GIVE TIL IT HURTS!

Sticks and stones

Two funnies to enliven your Saturday evening: one via Revolver, one purloined from our chum Miguel over at GFZ. I’m happy to supply my own headline for tonight’s first selection: Dumb bint opens yap, beclowns self.

To the people who think Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump are crazy but that trans people are made up, that “cancel culture” has gone too far, that “men should be men and women should women” — congratulations, you agree with Putin. You are his ideological ally.

Yeah, okay, okay, sure. I agree with Putin, whatever. I far prefer that than ever being seen in public agreeing with the intellectually-stunted likes of you and yours. About anything at all. Ever. Now go swing that cute little butt of your’n on out to the kitchren and fetch me a beer and a samwidge, whydon’tcha.

This next one I like a lot better. It dovetails kinda nicely with my previous post, I think.

david-goliath.jpg

Continue reading “Sticks and stones”

1

Say it ain’t so, Gene!

Well, THIS is just depressing as all hell.

Gene Simmons, the singer for legendary rock band KISS, viciously attacked unvaccinated people during a Wednesday interview with “TalkShopLive.”

Discussing the Covid-19 pandemic, Simmons told Steve Harkins, “I know that there are Flat Earth Society people who believe in all sorts of things. ‘They died because they were fat or because they smoked.’ No bitch, they died because they got Covid.”

Of course, the ignorant musician is unaware of commonly found information such as data showing nearly 80% of Covid hospitalizations occur in obese people.

Next, Simmons appeared to diss NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers for choosing not to get the Covid vaccine, saying, “I don’t care if you play football or not, stay away from evil people who don’t care about your health.”

“You are not allowed to infect other people just because you think you’ve got rights that are delusional of course,” the frontman added. “This delusional, evil idea that you get to do whatever you want and the rest of the world be damned is really terrible. We’ve got to identify those people and bring them out into the open so you know who they are.”

“If you are willing to walk among us unvaccinated, you are an enemy,” he said, concluding his tirade.

Works for me, pal, if that’s the way you really want it. Only know this: as you have declared me “an enemy” for refusing to abandon my most deeply-held principles on the say-so of a clearly ignorant, fearful bully like yourself, I now declare you to be an enemy of MINE.

Consider that my personal vow to do you as much injury as I am physically capable of, in all forms or permutations, using every means I can conceive or contrive. If it truly must be war between us—a condition I truly, deeply deplore—then let there be no mercy, no quarter, and no surcease either asked or given on either side. If it’s a fight you people want, then I firmly believe you by God ought to get yourselves one, all you can stomach of it: hard, bloody, and brutal, until you retch your throats red and raw from it.

So be it, then.

21

In the wrong hands Part the Second

A plethora of information is emerging on the Baldwin tragedy—and that’s exactly what it is, although frankly I still don’t give two shits about Alec Baldwin’s suffering, and am not likely ever to—and the more that comes out, the worse the whole thing smells.

‘Rust’ crew describes on-set gun safety issues and misfires days before fatal shooting
Hours before actor Alec Baldwin fatally shot a cinematographer on the New Mexico set of “Rust” with a prop gun, a half-dozen camera crew workers walked off the set to protest working conditions.

The camera operators and their assistants were frustrated by the conditions surrounding the low-budget film, including complaints about long hours, long commutes and waiting for their paychecks, according to three people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to comment.

Safety protocols standard in the industry, including gun inspections, were not strictly followed on the “Rust” set near Santa Fe, the sources said. They said at least one of the camera operators complained last weekend to a production manager about gun safety on the set.

Three crew members who were present at the Bonanza Creek Ranch set on Saturday said they were particularly concerned about two accidental prop gun discharges.
Baldwin’s stunt double accidentally fired two rounds Saturday after being told that the gun was “cold” — lingo for a weapon that doesn’t have any ammunition, including blanks — two crew members who witnessed the episode told the Los Angeles Times.

“There should have been an investigation into what happened,” a crew member said. “There were no safety meetings. There was no assurance that it wouldn’t happen again. All they wanted to do was rush, rush, rush.”

A colleague was so alarmed by the prop gun misfires that he sent a text message to the unit production manager. “We’ve now had 3 accidental discharges. This is super unsafe,” according to a copy of the message reviewed by The Times.

