Tag: Marsha Blackburn

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Following the Script

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson (Photo: Wikimedia | Creative Commons)

Sometimes I think about jumping ship. Perhaps I flatter myself, but I think I have some felicity with a turn of phrase. I have, on occasion, inspired an emotional response from my readers. Maybe I’m letting my ego run wild, but I think I could add something to any bench of speechifiers. Why not me?

What, one might ask, has prompted this flight of fancy?

Why it’s the senate confirmation hearing for U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, of course! As I write these words, the hearings are still ongoing, and it’s becoming apparent beyond parody how different are the standards to which we hold certain individuals. Consider, for example, the stark difference in qualifications between, say, Judge Jackson and Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn, who grilled Jackson on the first day of the hearing. If you so happen to be surfing the world wide web, I suggest contrasting the two officials’ Ballotpedia pages.

Jackson “received a bachelor’s degree in government, magna cum laude, and a J.D., cum laude, from Harvard University in 1992 and 1996, respectively. She served as the supervising editor of the Harvard Law Review from 1995 to 1996.” Blackburn, just for comparison, “graduated from Mississippi State University with a bachelor’s in home economics.”

Jackson’s page also boasts a lengthy list of awards. But I shouldn’t be unfair. Blackburn’s name is in a New York Times headline this week. To wit, the Times published an article by Charlie Savage titled “Echoing Conservative Grievances, Blackburn Miscasts Jackson’s Views.”

If you’ve seen any of the video from the hearing, you already know that transgender athletes, progressive education, parental rights, and (of course) critical race theory (CRT) were on the senator’s list of grievances. Most of the issues were, to be generous, something of a leap. Blackburn misquoted her way through Jackson’s record, apparently attempting to prove that Jackson was an agent of the deep state, hell-bent on introducing her secret biases into the American legal system.

“Ms. Blackburn also described three instances in which Judge Jackson ordered the release of inmates, including ‘a convict who murdered a U.S. marshal,’” Savage writes in the Times article. “The cases appeared to match three Covid-era rulings by the judge under a compassionate release law. The senator omitted the context: The man who killed a U.S. marshal, for instance, did so in 1971, had since served 49 years, and was 72 at the time of his release, with myriad health problems.”

Ah yes, those dangerous 72-year-olds. What a menace! Surely, this is proof that Judge Jackson is “soft on crime.”

Is that all it takes? One has only to mumble their way through a list of talking points, and one of the nation’s two foremost political parties is all too ready to celebrate them? Don’t we expect more from our senators? There are only 100 of them! Can we not expect them to comport themselves with some dignity? At the very least, can they not misquote people during a nationally televised hearing?

Of course, the lion’s share of the blame is undoubtedly because Jackson is Black. I have no doubt that the complaints from senators and Fox News hosts are owed primarily to racism, particularly any so-called “concern” about the judge’s qualifications for the role.

It’s a disturbing trend and a truly sad state of affairs. And if people think this behavior is acceptable while on camera, imagine what must happen in so many interviews, meeting rooms, and who-knows-where-else across the country. The unnecessary scrutiny some people must contend with, the free pass others get to make mistakes again and again and again. What really frightens me is that there seems to be a significant portion of Americans who think that it’s normal to twist the facts to fit a narrative, for whom fact checking is an anachronism.

So I wonder sometimes what it’s like to join the party for whom qualifications only matter if you’re talking about the other team. Why be constrained by facts, truth, common decency, or the belief that everyone deserves a fair shot? It must be an easy gig, following that well-worn script, if you can find a way to sleep at night.

All you have to do is speak loudly and carry a big grudge.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Crackpot Theories

Photo: Syda Productions | Dreamstime.com

Another crackpot conspiracy theory has entered the fray. Last week, the right-wing rag Washington Free Beacon took some liberties and a giant leap of logic, reporting that President Joe Biden’s administration will be handing out free crack pipes as part of a $30 million health grant package.

Before long, the headline — “Biden Admin To Fund Crack Pipe Distribution To Advance ‘Racial Equity’” — was out. The article was shared hither and yon, with at least one local news organization repeating it. Prominent Republican politicians lost no time getting in on the game, with Tennessee’s senior senator, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, releasing a video claiming that the Biden administration planned to set up vending machines to distribute crack pipes.

