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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