The tragedy occurred Thursday afternoon during filming of a gunfight that began in a church that is part of the old Western town at the ranch. Baldwin’s character was supposed to back out of the church, according to production notes obtained by The Times. It was the 12th day of a 21-day shoot.

Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was huddled around a monitor lining up her next camera shot when she was accidentally killed by the prop gun fired by Baldwin.

The actor was preparing to film a scene in which he pulls a gun out of a holster, according to a source close to the production. Crew members had already shouted “cold gun” on the set. The filmmaking team was lining up its camera angles and had yet to retreat to the video village, an on-set area where the crew gathers to watch filming from a distance via a monitor.

Instead, the B-camera operator was on a dolly with a monitor, checking out the potential shots. Hutchins was also looking at the monitor from over the operator’s shoulder, as was the movie’s director, Joel Souza, who was crouching just behind her.

Baldwin removed the gun from its holster once without incident, but the second time he did so, ammunition flew toward the trio around the monitor. The projectile whizzed by the camera operator but penetrated Hutchins near her shoulder, then continued through to Souza. Hutchins immediately fell to the ground as crew members applied pressure to her wound in an attempt to stop the bleeding.

According to something I read yesterday and can’t seem to find now for whatever reason, the director had called for another take after an already long day, to which Baldwin objected in a joking fashion, pointing the gun at the director and inexplicably pulling the trigger. Maybe so, maybe not so. Anybody who’s spent significant time on film sets—which I have, way more than once, in various roles and situations ranging from what’s known as “talent” to invited guest—knows well enough how grueling the work is, how long the days can be, and how seriously it all wears everybody involved down. Onwards.

Labor trouble had been brewing for days on the dusty set at the Bonanza Creek Ranch near Santa Fe.

Shooting began on Oct. 6 and members of the low-budget film said they had been promised the production would pay for their hotel rooms in Santa Fe.

But after filming began, the crews were told they instead would be required to make the 50-mile drive from Albuquerque each day, rather than stay overnight in nearby Santa Fe. That rankled crew members who worried that they might have an accident after spending 12 to 13 hours on the set.

Hutchins had been advocating for safer conditions for her team and was tearful when the camera crew left, said one crew member who was on the set.

As the camera crew — members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees — spent about an hour assembling their gear at the Bonanza Creek Ranch, several nonunion crew members showed up to replace them, two of the knowledgeable people said.

One of the producers ordered the union members to leave the set and threatened to call security to remove them if they didn’t leave voluntarily.

“Corners were being cut — and they brought in nonunion people so they could continue shooting,” the knowledgeable person said.

The shooting occurred about six hours after the union camera crew left.

From the sound of things, and as is usually the case, there’s plenty of blame to go around here; Baldwin is hardly the Lone Ranger on that. So stipulated. Nonetheless, I am still not prepared to go anywhere near as far to sympathize with the prick as Andrea Widburg appears to be:

Part of me pities Baldwin a great deal. He was seen weeping outside the sheriff’s office because, while he is an arrogant, entitled, aggressive, obnoxious git, he’s not a killer. His entire self-image is of someone who defends life (never mind that he’s fanatically pro-abortion). Now, though, he’s taken a life, something that will haunt him forever. That deserves compassion because all of us go through life knowing that one stupid, thoughtless moment (perhaps a moment of inattention when driving) could see each of us take a life, too.

True enough. Also, immaterial. Metaphors and analogies, helpful as they can be at times in establishing perspective and broadening our understanding, break down pretty fast in a case like this—all the more so because “cases like this” are in fact extremely rare, if not totally unique. And when it comes to being unstinting with our compassion Baldwin, by his own words, deeds, and untrammeled arrogance has made himself a damned tough sell in ANY case, this one more than any other. For instance:



That is but one example of many Baldwin lectures reviling the 2A and its supporters personally, by no means the harshest and most obnoxious of them either. The sanctimonious putz has made a fortune shooting people in the movies, yet blankly rejects the very idea of anyone but the film industry having access to them, regardless of how learned, experienced, skilled, or responsible in their use they might be.

