EMPIRE OF LIES

Jussie Smollett: From headshot to mugshot.

You've heard it before, and you'll hear it again right now: Everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the mouth. 

Mike Tyson said it, and Mike should know, because he sure as heck didn't plan to serve three years in the slammer on a rape rap. And they're still words to live by, even if the mouth in question is punched by yourself.

Jussie Smollett, the two-week symbol of American racial and sexual victimhood, is 36 years old, but has the long-term thought process of a 15 year-old. Maybe it would have helped had he gone to college instead of show business, maybe not. 

What is for sure is that Smollett, like many people who make a good living in the entertainment industry, is totally cut off from real life. It must have taken him by surprise that people aren't likely to walk around Chicago at two in the morning in a minus-20 wind chill with a bottle of bleach (which would have frozen) and a noose looking for a black gay man to attack while bellowing, "This is MAGA country!" 

Chicago: MAGA country? Where the last Republican mayor left office in 1931? That Chicago?

Nor did Smollett take the time to think that cops might want to take a once-over of his cellphone. Or that cops, upon finding resistance on his part, could always get the info from the phone company. I've seen that on cop shows, but Smollett's on a prime-time soap opera about a record company, so maybe he's got an excuse.

Nor did he realize that there are closed-circuit cameras on every block and in every store. Like the hardware where the guys described as his "gym buddies" bought the rope. 

But he sure knew his apartment building had a camera, so he wore the rope around his neck as entered the front door. You know, to prove it really, truly happened. 

Such a plan! And why did he go to such great stupid lengths?  Smollett thought he didn't receive enough sympathy from a threatening letter that was sent to him -- by himself. 

All because he wanted a raise. Interesting salary negotiation.

Smollett's starting pay on Empire in 2016 was $20,000 per episode. There's a chance he hasn't gotten a bump since, although he managed to scrounge up 7,000 bucks to pay his partners in crime. If I were asked to walk around Chicago in the middle of the night in Arctic-like temperatures for any reason, I'd demand 70 thousand dollars.

Line one: MAGAZINE ON BIRDCAGE. Those cops are there to
protect, serve, and do icky things.

How stupid was Jussie Smollett? He didn't think to tell his gym buddies to throw out the bleach and hats when it was over. Because even if the cops tracked them down, they never would have searched their apartment. 

Searched so thoroughly, in fact, that they would even take the magazine that lined their birdcage.

Because Jussie Smollett, TV actor, was smarter than Chicago police detectives. I've figured it out! I'm going to be the first person to get away with it! 

Nice work, Juss. Not only did you put your career in jeopardy, you made jerks out of celebrities who believed you, and made sure that the next time a real hate crime occurs, the first response from people will be Fake news! Donald Trump thanks you for your service.

Smollett even drove Christopher Paul Hasson off today's front page. He's the Coast Guard lieutenant who was out to commit mass murder. Hasson's targets were Democrats, Jews, reporters, and Joe Scarborough. Fuck Chicago -- this is really MAGA country!

The only reason Hasson got caught was because he did his web searches -- like wanting to know if Supreme Court judges had protection -- from his work computer. And the military never keeps track of what people use their computers for.

This guy's smart enough to have his own TV show at $20,000 per episode.

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THE PBS MINSTREL MAN

Gov. Ralph Northam's favorite night at the theater.

Remember when the New York Times  was keeping a running tab about prominent men caught up in the MeToo movement? They should start another for others running around in blackface.

Ralph Northam, Mark Herring, Tommy Norment -- there hasn't been this much talk about blackface since Lew Dockstader played the Alvin Theater in 1903. You can't watch the news without hearing someone say "blackface". CNN promos might as well call itself "The Most Trusted Name in Blackface News". MSNBC is going to have to alter its slogan from "This Is Who We Are" to "This Is Who We Are: Blackface". And "Fair and Blackface" is Fox News' idea of integration.

