If you ever get a chance to visit a historical archive and read American newspapers from the early 19th century, it's fun. They say things like, "We have just received the latest bucket of filthy untruths from the shameful den of Jacobin vipers at the Crosstown Weekly News, and pause from recoiling in horror to address their vile calumnies."
"We have just received the latest bucket of filthy untruths from the shameful den of Jacobin vipers at The Atlantic and Davos, and pause from recoiling in horror to address their vile calumnies." Sounds like something you'd write. You are carrying on a proud tradition, good sir.
Upton Sinclair (“The Brass Check”) and George Orwell (Homage to Catalonia and private letters) wrote about this ages ago. Over 100 years ago Sinclair detailed how the AP were the captive stenographers of the powers that be (the titular “brass check” referred to a token carried by prostitutes, showing what he thought of the bought and paid for media). Orwell almost 100 years ago wrote in the context of the Spanish Civil War about how the press would completely invent stories in favor of the government narrative, while ignoring any stories inconvenient to it. And of course there are tons of other examples, like William Randolph Hearst basically inventing the pretexts for the Spanish-American War. Corporate media have always been the water carriers of state propaganda, of course Kerry wants to go back to that.
I wrote a term paper in high school on Hearst and his famous scam, and bequeathed the idea to my daughter when she was in high school. It’s pretty fun to research.
'Local Substack writer denies long weekend in Vegas hotel with Sydney Sweeney...'
all belong in some kind of journalism or SubStack Hall of Fame.
Stuff has to be pretty darn funny for me to actually laugh out loud when I'm alone in front of my computer. Comedy, IMHO, is a team sport. Everything is funnier with more people. But I have, numerous times, laughed out loud reading "Tell Me How This Ends." Love it!
Chris you would have had much steeper competition for your witticism back then with lines like the 'vile calumnies' above. Your commentary and followers are one of the few places of reality I have found on the internet, and the humor from you and everyone is good medicine for this guy.
I just saw that clip and saved it for a future ridiculing article. John Kerry is one of the most insufferable people alive because he really think he's a savior and not a destroyer.
I have had to do that. He is the Premier Gasbag amongst all other gasbags. He has been a gasbag since Vietnam. And people just listen to him, nodding politely, instead of laughing or running out of the hearing room screaming, which actually are the only two normal, human reactions to hearing his gasbaggery.
And there it is: it’s always the John Kerrys of the world who see themselves as saviors, just as the Massachusetts Puritans did. They hanged 4 Quakers and exiled Anne Hutchinson and her followers all in the name of saving a religion that couldn’t deal with dissent.
He and Kamala are knit from the same ball of yarn--it is clear they both believe they are delivering profound truths that cause people to reflect deeply on their assumptions and beliefs. There is no other way to assess what it is they're trying to communicate. They think their words are truly significant and matter mightily.
All of this talk about The First amendment being a bad thing for democracy is freaking me out. What in the Hell?! Also, what is this crap about how there should be consensus on issues?! And he just comes out amd says, that folks with different opinions should be ‘hammered out of existence’?! Is anyone else angry and horrified by this?
I still lived in New Hampshire in 2004, and during primary season was working in downtown Manchester, watching American politics up close. Got to see a Lyndon Larouche supporter rush the stage at a Howard Dean rally, only to be wrestled to the floor by future U.S. Senator Al Franken. Got to see how short Gen. Wesley Clark is, which made me realize his campaign was doomed. Got to see two reporters nearly knock an old woman to the floor so as not to be late to a health care forum at which the actress Glenn Close was a panelist. And that was the year even Carole King came to town, to play a show for John Kerry, the Comeback Kid. That the Democrats of New Hampshire thought Kerry was their best chance to beat George W. Bush says a lot about human folly in 2004. New Hampshire gets a lot of heat for insisting on a first-in-the-nation primary because it's so tiny and white, not 'diverse' enough for the new America. Everyone who argues that point is an idiot. The whole point of New Hampshire as the first primary has nothing to do with diversity, and everything to do with being a tiny backwater. The WHOLE POINT of the exercise is that in New Hampshire it is possible, and strongly encouraged, for the candidates to get out and get in front of normal people on a small-scale, day after day. New Hampshire is so small you realistically can meet every potential voter in the course of the season. Bill Clinton probably did. It's meant to force politics down to the retail level. Anyway, my favorite moment that year, 2004, and probably the real beginning of my education as a 21st century American, was talking to a young Kerry campaign worker. The kid said to me, actually SAID THIS OUT LOUD TO ME, AT THE TIME A REGISTERED DEMOCRAT OF THE STATE HE WAS CAMPAIGNING IN: "People here are aggravating. They want so much from you. You call 'em two or three times... they still haven't made up their minds. They expect you to ask for their vote. Like it's something."