Well, screw that noise, and screw Alec Baldwin too. Bill joins Aesop in disagreeing with my assessment, most heartily:

On a set, the actor is no more responsible for checking a firearm – and very likely would not be permitted to do so – than you would be if somebody handed you a toaster and expected you to check it for dangerous electrical faults before making toast.

Let me unpack that a bit. Most actors know exactly zippo about firearms. If you handed them a firearm and told them to make sure there were no live rounds in it, they’d probably ask you were to find the bullets in the piece. Or they’d pull the trigger three or four times to see if anything happened. More than a few actors are dumb as goldfish, and couple that low IQ level with ignorance about firearms is a recipe for disaster.

That’s why firearms on a set are always handled and supervised by an armorer or at least a prop master who is responsible for making sure they are safe.

And those people generally do an unbelievably excellent job. I am aware of only three deaths involving the accidental firing of prop guns in the entire history of the business. Considering how many millions of hours of production time we are talking about, you are far, far, far more likely to be killed by a malfunctioning toaster.

Second, a lot of actors, and especially stars, have “people” who do stuff for them. Lots of stuff. I know one megastar whose PA orders for him in restaurants. She follows him around to do things like that for him.

On set, actors have most things done for them. Their job is to act, not fetch, carry, check stuff, certify gun safety, or whatever. To most actors a gun is just a prop, no different than a toaster or a break-bottle for smashing over heads in a fake fight.

As I said before, there is plenty of blame to go around here, and arguments to be put forth over how and where it should be apportioned. That said, I am neither willing nor able to absolve the person who pointed it at someone and then pulled the fucking trigger of his share of it. Bill’s headline contends that “Alex Baldwin Bears No Responsibility For This Shooting.” Sorry, but I simply can NOT go there; in my opinion, that particular bridge is WAY too far for me. For his part, in a recent follow-up post on the matter Aesop says this:

As the Baldwin kerfluffle has illustrated, the shared malfunction by a host of persons reading and commenting hereabouts, and throughout the greater blogosphere, on this exact subject, is best described as thinking everything is YOUR job.

Well, you’re wrong, it’s not, and now we can all go back to whatever we were doing befo….Oh? What’s that? Explain it to you?…heavy sigh

Look, we’ve already covered first aid for any butthurt, so let’s talk turkey here, no offense, nothing personal, and we’re all grown ups.

You, Jasper, and Billy Bob all going shooting at the abandoned quarry is not Alec Baldwin working on a movie set, not even when it’s his production, on a low-budget p.o.s. being filmed in Bumfuck NM.

The lack of a prodigious number of otherwise intelligent people to discern this lies at the root of your problem.

If Jasper or BillyBob get a mite lax with muzzle discipline, or putting their booger hook on the bang switch, you may elect to call it an early day, or not invite them next time. But no one died and left you their Drill Sergeant smokey bear hat and gave you leave to have a boot camp flashback, and most people figure all this out without having it explained to them with a boot to the junkulus.

But somehow, you can’t make the leap from that, to understanding why in hell it’s not ever Baldwin’s (or any other Swinging Richard’s) job to do weapons checks on a movie set, with 40-140 people around.

It might come as a small surprise to some, but I can agree that it is not, never was, and never will be Baldwin’s job to observe the most basic fundamentals of firearm safety before aiming at someone and then pulling the trigger, based entirely on the assumption (!) that others have done their own job competently and completely. So stipulated; as Jesse Jackson used to bellow while speechifying: COMMON GROUND!

But as I see it, it most certainly IS the responsibility of any rational adult, working in whatever industry or profession, to take a moment and check for himself anyhow. Mind, this isn’t preparing lunch for the on-set catering tent, or rehearsing a risky stunt before shooting, or even wiring the lights, cameras &c. What we’re talking about here is a gun, people. Guns are extremely dangerous things, period. They are NOT to be played around with or flippantly mishandled, EVER, lest some innocent party be maimed or killed because of your casual negligence. I supposed it’s possible, just barely, that there might be some benighted Rip Van Winkle sort out there somewhere who, after decades of hysterical propagandizing by the gun-grabber Left—of which Alec Baldwin has been a fully-paid-up cheerleader for many years—is not aware of this. But I very much doubt it.

