HOW WE GOT HERE: This whole discourse is Eyes Wide Shut!

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2024

Kubrick does it again: This very morning, far off campus, we found ourselves thinking, again and again, of Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut.

We plan to rewatch it this weekend. For today, this capsule, from memory:

In Eyes Wide Shut, the Tom Cruise character discovers that the actual world is not at all the way he thought it was.

He discovers this as he stumbled upon a peculiar scene in a mansion somewhere out on Long Island. Shout out, North by Northwest?)

(Apparently, the actual location for the shoot was a British mansion called Somerton. No known relation.)

Out on Long Island, the Cruise character stumbles upon the "masked orgy of an unnamed secret society"—a set of rituals built upon ancient desires concerning sexual subjugation. We can't quite recall where the plot goes from there, but how much more do you need?

Last night, we watched as several of our major broadcasters swept aside large chunks of what happened in Madison Square Garden this Sunday. 

Within the framework offered by these TV journalists, it all came down to that one (indefensible, ugly and stupid) non-joke. You would have thought it was just that one joke—just that one joke, all by itself, in the course of a very long evening!

A viewer would have thought it was just that one joke! Swept away was this part of Sunday's evening's sick ritual:

ROSENBERG (10/27/24): She is some sick bastard, that Hillary Clinton, huh? What a sick son of a bitch. The whole fucking party—a bunch of degenerates. Low lives. Jew-haters and low lives. Every one of them. Every one of them.

Watching some of the shows we watched last night, a viewer would never have known that the Garden Party included such disordered, atavistic remarks. 

No one tried to explain, or even to cite, the oral sex insult Hulk Hogan pulled from the garbage can and directed at Candidate Harris. Swept away were other such slimy remarks from this long throwback ritual.

In fairness, Kubrick may have undershot his mark by a bit. In Eye Wide Shut, participants in the throwback ritual feel they must do so in secret. 

Sunday night, at the Garden, participants felt they could engage in their ancient ritual conduct right out in the open. Their secrets were protected by several major news shows last night as Sunday evening's full range of events went unmentioned and undiscussed.

That said, vast amounts of our failing discourse have been built upon an eager agreement by our major journalists—the agreement that they should be keeping their eyes (and their traps) wide shut.

We're sorry, but once again this:

Last night, clinical psychologist Mary Trump told Lawrence O'Donnell that her grandfather, Fred Trump, was "a sociopath." She doesn't say the same thing about her uncle, perhaps for reasons of liability.

Whatever! The point we'll propose is this:

Our nation's discourse is currently being overrun by a cadre of men who show all the signs of being (clinically) disordered. 

It isn't just Donald J. Trump. It's also Elon Musk, whose taste for blatant, bald misstatement seems to know no bounds.

The preference for constant wild misstatement is a basic symptom of at least one major clinical disorder. Nor is it only Trump and Musk who display this obvious taste. We'd be inclined to wonder about Kennedy Jr. and Vance as well.

That said:

We American citizens can wonder as much as we please. The people who pose as our nation's journalists have agreed, long ago, that our spotless minds must not be robbed of their sunshine by such fairly obvious points.

We Americans go on and on, then on and on, as our journos conspire to keep their eyes shut. One recent example:

Has anyone ever struggled so hard, or at such length, to defend an indefensible practice of his guild as Ezra Klein did in this recent presentation for the New York Times?

We'll review that absurdly lengthy piece in the days ahead. It seems to us that Nicholas Kristof is now working to keep our eyes shut too—to keep ruminations safe.

On Sunday, the most ancient, atavistic impulses were general over the Garden. Last night, again and again, the entire prehistoric ritual was whittled down to one joke.

The sexual insults aimed at Harris were set aside and forgotten. For the record, such sexual insults have been widespread at the Fox News Channel.

Those sexual insults are aired every night—and Blue America's most trusted tribunes choose to avert their gaze.