Now another network has gotten into the (minstrel) act. Jim Hummel, the host of A Lively Experiment on PBS's Rhode Island affiliate, WSBE, was recently embarrassed when a 1986 photo of him in blackface appeared on Facebook. 

PBS in a blackface scandal! Listen carefully and you'll hear the sound of its cis-gendered, white-privileged employees lashing themselves in shame with whips covered in ethically-sourced, conflict-free spikes (on sale during their next fundraising telethon). 

As the interlocuter used to say at minstrel shows,
"Gentlemen, be seated!"

But hold on. Hummel had a perfectly good explanation for his racially-motivated behavior. He and a friend were attending a Halloween party as Don Johnson and Phillip Michael Thomas, the stars of Miami Vice.

Makes sense. Remember when you went to a Halloween party in blackface in 1986? 

Unlike Gov. Ralph Northam, Hummel couldn't put this down to the actions of a crazy school kid. Not only was he older, Hummel was a reporter at the Providence Journal at the time. 

If you're wondering why a reporter for a newspaper would risk his reputation (that is, whatever kind of reputation a reporter for a Rhode Island newspaper even has) over a stunt like this, Hummel blames it on his childhood. "I grew up in the Northeast, in a community where there were very few African-Americans," he said, adding, "I mean, call me naïve. Maybe I was not clued in on blackface then."

There were more black people at the '64 Jazz
Festival than Hummel's hometown.

Call you naïve? Maybe call you stupid. I grew up in the Northeast, too. Rhode Island, just like you, Jimmy! In Newport, which had a pretty small black population. And even when I was but a child, I was aware, somehow, that blackface wasn't an acceptable form of entertainment anymore -- and we're talking 1964, not 1980-fucking-6. Maybe it helped I had a few black friends in school. Or maybe because I wasn't ignorant.

Nor was I the only one. Never did I ever see kids in blackface. Come Halloween, if any of them wanted to impersonate their favorite TV stars, they wore a Superman costume or talked on a makeshift Maxwell Smart shoe phone. 

It never would have occurred to any of us to black up as Amos & Andy. Again, this is when we were in third grade, not four years after college graduation. 

You know Jim Hummel is disingenuous when he trots out the hoary "context" excuse. While admitting it "looks horrible," he quickly adds,  "If you look at [Northam's] photo, that's a Klan member standing in a hood." 

Excellent observation! And you are a guy in equally-grotesque blackface holding a gun in a photo taken two years later. Why is it so hard for these guys to say, "It was a stupid thing to do because I was stupid then." Take it from someone who did stupid things in his 20s -- no one could dispute this.

If you haven't guessed by now, Jim Hummel is ready to apologize to anyone who's offended. But apparently this being Rhode Island, nobody is. Especially at the Providence Journal, which Hummel still writes for, and currently has an all-white staff. Maybe he still hasn't met any black people. 

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NOTE: It has been brought to my attention that minstrel shows were performed at the high school in Newport as late as 1965. Strictly for fundraising purposes, you understand. Context is everything!

DON'T MESS WITH JEFF

Now playing at Amazon Music:
"I Threw it All Away" by Bob Dylan.

It's remarkable what a little extortion will do for a guy's reputation -- especially when it isn't the extorter's desired outcome. 

Until this morning, what was the first thing that came into your mind when you heard the name Jeff Bezos?

Amazon! Admit it -- even if you read the Washington Post, as far as you're concerned, he's the guy who let you binge on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel last weekend. 

And what is it about Amazon that's so newsworthy? Other than getting your leg wax delivered to you before lunch.

No, more likely it was headlines like this one in Forbes: AMAZON IS HELL ON WHEELS FOR DRIVERS. News reports of how said drivers had to make up to 200 deliveries over eight hours, forcing them to skip lunch, break speed limits, and urinate in bottles or buckets (for men) and baby wipes (for women). 

"...And here's a picture of me bleeding like a pig..."

