CHUCK HATES EVERYTHING! (Current Events Roundup)

     Earlier this past week, Arch Alarmist Alex Jones (who never met a bullshit theory he didn't like) and his Infowars channel started pushing this rogue narrative that the Vegas Shooter was associated with ANTIFA.

Obviously, this is a credible call, right? Because the best way to fight back against fascism is to unload a few thousand rounds of ammo on a stadium full of innocent people who are trying to enjoy Music....right?

RIIIIIIIGGHHHHT.

Anyway, typical Conspiracy Theorist M.O.---all the info comes from “anonymous sources” that won't be named and so can't be fact-checked (something the mainstream actually seem to have picked up with the whole Russiagate Thing) but of course, a certain corner of the internet are going wild with it. (They found ANTIFA literature all over his hotel room----does ANTIFA even PUT OUT literature?!--, according to....SOME unnamed source or another----'cause THAT'S real credible) No dissuading the True believers.

The cries of “False Flag Attack” and “Multiple Shooters” are, of course, pretty run-of-the-mill. The former seems to start these days anytime anyone gets shot. The scapegoating of ANTIFA, though, is a pernicious bit of bullshit that has multiple levels to it.

Any number of Nationalist types took up the cudgel with the Infowars story and apparently ran with it--- one person referring to Paddock as “a left wing, Anti Trump, Antifa, Democrat,” further adding, “he looks like a Jew.” (Keepin' it classy, Nazis!) Several people in the twittersphere, according to NEWSWEEK, attempted to connect the shooter to not only ANTIFA, but also to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

And unless you're a complete rube, you might now be seeing the problem, here. The problem is the blanket attempt to conflate two Corporatist, Globalist Neoliberal World Leaders with a worldwide underground semi-organized gang who are largely anarchist or communist that like to bust up White Supremacist rallies. It's not just that these two groupings aren't even in the same ballpark----it ain't even the same GAME. ANTIFA/DEMOCRAT. NO. That's like saying, BICYCLE/FETUS.CRATE/NEBULA. LOBSTER/PARTICLE ACCELERATOR. No. Just, no. They're not the same thing.

So, yeah-----all you nice, moderate suburbanites who don't look any further than CNN for your current events analysis and who dutifully ran out to cast your votes for Hillary last November----you and those guys wearing the bandanas over their faces and getting into fistfights with all the Neo-Nazis during the protests----I know this'll shock and amaze you---but you're basically being painted as one in the same.

Which isn't to cast too much negativity on ANTIFA. I understand all the arguments against them....yeah, it's America, we all have freedom of speech, it might be best just to hear the other guy out and let him be as stupid as he wants, but in the grand carcass of it all I kind of regard ANTIFA as a sociological antibiotic....if we must have these clowns out there pushing for the deportation/marginalization and/or harm of innocent people, hitting people with cars and bashing their heads open with sticks, then having this other group who want to clean their clocks is A-OK with me. Why would I condone such brutality? Look at some pix of the liberation of Auschwitz. That's why I'm okay with people punching Nazis.

       You might get the idea, at this point, that I'm more sympathetic toward these Anarchist loose cannons than I am toward the Democratic Party. And you'd kinda be right. Sorry.

There are so many different gradiations up and down the ideological spectrum that after a while they don't much resemble each other anymore. Not sure how you'd explain the notion of gradualism and corporate pragmatism to someone who basically wants egalitarian society and no central government....but yeah---I'm sure you guys are bedfellows. In some alternate universe.

As a loose rain dog on the ideological street, I get it---I have no desire to be part of a DNC-led McResistance with all the yuppies who can afford to fly around to different actions around the country with their pussy hats. Gimme a real resistance, I'll be there with bells on.

In the meantime, kids, remember that you're all being put into one big, amorphous box. And could be dealt with as such. Remember----this snake oil salesman (Jones) has the ear of some fairly important people these days. Those broad brushes are bein' used. This has been your heads-up.

