incredible to me that a large number of Republican politicians genuinely do not understand that "we're shutting down the government because the military has gone woke" makes you sound insane
— knife-wielding hemophiliac (@NickTagliaferro) September 18, 2023
Something light, because winding down sounds good: Jeet Heer, at the Nation — “Lauren Boebert Is Not the Only Republican Ruining Musicals”:
… Boebert’s performance was noteworthy not just for her personal boorishness but also as part of a larger pattern of right-wingers vandalizing musicals. Strange as it may sound, one of the cultural symptoms of the Trump era is the hard right’s affinity for musicals—an art form they also repeatedly desecrate.
Donald Trump himself is a prime example. No president has had such an intense love for musicals. In the White House, music was key to calming down Trump during his frequent outburst of anger. As The New York Times reported in 2021, White House official Max Miller—nicknamed the “Music Man”—was tasked with playing show tunes like “Memory” from Cats to “pull [Trump] from the brink of rage.” This is truly a case of music having charms to sooth the savage breast…
The extreme right is rich in figures who can be described as failed theater kids. These are people whose sensibilities are clearly shaped by a love for the expressive power and excess emotions of musical theater. But they haven’t been able to make a name for themselves in the area of their true passion, so instead they bring their thwarted theater-kid energy to partisan agitation.
Trump’s on-again-off-again crony Steve Bannon is a quintessential failed theater kid, writing a long string of movie scripts that went nowhere. In the 1990s, with cowriter Julia Jones, he worked on a hip-hop musical titled The Thing I Am. A bizarre hybrid, this musical tried to mash together the plot of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus with the story of the 1992 Rodney King riots in Los Angeles…
James O’Keefe, founder and deposed head of Project Veritas, is yet another failed theater kid. Founded in 2010, Project Veritas specializes in creating deceptively edited entrapment videos that showed progressives allegedly saying or doing compromising things… Of course, Project Veritas itself can be seen as a form of theater—albeit ineptly produced theater with crude and melodramatic plots…
One could extend almost indefinitely the list of right-wing provocateurs who had theater-kid backgrounds to include figures like Steven Crowder and Mark Steyn (who recorded a truly dreadful album titled Feline Groovy where he croons, in a faux-Sinatra fashion, cat-themed songs against a background of pastiche soft jazz). Even Gore Vidal or Mary McCarthy would struggle to find the vocabulary to describe how terrible the results are…
Ironically, politics and theater are merging at the exact same time that actual theater—whether musical or not—is in financial crisis thanks to the lingering impact of Covid. The critic Isaac Butler warns, “The American theater is on the verge of collapse.” Butler’s solution is a massive bailout of theater along the lines of the Federal Theater Project of the New Deal era. The migration of failed theater kids into right-wing politics suggests an added side benefit to this proposal. Surely we want future Steve Bannons and James O’Keefes to be working on productions of West Side Story in Peoria rather than shaping national politics.
Since politics has fused with entertainment, we shouldn’t be surprised when would-be or failed entertainers thrive as political leaders and pundits. Frank Sinatra once sang of New York, “If I can make it there / I‘ll make it anywhere.” A modern update might be: If you can’t make it on Broadway, there’s always Washington.
I like the idea of a modern WPA, but I doubt the federal government will ever be able to offer the free hand and lavish funding right-wing theater wannabes already collect from people like Peter Thiel and Harlan Crow…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I…. I clicked on the link, and I saw it, and I still don’t believe it, and yet I’ll see it in my dreams tonight.
Alison Rose
I have never wished for something to be satire as much as I wish this were satire. I just….I can’t….no. Please. Stop.
Old School
John Wilkes Booth was a right-wing theater guy too.
Alison Rose
WAIT NO I NEED THIS TO BE SATIRE EVEN MORE
someone fuckin kill me please
Kent
There was a time when my daughter couldn’t decide whether she wanted to be a Disney Channel star or a professional soccer player.
She was 12.
What excuse do these people have?
piratedan
since bluesky is STILL invite only, if you need an invitation, pls let me know and I will share one of my two…
no Nazi’s or sea lions need apply
Alison Rose
@piratedan: I gots a couple as well if we have multiple takers.
dmsilev
@Kent: What, you didn’t immediately call up Disney and pitch the idea of a show based around a 12 year old soccer star?
prostratedragon
“Modern WPA”😆😆! Thanks for mentioning Bannon, for whom “failed theater kid” is the key description and diagnosis.
