Stupidity abounds on the internet. "Stephen Sondheim's WEST SIDE STORY," MS. MOJO says in a clip of SNL with Robert Downey Jr. Uh, no. That would be Jerome Robbins' WEST SIDE STORY. He produced it, he directed it and he choreographed it. Yes, Sondheim did write lyrics . . . to the music Leonard Bernstein wrote. The book was written by Arthur Laurents. When you refer to the original Broadway production, it's Jerome Robbins' WEST SIDE STORY.
Some people are just too stupid to have internet access.
Which brings us to Sabby Sabs. Last week was a humiliating week for grifter Matt Taibbi. Mike dubbed him Idiot of the Week, THE VANGUARD boys couldn't stop laughing at him, Hal Sparks felt the need to bring up Matt's misogyny, THE MAJORITY REPORT noted the humiliation and that Matt had "s-ed your d" ("your" referring to Elon Musk), BOING BOING headlines "Elon Musk to his sycophant pet journalist Matt Taibbi: 'You are dead to me'" and Matt himself? He went on YOUTUBE with Donald Trump Jr. (no link to the sewer).
Why?
He had a new "exclusive." Exclusive? Rantings from his addled brain are surely exclusives. This time the poster girl for conspiracy theories was insisting that Donald Trump was spied on during the 2016 election at the behest of the CIA. Excuse us. The rabid brain of Matt Taibbi can't stick to basic allegations -- he has to pretend that accusations are facts and that he must water the facts to make them grow. So he moves beyond the CIA to Barack Obama.
Proof?
Matt Taibbi doesn't need no stinking proof!
We're not Barack Obama fans. We never fell for the spin and were in agreement -- strong agreement -- with Juan Gonzalez's "I Smell Barack Obama Baloney" (NEW YORK DAILY NEWS -- 2008). We produced pieces like "TV: The Christ-child fumbles" (2008) and "TV: Blustering Boys" (2009). We never fell for the con. But we do live in a world where conjecture is conjecture, and extrapolation is not passed off as researched facts and documentation.
Fortunately for Matt, Sabby Sabs is as unbound by facts and reality as he is.
"Sources say," Tabbi wrote. Unnamed sources. Republicans on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Might they motive to spread lies? Didn't a major claim implode on them? Yes and yes.
There was Sabby repeating it all as facts and chortling over her own claim that CNN and MSNBC were censoring the story.
Sabby then wanted to play a clip of Lesley Stahl interviewing Donald Trump in 2020 for 60 MINUTES.
We'll use the CBS transcript:
President Donald Trump: It's the biggest -- second-biggest scandal.
The biggest scandal was when they spied on my campaign. They spied on my
campaign, Lesley-
Lesley Stahl: Well, there's no-- real evidence of that.
President Donald Trump: Of course there is. It's all over--
Lesley Stahl: No--
President Donald Trump: --the place. Lesley, they--
Lesley Stahl: Sir--
President Donald Trump: --spied on my campaign and they got caught--
Lesley Stahl: Can I-- can I say something? You know, this is 60 Minutes. And we can't put on things we can't verify--
President Donald Trump: No, you won't put it on because it's bad for Biden. Look, let me tell you--
Lesley Stahl: We can't put on things we can't verify--
After playing the clip, Sabby then proved how stupid and unprofessional she is.
"Is Lesley Stahl going to come back on and apologize for what she said in this interview?" Sabby huffed. "Don't look at this through a partisan lens. To that point, I feel that Lesley Stahl should have to come back and issue a [sic] retractment for this interview."
What the hell is a "retractment"? Do you not know English, Sabby?
A "retractment"? Do you mean a "retraction"? How stupid are you?
Pretty damn stupid -- criminally stupid, in fact.
Lesley notes that Donald's claims can't be verified. And they couldn't. Sabby thinks that, four years later, the work of Matt Taibbi verifies Donald's claims. Even if that were true (it's not), Lesley doesn't owe an apology for anything. We can't verify it -- that's what Lesley said and, in 2020, they couldn't.
Watching Sabby you get how dangerous stupid people are -- not just to themselves but to the entire system of democracy.
Again: "retractment." Stupid, stupid, stupid.
"It came from inside the house," she insisted -- trying to pretend it was a horror movie. But the only horror was her. "All of them lied!" she exclaimed. "Obama, Hillary, Lesley Stahl."
Is her obsession with Lesley Stahl about the fact that Lesley has made a career in journalism and Sabby's left begging for money on YOUTUBE?
She's a fool. Many people are. Take this century's Patti Davis.
There are people we don't feel the need to 'honor.'
Often, these people are right-wingers who say something some on the left
agree with. This site does not exist, for example, to promote any
child of Dick Cheney's. We are not so starved for common sense that we
need to celebrate the former president of vice or anyone in his family.
By the same token, Donald Trump's wayward relative? Not interested.
We won't name her but we have to comment on her because of
remarks she's made per NEWSWEEK.
Jon Stewart is a comedian. He does not exist to deliver an election to
anyone. Jon Stewart is also not -- and has
never been -- The Great Liberal Savior. He is a
center-left person. He's not left. He's done great comedy. Outside of
that, he's been a strong advocate for military families and the 9/11
rescuers.
