Nuclear Jinx

I had so wanted to be frivolous here this week and then Saturday night happened. 

Oh, what the hell.  Here’s Jinkx Monsoon, Broadway star and former winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race, doing one of the most entertaining impressions I’ve ever seen of…

Oh, just watch it.

Okay, fine. 

NOW, let’s bring down the room.

Four guys you’d never want your daughter, son, sister or brother to date stood in the halls of the White House on the evening of June 21st, 2025 and told us we just launched a bunch of mega-bombs on a Middle Eastern country of 90 million people in order to prevent said country from putting together some sort of nuclear material into some sort of weapon that said country was supposedly weeks, months or years away from…. creating… enriching… launching?…. obtaining?

None of us seems to quite know.   

“Weapons of Mass Destruction” anyone?

Perhaps POTUS does, but he’s not saying.   Exactly.  Or pretty much any other way.

As for the three other guys behind him – J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth (Note: If this was the track, they’re be an entry – aka three horses owned by the same stable –  1 a, b and c)  – they remained suited up and silent in navy suits behind the boss, who was center stage in the blue jewel-toned number.

I mean, they might tell us more by the time you read this.  Perhaps in a scheduled press conferences on June 22 or on June 23 in a top secret security briefing to our representatives in Congress.  Who are supposed to know this stuff ahead of time and vote before the U.S. launches bombs into another country and ostensibly starts a war.

Of course, that didn’t happen.

Totally normal stuff here, right?

 And at no point last night was the word war mentioned in their four minute “presentation.”

So I guess that means we’re…. not in a war… with Iran?

Or are we?

I don’t even know what now

I mean when George W. Bush and Dick Cheney took us into the Iraq War twenty plus years ago, at least there was a vote.  And evidence, as specious and/or made up as it was.  They even called it an actual WAR and gave it a name – Operation Iraqi Freedom.  (Note: Yes, we eventually saw what they did there).  But this time there was no vote, no evidence – false or otherwise –  and nary a peep to any members in the Senate or the House of Representatives.

Just the Four Horsemen of the Christian Right telling us they did this thing that wasn’t a war.  Just a lot of… and I quote:

Great American patriots who flew those magnificent machines tonight…. and no military in the world could’ve done what we did…. Not even close… There’s never been a military that could do what just took place.

In case you were wondering.

Grammar matters

FYI, the magnificent machines were B-2 bombers and what they dropped were 30,000 pound bunker busters (MOBs) that bore straight into the ground to presumably blow up nuclear material thousands of feet below thousands of feet of concrete.  What happens to the remains of that nuclear material, and what the destruction caused by bombs weighing hundreds of thousands of pounds will be, is anyone’s guess.  But presumably, like always, it’s all in the name of “peace.”

Seriously, what could go wrong?

And while you’re contemplating that, here’s Jinkx telling a dirty celebrity story.

Now remember that the man leading us into this war – or whatever he claims it is – is the same person who took over the Kennedy Center a few months ago because a handful of times, among its hundreds of thousands of evenings of entertainment, it served as a venue host for drag shows.  This same person also runs a federal government whose national suicide hotline will no longer refer trans or gay kids to the LGBTQ+ hotline specifically for them, run by The Trevor Project.  That’s an actual truth bomb that just happened that you can read about here. 

Jinkx Monsoon and her kind, be damned.

Totally fine!!

Meanwhile, stay safe. 

As for those of us in Los Angeles, luckily we now have an extra 700 Marines on our streets, courtesy of POTUS, to keep us safe….

…From immigrants.

“One Day More”  from “Les Miserables” – Jinkx Monsoon (playing every role)

Is this Happening?

Screen Shot 2016-01-31 at 3.15.00 PM

What is our world coming to?

The new de facto leader of the Republican Party brags he wants to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. and limit the rights of other foreigners, such as the tens of thousands of Syrian refugees fleeing genocide in their native country, from ever getting inside our borders.

As a Jewish fellow, all I can say is good thing he wasn’t around when my grandparents entered the country. I’d have a whole different life. Or no life at all.

Here’s what it says on The Statue of Liberty, which at last glance still stands in New York Harbor:

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

Maybe we take the Statue down in light of 9/11? Or just erase the words. After all, it was a gift from France. They probably wouldn’t mind because of what happened in Paris a few months ago, right?

We could replace it with a shiny gold building that looks like a Dunhill cigarette lighter. That’s Gloria Steinem’s analogy about Trump towers, not mine. Because, well, how can you say it better?