“L’orchestrina,” Paolo Conte.
danielx
@dmsilev:
I think it’s been done already.
Delk
Aaron Schock is available!
dmsilev
@danielx: Probably, yes. Seems like an obvious angle to take.
Jay
https://nitter.net/RVAwonk/status/1703546882922811402#m
moonbat
Wasn’t one of the big reasons that twit James O’Keefe lost his gig was that he was blowing tons of Project Veritas moolah trying to realize his musical stage debut in Oklahoma! ?
“Poor James Is Daid”…
Geminid
Max Miller, the Trump aide the called the Music Man, is now in Congress. He now represnts a district south and west of Cleveland formerly held by Anthony Gonzales. One of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after the Insurrection, Gonzales retired. Three others retired and four lost primaries. The only two that made it back into Congress are Dan Newhouse (WA) and David Valadeo (CA). They were reelected in “jungle” primary states, which probably made the difference.
I don’t know much about Rep. Miller except that he was one of 4 Republican Reps who accompanied Foreign Relations Chairman Michael McCaul on a visit to Kyiv, a day or so after President Biden’s visit in February. McCaul and the other members assured President Zelenskyy of their continued support for Ukraine.
minachica
@piratedan: @Alison Rose:
I’d like one if you can spare it. I just lurk here, hope that’s ok?
NotMax
Baby, You Can Can-Can Too.
:)
HumboldtBlue
Jesus fucking Christ, what a fucking world.
Old School
@Jay:
Wow. I’m all for letting protesters protest, but…
Seems like it might be risky.
danielx
@HumboldtBlue:
Recorded in 2008….when as far as I know, “groovy” was last used in an non-ironic manner circa 1968. What the fuck is the matter with these people?
sdhays
@moonbat: It was easily the most productive and downright wholesome way any Project Veritas donor money was ever spent.
Maxim
@Kent:
Seriously. I did theater for years, starting in elementary school, and it didn’t turn me into a delusional … whatever these people are. I had a lot of fun, though.
sdhays
@Jay: Members of the Trump detail literally smeared their own shit all over an Obama washroom, which the Obamas were letting them use just to be nice. Sure, “not all Secret Service agents”, but that’s the level of professionalism they tolerate.
I wouldn’t trust them either.
Frankensteinbeck
@Alison Rose:
A topic I’m confident that Steve Bannon would portray with the sensitivity it deserves.
Yes, that was horrified sarcasm.
eversor
@moonbat:
Yep that was the big one. But he held multiple events where he danced and acted on stage that were funded by his project.
It doesn’t just stop a theater though. There are tons of failed movie projects (Altas Shrugged) and it’s littered with failed Christian Rock Bands, Christian Movies, Christian TV shows that all went under.
It drives them nuts. Which is why they think it’s all the Jews. But the reality is nobody likes them and the youngs hate their religion. So the moment they do something with it, the damn thing bombs and it’s hated more.
Alison Rose
@minachica: Of course! You can either drop your email here or if you’d rather, you can email WaterGirl and ask her to pass it along to me.
PaulWartenberg
Bad artists make worse dictators.
piratedan
@minachica:
bsky-social-p34jn-gt6qp
just give a return follow @ Piratedan7
moonbat
@sdhays: Agreed.
Geminid
Searchers found the wreckage of the F-35 fighter jet that crashed near Charleston, South Carolina last night (the pilot ejected safely and parachuted into a neighborhood). This morning I read that they were looking at two lakes as possible crash sites, but now I hear that a debris field was found on land. There was still no word on what made the pilot eject.
piratedan
@Geminid: probably saw Senator Graham and Scott in an embrace (not that there’s anything wrong with that)
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
So why do I so often hear terms like “undisputed” for champions in fighting sports? Is no one keeping records over there?
How would there be a dispute as to a title holder?