MeToo came and went with great speed. In our view, it was baldly faux a very large part of the time. As a nation, we've now reached a very dangerous place—and this is a major part of the way we all got here.

For us, it's back now to a different campus for more of the day's crucial medical research. That said:

We're going to rent Eyes Wide Shut this weekend. In the last film of his stunning career, did the great Kubrick do it again?

BREAKING: Harris ahead by four in a pair of polls!

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2024

Perhaps no more fish today: We expect to be losing a large chunk of time today. Yesterday, some encouraging news came in.

For the record, there's no way to tell from the various polls who is going to win the election. But as of Monday morning, the new poll from ABC News/Ipsos had Harris ahead among likely voters nationwide, 51-47.

We saw those numbers on Monday's Morning Joe. Later, up jumped Drum with virtually identical numbers from a different polling outfit:

CES says Kamala Harris is comfortably in the lead

The 2024 CES pre-election survey, based on a huge sample of nearly 80,000 adults, puts Kamala Harris ahead of Donald Trump 51-47% among likely voters. She's ahead 52-46% among very likely voters. Here's their breakdown by age and gender...

At Drum's post, a graphic displays those breakdowns by age and gender.

There's no way to know who's going to win. That will remain true until the votes get counted.

Still, this was the first encouraging news of this type in a while. And, of course, the possibility exists that Candidate Trump's "Garden Party" will turn out to be this year's "October surprise"—will turn out to be a self-inflicted wound which helps decide the election.

Or not, of course.

Concerning that pitiful Garden Party, Mediaite has captured some of the reaction on Monday morning on the "cable news" show, Fox & Friends

In this post, Colby Hall records the behavior of Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt, who said this to the friends:

"I think it is sad that the media will pick up on one joke that was made by a comedian rather than the truths that were shared by the phenomenal list of speakers that we had."

One joke? Is that all there was? Sadly, we have more on that construct below.

Earlier on yesterday's Fox & Friends show, Brian Kilmeade had jumped in to explain how bogus the criticisms had been, with the other friends playing along. For Hall's report on that exchange, you can just click this.

So it went on Monday morning's Fox & Friends. Sadly, Leavitt wasn't alone in framing this matter as a flap about just "one joke."  We saw an array of other broadcasters adopting that framework last night, not excluding Lester Holt and Wolf Blitzer. 

In a display we'd regard as instructional, the sexual insults directed at Candidate Harris went completely unmentioned. Sid Rosenberg's thoughtful remarks about Hillary Clinton had also disappeared. It's much as we've noted in the past:

There is no cure for human.

For denizens of Blue America, the largest challenge remains unchanged. We need to become a great deal more clear about how we ever got to this place—about the various ways our own instincts and our own behaviors may have helped create the dangerous situation we're now in.

In the short run, has the Garden Party become this year's (self-inflicted) October Surprise? As of now, there's no way to know. 

For ourselves, we're supporting medical science today! We may not be back on our sprawling campus until mid-afternoon. We may have no more fish today.

How did we get from there to here?

MONDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2024

IN RE What's goin' on: Within the past month or so, we've suggested that we the Americans may have reached the end of the modern political era.

The era began in 1960, with the iconic Kennedy-Nixon election. It seems to be grinding to a halt in this, the age where it's no longer clear that we the people even retain the capacity to conduct an election.

We expect to return to The Making of the President 1960 for a day or two at the start of next week. For today, let's use a different cultural touchstone to ask ourselves a basic question:

How in the world—how on earth—did we get from there to here?

We'll jump ahead to 1972, twelve years into the era. As our cultural touchstone, we'll consider Rick Nelson's hit song from that year:

Once again, here it is: "Garden Party."

The "Garden" in question was the same hall which featured Candidate Trump's latest furious rally. To recall one of the vibes from that earlier time, you can immerse yourself in the mellow tone of Nelson and his group, the Stone Canyon Band.

