Tag: Celebrity

Kanye Has Left the Building

Rapper, and celebrity nut job, Kanye West has ended his presidential run:

On July 4, Kanye West tweeted that he was running for president. It was treated as one of his typical grandiloquent pronouncements. The tweet sparked a lot of opinion pieces, cable news segments, and even a question in an Oval Office interview with Donald Trump. But most people brushed it off. In a follow-up interview with Forbes, West pledged, if elected, to run the White House like the nation of Wakanda from Black Panther. That remark seemed to reinforce the notion that this was just a lark. After all, West had previously compared himself to figures varying from God to Willy Wonka without attempting to establish the Kingdom of Heaven or manufacture an Everlasting Gobstopper.

………

On the morning of July 9, TMZ reported that West’s family was concerned that the billionaire rapper was suffering a bipolar episode based on his presidential aspirations. The well-sourced tabloid website added “our sources say his family and those close to him are worried, but they believe things will stabilize as they have in the past.”

………

Later that day, I talked to Steve Kramer. He is a get-out-the-vote specialist who runs a firm that also helps candidates get on the ballot. Kramer, who has worked mostly for Democratic candidates but has also had some Republican clients, told me that he had been hired to help West get on the ballot in Florida and South Carolina. He added that his understanding was that West’s team was “working over weekend there, formalizing the FEC and other things that they’ve got to do when you have a lot of corporate lawyers involved.”

………

This all seemed real enough, and I reached out to West’s publicist for a response. The initial response was to loop in another spokesperson on the email. West’s team then went dark. As I waited for a response, I followed up with Kramer who told me, “He’s out.”

I asked what happened. “I’ll let you know what I know once I get all our stuff canceled. We had over 180 people out there today,” Kramer said.

Is Vermin Supreme running this year?

Yaaassssss!!!

Wackdoodle Alex Jones has been busted for driving drunk.

Here’s hoping that he gets some real jail time:

The conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was arrested in Texas on a misdemeanor charge of driving while intoxicated after his wife called police to their house over an argument, according to court records released on Tuesday.

The Infowars founder was booked into an Austin jail shortly after midnight and released on bond a few hours later, said a spokeswoman from the Travis county sheriff’s office. Jones, 46, had a “strong odor of alcohol” coming from him and his blood-alcohol level was recorded at 0.076% and 0.079%, according to court records.

In Texas, the legal blood alcohol limit is 0.08%. Jones was also allegedly unable to complete sobriety tests.

In an arrest affidavit, the sheriff’s deputy said he was originally responding to a family disturbance call at Jones’s home just after 10pm on Monday. “Dispatch advised the disturbance now was only verbal but earlier in the day ‘it was physical’,” the affidavit said.

………

Jones is being sued in Austin by the parents of a six-year-old victim of the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre who claim the Infowars host used his show to promote falsehoods that the shooting was a hoax.

So he’s a wife beater too.

Throw the book at this turd.

Adding to the List of They Who Must Not Be Named

I’ve never written about him before, but I need to add Kanye West to my list of they who must not be named, after he announced that he is changing his name to, “Christian Genius Billionaire Kanye West”, and that he will run for President in 2024.

Normally, my list has exception for people who run for office, but in the case of Kanye, Imma let you finish, but unless you actually win a caucus or a primary, you are out of here.

Kanye West is now on my list of my list of They Who Must Not Be Named:

Kanye West knows what’s going to put him in the Oval Office in 2024 — he’s reaffirming his plans to run while revealing his platform and a name change … a huge one.

………

Ye also complained about Forbes’ reluctance to label him a billionaire and announced he’ll change his name to “Christian Genius Billionaire Kanye West” … just to stick it to the outlet. 

 As near as I can tell, this is not some sort of performance art for a mockumentary.

Tweet of the Day

People of all races, religions and nationalities work at Sanofi every day to improve the lives of people around the world. While all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication.

— Sanofi US (@SanofiUS) May 30, 2018

This is, of course, in response to Rosanne Barr claiming that Ambien made her tweet racist bullsh%$.

In less than 24 hours, Rosanne has had me compliment the ethics of a TV executive, and express admiration for the public relations activities of a large pharmaceutical firm.

Reality has exceeded my capability for satire: It’s like a hideous inverse function of a miracle.

Hypocrisy, Arrogance, and Bigotry Are Not a Good Combination

Last year, I noted that MSNBC media personality Joy Reid had been caught throwing around bigoted homophobic comments on her now defunct blog, particularly as pertains to Florida politician Charlie Crist.

She made a perfunctory apology, and it faded into the background, until this week.

New homophobic posts were uncovered on the internet archive the Wayback Machine, and now Joy Reid is claiming that these were the result of hackers.

The wayback isn’t the only archive service.
There’s more out there…just waiting to be found.