Last week, he
returned to THE DAILY SHOW. And, yes, children, he was funny. We especially enjoyed the exchange with Dulce Sloan ("I said what I
said"). He will be doing Mondays for the foreseeable future. We could
not get through an episode with Trevor Noah who was not funny, who
played Stepin Fetchit with the popping eye balls and the high pitched
voice for laughs. It wasn't funny. Maybe it was in his own country but
the US has enough racism to address (we would think the same of the
region that Noah grew up in) without resorting to racist tropes from the
first half of the 20th century. We didn't watch THE DAILY SHOW when he hosted regularly but we did appreciate his humor.
NEWSWEEK quotes the Trump family member stating:
Not
only is Stewart's 'both sides are the same' rhetoric not funny, it's a
potential disaster for democracy ... The damage done by his 'The Rally
to Restore Sanity and/or Fear,' a DC rally/joke which inspired an entire
generation to shrug off politics and ignore the dangers of the right
wing, cannot be overstated. It was, in no small part, responsible, for
helping Donald come to power
We called out The Rally To Restore Sanity and/or Fear. We also called out the people who were seeing that as something political.
But
even with the critique we gave of that -- which we stand by -- we're not going to
pretend that was "responsible, for helping Donald come to power."
That's
a huge overreach.
Maybe that Donald family member should look at her
own actions. We know she's a motor mouth today; however, don't
remember her injecting herself into his campaign in 2015 (or in the
election year of 2016). That whole family -- including motor mouth --
is trash.
Now we can be dumb but we're not stupid enough to blame Jon Stewart for Donald being elected.
The
first person to blame is Hillary Clinton. In 2008, she went
everywhere. Was there a bar in Philadelphia, for example, that she
didn't drop in and talk to potential voters? She was 'of the people' in
her 2008 campaign (for the Democratic Party's presidential
nomination). She went everywhere and she gave everything to the
campaign. And she lost.
Some people would take that and learn from it.
And you could argue that Hillary did learn: She learned how to cheat.
And it bit her in the ass.
She's angry and she's never going to get over losing.
She
needs to blame herself. Russia was the raving of a sore loser. And
she also needed to drop out of public sight. Others who lost had the
good sense to do so. Al Gore, for example. Or John Kerry who, after the 2004
loss, went out of the country for a brief time. But loser Hillary
wanted to make every day about her.
She's the reason she lost.
In
2015 and 2016, she refused to do actual work. Donna Brazile was
rightly fired from CNN for feeding Hillary's campaign debate questions
ahead of the debates. Hillary strong armed others from running for the
nomination -- including a male senator who we would've supported but who
said it wasn't worth it -- and yet the primary ends and she seems to
think she's going to be crowned president.
She
is not and was not Barack Obama. She never had the sheen of
celebrity. But he attracted voters with celebrities so Hillary felt the
need to surround herself with them. Did no one in the DNC see that
trouble?
Hillary thought she could be Barack. Oh, look, Hillary
onstage with J-Lo, oh look, Hillary with this celebrity and with that
and -- That's not campaigning and Hillary will never, ever by a stylish
figure. What she won support for was her ability to roll up her sleeves
and get to work. Presenting herself as consort to the stars was
ridiculous and artificial -- and Hillary's long been accused of being a
fake. She tanked her own campaign with that celebrity nonsense and by
refusing to be the workhorse she was in 2008 when she went every where
(during the primary) to get votes. 2016? She was Bully Boy Bush
needing his pillow on the road and telling people to stop scheduling him
overnights because he needed to sleep in his own itty bitty bed.
Jon Stewart? He's not on the list of even 100 reasons that Donald won the 2016 election.
Don't
like his jokes? Don't watch him. But you're a liar when you start
claiming that he's the reason Donald Trump made it into the White
House. The Trumps are the reason -- and motor mouth might want to check
out the long history of her trashy family that burned everyone they
ever encountered -- even Nikola Tesla -- and maybe if that family had
addressed that issue, Donald wouldn't be the nutcase he is today -- a
nutcase who is just like his trashy family.
After Jon Stewart left THE DAILY SHOW, late night hosts seemed to lose all perspective. You couldn't watch late night anymore because they were all telling jokes and/or attacking Donald. That's not comedy. Some embraced the obsession. We didn't. A lot of people didn't. It wasn't fair and it often wasn't funny. It also gave Donald the appearance of being more important than he actually was.
One of the few comics who had the right touch during this time period was John Mulaney who's take was that Donald Trump was like a horse let loose in a hospital. That was original, funny and inspired.
Everyone else seemed to be singing the same tune from the same hymnal. And each episode brought diminishing returns.
If you believe Jon Stewart is the liberals only hope in 2024, you should be glad that he's joking about Joe Biden and -- and! -- Donald Trump. He can speak to people in ways that the only-bash-Trump hosts cannot. He comes across as fair and so people will take a moment to listen.
But whatever you believe, Jon Stewart is a comedian and his first -- and main -- job is to make you laugh. He gets that -- he got it when he took on CROSSFIRE years ago -- but so many in the audience don't as evidenced by the bitching, moaning and whining after last Monday's show. It's the stupidity, Stupid.