You know, because why not bypass marijuana decriminalization and go straight for crack pipe distribution?

Around the same time, The Daily Beast reported that the claim was false. A spokesperson from the Department of Health and Human Services was interviewed, but they never said that crack pipes were part of the package. In fact, what the spokesperson did say was that “all kits must comply with the law.”

The kits in question are, it’s true, smoking kits. They’re part of a measure to reduce the risk to those addicted to illicit substances, in what’s usually termed harm reduction. “Safe smoking kits have been identified to reduce the spread of disease,” reads the report, and to that end, the kits would include things like brass screens, rubber mouthguards, and disinfectant wipes.

The grant package also includes funding for things like screening for diseases such as HIV, syringe and medicine disposal, safe sex kits, wound care, overdose reversal drugs, and community outreach.

In other words, there are no vending machines distributing free crack pipes, and nobody’s getting high off of anything paid for by this package.

The HHS and the White House denied the crackpot crack pipe claim. The email exchange with the Washington Free Beacon reporter was turned over to the reporter from The Daily Beast, and there was no mention of crack pipes. Various fact checkers weighed in as well. By that point, of course, the damage was done. I doubt that “crack pipe vending machines” will ever leave the talking-point toolbox of far-right politicians. It’s a specter that will haunt any conversation about harm reduction in the future, like microchips in vaccines, former President Obama’s birth certificate, and ritualistic Satanic abuse.

You almost can’t blame them. It really is the perfect right-wing talking point, especially with the “racial equity” phrase in that initial headline. “Look what critical race theory leads to,” I can imagine some self-professed conservative talking head saying. “Right to crack pipe vending machines. And they’ll put them in your neighborhood.” It’s just the right mix of racism, classism, moral outrage, and fear mongering. The best thing about it? Since it was never going to happen anyway, it’s a perfect thing to campaign on. As the aforementioned vending machines will never materialize, that’s one campaign promise anyone can keep.

I’m not sure what pains me more, that a new bogeyman has been added to the right-wing arsenal or that serious public relations damage has no doubt been done to the legitimate need for harm reduction measures. Probably the latter. If the past two years have made anything clear, it’s that any community is only as healthy as its least-cared-for members. Meaning it’s really in everyone’s best interest to help take care of the people who are suffering.

Of course, I make these points, as I often do, because I hope they’ll reach some conservative-minded neighbor or family member, someone who cares about the bottom line, who wants to know what’s in it for them. But really, I just think it’s the right thing to do. To work to reduce the suffering of our fellow human beings — isn’t that a noble calling? A worthwhile use of resources?

Oh well. That’s probably enough of my crackpot theories.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Tilting at Border Walls

US Senate Photography | Wikimedia

Last weekend, I found myself in a long conversation with my brother-in-law’s father, Art. (Is there a name for that relationship?) He’s a college professor, so we have similarly oriented jobs — we both do a lot of sitting, thinking, writing, and reading. And sitting. Lots of sitting. But he describes himself as a conservative; whereas, I typically call myself a progressive.

Art lives in a small town in rural Middle Tennessee. I live in Memphis. We’re both men and we’re both white, so we have that mountain of privilege in common. Still, with our political and geographic identities being what they are, if you only listened to the national news outlets, you’d think we would be unable to have a five-minute-long conversation without smashing a wine bottle over one another’s heads. So, even though we politely disagree about some potential solutions to certain problems, we can usually agree that issues like pollution, pandemics, or disappearing newspapers are problems.

One of the more frightening items on that list, as we saw it, is the devolution of political discourse into a world in which there is but one criteria — absolute, unquestioning loyalty.

This week, Politico reported that Sen. Marsha Blackburn is among a list of GOP politicians being eyed as a running mate for a 2024 bid by our former president, Mr. Donald J. Trump.

To which I say, “Sure. Why not?”

Sen. Blackburn certainly isn’t interested in Tennessee or in any of the problems we face. She’s more often found using her platform to talk about our dealings with China or the southern border of the United States. If you made a drinking game out of her 2018 debate with former Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen and had taken a shot every time she said “Obama” or “NRA,” you would have died of alcohol poisoning. It seems clear to me that Sen. Blackburn wants to work on a larger stage, to vie for national attention. She can’t be bothered with such pedestrian concerns as infrastructure in her own state, or gun violence, healthcare access, poverty, education, or any of the other problems plaguing Tennessee. She’s got what it takes to make it to the top, though.

