They don't know any better.
Over and over, last week, we had to keep telling ourselves that. And then we'd hum along to Mary J. Blige's "No More Drama."
But drama was all last week offered. Some of the low lights?
Well there was Friday afternoon when we watched on TV as Robert Kennedy Jr. spoke and our jaws dropped. Not over his endorsement of Donald Trump in the presidential race. We knew that was coming. What we couldn't believe was the face.
Did no one ever explain to Junior that blush is an accent, not a foundation?
Yeah, it's just for the cheeks. And it should look like it was put on with a brush, not with a brick.
There are circus clowns that wear less make up.
A mutual friend of Junior's had told us earlier in the week about the call that was put in. Was he making a mistake if he endorsed Donald Trump? Yes, the friend told him.
"It was so different from the call a decade ago," he explained. "That time it was him asking if he should marry Cheryl [Hines] and my yes answer got a lot more push back."
Indeed.
Junior raised the issue of Cheryl's name value (not as high as he wanted) and her "horse face" and the dangling boob that was smaller than the other and -- Well, let's leave it there. We don't want to be unnecessarily cruel. Besides we had to jog his memory on the fourth complaint Junior had about Cheryl, he'd forgotten.
We hadn't because Junior made four calls that time, to four trusted friends, who'd repeated the story over the years. Three of them didn't think the marriage would last five years and that Junior would leave her. Fortunately for Cheryl, with her, he just cheats and "she gives him time, [he] makes it back home." That was from another man he called about whether or not he should marry Cheryl. When we found out he'd called at least one about both (whether to marry Cheryl, whether to endorse Donald), we decided to check and see if he'd called all four.
Three. He called three of the four. One didn't return the call ('when someone's dead to you, that's it."), another explained that Junior no longer has his phone number ("I ended it when he announced he was running as an 'independent'") but on the fourth, we struck gold.
He explained that Junior "seemed more worried about endorsing Trump -- kind of strange you know, since he was marrying Cheryl three months after wife number two killed herself."
Yes, that is strange until you grasp that the American people, unlike Cheryl, are not a doormat.
They'll rebuke him. They'll call him out. They'll refuse to support him.
Cheryl?
Oh, honey, you made a mistake again! I forgive you! Don't leave me! Don't leave me!
Desperate.
Desperate like JD Vance.
Last week, he went into a donut shop. It did not go well.
No one wanted to talk to him. He came off as even a bigger weirdo than he normally does. And what was up with that hair?
Garrett Munce (ESQUIRE) offered:
While the whole thing played out like a scene straight out of Veep (is Vance a real life Jonah Ryan?), we couldn’t help but notice something very specific. X user Rob DenBleyker noticed it, too. Something looked very off about Vance’s hair.
It’s almost definitely not intentional. But the unstyled shelf of hair atop his dome, with no gradation to the rest of his hair, is not a great look for anyone and most certainly not a Vice Presidential nominee. So what exactly is happening to Vance’s coiff? We called up a few hairstylists to find out.
“It looks like someone just plopped a toupee on top of his head,” said Kevin Baker, a hairstylist at Material Salon in Tampa, FL, who went on to note that it seems like Vance went to an unskilled barber. Taking that idea further, another barber we spoke to (who wanted to remain anonymous) said it looked like either a DIY cut or a rush job—or both. “That’s someone who thought ‘something is better than nothing,’ which is obviously incorrect,” they said.
Vance is probably the type of guy who would look down his nose at paying
for an expensive haircut, but you don’t have to pay a lot to get a good
haircut provided you go to a good barber. Either Vance actually did try
to DIY his hair (or maybe asked an aid to trim him up on the campaign
bus—while it was moving) or he didn’t vet his barber properly to make
sure they give a good cut regardless of how much he’s paying for it. A
good rule of thumb is to always check out a barber’s work before going
to a new one, either on their own social media (or the shop they work
at) or with real life referrals so you know the quality of their work
before sitting down in their chair. And if you’re going the DIY route,
make sure you or whoever is cutting actually knows what they’re doing.
Goodness, Munce, haven't you ever hear of Occam's razor?
The most obvious explanation is that he paid someone to cut his hair and that someone -- like the bulk of the country -- can't stand him. It was an accidentally bad haircut, it was one more member of the working class making it clear that they didn't support JD Vance.
And why should they? His best known moments? JD Vance repeatedly insulting single women as "childless cat ladies" over the years -- not one, not twice, not three times -- No, at least a dozen times he stated that these women were hurting the country.
