“The scary thing about this woman and others who talk about celebrities as if they know them personally is that the exercise squanders civic involvement. Unlike voting in a real election, voting in a People poll accomplishes absolutely nothing, but we’re still encouraged to believe in celebrities as modern mythic gods. Modern-day heroic fallacies. Zeus screwing around behind Hera’s back. Icarus getting high on too much ego. Innocent Ledas losing their cherries on the casting couch.”
—The Shadow Catcher, Marianne Wiggins
1.
What a week…consider that (1) Nikki Haley was outvoted in Nevada's Republican presidential primary by a “None of These Candidates” option, (2) Ohio Senator (R) JD Vance said to George Stephanopoulos's Hairdo, after being shown an ad that shows rapist Orangeman ‘Tiny Hands’ Fuckleroy being treated as a hero, that "I think it's actually very unfair to the victims of sexual assault to say that somehow their lives are being worse by electing Donald Trump for president when what he's trying to do, I think, is restore prosperity,” (3) Netanyahu rejects Hamas cease-fire proposal, (4) Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel resigned due to pressure from Fuckleroy’s allies, (5) in the hope of being Fuckleroy’s running mate, Rep. Elise “Just A Yes or No Answer” Stefanik walked all over Kristen Welker of Meet the Press refusing to commit to certifying the 2024 election results, implying President Biden is attempting to get Trump removed the ballot (there is zero evidence of this), claimed the federal government is being “weaponized” against conservatives (again, no evidence of this), and referred to the terrorists involved in the Jan. 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol as “hostages,” (6) the Kremlin’s decision to allow Tucker Carlson an interview with Vladimir Putin, translating to interest in building bridges to the disruptive MAGA element of the Republican Party with the hope that Donald Trump would return to the presidency and that Republicans would continue to block U.S. military aid to Ukraine, (7) Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) introduced, and more than 60 House Republicans co-sponsored, a resolution denying that Fuckleroy had engaged in insurrection in his attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and (8) after demanding a border deal that was hammered out over a four month period senate Republicans voted to reject the bipartisan border deal that included aid to Israel and Ukraine, due to pressure from, you guessed it, Orangeman Fuckleroy. And in a bit of irony, Traitor, er, I mean, Senator Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ), one of the team of senators who had negotiated the bill, called out the Republicans who had staged photo ops at the border and insisted that Congress must address the rise in migration across the border saying, “After all those trips to the desert, after all those press conferences, it turns out this crisis isn’t much of a crisis after all. Sunday morning, it’s a real crisis. Monday morning it magically disappeared.”
And for the cherry on top, despite the supposed GOP nominee for president being a rapist, racist, and a serial liar, Black and Hispanic voters are deserting the Democratic party in large numbers. Shite.
But, you have to chortle that, after much hoo-hah and fanfare, the House GOP fails to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas. Another yuk is that federal appeals court said Tuesday that Donald Trump is not immune from prosecution for alleged crimes he committed during his presidency, flatly rejecting Trump's arguments that he shouldn't have to go on trial on federal election subversion charges. But what is not so funny is that Fuckleroy’s actions are not those designed to win an election by getting a majority of the votes. They are the tools someone who cannot win a majority uses to seize power.
2.
Our very own Arizona superintendent of public instruction Tom Horne, called out by MSNBC as America’s WORST state education official, has topped his own self. As reported by David Gordon in Blog for Arizona, he has continued his ascent into the Orwellian stratosphere of Alt-Right Knowledge with his announcement on January 31, 2024, that he would make the resources of unaccredited and right-wing leaning Prager University available for public school teachers to show children in their classrooms on the Department website with other resource options.
“Other Resource Options” include climate denialism, denial of the reality of American slavery, depicting solar and wind power as environmentally dangerous, and likening environmental activists to Nazis and claiming recent record-breaking heat is just part of the natural weather cycle, according to the Guardian. Among PragerU’s leading financiers are the oil and gas fracking billionaire brothers Farris and Dan Wilks, who have ponied up at least $8m over the past decade, according to Texas financial records. Other top conservative donors to PragerU, which styles itself as alternative to the “dominant leftwing ideology in culture, media and education”, include the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the National Christian Charitable Foundation and the Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation.