As long as I'm waxing my carrot on current events---when the yowling Oompa Loompa in Chief starts calling people who have the audacity to actually engage in their American right to dissent and protest (a right people fought and died for) sons of bitches, don't you just wish a wise populace who cared about their freedoms would just yell, “get that stupid, orange SOB out of the White House! He's fired! HE'S FIRED!!!!”?

Yeah---me too.

On the flip of that, does anyone out there really think of Hillary Clinton as a “Victim” of some sort?! This I ask as she's making the rounds with her World Pity Party in support of her new book, WHAT HAPPENED? (The question mark is my addition, since she seems to have not figured the answer out herself) I've seen enough reports on the subject to where I don't have to bother reading it myself, but the main gist seems to be that she looks everywhere but inward to point a fickle finger of blame. Christ Almighty! The poor old gal had every advantage under the sun....her corrupt buddies in the DNC stacked the deck for her in a pathetically(and OBVIOUSLY) rigged primary; the entirety of the mainstream media (Faux News notwithstanding) lined up behind her; the Neo Cons, the Military Industrial Complex, Wall Street---most of whom will usually align themselves with Republicans----all threw her their unequivocal support. All of that would usually spell a ten ton win for any other person, especially in the face of such an opponent, now possibly the most unpopular President ever. How do you botch that? You can whine all you want about Russia, Bernie Bros or whatever other piece of fiction you care to dredge up as an excuse; only one person could have defeated Hillary Clinton, and that was Hillary Clinton.

Why not just go for the gold? I was on my second pass of proofreading and a devil on my shoulder said, “as long as you've gone this far, why not talk about 'Saturday Night Live'? That way you'll have everything out of your system and you won't have to talk politics again for at least another year?” Well, yeah, okay----SNL has been in my craw in recent months, so, done.

You're not going to like it.

So, there's the afformentioned Oompa Loompa in the White House and we're all terrified, but “Saturday Night Live” is actually FUNNY again for the first time in a desert, and Alec Baldwin is just SO CUTE as the Chief Executive Creep, and our faith is restored and SNL is FUNNY again, and we all tune in every Saturday and all is right with the world....and we're all laughing, 'cause.....'cause.....it's TRUMP, right????? And SNL is now the zenith of political satire again, RIGHT????

right?

Ehh.....

Okay, truth is I'm more lenient on current incarnations of the show than some....I got back into it (after years of general apathy) around 2010 and drifted out of it again by 2012, 2013 or thereabouts because all the cast members I liked were jumping ship and it wasn't making me laugh anymore.

Suddenly, though, we're all supposed to start loving it again because some loon's in the White House and suddenly SNL is the absolute pinnacle of political satire....because we all need a good laugh in this day and age and because it's TRUMP, goddammit!!!!!!

So the other week the new season premiered and I made a point of watching, because we're all supposed to love it and all.....watched it that night, pulled it up on YouTube and watched it the next day.

It wasn't funny.

Oh, it had its moments, to be sure-----well, it had one moment---Kate McKinnon's bizarro world turn as Jeff Sessions caught me off guard....that was genuinely funny. Not in a way that had any remote reflection on reality.....but it kinda made me laugh.

It might have been funnier if they'd actually ripped Sessions for being a racist, cryptofascist douchecanoe...but naturally, that's a little too heady for SNL, so they didn't go there.

Which has been my chronic issue with them over the years, I guess: They don't “Go There”.

That's the most I can give SNL right now.

But....but....Chuck....they're nailing it!!!! And it's TRUMP, dammit!!!!!!! You remember TRUMP, right????

Sorry----it being Trump doesn't help matters----sorry----not funny is not funny. In fact, I can't count the number of topical “humorists” I can't abide anymore since the last election...Colbert. John Oliver. Samantha Bee. Seth Myers. Bill Maher. Okay, I've disliked Maher's smarmy ass for years, now, so maybe he doesn't count. Trevor Noah. All Corporate Neoliberal suckups and sellouts, every one. Worthless. Rachel Maddow. She's a comic, right? She may as well be.

