’m old enough to go to war and kill people but not old enough to drink? That’s fucked.”

    It wasn’t changed everywhere uniformly. I transferred from U Florida to U Washington for my junior year. At U Florida, not only was 18 the drinking age, but there was a bar right on campus (I wonder if it’s still there; maybe Betty Cracker knows). At U Washington, drinking age was 21 and I was still a year away. Struck me as funny.

  40. 40.

    James E Powell

    @Mary G:

    If you just scan the WaPo front page, you’d have to believe that Democrats had nothing to do with any of this.

    The press/media is setting up for “Trump Saves America!”

  41. 41.

    Jay

    EXCLUSIVE: Here’s what it’s like to be incarcerated on Rikers Island as coronavirus spreads through the jail. "Still no hand sanitizer, no bleach….They might cut off the phones, so you might not hear from me for a while.” https://t.co/sBZax1p2BB— The Appeal (@theappeal) March 24, 2020

  46. 46.

    Mary G

    This bipartisan deal is a raw deal for the people. It does far too little for those who need the most help, while providing hundreds of billions in corporate welfare, massively growing government, inhibiting economic adaptation, and widening the gap between the rich and the poor.— Justin Amash (@justinamash) March 25, 2020

  47. 47.

    joel hanes

    @Mary G:

    Well, Rep. Amash, that’s Republicans for you.

    Particularly the Republicans of the Freedom Caucus.

    Which you helped found.

  52. 52.

    Jay

    @Mary G:

    it’s better than what was on offer. Sadly, our legislators, are not up to speed ( even Macron and Trudeau) on the facts of employment in End Stage Capitalism.

    Hopefully, like in the case of SNAP recipients finding out that all of the “qualified foods” have been hoarded, they will learn.

     

    wait until the people pissed off about Hand Santitizer and Toilet Paper hoarders, learn that 23 people have hoarded 92% of all the wealth in the world.

  59. 59.

    Heywood J.

    That kid doesn’t need to apologize for anything. He simply relayed the main lessons that this country’s culture and politics have taught him his entire life — that selfishness is a virtue, that global warming and gun violence and poverty and all the rest of it are someone else’s problems, so too bad.

    It’d be nice if just once in a purple moon our wonderful corporate media would do this dance on any of the chiseling, fist-shaking codgers they suck up to in those haunted diners every other week. Just pick one at random and make them an object of derision for a week, like they did with some dumb, drunk kid who was just doing what many of us did when we were that age.

    The difference is that the haunted-diner oldsters know better, and they still don’t give a shit. Sluder already has more goddamned character in his backwards cap than the lot of them have combined.

  60. 60.

    JaySinWA

    @TS (the original):

    I find it weird that you can be old enough to vote but not old enough to drink alcohol. My part of the world the drinking age has been 18 since forever.

    I think the drinking age issue is a major cause of over indulgence in teens. European rules seem to help younger people drink without excess.

  62. 62.

    Mai naem mobile

    The Kushner Co has missed the March payment on the Times Squaŕe building  they bought in ’15. The whole piece is at Crains behind a paywall. Anyhow, I didn’t realise they were having problems with this too.I thought he had taken care of the 666 building which was the real problem. Now it makes sense that he seems to be looking to monetize any opportunity he gets at the WH like the COVID19 lab deal with Oscar,,’ his brothers company.

    https://therealdeal.com/2020/03/24/pandemic-may-finally-push-kushner-cos-times-square-retail-space-into-default/

  65. 65.

    cain

    @Mai naem mobile:
    He’s not a very smart money manager so he’s probably made a lot of bad decisions and that’s why he is where he is. Having Trump as president is definitely helping dig himself out of a hole, but he’ll be back in it because he is a stupid person.

  66. 66.

    bemused

    I love AL last sentence, be kind but not apply that to pro R’s. Trumpers, local numbskulls or national crooks, are dead to me unless they have an epiphany, apologize with absolute sincerity and atone for their evildoing. I expect this will be rare or never.

  67. 67.

    Mary G

    Total confirmed U.S. coronavirus cases at end of each Tuesday:
    • Jan. 14 — 0
    • Jan. 21 — 1
    • Jan. 28 — 5
    • Feb. 4 — 11
    • Feb. 11 — 14
    • Feb. 18 — 25
    • Feb. 25 — 59
    • Mar. 3 — 125
    • Mar. 10 — 1,004
    • Mar. 17 — 5,902
    • Mar. 24 — 53,478

    https://t.co/74QzWYbn1p pic.twitter.com/ydxp3iyXGp
    — Mike Baker (@ByMikeBaker) March 25, 2020

    Losing all that testing time was terrible.

