"Just last week it was reported that an illegal adlinthin– and you just look at thisss, what's happening" — Trump pic.twitter.com/5z0j1zArN4
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 14, 2024
As I understand it, Sunday strip comics are produced some weeks in advance, but a good political artist has the gift of timing…
(Doonesbury via GoComics.com)
Speaking of forty-year-old comedic stylings… In Japan, some fear the demise of vintage rakugo, and yet America’s SNL has retained a very similar structure since Lorne Michael was a fresh young creative:
Weekend Update with Colin Jost and Michael Che! pic.twitter.com/JcfvW9YyCX
— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) April 14, 2024
Baud
He’s transitioning to full gollum.
NotMax
Calling it a birthday beverage? Yeah, whatever. However calling it a martini stretches credulity beyond the breaking point.
:)
NotMax
@Baud
“That’s Sir Sméagol to you, peasant.”
//
sab
We jackals are an old demographic. We need to choose our nursing homes well and not just rely on outdated word of mouth conventional wisdom.
And don’t even get me started on out of state siblings in denial.
Almost Retired
Good morning. I am in Texas. Saw my first open carry in the Safeway. Because you never know when the Deli Manager is going to go berserk and jump over the counter. I feel much safer here than in California.
sab
@Almost Retired: Safer here too in Ohio where everyone is fully armed. We have raccoons and they have claws!!
We also had another toddler killed by the family gun, but that is just a common exception that proves some rule. Go guns!
brantl
@Almost Retired: What is it about grocery stores that inspire such fear? Is the the pickle spears? Or the deli appetizers on the small plastic swords?
Dorothy A. Winsor
Yesterday was our son’s birthday, so we spent most of the day with them. Son’s birthday always feels more significant than mine, probably because I remember it better.
sab
@brantl: I think it is the other customers with their grocery carts. You know when you get outside they will have real cars.
sab
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Yes. I don’t remember being born at all.
Frankensteinbeck
@brantl:
It’s the white guys visibly carrying guns, which is why they do it.
NotMax
@brantl
Head cheese.
// :)
eclare
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Happy son’s birthday!
OzarkHillbilly
@brantl: Lowes are worse. Those 2x4s have murder in their knots. Why just last week a stack tried to engulf me.
NotMax
@Dorothy A. Winsor
April 13 also the birthdate of that dude on the two dollar bill.
;)
OzarkHillbilly
@sab: Sorry to hear you are having problems with your father’s final days. Just losing mine was stressful enough, no matter how expected it was.
@NotMax: Grover Cleveland?
sab
@OzarkHillbilly: There are whole law review issues on their dangers. Stuff falls, even on customers.
NotMax
@OzarkHillbilly
Luckily easy enough to flee as they don’t run.
They lumber.
OzarkHillbilly
@sab: I know, last week a sack of concrete went hard on me.
OzarkHillbilly
@NotMax: Oooooff….
sab
@OzarkHillbilly: Even if there are not problems I will invent them. (Ask my husband.) But here there were real problems. But I think he is in a safe space now. My siblings will be asking what took so long. Helicopter parents (children).
My mom died twelve years ago. My brother has been back twice, one funeral one wedding. This time he will be double checking my custodial decisions and criticicizing Dad’s nurse’s aide.
NotMax
@OzarkHillbilly
Um, not quite
;).
brantl
@sab: And they’ll drive them the exact same way they steer the shopping carts?
frosty
@NotMax: Oooof indeed.
OzarkHillbilly
@sab: We got lucky with my father’s end of years care. A really nice place with good people and lots of little old ladies desperate for flirtatious remarks, of which he still had plenty even if he no longer knew what he was saying.
Seriously, we had no worries, not even about money as he had LTC insurance, which with his pension and SS took care of everything.
@NotMax: Damn! I could’ve sworn it was him!
sab
@brantl: More forcefully, because they are safer in cars than behind carts.
Spanky
@NotMax: Well, it can’t be baud. He’s on the three dollar bill.
Quantum man
@OzarkHillbilly: If you had carried a bazooka you could have blown it apart before it landed on you.
sab
@Spanky: I thought it was a feminist civil rights person, but apparently it is still Thom Jeff.
