Yes, Kamala, Americans Can Make Copies
It's 2021, not 1921
I grew up in a small town in Indiana called Crawfordsville. Nice place, about 15,000 people. Home of Wabash College. (Go, Little Giants!) Not the tiniest village you’ve probably ever seen, but it’s hardly a bustling metropolis. And you know what they’ve had in Crawfordsville ever since I was a little kid? Photocopy machines. Everybody has known about photocopy machines for decades. There were TV commercials for them and everything, way back in the ‘70s.
But don’t tell Vice President Kamala Harris about that. She seems to think all of us in Flyover Country are still living in the dark ages.
Kamala is so bad at this, she can’t get through an interview with Soledad O’Brien without making a fool of herself. Soledad O’Brien.
Country folks have access to copiers, Madam Vice President. Thousands of CVS stores have copiers, for one thing. And most of those hayseeds you claim to represent have internet access, so they can go on Amazon and buy an inexpensive scanner to use anytime they want. Come to think of it, they even have e-mail accounts and cameras on their phones, so they can just send copies of things that way. Dag gummit, some of ‘em are even technologically advanced enough to read these words right now. Because it’s 2021, not 1921.
Why, they’ve even got indoor toilets, Kamala!
This woman is a gift to the Republicans. The more she talks, the more Americans start to panic that she’s our backup for the doddering 80-year-old codger who’s supposed to be running this country. Whenever we start asking ourselves if anybody can be worse than Biden, she pops right back up again.
So, What Else Is Going On?
Is there anybody in the world who actually believes Hunter Biden’s “art” career is anything but another money-laundering/influence-peddling scheme? He’s never had a real job in his life, so why would this be any different? Oh, I know some people claim to believe it’s real. But they’re Democrats, so they have to say that. They don’t actually believe it.
What better way for this White House to prove it’s all on the up-and-up than to make the whole thing completely anonymous? If we don’t know who’s paying half a million dollars for one of Hunter’s “paintings,” that’s even better than if we did know!
These people are so comically corrupt, both the White House staff and most of the “journalists” assigned to cover them, that it’s insulting they even pretend not to be. Their voters are idiots, so they assume the rest of us are too. Just once, I wish they’d come out and say, “We’re gonna do whatever we want, and we have the power to get away with it.” Wouldn’t that be so much simpler and easier?
Hey, kids! Are Mom and Dad always telling you what to do? Is your dumb younger (or older) sister (or brother) getting on your nerves? Or are you just plain bored? Then you should rat out your family members to the Federal Bureau of Investigation today!
Once again: Why is it that we keep hearing so much about fascism from the people who are actually using fascist tactics? Turning family members against each other seems pretty damn suspicious and extremist to me.
They miss him so much. They don't know what to do without him.
I don’t know exactly what’s going on in Cuba right now, but I like it.
Take that, commies!
Speaking of whom, I assume Obama is going to take credit for this, right?
Meanwhile, the commies are getting nervous:
Vete a la mierda, cabron.
I’m ambivalent about tearing down statues of Civil War generals or any other dead people. On one hand, they’re just statues. If a local government decides to take them down, it’s none of my business. On the other hand, when did a statue ever hurt anybody? It’s an inanimate, stationary object. It’s incapable of bothering anybody who doesn’t specifically choose to be bothered.
It’s like that one guy said: “Those who don’t know history… something something something, blah blah blah.” I forget the exact quote. Probably doesn’t matter anyway.
Last week I told you about DC Comics capitalizing on the 1/6 riot by turning their ‘80s vigilante character Wild Dog (basically the Punisher, except he wears a hockey mask and operates in the Quad Cities) into a Capitol rioter. From the previews, it looks like Wild Dog spouts a bunch of boilerplate “right-wing” rhetoric and even brags about taking a dump on Nancy Pelosi’s desk. It’s not really the original conception of the character, but apparently DC figured nobody would care because he’s relatively obscure. To them, the joke is worth it.
