His father’s youth wing forced him off the stage last night when the author of Triggered began a book-promotion appearance by announcing he wouldn’t take any questions/comments.
Why did this seemingly routine announcement (lots of speakers opt not to do Q/A), um, trigger the most ardent supporters of America’s Genius of the Carpathians to attack his son and his son’s very Elena Ceausescu partner (she instructed the assembly that “You’re not making your parents proud by being rude and disruptive.”)?
Well, “We wanted to ask questions about immigration and about Christianity, but they didn’t want to face those questions.” No kidding. If you thought John McCain had a hard time handling a voter who told him Obama was an Arab, imagine fielding Since America was uniquely created by Jesus Christ, who was white, why do we accept non-white immigrants?
At 81, Harvard’s highest-profile emeritus has chosen to close out his life anticly and frantically suing everyone in sight. And in return getting sued.
Like his doubles in desuetude, Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani, he has long been a naughty boy, a game-player, a rule-breaker, and he intends to go down swinging as the rule of law catches up with him. But as he is very old, his punches aren’t landing. He and his doubles are hollow men.
We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless
Observers try to capture the convoluted farce Alan Dershowitz has made of his life:
[E]very argument he makes creates even worse fallout: Don’t just deny… demand they sue you! Then get sued. Don’t just litigate the case… get [David] Boies kicked off! End up facing [brilliant litigator] Chuck Cooper. Don’t just claim [Virginia] Giuffre’s mistaken [about your sexual crimes]… accuse Boies of blackmailing you! Get sued by Boies.
He might have quietly settled various cases against him; he might have retreated to Martha’s Vineyard, as the lights dimmed, with a little dignity. Instead, this bizarre American figure, this deflated pop-up doll, keeps trying to pop. We cannot help watching him. And his doubles.
Here we go round the prickly pricks Prickly pricks prickly pricks Here we go round the prickly pricks At five o’clock in the morning.
[Alan Dershowitz claims that one of his friend Jeffrey Epstein’s underage sex slaves has] “caused him severe emotional distress, including ‘cardiac conditions.’”
All sorts of direct witnesses apparently told then-assistant OSU wrestling coach Jordan that the team doctor was raping student wrestlers. Yeah, we know; it is what it is, he is reported to have said to the complainants. If you can shrug at a doctor masturbating in front of one of your referees in the locker room shower, you can shrug at anything.
If it seems incomprehensible to you that the British don’t want to be in the EU, consider what the Danes just subsidized with their membership: A high-profile formal report condemning the fifth strongest democracy in the world as a reactionary ethnocracy — and this judgment courtesy of that well-known champion of democratic values, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. (Ooooooops!)
European Parliamentarian Niels Fuglsang, who represents the ruling Social Democrats, has said that he will demand an explanation from the European Commission. “I don’t think our taxpayer money should go to such a propaganda business for Erdogan.”
“We are so to speak paying for a report that spreads lies and propaganda about ourselves,” notes Social Democrat MEP Christel Schaldemos.
EU to Denmark: Get with the program! Marry your girls off at thirteen, stick ’em in a burqa, and shut the fuck up.
… and various Islamic groups keep lazily saying yes. I mean, they don’t even bother arguing the thing, making a case — they just say dude no problem so what’s your problem?
Ali Abu Shwaima, the chairman of the Lombardy Islamic Center, said there has never been a problem due to women wearing a burqa or veil, thus such a ban is pointless. “Everyone should be free to dress as they wish,” he said.
One, no one is allowed to present themselves to any public realm I’m aware of in any way they wish. Two, a logic issue: If there has never been a problem of this sort, why is northern Italy, along with many regions and countries all over the world, passing burqa bans? UD detects a problem. This guy might at least do everyone the favor of offering reasons why banning burqas is a bad idea. As you know if you follow UD on the subject, burqa fans are strikingly lazy (banners are Islamophobes is about as far as many of them think they need to go) in its defense. I’m guessing it’s because it’s hard to defend.
Scathing Online Schoolmarm says: Even at the highest levels, editors sometimes mistake plain and plane. In a column about Michelle Obama, Charles Blow writes:
[Racists have always believed black people lack] the morality and character to exist on the same plain as white people.
It’s an understandable error, since it sort of makes sense to say someone deserves to exist in the same geographical location as other people; but the actual idea is that they are on the same level. SOS is going to guess that an editor will soon correct it.
From their greedy idjit prez to their AD — a man very highly compensated for having the brains to leave messages on journalists’ phones telling said journalists they are “fucking scum” for questioning him about the third case of psycho coaches at the school — Rutgers University has proved itself one of America’s premier high culture locations. The life of the mind is in good hands there.
You can’t help wondering, driving through Potomac, Maryland, or the Hamptons, or hundreds of locations like them, what’s going to happen to all the empty, unsellable, mcmansions. Turns out not every generation of Americans wants a meaninglessly vast, crushingly expensive box in a distant field – so once the owners realize they’re also desperate to get out of them, what do you do with the abandoned, house-littered landscape?
Of course there are always squatters – Florida and Nevada mcmansions are full of them – but there’s no money in that. OTOH: Turns out a beautiful cosmic convergence is playing out right in front of our eyes: Owners are renting to enormous bring-your-own-guns parties! Shooters want anonymity for their shooting; owners want rental income: Win/Win.
Yes, neighbors are pissed about hundreds of drunk dangerous people next door in what they thought was an upscale neighborhood — dumping trash, blasting music, fighting, crashing their cars, and killing each other — but town councils don’t give a shit, and by the time the police get there, as in lovely Orinda, California, five people are already dead, and more to come, kiddies.
And look – as I’m sure the NRA will explain to the local belly-achers – there are two cool things they’re overlooking here:
They can watch the massacre on YouTube. Yes! It was filmed.
The Orinda party was on Halloween. How many parents can show their trick or treaters real corpses?
*****************
Uhhhhhhhh… okay! Day 1 post-massacre, Airbnb announces it’s banning party houses. But if you read the article I linked to, it’s clear that this won’t be easy. Massive parties and criminal activities have for some time been the “scourge” of the industry, and UD doesn’t see how you can effectively police liars of the sort who lied her way into the use of the Orinda house. Plus, as abandoned mcmansion territory grows, there won’t be any neighbors to complain about your meth lab/assault weapon jamboree. Miles of tumbleweed and turrets will assume a Mad Max character…
La Kid, looking a lot like her mother at that age, with two Irish friends in Chicago last night. (She’s in the middle.) She’s about to go Halloweening dressed as Moira from Schitts Creek.