One driver, who, in an accident, received lacerations on his hand deep enough for him to see a bone, received no sympathy from his dispatcher. "Are you dying right now? Girls have come back with worse wounds than you."  Why, just this morning, the Los Angeles Times reported that the tips received by Amazon drivers actually go toward their base pay. That's one way of saving a buck!

And all that was after reports of the working conditions at Amazon warehouses, usually described as "horror stories", including the reliable urine buckets. A guy like Jeff Bezos, worth $137-billion, can't afford to have his people take bathroom breaks or half-hour lunches, or pay a decent wage without his drivers picking up the slack themselves. How you like your leg wax now?

Thanks to plastic surgery, Sanchez can now
play Donald Duck without a costume.

This morning, however, all that is forgotten in the wake of the National Enquirer's attempted extortion regarding Bezos' ill-considered affair with B-list TV "personality" Lauren Sanchez, currently a correspondent (meaning holding a microphone and reading off cue cards) for Extra, and formerly of KTTV's Good Day LA and Ten O'clock News. 

Lauren Sanchez, a news reporter? To paraphrase Cindy Adams, only in L.A., kids, only in L.A.

Jeff Bezos' reputation as the worst example of capitalism has become that of speaking truth to power at its finest, literally overnight -- just like Amazon Prime! And what is the name of the bad guy involved in this extortion? Pecker! Don't you dare tell me you would have believed it if you saw it in a movie. 

The transformation of Jeff Bezos.

To recap: a billionaire who runs his business like a 19th-century sweatshop... who became symbol number one of everything that's wrong with the American way of life... is now a hero for throwing down the gauntlet to the publisher of a scandal rag... who, in turn, is doing the bidding of a gangster president... who doesn't want a legitimate newspaper investigating the death of one of its columnists at the hands of a Saudi Arabian prince... who, in turn, is the best friend of the gangster president's son. 

All this over some dick pics of the billionaire. 

This is indeed a great country.

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GOOD LORD?

Farrakhan's album has since been re-released under
the title In an Anti-Semitic Mood.

A four year-old interview with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan recently surfaced. In it, Farrakhan -- a former calypso singer once known as The Charmer, and better known now as the Jew-hater with the Pepsodent smile -- called for an end to integration, and the creation of a black state because it's "what God wants." 

Now don't you go questioning him. Farrakhan's title is "Honorable Minister", meaning he's got a direct line to the Sky Chief. You should be so honorable.

Election Day, 2016.

It isn't just racial matters God's interested in; he's been sticking His holy nose into politics, too, as Sarah Huckabee-Sanders explained during an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network. "God," she said, "wanted Donald Trump to become president." 

Sorry, kids, God's gotta get to the
polls before they close.

This is apparently the one time where it's perfectly OK for non-citizens to throw a presidential election. Forget about Heaven's Gate. What we need is a jumbo-sized wall around Paradise.

Let's recap. When it comes to things like church leaders raping children and nuns (as the Pope recently admitted), disease, starvation, earthquakes, poverty -- pretty much what makes the world go 'round -- God is strictly hands-off. But when the Al Capone of Fifth Avenue glides down an escalator, suddenly He's all about taking an interest in our well-being. 

Earth's representative of
God's love.

Why did God decide to tip the scales on Election Day? According to Huckabee-Sanders, Trump "supports a lot of the things that people of faith really care about." People of faith, then, support shutting down the government for a month, calling neo-Nazis "good people", and putting children in cages. People of faith like a president who boasts of being a sexual predator, acts like Mussolini with a bad combover, and who couldn't utter a truthful sentence even if it meant he could finally sleep with his daughter. 

Sarah Huckabee-Sanders should know, because she's a proud Christian, too. No wonder I don't go to church. 

And if we're to believe Louis Farrakhan -- and why not, since Women's March co-founder Tamika Mallory recently referred to him as "the greatest leader of all times" --  God is also a racial segregationist and anti-Semite (which, when you consider what Jews have gone through, isn't much of a stretch). Have a good time at the next march, ladies! Just be sure to keep your Star of David necklace at home.

