Surprise! White Supremacists Are A Bunch Of Doofuses.

The best thing we can do with our current crop of young
American Nazis and white supremacists is
mercilessly mock them. 

What happened in Charlottesville, Virginia earlier this month is no laughing matter, but you can't help but mock some of those white supremacists who caused such havoc.

Mockery is one of the best ways to erase the so-called legitimacy of awful subsets of people like that, and luckily, the white supremacists make it easy.

Chris Cantwell, was caught on film by Vice in Charlottesville, talking tough about how he doesn't think Donald Trump is racist or anti-Semitic enough because he let his daughter Ivanka marry a Jewish guy - Jared Kushner.

Cantwell is later seem sobbing like a little boy who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar because he feared he might be arrested for his actions in Charlottesville.

Too bad, baby. You gotta own what you do.

Fun fact: Cantwell was also part of "Free Keene Squad" a few years back in which he and his fellow band of "saviors" harassed parking meter readers in Keene, New Hampshire for some reason.

We also have the Statnews.com reporting on how the white supremacists are taking DNA tests, you know the ones you can get through outfits like Ancestry.com, the ones that tell you what your background is.

These idiots took these tests to prove their ever so white, non-Jew bonafides, except the tests keep proving the morons have Jewish and African blood in them.

Bummer, dude.

This past weekend, we had the humiliation in Boston, when the alt-right wingers held their so-called Free Speech Rally. Something like 30 of them showed up, compared with, oh, I don't know, 30,000+ counterprotesters.

Talk about being outnumbered!  An organizer of the Free Speech rally said it kind of fell apart on them.

Ya think?

For a closer, let's watch two videos to send our white supremecists on the way. The first, by Sandy and Richard Riccardi, is a sweet song called "Tiki Torch Nazis," to commemorate the idiots in Charlottesville more than a week back.

The second shows how a tuba can really deflate a Nazi march.

First, "Tiki Torch Nazis"



Now, even better, is the tuba. Video is from a couple years ago, but still relevant. The "Flight of the Valkyries" is a nice touch:

This Company REALLY Hasn't Gotten The Hang Of PR

JetSmarter might be a decent company, but their
PR department sure needs work. 

When I worked in journalism, I got pitches all the time from companies who want to get exposure for their products and services.

Sometimes the pitches were helpful, sometimes not. A few prompted me to write stories about the companies, sometimes I would run screaming out of the room the PR pitch was so bad.

The following has to be the worst effort at trying to get a publication to write a story.

A website called The Verge not along ago got a note from an outfit called JetSmarter, a company thats been called the "Uber for Private jets."

JetSmarter offered a Verge reporter a demonstration of its service, involving a round-trip light in the United States, in exchange for what The Verge says was a demand for uncritical puff piece with the following demands from JetSmarter:

"Upon the execution of this Agreement, Journalist shall provide Company with a credit card and a copy of an ID of the credit card holder ("Credit Card") and shall authorize Company to charge the Credit Card in the amount of $2,000 should (i) Journalist cancel the trip on the date of departure of the outbound flight or in the event that Journalist fails to arrive at the departure location at the scheduled departure time or other unforeseen delays or (ii) in the event Journalist fails to post the article described above on the first page of this agreement."

In other words, if The Verge took on this story, they'd have to pay $2,000 if a glowing puff piece about JetSmarter "within 5 business days."

Whoever at JetSmarter came up with this has NO idea what he or she is doing. The best way to NOT get a puff piece is to do sometthing like this. Instead, you get negative coverage and mockery, which is what The Verge and, now,  me are doing.

Also, is JetSmarter too cheap to release promotional material themselves? They wanted a journalist to do the work for them, so they wouldn't have to pay anything?

PR is all about selling, flattery, relationships and trying to find win-win situations. Bullying like JetSmarter did the absolute opposite of that.

To state the obvious, The Verge chose not to write the puff piece, but instead wrote a slam against JetSmarter that I'm using as a basis for this post

Time to get a new public relations department, guys.

Professional Anarchists And That Terrible Bowling Green Massacre Humor Social Media

Here's one image of the "Bowling Green
Massacre" that's been making its way
around the web

Say what you want about the Trump administration: When somebody there misspeaks, we get a torrent of online humor.

Hey, you need something go get you going.

Today's humor came from President Trump's unfortunate wording in a tweet complaining about protesters opposed to him.

"Professional anarchists, thugs and paid protesters are proving the point of the millions of people who voted to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!" Trump wailed in a 6:48 a.m. tweet Friday morning.

In case you haven't noticed, "professional anarchist" is more than a bit of  an oxymoron. By definition, anarchists aren't professional..