The internet is forever.https://t.co/f5tHT8HRDm

— Queef Whisperer🕵️ (@queefagain) April 25, 2018

She has variously claimed that hackers accessed her blog after the fact and changed the posts, or that the Wayback Machine has been hacked, an allegation which the good folks there politely called bullsh%$, as did an analysis by The Daily Beast.

Unfortunately, as this colorfully named Twitter user observes, her blog posts have been archived by a number of archiving services over a rather long period:

According to the Library of Congress, Reid’s blog was archived on their local server on January 12, 2006–two days after the blog post in question was authored. Reid has so far decided against contacting the Library of Congress regarding the hacking allegations.

Oh Snap.

Also, see this Twitter thread, it gives a good survey of what was posted.

Also, the LBGT group PFLAG just rescinded an award that they intended to present to Reid, and she has had to cancel an appearance at an event with former New York US Attorney Preet Bharara.

My guess is that Reid is being honest when she says that she does not recall making those posts, but I put that down to her memory, and not hackers going after her 10 years ago.

Meathead

When you libel James Clapper and John Brennan you libel America. The desperate attack on men who have given over 90 years of dedicated service to our country is clear evidence of a conscientiousness of guilt.

— Rob Reiner (@robreiner) February 5, 2018

Dead from the neck up

Well, now I understand how Rob Reiner produced and directed the fiasco that was North.

Rob Reiner seems to think that criticizing a man who lied to Congress about warrantless wiretaps (Clapper), and another who has spent most of his career sucking up to the House of Saud with a detour excusing torture?

The only word that I can think that describes his neo-McCarthyite bullsh%$ is Deplorable.

The final word on this tweet is:

I hated this tweet. Hated, hated, hated, hated, hated this tweet. Hated it.

I Don’t Expect This to Last

In response to the shooting of a Republican Congressman at a baseball practice in Arlington, Virginia, Ted Nugent is now saying that people should be more civil in discussing politics, and he said that this would apply to him.

I expect the aging rocker to break his promise before Labor Day:

Singer Ted Nugent claims that he has seen the light and will stop using toxic rhetoric to attack Democrats.

In a Thursday interview with 77WABC Radio, Nugent swore that he has “reevaluated” his language and would refrain from saying “anything that can be interpreted as condoning or referencing violence.”

“At the tender age of 69, my wife has convinced me I just can’t use those harsh terms,” he admitted. “I cannot and will not and I encourage even my friends/enemies on the left, in the Democrat and liberal world, that we have got to be civil to each other.”

Nugent is well known for attacking Democrats, particularly former Secretary Hillary Clinton, former President Barack Obama and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). He once referred to the former president as “a piece of sh*t” and “sub-human mongrel” and urged him to “suck on my machine gun.” He then went on to encourage Clinton to “ride one of these into the sunset, you worthless b*tch.”

Anyone want to set up an office pool on when Nugent goes all assassination again?

Even the Liberal New Republic………

While I have said on many occasions that the new New Republic is better than when it was owned by virulent bigot Marty Peretz.

I find the articles far more thoughtful, and the self satisfied smugness and arrogant idiocy is in far smaller supply.

Still, sometimes it returns to form, and the stupidity is epic, such as when Senior Editor Jeet Heer suggests that in 2020, the Democratic party should run a celebrity rather than an accomplished politician for President.

Some points:

  • That’s what we did this year.  Hillary Clinton’s viability in politics has always been as a celebrity, wife of the Governor of Arkansas, and then wife of the President of the United States.*
  • Hillary lost.
  • Trump did not win through celebrity, but through selling the lie that he cares about the ordinary working folks. He did that by pointing out the truth that the the celebrity-political complex did now.
  • It reinforces the idea that the Democratic Party is out of touch with the real world.  It’s why the hit musical is called La La Land, and not The Real World.
  • It serves to deflect from the real failure here, which was that the party establishment, in a stunning exhibition of solipsism, nominated one of the few political figures on the face of the earth who could lose to Trump, because of this.

I get it: Nominating Meryl Streep is easier than fixing the party, and you support stupid lazy.

Gaaaahhhh!  I hate pseudo-intellectual contrarians.

*This is not to say that she is not a capable person, it’s just that if you look at political leaders, they don’t get to be the Senator from the 3rd largest state in the US, and then Secretary of State, and the nominee of the party without being a governor, or a mayor, or a congressman, or a city councilman.
Also, if they called it The Real World, MTV would sue their asses.
Other names that spring to mind as other potential losers, are Clayton Williams, Adlai Stevenson, Kathleen McGinty, Patrick Murphy, Evan Bayh, Ted Strickland , Kathleen Kennedy Townshend, Martha Coakley, Frank Murkowski (lost to Palin, for F%$#’s sake), and George P. Mahoney. (Had to spend some time on the Google machine to get a list even this short.)