In the pilot episode of the new Apple TV series The Studio, newly installed movie studio chief Seth Rogen has two choices.
One is to greenlight legendary director Martin Scorsese’s penultimate film about cult leader Jim Jones and the 1978 Jonestown massacre, where Jones famously coerced dozens of his followers into committing mass suicide in his compound by drinking cyanide-laced Kool-Aid, rather than open its doors and answer to his very real crimes of emotional, financial and physical abuse.
The other is to make the much more colorful Kool-Aid!, a flamboyantly fun interpretation of the fabulously flavored punch (note: whose rights his billionaire corporate overlord recently acquired), featuring whimsical versions of little red, green and yellow Kool-Aid people mischievously wreaking havoc in their own invented alternative universe.
This being a satire of the movie business, as well as 2025 America, the selection is clear.
As his head of marketing proclaims about Kool-Aid:
I can sell the f-ck out of that!
Are we at the point that where a good idea is merely something we can market?
No, we’re way, way, waaaaay past that point.
Approximately $6 trillion dollars in wealth vanished from the U.S. stock market in the two days since the massive Trump tariffs went into effect last week.
Meaning 10% of our national value.
Meaning that the 35% of working Americans who have 401K account savings they’ve contributed to for years are significantly poorer with no end in sight.
Add the fact that much of Social Security’s D.C. staff, as well as many of its nationwide offices, were either fired or shuttered under the pretense of government efficiency by a bunch of DOGE bros, as well as anecdotal stories of thousands of recipients being mistakenly…ahem….deleted from the system by the click of a DOGE keystroke, one could easily conclude the financial safety of the average American has suddenly become the equivalent of…. a 15 alarm fire.
Which is pretty knee-deep sh-tty considering fire alarm levels typically range from 1-5.
Not as sh-tty as being snatched off the street and vanishing into the worst prison in El Salvador after having your head shaved (Note: Will there be an American film company in the country willing to make that story in three and a half years?) but still not enviable.
In other words, really, really, REALLY sh-tty.
Of course, this is not what we, the average working, non-billionaire Americans, are being told. What we are being told, I mean sold, by the man who would be King, I mean POTUS, the guy who’s been playing golf since Friday with some Saudi billionaires in Florida and hosting a $1 million-dollar-a-plate MAGA fundraising dinner over the weekend, is to “hang tough” because this is an “economic revolution” and the results will be “historic.”
In another interview he went on to boast:
We’re going to become so rich, you’re not going to know where to spend all that money.
Well, that would be nice and I’m sure many of you are brimming with ideas.
But first on my agenda is to dig myself out from under this BIGLY HUGE AND RELENTLESS ENDLESS PILE OF SH-T!, SH-T and MORE SH-T!
Though that’s not what the PT Barnum of Golden Escalators is suggesting I do. What he wants me, a lifelong liberal Democrat, to do is to spend my money supporting the MAGA agenda of the Republican-controlled Congress.
The day the stock market tanked I received an urgent letter from his #2 guy in the House of Representatives, House Majority Leader and MAGA stalwart Steve Scalise, imploring me to contribute $1000, $500, $250, $100, $50 or $35 to the National Republican Congressional Committee. (Note: How did they decide on the numbers and in which order to put them in?) He also strongly urged me to answer 29 questions in its AMERICA FIRST PRIORITIES ISSUES SURVEY.
Well. I mean, twist my arm, STEVE.
Though, as you can imagine, he didn’t have to.
Not only is Rep. Scalise a rabid opponent of a woman’s right to choose, an attendee of white supremacist conferences and full throated supporter of big oil and NOT green energy, he has voted against every piece of legislation in support of the LGBTQ plus community despite the fact that a BLACK LESBIAN CAPITOL POLICE OFFICER NAMED CRYSTAL GRINER took a bullet in the leg and HELPED SAVE HIS LIFE in 2017 when he was shot by a gunman during a Congressional GOP baseball practice at an Alexandria, VA stadium.
But back to Steve’s letter.
It had a respectful start – Dear Fellow Patriot – but that was where it ended. What followed were these first two sentences:
- Did Joe Biden’s REGIME work for YOU? (Note: No, not Regine’s, the once hot NYC nightclub Trump frequented in the eighties. Regime, as in North Korea, one of America’s newest allies).
- Are Biden’s leftover allies in Congress fighting for YOUR values? (Note: And yes, the YOUR was in boldface).
I know, you can imagine the rest.
Though actually, you don’t have to. Here are two choice, unedited pages for your perusal.
And even better, here’s the survey of 29 questions I answered in pen and mailed back to them.
I had many favorites but I have to say the best question in light of recent events was #5:
Do you believe most Americans want a return to the booming economy we enjoyed during the first Trump term?
When Trump was defeated in Fall, 2020 the U.S. economy, knee-deep in the covid pandemic, was the worst it’d been since the economic crash in 2008.
And after Friday’s massive financial losses, the 2025 U.S. economy was deemed the worse it’s been since the summer of 2020.
Talk about drinking the Kool-Aid and selling the f-ck out of less than nothing.
That’s why, in total exasperation, I scrawled this response in my craziest handwriting on the front of my survey response card:
TAKE ME OFF YOUR F-KNG MAILING LIST YOU FASCIST, HOMOPHOBIC, LYING, RACIST ASSH-LES AND ENJOY THE STOCK MARKET CRASHING AND THE END OF DEMOCRACY!
Sure, it’s a bit blunt and doesn’t meet them where they are.
But at least it’s not a manipulative, curated lie.
Soldiers’ Chorus – “My Country, Tis of Thee”
notes from a chair 