As Politico’s Marc Caputo reported in the aforementioned article, “Those familiar with his thinking say his selection will be determined by two factors that rate highest in Trump’s estimation: unquestioned loyalty and an embrace of the former president’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.”

And there we have it. No wonder Marsha’s name is being floated as a potential running mate. She is, after all, happy to parrot the lie of the stolen election. In this way, Tennessee’s senior senator represents much of what I find so hard to stomach about this moment in time. We are knocking on the door of year two of a global pandemic, with the newly arisen Omicron variant presenting another cause for concern. As the Great Resignation rolls on, we find ourselves in the middle of a long-overdue reckoning about workers rights. These are national issues, yes, but they are also ones that specifically impact Tennessee. No elected official has unfettered power, but it seems that a wily politician could leverage the national zeitgeist into some sort of strategy to implement change for their constituents. But that’s not going to play well on Fox — or in Mar-a-Lago.

Unquestioning loyalty is the name of the game, and under those rules, there’s no incentive to reach across the aisle. There’s not even a reason to attempt to fix problems such as healthcare access or stagnated wages and unsafe working conditions. To do so might mean admitting someone from the opposing party has the right idea, at least occasionally, and it’s a short road from there to an angry mob chanting “Hang, [Insert Politician’s Name]” on the lawn.

I suppose it’s no wonder why Sen. Blackburn and her ilk ignore real problems in favor of the same list of talking points, happily tilting at fantastical border walls. But it’s not helping any of us living in the real world.

Jesse Davis

jesse@memphisflyer.com

Categories
News News Blog

Senate Hearing Experts Warn of Holiday Dangers

(Credit: U.S. Senate)

A Tuesday Senate hearing on holiday toy safety found a massive increase in button battery-related injuries in small children last year and reviewed legislation to reduce them. 

Button batteries are those small, silver, coin-shaped batteries that power a range of small devices like watches, hearing aids, television remotes, garage door openers, and more. From March to September 2020, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission discovered a 93 percent increase in button battery-related injuries in children aged 5-9. The injuries mostly involved ingestion, but some involved children placing a small battery in their nose or ear.

During the seventh-month time period, most children were at home as Covid kept many schools closed. Their parents were likely home, too, and distracted by balancing home life, work, and, maybe, teaching their children. 

“Having kids around products with coin batteries with distracted parts goes a long way to explain the increase,” Dr. Benjamin Hoffman with the American Academy of Pediatrics said during Tuesday’s hearing. 

Having kids around products with coin batteries with distracted parts goes a long way to explain the increase

Dr. Benjamin Hoffman, American Academy of Pediatrics

Hoffman told lawmakers he wanted rules for manufacturers to make it as hard as possible to remove button batteries from devices. He suggested also they add a coat of a bittering agent on removable batteries so children would spit them out if ingested. Though, Hoffman said no hard data exists on the efficacy of doing so. 

To add these protections, lawmakers reviewed Reese’s Law. It would create those standards to make it hard for children to access the batteries in products. It would also create new warning-label requirements to tell of the hazards of ingesting button batteries. 

The proposed law is named for Reese Hamsith. The Texas girl swallowed a button battery at age one and did not live to her next birthday. Reese’s mother, Trista — founder of the child advocacy group Reese’s Purpose — told lawmakers Tuesday of Reese’s ordeal. 

Trista said her daughter swallowed a button battery in October 2020. She then wasn’t “her spunky self” and a doctor diagnosed the girl with croup, her mother said. 

“After returning home we noticed a button battery missing from a device,” she said. “We tore the house apart but couldn’t find it. A quick Google search had us rushing to the emergency room. An x-ray confirmed that she had ingested the battery and doctors performed emergency surgery to remove the battery.”

But the battery created a hole in her esophagus and trachea, allowing food and water into the little girl’s lungs and air into her stomach. The girl died after a surgery to close the hole in December 2020. 

