KAFKA'S DESCENDANTS: As we watched the stumblebums try to report...

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2026

...we were driven to thoughts about Kafka: Early this morning, the haplessness known as Stumblebum Chic had us flashing on Kafka. 

On cable TV and in major newspapers, we the people were trying to report the progress of the Guthrie search. The sheer incompetence concerning the glove[s] returned us to thoughts about this:

Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka (1883 – 1924) was a German-language Jewish Czech writer and novelist born in Prague, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Widely regarded as a major figure of 20th-century literature, his works fuse elements of realism and the fantastique, and typically feature isolated protagonists facing bizarre or surreal predicaments and incomprehensible socio-bureaucratic powers. The term Kafkaesque has entered the lexicon to describe situations like those depicted in his writings. His best-known works include the novella The Metamorphosis (1915) and the novels The Trial (1924) and The Castle (1926)...

And so on from there. According to that leading (and rather highbrow) authority, he trafficked in "the fantastique" (click here), especially in this famous novella:

The Metamorphosis

The Metamorphosis, also translated as The Transformation, is a novella by Franz Kafka published in 1915. One of Kafka's best-known works, The Metamorphosis tells the story of salesman Gregor Samsa, who wakes to find himself inexplicably transformed into a huge insect (German: ungeheueres Ungeziefer, lit. "monstrous vermin") and struggles to adjust to this condition, as does his family. The novella has been widely discussed among literary critics, who have offered varied interpretations...

Plot

Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into a "monstrous vermin." He initially considers the transformation to be temporary and slowly ponders the consequences of his metamorphosis. Stuck on his back and unable to get up and leave the bed, Gregor reflects on his job as a traveling salesman and cloth merchant, which he characterizes as being "plagued with ... the always changing, never enduring human exchanges that don't ever become intimate."

As the novella continues, the circumstances of Samsa's transformation become increasingly awful. 

Is Gregor Samsa facing "a bizarre or surreal predicament," to which he "struggles to adjust?" At present, our struggling nation finds itself in a similar stew, though that isn't the main component of the instruction we find lurking there. 

Early this morning, we began to flash on this awful tale as we clicked through the efforts of our flailing American press corps to report on the various glove[s].

With apologies, the gloves in question are the various gloves which have been found by investigators in Tucson. Especially in major organs of Red America's press, the stumblebums to whom we've referred have attempted, for almost a week, to report how many gloves have been found, and to explain their potential significance.

How many gloves had police investigators found? Was it one glove, or possible two, or was it as many as three? Last Thursday, Fox News Digital went with this:

Nancy Guthrie case investigators find black gloves near roadside

A pair of black gloves recovered near Nancy Guthrie’s Tucson-area home is being tested for DNA, marking the latest development in the investigation into her disappearance.

Authorities said the gloves were found roughly a mile and a half from her Catalina Foothills residence, though it is not yet known whether they are connected to the masked individual captured on surveillance video at the home. There were conflicting reports about whether there was one glove or a pair of gloves.

Deputies and FBI agents were seen searching desert brush along a nearby roadside late Wednesday into early Thursday, focusing on terrain about a mile from the property...

Had they found two gloves, or had they found only one? It doesn't get much clearer than that!

That night, it fell to Jesse Watters, to host the announcement that a glove had been found right inside Nancy Guthrie's house! The announcement was excitedly made on Jesse Watters Primetime last Thursday night. It was then excitedly repeated on Hannity and on Fox News Tonight, and then on Fox & Friends the next morning.

Later that day, it fell to the sheriff of Pima County to report the fact that this claim had been pure bunk. That night, Watters offered a roughly three-word non-retraction retraction as the stumblebum conduct rolled on.

As of this very morning, how many (relevant) gloves actually have been found? Is the number one, or could it be two? Even this morning, major news orgs continue to offer contradictory reports on that point—and not only that:

Bizarrely, a new number has crawled out on the scene—sixteen. When PBS reposted an AP report, here's how the news report ended:

Glove found near Guthrie home with traces of DNA appears to match those worn by masked suspect

A glove containing DNA found about two miles from the house of "Today" show host Savannah Guthrie's mother appears to match those worn by a masked person outside her front door in Tucson the night she vanished, the FBI said Sunday. 