Then there was the Kellyanne Conway comment about the "Bowling Green Massacre" as justification for the so-called "Muslim Ban" executive order by Trump. She obviously misspoke, since there has been no "Bowling Green Massacre" that anybody can remember.

To be fair, Conway later tweeted that she misspoke, and was referring to a couple terrorists who had allegedly been plotting something around Bowling Green. There was obviously no real life massacre.

More on that in a minute.

It looked like quite a few people were ready to sign up to be "professional anarchists" if the pay was right.

One wag asked: "Wait, how do I become a 'professional' anarchist? What's the pay like? What paperwork do I have to fill out? What qualifications do I need?"

The Bowling Green Massacre got a lot more play, however.

One of the most popular things that popped up was the Bowling Green Massacre Victims' Fund.  If you click on the link, you get automatically transferred to the ACLU donations page.


I saw a tweet from Jimmy Kareliussen (@JMKareliussen) that said: "February 30th will henceforth be known as "Bowling Green Massacre Memorial Day."

Also on Twitter, mormonLIBERALmafia (@VoteMorales) said. "More people would have attended the @realDonaldTrump inauguration but they all died in the Bowling Green Massacre. Sad."

Natasha  Rothwell, (@nathasharothwell)  referencing what looked like Trump's confusion over whether Frederick Douglass is a living person, tweeted, "Saddened and sickened by Frederick Douglass' silence surrounding the Bowling Green Massacre. 

Others counseled people to tone it down regarding the massacre. Justin Shanes (@justinshanes) noted: "Finding these Bowling Green Massacre jokes to be a little too soon. Out of respect, we should wait until it takes place." 

More ominously, outside the jokes, Conway again whined that people aren't "respecting" Donald Trump. The common theme from the Trump folks seems to be that the media ought to just shut up.

I guess they don't want to do things that attract, you know, scrutiny and challenges.

Conway described the media approach to Trump this way, in an interview with radio host Sean Hannity:

"It never took on the aura of respect that it deserved, and if you are nt showing the President and his main spokespeople respect, then you're not showing the office respect, and you are inciting mob mentality if not mob violence."

That's so rich coming from the Trumpsters. Like they show anyone respect. Plus, you gotta earn it, bub. Act like a president and people might start treating you like one, Donald.

And yes, it's the job of the media to inform people. If they choose to protest based on the information about the Trump administration they can, since there's this little thing called the First Amendment.

Besides, with a few exceptions, most of the demonstrations against Trump have been quite peaceful.

So Kellyanne, Quitcherbitchin' and get back to work. And no more alternative facts, please.

Focusing On Celebrity Might Help Stop Donald Trump

Meryl Streep's Golden Globe criticism of Donald Trump
wasn't the most important thing that happened this week,
but mocking Trump IS an effective tool against him. 

More than a few pundits in the Twittersphere raised a good point yesterday: They questioned why we were all so focused on Donald Trump's feud with Meryl Streep when there's so many more important questions about the Donald.

You know: Russian hacking, his love affair with Vladimir Putin, the shadowy, corrupt business dealings, the lack of a good temperament, his tacit acceptance of bigotry, violence and the like.

I could go on and on.

On one hand, the Twittersphere is right, Meryl Streep vs. Donald Trump seems pretty low down the list of things to worry about.

However, I still think the Trumpster's Twitter feuds are the best ways to keep him off balance. True, his ultra-thin skin doesn't give anyone a lot of confidence he can competently captain the Ship of State.

But we all know Donald is going down anyway. Maybe keeping him off balance is the best way to get him off the world stage once and for all. The sooner the better.

These celebrity feuds make it all the more easy to mock him. To Trump, the worst thing that can happen to him is getting mocked.

It happens a lot to him. Why not keep making it worse?

Especially when the cause of the mocking is something like Trump's inevitable Twitter reaction of Streep's speech at the Golden Globes on Sunday.

As if this Streep was the most important thing facing him Trump, Tweeted:

So we get funny headlines like this from satirist Andy Borowitz in the New Yorker who had an article with this headline: "Trump Urges Spy Agencies To Lay Off Russia and Focus On Threat Posed By Actresses."

Plus, incidents like the Great Streep/Trump crisis of 2017 give us reminders of more the more important issues I referenced above, like this tweet from ABC political analyist Matthew Dowd:

"Let me make it more clear: Trump fans oppose actress exercising free speech while supporting Russian despot who prevents free speech. Hmmm."

And this from Brian Klaas: "Every day around 6:30 a.m. in New York, an angry billionaire awakens in a gilded penthouse to tweet furiously about how he is a victim."

One more, from David Sirata   "It's odd to hear criticism of a Hollywood star for making comments...in a nation that elected a reality TV star to the White House." 

Naturally,  like it or not, people would rather watch or read about celebrity news than the intricacies of military intelligence regarding Russia. I'm just as guilty as the next person in this regard.