This is a MAGNIFICENT collection of stories. "Got to see a Lyndon Larouche supporter rush the stage at a Howard Dean rally, only to be wrestled to the floor by future U.S. Senator Al Franken." Each word of that, and the way it all fits together....
The Larouche supporters were amazing - like part cult member, part performance artist. If I could go back in time, I would follow them around exclusively. At a John Edwards rally, they started yelling about Dick Cheney and wind farms - absolutely incoherent, just lovely. The candidate didn't simply ignore them - he stopped speaking and moving entirely, almost mime like, while his aides escorted the Larouche maniac from the room. It was great absurdist theatre. You knew immediately that Edwards had been told not to engage with any heckler, to avoid being caught on tape - don't want anything that might upset the news cycle. But it was advice that probably cost him the vote of everyone in the room, because it was behavior not meant for face to face interaction. Does that make sense? These people only act so as to get on TV, or avoid getting on TV. The middle ground is where the rest of us live. Or used to live. 2004 seems quaint.
The chances of him causing a disaster by pushing the wrong button is too high. And even having him work as, say, cook, is dangerous. He'd probably end up giving the entire crew food poisoning.
But deploying him to Ukraine as a mine-clearer would be a good use of him and wouldn't require too much physical effort
My mom has some great stories about my grandfather coming home from Vietnam and shouting obscenities at Walter Cronkite on TV for all the BS he was spewing about the war.
Later in life, he told me that Cronkite owed his whole career to the bones in his skull that made his voice resonate in a tone conveying authority, regardless of what he was actually saying.
You nailed it. The biggest lie of all is that the press was ever fair or balanced. The press has always been biased There has never been a time when it wasn’t. The fantasy of the three big networks NBC CBS ABC being honest and fair is nothing but a fantasy. They were never fair or balanced. But we were not aware of that because there was no alternative at the time.
Ok- this one is easy peasy ( 2 glasses of Sagrantino into the weekend. I just drove six hours and I’m in vacanza . Gimme a break.)
John Kerry: Swiss prep school, aristocratic establishment dull mediocrity ( like a linoleum floor in a junior high with too many layers of old waxy buildup) who has the following talents in life: being a snob, being tall, being a gigolo for rich women who like dudes dressed like a butler, who look like reanimated pituitary gland extract experiments gone wrong.
“...if people go to only one source and the source they go to is sick and, you know, has an agenda and they're putting out disinformation, our First Amendment stands as a major block to the ability to be able to just, you know, hammered out of existence.”
he’s right. we need to get rid of The Washington Post.
damn you First Amendment!
there are a dozen outlets I would love to torpedo also John, but y’know…the Constitution.
No no you don't understand. It's "our first amendment". We are allowed to print whatever we want about whoever we want but we can't let that sort of freedom apply to hoi polloi. Good heavens they might print scurrilous truths about us!
Ugh! I can't stand the man, thank you for taking the hit for the rest of us. There is no way that I'm going to burn up bandwidth or brain cells to listen to that idiot. The Swift Boat story should have covered him in shame and consigned him to a life of prayer and penance in some monastery where no one ever visits.
If you ever get a chance to visit a historical archive and read American newspapers from the early 19th century, it's fun. They say things like, "We have just received the latest bucket of filthy untruths from the shameful den of Jacobin vipers at the Crosstown Weekly News, and pause from recoiling in horror to address their vile calumnies."
"We have just received the latest bucket of filthy untruths from the shameful den of Jacobin vipers at The Atlantic and Davos, and pause from recoiling in horror to address their vile calumnies." Sounds like something you'd write. You are carrying on a proud tradition, good sir.
Wow. There really is nothing new under the sun. We just know about it ad nauseam via the internet. And it’s much harder to avoid.
Upton Sinclair (“The Brass Check”) and George Orwell (Homage to Catalonia and private letters) wrote about this ages ago. Over 100 years ago Sinclair detailed how the AP were the captive stenographers of the powers that be (the titular “brass check” referred to a token carried by prostitutes, showing what he thought of the bought and paid for media). Orwell almost 100 years ago wrote in the context of the Spanish Civil War about how the press would completely invent stories in favor of the government narrative, while ignoring any stories inconvenient to it. And of course there are tons of other examples, like William Randolph Hearst basically inventing the pretexts for the Spanish-American War. Corporate media have always been the water carriers of state propaganda, of course Kerry wants to go back to that.
I wrote a term paper in high school on Hearst and his famous scam, and bequeathed the idea to my daughter when she was in high school. It’s pretty fun to research.
"donne-leur une bouffée de mitraille"
Had to look it up. Wiff of grapeshot. 19th Century 'I love the smell of Napalm in the morning...smells like...VICTORY!'
bsn
donne-moi une mitrailleuse
I'd have to say that
"...makes my bowels rumble.."