Jugs of Justice

Jugs of Justice

Apropos of something, I have another question. When Trump skipped the last debate before the Iowa primary on Thursday, he claimed to have instead spearheaded an event that raised $6 million for our wounded war veterans through his website. But the only donation link on his website was to his Trump Foundation, which the PUBLIC TRUST(s) will go to our vets. But if this is so, can’t he still get some sort of personal TAX DEDUCTION from it? It’s His Foundation, right?

Any accountants out there know how to maneuver cash as a deduction amid all of the full legal slime written on a multi-billionaire’s federal tax return? Cause every little bit counts – that’s how you get and stay rich to begin with – so I’d love to get a full reading on this. That would be my American Dream at the moment. Assuming anyone could out-maneuver him or his money. Hillary? Bill? Bernie? Bueller? Anyone???

Sorkin, can you hear meeeee?

Sorkin, can you hear meeeee?

A friend of mine wrote on Facebook last week that he doesn’t see how discrimination and exclusion can be remedied by discrimination and exclusion. Okay, he was referring to the Oscars and how under the Motion Picture Academy’s new rules to remedy #OscarsSoWhite people like the lesbian female writer of Nine to Five; one of the biggest child star actors of the sixties and seventies; and another woman who was a pioneering animator back in the day, would have their voting rights stripped despite many decades of membership that always guaranteed voting. Where do these new Academy rule makers think they are – Florida? Don’t they remember that almost a decade ago, they gave Al Gore the Oscar?

Um... no no... we're good

Um… no no… we’re good

Of course Donald Trump’s frontrunner status can be compared to Oscar voting. To quote the words Mel Brooks’ character of Hitler sings in his megahit musical The Producers:

The thing you’ve got to know is…

Everything is show biz….

After which point he sings:   Heil myself, Heil to me….

Ring a bell – or lighter – yet?

#HomerKnows

#HomerKnows

Try explaining the current state of our affairs to small classrooms full of 21 year olds as I attempted this week. Sure, these were writing classes, not political ones, but to be a good writer one needs to draw from real life. Which means an understanding of human behavior in the world as it exists is essential in order to convincingly portray anything remotely recognizable in your made up world.

Somewhere along the line I got flummoxed and actually found myself reduced to phrases like:

It wasn’t always like this.

Or –

Yes, it was crazy, but never this crazy.

And then finally –

No, I’m not sure this is a joke. So why are we all laughing? Well, um, good question!

In the end I’m not sure I did any good at all. I was only hoping at that point, not to make it all seem any worse than it already is.

Me, every 10 seconds

Me, every 10 seconds

Fortunately, teachers are not held to the same standards as doctors. First Do No Harm dictates the Hippocratic oath. Yeah, right, that wasn’t happening.

I can’t blame any of this on the Trumpless Republican debate because I wasn’t watching, Instead, that night I was actually teaching one of these mini-groups. But unfortunately in an effort for clarity I recorded the damned thing and perused the highlights several days later.

Insert "Elephant in the Room" pun here

Insert “Elephant in the Room” pun here

Here are some, courtesy of the Washington Post and my viewing brain:

Jeb Bush: Look, I am in the establishment because my dad, the greatest man alive was president of the United States and my brother, who I adore as well as fantastic brother, was president.

Retired neurosurgeon Dr. Carson: I’ve had more two a.m. phone calls than everybody here put together, making life and death decisions, put together very complex teams to accomplish things that have never been done before.

Sen. Ted Cruz: I would note that that the last four questions have been, “Rand, please attack Ted. Marco, please attack Ted. Chris, please attack Ted. Jeb, please attack Ted…” Let me just say this…

Moderator: … It is a debate, sir.

DO NOT LOOK DIRECTLY INTO HIS EYES!!!

DO NOT LOOK DIRECTLY INTO HIS EYES!!!

Another Moderator: Can you name even one thing that the federal government does now that it should not do at all?

Gov. Chris Christie: How about one that I’ve done in New Jersey for the last six years. That’s get rid of Planned Parenthood funding from the United States of America.

Moderator: Anything bigger than that?

Christie: Bigger than that? Let me tell you something, when you SEE thousands upon thousands upon thousands of children being murdered in the womb, I can’t think of anything better than that. 

Sen. Marco Rubio: Well, let me be clear about one thing, there’s only one savior and it’s not me. It’s Jesus Christ who came down to earth and died for our sins..Because in the end, my goal is not simply to live on this earth for 80 years, but to live an eternity with my creator. And I will always allow my faith to influence everything I do.

Walk the walk, Rubio

Walk the walk, Rubio

Oy vey iz mir, as my grandmother used to say. How can this be happening? I have no idea. And I am more confused than ever. But luckily, I’ve never been intimidated by Dunhill lighters. I’ve always thought they were tacky. And the people who used them dumbasses.   And I’ve never been afraid to say so.

Neither should you.

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