More Bad Fashion News: Return Of The Fedora Set Back Another Generation; Face Mullet Still Thrives

Caricature of a Journalist

Glenn Thrush, "Hey, You, Get Off Hillary's Cloud". February 19

Revealed: "Politico's *Intense* Internal Memo". February 18

AT some point during the last two days--as usual, but not always, I've slept since then--local news brought the story of the woman whose apartment was burgled, and who, as a result, is mad as hell and isn't taking it anymore, by which we mean she found a way to get on local teevee and denounce the illicit appropriation of other people's stuff.

This was, first of all, at the expense of revealing that her housekeeping skills are worse than mine, though it should be pointed out that I consider dust and clutter to be political statements. Second, her one and only concern, beyond a, let's say, notable focus on the sliding door she repeatedly insisted the brigands had used as no means of entry were visible to investigators, seemed to be her burgled television, which was still in its box, as demonstrated by her pointing to the mark on the carpet where the thing had stood, and which indeed was, compared to much of the rest of her carpet, notable for not having shit piled on it.

Normally we'd applaud such civic-mindedness--What is our world Coming To, after all, when a middle-aged woman can't sit peaceably on her own couch, secure in her own residence, and wind down with an evening of watching the box her television is in?--except that the reporter, or "reporter" then felt obligated to show that the station hadn't simply sent out a news crew just because some staffer's aunt had suffered a break-in. Her very street, he and the graphic told us, had been averaging one burglary report a month for the past two years.

And as usual, when these people try to explain something a) it just gets worse and b) it generally leaves real questions, such as "Th' fuck was your teevee still in the box, lady?" unasked and unanswered. So here we were left to wonder at what point an apartment complex burglary ring became "news"? Did it have to average one a month for two years, or was this the magic #25? Or is the standard "when some staffer's aunt loses a major appliance"? And how long had the woman resided there? Anyone would be irate about losing a television she hadn't even gotten to watch yet; was the woman utterly indifferent to the suffering of twenty-four of her neighbors? If one of the earlier victims had owned seventeen cats, and the place shown evidence of animal feces and unwashed dishes, would The News have shown up quicker? How 'bout a meth lab? "Lookit, I had a whole box of beakers sittin' right here. Hadn't even been opened yet."

Armed robbery was the bigger item on the Crime Beat, though, as two gunmen tried to rob a strip-mall rib joint. The night manager got out the front door and spotted the wheelman, who bolted, so the robbers ran up the street and tried to carjack a woman. She sped off and they unloaded on her, shooting out her windshield and hitting her in both arms.

This was described as a "crime spree".

Now, I dunno about you, but whenever I plot crime sprees, they usually involve crossing state lines, not just Michigan Road, and I'm generally knocking over banks and casinos, not coin-operated newspaper boxes, while driving my own Shelby Mustang, and I've picked up Ida Lupino or Gloria Graham hitchhiking. There's a pair of twists could handle a rod or wear a gown. And either one of 'em could knock the tattoo right off Angelina Jolie's bicep.

I'm sorry, where was I? Oh, anyway, I noticed from the following half-hour that, according to the national "news", the economy is now tied to what gnomish little men who earn their living on the Exchange floor think about investor psychology, which sorta glosses over the fact that the vast majority of those shares change hands because of institutional investors and their software programs, but at least it offered some closure: as with local law enforcement, so with the nation's economy; let's see what people who're directly hit in the pocketbook have to say, hmmmm? The results could surprise you! But won't.

I had all this in mind this morning when, following Somerby, I went looking for the big Politico fact check on Hillary's claim she listens to the Beatles and the Stones! But Bob didn't link it, so I had to go to the home page and play Spot the Fedora, which meant the first thing I spotted was Today's Big Story: "Pols talk, markets dive",which blames the fact that that gnomish trader is probably being forced to drink Glenlivet, or, worse, a blend! squarely on the square shoulders of Chris Dodd, who uttered the N-word on teevee.

Nationalization! Oh, the fucking horror of it all, or, as the Gnome said, the loss of equity! which, apparently, he and the rest of The Street would prefer happen as a natural result of those stocks naturally crashing to earth and burning to ash. The Gnome looked to be about fifty, meaning he's quite possibly watched investors force-fed their own equity out of bowls made from their kneecaps a couple hundred times over a quarter-century. But not, y'know, by Socialist Democrat hordes.

Christ on a cracker, I don't care what you think about the prospects of nationalization. But if it took Chris Dodd appearing on television to make that Ugly Spectre real for you, throw the goddam thing out the window. Or put it back in its box, leave it on the floor, and hope somebody steals it. You probably have insurance. Meanwhile, if it's all the same to you, I'd rather have Chris Dodd and Barney Frank there to try to fix things, rather than more of the self-centered Libertoonians who gripe about stock prices and who got us into this mess in the first place. A bad case of the Jitters is the least I wish on those people; and a few guvment officials willing to speak the truth is the most I'll ever hope for.

By this point I'd already forgotten about Hillary, who:

We decided to fact-check, remembering the ambiguities that swirled around Yankees vs. Cubs, Dubai Ports World and Bosnian snipers.

Oh yeah, much thanks. Because of a) a whole-cloth invention by the Press of some sort of "conflict" in her choice of ball club to root for which had nothing whatsoever to do with anything she ever said or did, but was ridden like a stolen hobby horse by the punditocracy; b) the fact that while Senator Clinton was denouncing the Dubai Ports deal some of her advisors were partners in a group which had been hired to lobby for Dubai International Capital Group, which amounts to one of the most blatant cases of Not a Conflict of Interest in recent Congressional annals; and c) the fact that she said she came under fire in Bosnia when she didn't. Dear Lord, how are we to trust anything the woman has to say? Her iPod might actually be crammed to spiking with The Turtles! The Archies! The Peppermint Trolley Company! Liar. Now that she's Secretary of State, what if the thing fell into the hands of the Iranians, or the North Koreans, or the Seljuk Turks? Could there be secret backwards messages on it, or frequencies only Hillary can hear?

How'd you manage to leave out the missing Rose Law Firm records, Thrush?

Turns out it's the Beatles and the Stones, which Thrush determined by reading an article about it from 2006. Of course, telling the truth in response to an innocuous question is just the sort of thing a Liar like Hillary would do! Besides, doesn't this implicate her in the Kennedy assassinations?