Horne bleated at a press conference, “It’s alright for teachers to teach controversial views as long as both sides are presented, and the problem we’ve had is in some classes, only the extreme left side has been presented, so these present an alternative.” Tucson-based Arizona Representative Raul Grijalva, as reported by AZ Central, partially commented, “PragerU does not belong in Arizona schools. It’s masquerading as a serious educational resource when in reality it’s unaccredited right-wing propaganda. Just as Congressional Republicans want to ban books and eliminate diverse points of view, PragerU’s intent is to indoctrinate our children with disinformation, mistruths, and whitewash history.”
I first heard about this from a post by my friend Nancy McCallion who has taught in the Tucson school systems for several years. She suggested to make your voice heard by calling 602-771-3500 or submitting a form entry here.
3.
In a play not often heard in Washington these days is that, according to the Guardian, the Biden Administration actually halted the granting of new permits for building liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals. This comes at a time when America’s total contribution to global warming has probably not gone down at all over the last two decades. Far from being a boon, natural gas has been a trap, one that the industry now wants to catch the rest of the globe in.
The article goes on to say we now live on a planet where the cheapest way to produce power is to point a sheet of glass at the sun; there’s no reason not to go straight from coal to renewable energy, with no intermediate stop at gas. The idea that it’s a “bridge fuel” is a decade out of date, but it’s an argument that big oil wants to extend four or five decades into the future, because that’s how long this new infrastructure is supposed to last.
You could be thinking to yourself right now, do I want an ‘elderly man with a poor memory’ to be our next president? My question is do I want an ‘elderly man with a poor memory’ who has a very capable vice-president and staff that have accomplished great strides for Democracy for a second term, or do I want an ‘elderly man with a poor memory,’ who’s a racist pig, and has a staff that would put the shakes in Beelzebub, for a second term? Hmmmm, I’ll have to think on that one. Paul Krugman penned an opinion piece this morning in the New York Times where he said, “I’ll bet that many readers are similarly vague about the dates of major life events. You remember the circumstances, but not necessarily the precise year. And whatever you think of me, I’m pretty sure I don’t write or sound like an old man. The idea that Biden’s difficulty in pinning down the year of his son’s death shows his incapacity — in the middle of the Gaza crisis! — is disgusting. As it happens, I had an hourlong off-the-record meeting with Biden in August. I can’t talk about the content, but I can assure you that he’s perfectly lucid, with a good grasp of events. And outside that personal experience, on several occasions when I thought he was making a serious misjudgment — like his handling of the debt ceiling crisis — he was right and I was wrong.”
And in the under-reported and seldom-heard-of categories for Biden Administration accomplishments, Politico published a list of thirty major but under-the-radar changes made so far during Biden’s tenure that most of us might have missed. In perusing the list it appears to me that most of these items are helpful to ordinary Americans, not the ultra-wealthy. In the spirit of appearing “Fair and Balanced,” here is the list for Fuckleroy…
4.
A very cool ‘project’ has been taking place in Los Angeles where, according to the Washington Post, sky-high graffiti covering dozens of floors of the Oceanwide Plaza development in downtown L.A., a $1 billion project that was abandoned in 2019, sucked in street artists from all over the city. Most media condemned it as vandalism, and a blight on the city, but others such as Susan Phillips, author of “The City Beneath: A Century of Los Angeles Graffiti” and a professor at Pitzer College in California, said in an email that it was “perhaps the most legendary roll call in the history of Los Angeles.” Roger Gastman, a longtime graffiti curator and historian, said there’s been “a boom in street work the last few years unlike anything I have seen since the 1990s,” and the buildings show “that graffiti is bigger than ever.”
5.
And in another art form, the Guardian published an interesting article on Blazing Saddles, its 50-year anniversary, and why it could not be made today. One of the more popular things to say about Blazing Saddles is that it could never be made today, due to its frequent deployment of the N-word. But it should be noted that it barely got made in 1974 for the same reason. As the grinning white foreman who requests the Black workers sing on the line (“When you was slaves, you sang like birds”), Burton Gilliam was so ashamed to use the word that he apologized to the star, Cleavon Little, who reminded him of its villainous context in the script. Throughout the film, the N-word is a hard slap that’s intended to sting – then as much as now, 50 years later – and it’s Little, the sly Bugs Bunny of Brooks’s cartoon west, who makes buffoons of everyone who utters it.
6.
In the event you find yourself stranded in Mesa, Arizona tonight, stop by the Mesa Contemporary Art Museum’s Annual Contemporary (there’s that word again) Crafts exhibition from 7-9pm. I have two pieces in the show, and here’s an image from their Instagram post which features a mysterious hand holding an invite, which happens to be one of my pieces featured in the show.
And now…
Dig that mysterious hand.