Rusty
@sab: We had that with my sister-in-law. She would arrive to tell my wife how she was doing it wrong for their mother. Somehow what the SIL wanted always made more work and stress for my my wife and if things went wrong we would be picking up the pieces. My sympathies go out to you.
OzarkHillbilly
Take it for what it’s worth, but it would not surprise me.
sab
I am not looking forward to my RWNJ unvaxed Rebublican brother descending on my dad’s nursing home today. Thanks, sisters.
He is antivax because Fauci is provax and progay.
OzarkHillbilly
@Quantum man: I went with the flame thrower. Now, all the lumber shivers with fear whenever I come near.
Ken
@OzarkHillbilly: I’ll say “shiver me timbers” because you obviously want someone to spot what you did there.
NotMax
@sab
More especially when it’s a Volvo (2:16 – 2:40).
:)
eclare
@OzarkHillbilly:
Wow. I believe it.
RevRick
That abomination rally took place ten miles north of me. I feel sorry for Aaron Rupar, who subjects himself to this vile garbage on a regular basis.
Meanwhile, because Trump and the Schnecksville Fire Company big-footed the day, Shankweilers Drive-In, which had originally scheduled their 90th anniversary celebration for Saturday, had to postpone it until today.
BTW, schnecken is the German word for snail, which of course moves on a slime trail… like Trump.
Freemark
@brantl: Those habaneros really do bite.
NotMax
@RevRick
Been there, a long, long time ago. Coffee potent enough to strip varnish.
;)
OzarkHillbilly
@Ken: I set them up so others can get the abuse.
eta: truth is, I’m a very linear person, my mind goes from point A to point B with no deviations allowed
Dorothy A. Winsor
@sab: How maddening
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
LiminalOwl
@sab: Much sympathy to you on this whole situation. I’m glad your father is safe now, sorry that other family members are… unhelpful. Or let’s just say Republicans.
eta: And then I went to the previous thread and saw that your father is dying. I know it was expected, but I’m so sorry. Thank you for being part of this community, and I hope we can give you needed support. And I always value your contributions.
Mousebumples
@sab: as I mentioned in the last post, my thoughts are with you and your dad and all who love him.
Be gentle with yourself. I remember sitting with my grandma in hospice on December (with a cousin), and it was absolutely a crying/reminiscing time.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Almost Retired:
Last week coming back from the eclipse trip, I saw some 50-something white bubba in a gas-and-pee in Dalhart Texas packing. It was some holster thingie that sat low on his thigh, halfway down to his knee.
He left and I began to hope he’d get into a single-car crash that would affect him for life.
prostratedragon
@NotMax: They sure ‘nough is.
JML
@OzarkHillbilly: wouldn’t surprise me at all. schools paying people off like this was still revoltingly common back in the 70’s and into the 80’s; it’s gotten increasingly hard to do quietly in the last 30 years and tends to happen less. but we also know how many of these crimes go unreported much better now and as a society we haven’t improved that situation nearly enough.
People covered for OJ for a long long time because he was massively famous and rich.
Wapiti
@sab:
(replaced: Read through the comments and realized I didn’t understand the situation)
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@NotMax: Calling that drink a martini also violates the ANSI K100.1 standard for martinis.
RevRick
@Wapiti: I had a parishioner whose parents moved in with her. Her dad was sinking into dementia. Her fragile mom died in a fall. But her dad kept forgetting it happened. So, every morning he’d ask his daughter, “Where’s M?” And every morning she would have to explain to him that she was dead. And he’d weep uncontrollably, as if hearing the news for the very first time.
lowtechcyclist
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
@sab:
Same here. But that’s one of the cool things about being ‘born again’ – I remember that birthday.
RandomMonster
@Baud: The Gollum J. Trump account is one of the few things I miss about Twitter.
Suzanne
So I am running a half marathon on May 5. Yesterday, Mr. Suzanne and I participated in a group run previewing 11 miles of the course. After the crazy rain we have had in the last two weeks, it was good to get outside. It was surprising to see how much of the city was still under water. If you know Point State Park, the whole area is flooded and you can see just the fountain sticking out.
We each went with pace groups. I signed up to go with a 12-minute-mile pace group, but that pacer ended up not showing up, so I went with the 11:30 pace group, and that was fine. Only bummer was that the roads weren’t closed, so there were parts of the route where we were single-file on some crappy sidewalks, and I twisted the same freakin’ ankle that I twisted twice already in the last month or so. So I am going to stick mostly to my Peloton this week!