You've got no right to cry in your beer over the election of Trump if you found it worthwhile to direct a metric truckload of airtime to his empty podium. It's as simple as that. And the way they bookended the latter half of last season with dueling versions of “Halleluja” made me want to personally approach each and every one of these charlatans and slap Leonard Cohen's name and lyrics out of their collective mouths, along with every single tooth I'd be lucky enough to knock loose.

Yes----step back and take it in, because no euphemism was intended-----I wanted to punch these people in their mouths. I hated what they did THAT MUCH.

UNPOPULAR OPINION #1: SNL has ALWAYS been spotty as hell. Always. ALWAYS. This is the part where all you old skoolers fall all over yourselves to castigate me and insist, “you don't know, punk! Back in the day SNL was counter-culture! It was brilliant! You have no idea how good it was! You need to go back and see the stuff with the original cast!”

To which I reply, no, actually, I ***DO*** know. Because my 13 year old ass was front-and-center for the very first episode, way back in the Mesozoic Era. Don't let these Dorian Gray good looks fool you. And I watched the original run fanatically for its entire duration. Loved the cast. I even liked the Muppets and the short films by Gary Weis. Some of them anyway, I guess.

It'd be an understatement to say a lot of this stuff didn't age well, though....some of it, plain and simple, wasn't good THEN. I remember as a kid trying to justify liking the show to my straightlaced Mom as dud skits peeled forth one after another. Thanks, SNL, for backing me up.

UNPOPULAR OPINION #2: The Political stuff has always been SNL's weak spot. Always. A!L!W!A!Y!S. From lame Gerald Ford pratfalls to all the winking, nudging nonsense of the Carter Era to Dana Carvey's pathetic, uncritical take on Bush I to Armisen's blackface and Jay Pharaoh's general dullness as Obama.....none of this shit was funny. If it was possible to skip the interminable political cold opens I always would, rather than watch more terminally softballed attempts at “satire”. And, as a further note to would-be political humorists----when you invite these politicians to guest on your show, YOU ARE IN BED WITH THE ENEMY!!! YOU HAVE COMPROMISED YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM. Please fuck directly off the edge of the nearest cliff. Thank you.

And I have to reiterate to those who fear the ramifications of “Going There”-----if you're not gonna “Go There”, why should we get in the goddamned car?????

The only person of in the history of SNL who ever had the balls to “Go There” was Charles Rocket, on the much-maligned Doumainian season. Watch his stints on Weekend Update if you can find any trace of 'em. Lorne Michaels seems hellbent on erasing any trace of that era of the show. Rocket had TEETH. His Weekend Updates were properly savage.

He paid for it, too. Go ahead and ask him.

OH, WAIT, YOU CAN'T! Poor sonofabitch killed himself.

Anyway, yeah, (and this one's for the Rocket) fuck SNL.

As I prepare to lob this one out there the sky is falling and Castle Weinstein is crumbling like an iceberg on the Equator. Good riddance. Miramax devoured 90 per cent of what we knew as “Independent Film” in the 90s and probably has a good hand in why mainstream movies suck these days. I'd just as soon see the whole house of cards come down.

And the state of film doesn't even touch this douchenozzle, his abuses and the internal machine's culture that allowed it to keep happening for decades. 'Bye, Harvey! 'Bye to a lot of these troglodytes, I hope.

Tying in with the whole political theme, any articles you may have read by elitist Washington Insiders handicapping the potential candidates in the 2020 Democratic presidential horse race will always focus on one crucial (and nauseating) factor: these peoples' abilities to fundraise.

The hit now being taken to anyone favored by Megadonor Weinstein should be the best warning shot ever given across the bough of the political establishment (and the Democrats in particular)----wanna survive extinction? Abandon Donor Culture now.

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