  72. 72.

    Mary G

    Per his office, @SenSchumer “secured a provision in the agreement that will prohibit businesses controlled by the President, Vice President, Members of Congress, and heads of Executive Departments from receiving loans or investments from Treasury programs.”— John Bresnahan (@BresPolitico) March 25, 2020

    But not Jared?

  75. 75.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @mrmoshpotato:

    I just thought I would let you know that I recently learned that in Australia a “douchecanoe” is a jet ski.

    I’m assuming that makes the owner of one a douche. :)

  77. 77.

    Joey Maloney

    I missed yesterday’s live music thread, but https://musicneversleepsnyc.com

    A 24-Hour Music Video Livestream Marathon Event beginning at 6:00PM EDT on Friday, March 27, 2020.

    Music Never Sleeps NYC will be streamed across social media platfroms including YouTube. Visit this page for updates about the programming and additional artists.

    List of performers

  79. 79.

    Gvg

    @mrmoshpotato: Hump means to carry heavy weights some distance in this context. I have usually encountered the phrase is stories about boot camp or infantry life, as in soldiers hump heavy backpacks or heavy guns somewhere an exhausting distance away. Hump also can be a reference to having sex. Soldier talk often seems to have that double meaning.

    in this case, it just means the kid should do some heavy lifting for elderly neighbors, such as carry kitty litter.

  80. 80.

    Mart

    @NotMax: I was in the, “if I am old enough to fight in Vietnam I am old enough to drink age”. Unfortunately we killed about as many old people as Covid-19 in car accidents.s These kids are way better (in general) than my generation. I liked his apology, no sorry if I offended your delicate fee fees; and an added here is what I think we need to do better. Bless his heart.

  81. 81.

    bemused

    Omg. I had no idea people would actually, deliberately have a coronavirus party. Sounds like infecting each other worked. Then again, this is exactly what trump is proposing for all Americans by Easter. He, of course, will not attend himself.

  82. 82.

    Mary G

    So much human capital we are losing:

    I am a cardiologist fighting covid -19 for last 4-5 days. I m pretty sure I contracted this from a false -ve tested pt who died of ARDS. I am not doing great either. I urge you to limit unnecessary exposure 2 any pt/person. Plz lockdown what you can. It’s nt worth it #coronavirus— Waqas Qureshi, MD, MS (@PCIsurgeon) March 25, 2020

    It’s just heartbreaking.

  85. 85.

    opiejeanne

    @Gvg: When I was a little kid, the man across the street had a sign on his backyard shed that said “Do Not Hump”. He worked for one of the railroads, and that was originally on a boxcar. I remember my mother tried to explain that it was something to do with train cars, but even at age 7 I suspected he had it on his shed because of the sexual connotation, thinking it was a great joke.

  86. 86.

    opiejeanne

    @Mike J: I think he got it right, I think the apology was sincere. He sounded very much like the kid who drove through our fence two weeks ago, who when sober is a pretty nice kid.

    I also think that when he sobered up his parents explained to him that he was risking his spot in the college of his choice by that drunken display of arrogance.

    Or his grandma smacked him upside the head.

  94. 94.

    JPL

    There has to be a loop hole because trump would not approve this    Many Raju

    Schumer office said he has secured a provision in the agreement that will prohibit “businesses controlled by the President, Vice President, Members of Congress, and heads of Executive Departments from receiving loans or investments from Treasury programs.”
    The children, spouses and in-laws of the aforementioned principals are also included in this prohibition.”

  95. 95.

    Martin

    @opiejeanne: So, there are freight yards called a ‘hump yard’. They have a small hill (the hump) and an engine pushes a line of train cars up the hump, where the cars are decoupled one at a time and then roll under their own weight down the hill where they are switched onto various sidings to form new trains. It’s a kind of filter for train cars.

    Before the switched car bang into the waiting train of cars it goes over a series of devices called ‘retarders’ which slow the car down, but the cars can bang together pretty hard, so if you’re shipping something fragile you don’t want it switched  onto a  train using the hump, so they instead have to use a switching engine – a smaller engine whose job it is to move the cars around. The hump is WAY faster.

  96. 96.

    TS (the original)

    @James E Powell:

    The press/media is setting up for “Trump Saves America!”