Sandia Blanca
@RevRick: A friend of mine had a brilliant way to handle a similar situation with her mother. Mom would ask where her husband, a retired pastor, was. My friend would say, “Oh, Mom, he’s out visiting some parishioners.” That answer satisfied the mother, and did not cause any trauma.
Jeffro
Good morning peeps. This got buried in all the other news this weekend: an “extraordinary” number of former trumpov officials publicly oppose his re-election
(apologies if someone else already posted the link!)
It’s worth forwarding to the RWNJs in your life…it’s USA Today, not some commie liberal rag like the Post or Times ;)
frankly, failing The Bolton Character Test is, just by itself, disqualifying (for anything)
Anyway
@Suzanne:
Ouch! Hope the ankle heals in time for the half. I wussed out of the Broad Street 10-miler — didn’t get enough miles in over the winter.
How’s the new job?
TBone
@RevRick: 💔 my mom eventually forgot she’d ever been married to dad who predeceased her, but started asking me if we could just move back in to live with her long dead parents (as we’d done for a few years when I was 3 after divorce). She detested the care facility. She never, ever forgot who her children were though.
lowtechcyclist
@sab: Just want to say my thoughts are with you and your dad. Hope the helicopter siblings aren’t too problematic in this difficult time.
Matt McIrvin
@RevRick: I think this is a situation where we can make an exception to a bedrock commitment to truth. If it hurts him so, and he can’t even process that grief in the way a person with a functioning memory would, is it really necessary to tell him?
Lyrebird
@sab: Continued good thoughts to you and your dad and all the caregivers.
Even the ones caught up in the unhelpful blinkered thinking about over doeping people who are really old.
My sibling situation ? Well hearing about yours got me to send some “Luv U!” texts to mine, since you reminded me how grateful I should be. Total respect for your being there for your dad in spite of knowing you’d get bs and disrespect.
catclub
I would say USC covered for OJ because he was massively talented in ways that could make THEM rich.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@sab:
Both me and my wife are only children who had remaining parents go fairly quickly and didn’t hafta deal with second-guessing siblings.
So sorry you’re dealing with that second bit given the first bit is hard enough.
sdhays
@JML: It’s almost like if you’re rich, “they” let you do it.
catclub
EXTREMELY slow learner there. Some people knew all that in 2011.
Suzanne
@Anyway: So I have been assigned to a big hospital cardiac expansion project in Florida. Kickoff is scheduled for week-after-next, so I will be down there for two days of meetings and tours. In the meantime…. I’m bored AF, LOL.
Some of these damn sidewalks are treacherous! One member of my pace group took a fall. On race day, we get the actual roads and bridges, which will be good. It was still pretty windy yesterday, so one of those bridge crossings was chilly!
Spanky
My experience in dealing with dementia (three steps and in-laws, and waiting for more shoes to drop) is to inhabit their world as much as possible without trying to drag them back to reality. Every explanation you give will soon be forgotten anyway.
Suzanne
@Anyway: I hear the Broad Street Run is fun….. all downhill!
WaterGirl
@Suzanne: Twisted ankles are like that. You feel like you’re this close to being totally healed and then you twist it again. So frustrating.
SFAW
@RevRick:
Awful.
But, here’s a “pro tip” I picked up, in case I were ever in a bad-news-giver situation: Tell the demented survivor that his/her departed spouse “is out, but (s)he’ll be back in a little while.” [I witnessed a quasi-similar exchange at a senior-living place where I deliver meds. The concierge — who should have known, or been trained, better — opted to give the husband (of the deceased wife) the bad news, straight up. Bad move. He did not react well. I mentioned the event to my (much smarter, and more experienced with things like that) wife, and she gave me the above tip. ]
ETA: Or what WaterGirl (and others) said.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@RevRick: These issues are very much on our mind, though we are “only” in our late 60s. We bought long term care insurance years ago. The premiums have greatly risen over the years as the insurance industry struggles to keep LTC insurance financially feasible, and we find ourselves having to reevaluate every couple of years how much coverage of what kind we should keep. We just don’t know.
Also like everyone of a certain age we watch family and friends go through this. We’ve been seeing the slow decline of our next door neighbor for years and last month watched them clean out the house and put it on the market, as she no longer knows her family and is being moved to a care facility.