Lawmakers also considered the dangers of a raft of holiday toys, especially counterfeits not made to comply with safety standards, in the hearing called “Hidden Holiday Hazards: Product Safety During the Holiday Season.” Last year, 150,000 toy-related injuries and nine deaths were reported to the federal government, experts said Tuesday. 

Last year, 150,000 toy-related injuries and nine deaths were reported to the federal government.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) told of a Tennessee family that bought a hoverboard as gift online. The hoverboard caught fire and burned the family’s house down. She urged manufacturers, retailers, and government overseers to closely monitor supply chains for poorly made and counterfeit toy products.

“So, these are the things that we watch out for to make certain that the supply chain is going to be safe — and as more consumers are buying from third-party platforms — that they’re going to have the insight into where these products are coming from and why these products might be unsafe,” Blackburn said.

Holiday dangers extend from toys, too, lawmakers were told, to Christmas tree lights, menorahs, and more. From 2016 to 2018, 100 Christmas tree fires and 1,100 candle fires resulted in 30 deaths and 180 injuries, according to federal data. 

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Prickly City

Irish poet Oscar Wilde opined in his 1899 essay, “The Decay of Lying,” that “Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” The shortened version of Wilde’s quote — life imitates art — has become something of a go-to aphorism in the ensuing decades. But it seems to me life is no longer imitating art so much as it is imitating a reprise of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, and we’ve all fallen down the rabbit hole.

How else to explain the bizarre phenomenon of Fox News spending countless hours of airtime last week on the decision by the publishers of the Dr. Seuss children’s books to not reprint six titles because they contained ethnically insensitive or xenophobic content? You can easily look up the images in question online. They’re mainly racial-stereotype caricatures that were commonly used in the 1930s and 1940s, and it’s pretty understandable why the books wouldn’t be reprinted in 2021.

But that reasoning doesn’t adequately stoke the Fox News outrage machine. Nope. The real reason Seuss books are going away is because of liberal “cancel culture,” the current rallying cry of the snowflake right. To their credit, it’s a useful phrase, really, one that can be applied to almost anything that is stopped or rejected.

The Commercial Appeal, for instance, has just replaced its long-running conservative cartoon, Mallard Fillmore (which “balanced” Doonesbury), with another conservative political cartoon, Prickly City, which features the adventures of a conservative young Black woman who once fell in love with Tucker Carlson. I am not making this up. Unless Wikipedia made it up.

At any rate, letter writers to the CA are predictably complaining that lame duck (literally) Mallard Fillmore is the victim of cancel culture. The truth is less outrageous: The editors at the CA, a privately owned company, decided to pull one conservative cartoon and replace it with another one. It’s kind of like when Beverly Hill SVU (or whatever) gets the axe from CBS.

Or like when thousands of Fox viewers demanded the resignation of Shepard Smith when he came out as gay. Or was that different?

But wait, there’s more. It turns out that the ancient plastic toy, Mr. Potato Head, is also a victim of cancel culture. And also the subject of many hours of pearl-clutching commentary in conservative media circles. How dare they remove the fedora and mustache of Mr. Potato Head?! What’s next, G.I. Josephine?

It’s kind of like when conservatives went nuts and boycotted the Dixie Chicks after they criticized George W. Bush. Or was that different?

Cancel culture has also become the rallying cry of conservative Republicans on Capitol Hill. Last week, in referencing public attitudes toward COVID, President Biden said, “The last thing we need is Neanderthal thinking, that in the meantime everything’s fine, take off your mask. Forget it. It still matters.” The nerve!

Thankfully, our own Senator Marsha Blackburn was quickly on the case, defending the downtrodden Neanderthal people on Fox News: “Neanderthals are hunter-gatherers. They’re protectors of their family,” she said. “They are resilient. They’re resourceful. They tend to their own. Joe Biden needs to rethink what he is saying.”

No one had the heart to tell Marsha that Neanderthals have been extinct for a few thousand years. I mean, except for a few descendents in Congress, the ones who tried to cancel the last election. Or was that cancellation different?

Senator Ted Cruz asked Attorney General nominee Merrick Garland how he felt about cancel culture in a Senate hearing. Garland responded: “I do not have an understanding of the meaning of the term sufficient to comment.” Which sounds about right.

