Tuesday Stuff (updates)

I think it’s safe to say that Jim Acosta of CNN has had enough (NSFW/H, but for a good reason)...



...and as a follow-up, this may be Joy Reid’s finest moment, going after The Swanson TV Dinner Heir – sweet! (makes up for the Bernie Sanders body language expert)...



...and sticking with the Roger Ailes conservative propaganda channel, John and Jayar tell us about “Fix and Fiends” getting all bent out of shape about “free” college (yeah, we’re already paying our tax dollars, so just allocate it for public colleges a little more fairly instead of doling out still more tax cuts and stock buybacks for people who don’t need it, as Jayar points out)...



...and I know I’m a little late on some stuff in this post including this item; Repug state rep Ray Garofalo of Louisiana mentions the “good part” of slavery – he would have been better off if he’d said, “yeah, there was a financial benefit to slavery for the slave owners, even though the practice was utterly disgusting and reprehensible for so many reasons”...I’m not sure Garofalo honestly meant for his remark to be as stoo-pid as it was since he backtracked immediately, but I guess that’s because he was called on it right away...I just think it’s ridiculous for legislators of ANY political party to be wasting their time holding hearings or discussing content in history books, mainly since the people taking offense are doing so because they want THEIR version of history recorded for the record as opposed to anyone else’s (yeah...what’s really going on here is that some good ol’ boys are butt hurt over “critical race theory”...and of course, since FL Guv Ron #DeathSantis is trying to be Trump 2.0, he’s involved in this idiotic discussion too – more here)...



Update 1 5/4/21: God almighty, what’s next? A “both sides” opinion commentary on lynching (here)??!!

Update 2 5/4/21: Still digging that hole I see (here).

Update 5/6/21: I think this is what happens when we neglect civics and social studies in our schools.

Update 5/7/21: I'm starting to wonder if these updates will ever end (here).

...and David Doel tells us about a Miami private school that is banning vaccinated teachers, which is part of the reason why we apparently aren’t going to get to “herd immunity” as noted here (mildly NSFW/H also)...



...in addition, I think David Shuster is doing a really good job with these “Rebel HQ” videos, this one having to do with the death of insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt, and of course Babbitt’s family are suing Capitol police for $10 mil in response (obligatory eye-roll)...



...and speaking of those who have departed us, RIP Olympia Dukakis (great dinner scene in Moonstruck with the also-departed John Mahoney)...



...and speaking of milestones, since it’s May 4th, we cannot ever forget this.



And speaking of The TV Network Where Truth And Reality Goes To Die (as noted at the top of this post), I’ll bet you didn’t know that its founder may have had an indirect contribution to what happened at Kent State. Well, you can argue that he did, as Gabriel Sherman does in The Loudest Voice In The Room, pgs. 69-70:

(From Ailes’ days as a political consultant):

In the spring of 1970, Ailes was in the middle of another contentious GOP primary race for an open Senate seat in Ohio, one that would have spillover effects for (the Richard Nixon presidency) and the country. Ailes was advising the Ohio congressman Robert Taft Jr. against the “law and order” candidate, Governor James Rhodes, who had been considered as a possible Nixon running mate in 1968. The race was pushing Rhodes even further to the right.

When Taft debated Rhodes in Akron in late April, Ailes walked onstage thirty seconds before airtime and handed Taft a note with one word written on it: “Kill.”

“Rhodes got shook up,” Ailes bragged afterward to a Boston Globe reporter. “I gave Taft the note, partly facetious, partly for a laugh – just to try to get Bob to be a little tougher in his answers.”

The gambit worked: the Toledo Blade noted that “the usually placid Mr. Taft accused the governor of lying about his record and told him he should be ashamed of himself.” A few days after the debate, Rhodes flew to Kent State University, which was engulfed in student unrest. At a press conference on the morning of May 3rd, Rhodes lashed into protestors who had burned the ROTC building the previous night and declaimed that the demonstrators were “worst than the Brown Shirts and the Communist element.”

Rhodes’s inflammatory speech intensified the conflict at Kent. In the chaos, National Guardsmen fired into a group of marchers. The volley of more than 60 shots in 13 seconds left four dead and nine wounded. Kent State, (Nixon Chief of Staff) Bob Haldeman later wrote in his book The Ends of Power, “marked a turning point for Nixon, a beginning of his downward slide towards Watergate.”

What’s past is prologue, isn’t it?