What was the background of the Rick Nelson song? The song in question is so famous that it has its own Wikipedia page! Here's part of what the leading authority tells us:

Garden Party (Rick Nelson song)

"Garden Party" is a 1972 song written by Rick Nelson and recorded by him and the Stone Canyon Band for the album Garden Party. The song tells the story of Nelson being booed at a concert at Madison Square Garden. It was Nelson's last top 40 hit, reaching No. 6 on the U.S. Billboard pop chart.

On October 15, 1971, Richard Nader's Rock 'n Roll Spectacular Volume VII concert was given at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The playbill included many greats of the early rock era, including Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and Bobby Rydell, with Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band listed in advertisements as a "special added attraction."

Nelson came on stage dressed in the then-current fashion, wearing bell-bottoms and a purple velvet shirt, with his hair hanging down to his shoulders. He started playing his older songs like "Hello Mary Lou," but then he played the Rolling Stones' "Country Honk" (a country version of their hit song "Honky Tonk Women") and the crowd began to boo. While some reports say that the booing was caused by police action in the back of the audience, Nelson thought it was directed at him. Nevertheless, he sang another song but then left the building and did not appear onstage for the finale.

The authority moves on to explain some of the lyrics in the song Nelson wrote about this experience. Example:

"Garden Party" tells of various people who were present, frequently in an oblique manner ("Yoko brought her Walrus", referring to Yoko Ono and John Lennon)...

One more reference in the lyrics pertains to a particularly mysterious and legendary audience member: "Mr. Hughes hid in Dylan's shoes, wearing his disguise." The Mr. Hughes in question was ex-Beatle George Harrison, who was a next-door neighbor and good friend of Nelson. Harrison used "Hughes" as his traveling alias, and "hid in Dylan's shoes" most likely refers to an album of Bob Dylan covers that Harrison was planning but never recorded.

Stuff like that!

Was Nelson booed when he and his band tried to move past the bubblegum hits he'd recorded as a teenager? We have no idea. 

But he responded in mellow fashion, one of the basic tones of the era. The lesson he took from his perceived rejection was summarized in the chorus to the song:

But it's all right now
I've learned my lesson well
You see, you can't please everyone
So you've got to please yourself.

That was the ethos of one part of the nation during that earlier era. Elsewhere, experiences were substantially different—but in the same year of that Garden concert, Marvin Gaye recorded this enduring anthem:

What's Goin' On 
Mother, mother
There's too many of you crying
Brother, brother, brother
There's far too many of you dying
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today, yeah
Father, father
We don't need to escalate
You see, war is not the answer
For only love can conquer hate
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today, oh 
Picket lines and picket signs
Don't punish me with brutality
Come on talk to me
So you can see
What's going on...

Talk to me / So you can see / What's going on? We've always been in awe of Gaye for having the confidence to assign himself that role in the healing he dreamed about.

There was a lot of anger back then too. That said, in certain ways, the society was easier to contemplate and negotiate at that time. 

In certain very basic ways, the society was much less complicated and complex. That said, how did we ever get to this? 

Also, will those of us in Blue America ever be willing to ask the key question? Will we ever be willing to examine the way our own behaviors, in Blue America, may have helped place us where we all are?

We never don't think of [NAME WITHHELD] when we hear Gaye's moral anthem. "Naaaahhh—non-violent," he said to us one day, almost surely in 1971 or 1972.

At the time, he was the greatest high school basketball player Baltimore had ever produced. (There were quite a few others to come.) We clearly remember his statement today—but how did we get to this place?

For the authority's report on What's Goin' On, you can just click this.


HOW WE GOT HERE: How did it [ever] get this far?

MONDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2024

One candidate's Garden Party: On balance, Sid Rosenberg isn't a well-known national figure.

Yesterday, he was a featured speaker at a Garden Party. 

It wasn't Rick Nelson's Garden Party, concerning which he wrote and recorded this song in 1972. It was the Garden Party of one of the candidates—of Candidate Donald J. Trump.