Shouty Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan demanded that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hold a congressional hearing on the pressing national crisis of cancel culture. She ignored him, thereby missing a golden opportunity to schedule such a hearing and then cancel it at the last moment.

That would have been artful.

Categories
News The Fly-By

MEMernet: Marsha Dragged and Save Black Lodge Video

Marsha’s Turnaround

The internet dragged Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn last week. George Takei (yes, that one) summed it up in a tweet that said, “How it started, how it’s going, etc.”

Takei showed two tweets from Blackburn. In one from October 2020, she blasted then-presidential-candidate Joe Biden for being “all talk and no action.” In another from last week, she blasted Biden for his many and quick actions as president saying, “30 executive orders and actions signed in only three days’ time. @POTUS, you can’t govern with a pen and a phone.”

In a response, Jaime Harrison, current chairman of the Democratic National Committee, tweeted at Blackburn saying “you’ve been in Congress for almost 20 years. You have only sponsored three bills that have become law: two were to rename post offices and the other to study a battlefield.”

Save Black Lodge

Owners of Black Lodge video store launched an Indiegogo this month to “pay our rent until we can get to the other side of COVID.

“Right now we’re making enough to pay our employees and almost all of our other bills, but rent is what’s killing us,” reads the site. As of press time, the store had earned $9,233 of its $25,000 goal.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Little Dark Age

“If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition, and ignorance on the other.” — Ulysses S. Grant.

As I write this, it’s the day after the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, 24 hours after politicians like 8th District Congressman David Kustoff and Senator Marsha Blackburn release their annual pious MLK quotes on Twitter. Because if anyone exemplifies the ideals of Dr. King, it’s Republicans who supported the overturning of a presidential election in order to appease the deluded, hateful supporters of a narcissistic would-be autocrat.

Kustoff had the utter audacity to cite this King quote: “Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.” Are you kidding me? Tell it to your friends who were at the Capitol last week, David. Tell it to the president whose boots you licked. I expect this kind of stuff from Blackburn, who’s been a lightweight and sellout for years. But Kustoff is smarter than Blackburn. He knows better. His cynical embrace of Trump’s corruption and lies is appalling.

Today is also the day before President-elect Joe Biden gets inaugurated in front of — what? — 300 people? Thanks to Kustoff’s and Blackburn’s pals, the ignorant yahoos who destroyed the Capitol a couple weeks ago, this year’s inauguration will feature a “crowd” made up of 25,000 troops. Trump won’t be there, having pardoned a bunch of sleazos before hopping a jet to Mar-a-Lago for some well-deserved R&R before his Senate impeachment trial. But there will be some good news for him: His only inaugural crowd will no doubt have been larger than Biden’s. Sean Spicer, wherefore art thou?

This new administration and this new Congress and Senate take over a country in chaos. Millions of Americans are unemployed, facing eviction, a lack of food and money, and an epidemic that will have killed half-a-million of us by the end of February, roughly a year after we were told by President Trump that it would “just go away.”

It’s a country in which more than 70 million people bought into the Trump fever-dream, a twisted vision that tapped into fear and latent anger more effectively than most of us imagined was possible. Take a minute to think about what Trump (and his political and media enablers) convinced his base to fear and/or distrust: any Democrat, any liberal, immigrants of color, journalists and most major media outlets, Black people, Mexicans, Antifa, “cancel culture,” mail-in voting, the American electoral system, scientists and medical experts, the Justice department, military leaders … I could go on.

Joe Biden says he wants to unite the country. I wish him luck. Maybe start with bringing back some iteration of the Fairness Doctrine, some sort of legislation that will ensure that knowingly broadcasting lies and disinformation on public airways or providing a place for it on the internet won’t be tolerated. It’s not just Fox News or OANN. It’s Facebook, Twitter, Google, Instagram, you name it. There has to be some sort of recalibration, some way to monitor this stuff. Too many people are being radicalized by lies and false conspiracies. The fact that millions of people actually bought into the insanity of QAnon is itself astounding and terrifying.

Similarly, the Big Lie about Trump “winning in a landslide” was allowed to be spread unchecked in too many places by too many people without pushback or fact-checking. We’ll be dealing with the fallout from it for quite some time. Thanks, David and Marsha. Good work.