Aesop’s contention seems to me like a pretty good argument for seeing to it, as a matter of black-letter law, that every last projectile weapon operated by means of any explosive chemical propellant be removed from film industry hands forever. No more guns in the movies—full stop, end of story. Which, hey, I’m good with that. Then again, I’m also in favor of a blanket ban on gun ownership for ALL Leftists, so it may be that my position is a somewhat, ummm, radical one, I admit.

Interestingly enough, Baldwin can’t even fob it all off on his being an ignorant dumbass about handling guns properly, as my boldface below strongly suggests.

It’s unclear what was fired from the firearm, as The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office is still investigating, telling The Daily Beast that as of Friday afternoon, a forensics report hadn’t been completed. A spokesperson for Rust Movie Productions claimed the gun only contained blank rounds, while IATSE Local 44 said a “live single round was accidentally fired.”

Still, Tobey Bays, a prop and set artist by training and the business agent for IATSE Local 44, explained to The Daily Beast that “a live round” doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a bullet in the chamber.

He said Hollywood propmasters will “only put the amount of blanks into the gun that are meant to be shot in the scene… They’re pretty strict, they’ll always yell out, ‘Gun is hot!’ before they hand it over to the actor.”

However, the source who was on set when Baldwin discharged the prop gun on Thursday said the cast and crew were told it was a “cold” firearm during the rehearsal as they were setting up the framing.

And despite Baldwin having recently gone through a firearm-safety training session, the source said safety protocols were all but ignored by both Baldwin and the responsible production members.

Oof. If true, boy might want to consider lawyering up, I’m thinking. For me, it all still comes down to the fundamentals.

“You never let the muzzle of a weapon cover something you don’t intend to destroy,” said Carpenter, whose New Orleans-based firm has worked on the sets of scores of TV and film productions. “All guns are always loaded. Even if they are not, treat them as if they are.”

Former filmmaker and former US National Shooting Team member Peter Lake put the blame on Baldwin.

“The buck stops with Alec Baldwin on every level,” he told The Post. “It looks very bad for him. At least the captain of the Titanic had the good sense to go down with the ship.”

And that, my friends, is IT. No matter who you are; no matter what your job is and/or is not; no matter how many flunkies you have to take care of things for you, YOU DO NOT EVER—EVER—POINT A GUN AT SOMEONE AND PULL THE TRIGGER WITHOUT CHECKING IT OUT FIRST. Via GFZ, a more intelligent and aware actor named Baldwin says it well:


For my money, Adam is way more talented than Alec too, but feel free to disagree with me on that also, if you absolutely must.

Update! Arthur drives the lesson home. Film-industry types, pay close attention. Take notes, even.

I am kinda obsessive about checking a firearm when I pick it up to make sure it is unloaded. Generally I will check the chamber on a firearm when it is handed to me or I hand it to someone else, even when I literally just checked it a second earlier. It is just a habit I have gotten into as someone who has handled firearms all of my life and in several stages of my professional career been a seller of firearms. Some people think it is a little weird but I don’t care.

So today I was stowing some gear and one of my handguns was in a case. Before I put it into the safe, I reflexively racked the slide even though I knew the gun was empty. 

Clink, a round was in the magazine and chambered.

Now because I am not Alec Baldwin, everything was fine. I was treating the gun as loaded, as always, had it pointed in a safe direction, as always, had my finger away from the trigger, as always. But the gun I knew was unloaded had a round in the magazine.

That is why we check every single time. Better to verify a gun you know is unloaded a hundred times than think that a gun is unloaded when it is not. Don’t get sloppy or lazy, not ever.

Bingo. My own uncle, a highly-decorated former Marine MP and lifelong firearms enthusiast, once nearly shot himself in the leg whilst preparing to disassemble one of those “unloaded” guns for cleaning. I repeat: guns are dangerous. They are NOT to be played around with, regardless of how skilled, knowledgeable, or experienced you may be. You play stupid games with them, you will win stupid prizes. That’s all there is to it—for you, for me, for Alec Baldwin, for every single one of us, no exceptions. And no do-overs, either.