"Max Boot is a turd."
"President Shitshispants" and
'Local Substack writer denies long weekend in Vegas hotel with Sydney Sweeney...'
all belong in some kind of journalism or SubStack Hall of Fame.
Stuff has to be pretty darn funny for me to actually laugh out loud when I'm alone in front of my computer. Comedy, IMHO, is a team sport. Everything is funnier with more people. But I have, numerous times, laughed out loud reading "Tell Me How This Ends." Love it!
Chris you would have had much steeper competition for your witticism back then with lines like the 'vile calumnies' above. Your commentary and followers are one of the few places of reality I have found on the internet, and the humor from you and everyone is good medicine for this guy.
bsn
I just saw that clip and saved it for a future ridiculing article. John Kerry is one of the most insufferable people alive because he really think he's a savior and not a destroyer.
In-fucking-sufferable. Imagine sitting in that room and listening to that jackass in person.
I would be removed by security.
#metoo
3
I've never had a nightmare quite that bad.
And sincerely hope I never do!
I have had to do that. He is the Premier Gasbag amongst all other gasbags. He has been a gasbag since Vietnam. And people just listen to him, nodding politely, instead of laughing or running out of the hearing room screaming, which actually are the only two normal, human reactions to hearing his gasbaggery.
he needs a swift boat to an old age home
He can stop by on his way and pick up Joe.
his epitaph will read "He never achieved importance"
Jackass is such a great term!
He talks like, a you know, valley girl.
And there it is: it’s always the John Kerrys of the world who see themselves as saviors, just as the Massachusetts Puritans did. They hanged 4 Quakers and exiled Anne Hutchinson and her followers all in the name of saving a religion that couldn’t deal with dissent.
Eventually dissent is always dealt with in the same manner.
He and Kamala are knit from the same ball of yarn--it is clear they both believe they are delivering profound truths that cause people to reflect deeply on their assumptions and beliefs. There is no other way to assess what it is they're trying to communicate. They think their words are truly significant and matter mightily.
SimCom, you're presupposing that Mr. Kerry actually thinks.
I know a number of people who would question that assumption.
I lasted until he said "there's got to be some sort of accountability on facts". Then I turned it off.
It's like Kerry has no idea why someone would think "the nerve...", because his head is so far up his ass. It's astonishing to watch.
This is a Massachusetts mindset, isn't it? Not necessarily Puritan; it might stem from the abolitionists.
Or present day Martha's Vineyard.
All of this talk about The First amendment being a bad thing for democracy is freaking me out. What in the Hell?! Also, what is this crap about how there should be consensus on issues?! And he just comes out amd says, that folks with different opinions should be ‘hammered out of existence’?! Is anyone else angry and horrified by this?
All day, every day.
Listen to the dire warnings about the loss of the First on Dark Horse podcast: Brett Weinstein has a conversation with Matt Taibbi.
I’m glad you read/listen to/watch this stuff so we don’t have to. Your gut biome must be incredibly strong.
I still lived in New Hampshire in 2004, and during primary season was working in downtown Manchester, watching American politics up close. Got to see a Lyndon Larouche supporter rush the stage at a Howard Dean rally, only to be wrestled to the floor by future U.S. Senator Al Franken. Got to see how short Gen. Wesley Clark is, which made me realize his campaign was doomed. Got to see two reporters nearly knock an old woman to the floor so as not to be late to a health care forum at which the actress Glenn Close was a panelist. And that was the year even Carole King came to town, to play a show for John Kerry, the Comeback Kid. That the Democrats of New Hampshire thought Kerry was their best chance to beat George W. Bush says a lot about human folly in 2004. New Hampshire gets a lot of heat for insisting on a first-in-the-nation primary because it's so tiny and white, not 'diverse' enough for the new America. Everyone who argues that point is an idiot. The whole point of New Hampshire as the first primary has nothing to do with diversity, and everything to do with being a tiny backwater. The WHOLE POINT of the exercise is that in New Hampshire it is possible, and strongly encouraged, for the candidates to get out and get in front of normal people on a small-scale, day after day. New Hampshire is so small you realistically can meet every potential voter in the course of the season. Bill Clinton probably did. It's meant to force politics down to the retail level. Anyway, my favorite moment that year, 2004, and probably the real beginning of my education as a 21st century American, was talking to a young Kerry campaign worker. The kid said to me, actually SAID THIS OUT LOUD TO ME, AT THE TIME A REGISTERED DEMOCRAT OF THE STATE HE WAS CAMPAIGNING IN: "People here are aggravating. They want so much from you. You call 'em two or three times... they still haven't made up their minds. They expect you to ask for their vote. Like it's something."