Noah Brand
https://www.reddit.com/r/forwardsfromgrandma/comments/w1k583/more_info_on_that_bizarre_maga_musical_ben/
That thread has all the information I was able to pull together on THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM, the batshit-nuts musical put together by a BYU girl whose dad is a prominent white supremacist. It’s about star-crossed lovers trying to reach across the MAGA/Antifa divide at a liberal West Coast university, with a sarcastic Greek chorus provided by The Internet.
I’ve seen a bootleg copy, and it is not as good as that makes it sound. The cast and crew literally mutinied.
Geminid
@piratedan: I just hope there was a real mechanical issue, and it wasn’t the pilot reaching for a can of Red Bull and pulling the ejection lever by mistake.
And I guess I’m also hoping no cows or possums got hurt.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Noah Brand: Sounds like it might have had potential if it were written by someone with a foot in reality instead of a winger.
piratedan
@Geminid: me too, just being snarky because I can.
sab
@Alison Rose: Max Miller is currently a congressman from Ohio (Medina County.
ETA He replaced Anthony Gonzalez, a very right-wing Cuban-American who was very anti-Trump.
The idea of Medina County being represented by a guy who sang show tunes to calm a nutzo Trump does not surprise me.
ETA Geminid beat me to it at #15
Frankensteinbeck
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
I believe the implication is that they are not currently expecting any challengers. During a tournament, a reigning champion’s status is being disputed.
Betsy
I’m probably the 17th commenter to point this out, but — Washington *is* said to be Hollywood for ugly people.
Geminid
@sab: There is a song about Max Miller’s White House experience, that is sung to the tune of a well known Statler Brothers song. I’ve inflicted it on people here already but I’m always looking for fresh
victims-I mean, listeners.Just say the word.
prostratedragon
Ustinov as Nero, singing.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Frankensteinbeck: Ah, understood.
Ruckus
@Kent:
What excuse do these people have?
None whatsoever.
They wanted to be someone, something, notable.
But they aren’t good enough at anything to be more than notably bad.
Everyone has to find something that they are good at, or at least not bad at. Many want one thing and it never comes about, and may not even be in any way their fault.
For some there is no answer.
The people we see as today’s losers are those that never even asked the question.
Geminid
But I repeat myself.
Steeplejack
@Jay:
WTF?! What happens if the “armed man” whips out his weapon and starts blazing away? “Oops, our bad. Didn’t see that coming.”
He was a hell of a lot closer than Lee Harvey Oswald. Just sayin’.
moops
This insight should be exploitable.
JWR
Not a ruling from Chutkan, but a brief from TFGs lawyers arguing that Chutkan writing that a president is not a king shows her bias against their client. It’s a nice demonstration of the anti-logic they’re attempting to use. (From Yahoo!)
Ruckus
@Geminid:
It was on autopilot so it should have flown on until out of fuel but it didn’t stay up long so there likely was something decidedly wrong with the plane. Any guesses would be wild speculation.
ArchTeryx
In the end, this is what you get when you gerrymander yourself into permanent power. None of these people are in the least worried about consequences. Government shutdowns never seem to move the needle any more, because negative partisanship and polarization are at Civil War levels. When every single election has democracy itself at stake, and every single election depends on people who don’t know shit from shinola…
I start thinking like all the doomloopers over at Lawyers, Guns, and Money. The well of cynicism is nearly as bottomless there as in the Republican Party.
kindness
The F-35 failure? Maybe a light rain began to fall. Supposubly the plane can’t fly in weather.
mrmoshpotato
@Kent:
What excuse does a 12-year-old have for not wanting to be a pro soccer star on the Disney channel?
I blame bad parenting.
ETA – I see I’m not the first. Good on ya, Run DMC Server!
ArchTeryx
@Jay: He’s tried to purge all the Trump plants but no doubt there’s been plenty of Congressional effort to keep some of them on board. Just waiting for their opportunity.
mrmoshpotato
@kindness: A goose pooped on it. Damn you, shitty geese!
mrmoshpotato
@piratedan: And especially no Nazi’s sea lions!
Kristine
In a not so recent article the writer referred to pro wrestlers as “rowdy theater kids” and suddenly that whole scene made sense to me.
I don’t watch it, but I think I get it now.
Freemark
@Ruckus:
You’re being irresponsible.