Rosenberg was just one speaker among quite a few, including the policy nutcase Elon Musk. Providing a rough idea of the vibe along with a walk down memory lane, here's who Sid Rosenberg is:

Sid Rosenberg

Sidney Ferris Rosenberg (born April 19, 1967) is an American radio personality. He is currently the host of Sid and Friends in the Morning and "Sid Sports Sunday" plus sports reporter on 77 WABC in New York City.

[...]

His radio career started in West Palm Beach, Florida, where he hosted the syndicated sports radio program The Drive on Sports Fan Radio Network in the late 1990s...In 2000, he returned to New York City to co-host WNEW-FM's turbulent morning show, the Sports Guys. A year later, he joined the Imus in the Morning program...

Rosenberg was no stranger to controversy on the Imus show, which was also simulcast on MSNBC cable television. Among other things, he said on-air that Venus Williams was an "animal," and that she and Serena Williams would be better suited for National Geographic magazine than for Playboy, that "faggots play tennis" and that the United States women's national soccer team were "a bunch of juiced up dykes."

Rosenberg was fired from the Imus show after making crude remarks about Australian singer Kylie Minogue's breast cancer diagnosis...As a substitute sportscaster on April 4, 2007, Rosenberg reported on Rutgers University's 59-46 loss the previous evening to the University of Tennessee, in the final game of the NCAA Women's Division I Basketball Championship. This served as a lead-in to Imus and other cast members, who made comments that resulted in the cancelation of the program one week later.

That's who Rosenberg is, or at least who he was in the past. His role on Imus recalls the era when this garbage can behavior was working its way inside the culture in various disguised and camouflaged forms, with major members of Blue America's media elite straining to get on board.

(We think here of the early Howard Stern, along with the more presentable Imus.)

That's who Rosenberg seems to be, or at least that's who he's been in the past. Yesterday, speaking at one candidate's Garden Party, he offered such thoughtful ruminations as these:

ROSENBERG (10/27/24): She is some sick bastard, that Hillary Clinton, huh? What a sick son of a bitch. The whole fucking party—a bunch of degenerates. Low lives. Jew-haters and low lives. Every one of them. Every one of them.

So said the "radio personality" at one hopeful's Garden Party.

For better or worse, you can hear the full seven minutes of his remarks through the auspices of 77ABC, a corporate entity which apparently isn't embarrassed by the conduct of this employee. Included will be this remark—a remarks which were plucked by Acyn from the stew and subsequently headlined in this post at Mediaite:

ROSENBERG: But the fucking illegals, they get whatever they want.

You can hear the full seven minutes here, but we'll offer a type of warning. In the midst of Rosenberg's ugly, profanity-strewn rant, you'll possibly be exposed the some of the ways those of us in Blue America have actually managed to get here.

In our view, we've done that over the past sixty years. As is true of human tribes all across the globe and all through the annals of time, those of us in Blue America aren't especially skilled at seeing such things about ourselves and about our own behavior.

Yesterday's Garden Party was full of ugly denunciations and rants. Perhaps the stupidest boy of them all was comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, whose remark about a certain "floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean" was later disowned by the Trump campaign itself.

That said, the vitriol, and the sheer stupidity, were general over the Garden. In the course of the rally's mayhem, a journalistic rule of thumb seems to have emerged:

When this is done on the Fox News Channel, the New York Times (and other such orgs) will avert their gaze. But when it's done at Madison Square Garden, in a highly-publicized event, even the finer people apparently feel they have to report what happened.

That' what the Times has done, at long last, in today's news report:

Trump at the Garden: A Closing Carnival of Grievances, Misogyny and Racism

Donald J. Trump’s closing rally at Madison Square Garden on the second to last Sunday before the election was a release of rage at a political and legal system that impeached, indicted and convicted him, a vivid and at times racist display of the dark energy animating the MAGA movement.

