Sunday, April 18, 2021

Fools' names and fools' faces

 

There are a great many people in this world who seem to have a very high opinion of themselves that is not always justified by the things that they say, or how the media covers them—which itself is an institution populated by a great many superstars-in-their-own-minds types. In the past week we have seen several examples of this. Take for instance Jennifer Weisselberg, who no one ever heard of until a few weeks ago, when she suddenly became “famous” for turning over financial records which she was given in a divorce settlement with the son of Allen Weisselberg, who the Manhattan District Attorney is attempting to persuade to “turn” on Donald Trump. Why she should be given such records was probably due to the fact she had no idea on how to “interpret” them.

Jennifer Weisselberg has also bragged to the media about the seemingly innocuous questions asked of her by the DA, and by way of “explanation” of why she doesn’t seem to do much, she claims to be the victim of domestic and sexual violence, although her ex-husband, Barry Weisselberg, has repeatedly claimed he never raised a hand to her. This seems like one of those Johnny Depp/Amber Heard cases; a CBS News story that otherwise inflates her “importance” and “victimhood” mentions this in passing without any further elucidation:

Barry, who in 2017 sought and then withdrew a request for an order of protection against Jennifer, citing “bodily harm,” ultimately received full custody of their two children.

There is almost no information to be gleaned on the Internet that reveals more about this apparently dysfunctional relationship, but being a former ballerina, we can infer that Jennifer Weisselberg is a bit of a “diva.” Anyways, I don’t think that this person looks like the kind who wants kids getting in the way of a good time:



Meanwhile, being a long-time Green Bay Packer fan, it was already frustrating to listen to a former “hero” reveal himself to be tone deaf before the last election by posting on social media his endorsement of Trump; it isn’t a shock” that a white guy in Mississippi would vote for a Neanderthal like Trump so long he is the right “color,” but we really don’t need to know the reasons for it coming from a state whose record of race relations is infamous in this country’s history.  But last week Brett Favre made news again when he complained about how he doesn’t like to see “politics” when he watches a football game.

That’s a bit hypocritical on a variety of fronts. First of all, the only “politics” you might see in a football game is before the game starts; secondly, people only know Favre as a former football player, and being a Hall-of-Famer he ought to know better than to make a fool of himself by openly supporting a fascist and a racist, because he is himself inserting his own politics in a sport that is majority black. Thirdly, Favre reveals himself to be tone deaf in the aftermath of January 6, and he seems to think that only right-wing athletes like himself have the “right” to intone on political and social issues.

And then there is Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, who had a little tiff with Dr. Anthony Fauci at a congressional hearing, before he was told to “shut your mouth” by Rep. Maxine Waters. What was interesting about the exchange was how they each framed the COVID-19 pandemic—Jordan as an issue of First Amendment rights, freedom and personal liberty, and Fauci as a public health issue. Who is right? You can’t exactly exercise your “liberties” if you are dead. You’d think that common sense dictates to “err” on the safe side, but Jordan—who former Speaker of the House John Boehner has called a “legislative terrorist”—is also a “terrorist” on public health issues. With nearly 600,000 dead from the virus in this country, with new and possibly more dangerous strains of the virus about, and younger people and children becoming the most likely candidates for infection, Jordan only wants to inject far-right propaganda one-liners.

Fauci became visibly upset by what he called Jordan’s “ranting,” particularly after he gave Jordan a number—10,000 a day or less—of new infections in combination with sufficient numbers of people vaccinated as a framework sufficient to begin a “gradual” move toward normalcy. That Jordan thinks that people’s rights are being “trampled on” because of “mask orders, curfews and capacity limits on businesses” shows plainly that he is playing to his base, particularly male Republican voters who polling claims is the demographic most opposed to vaccinations, let alone mask wearing. Jordan obviously believes that playing to a limited crowd of fools makes him look to them like a “constitutional scholar,” or a “man of the people,” or some garbage like that. The reality is that he is what Boehner said he is: a destructive little man who can’t shut his mouth.

So there you have it, a week where (and not even counting more mass shootings) how completely different people are “newsworthy” for the wrong reasons: a mostly nobody who gains “fame” because she happens to be accidentally attached, like a blood-sucking sea lamprey to a whale, to people who are in the news. Or  a hypocritical former star athlete who can’t get out of the way of his own tone-deaf politics, and a Republican politician who is the epitome of stupid is as stupid says—and there are a lot of those. And in all three cases, these people think that they actually are “important” in the grand scheme of things—or at least that is what they and the media think.

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