Jeffro
I normally like Matthew Desmond’s stuff (EVICTED was incredibly eye-opening) but this is really dumb: Rich Liberals, Give Up Your Tax Breaks
Imagine if we just…campaigned against rich people hogging the wealth of this country and not paying their fair share in taxes? It’s HUGELY popular and doesn’t turn something like taxation (our collective obligation to fund the government) into a matter of individual choice?
OzarkHillbilly
@RevRick: I was in a very similar situation with my father while Ma was in and out of the hospital. Every morning (and multiple times a day) he would ask, “Where’s mother?” and every time i would reply, “She’s at the grocery store.” and he would happily accept that and know that she would be home soon enough.
One morning he asked and before I could answer my little sister said, “She’s in the hospital, Dad.”
And he blew up. “WHY DIDN’T ANYBODY TELL ME???” And was agitated for hours afterward, long after he had forgotten why he was angry.
I could have strangled her (not really but you get the emotion).
Later on, soon after we put him in a home, I made the mistake of saying, “I’ve gotta go now, Pop.” and he damned near crushed my hand while begging me not to leave him there with tears running down his face. It took maybe a half hour for me to calm him down.
When I was sure he was OK I said, “I’m gonna go the bathroom, Pop. I’ll be right back.”
“OK.” was all he said.
While waiting for the elevator, I looked back and he was sitting on the couch where I had left him, staring off into whatever distant memories he was still in possession of. When I got onto the elevator I felt guilty as all hell, but not for lying. I knew the lie was a kindness and that he had already forgotten I had ever been there. No, the guilt I felt was of abandonment. I knew I had to do it but no matter how many times I did it, the feeling never went away.
sdhays
@Jeffro:
Trump’s political interests are wholly subservient to his personal interests. He has no political agenda bigger than himself.
ETA: Just noting that even in this criticism, Bolton is being overly kind.
different-church-lady
@NotMax: He’s part of the group on the back.
OzarkHillbilly
@Suzanne: Good luck on the 5th!
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
WV Blondie
@RevRick: My sympathies to your parishioner. We’re getting ready for something similar – moving in with my MiL because she’s in early-stage dementia. Her oldest son died two years ago, but she doesn’t remember it. Her grandchildren (his kids) don’t come to see her any more because they get so upset when she asks, “Where’s D? I haven’t seen him in a few weeks.”
different-church-lady
@Jeffro: Like Bolton couldn’t fuckin’ see any of that going in to the job?!?
Baud
@Jeffro:
That’s pretty dumb.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@different-church-lady: He thought the leopard wouldn’t eat his face, you see…
Karen H
The KNITTERS of Balloon Juice might be interested in the Summer of Mystery Club from Scottish designer Kate Davies (KDD & Co). It includes a new design collection of seasonal knits (11 patterns) inspired by the golden age of detective fiction, a book club of 10 Margery Allingham classic mystery novels, with discussion groups on Ravelry, a collection of essays from several authors, and at the end a book (print or digital) of it all. Begins May 6.
One of the patterns is a mystery Knit-A-Long with clues based on an Allingham novel. Sounds like fun and I’ve signed up and bought the first book on Kindle. I loved her books when I read them years ago. I’m interested to see how they hold up for me.
More information on the website shopkdd.com

OzarkHillbilly
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: My wife’s Spanish father died after watching a football match. Heart attack, his partner in the passenger seat never heard a thing, didn’t even realize it until Jose didn’t answer a question. Her mother lived long enough to see her granddaughter get married (via the internet) and then died 2 or 3 days later at the hospital. I had warned my wife to be prepared for exactly that. Monse had been thru 2 cancers, 2 open heart surgeries and much much more. I figured seeing her only grandchild get married might be the thing that allows her to say, “OK, I’m done here.”
Jeffro
Right??
But here’s the thing: I bet Bolton had plenty of warnings given to him about what he was getting into with trumpov, and he probably believed most of it…but then he gets in there and is like, “HOLEEEEE SHIT, this guy really is going to get us all killed!”