Give Satan worshippers some credit. They have no problem calling their guy "the devil" out loud. 

And at least Al Capone paid his bills. 

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HIS DARKER SELF

My yearbook page doesn't look anything like this,
and not just because I didn't own a sports car.

By the time you read this (that is, if you really do read this), Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam could be on his way to collecting a five-figure pension, having just spent a weekend unable to give a straight answer to a question that most 21st-century politicians have never been asked: Are you in blackface or under the Ku Klux Klan outfit?

Granted, it's difficult to remember everything you did 35 years ago. Speaking personally, I couldn't tell you exactly what I did 35 minutes ago. But there are some things that are just so unusual, so striking, that to say they slipped your mind makes one think that you slipped on your mind. Like, did you pose in blackface or under the Ku Klux Klan outfit?

Bing definitely isn't dreaming of a white Christmas.

I ask the question twice because it just seems to be something most people could answer relatively quickly. Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, and Freeman Godsen & Charles Correll (a/k/a Amos & Andy) would have no problem, that's for sure. Even fellows you wouldn't necessarily expect -- Bing Crosby, Laurel & Hardy, the Marx Brothers -- could recollect those singular moments: Nope, no way am I the guy in the Ku Klux Klan outfit.

Any longtime observer of politicians caught in the beartrap of their own misbegotten behavior can easily spot the signs that will likely lead Northam to his resignation. First, just boasting that he would never resign is the political equivalent of the highway sign reading LAST EXIT BEFORE TOLL. Like the wise man said, those who ignore history are doomed to hold embarrassing press conferences.

Second, the aforementioned ever-changing explanation. Behind door one: blackface. Behind door two, KKK. What do you choose, Ralph? One day, "not sure". Next day, "not me at all". Yet it's on your page in your med school yearbook with other pictures of you. And your nickname was "Coonman" even though you claim not to know why. No wonder why CNN misidentified the Governor as a Republican. (Full disclosure: I don't know why my childhood nickname was Moose.) 

If my wife ever gave me that look in public,
I'd find the nearest sewer to crawl into.

Third -- the most heinous of all -- Northam completed the cowardly/disgraced politician's hat trick by dragging his humiliated wife onstage during his non-confession. Good Lord, man, isn't it bad enough that she's married to you -- now she has to drown in the waves of your bile? What on earth goes through men's minds (and those of their advisors) when they think this looks good? The poor woman even had to prevent her idiot husband from demonstrating his Moonwalk skills! If there are things wives find unforgiveable of their husbands, this must rank #2 behind him screwing his mistress in the window of Best Buy.

If that wasn't enough, Ralphie-boy tried to excuse it all away by using the old everybody did it routine. Which might have been true if he graduated from med school in 1921. But in 1984? Well... he just might be right. USA Today provided a list of five politicians, Northern and Southern alike, who had no idea that their fairly recent blackface appearances would ever be considered insulting. Now you know why it never occurred to these people that such a thing would ever be considered detrimental to their political careers. Everybody, it seemed to them, really did do it! (I think Herman Goering made a similar excuse, but that was over 70 years ago.)

The author in 1975, dreaming up his next
tasteless stunt.

Not that I'm innocent. There are things I did during my early college years that make me embarrassed now; things I witnessed that were hilarious at the time which no longer pass the (literal) laugh test. No, my hands aren't entirely clean (except of black shoe polish).

And I can take a trip down memory lane even further, like being called into the principal's office after momentarily dislocating a classmate's thumb in 6th grade. That was 50 years ago. Do I have an extraordinary memory? Not at all! I just remember shit I did. For that alone, I'm more qualified than Ralph Northam to be governor of Virginia.

If I can pat myself on the back at all, it's because the stuff that would derail a politician's career was over by the end of my sophomore year -- hence the phrase "sophomoric humor". If there's a phrase for "final year of med school humor", I would've thought it represented something classier than what I participated in at 19. 

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