But there he was this morning on NBC's MEET THE PRESS refusing to apologize for it. Refusing to take it back. Refusing to call it a mistake.
KRISTEN WELKER:
All right. Let's talk about women voters more broadly. The Census Bureau estimates there are 22 million women between the ages of 20 and 40 who, for whatever reason, do not have children. What do you say to those women who hear some of your comments, including "childless cat lady" comments, which you've been asked about, but who feel as though you won't represent them?
SEN. JD VANCE:
Well, I'd say, first of all, I will represent you. I want to be the vice president for the whole country, and I want to represent everybody. And yes, I made a sarcastic comment years ago that I think that a lot of Democrats have willfully misinterpreted. But what I’ve simply said is that I think that it's really a profound change that's happened in our country, where we've become anti-family. And I would like to change that. And I think if you talk to young women, whether they have children or don't want to have children, what you consistently hear is that a lot of young women feel like they don't have options. I saw this with my own wife, who's a working mother, who's a very, very accomplished litigator. She has three beautiful kids and always felt like she was having to balance being a good mom with being the kind of litigator that she wanted to be. I just want women to have more choices. I've seen that very personally in my own family, and I think it's something that is broken about our country.
KRISTEN WELKER:
Let me zoom out a little bit then. You're calling it a sarcastic comment, and yet some women – and you got the feedback in real time – felt like it was a gut punch to them personally. Do you regret making that comment?
SEN. JD VANCE:
Look, I regret certainly that a lot of people took it the wrong way, and I certainly regret the DNC and Kamala Harris lied about it.
KRISTEN WELKER:
But do you regret what you said, Senator?
SEN. JD VANCE:
Look, Kristen, I'm going to say things from time to time that people disagree with. I'm a real person. I'm going to make jokes, I'm going to say things sarcastically. And I think that what's important is that we focus on the policy. There are certainly going to be things that I say if I'm elected vice president that people are going to say, "Well, I wish he had said that differently." I think it's most important to actually be the person I actually am, and to say those sarcastic comments were made in the service of a real substantive point. This country has become too anti-family. It's too expensive to afford a house. It's too expensive to afford groceries. Donald Trump and I want to change that. And unless we get better leadership, we're not going to.
KRISTEN WELKER:
But again, just very quickly, given that people have told you directly, have spoken out, have said that they were offended, they were hurt by those comments, do you wish you never made those "childless cat lady" comments?
SEN. JD VANCE:
I think that it's much more important for me to just be a normal human being who sometimes says things --
KRISTEN WELKER:
So no regrets?
SEN. JD VANCE:
– people disagree with. I have a lot of regrets, Kristen, but making a joke three years ago is not at the top ten of the list.
He lied and tried to pretend it was a one-time remark.
He lied and tried to blame Kamala Harris for his own words.
He lied and could only offer others -- Kamala, the people who took it the 'wrong' way and were offended.
The remarks came from his mouth and he won't own it or take accountability.
President Harry Truman didn't just say, "The buck stops here." He had it made it into a sign that sat on his desk in the Oval Office. Contrast that with JD who instead says, "The buck stops with everyone else."
About the only thing the clown improved on was his makeup. Here he is a month ago on MEET THE PRESS.
And here he is from today.
As you can see, for the facial skin, he's now just sticking with foundation and applying it evenly proving that even Miss Sassy College Draq Queen can still learn a thing or two about makeup.
Maybe he and his buddy Donald can learn about music rights? Beyonce's forced Donald to stop using her song "Freedom" at the rallies by having her attorneys send a cease-and-desist order. Last week also saw a lawsuit against the Donald-JD campaign over music usage. Mitchell Peters (BILLBOARD) notes, "On Friday (Aug. 23), the late soul singer's son Isaac Hayes III announced on social media that a federal judge had granted his father's estate an emergency hearing in their lawsuit against the former president, who has been using 'Hold On, I'm Coming' without authorization during multiple campaign rallies." Ourselves, we keep wondering when Donna Mills is going to sue JD Vance? Or did making 1984's THE EYES HAVE IT makeup video relinquish all of her rights to her patent eye makeup.
Last week also saw the DNC in Chicago. The national convention brought out a lot of crazies.
For example?
A little advice that could have applied to a lot of people last week.
CODESTINK was present. The elderly figureheads -- Jodi and Susan (aka Medea). Doing the same thing that they've been doing for over 20 years. When your efforts have achieved nothing for two decades, maybe it's time to either step down and let younger people take over or at the very least rethink how doing the same thing over and over is ever supposed to produce different results.
"Saying Their Names At The DNC."