A comic kicked off the rally by dismissing Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage,” then mocked Hispanics as failing to use birth control, Jews as cheap and Palestinians as rock-throwers, and called out a Black man in the audience with a reference to watermelon.

Another speaker likened Vice President Kamala Harris to a prostitute with “pimp handlers.” A third called her “the Antichrist.” And the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson mocked Ms. Harris—the daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father—with a made-up ethnicity, saying she was vying to become “the first Samoan-Malaysian, low IQ former California prosecutor ever to be elected president.”

By the time the former president himself took the stage, an event billed as delivering the closing message of his campaign, with nine days left in a tossup race, had instead become a carnival of grievances, misogyny and racism.

[...]

Later, the television host Phil McGraw, known as Dr. Phil, lectured the crowd on why Mr. Trump did not fit the definition of “a bully” because a bully requires “an imbalance of power,” seeming to ignore the fact that Mr. Trump has enormous power as a billionaire and former president.

During the speech by Mr. Trump’s running mate, Mr. Vance, the entire arena spontaneously burst into chants of “Tampon Tim” to disparage Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, Ms. Harris’s running mate.

[...]

David Rem, a childhood friend of Mr. Trump, called Ms. Harris “the devil.”

You can't get dumber than Dr. Phil. At long last, that's perfectly clear.

That said, even the New York Times couldn't get to everything that was said in this news report. Unmentioned was the ugly oral sex insult the former "professional wrestler" known as Hulk Hogan directed at Candidate Harris. 

In fairness, this insult may have gone unmentioned in the Times because it was too hard to explain. Mediaite explains the oral sex insult here, with background from last summer offered here and also offered here.

(Warning! Dagen McDowell sightings!)

For the record, insults of this type, directed at Candidate Harris, have been general over the Fox News Channel in the past few months. 

We regard that as a remarkable fact; it's a remarkable fact which we've been noting in our own reports. It's also a fact which we've seen no one among Blue America's journalist crowd mention anywhere else.

The candidate who staged this Garden Party may well get elected next week. (Or not.) Polling suggests that the race is very close, though there's no way to be sure even about that widely stated assessment.

The candidate who staged yesterday's mess may get elected next week! At some point, those of us in Blue America might want to ponder an extremely basic question.

Many people have been asking this question of late; in our experience, few people have tried to address it. This very morning, Mika Brzezinski asked the question on Morning Joe after describing the Garden Party:

BRZEZINSKI (10/28/24): It's discouraging that so many people would rally to hate. Oh my God, how did we get here? How did we get here?

How did we get here, Mika asked. She was asking a very good question. 

In our view, the answer takes us back perhaps sixty years. In our view, it does involve unattractive and unintelligent behavior by us in Blue America. 

Some of that Blue American behavior takes us back in time. On the other hand, we also think of this unanswered, highly significant question from just the past four years:

Key unanswered question:
Why did President Biden (not Vice President Harris) do what he did, for three-plus years, with respect to the southern border? Why did the president do that?

As we've noted, Candidate Harris has been asked that question again and again. Again and again, she has refused to answer—and that unexplained conduct by President Biden may send Donald Trump to the White House! 

How did we ever get to this place? We'll discuss the border, and other topics, over the course of this week.

Warning! Some of the answers lurk in the comments which got edited out of Acyn's posts about yesterday's Garden Party. We even refer to the fuller remarks by Tucker Calson—to the fuller remarks he offered after mocking Candidate Harris on an angry "racial"/ethnic basis.

Acyn gives us what we want. Does he give us what we need?

Tomorrow: Stephens and Kristof and Bouie and Klein! A tale of four New York Times columnists


SUNDAY: Is it about to happen here?

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2024

We can't quite answer that question: "It can't happen here," Sinclar Lewis once said. 

