It’s okay, today, People.
It seems we’ve been given a reprieve on one front. The midterms were a lot closer than expected and we are neck and neck with the fascists. Yay? It seems that enough regular people are fed up with the evil ridiculousness. They got nervous that the President might be right and democracy is at stake. They were correct in taking that to heart.
Also, here in Cali it rained for a few days. So, everything is coming up roses this week. Literally. We’ve held the monsters at bay and climate change doesn’t matter for a few days because it rained in southern California. It never does. You know the song.
In a few weeks it will all be brittle and tinder-like again. The Right will regroup around some new talking points and the menace will pick up again.
Culturally, all is garbage. I do enjoy the demise of Twitter and the hilarious downfall of one of the primary narcissists who drive current culture. There’s a few, but three of them took big hits in the last few weeks. Musk, Trump and Ye are all spiraling. Like, bad. It’s beautiful.
The reposting of the Gallagher episode after his death has revealed, again, how hollow and wrong-minded the fight against ‘woke’ culture really is. People spewing out their defense of Gallagher on what has become the death throes of Elon Musk’s cultural relevance. A screaming, dying social media platform, to defend who they seemingly see as a warrior of free speech because of my talk with him. Fucking Gallagher. A clown. Is one of their heroes apparently. What a bunch of uninspired hack babies.
The ‘anti-woke’ angle is pure hack. A word they like to throw around a lot but I am sure most don’t even know what it means or where it comes from. Or maybe they do because the pot calling the kettle hack is one of their favorite tactics. I’m not, you are. Over and over again like a bunch of empty brained, easily manipulated and even more easily triggered hacks.
Obviously, the fight is not over and it may ultimately be unwinnable but what a joy it was to see all the dumb dumb minority rule election denying opportunists and radicalized Christians and believers of pure fairy tale bullshit take one to the collective balls. That sack belongs to King Baby Donald and everyone on his tiny autocratic grifting dick.
Kanye has been spiraling for a while but the anti-Semitic version made me nervous. When Kyrie Irving got on board I became more nervous as a Jew. I’ve always known about the strain of anti-Semitic imagery and conspiracy within the black community. It’s in some churches, for fuck's sake. I’m just happy there was push back. I got scared that there would be an alignment between the worst of white culture and all of black culture against the Jews.
Dave Chappelle dealt with all that from all the sides that he could in his monologue on SNL. He did it so deftly that initially I thought he was giving Kanye and Kyrie a pass and saying the only transgression was saying out loud publicly something all blacks know to be true and know not to say publicly. He was kind of saying that but he was able to balance and disarm the conspiracy theory and reconcile the perspective of the black community with the culture at large and ultimately deal with the cost of the transgression which is a reality when we say shit sometimes, as Dave knows. It was interesting because the whole riff was about the reality of lines you can’t cross. He did cross them, again, but it was funny. Because of his skill and the way he contextualized it. I’m still thinking about it. I may think it's anti-Semitic tomorrow. I’ll see.
Tough week for narcissist fucks. Good week for democracy or whatever we have here.
Today I talk to Wes Bentley about moving from stardom through addiction to being a sober working actor. Good guy. On Thursday I talk to one of my literary heroes, Bruce Wagner, about his work. Great talks!
Enjoy!
Boomer, Monkey and LaFonda live!
Love,
Maron
Push Back.
