Another Fine Work of Bart

Every once in a while I like to admittedly trigger my friend Bart Baker, who I consider the poet laureate of Josh Hawley.  Bart is a WGA-nominated writer and accomplished novelist whose BartRants (tm) are Shakespearean, akin to King Lear raging in the storm.  Bart lives in Missouri, and so is very well-versed about Hawley and the mere mention of the senators name will often get Bart to spit out a sentence or two in fury.  But when there's an actual story about Josh Hawley that focuses on something awful he's done (which occurs far more than ideal), I feel I can post in on social media and flag Bart to it -- knowing that, without my doing anything more, I'll get the day's entertainment.  And a column for the next day.  And to be clear, it's not just that Bart writes in such a vibrant, entertaining way, but his reaction and insights are also very smart and spot-on.

And so yesterday, I offered these first-three paragraphs from a RawStory article.  And then sat back and waited.  The story began --
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​"After months of leading the charge against Medicaid cuts in the GOP’s reconciliation bill, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) now appears to have suddenly changed his tune.

"Once the Senate’s most vocal opponent of any Medicaid reductions, Hawley now says he’d 'be fine' with most of the proposed cuts, as long as one key provision gets fixed, according to a new report in NOTUS.
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'They’ve got to fix this hospital piece of it,' Hawley told the publication Tuesday. 'And if they do that, then I think that’d be fine.'”

After posting that, I turned back to my other work and then went to lunch.  And when I came back to the desk, I thought I'd check in to Facebook to see if anything had come to Bart's attention, and if he'd responded.

And it did and, of course, it had.  

And the wonderful thing about a good BartRant (tm) is that he writes with such verve that it's the literary equivalent of writing without stopping to take a breath.  He wrote --

"​What a shock - said no one who knows Hawley. Peter Thiel probably cried "I need a bigger boat!" and that Senator with a spine of bacon grease responded, "Yes sir! Need it waxed on Sundays, sir?' Hawley is the worst sort of politician which also makes him the worst sort of human being. He lies for points. He wants a $15 minimum wage. Because it has no chance of passing the senate. If it did he would reverse course faster than a cartoon roadrunner (his resemblance to that drawing is uncanny…). Medicaid cuts? He’s railing in the Senate - and more importantly, for the cameras - how he’s against it until… oh look, surprise, surprise, Gomer didn’t just want provisions changed he did a donut in the high school parking lot until he was driving off in the opposite direction. Because he can’t disappoint the people who really put him in office - billionaires. Want to know why his face is so thin, easier to get it up some very rich donor’s ass. But take comfort, when you’re poor and dying from lack of medical care - he’s fighting for hospice to send you on swiftly so you’re no longer a burden to society."​

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​And there it is! From Maestro Bart Baker. With another of his patented BartRants (tm). Shakespearean, operatic, virtuosic. All I have to do is type on social media, "Hey, Bart, did you see the latest from Josh Hawley?" And I know I can then finish up my other work because Bart -- God bless him -- will have my column for the next day!

Brilliant, superb and spot-on.

And to be fair, since Bart did write my column today, I feel an obligation to return the favor, at least as best I can.  So, here's the trailer for his screenplay for the Lifetime movie, Forever, with Taye Diggs and Meagan Good, for which he got a Writers Guild Award nomination last year.

And yes, it's true, this gentle, heartfelt drama was written by the same legendary creator of BartRants (tm)
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