Now that we have some vaccines that work, we have to figure out how to get the medicine into as many Americans as quickly as possible. The Trump administration’s “plan” of leaving it up to the states has resulted in an ineffective, spread-shot system without consistency or logic. Over the weekend, I saw several posts on social media from folks who’d gotten the vaccine. Only one was over 75 years old. They were all from out of state. Lots of folks were asking, understandably, “How did you do that?”

I went to the Shelby County Health Department website on Monday and learned nothing about how to schedule a shot. I followed a link to the state of Tennessee COVID site, where I could fill out a multi-page survey (outdated) to see if I was eligible for a shot, but there was no mechanism for signing up, and no indication of when I’d be able to do so. We’re still stumbling around. Hopefully, when the feds take over, they’ll flip on a light switch. We’ve been in this little dark age for too long.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

The Tiger in the Bathroom

As we enter what portends to be the week in which we will see the final death spasms of Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the American presidential election, an early candidate has emerged for Time magazine’s 2021 Person of the Year. That would be an unassuming political functionary named Bradford Jay Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state.

Raffensperger, a lifelong Republican, was the recipient of a phone call on Saturday from our clearly demented president, who spent the better part of an hour spewing rumors, conspiracy theories, and blatant lies, all the while haranguing, threatening, and begging the secretary of state to just, you know, change the state’s election results. What’s the harm?

“C’mon, fellas,” the president finally whined, “I just need 11,780 votes.” It was a line straight out of Goodfellas, the closing argument of a mob boss. Just cheat a little for me, or it might not go well for you.

It turned out that Raffensperger, a Trump voter and supporter, had a spine. He was the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike, the last line of defense against a would-be autocrat determined to overturn a free and fair election based on no evidence whatsoever, only a desperate, overweening desire to stay in power.

At long last, and not a moment too soon, Donald J. Trump encountered a Republican with enough integrity, with enough sand in his craw, to simply say no to the president’s ludicrous kabuki horror show. “Your data is wrong,” Raffensperger said. By which he meant, your “data” comes from fools on Parler and OANN. You are the emperor but you have no clothes.

After the phone call, Trump was unhappy, so he went on Twitter and blasted Raffensperger, accusing him of not answering questions, of being untruthful. And once again, Trump was rebuffed by a single man with the stones to call his bluff. Turns out that the secretary of state had receipts: A tape of the entire phone call was released to the media so Americans could judge for themselves who was telling the truth, and who was not.

Trump supporters immediately got the vapors, gasping at the audacity of Raffensperger releasing a tape to prove he wasn’t a liar. A gentlemen, the Trumpers huffed, simply doesn’t do such things. It was a bit like complaining that Captain Sullenberger forgot to put on his turn signal before landing a crippled passenger jet in the middle of the Hudson River.

So what’s left of the Republican party after Duh Furor leaves in two weeks? You’ve got your never-Trumpers (Republicans who never drank the Orange-Aid). Then there are “concerned and troubled” Republicans, including Senators Susan Collins, Ben Sasse, Lisa Murkowski, and Mitt Romney, who aren’t all in for Trump, but who don’t speak against him without checking the wind. Next are the Trump panderers, those making the cynical political calculation to go along with whatever insanity Trump pulls out of his butt just to keep the magical “base” on their side. These are the folks who will stand up in the Senate and in Congress this week and proclaim that the election is “tainted,” while showing no evidence to support any of it. This group includes Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn and fellow Trump-spawn from hell, Senator-elect Bill Hagerty.

So what’s left after that? Nothing but “the base,” the potpourri of anti-abortionists, evangelicals, billionaires, gun-rights nuts, assorted racists and white supremacists, QAnon conspiracists, and millions of pissed-off caucasians who love Donald Trump because he tells them their lives are screwed-up only because other people (Black and brown and Chinese) are screwing them.

When Trump leaves office, how does this disparate bowl of fruits and nuts and cynical creeps ever reassemble itself into a national political party? I don’t think it does. The GOP has let itself become a personality cult. When Trump goes, it will splinter into a pile of pick-up sticks. They have nothing in common but Trump, who in 2024 — if he’s alive and/or not in prison — has no chance of winning the presidency again. It wasn’t even close this time. He lost by seven million votes, and his old white base is dying off.

