Donald Trump is Hitler.
Donald Trump is the KKK.
Donald Trump is Satan.
Silly us, we thought Ronald Reagan had been The Great Satan.
And Donald?
We thought he was a self-involved bore incapable of actual thought.
Unlike so many on the left, our opinion of Donald was based on observable fact.
We know him and we don't like him.
It's okay, he doesn't like us either.
And our interaction with -- and avoidance of -- him goes back years.
Today's hysteria over him has always seemed to us to smell of self-created drama for so many.
Monologue after monologue by Jimmy The Con Kimmel or Stephen Homophobic Colbert or Bill I Hate Women and Muslims Maher?
If he's Hitler, if he's the KKK, if he's Satan, why the jokes?
Are we supposed to believe that late night comics in Serbia were doing bits about Slobodan Milosevic back in 1999?
Donald Trump is a cottage industry for CNN.
CNN doesn't have to be embarrassed about that.
Trump coverage delivers ratings.
But they can deliver intelligent -- and, yes, fair, -- coverage.
Why they don't?
That's what should embarrass them.
The same way that SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE should be embarrassed that the abusive and homophobic Alec Baldwin keeps guesting to play Donald Trump instead of one of their own cast members.
Is it such a great role?
We're sure its one full of comic potential.
We're not seeing Alec hit those notes. We're seeing him play to the audience. We're seeing him give the type of performance that Lorne Michaels has always insisted did not belong on SNL.
Equally true, Alec Baldwin turns sixty next April and will be celebrating the birth of his fifth child.
What happened to concerns about overpopulation in this world?
Does Alec Baldwin need a fifth child?
Is he something amazing becoming a father again at sixty?
Or isn't he becoming just as creepy as the caricature of Donald Trump?
Five children.
Alec's friend Harvey Weinstein got into trouble and we saw what happened -- Alec minimized harassment and then started blaming rape survivor Rose McGowan.
As THE DAILY BEAST noted:
Rose McGowan fired back at Alec Baldwin on Sunday after he said McGowan “delayed justice” against disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein, whom she says raped her. “wee little baby man had a widdle baby tantrum cos he wants to protect rapists. You’re sooo liberal, you scum bucket,” McGowan tweeted in response to Baldwin’s remarks.
How does a Harvey Weinstein happen? Because of people like Alec Baldwin.
(Equally true, Alec has a lot more in common with Harvey than he's willing to admit.)
So if Trump's so bad and so evil, does that excuse our making nice with Alec and letting him play Donald on SNL?
It's a funny kind of world we're living in.
MSNBC's Joy Reid's commenting on how she feels she has more in common with neocons than with the left.
Rachel Maddow's daily rants are seen as inspirational when they're so beyond the cray they make Howard Beale appear reticent and reasoned.
Ellen DeGeneres brings on War Criminal Bully Boy Bush because he attacks Donald Trump verbally.
Ellen, did that really bring the dead from the Iraq War back to life?
No, it didn't.
And you normalizing Bully Boy Bush is something we can't ignore or forgive.
It was shameful.
You were shameful.
Donald Trump?
He may be all the bad he's said to be by the frantic fortune tellers.
But even if that's so, would it really excuse one-sided journalism?
Or the spreading of still unproven allegations against Russia regarding the 2016 election?
Or egging on a clash between Russia and the US -- two countries with nuclear weapons?
In The Age of Barack, so many looked the other way and that was bad enough.
They ignored the fact that he didn't end the Iraq War and he didn't end veterans' homelessness.
That was bad.
That was really bad.
But it's no longer just situational ethics. When you're praising Bully Boy Bush and making nice with him, you are now a part of the true Axis of Evil.
Have you no shame?
Donald Trump is a bore. He's a narcissist.
But thus far, his actual actions aren't all that different than his predecessors.
Maybe at the end of his White House tenure, he'll have made it clear just how corrupt the presidency is and maybe people will be smart enough to apply that to the ones who came before because they've got blood on their hands -- even if Ellen's doing the hand-jive with them.