(you know, like the rest of us felt on the morning of November 9th, 2016)
Anyway, complete failures of imagination on the right, that’s for sure. See also, the Leopards’ Eating Peoples’ Faces Party, etc etc. (ETA which Bruce K noted while I was typing sloooooowly =)
TBone
@OzarkHillbilly: I used to have to do the same thing. It’s an awful feeling.
I’ve been having nightmares.
As for sibling denial, I still can’t believe what I went through. About mom visiting when Dad was in Center City dying of cancer: “If you can’t take off work every day, just put her on the train.”. It got worse from there.
MomSense
@Karen H:
OOOH that sounds fantastic. She is such a fabulous designer. Whether I can participate or not is up to timing and the house gods and goddesses.
Looking at houses today and packing up my great grandmother’s dishes this morning.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@RandomMonster: Golum J Trump? LOL. People can be so clever.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Suzanne: My knees hurt just thinking about running. I’ll cheer for you instead.
Karen H
@MomSense:
It might be a nice distraction for you, with all you have going on. After all, you don’t have to knit all the patterns or read all the books, but they’ll be there when you’re ready.
MomSense
@sab:
I remember one afternoon I was walking a trail with my friend after having spent four days caring for my dad post heart procedure so my stepmom could visit her daughter. I took 3 days off of work, left my kid with his big brother, drove an hour, cleaned their house, did their shopping, etc. My sister called and told me that Dad had a heart procedure on Wednesday and you should call them and see if they need help.
lowtechcyclist
@catclub:
I’ll give Bolton a pass on that. Before 2015, I didn’t think about Trump any more than I thought about the Kardashians. Which was to say that if their name popped up in something I was reading online, I’d think, “oh, not them again” and skip on past.
Soprano2
@sab: I’ve been told I should look at places now, and maybe even get on waiting lists even though I don’t need a place for my husband now, because it could take a year or more to get a spot in a good one.
OzarkHillbilly
@MomSense: shaking my head…
TBone
@MomSense: it’s mind boggling every time, even when you know what you’re dealing with and expecting it. It still shocks me all these years later.
Soprano2
@OzarkHillbilly: Oh I totally believe it. I’m surprised it was only two. That kind of behavior doesn’t just suddenly happen. Is anyone surprised the school would protect him? I’m not, how much money did they make off him?
Steeplejack
@OzarkHillbilly:
That reminds me: When Simpson died (Wednesday), Joy-Ann Reid did a deep review of his murder trial on her MSNBC show. She concentrated on it being a watershed moment in American justice and racism, and she did a good, detailed job on that. She also talked about how she had followed the trial closely as a 25-year-old on maternity leave, and she played the now iconic clip of black college kids cheering when the innocent verdict was delivered. At times her affect seemed (to me) almost cheerful—at odds with the topic—like it had been a happy victory in the civil rights struggle. I found myself wanting someone to interrupt her and ask her if she thought he did commit the murders.
It’s interesting that I can’t find that segment from her show on the MSNBC site or on Twitter. Not sure there’s a sinister explanation, but usually I can find the clips I’m looking for. The closest I could get was her discussing it later on Chris Hayes’s show: “Joy Reid: Black people cheered O.J. Simpson verdict because a black man took on the criminal justice system and won.”
Soprano2
@RevRick: Oh geez, she should have lied and said mom was on a trip or went to the store. That’s what my friend did when her mom asked where her parents were. No need for them to go through that grief over and over again.
narya
@sab: I’ve been thinking of you. I hope that you all can live with some ease.
lowtechcyclist
@sab:
Yeah, I’ve been trying to interest my wife in at least looking at local senior living communities, because she already has to minimize her trips up and down stairs, and it’s a matter of time – probably several years, but it’s coming – before she needs to be in a place that has none, rather than living in this 2 story + basement house. But she doesn’t want to think about that.
Me, I’m 70 and could live to 100, but I want to have at least some sort of general plan for those next three decades. I’m sure I’ll get old eventually, even if I’m doing an excellent job of putting it off.
Soprano2
@OzarkHillbilly: This is one of my greatest fears, that I’ll be in this situation with my husband someday. Made me tear up thinking about how hard that was for you.
Kay
@Soprano2:
The wait lists are kind of deceptive because everyone gets on several (understandably) but everyone involved also knows that everyone gets on several so we just assume the wait list is 1/3 or 1/4 of the length it appears to be. Don’t let a wait list put you off. No one can predict openings- they can have 4 in a week or none for months.