It’s more likely that the former president will keep doing what he’s done all his life: get media attention by spewing whatever outrageous thoughts float to the top of his withering cortex; find suckers to grift and prop him up; and play golf as much as possible.

After Trump leaves, the Republicans will wake up like the wasted partiers in the morning-after scene of The Hangover, wondering what happened, why there’s a chicken walking around, where that inflatable sex doll came from — and what to do about that tiger in the bathroom.

Bruce VanWyngarden brucev@memphisflyer.com

Categories
News The Fly-By

MEMernet: Walking (Dead) in Memphis, Twitter Clapback, and 901 Reasons

CREDIT: Posted to Reddit by u/Dbfresh0

Walking (Dead) In Memphis

Downtown Memphis is invaded by flesh-eating Walkers in the Walking Dead mobile game.

Posted to Reddit by u/Dbfresh0

Marsha, Marsha Jemele Hill/Twitter

Writer and podcast host Jemele Hill roasted Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn with a comeback tweet heard ’round the internet last week.

Blackburn tweeted, “We will never rewrite the Constitution of the United States.” Hill responded, “If there wasn’t a rewrite, you wouldn’t be a Senator (and also couldn’t vote) and I’d be enslaved.”

901 Reasons

The city of Memphis began an online campaign recently to give citizens #901Reasons to wear a mask, social distance, and stamp out COVID-19 here. This one is the best so far.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Justice Ginsburg Succumbs to Pancreatic Cancer

CREDIT: Official Photo

Official Photo

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg

As the weekend began, amid what was already a smoldering political landscape, the nation got the sad and long-dreaded news that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, aged 87, had died, a victim of recurrent pancreatic cancer.

Justice Ginsburg, who had been the leading liberal light on the Court, leaves behind a tribunal dominated by conservative jurists, and speculation inevitably ensued as to what comes next.

Meanwhile, the immediate reaction, transcending partisan divisions, was simply one of sorrow. Among the early reactions:

“I’m very sad to learn of the passing of Justice Ginsburg. She was a marvelous lady who valued justice and nurtured justice and loved life to the fullest. She made a major difference in the lives of all Americans, but particularly in the lives of the young women who just want a chance to compete on a level playing field and pursue their dreams. Hers was a life well-lived. Thank you, RBG.” — 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen

“Justice Ginsburg brought decency, intelligence, and principle to the Supreme Court. Her life inspired many Americans, especially young women. Her service to our country deserves great respect.” — Senator Lamar. Alexander

“We are heartbroken to hear of the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a towering jurist and an empowering figure for the most vulnerable. She was a kind and gentle soul who never shied away from a fight for what’s right. The country was fortunate to have Ruth Bader Ginsburg for as long as we did. Her contributions made the United States a more just and equitable place.

“Today we lost the best of America. But it’s not just the nation that is forever changed by her service and her commitment to uphold our Constitution and the progress it demands. Every day we see women stepping up to stand on her shoulders and continue her fight. We honor her legacy, we are grateful for her work, and we are fortunate to watch the impact her life has had, and will have, on future generations. L’Shana Tovah, Justice Ginsberg, and may God rest your soul.” — Mary Mancini, Chair, Tennessee Democratic Party

“Justice Ginsburg was a smart, talented trailblazer who paved the way for women in the judiciary. She worked hard to achieve prominence on her own merit, and I thank her for her service to our country. My condolences go out to her family and friends in the wake of this loss.” — Senator Marsha Blackburn

“Justice Ginsburg was a pioneer for gender equality and an American hero. There’s so much at stake with the selection of her replacement — the fate of the Affordable Care Act and abortion rights are just two issues among many. We’ve got to vote like our lives depend on it because it’s true.” — Ashley Coffield, Tennessee Planned Parenthood

“Our thoughts and prayers are with Justice Ginsburg’s family and friends during this difficult time.” — 8th District Congressman David Kustoff

Beyond the condolences, there were immediate indications of the political undercurrent to Justice Ginsberg’s passing. The obvious question, crucial to both Democrats and Republicans: Would President Trump attempt to appoint a successor either before the November 3rd election or in the interregnum between then and January, when either he for Joe Biden would begin the next presidential term along with a new Congress?

More, as the story develops.