Ruckus
@ArchTeryx:
The current day republican party can only see things in their rear view mirror. It’s why their view is backasswards and of a time that only could have existed long ago. But didn’t, unless your way back machine goes back way farther than anyone alive today. They have been losing the concept of an actual governing political party for decades and keep trying to go back farther and farther in time to find themselves but don’t have a strong enough (or any) grasp of reality. They want something that didn’t exist, even as bad as it was for many and what they want is even worse than history and reality would give them. But time doesn’t go backwards or backasswards and what they want, as bad as history was, wasn’t reality.
Ruckus
@Freemark:
Tell me something I DON’T know…..
HumboldtBlue
If you need a smile, Shuler King has some thoughts on the “Baby Bishop.”
Doc Sardonic
OK pint of 100 proof in………That ain’t even close to enough to get me to click on some asshole singing smooth jazz paeans to cats, and I have 4 of them.
Steeplejack
@Frankensteinbeck, @The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
I think the “undisputed” thing goes back to the old days when there were competing organizations in boxing. The World Boxing Federation would have a champion, and the Federation of World Boxing would have a champion, and they would argue about—dispute—who was the real world champion. And then occasionally someone would win both of the titles and become the undisputed world champion!
I think boxing went through a period of consolidation—going to bed soon and I’m too lazy to look it up—and there became only one world championship title. But “undisputed” lingered as a superfluous adjective intensifier to “world champion.”
Something similar may be at work in the various MMA worlds, but I haven’t kept up with those.
Misterpuff
Of course, Steely Dan always gets there first:
Show business kids making movies of themselves
You know they don’t give a fuck about anybody else
You know you go to
Lost Wages
Lost Wages
Tom Q
Well, to further your case here, I can report a personal encounter.
The summer I was 15 ( a LONG time ago), I was in a 6-week summer theatre workshop in Bedford Hills NY. Also attending this workshop was a fellow named Roger Stone. In fact, he and I played the same role (on alternate nights): a doctor in a dramatization of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.
Two things I remember most about Roger that summer: 1) he was constantly trying to get people to talk about politics, which most of us teens found intensely boring and 2) (germane to your argument) he spent a lot of energy trying to talk one of the female members into performing the Honey Bun number from South Pacific with him — he had the costumes because his father had done it at some charity event.
My brother went to the same high school as Roger and, two years later, appeared with him in a school production of The Fantasticks. So, yeah: the musical theatre thing is quite real.
In case you’re wondering, most of us couldn’t stand the guy, even then. Showing we were early good judges of character.
ArchTeryx
@Ruckus: While the party can’t, the Supreme Court sure can. In collaboration with gerrymandered state legislatures, they’ve already taken us back more than 50 years and they’re aiming for the 18th Century. That’s what a lot of the cynicism is about over on LGM. Screaming into the void while the fascists take over by judicial fiat. I fear that a lot more than a government shutdown, sadly.
Certain members of our side – enough of them – screwed the royal corgis letting the evangelicals have the SC(R)OTUS, and now we’re reaping what we’ve sown.
mrmoshpotato
@Doc Sardonic:
What you drinking, Doc?
Geminid
@kindness: People are always running down the F-35, and it is by no means the perfect plane. But when Finland had a choice of the F-35, Swedish Grippen, or the Eurofighter a few years ago, they picked the F-35 even though they have to pay $6.8 billion for 60 of them.
These planes are very much in demand. The Israelis, for instance, are buying F-35s as fast as we can give them the money! .
Doc Sardonic
@mrmoshpotato: Evan Williams Bottled in Bond Old Fashioned
topclimber
You gotta admit the Freedom Caucus performs the definitive version of “Send in the Clowns.”
danielx
@Tom Q:
I believe that without question, particularly since the description of Roger Stone’s personality traits is early evidence of his being a twisted little fuck. Bearing in mind that he has a life sized tattoo of Richard Nixon on his back, although I hear tell that Trump tattoos are a thing in certain circles. I keep coming back to the joke about the guy getting TRUMP tattooed across his forehead:
Tattoo artist: well, what’ll it be?
Idiot: well, i don’t ever want to get laid again…
Tattoo artist: say no more.
Chetan Murthy
@sdhays: My memory of (what I think is) that incident:
SMDH.