It doesn’t hurt to get on a couple or at least locate the facilities in your area but no rush either.
sdhays
@Steeplejack: I just remember being confused, as a high school student, why the general reaction to the verdict wasn’t a wholesale condemnation of the LAPD.
I’m white and it seemed to me that O.J. was pretty clearly guilty, but I could understand how a jury in LA could conclude that with Klan members not following procedures in handling evidence of a prominent black celebrity, the prosecution failed to get them to “beyond reasonable doubt”.
So, that was part of my learning that society often doesn’t confront problems in constructive ways.
TBone
Sitting outside on a beautiful morning, drinking coffee and blasting this for the Rumpy neighbors who are outside loading into the cars for church 😆 🎶
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=K7jgZTDLeIs
stacib
@Spanky: This is one of my biggest struggles. My mother is 93, and the dementia is about 80% of the time now. She’s still here at home with me, and my brother has been pitching in. When she asks about my oldest brother, who died four years ago, she asks in the present tense, I’m always stuck on how to respond. The weird thing, I had two brothers die within six months of each other, and the younger one was her favorite. She has never asked about him.
Soprano2
@sdhays: The way I heard it said was that the LAPD tried to frame a guilty man, and it backfired on them. I read both Marcia Clark and Chris Darden’s books. They had an uphill battle from the beginning; Clark said the cops who searched OJ’s house seemed starstruck by it, as if he were their hero. Darden’s book was particularly interesting to me, he wrote a lot about his life.
Phylllis
@lowtechcyclist: I think hubby and I are in good shape here in our house for another 7-10 years. We bought it with ‘aging in place’ in mind. He’s 70, but stays active both physically and intellectually. My plan if something happens to him is to sell this house post-haste and move into one of the senior living places asap.
SFAW
@sdhays:
For me, Mark Fuhrman’s lying about being a racist — or at least using the N-word — was the deal-breaker. [Not whether OJ did it; I’m talking about introducing (to my non-lawyerly mind) reasonable doubt.]
JML
@Soprano2: I’ve heard that before too about the LAPD, and it seems at least somewhat accurate. You have to wonder what really drove their thinking: was it because murder involving a celebrity was so serious? concerned that it would come out how many times they let him get away with beating his wife? Did murder transform him in their eyes from being a celebrity to hang with to a n-word to be sent to prison? Disturbing how much of a mess the LAPD was and should have been a warning to cities across the country.
Instead we militarized the police and made it worse…
Kay
@Soprano2:
He was, quite literally, their hero. He entertained police at his home, donated to police charities, and spoke on a personal basis to supervisors and managers in the LA police. It’s why they wouldn’t respond when Brown Simpson would call on DV. She says it on one call – she says “oh, you know why I’m calling” she’s just hopeless and disgusted.
The police framed a guilty man. that’s true, but the police also protected a wealthy and powerful athlete/celebrity from domestic violence charges. She would not be dead if they had done their jobs at any point in the tragedy trajectory.
lowtechcyclist
@Phylllis:
Looks like you already did some planning then – good job!
We moved into this house when I was in my mid-40s and she was in her mid-30s, so aging wasn’t exactly on our minds. Her attitude for many years was that she wasn’t going to move again, period. I think she’s realized that won’t work, but she still isn’t ready to think about it.
Phylllis
@sdhays: I served on a federal jury a number of years ago & what was really eye-opening for me was how specific* the judge’s instructions to the jury were; we had a series of if/then questions to answer and all of them had to be yes to convict. I think the ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ threshold definitely came into play in the Simpson verdict.
*Dunno if her process was typical of all federal judges-she was widely regarded during her term on the bench here in SC.
Steeplejack
It’s too bad Twitter is such an unreliable source of information. There are a lot ot titillating tidbits in the thread after the item OzarkHillbilly posted at #31.
(Nitter links.)
@drsports808: “Robert Kardashian almost certainly disposed of the murder weapon. He picked O.J. up at the airport. That is the only reason Kardashian was placed on the defense team—for attorney/client privilege. He had no other role. In fact his law license was inactive at the time of the murders.”
@sunshine9496: “He also left Simpson house with a brown paper bag that on his death bed he admitted were O.J. shoes. He also refused to speak to O.J. after the trial.”