That was one of the more ignorant YOUTUBE video whines last week.
Their names? The dead in Gaza.
Say their names why? This wasn't an episode of NIGHTLINE, it was a political convention.
And that might have been the biggest problem for some on the left last week: Knowing what a political convention was.
DEMOCRACY NOW! expanded to two hours a day last week to cover the convention; however, they never managed to get the basics right. There hasn't been a real convention since 1968. 1972? McGovern's team ensured abortion and women were rendered invisible. Nora Ephron covered it all in "Miami" decades ago. Apparently, however, ignorance of history found a lot of the left playing Gloria Steinem screaming in tears at Gary Hart in 1972, "You promised us you would not take the low road, you bastards!" She had made deals and promises and been played like the fool she is.
See Veronica Geng's "Requiem for the women's movement," the November 1976 cover story of Harper's. And for a take on 1972 that paints Gloria as a sell-out to women, see Germaine Greer's "McGovern, the big tease" from the October 1972 issue of Harper's.
We've noted that repeatedly over the years. These conventions are spectacle, planned spectacle, ever moment orchestrated ahead of time except the audience's response.
But last week, no one wanted to tell all the slow kids what was happening and what was going to happen.
When we note the conventions, we also like to note 1984 when ABC broke into the Democratic Party's convention for a late-breaking rerun of HART TO HART.
That statement -- not claim, it happened -- has resulted in more e-mails than anything else per Ty who reads the bulk of the e-mails that come in. And thousands and thousands of people have e-mailed to insist that we think we're clever with that joke but it never happened.
Oh, but it did.
From Peter W. Kaplan's "THE NETWORKS DEBATE CONVENTION COVERAGE" (NEW YORK TIMES, July 29, 1984):
Two nights earlier, one major participant in the convention-as-electronic-event had turned off the television, perhaps forever transforming the manner in which future conventions would be covered by television: ABC, impatient with a scheduling lag on Jesse Jackson's speech - which that network considered the only newsworthy part of the evening - cut away from the event and put on a rerun of ''Hart to Hart,'' a segment of one of its canceled detective series. It was the plug-pull heard 'round the broadcast world. The moment ABC viewers across the country saw Robert Wagner and Stephanie Powers in a screeching car chase car instead of the presentation of the Democratic platform, an era of pro-forma public-affairs responsibility in television had effectively been challenged.
You'd do well to read the entire article. It addresses the reality of the political conventions.
Again, reality was ignored last week.
We wanted one speaker!
Well you were never going to get them. Certainly not some minor state official. But you deluded and tricked yourself into believing otherwise and people who live for drama encouraged you to indulge in the psychotic break with reality.
It reminded us, honestly, of 2008. The DNC was in Colorado where Barack Obama tricked and manipulated IAVW -- punked them like an episode of Ashton's now forgotten TV show. All these years later, there were whiners yet again.
As we noted in 2008, they're infomercials, that's all the conventions are. They're selling a product.
And it's a pre-packaged product, no substitutions. It's not Burger King, you can't go up to the counter and pick from an assortment of products and then order one with "hold the lettuce and extra pickles please."
So maybe try dealing with reality. There aren't multiple contestants. The winner in November will either be Kamala Harris or Donald Trump. You don't need a dozen roses, it's not an episode of THE BACHELOR.
Focusing on what was actually do-able and what happened, James Zogby (THE NATIONAL) noted:
The 2024 Democratic National Convention was an exhausting rollercoaster ride for Arab Americans and supporters of Palestinian rights. It was a messy affair, with highs and lows, some small victories and some setbacks. But on balance, the naysayers are wrong, because Palestine and supporters of Palestinian rights were big winners during the four days in Chicago.
We didn’t get language on the Palestine-Israel conflict changed in the party platform, nor did we get a Palestinian-American speaker in prime time from the convention’s main stage. But the issue of Palestine was front and centre from Monday to Thursday, and in the days that followed. They were small wins, to be sure, but they were victories, nonetheless.
To know what goals we should make and pursue, we need to know the basics.
"Saying Their Names At The DNC." That's beyond stupid,
it's actually insulting. The ignorance is not an excuse. Let's
spoon-feed the uninformed masses. Over one million Iraqis died in
something known as the Iraq War. Their names weren't listed at the
2004, 2008, 2012 or ever. Not at any convention -- not the DNC, not the
RNC, not the Greens. Equally true, not even the US troops who died in
Iraq after being sent there by the US government got their names read.
For a number of you, the expectations were ahistorical and unrealistic and, therefore, setting yourselves up for failure. There is no revolution without education.