He didn't exactly mean it! Actually, that was the title of a famous book:

It Can't Happen Here

It Can't Happen Here is a 1935 dystopian political novel by American author Sinclair Lewis. Set in a fictionalized version of the 1930s United States, it follows an American politician, Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, who quickly rises to power to become the country's first outright dictator (in allusion to Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Nazi Germany), and Doremus Jessup, a newspaper editor who sees Windrip's fascist policies for what they are ahead of time and who becomes Windrip's most ardent critic. The novel was adapted into a play by Lewis and John C. Moffitt in 1936.

The novel was published during the heyday of fascism in Europe, which was reported on by Dorothy Thompson, Lewis's wife.

[..]

Since its publication, It Can't Happen Here has been seen as a cautionary tale, starting with the 1936 presidential election and potential candidate Huey Long.

And so on from there.

Can (something resembling) it happen here? We'll suppose that the answer is yes.

For ourselves, we'll guess that liberal / progressive name-calling has long since run its course as an antidote to that possibility—as an effective electoral tool. That includes the more simple-minded attempts to say whether one of the current candidates actually is, or actually isn't, "a fascist."

By now, it's way too late for any of this to matter. But for the record, this:

Yesterday, one candidate was, once again, extending his talk about our nation's various "enemies of the people"—a group which is sometimes known as "the enemy from withjn."

He did this yesterday during a boisterous rally in Novi, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. You can see him doing so on the C-Span videotape, starting at minute 38. 

What will you see at that point? This is what you'll witness:

You'll see the candidate talking about the reporters who were present to report on his rally, but also to videotape and televise it. This is part of what you'll see this particular candidate say:

UNNAMED CANDIDATE (10/26/24): See nowthe camera didn't show that. For all of you at home, you're going to have to come in and watch in person.

Can you imagine? It's so nasty. They're so nasty. They're so evil. They are actually the enemy of the people, they really are. It's so evil. 

This time, the candidate was saying that the members of the mainstream press were the people who are "so evil"—who are "the enemy of the people." He was complaining because a (presumably) stationary camera positioned to broadcast his rally hadn't been shifted to show the material on a video screen to which he'd been referring.

You can see him offering the background for this declaration starting at the 23-minute mark of the C-Span videotape. At that point, he shades his eyes as he looks to the back of the room, saying this, as he endlessly does, about the journalists huddled there:

UNNAMED CANDIDATE: You didn't know that because the fake news [shades eyes]—

Whoooaaa! You got a lot of fake news! You got a lot of bad ones back there! Whoa! That's a lot of fakers! 

You know, you'd think they'd want their credibility back...

This continues for a while after that. At this point in the day's presentation, the journalists were simply "a lot of bad ones." At the 38-minute mark, it became official again:

The reporters were now described as "the enemy of the people," a bit like Lewis once said.

All across the face of the globe, it's part of the way our imperfect species is wired. We've always been wired to respond, not just to kings and queens, but also to the allure of "the strongman."

Sometimes those strongmen even turn out to be madmen. It has happened all over the globe, and of course it could happen here.

In this case, the enemy of the people in the back of the venue are working for owners who have agreed, in the immediate American context, that this possibility mustn't be discussed.

So it has gone in the current circumstance—including now, as Election Day draws near. Over here in Blue America, we have responded with our unimpressive journalistic leadership and with their pathetic pop guns.

We'll guess that this candidate is going to win, though there's no way to know at this point. With that in mind, a question arises:

How did we ever get to this place? How did we Blues ever get here? 

Through what lack of skill—through what lack of self-awareness—have we finally reached this place? How have we finally reached the place where this outcome is thoroughly possible?

We'll be exploring that question in the coming week. For now, let's return to yesterday's question:

Did Marc Thiessen perhaps or possibly get it partially right?

Did he get it right in his column for the Washington Post? We apologize for the aggressive headline atop his piece. But concerning Blue America's latest pop gun, here's what the columnist Thiessen has said:

Harris’s closing argument is dishonest, desperate and hypocritical

[...]

