Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Bark louder, little dog.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

A Senator Walker would be an insult to the state and the nation.

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

We still have time to mess this up!

The words do not have to be perfect.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

A Senator Walker would also be an insult to reason, rationality, and decency.

In my day, never was longer.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Friday Evening Softballs Open Thread: Point! Mock!

Friday Evening Softballs Open Thread: Point! Mock!

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Win the morning!

… “Here’s how you can spread the word and help make this a huge success,” the memo read, before suggesting that employees post a photo of the book on social media with the hashtag #axiossmartbrevity, write (presumably positive) reviews of the book on Amazon and Goodreads, and buy six copies, each, of the book. The memo stressed that employees could expense the cost of those six copies to the company itself. With around 500 employees, and books at $24.30 a piece, this puts the company on the hook for about $72,500 if every employee decides to follow the memo’s instructions…

Sweaty attempts to juice book sales and get on bestseller lists are nothing new in publishing… Politics writers-cum-media barons attempting to astroturf support for their book by turning their own workers into an army of lightly coerced marketers, however, is a neat twist on the theme. Axios said in its post launching the book that all proceeds from sales will go to the Axios fellowship program. Of course, writing a bestseller doesn’t just mean making more money in sales; it also affords authors more opportunities, prestige, and influence. It’s clear that the better the Axios book sells, the better things are for the people who wrote it. Less clear is what exactly Axios employees have to gain from the book doing well.

In response to Defector’s questions about the employee-centered marketing push and the amount of money the company set aside to buy copies of books for itself, Axios spokesperson Yolanda Brignoni said the book was a “team effort” and emphasized the fellowship program for journalists from underrepresented groups. “We, of course, wanted the team to have books for themselves and family,” she added. Defector followed up to ask how the company decided on six (6) books per employee, and if the amount of money the company set aside to buy these books was greater than what it expected to earn from book sales (and then put towards the fellowship program). Brignoni said: “We are extremely invested in equipping this next generation of journalists with the skills and expertise to take their careers to the next level. So, we hope to sell a lot of books this week and moving forward.”…

Defector also excerpts some reviews of Smart Brevity, which are — like Defector — not kind!

Meanwhile: At a rally far, far (not far enough) away: Wrestlemania!

Reader Interactions

75Comments

  2. 2.

    cain

    Someone who self identifies as smart and wears a Trump supporting t-shirt are just called trolls where I come from.

    ETA – MFs you know what I got right here? #2 Heading into the weekend, yo!

  3. 3.

    hells littlest angel

    Less clear is what exactly Axios employees have to gain from the book doing well.

     

    After going through a wood chipper, books are a terrific mulch.

  4. 4.

    bbleh

    Okay, this is good, but I want an entire aerobics routine.  “And point, and mock, and hands on hips and laugh, hahaha!  And toss head and turn dismissively. Turn back, arms up, and shame, shame shame! Hands down and forward and shake that head no no no! And point, and mock …”

  6. 6.

    dmsilev

    It ain’t the way I wanted it! I can handle things! I’m smart! Not like everybody says… like dumb… I’m smart and I want respect!

  8. 8.

    hells littlest angel

    So this clever move could pump up sales by as much as … [calculate, calculate] … 3000 copies!

  12. 12.

    bbleh

    @hells littlest angel: this clever move could pump up sales by as much as … 3000 copies!

    Why it’s important: these 3000 buyers are the most informed people in Washington.  Not only do they think it’s a smart buy, but they think it’s a smarter buy than everything else on the shelves.

  17. 17.

    RSA

    @cain:  If someone says, “I’m smart and I’m for Trump,” that means they can’t blame stupidity; some kind of obvious moral failing is the next most likely explanation.

  24. 24.

    Ruckus

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I have a relative that is how shall I say it, emersed in scientology. Buried would be another word. Stupefied could apply. Dumbfounded works. But anyway you say it, it is an idiotolgy. Yeah I made up a new word, sue me. I have, in the past had to visit this person at scientology. They like books. Big ones with an oversized price tag and a lot of made up big words seems to be the norm. And the deeper you are emersed in this whatever the hell it is, the more you have to dig to find a higher level of stupid so that you can make less sense of the bullshit.

  26. 26.

    dm

    “I identify as smart” is a Cretan paradox (“All Cretans are liars”, according to Epimenides the Cretan).

    Presumably, this whole “I identify as…” on the right is sarcasm to mock the phrase’s use in gender-identity contexts.  So, for the wearer, “I identify as smart” is an assertion that the wearer only pretends to think they’re smart.

    Well, okay.  If you say so….

  29. 29.

    Baud

    @Ruckus:

    And the deeper you are emersed in this whatever the hell it is, the more you have to dig to find a higher level of stupid so that you can make less sense of the bullshit.

