The Fortnightly Rant

Focus groups have determined that when given a choice, people prefer hearing about lost puppies being found to staring into an existential abyss. Oh, well…here we go again, anyway. Pardon us while we state the obvious. While we’re at it, let’s print something that’s not even news: ordinary Americans haven’t been screwed this hard since Herbert Hoover was President. A couple of recent tweets can sum it up as well as anything we could write: Kimberly Nicole Foster [@KimberlyNFoster]: “it’s wild that ‘unskilled’ labor is the labor that society literally collapses without.” Andrew Lawrence [@ndrew_lawrence]: “What if the reason kids are depressed is [because] they …

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Time Magazine’s “Man, Woman, Thing, or Random Editorial Notion of the Year” is a promotional stunt masquerading as a tradition. Every year, though, Americans* pay attention to it. Why? Ask Charlie Brown why he lands flat on his back every fall. This annual marketing ritual does have one saving grace: it reliably provokes the savage wit of our Starving Artiste. The magazine misfired badly by featuring a billionaire who wants to go to another planet without having understood this one. Mr. Dater, on the other hand, has once again pinpointed—or pen-pointed—the single most salient thing going on today. Our only quibble is that “…of the …

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Another fortnight, another resounding “Thunk,” as Uncle Sam’s top-hatted noggin slams into yet another landing during his violent and interminable descent down the endless staircase leading to democracy’s crypt. Did he fall? Or was he pushed? Oh, please. We are the nation’s last living exemplar of a truly free press. Do not expect us to mimic our corporate competition by pretending to be even stupider than we actually are. Following the incoherent barking of their malevolent leader, the members of Cult #45 have volunteered enough of their warm if not necessarily sapient bodies to give the Covid-19 virus the opportunity to develop a new mutation …

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Readers, are you tired of the bitter bickering, constant conflict, and demeaning dialogue that pass for public discourse these days? Of course you are. Who wouldn’t be? The only thing on which Americans can agree is that other Americans are far too disagreeable.* Well, good news, everyone, we’ve got the perfect solution! Here’s how it works. Let’s say the neighborhood arsonist strolls up your driveway with a gas can in his hand. He’s eying your garage in a manner that seems suspicious. Ordinarily, you might be tempted to come down off your porch with a pipe wrench in your hand, telling him in no uncertain …

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Except for a few Amazonian tribes, all of us Earthians have by now been introduced to the MCU, the Marvel Cinematic Universe. A movie franchise making that much money becomes culturally unavoidable. Those celluloid shenanigans may be safely ignored, of course. At least, so we presume. If only we cold say that about the RCU—the Republican Criminal Universe. True, the nation’s plunge into competitive weirdness does seem to roughly coincide with the release of Iron Man in 2008. We suspect, though, that other events that year may have had a more disruptive effect. For example, the presidential election was won by a Black man. If …

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When we last went to press, AP had just fact-checked Individual-1’s assertion that “the real insurrection happened on November 3rd, the Presidential Election, not on January 6th—which was a day of protesting the Fake Election results.” Hidebound as ever, AP passed up the chance to level the charge “fake” at the statement’s perpetrator, settling for the prim term “false.” Normally we would refrain from wasting ink and paper on the blatherings of a person clearly untethered from reality and unfettered by morality. What makes this newsworthy is that it’s such an appalling spectacle: the august AP fact-checking the jabberings of a depraved baboon.* How has …

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