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  You know.  Looking at this New Yorker cover.  I don’t know that this really concerns itself with the latest litany of sexual harrassment scandals.   But, here The man is flashing in what appears to be the privacy of his own bedroom.  Why is a giant Betty Boop rushing past the airspace?  I suppose the flashing makes it bothersome — aimed at Ms. Boop as it were — a more convenient point in my argument for some “blurred gray lines” would be if he were just walking around nude.  Then again, he’s still probably expecting Betty Boop to be rushing across shortly, but this is happenstance of two parties — stranger in the night.

On Joe Barton… well, if you really wanted to see naked pictures of Joe Barton, I guess now you can get your jollies.  Shame he has to endure the horrors — should be able to sue, shouldn’t he?

Yeah, the second allegation — Al Franken grabs woman (Minnesota state legislator) in the ass — throws my  forgiving of his USO tour shenanigans — into the dumpster, and now there’s something troubling.  Perhaps not Charlie Rose troubling… yet.

What I’m struck by with this act of transgressive humor — he committed the incriminating photograph pose in 2006 — at a moment when he was moving toward his 2008 Senate run, and failing that surely by now a voice of Democratic Party hackdom.  Joining the ranks of, oh, (bemusing ain’t it?) Joe Barton in terms of lack of discretion and leaving one vulnerable.  He knew enough to become “serious” — so he’d know enough to put it in the past.  But then again, maybe he figured he already had himself running around infantilized and in a diaper for comedic effect, so the deed was already done.

Meanwhile, in New Jersey, from more standard political corruption, Senator Bob Menendez’s trial ends in a divided jury, and I’m struck by this nugget of information.  Bob Torricelli was eyeing a Senate bid if Menendez fell, but upon the hung jury, the whole of the Democratic Party of New Jersey stands by Menendez… including one time disgraced Senator Bob Torricelli.  I suppose you don’t expect New Jersey to do anything but produce corrupt political figures, and … well, I guess the man wasn’t convicted, but of this is born the “Drain the Swamp” mantra.

Of course, the problem is the closest thing to a “Mr. Smith” in the Senate is… um… your Al Frankens.  And that’s a little stunted, isn’t it?

Did you know that before 1992 when a lot of this was going on that Judge Moore was a Democrat? You didn’t know that? How about all these people now saying, ‘Oh, yeah, yeah, everybody here knew about Judge Moore. Oh-ho-ho, yeah, good old boy we’ve known about Judge Moore for a long time.’ While he was a Democrat. Nobody said a word. When he supposedly was attracted to inappropriately aged girls, he was a Democrat. For what it’s worth.

So says Rush Limbaugh.  The give-away “for what it’s worth” being… not a damned thing.  Surely, even in the partisan rangling of hypocrisy where “some” are surfacing about to recall Gloria Steinem on Bill Clinton with some out there hedging over to “possible reassessment in order” (now that all political costs are faded) …
And wanting to decry hypocrisy as we work to inflate the import of Al Franken…

no one on Team Liberal would’ve given a damned about protecting Roy Moore in 1992.

Also…

“It’s a multi-faceted search-and-destroy mission here. But what’s really driving this,” controversial radio host Rush Limbaugh said on his show on Tuesday, “is Mitch McConnell.” 

So now the Alabama State Republican Party is effectively at war with Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell.

What say you, Alex Jones?  (Listen.)

Roy Moore told girls they were purty. Whoo. He didn’t try to take them out, he didn’t try to have sex with them, but you know what he told them they were purty

Clever bit of homespun crafting.

There is one point, which is alluded to in his rant — the demonic drag queen reading to school children.  No, not the worst outrage in this crazy world of ours, but… I tend to frown on the one that looked like a demon (unicorn colored?)  doing that abcs book… on that sense, I’m… somewhere on the same page as Alex Jones and the right wing outrage machine… kind of?

So.  I’m curious to figure out what it is, what the rationale is, what reasoning the military of Zimbabwe has for declaring their deposition of Mugabe a… “not coup”.

It’s in the details of the situation, I suppose.  When you arrest the leader, and the goal and outcome is to bypass his successor to install your own, it does seem kind of coup-like in the extreme, doesn’t it?

If it were a coup, they would promptly declare on their radio transmissions disclosing a “what is happening”, over Radio Zimbabwe — “Good morning, Zimbabwe.  Today we have enacted a coup.”  Right?

Is that a thing that happens?

The Obama-Clinton Machine’s liberal media lapdogs just launched the most vicious and nasty round of attacks against me I’ve EVER faced!
We are are in the midst of a spiritual battle with those who want to silence our message.

So Roy Moore tweets.  He can’t decide if the enemy is Obama or Clinton.  For that matter, I have to ask: doesn’t he go ahead and throw Carter into the mix? — the Carter – Obama – Clinton Machine.

And then we get the “much ado about little” … as… wait for it…

In an interview with the Washington Examiner on Thursday, Ziegler compared it to the Biblical story of Joseph and Mary, saying “Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus.”

… though.  Hrm.  “To my recollection, slight difference,” he said. “Joseph and Mary didn’t f^. Isn’t that the whole point of that story?”

And what 30-something year old man doesn’t make moves on a 14 year old girl?

“There’s nothing to see here,” said Jim Zeigler, the state auditor and a longtime supporter of Mr. Moore. “Single man, early 30s, never been married, dating teenage girls. Never been married and he liked younger girls. According to The Washington Post account he never had sexual intercourse with any of them.”