And, finally, this—@Ron_YNWA: “IDK if this is true or not . . . but it’s been reported that this was his final tweet before his death and his family deleted it immediately afterwards.”
eclare
@stacib:
Oh that is heartbreaking.
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
To be clear, I agree with those above who distilled it down to “the LAPD framed a guilty man.” It was a watershed moment in what it revealed about racism and corruption in our justice system. But I have a hard time seeing it as a “victory” for anybody.
Kay
“No report” is insanely preferential treatment. There is always, always a report. It is Police 101.
The LA police simply didn’t give a shit that he was beating his wife. They didn’t care. She was not the important person and the celebrity athlete. They protected him for ten years while the DV escalated and eventually, of course, he killed her. She knew he would and she told them that over and over.
RSA
I saw this news out of Ohio the other day.
It turned out to be a toy gun. The Black teenager survived, thank goodness. The cop has a spotty record and will probably be fired and go to work in a neighboring town.
I don’t know how it’s possible to maintain a civil society with the rules in some places.
Kay
@Steeplejack:
Ugh. The Kardashians. Another entirely negative reality tv phenom, like our friend Donlad Trump. I am so, so sick of them. Someone on Twitter recounted a (horrible) story about an NDA with the father and called them “rich thugs”. Agree.
There’s like 25 of them too – we’re stuck with them forever.
raven
@Kay: This was posted here earlier.
Kay
@raven:
That’s what I read, thank you. I like “rich thugs”. Stealing that.
Kay
Nicloe Brown Simpson is the answer when anyone asks you “why don’t they leave these relationships?”
She left. It didn’t matter at all. He stalked her and killed her. She could have gone to a remote island off Alaska and he still would have stalked her and tried to kill her. That’s what they do.
We had an Ohio case recently where the husband killed his ex wife almost 15 years after the divorce and AFTER she had remarried. Where are they supposed to go?
Another Scott
@Kay: A former colleague was a hippie in LA and SF in the 60s. He had stories of being hassled and beaten by the cops out there, for no reason at all.
Yes, the LA cops tried to frame a guilty man. The OJ murder trial was yet another illustration of the fact that they were out of control for decades, and people had to finally confront it and do something about it.
Grr…,
Scott.
Steeplejack
Liverpool just got their
assesarses handed to them 1-0 by #15 Crystal Palace. Not good for their title chances.emjayay
@OzarkHillbilly: Hence the term “shiver me timbers.”
Kay
@Another Scott:
They’re worse now than they ever were, IMO and experience. They now have an even bigger chip on their shoulders because people told them thay have to stop shooting black men and people on the Right and centrists told them they were being treated unfairly. It’s all wah wah, poor me.
Now they barely do the job at all. In my rural county, with 30,000 people, they will no longer get out of the car. They pull people over on reasonable suspicion and have them spread eagle in the roadway. They will take no risk at all.
Uvalde is much more the norm than people know. Honestly I would avoid calling them – I always have because I was raised in the kind of family where calling the police was just unheard of, but I wouldn’t even call them in a pinch now. There’s no help there and they may go nuts and just start shooting or arrest everyone they don’t like.
Kayla Rudbek
@Karen H: thank you! Some pretty patterns on that page…
Kay
@Another Scott:
My middle son likes cars and always has several beaters he’s trading or working on or driving to work. He goes to work early – sometimes 4 AM – and he kept getting pulled over. Finally he had had it and when he was next pulled over he got a very young cop and told him “I know you’re pulling me over because I’m in a crap car and it’s 4 AM but I’m not doing anything wrong, I get pulled over all the time and I want to be left alone”. He said the young cop was sympathetic and nearly apologized. I’m glad he stuck up for himself. Obviously a black man can’t do this – too risky- but I feel like those who can, should. They need to be checked.
Melancholy Jaques
@SFAW:
It seemed to me to be a very effective distraction. It gave the jurors permission to let a murderer go free. Fuhrman using the N word had nothing to do with the truth of whether OJ committed the murders. You could take every single piece of evidence connected with him out of the case and it is still clear that OJ did it.
Since every accused is entitled to a zealous defense, anything is fair game, including making the trial about the Los Angeles police rather than about the murders.
One thing we have learned in the 30 years since: our police departments are filled with Mark Fuhrmans and nobody is going to do anything about it.