[...]

The FBI also has said approximately 16 gloves were found in various spots near the house, most of which were searchers' gloves that had been discarded.

Say what? Approximately sixteen gloves have been found "near the house?" Most of them were simply "gloves which had been discarded" by searchers? 

Some of the searchers threw them away? Other searchers came along and "found" them?

Why would law enforcement personnel discard their own gloves in the course of conducting their search? On this morning's Morning Joe, we finally saw someone raise that obvious question, though with no explanation given.

Meanwhile, as you can see, that PBS / AP report says that one glove appears to be relevant. But this is what the New York Times is reporting this morning, even now, as we type:

The F.B.I. said Sunday that gloves found about two miles from Nancy Guthrie’s home carried an unknown man’s DNA. Authorities planned to enter the DNA profile into a database in an effort to identify the person. The bureau said in a statement that the gloves appeared to match a pair worn by the man who was captured on Guthrie’s doorbell camera on the night she was abducted. The F.B.I. added that most of the other gloves recovered during its searches were those of investigators who had discarded them while conducting sweeps near the home.

The New York Times refers to "gloves"—plural. The Times also reports that other gloves found near the home had in fact simply been discarded by investigators, but it spares readers the mystery of learning that the number of those discarded gloves lands somewhere in the mid-teens.

(Why would investigators litter an active crime scene that way? Like others, the Times doesn't ask. For the record, the Times offers no link to the text of that FBI statement.)

So it goes as we the humans attempt to report the basic facts about an event which the Fox News Channel has heavily prioritized for at least the past nine days. On balance, we'd limn it like this:

Red America's press has gone all in on this news topic. By way of contrast, and perhaps more sensibly, Blue America's press has treated it as one news topic among many. 

For that reason, the stumblebums of Fox News and the New York Post have driven the reporting of the tiny handful of available facts. For us, the maddening bungles found all through the reporting has driven us straight back to Kafka.

Full disclosure! We've seen several major figures make intelligent comments about various matters in the past several days. We would include such names as these:

Marco Rubio. AOC. Barack Obama. Governor Wes Moore, regarding the topic of this earlier opinion piece by Colby Hall.

We've seen some people make sensible statements in the past few days. But over at the Fox News Channel, the stumblebums and the even more deranged individuals decided to drive the reporting of this matter. As a result, citizens have been told that it was one glove, or two, or maybe three—and now it seems to turn out that the number is really sixteen!

Gregor Samsa turned into a cockroach? Have you ever watched the Gutfeld! show—a "cable news" program which airs in prime time each weekday night? 

(That program's vulgar, dimwitted presentations often reflect unregulated anger turned loose on reasonable complaints and critiques.)

Starting tomorrow, we want to tell you why we flashed on Kafka this morning as we tore our hair about the journalistic transformations which now threaten our faltering nation.

According to the leading authority, Kafka's protagonists, including the instantly transformed Gregor Samsa, frequently found themselves "facing bizarre or surreal predicaments." This nation is facing such a predicament, though our leading lights in Blue America may not be describing it well.

Kafka may have been deeply depressed—or he may have been able to see something about the human condition. We haven't mentioned the sitting president yet, though he will be a key player in this story as the week rolls along.

As our exploration continues, we'll return to his apparent affliction, and to the refusal of major Blue American orgs to discuss what's right there before them—to attempt to report and fully describe the transformation at hand. We'll even discuss, if only briefly, the intelligent things which have been said by AOC, by Barack Obama, by Wes Moore, and even perhaps by Rubio, we're willing to say right here.

Was Franz Kafka severely depressed—or could he simply see something? For today, how many (relevant) gloves have been found? 

Citizen, don't even ask!

Tomorrow: In our view, it's rather hard to disagree with what AOC said!