Granted… although, One of the women, Leigh Corfman, told The Washington Post that she was 14 when Mr. Moore, 32 at the time, drove her to his home in Gadsden, Ala. He took off her shirt and touched her bra and underwear while also guiding her hand over his pants, Ms. Corfman told The Post.

But what we see is Jim Zeigler taking to the part of the story it appears that Mr. Moore has essentially confessed to… more or less.  Going after someone right below the legal age of consent… a possibility…  Don’t remember… within the range of possibilities…

“that would be out of my customary behavior.”

Biblical.

In a written statement quoted by the Post, Moore said “these allegations are completely false.” But if they are true, Brinson says, it would simply mean that “he went a little too far and he stopped.”

That damnable “Clinton” half (third?) of the Clinton — Obama Machine and all that legalistic wrangling on the definition of “is”?  Out the window.

So.  I suppose this sets up an exciting December election.  Do you trust the polls?

I asked two prominent Fairhope residents about how their wealthy peers would vote. One, a liberal, said his neighbors on Mobile Bay’s fashionable Eastern Shore would claim to support Mr. Jones and then secretly vote for Mr. Moore, a man they would not invite to their homes.
Another, a conservative, said “most of my Republican friends say they are going to vote for Jones” because Mr. Moore would shame the state. As to how local Republicans will finally split, he predicted half would vote for Mr. Jones and half might stay home. “That would be all right, too,” Mr. Jones told me later when I described the conversation.

On the tack of what it takes to Doug Jones is running a state-wide Senate campaign in Alabama, meaning… he’s having to distance himself from anti-neo-confederacy.  Does this piece of symbolism faux de grace matter to you, woke America?  Decide soon, or don’t… you probably don’t live in Alabama.

All right.  Time to figure out what’s going on in the, quote in quote, “Culture War”…

The ACLU is defending the right to editorialize Taylor Swift as speaking for the “lower case kkk“, when one points to her fanbase in the, quote in quote “alt right”.

The alt right, of course, taking Taylor Swift as one of their own when they realized the true subtext of her frequent themes of bashing her last boyfriend — see, when she’s bashing her last boyfriend what she’s really doing is … um… bashing her last boyfriend?

Interesting enough to note that…
The ACLU of Northern California got involved after Herning told them of the letter. The organization has now put out a statement calling her post “a mix of political speech and critical commentary,” protected by the First Amendment. The brouhaha has led other culture writers to say they’ve received similar letters from Swift’s lawyers when writing about her alt-right fans and lack of political engagement in the 2016 election.
… might cause someone with a casual reference point on these things to say that Taylor Swift is a kind of litigation nazi.

(Larry David, in commentary over his latest controversy over an SNL monologue, is cited as — with the “Soup Nazi” episode of Seinfeld — creating the epithet in casual or trivial citations.  Even granting the qualifier of “practically”, I don’t think this is the least bit accurate.  On Larry David’s controversy — I think the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode on Wagner tells you where he stands.
Actually, I need to go check out 4-chan to see what the trolls of the “alt right” are saying about Larry David.)

Papa Murphys wants it be known that they want neo nazis to quit buying their pizza.  They became a cause of the “alt right” after the company speculated that their commercial association with the NFL is hurting their sales, what with all the kneeing and protesting and… um… mocked up flag burnings.
Damned it.  Now where is White Aryan Youth Jamboree going to get their pizzas?

AND… anti-abortion activists are boycotting Jim Beam because Mila Kunis donates to Planned Parenthood.  Yeah, well… what you need to do if you’re a corporation is have one set of political celebrity advertise to one part of the political spectrum, and another set of political celebrity to the other side.  Taylor Swift, apparently, might be the next endorsee?

Chuck Klosterman has an interesting opinion in this book about traveling to find popular musical death sites, as he travels the highways for blues legend Robert Johnson and his observation on listening to something that his rock critic predecessor, Lester Bangs as he momentarily became sick of rock in the wake of Altamont , considered revelatory — back to the source of all the rock he listens to — …

“I love blues based rock, but I f^ing hate the blues.”

Hm.  Kind of know and understand the sentiment.  It rhymes with this opinion, in reviewing a book about Prog Rock.

Do you like prog rock, the extravagantly conceptual and wildly technical post-psychedelic subgenre that ruled the world for about 30 seconds in the early 1970s before being torn to pieces by the starving street dogs of punk rock? Do you like the proggers, with their terrible pampered proficiency, their priestly robes, and their air—once they get behind their instruments—of an inverted, almost abscessed Englishness? I don’t. At least, I think I don’t. I like Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which is a kind of wonderful satirical compression of prog rock, a fast-forward operetta with goofy existentialist trappings and a heavy-metal blowout in the middle; I like the bit of Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells that became the theme music for The Exorcist. And there are contemporary bands I adore that have been grazed by prog: the moody, alchemical Tool, the obtuse and crushing Meshuggah. But for naked prog, the thing itself, I seem to lack the mettle.

It’s okay to like what indisputably sits on the shoulders of something, but not much take any liking for the inspiration… the fountainhead.

I suppose the last word on Prog rock is this episode of Chris Elliott’s Eagleheart.  I imagine “the blues” gets a little too racially loaded for anything so glib.