Suddenly, a reason to care about the Stupor Bowl

Since I haven’t given a fart in a whirlwind about the Negro Felons League since the first players’ strike back in the eighties, I maintained a personal tradition by wasting not one moment of my attention on this year’s Chinkenpox-attenuated Stupid Bowl sub-extravaganza. Accordingly, I spared myself the immersion in a marinade of PC scolding via the halftime ads, including the shitfling starring phonus-balonus limousine liberal and New Jersey Pudhead nonpareil Bruce Springsteed in his accustomed role.

Happily enough, Larry Correia somehow acquired an Eyes-Only-classified copy of the words the Wokester ad execs stuffed betwixt the locked jaws of the self-proclaimed Champion Of Duh Workin’ Mayan™to share with us unhip flyover-country nonentities who may have missed it, intentionally or otherwise. Before we get to that, though, here’s Correia’s idea of what the preliminary storyboarding might have been like:

“You know, sir, during our celebrity voice over talking about the dichotomy between the two sides of the country, to contrast the red staters playing in the dirt, we should put a bunch of big gleaming pretty glass buildings in the background, so that we can subtly remind them that we’re above them.”

“Good call. And for the fly over people get all the cow skulls, broken wind-mills, and silos you can find. We can’t ever let them forget their place. Alright, on that voice over, what celebrity is hot right now with those racist dipshits?”

“Cardi B? She’s a Hash Tag Strong Woman.”

“No. Everyone knows Red Staters hate women. I saw it on the Hand Maid’s Tale. We need nominally male gender identifying, someone who represents those backwards inbred hicks. Can we get Bruce Springsteen?”

“But sir, isn’t he a flaming liberal from New Jersey who campaigned for Joe Biden and who routinely sneers at our target audience of uneducated rubes? Since they’re feeling mocked, disenfranchised, and thousands of them just lost their high paying energy jobs, how can we foist a coastal elitist millionaire musician on them?”

The MBAs all share a confused and worried glance about how to overcome this seemingly insurmountable issue.

“Hmm…  But what if we stick him in a cowboy hat?”

“BRILLIANT!”

Oh, absolutely! Moving on to the script:

Hi. I’m Bruce Springsteen, millionaire musician, but today I’m driving around bumfuck nowhere in some busted ass old jeep to a melancholy soundtrack looking like an extra on Longmire so that you know I’m JUST LIKE YOU. Poor.

Look. A cross. Because Jesus or something. I don’t know. I got paid like two hundred grand for one day of work. Here’s some high-minded sounding poet laureate style voice over about how we’re all in this together that I probably recorded in the studio in my mansion.

Now I’m gonna be extra sanctimonious about how hard it is to meet in THE MIDDLE.

Red versus Blue… Sure, team blue was all #RESIST for the last four years and endless goofy investigations, but if you think security videos of 50 mystery boxes being delivered by a Detroit election van at 3:00 AM is worthy of an audit you are basically a terrorist who needs to be cancelled and driven from society.

Citizen versus Servant. Like it’s okay for riots to burn the places where citizens live and work for months on end, but if the servants are inconvenienced for a day that’s basically a coup that requires more troops than we landed on Utah Beach.

We need that connection. We need the middle. Because somebody has to pay the taxes to bail out our hedge fund buddies.

There’s a Divide. Of course that divide is your problem and totally not our fault. Look, a horse.

Our light has always found its way through the darkness. Said darkness obviously being four years of somebody we didn’t like briefly keeping us from doing every crazy ass thing we wanted to. Have some more executive orders.

But there’s hope… on the road… because we installed an old white segregationist who got millions funneled to him through his crackhead son from communist China… but if you talked about that in October you got kicked off the internet for Fake News. But now the news is real. So Hunter got a book deal from the same publishing house that cancelled a senator’s book about the dangers of Big Tech censorship.

Damn… How many crosses do you people need?

To the ReUnitied States of America. We even made the star red too because we are completely incapable of any introspection whatsoever.

Buy our shit.

Good stuff for sure. For a further setup for my payoff pitch, have yourself a gander at the damage done to Sudden Patriot Brucie’s ravaged, leathery mug by long years enjoying the Lifestyle Of The Rich And Useless:


YIKES. Also, OOF. The knockout-punchline, as coined by an astute AOSHQ commentard:

21 Bruce looks like that Indian who beat the drum in the Covington kid’s face. Posted by: x4

And—provided we all overlook the excess poundage put on by all those expensive meals cooked up by Working Class Bruce’s personal gourmet chef, along with the luxe dentition denied the penurious Chief Sues-A-Lot—well, damned if he don’t at that. Which, for a smarmy egotist like Springsprangsproing, is bound to smart a goodish bit.

