Big Bird Is Watching You

T is for Thoughtcrime

Nov 08, 2021

🎶Sunny Day
Sweepin’ the clouds away
On my way to where they sow deceit🎶

I got vaccinated last April, and I’m glad I chose to do so. Given my age and general health, that choice made sense. But I’m not a hysteric who thinks all the children are going to die of COVID-19, because the evidence shows kids under the age of 18 are actually the safest among us. If you want your child to be vaccinated, that should be your choice and yours alone. Nobody else should try to undermine your decision.

Especially not a puppeteer in a bird costume.

Big Bird @BigBird

I got the COVID-19 vaccine today! My wing is feeling a little sore, but it'll give my body an extra protective boost that keeps me and others healthy. Ms. @EricaRHill even said I’ve been getting vaccines since I was a little bird. I had no idea!

I learned my ABCs and 123s by watching Sesame Street, so it’s creepy to see those characters being used for vaccine propaganda. This will play well among coastal soccer moms who wrap their kids’ heads in five masks apiece and call 911 when they hear a sneeze. But the rest of us have been paying attention for the past two years, and we know kids are safer than adults from this particular virus.

That doesn’t matter to the public servants with their hands up these puppets’ asses, of course. Elmo is also getting in on the act:

Elmo @elmo

Elmo was so happy to talk to @drsanjaygupta at the town hall today! Elmo learned that Elmo's friends can get the COVID-19 vaccine now, and soon Elmo can too!

And Grover:

Grover @Grover

Super Grover may have many special superpowers, but he also knows when to ask a friend for help! Thank you @KizzyPhD for teaching us aaaaall about COVID-19 vaccines at the town hall today!

And even Oscar the Grouch:

Oscar the Grouch @OscarTheGrouch

Well this stinks. Apparently, the COVID-19 vaccines won’t make you feel grouchy at all! That's what @KizzyPhD said at today's town hall, anyway. You might get a sore arm and feel tired, so at least there’s that.

But as you might have noticed, Oscar doesn’t say he got the vaccine. That’s because he’s totally a QAn*n guy:

jimtreacher.substack.com @jtLOL

"You think you know these government people? What they're capable of? You don't know nothin'. The Tuskegee Experiment. Google it."

Also, he literally lives in a trash can. If anybody has developed a natural immunity to disease, it’s Oscar. He’s just plain meaner than COVID-19.

Not to make too much of a few tweets by whoever runs the Children’s Television Workshop’s Twitter accounts, but this stuff is really creeping me out. It feels like they’re setting kids against their parents. If our moral, ethical, and intellectual betters want to convince Mom and Dad that they should vaccinate their children, that’s fine. But turning kids against their own parents just feels wrong.

jimtreacher.substack.com @jtLOL

Day 70 of Americans stranded in Afghanistan.

I never paid much attention to the whole “Russian collusion” thing, but I’m not surprised that it turned out to be a load of crap. There have always been plenty of good reasons to criticize Donald Trump, but that’s never enough for the press. They always have to just make $#!+ up. The Steele dossier was complete hokum, the media worked themselves into a frenzy over a hoax, and they will not admit they were wrong because they’re not actually journalists.

It’s still not a good reason to vote for Trump,1 but it sure as hell isn’t a reason to trust those frauds either.

Hey, whatever happened to that Southwest Airlines pilot who supposedly said “Let’s go, Brandon” and freaked out all the journos? As Steve Krakauer points out in his Fourth Watch newsletter, it’s been a week and nobody has confirmed it actually happened, let alone who said it or why it matters.

That’s because even if a pilot did say “Let’s go, Brandon” as people were disembarking from a plane, who gives a hoot? It’s not something to get upset about. And once all those hot takes cooled off, all those shrieking journos realized they’d made asses of themselves and clammed up.

Hangovers are a bitch, huh?

My grandfather was career Navy, and I wonder what he would make of naming a ship after a pedophile.

Yellowstone is back, after what feels like five years, and I love that crazy, ridiculous show more than ever. Beth Dutton might be my favorite TV character of all time, and I’ll show you why with one screenshot:

That sums up her character. Even after she got blowed up real good at the end of last season, she’s still ornery enough to light up a cigarette right next to a no-smoking sign. It helps that she’s absolutely gorgeous, of course. But on a show full of supposed tough guys, she’s the one they all fear the most because she couldn’t care less what she’s supposed to do. And she’s smart enough to get away with it.

The show is pulling a Cousin Oliver move this season, bringing in a cute kid to liven things up. Usually that’s a prelude to disaster, but for once, I think it might actually work. For one thing, the kid is played by Finn Little, who was terrific in Those Who Wish Me Dead (directed by Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan) and is really good here as well. For another, Rip Wheeler hates the kid on sight and does not care about hurting his precious little feelings. Rip is like a cross between W.C. Fields and Gunnery Sergeant Hartman. And for a third, Beth actually seems to like the kid, and she likes maybe three people in the entire world.

We still don’t know who tried to exterminate the entire Dutton family in one afternoon, but I can’t wait for those idiots to find out what all those other city slickers learned, right before they went to meet their maker. You do not cross the Duttons.

Speaking of Those Who Wish Me Dead: That refreshingly simple revenge flick also starred Aiden Gillen, who’s on a new AMC+2 show called Kin about an Irish crime family trying to survive in modern Dublin. Gillen plays a gay cokehead crime boss who watches his whole world fall apart, as he realizes he wouldn’t have the will to stop it even if he knew how. It’s nice to hear Gillen use his native Irish accent. The show also stars Charlie Cox, who hasn’t done much since Daredevil was cancelled a few years back. The show is deliberately paced, to put it mildly, but it’s interesting to see how they do things over there in the land of saints and scholars. Why should the Italians get all the gritty, depressing crime shows?

I didn’t realize Ireland had turned into an island of cokeheads, but apparently that’s true in real life. It’s tough enough to understand people from my homeland when they’re talking at normal speed, let alone twice as fast.

Thanks for reading, and I’m sorry it’s Monday. I don’t like it any better than you do. “One extra hour,” my rosy red patoot.

But hey, you know what would make you feel better? Subscribing to this AD-FREE newsletter right now. It’s only $5/month or $50/year. Doing the right thing and helping the less fortunate eases your guilty conscience and lifts your mood. Go ahead, try it. You’ll see.

Who the Heck Is Jim Treacher

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