Ironcity
@Suzanne: When you get the actual streets/roads on race day have all/most of the potholes been fixed enough? I distinctly remember looking through both the Liberty and Smithfield Street bridge decks to the Monongahela.
Miss Bianca
@Steeplejack:
I remember being in downtown Chicago when the verdict was being handed down (I was doing temp work at the time, like most all the other actors I knew), and seeing all these young Black men on the street, cheering and high-fiving each other, and cars honking. It was a profoundly alienating moment for me until I realized just *why* the celebratory feel was in the air.
Anonymous At Work
“When even autocorrect…” Weekend Update is consistently the sketch to watch and will be…until the holiday joke swap gets one of them killed…
wjca
Except, for him “My precious” is . . . himself.
twbrandt
@sab: I’m so sorry you are dealing with this. Best wishes to you.
Barbara
@Steeplejack: Ta Nehisi Coates wrote an article in The Atlantic at the time of the six-part ESPN series that addressed the question of the feelings that many Black people had about the Simpson trial and verdict. Coates was repulsed at the idea of Simpson getting awa with murder and in the process becoming some kind of icon for civil rights, but he delved deeply to provide a more nuanced explanation. The article was from 2016, but it was featured in the newsletter this week after Simpson died. It still rings true.
Steeplejack
@Barbara:
Thanks, I’ll look that up. I generally appreciate Coates’s perspective.
ETA: “The newsletter this week.” Whose?
Gvg
Forman’s using the N word wasn’t the big deal I remember. It was that he wrote novels about crooked cops that were thinly disguised real stories about himself and I think he had also boasted about framing people who made him mad. I think it was for a routine traffic stop, he was boasting about framing someone. This was know to his superiors well before the murders and they did nothing.
A police department ought to care for its deserved reputation because officers have to be credible on the stand. He should not have been on any police job. Other reporting made it clear that LAPD really was that corrupt and everyone knew it. So it was reasonable to doubt them.
That said I thought he was guilty and the record of all the prior calls were why. He got off because he was rich, and not being convicted was not a black justice victory at all.
Uncle Cosmo
@Jeffro: If this is “really dumb” –
–then forgive me if I ask if you were one of the many Jackals who over the years have sniggered every time someone noted that the doctrinaire anti-government-handout Ayn Rand filed for and accepted Social Security cash. Because IMO anyone who satisfies Desmond’s criteria of “just-talk” liberalism is just as much of a hypocrite as Rand – it’s just the mirror image.
If it was inappropriate for Rand to justify taking funds she wrote and spoke against on the grounds that “If they’re stupid enough to offer me money, I’m smart enough to take it,” then it’s just as inappropriate for us good lefties to take value from a system that preferentially rewards those who qualify. A bon chat, bon rat – or if you prefer it in English, Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
Barbara
@Steeplejack: From The Atlantic itself. I get an email with suggested articles on a weekly basis, maybe even daily. Anyway, if you have access to The Atlantic you can find it. It’s from 2016 I think.
Steeplejack
@Barbara:
Okay, thanks. “Newsletter” threw me.
kindness
I’ve read Doonesbury since it’s inception. It’s fun to watch the arc of the characters lives and see that Trudeau still makes them say politically poignant things.
Marc
During the trial and in its aftermath, I’d get my hair cut at the one remaining black barber shop (and book store) in the Silicon Valley (in Menlo Park, it’s changed hands since but is still there). As you might imagine, this was a popular topic of discussion. First, for literally centuries prior to that time, a black person arrested and accused of murdering white people, whether innocent or not, would inevitably be found guilty. And, we all knew of white people (particularly rich ones) accused of murdering black people who weren’t even arrested, much less convicted. Second, we all had multiple encounters with racist white cops like Mark Fuhrman, he was the “villain” to us, more so than OJ.
OJ was never a “beloved” football star in the black community (like, say, Jim Brown) and if you asked if he was guilty, most of us would have said yes. It was a “black justice victory” in the sense that that this was first time in our experience that a rich black man received the same kind of “justice” as a rich white man. The “hero” for us in that in that trial wasn’t OJ as much as it was Johnny Cochrane.
Tehanu
I read that Doonesbury cartoon this morning in the L.A. Times — but it didn’t include the first two panels about normalizing rape. Damn, that makes me angry.