Hey, who says there ain’t no justice in this world?

Disappointing, but hardly surprising

Dammit, I always loved that show too, and he was great in it. Ah well.

Actor David Cross, husband of actress Amber Tamblyn, responded to Joe Biden’s call for unity by exclaiming he wants division and even “blood.”

“After a year of pain and loss, it’s time to unite, heal, and rebuild,” Joe Biden tweeted on Saturday.

“F**k that. I want blood,” Cross responded.

Here’s hoping you get it, asshole, by the bucketload. Not ours, mind. I’m thinking it could be obtained from a different source.

Cross issuing an obvious call to violence still has not been censored by Twitter. The “Arrested Development” star later accused “MAGA chuds” of engaging in the same kind of “violent fantasy trolling.”

“I am loving the responses to this that are all, ‘come and try pussy soy lib hollywood girl woman’ as if these anonymous maga chuds & chudettes don’t practice the same exact feckless violent fantasy trolling,” he tweeted.

So, let me get this straight: your doing THE EXACT SAME FUCKING THING as the people you denounce and loathe somehow makes you…better than them?

In the wake of the election, some Trump opponents have taken the opportunity to threaten his supporters with harsh, draconian punishment no different than a McCarthyite blacklist. The sentiment apparently started when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) called for an archive of “Trump sycophants.”

“Is anyone archiving these Trump sycophants for when they try to downplay or deny their complicity in the future? I foresee a decent probability of many deleted Tweets, writings, photos in the future,” she tweeted.

Other prominent leftists agreed that Trump supporters should be shamed and pushed aside.

“If you’re a Trumper I hope the pain and anxiety you feel now is excruciating. You voted against America and for a cult leader who has no redeeming or admirable qualities. He’s a cretin who cares nothing about this country and you don’t either. You deserve all the pain and more,” tweeted former MSNBC host Toure.

Soon, motherfuckers. Soon.



Ready for the shocker, though?

Some prominent liberals and Democrats have denounced such talk as unnecessarily divisive and have even encouraged people to speak with Trump supporters.

“I’m fascinated by playing devil’s advocate and want to understand the people I disagree with. I don’t want to dismiss and malign,” comedian Whitney Cummings told The Daily Beast.

“I think it’s very self-righteous or sanctimonious to just dismiss people we disagree with without trying to understand why they believe what they believe,” she added. “I don’t get it. I grew up in Washington, D.C., mostly, but also in Virginia and West Virginia, so I grew up seeing both sides, and people believing different things. Even though I don’t agree with somebody, I don’t think they’re dumb.”

“‘You complete me’ doesn’t mean because we’re exactly alike. It means because we are different. I don’t want to live in a country without the red states,” said comedian Bill Maher. “I like traveling there. When people talk to you in Oklahoma, they’re not scanning the room to see if there’s someone more important. Because, frankly, when I’m there, there never is.”

Can I get an UNEXPECTED!™, anybody?

Well, bye

They keep promising to leave, but they never follow through.

The latest is Bruce Springsteen.

“The Boss,” as people with bad taste in music call him, said he’d be “on the next plane” to Australia if Donald Trump is reelected. “I love Australia. Every time, we have nothing but good times down there. It’s always a treat to come. Love the people, love the geography, great place for motorcycle trips, it’s close to our hearts. If Trump is re-elected – which he will not be; I’m predicting right now he’s gonna lose – if by some happenstance he should be, I’ll see you on the next plane,” Springsteen said in a recent interview.

Added bonus: there’s an incredible variety of the world’s deadliest wildlife Down Under, from insects to seamonsters to snakes and beyond. But let’s get right down to the real meat of this thing, shall we?

I don’t believe he’ll actually leave, and I don’t have any feelings about Bruce Springsteen living in the United States one way or the other. I just think it’s about time we, as a country, acknowledge a universal truth: Bruce Springsteen sucks.