Celebrity news can have real beneficial effects, if played right. Streep was Exhibit A Sunday night in this regard at the Golden Globes, which is run by the Hollywood Foreign Press.

Streep noted the dangers to press freedom under Trump as she accepted the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement, she said in part:

"That's why our founders enshrined the press and its freedom in the Constitution. So i only ask teh famously well-heeled Hollywood Foreign Press and all of us in our community to join me in supporting the Committee to Protect Journalists, because we're going to need them going forward, and they'll need us to safeguard the truth."

I bet few television viewers had even heard  of the Committee to Protect Journalists before Streep mentioned them at the Golden Globes.

But her words had an immediate effect.   According to Money Magazine, the Committee to Protect Journalists typically gets a sleepy five online donations on a Sunday evening. Because of Streep, the number of people contributing Sunday night was more than 700.

They're still counting that nice influx of money they got. (The non-profit CPJ raised about $1 milllion in 2016.)

The Guardian had a good point regarding Streep's remarks at the Golden Globes. The Guardian quoted Streep and had this analysis:

"'There was one performance this year that stunned me,' (Streep) said. 'It sank its hooks in my heart. Not because it was good; there was nothing good about it. But it was effective and it did its job.'

She souned like the most withering theatre critic ever. If that was a review and you had to work a quote out of it for a poster, the best you could do would be 'Effective - Meryl Streep."

The Guardian went on with its own wonderful review of Streep's performance:

"Streep, thougn, had identified one of Trump's key weaknesses. You can critisize him all you like for being a racist, a sexist, a sexual predator, a homophobe, a xenophobe, a conspiracy theorist, a bully or a bad advert for male grooming, but it's all water off a duck's back - you could even say that duck is sitting on Trump's head pretending to be a toupee.  - it doesn't matter. But to disrespect Trump's performance - that's gotta hurt."

Which is the point of this post. Life is performance art for Trump. Give bad reviews to the performance, and he goes off the deep end.

Especially if you highlight how lame his performances are, and how reluctant other performers are to participate with him. Or come up with ways to make him "pay" for those performances.

I've already written about performances and singers refusing to participate in the inauguration. That trend continued this week.

It seems the Trump team is still desperately trying to book acts for the inauguration, even though easy Google searches of the people their seeking would show they're no fans of Trump.

Take Moby, the noted DJ and musician, who has called Trump an "actual psychopath."

Still, unlike many performers, Moby said he would agree to perform at Trump's inauguration, but I bet his price is too steep for even the (alleged) billionaire Trump.

Moby said he wouldn't need money as compensation from the Trump team. I'll let Moby explain it in his own words, as quoted in the Independent:

"Hahahahaha, wait, Hahahaha, really? I guess I'd DJ at an inaugural ball if as payment Trump released his tax returns....So Trump what do you think? I DJ for you and you release your tax returns?"

Again, Perfect. Moby slams Trump where it hurts - his fascination with celebrity - and at the same time calls attention - with humor - to more important issues: Trump's um, complicated finances.

Moby went so far as to come up with a proposed playlist for Trump's inauguration, which includes Rage Against The Machine's "Killing In The Name,' Radiohead's "Idioteque" and Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit."

Ouch!

So let's all keep, um, showering Trump with mockery. It will do a body - and a nation - good.

Mocking Trump Might Be Only Way To Stop This Dangerous Jerk

Imagining Donald Trump if he was an Olympic swimmer. 

The news over the past 24 hours has been all about Donald Trump's latest outrage. (There's one every day.)

Of course, the latest outrage you've heard about is The Donald saying "Second Amendment People" have, um, options, if Hillary Clinton is elected and she starts appointing Supreme Court justices that are hostile to the Second Amendment.

But it was a joke! he says. Ha ha! What he really meant was people who love the Second Amendment can band together to work for Trump's election and Clinton's defeat.

Riiiight.

As any bonehead knows, if Trump really just wanted to say Clinton is bad for the Second Amendment, all he had to do is say, "Hillary is hostile to gun rights! Vote for me to preserve the Second Amendment and gun laws!"

Boom, that's it.

However, as many commentators pointed out, he does this all the time. He says really bad things but says them in ambiguous ways that he can backtrack and say, "It was only a joke."

Most of the world takes these as jokes, because Trump is a joke.

But Trump also knows there's a certain segment of the population that won't get the nuance, and take his words as marching orders. That's the dangerous part.

Thomas Friedman wrote about that today in a New York Times column, the first sentence of which was:

"And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin got assassinated.

Friedman went on to explain that extremist rabbis and militant settlers branded Rabin a traitor, and then candidate Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a "feverish right-wing rally from a balcony in Jerusalem's Zion Square, as protestors below shouted for the death of Rabin"

Sounds like a Trump rally to me. Which illustrates the danger and how Trump is playing with fire for his own personal gain. Who cares if somebody dies, as long as he wins, right?

