Vanity, Vanity, all is Vanity

[ Vanity, vanity … etc.: Ecclesiastes 1:2]

Hannity, Hannity, fatter than a Manatee…
       ~ John Cleese, from a poem by

Yes, Virginia, this IS a fisking, but a needed and almost never seen in my writings, fisking of a Lonesome Rhodes sort of display in the mass media that ought to shock us, both as an absurdist but dangerous defense of the Madness of Donald Trump, and as a flagrant example of the deterioration — even rotting — of academic standards once held in highest regard by an educated society that considered education the KEY to rising in that society. Just ask Abraham Lincoln, who is peripherally involved in all of this, as we shall see.

I have just had a sort of epiphany of sophistry. This is not hyperbolic, nor is what I have to say controversial, save that it might offend some of those from whom the epiphanic state was engendered. Now, bearing in mind that this sophistry — the tree that produces no fruit whatsoever — is only explainable by laying it out in reverse, I will, withholding certain information until the denouement, begin thusly:

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Let us go down, and there confound their language

Happy New Year!

Here’s a fun true story about NOT hiring a bilingual proof reader:

Many years ago, I got a job typesetting for a company that specialized in supermarket flyers. Several of our accounts were for flyers in Spanish. But, like good Orange County, Cali. gringos, they couldn’t be bothered to hire a bilingual proofreader. Came the new year, in giant HEADLINE type:

Our Fourteenth Annual Christmas Radio Show!

Jan. 1 2019 UPDATE: The show has been taken down. Link no longer works.

Welcome to his vorpal sword‘s  Fourteenth Annual Presentation of “The Saint Nick Case,” a Christmas radio play of approximately one-half hour.

The Saint Nick Case for radio was written by Hart Williams in 1986, and performed on KOPT AM radio for Christmas 2005.

Click for the radio play

For a special treat,  The KOPT Radio Theater Players in the 2005 production of “The St. Nick Case,” in wide-spectrum, full color stereo. The radio play was broadcast live on Eugene’s Air America affiliate KOPT-AM 1600 on December 23, 2005.

Shameless Plug

I’m out of jail. Finally. Five months of twelve have been spent being capriciously punished by Facebook.

Oh, and not able to do my Christmas marketing. Have a look. It’s only 60 seconds.

Courage.

America At Its Best

Some of you know that I carried out a lengthy blog campaign in the summer and fall of 2006 against a secretive group of libertarian cronies of the Koch Brothers, going back AT LEAST to David Koch’s Vice Presidential campaign in 1980 with Ed Clark as the standard-bearer.

I phrase that last very carefully, because, even at the time, they were clearly working at Koch’s behest and paycheck and walked out of the Libertarian Party together a few years later. What I uncovered was what the mainstream media still can’t wrap their heads around: these guys spawn 501(c)3 charities and 501(c)4 “civic leagues” at a rate that would awe a rabbit.*

[* And, following the phony “IRS scandal” that the right wing flayed and pilloried the agency with for years, those organizations are, more or less, off limits to IRS scrutiny.]

But if you focus on the people, they keep showing up again and again and again.

And that’s where James Crumley comes in.

Facebook is a Kafkaesque Nightmare

Mark Zuckerberg’s Rube Goldberg machine is starting to squeal. It seems that the scandal de jour is that they knew about the Russian intervention a full year before the election and chose stock price over country. (And customers, come to think of it.) Naturally, Mr. Z releases an apologia and a “fix” statement:

A Blueprint for Content Governance and Enforcement
Mark Zuckerberg / Facebook

My focus in 2018 has been addressing the most important issues facing Facebook.  As the year wraps up, I’m writing a series of notes about these challenges and the progress we’ve made.  The first note was about Preparing for Elections and this is the second in the series…

Note that it starts with “Me.”

Let me tell you about “me” instead.

Where Are The Angry Tea Party Voices NOW?

To wit(less):

Vote as if your life depended on it. It probably does.