He doesn’t suck because of his politics, though that doesn’t help. He sucks because his music sucks. He can’t sing, and even if he could, his songs suck.

Bruce Springsteen has spent his whole career rewriting the same “story” as a song. Here’s every Springsteen song rolled into one:

Becky’s dad doesn’t approve of the guy she’s dating, probably named Johnny, but she’s not going to let that stop their love. The factory has closed or is about to, making life in this small town even tougher than it was before. The young lovers are going to meet somewhere, probably on the outskirts of town, and go off to start their lives together, even though the odds are stacked against them. (Cue the guitar or horns.)

Enough already. Bruce Springsteen is the most overrated musician in history, followed closely by Jon Bon Jovi, who apes Bruce’s style while spending more time on his hair.

Maybe it’s something about New Jersey that makes crappy musicians, I don’t know. But I do know that being lectured, lyrically or otherwise, about how rough it is out there by a multimillionaire with a guitar and a guy on the payroll whose only job is to rip the sleeves off jean jackets to make him seem “edgy” is not talent, it’s a marketing gimmick.

Seconded, every word of it, with great big bells and a cherry on top. So just this one time, just for once: don’t talk, DO. Far as I’m concerned, the quicker that limousine liberal can put himself in the way of a funnel-web spider, a cassowary, or an eastern brown snake, the happier I’ll be.

Busted!

As I just cross-posted on MeWe: I love this story SO DAMNED MUCH.

The New Yorker has suspended reporter Jeffrey Toobin for masturbating on a Zoom video chat between members of the New Yorker and WNYC radio last week. Toobin says he did not realize his video was on.

Two people who were on the call told Motherboard separately that the call was an election simulation featuring many of the New Yorker’s biggest stars: Jane Mayer was playing establishment Republicans; Evan Osnos was Joe Biden, Jelani Cobb was establishment Democrats, Masha Gessen played Donald Trump, Andrew Marantz was the far right, Sue Halpern was left wing democrats, Dexter Filkins was the military, and Jeffrey Toobin playing the courts. There were also a handful of other producers on the call from the New Yorker and WNYC.

Both people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to speak freely, noted that it was unclear how much each individual person on the call saw, but both of the people we spoke to said that they saw Toobin jerking off. The two sources described a juncture in the election simulation when there was a strategy session, and the Democrats and Republicans went into their respective break out rooms for about 10 minutes. At this point, they said, it seemed like Toobin was on a second video call. The sources said that when the groups returned from their break out rooms, Toobin lowered the camera. The people on the call said they could see Toobin touching his penis. Toobin then left the call. Moments later, he called back in, seemingly unaware of what his colleagues had been able to see, and the simulation continued.

And we’re all supposed to believe that it’s Trump who’s the degenerate.

Update! Didn’t think of it until just now, but I believe I’m gonna put up permanent links to MeWe, Gab, and Duck Duck Go over in the right sidebar. Just as a public service, y’unnerstand.

JUSTICE FOR JUICY!

Again: play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Former “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett was indicted Tuesday by a grand jury in Chicago after a special prosecutor re-investigated allegations he bogusly reported being the victim of a January 2019 hate-crime attack, officials said.

Smollett, 37, was indicted on six counts of disorderly conduct related to making four separate false reports to Chicago Police Department officers, claiming he was the victim of a hate crime while “knowing he was not the victim of a crime,” special prosecutor Dan Webb said in a statement released Tuesday afternoon.

Webb was appointed by a Cook County judge to continue looking into the false allegations after the Cook County State’s Attorney Office dropped all charges against the actor.

He said his office has made arrangements with Smollett’s attorneys for the actor to voluntarily appear at an arraignment on Feb. 24 in the Criminal Division of Cook County Circuit Court. Webb’s investigation began Aug. 23, after Cook County Circuit Court Judge Michael Toomin appointed him special prosecutor.

Toomin directed Webb to launched an independent investigation to determine whether Smollett should be further prosecuted for the allegedly false reports he made to police and whether “any person or office involved in the Smollett case engaged in wrongdoing, including the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office or individuals in that office,” Webb’s statement reads.

That last bit sounds like it might turn out to be the most, umm, interesting part of this whole shitshow, I think.

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