This is a MAGNIFICENT collection of stories. "Got to see a Lyndon Larouche supporter rush the stage at a Howard Dean rally, only to be wrestled to the floor by future U.S. Senator Al Franken." Each word of that, and the way it all fits together....
The Larouche supporters were amazing - like part cult member, part performance artist. If I could go back in time, I would follow them around exclusively. At a John Edwards rally, they started yelling about Dick Cheney and wind farms - absolutely incoherent, just lovely. The candidate didn't simply ignore them - he stopped speaking and moving entirely, almost mime like, while his aides escorted the Larouche maniac from the room. It was great absurdist theatre. You knew immediately that Edwards had been told not to engage with any heckler, to avoid being caught on tape - don't want anything that might upset the news cycle. But it was advice that probably cost him the vote of everyone in the room, because it was behavior not meant for face to face interaction. Does that make sense? These people only act so as to get on TV, or avoid getting on TV. The middle ground is where the rest of us live. Or used to live. 2004 seems quaint.
The only thing Kerry does well and makes any sense is marry rich women.
Danny Huckabee⁹
Apparently rich women with quite limited eyesight
But many things are, in fact, improved by ketchup.
It makes the best lube.
Ha ha ha that's hilarious!
😂😂
If he weren’t so old, it would do Kerry good to spend a year working on an oil rig.
The chances of him causing a disaster by pushing the wrong button is too high. And even having him work as, say, cook, is dangerous. He'd probably end up giving the entire crew food poisoning.
But deploying him to Ukraine as a mine-clearer would be a good use of him and wouldn't require too much physical effort
The little I know, or wish to know, of Mr. Kerry makes me doubt that he is familiar with the concept "work".
Unfortunately you’re right. Maybe we could get him a training oil rig, like training wheels. Or just dig holes and fill them up again.
With some difficulty I force myself to refrain from the obvious comment re Mr. Kerry's whereabouts as those holes are filled in.
I’d settle for sending him back to St. Paul’s for a year to work in the dining hall for minimum wage. I think he’d find it enlightening.
My mom has some great stories about my grandfather coming home from Vietnam and shouting obscenities at Walter Cronkite on TV for all the BS he was spewing about the war.
Later in life, he told me that Cronkite owed his whole career to the bones in his skull that made his voice resonate in a tone conveying authority, regardless of what he was actually saying.
First observation: 6.8% of Kerry’s talk at Davos consisted of “you know.” 7 repetitions in 205 words.
Good catch!
You nailed it. The biggest lie of all is that the press was ever fair or balanced. The press has always been biased There has never been a time when it wasn’t. The fantasy of the three big networks NBC CBS ABC being honest and fair is nothing but a fantasy. They were never fair or balanced. But we were not aware of that because there was no alternative at the time.
There was always alternative media, but it took some work. The newsstand was an hour-plus slog.
Did Kerry take a private plane to Davos? Or did he fly commercial? Or did he appear on a Zoom call?
Asking for a friend.
He flew on a waft of virtue
My wafts of virtue emit too much methane.
THAT'S NOT VIRTUE
Heinz powering internal flatulence
He flew in using a special green fuel that generates clouds of smug
this comment made my day
Lolol
Greta rowed him across the Atlantic Ocean. She has really blossomed!
Chris, I’m really struggling to decide if your angry is funnier than Taibbi anger.
Kerry is so pathetic he can only be the living role model for Justin Trudeau, the stupid that Trustin Judeau strives to be.
Ok- this one is easy peasy ( 2 glasses of Sagrantino into the weekend. I just drove six hours and I’m in vacanza . Gimme a break.)
John Kerry: Swiss prep school, aristocratic establishment dull mediocrity ( like a linoleum floor in a junior high with too many layers of old waxy buildup) who has the following talents in life: being a snob, being tall, being a gigolo for rich women who like dudes dressed like a butler, who look like reanimated pituitary gland extract experiments gone wrong.
Fine post, Chris.
Tanto out.
Skull and Bones. Gentleman's C. Yes.
“...if people go to only one source and the source they go to is sick and, you know, has an agenda and they're putting out disinformation, our First Amendment stands as a major block to the ability to be able to just, you know, hammered out of existence.”
he’s right. we need to get rid of The Washington Post.
damn you First Amendment!
there are a dozen outlets I would love to torpedo also John, but y’know…the Constitution.
No no you don't understand. It's "our first amendment". We are allowed to print whatever we want about whoever we want but we can't let that sort of freedom apply to hoi polloi. Good heavens they might print scurrilous truths about us!
Ugh! I can't stand the man, thank you for taking the hit for the rest of us. There is no way that I'm going to burn up bandwidth or brain cells to listen to that idiot. The Swift Boat story should have covered him in shame and consigned him to a life of prayer and penance in some monastery where no one ever visits.