     

    Probably too long for a rotating tag.

  33. 33.

    Jeffro

    The trumpies are SOOO aching for someone to give them that same white supremacist thrill and validation without all the cognitive dissonance of having to get behind such obvious corruption, stupidity,   incompetence, and constant blaring in their ears.

    Well, most of them are, anyway.

    I can’t imagine being a Republican and feeling like my choices going forward are trump, DeSantis, Cruz, Pompeo, Cotton, Hawley, or any of the others.  No wonder they’re so cranky and hateful!

  34. 34.

    Sister Golden Bear

    This is what happens when Christofascists take over public schools.

    2100 Louisiana public school students were told they were going to a career fair, but were instead taken to a church service where girls were told to forgive rapists and reject transgender identities and boys competed in push-up contests for money. It gets worst….

    “They talked about rape (and) forgiving the offender, suicide, prayer leadership, and many more dark controversial topics. We had females in the bathrooms crying due to the topics of discussion,” Bryant wrote.

    Her transgender child, who identifies as “he,” tried to walk out as the “girl talk” started and was initially barred from leaving, the mother said. Bryant said she also heard that other transgender students were bullied Tuesday.

    “Other students poured water on top of transgender students’ heads without any repercussions by any of the adults present,” Bryant wrote….

    “It kind of felt more like a spiritual event than a career and college fair,” Holiday said.

    And he said he too was struck by the difference in what he heard later from the female students who attended.

    “We boys all we did was do push-ups, we played games, we got money for the games we played,” he said. “It was a bunch of things that were very different, very sexist (compared to what the girls experienced).”

    More reporting here.

  36. 36.

    Jeffro

    @SpaceUnit: somewhere, there HAS to be a MAGAt who super-glued his trump hat to his head years ago and it’s still there.

    Like, where are the medical professionals?  Where’s the human interest story about the dangers of super-gluing a cheap hat to your head for years?  Has anyone thought to ask THAT question in various midwestern diners?

    Y’all know I’m right, too.  =)

  37. 37.

    Citizen Alan

    If I ever heard someone suggest in my presence that a woman should forgive her rapist, I would immediately ask that person how many people hes raped. Because I would be certain it had been at least a few.

  52. 52.

    C Stars

    @raven: Yeah, Wilmington is a nice city. Not such a great history, but presently not so bad. A Trump rally in Wilmington, though, maybe not so much.

  60. 60.

    MinuteMan

    @cain: Someone who self identifies as smart and wears a Trump supporting t-shirt are just called trolls where I come from.

    I would call them oxy-Morons.

  63. 63.

    prostratedragon

    @HumboldtBlue:  No, just found them rambling around the search “Equinox John Coltrane.” A way to get an idea of how far music has spread, there are covers from all over the world, lesson plans, playalongs, …

  66. 66.

    tokyocali (formerly tokyo ex-pat)

    @bbleh: This would be hilarious put to video! Now I’ve got visions of 80s aerobics classes and music in my head.

    @Sister Golden Bear: This is horrific. Can parents sue? I’d certainly be looking at that option. Regardless of the gender of my child, I would be livid that sending my kid off to school for an event purported to be about jobs resulted in this kind of religious indoctrination. At what point will the line between church and state get reinforced?

  67. 67.

    Chacal Charles Calthrop

    @MazeDancer:

    @prostratedragon:

    thanks everyone for the links.

    I get the sense that Biden has lived long enough to understand that what people remember about an era are its musicians and artists, not its politics — and, he also wants to have fun being President.  So part of being President is inviting BTS, Elton John, and Olivia Rodrigo to the White House.  Everyone’s clever enough to pay tribute to some pressing political issue, and everything is very public. but they’re also all enjoying themselves, which is just as it should be.

  69. 69.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    MSNBC has a former federal prosecutor on saying indicting Dump for stealing nuclear secrets would be seen as “political”.  This is what we’re up against.

  70. 70.

    SixStringFanatic

    Any man who must say “I am smart” is no truly smart man.

    I think I heard that somewhere in Westeros.

  74. 74.

    Calouste

    Talking about “point and mock”, the pound plunged against the dollar, which led the Guardian to the headline “markets have lost confidence in government”. Keep in mind that Liz Truss has been PM for less than three weeks, with two of those taken up by the death and funeral of the Queen, and as a Conservative, she’s already lost the confidence of the markets

  75. 75.

    RaflW

    @Chacal Charles Calthrop: Stale thread, but I gotta say: Can anyone remember any sort of culture or music performance at the Turnip White House?

    He had some fireworks and probably the Marine Band. But no stars, because stars can outshine a dimly polished turd.

    So glad to see a return to the WH being a venue for music, as well as recognizing Sir Elton’s long work on HIV.

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