Jay
@Geminid:
I had to laugh, one of the Xitter Paid Blue Checkmark wingnuts blamed the “woke military” because they could not track the F-35 after the bail out,
duh, you moron, that’s the whole point of the F-35,
Yes, they got ratio’d.
HumboldtBlue
@topclimber:
I think that may be my least favorite song. Mahogany by Diana Ross is a close second, but I have always, since I think I first heard it, hated that damn clown song.
raven
Ugh, the self inflicted quick-step. The half gallon isn’t as bad as the old stuff but still. . .
NotMax
Who will be the first January 6th defendant to take a cue from Boebert and try using “anxiety in a new environment” as a defense?
//
Joey Maloney
@sdhays: Wait, WHAT?
Source? I’ve never heard of this.
HumboldtBlue
delete
mrmoshpotato
@topclimber:
Their version is more “Send in the Assclowns.”
prostratedragon
The part of interest is a little over 4 minutes from the cue to the inevitable tributes: John Hurt as Caligula in I, Claudius. Truly theater as a weapon of control.
mrmoshpotato
@HumboldtBlue:
Peggy Brandt: Do you know how hard it is to find a decent man in this town? Most of them think monogamy is some kind of wood.
Stanley Ipkiss: HA!
Chetan Murthy
@Joey Maloney: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/01/14/secret-service-bathroom-ivanka-trump-jared-kushner/
Joey Maloney
@Chetan Murthy: Holy shucking fit. The hell is wrong with people? I mean if the guy had an upset stomach that’s one thing but a civilized person cleans up their own mess.
wjca
Except for the detail that
a) it’s pretty much impossible to sing a definitive version if you’re tone deaf. Which they definitively are.
b) traditionally (and they insist they’re big on tradition) a chorus
caucusis supposed to sing in harmony. Harmony, even just internally, seems to be in rather short supply there.Chetan Murthy
@Joey Maloney: And this was a mess in a bathroom provided by the Obamas as a simple act of human kindness. I mean, yeah, the mind boggles at what kind of asshole one has to be, to fuck that up.
ETA: and as I wrote above, my recollection is, the RUMINT at the time is that the asshole left an upper-decker.
Chetan Murthy
@wjca:
Can’t very well
worksing in harmony, when it’s an article of their faith, that collective action is for commmies and cucks.Joey Maloney
@Chetan Murthy: add “upper-decker” to the long list of things over my online life that I’ve googled and wish I hadn’t.
Chetan Murthy
@Joey Maloney: These SS dumbfucks were like scorpions: they couldn’t help themselves, just *had* to sting the frog that was so helpfully carrying them across the stream.
Another Scott
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: @Frankensteinbeck:
I always understood “undisputed” to be in relation to professional boxing where there were about 300 sanctioning bodies with about 287 simultaneous champions in each weight class.
If a champion were “undisputed”, the the sanctioning bodies agreed that that one was the top of the heap.
Of course, usually it was used as a flavoring word like “obviously”…
Cheers,
Scott.
gene108
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
In boxing, at least, different boxing federations (the sport is global) have different titles.
You can have an IBF heavyweight champion, and another boxer holding heavyweight titles with the WBA and WBC, therefore there isn’t an undisputed heavyweight champion.
An undisputed champion holds the championship of all major boxing federations.
Dave
@Joey Maloney: There is a lot of encouraged and I mean a lot of encouraged reactionary assholery shot through law enforcement culture; and massive resentment aimed at anyone inside or outside that culture that is seen as policing their behavior or even potentially so. The Obama’s actual behavior doesn’t matter because they were outsiders (jumped up ones that think they matter) so they deserve contemptuous behavior.
Geminid
@Geminid: Well, I see that sab had too much sense to bite. So this is for the Lurkers!
“White House” By Max Miller (with apologies to the Statler Brothers):
Kathleen
@prostratedragon: You know who else “failed” as an artist…
Kathleen
@prostratedragon: I suspect there are other “failures” to account for the fact he’s a Nazi troll, if you catch my drift.
Miss Bianca
My God, and here I am over here in Redneckistan doing a steampunk Gaslight to keep from going insane as a result of all the radical right-wing bugfuckery I am surrounded with.
At this rate, I’m kind of afraid to do a musical! WHAT IF THEY ALL COME TO TRY OUT.