    Down under we are approaching total lock down. In the middle of the news of same we get “Trump wants to re-open the US before Easter”. I have such difficulty when the media treats him as a normal ordinary leader of a powerful country. NO other world leader is acting like this. No-one should report it other than to say – the US is in big trouble.

  98. 98.

    opiejeanne

    @mrmoshpotato: He had his sexy lawnmower and sexy garden tools stored in it, as well as big bins of chicken scratch and pellets for his rabbits. It smelled interesting to me as a little kid, like the feed store in town.

    My sister and I played with his kids and he handed me a rabbit one time and told me I could keep it if I could hold onto it. This was a very large rabbit and it kicked and scratched me until I gave up and put it down.

    He had a small dog house for his rooster, a little bantam, and one of the hens had gone inside and laid a tiny egg which he proclaimed to have been laid by that rooster.

  101. 101.

    Mai naem mobile

    @JPL: “The children, spouses and in-laws of the aforementioned principals are also included in this prohibition.” also from Manu Raju. This will probably be litigated by the Trumpov org,ofcourse, in front of judges nominated by Trumpov.

    Anyhoo, another thought that occurred to me was whether Trumpov is being hard on NY because he’s trying to blackmail NY on the investigations of him and his family. A quid pro quo of sorts.

  102. 102.

    WereBear

    @Mai naem mobile:

    Anyhoo, another thought that occurred to me was whether Trumpov is being hard on NY because he’s trying to blackmail NY on the investigations of him and his family. A quid pro quo of sorts.

     

    He’s capable of it, but that’s not what going on, since he’s doing this to every governor in every state pleading for federal intervention: which is what is supposed to happen.

    It’s a handbook somewhere: the federal government directs companies to make what we desperately need, which includes money for re-tooling and sorting out workers and getting the stuff transported where it should be.

    We did this in WWII with carbon paper and telephones. It’s part of how we won WWII.

    Instead we get President Stupid thinking he’ll have a bidding war over ventilators which will push up ventilator stock and it will be “the best, the best deal, look at the deal I made, all by myself, me, I thought of it.”

  103. 103.

    Mai naem mobile

    @WereBear: Trumpov is picking states though. Florida reportedly got everything it required. Its NY in particular and Illinois who aren’t getting their needs met. If I was Cuomo I would buddy up with a red state governor and have the red state governor ask for way more than it needs and sell it or give it to NY. This admin. is totally stupid enough to not know the red state is asking for more than it needs. All the appointees aren’t even qualified for their jobs. Heck there is a decent chance the appointee will be a college senior.

  104. 104.

    Rihilism

    If anyone is on instagram can they go to the actor Danial Day Kim’s account and tell hime to SHUT THE FUCK UP about his experience with hydroxychloroquine. Not only is his completely uninformed opinion giving people false hope (I have no idea how many followers he has) , but it’s being amplified by the right wing as ABSOLUTE PROOF that Trump was RIGHT (suck it libtards, even your Hollywood elites admit Trump is a ssssuuuuupppppperrrrr gggeeeeeennniiius)

    But worse, hydroxychloroquine may in fact turn out to be an effective treatment (as dozens or even hundreds of other drugs MAY be effective), but his stupidity may decrease the likelyhood that we’ll know in the near future whether it is as is indicated by this article https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/danvergano/chloroquine-dangers-coronavirus

    With the money quote:

    “But hordes of people rushing to their doctor to take unproven drugs might interfere with such efforts to test them to find out if they really work or not, Jüni and other experts worry. Why enter a clinical trial, where there is a chance you might not receive an experimental drug if you are in its control arm meant to serve as a comparison with only standard care, when you can just pressure your doctor to give it to you for off-label use?”

  105. 105.

    Rihilism

    @Rihilism: I say anyone with instagram cause I have no desire to join instagram. I already have a twitter account which is bad enough, and Kim is not on twitter otherwise I’d tell him myself.

  108. 108.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @TS (the original): I find it weird that you can be old enough to vote but not old enough to drink alcohol. My part of the world the drinking age has been 18 since forever.

    Voting age was lowered to 18 nationally via the 26th Amendment in 1971. State of MD lowered drinking age to 18 (for everything but “hard liquor”) in 1974, largely on the force of that argument – but raised it back to 21 in 1982, shortly before –

    President Ronald Reagan passed  signed into law the Minimum Drinking Age Act in July 1984, a law that mandated states increase the drinking age to 21.

  109. 109.

    Rick Taylor

    He’s just a kid who got caught on camera saying something stupid.

    It’s not like he’s the President of the United States, saying dumb and harmful things day after day after day to the nation and to the world.

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