It seems that one of the recent sports in recent days for some empty Republicans is to ridicule liberal gun control advocate Alec Baldwin for being the person who pulled the trigger that tragically, accidentally killed the cinematographer on the movie set for the film he was starring in and producing. Most notably, perhaps, is Donald Trump Jr. hawking a t-shirt about Baldwin killing the woman.
I’m not going to get into detail about the tragedy on the set. I have some opinions on the matter, and I have no great admiration of Alec Baldwin dating back to an online “confrontation” of sorts that we had when I writing on the Huffington Post – an exchange I wrote about here a couple of years ago. But none of that matters when dealing with something so deeply sad, most especially when all the facts simply are not known yet. So, for right now, the only thing we can know with absolute certainty is that this is a tragedy, and it was caused by some irresponsible mistakes. The Republican reaction, however, is another matter. And they’re only hurting themselves by it, which is clearly something they don’t grasp. It starts with what I mentioned, that we simple don’t know the details enough yet, a pesky fact which has escaped the sensibility of these Republicans happily dancing. But then I’m not surprised, since dealing with facts is a non-issue to Republicans these days, and jumping to conclusions is never a good look, most especially in a tragedy. More to the point, though, is by spinning in giddy joy over one death, these Republicans don’t realize how utterly cold and callous they appear, metaphorically dancing on the grave of a woman they ignore, being so blindly focused on Alec Baldwin being in middle of a tragedy. Gee, never mind the woman whose death actually is the tragedy. In fact, the emptiness of these Republicans is so focused on Baldwin and so overwhelms them that the comments I’ve seen haven’t even included the bare-minimum default expression of sympathy that Republicans almost always offer after such tragedies – sending their “thoughts and prayers (™ GOP). Nothing, not a word of sympathy for the very real, actual death. But beyond this, what they don’t realize is that their attention to this one death and how irresponsible they rightly say it was (again, whose irresponsibility is a matter to be determined) shines a massive light on the reality that, if this one gun death was so profoundly wrong – which it was – imagine how ghastly the 30,000 gun deaths are every single year after...after year after year after years, and the mass gun shootings which occurs on average of one every single week. And yet, this cadre of warped Republicans dancing with joy at a death -- whatever the accidental cause -- ignore that. And so, they show themselves “outraged” by a single death, but are just fine with those 30.000 yearly gun deaths and weekly mass gun shootings. Which only serves to highlight their emptiness and callousness. And…yes, that GOP-related word these days…hypocrisy. Further, the t-shirt Don Jr. is hawking on behalf of a tragedy references Alec Baldwin killing one person. And of course, being the lifelong mindless, clueless Don Jr. that he is misses the obvious point that in doing so, he leaves Republican NRA apologists open to not only being slammed for the yearly 30,000 deaths, but also the perhaps 80-100,000 deaths from COVID-19 caused by his father willfully ignoring the pandemic, which overall has killed almost 700,000 Americans. And yes, criticizing Don Jr. for all of that has, in fact, been the response that sonny boy’s cruelty has gotten. Which anyone but a self-absorbed, cold-hearted chump trying desperately to please his daddy could seen coming. (By the way, while trying to have a happy dance over this shooting tragedy on a Hollywood movie set, to "own the Libs," no doubt, what these cheery Republicans are missing is the very opposite of what they're reprehensibly trying to gloat about: how incredibly rare these terrible gun accidents on movie sets are, most especially when compared to shooting deaths in the rest of society. Each gun death on a movie set is utterly horrific -- and one more than should ever happen -- but news stories on this recent tragedy which note other gun deaths like it that have happened during movie production have only referenced two. Not just "two" others in the past 40 years, but in all the records they can find. There might be more, but none are mentioned. Again, this is now three more gun shooting deaths than should happen, but if all of society had that record of gun tragedies, a lot more people would be alive.) In the end, I am sure that all these Republicans think they are making some Great Point by dancing at a tragedy, but of course the only people joining their dance are those who already agree with them. Most everyone else saddened by a tragedy only can look at this happy reaction and recoil in ghastly response. Which seems to be the Republican brand these days.
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If you missed Last Week Tonight with John Oliver last night, the Main Story was on Taiwan. And it was one of their most interesting and entertaining in a long while. The story goes into the long history of Taiwan and what its current, decades-old battle with China is all about. It's well done and, for a serious subject, especially funny, my favorite parts being when Oliver mimics the style of a British narrator on old newsreel footage. I’m very interested in what happens with Steve Bannon testifying before the House committee, though not for the reason that’s getting the most attention.