Trump also did not say, as Harris claims, that he would use the American military to go after his political opponents. At her rallies, Harris plays a selectively edited clip of Trump saying in an interview with Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo: “We have some very bad people, we have some sick people, radical left lunatics, and I think they’re the—and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard or if really necessary by the military.” She then tells voters: “So, you heard his words. … He’s talking about that he considers anyone who doesn’t support him or who will not bend to his will an enemy of our country. … He is saying that he would use the military to go after them.”

No, he’s not. The words “in terms of Election Day” are omitted from the clip she plays, to mask the fact that Trump was answering a question about possible Election Day unrest—which he said could be “easily handled” by National Guard. She takes his quote out of context to make it seem he is saying something different than he is.

That’s not just dishonest, it’s hypocritical. As I recall, it was Democrats who accused Trump of violating his oath of office for failing to deploy the National Guard to protect the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Let’s be clear: I’d prefer Trump didn’t talk this way. In addition to being bad for the country, it’s bad politics: Such rhetoric is like fingernails on the chalk board to swing voters. But misrepresenting his words to suggest Trump would use the military to target ordinary Americans who oppose him is far more offensive.

That's how the column ended.

Question! Has Donald J. Trump ever actually said "that he would use the American military to go after his political opponents?" (We're quoting Thiessen's paraphrase.)

We will guess that he probably has! By now, there are very few things this badly disordered person hasn't said. We'll guess that there are things he has said which can be correctly paraphrased that way.

We'll assume he has said such things! But is that what he said to Bartiromo in the interview in question? As readers surely know, this interview has been widely cited all through our Blue American warrens, as our flailing corporate tribunes have fired their pop guns in the latest way.

Is that what he said to Bartiromo? In all honesty, no it isn't! Quite explicitly, he was asked a question about possible "chaos" on Election Day. Quite explicitly, he referred to "Election Day" as he replied to the question.

In that exchange with Bartiromo, he neither said nor suggested that he would "use the military to go after anyone who doesn't support him." In that exchange with Bartiromo, he neither said nor suggested that he would use the military to go after Adam Schiff or Nancy Pelosi.

In fact, he didn't name any political opponents at all. All in all, it was a nothingburger Q-and-A—a Q-and-A which has been transformed into the latest ineffective attack.

Tina Turner always said she liked it nice and rough. Our corporate multimillionaire tribunes—people like Joe and Mika, but even now Jake Tapper—tend to like it nice and easy. 

In the matter of this Q-and-A, they pulled out their pop guns and began to embellish—began to engage in the time-honored practice of creative paraphrase.

Warning! By now, corporate tribunes in Red America are fully aware of this practice! When our tribunes behave this way, the tribunes at the Fox News Channel will in fact swing into action.

They've reported this sort of thing a million times by now. Also, the never tell viewers about the million-and-one disordered things this candidate really has said. 

In this way, Red America's minds remain spotless, a little bit like ours.

No one is going to tell you what this candidate said in Novi. No one is going to tell you that he extended his "enemy from within" demonology in the way he did.

The children are lazing around today, happily spending their very large salaries. For ourselves, we'll guess that the Novi nutcase is going to win this year's election, though it's entirely possible that he won't.

How did we ever get to this place? We'll start with that tomorrow. For today, we'll close with embarrassment concerning a point about that one particular Q-and-A which we ourselves haven't cited:

Bartiromo asked the candidate about possible "chaos" on Election Day. The candidate said that, if necessary in the event of such chaos, the National Guard, or even the military, could respond.

This has been presented as a threat about what the candidate might do. That said, he won't be in office on Election Day! If someone decides to call out the military, it of course won't be him!

Is it about to happen here? We can't answer that question.

We can tell you what he said in Novi. As part of the way we've earned our way out, you'll hear it nowhere else!

Starting tomorrow: How we Blues managed to get here