The creators of Wild Dog, Max Allan Collins and Terry Beatty, aren’t happy about it. Collins gave a lengthy statement to comics blog Bleeding Cool, leading off with this:
“My first reaction at discovering Wild Dog had been recruited into the Suicide Squad as the leader of the Jan. 6 Insurrection as a defecating Proud Boy-style seditionist was bewildered shock. Basically, ‘Huh?’ That quickly grew to rage, expressed mostly as, ‘F-ck DC,’ and ‘F-ck the writer.’ I shared these sentiments with Wild Dog's artist/co-creator, Terry Beatty, and he basically tried to calm me down. But, obviously, it gradually worked him into a rabid lather, too.”
And Beatty adds:
“Yes, he was a vigilante. Yes, he was a gun nut. But he wasn’t a conspiracy theory idiot or leader of a mob… To now make him the leader of a mob of racist, violent, moronic goons pretty much destroys any possibility of future use of him as an actual hero — vigilante or not.”
Read the whole thing. Collins includes this kiss-off to DC Comics: “I have worked with many terrific people at DC, but DC itself remains what it's always been – a corporation built on the bones of two Cleveland teenagers.” He’s referring to Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the creators of Superman, who were bilked out of untold millions by the company they made famous. The Man of Steel might believe in truth, justice, and the American way, but his custodians sure don’t.
So DC Comics has alienated a couple of disgruntled ex-employees, and I doubt Trump fans who also like comics are going to be happy about it either. But nobody at DC cares, because they’re a bunch of libs. The minor controversy might sell a few more copies, and they can feel smugly superior to those people.
The whole thing just depresses me. As much as Trump fans hate me for refusing to jump on the bandwagon, they’re right about the media, and this is just further proof. They’ve been treated like a joke their whole lives, and the 2016 election was their chance to fight back. But Hillary Clinton’s humiliating loss just redoubled the media’s efforts to paint half the country as bumpkins and/or Nazis, and now even mainstream comic books are getting into the act.
I’m not sure it’s worth signing up for Paramount Plus just to watch Detroiters, but if you got the $1/month trial on Prime Day this year, the show is worth your time. Or at least it’s worth mine.
It’s a very strange show, sort of a cross between an improv sketch show and a workplace comedy, and not all the jokes land. But when they do, it’s one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a long time. It was filmed in Detroit and stars two Detroit natives, Sam Richardson and Tim Robinson, and they obviously love their hometown.
Richardson and Robinson are also best friends IRL, and they’re not afraid to show it.
Plus, Detroiters deals with race in a really refreshing way: It treats all the characters like individual human beings! There are episodes where Sam is one of the only black people, and there are episodes where Tim is the only white person. And it’s no big deal. They’re just guys. It’s just a show. Race is just one aspect of who they are, not an all-consuming obsession.
Not to say there’s no conflict. They still get on each other’s nerves, because they’re weirdo man-children with anger management problems. There’s quite a lot of yelling, actually. But nobody’s lecturing or scolding the viewer about “privilege.” Detroiters only went off the air three years ago, but it already feels like a relic of a simpler time.
Plus, it’s just… nice. Even when the subject matter is dark or gross, which it usually is, it’s presented so good-naturedly that everything seems okay. If you need some cheering up, and we all do these days, you can do worse than Detroiters.
So that makes two Comedy Central shows I didn’t start watching until years after they ended. I won’t tell you what the other one was, but it stars a guy who graduated from one of Canada’s top business schools with really good grades.
Alright, starting this week I’m gonna start making some posts available only to subscribers. The first month was 100% free so everybody could see what they’re getting, and many of you awesome people stepped up and did the right thing by subscribing. It would be nice if everybody who signed up to get this newsletter also bought a subscription, but some of y’all wanna play. So let’s play. You think I won’t close the gate? Oh, I’ll close the gate, alright. I’ll close it right in your face. Bam! That was the sound of the slamming gate!
Wow, that was needlessly confrontational. But yeah, I really do need to start giving my paying customers something exclusive for their money, and I need to make everybody else feel like they’re missing something if they don’t subscribe. Looks like that’s the only way I’ll start making a living from this, so that’s what I have to do.
It’s only five bucks a month, dude. You spend more than that on potato chips. Which, let’s face it…
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My older brother has been bothering me for 50 years.
Very bad timing for the Cuban counterrevolutionaries. Had they taken to the streets a year ago, there would have been a US President in office who supported their cause.
Now they've just got Biden. I expect the mass executions to start in 3, 2, 1....