Honestly, I don’t care all that much about him showing up because of what he’ll say as a witness. Because I don’t think he’ll say much of anything as a witness – or anything. My guess is that he’ll say “I don’t know” or “I don’t remember” about everything, and anything he doesn’t respond to that way he’ll probably take the Fifth Amendment. (If they’ve subpoenaed any documents from him, that’s another matter.) What I do care about is how he’s dealt with as someone defying a subpoena from the United States Congress. If he doesn’t want to testify, that’s his business – but every action has consequences. And, speaking as a non-lawyer who is also not a Constitutional scholar, I think that the consequence for defying a legal subpoena from the House of Representatives should be something that puts you in prison. Otherwise, why have subpoenas, and without subpoenas why have Congressional investigations? Which brings me to a related issue. It got some attention, though not a lot from the proper perspective. And it’s that when the House of Representatives voted 229-202 last week to refer contempt charges against Steve Bannon to the Justice Department, the story (to me) was not that the vote passed, but that 202 Republicans in the House of Representatives voted that they do not think that someone who has defied a House subpoena should be charged with contempt. I’m going to repeat that one. Last week, 202 elected Republicans in the House of Representatives, who sworn an oath the defend and protect the U.S. Constitution, voted on the record that they believe that someone who has defied a House subpoena should not be charged with contempt. And though this is very clear, I’m still going to put it another way – 202 Republicans out for 211 elected to protect the country said that they think it’s fine if a witness wants to defy Congress and ignore to testify even when they have been legally subpoenaed. So, to today’s GOP, there’s no reason to have subpoenas. And without subpoenas – to today’s Republican Party – there’s no reason to have Congressional investigations. Which, of course, is a very fascist thing to do. Trying to undermine other centers of authority to governmental power and abuse. Mind you, I think it’s a pretty safe bet that if the Republican Party was in control and they were investigating Democrats they’d be screaming bloody murder that their subpoenas should be followed. Unfortunately, there would be two big problems with their screaming. The first is the rule of law and justice isn’t a “Who’s in power” thingee and it only works when dealt with evenly and fairly, other wise it isn’t justice. And the second is that they’re now on record saying that subpoenas don’t matter, and ignoring one shouldn’t be referred to the Department of Justice. Of course, we’ll find out what the DOJ has to say about all this. And it seems likely (hopefully) that the Justice Department will say that Republicans are full of sheep drench and subpoenas actually do really matter. But still, the problem for the Republican Party is that they know stand on a foundation of stating that Congressional subpoenas don’t matter and that they can be ignored. Which means that Congress’s power and authority would be undermined, most especially when trying to stand up as a co-equal branch of the government against illegal acts of an authoritarian president. Which is such a very fascist thing to do. But then, that’s today’s Republican Party. Because all of this is about today’s elected Republican Party, which promotes, defends and enables fascism.
From the archives, this week's contestant is Andy Zerman from New York, NY. I was pleased, and a bit surprised that I got the composer whose style the song is written in. But I was stumped -- utterly stumped by the hidden song. No clue. Oddly, I thought it might be one of those 'trick songs' that pianist Bruce Adolphe sometimes does, where the song isn't a popular song, but something from the classical world. It wasn't that, but it turns out I had a good reason to think that. (I shall say no more.) Even when he slowed down the song and highlighted it, I didn't know. Only when I started at the main theme and focused on that did I guess it. That one theme, when you know what to listen for, is extremely clear. But the rest is very well hidden. Nice piece, though...
For anyone who watched the Netflix series Lupin from France (which, for those who didn't see it, is a modern-day story about a "gentleman thief" who emulates the character from the novels).
Tomorrow (Monday) on TCM they have two 1930’s movies based on the original books. 3pm EST -- Arsenne Lupin from 1932 starring John Barrymore – with Lionel Barrymore. 4:30pm EST -- Arsenne Lupin Returns from 1938 with Melvyn Douglas. Crank up the DVR.
Yesterday on Twitter and Facebook, I posted the following. I thought nothing of it, I've linked to such stories regularly. And usually on Twitter I get somewhere between 5 and 50 "Likes" or retweets. (Facebook is much different, since responses there are limited to people who follow me. On Twitter, things can get retweeted endlessly and bounced around all over the place.)
While pointed, I thought it was pretty benign.
For reasons totally unexpected by me, this one made some people very angry on Twitter. I responded to a few, though not many. In part because I didn't care enough and had no interest in debating anyone so venal or snarky, but in part too because there were too many responses, and I just had zero interest reading through them all.
But -- On the other side of the coin, however many angry replies I got, they were paltry, overwhelmed by the tsunami of people who were pleased by the story. As I write this in the morning, about 12 hours after having posted that above-tweet, I have also now gotten more "Likes"...than there were expected attendees! So far, and the number keeps rising, there have been over 12,000 (!!) "Likes," and it has clogged up my Twitter feed. [UPDATE: Four hours later, it's now over 17,000, which is officially the most responses I've gotten to a tweet.] For what it's worth, I also (not surprisingly) have not responded to many of the notes where people have written positive comments. Just too many to read, of course. At first, I did reply to people who said that there's no way that's even 1,000 people. I explained that I was just quoting the newspaper article, and noted that there might be people in the balcony (if there was one), or behind the camera, or in the lobby -- and also that it's a two-day event, so maybe the 1,000 includes both days. But after a handful of writing those answers, I gave up with that, too. (Okay, a side note: I did see one snarky tweet scroll by this morning from a Trumper, and just had to respond to it. It was too perfect a set-up not to. What he wrote was, "Joe cant count to a thousand..let's go brandon." I wrote back -- "It's spelled 'can't.' And Brandon is capitalized. And there should be a comma after 'go.' You're welcome. Goodbye!" Seriously, there was no way I could let that slide...) By the way, for those keeping a record of such things, the previous biggest response I'd had to a tweet -- one that was near-unanimously positive -- was when I wrote about a young boy who had just spoken eloquently at last year's "virtual" Democratic Convention and reminded people he was the same kid who Joe Biden had met at a campaign event and offered to stay in touch with him to help with his stuttering. That tweet got over 16,000 "Likes" (and still gets some from time to time). As a related note, anyone replying to me on Twitter during the next day or so shouldn't expect a response since it will be buried in the avalanche... SECOND UPDATE: As of 11 PM tonight, the number of "Likes" now as gone up to 24,000. |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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