Nobody is ever going to rein Trump in, to make his discourse semi-civil.

It seems one way to tear Trump down is to mock him. He's so fragile it seems to send him off the deep end. Plus, his rabid supporters won't listen to facts, but maybe they will if the rest of us somehow make Trump seem "uncool."

It's a long shot, but it eventually worked for cigarettes.

 The ever-reliable Elizabeth Warren hit the nail on the head again when she Tweeted this: "@realDonaldTrump makes death threats because he's a pathetic coward who can’t handle the fact that he’s losing to a girl."

He is especially bad at taking criticism from women, and regularly becomes unhinged when people like Warren launch tweet storms against Trump. She, too, understands mockery is the way to defeat Trump.

I get it that mocking people is a form of bullying. But it can be appropriate when used on a bully like Trump who won't back down.

The following letter recently appeared in the Tampa Bay Tribune.  It's also a perfect sendup.

It might be the best trolling of Donald Trump ever:

Here's the text:

"My Letters Are So Great!"

"I write fabulous letters. If you read all the letters I have written, you would agree. You would love them. Other letter writers are weak, soft and out of touch. I'm not like that, and I'm sure if you are reading this you aren't either.

This paper really needs great letters, and I am awesome at letter writing.

Other letter writers might attack me, but then they go away. They don't have what it takes to keep writing letters. I have what it takes to write the best letters. Letter writers who disagree need to be punched in the face and run out of town.

I guarantee this letter will be picked as letter of the month. If it isn't picked, it will prove that this letter writing contest is rigged."

----Terry Vaught, Dover

Actually, Vaught later said the letter was a little longer but the paper apparently edited it down some.

The omitted sentence. "My letters are so great I'm going to build a wall and putting my letters on them. Then I'll get the other letter writers to pay for building the wall."

In my opinion, the letter should have also said that anyone who disagrees that the letter is great is mentally unstable.

If you have any great ideas on how to mock Trump, tell me in the comments section, or on Facebook or  Twitter. 

How To Humiliate Those Jerks Who Blame Disasters On Gay Marriage

A weird conservative politician in Britain named David Silverster attempted a tried and true response to the recent passage of gay marriage legislation in that country.

A storm slams Britain in December. A local
politician blames the bad weather on the
gays, as always, which has led to some
hilarious mocking. 

Silverster said devastating December storms and floods in Britain were God's wrath for gay marriage. Religious wackos have used that line in the United States for years.

In the United States, we just roll our eyes at such stupidity. But we should take a page from Britain, where comics and wiseguys invented their own weather forecasts to mock Silvester.

On person Tweeted:

Tonight for the first time
Just about half-past ten
For the first time in history
It's gonna start raining men. 

Of course, that's lyrics from the 1980s song "It's Raining Men" by the Weather Girls, which is particularly popular among many gay people. 

So many people have latched on to this song since Silvester made his dumb comments that the tune might once again reach Number 1 on the charts in Britain next week. 

Martha Wash, who was a vocalist for the Weather Girls, is not surprisingly, just fine with this.

"I'm flattered that after all these years, the song is still relevant (event if it is for storms and floods)" she wrote in an email  

Dean Burnett, writing in The Guardian, wrote a mock science article that indicated Sylvester had a point, because maybe gay marriage was disrupting local weather patterns and worsening global warming, which in turn was causing weather extremes:

"Logically, same sex marriage leads to an increase in the number of wedding. Weddings invariably involve a large number of people congregating in one place, which leads to a lot of body heat and warming, and this heat enters the atmosphere, increasing the air temperature and producing more warm fronts.

People also cry a lot at weddings. This likely to be even more pronounced at same sex weddings, with the added element of recently achieved equality making the events even more poignant. 

Tears are basically water, which quickly evaporate, thus adding to the water content of the atmosphere.

Weddings also typically involve a lot of alcohol, which makes people colder, meaning they're more likely to turn on heating systems when they arrive home, releasing more heat and CO2 into the atmosphere."

Finally, actor Nicholas Pegg did a deadpan mockup of a Serious Official Shipping Forecast that the BBC regularly broadcasts to a large audience in Britain.

In Pegg's high seas forecast, he warned of "Gays at Viking, Southeast Iceland and Bongo Bongo land" and alerted mariners to the risk of "homophobic outbursts, back peddling westerly and becoming untenable."

So, the next time some right wing wacko in the United States blames the gays for the inevitable spring tornado outbreak in the Midwest, we should be ready with our own forecasts.

I suggest using the song "Tornado" by Little Big Town, with the lyric, "I'm a tornado looking for a soul to take."