Republicans are pulling an Amber on the country

 

The “real” world interferes with my movie watching again. First let’s get the latest on the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard soap opera out of the way. After claiming during the trial that she wished Depp would “leave her alone”—something she should have thought about six years ago—she still can’t seem to leave him alone. I don’t know who her PR person is, but she should fire him or her now for giving her bad advice, if indeed a narcissist like Heard can even take advice. After Tuesday’s repeat “performance” on the TODAY show interview, any "truth" that is liable to come out of her mouth will be seen as purely accidental. What we heard from her indicates that she is doubling down not just on her defamatory statements about Depp, but she may even be opening herself up to a defamation claim by the jurors as well, as a UK barrister suggests: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3k0GQm2kJPY

Meanwhile, Moira Donegan, who called the Depp trial an “orgy of misogyny” in The Guardian, neglected to mention that she is currently facing libel charges in a U.S. court, brought by a New Orleans-based journalist who was falsely accused on a list Donegan posted of male journalists accused of sexual offenses by (of course) anonymous women; she has a GoFundMe page beseeching likeminded fanatics to pay her legal expenses for her. Donegan has been engaged in an “orgy of misandry” for years; it is “amazing” how people like this who have little regard for truth are allowed a platform by “mainstream” news outlets.

Also “newsworthy” is that we are being told that Heard is now a doting mother over an adopted daughter, possibly from a paid surrogate mother; although it is not clear who the “natural” father is, there have been reports of a “battle” over Elon Musk’s frozen sperm, which Heard managed to accumulate before she split with him. This is further proof that Heard was not just an abuser but a user of the men in her life; Depp was the one who finally said enough was enough and she wasn’t going to get away with this, at least not from him. 

We might be allowed to suspect that if Heard’s career tanks, she may blackmail her unintended “sugar daddy” for money, if in fact Musk’s sperm was used. And to be honest, women like this (Heard says she is both "mommy" and "daddy") have a child to "own" for themselves only, like they would a dog that gives the "unconditional love" that is expected in return for being taken care of--and can easily turn to abuse by the "owner" if the "correct" response is not received (think Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest).

It is interesting to note that the media is jumping all over a poll that claims that Depp’s popularity went down during the trial, despite all his support on social media; if true (and the same poll doesn’t measure Heard’s numbers), this can only be explained by people who only got their information from the mainstream media’s daily dose of “heinous” allegations made by Heard and not the subsequent destruction of her lies.

Meanwhile, some folks have commented on the bizarre way Heard moves her mouth when she is challenged and finds it difficult to squirm her way out of an obvious lie, although to me expressions like this from the interview merely indicate that her habit of smirking is starting to freeze on her face:

 

In any case, the reaction on social media to her TODAY show interview indicates that Heard has only managed to make things worse for herself, especially with the false representation of her own words on those audio clips; Depp needs to press Heard to pay the judgment now because she just won't stop making defamatory statements, and he should sue NBC for allowing Heard a platform to make them. We are even told that Dateline is going to allow Heard to present "evidence" that was excluded from the trial without Depp's team an opportunity to respond to it--and lets recall that evidence helpful to Depp's case, like the Australia audio that backs his version of events, was excluded.

But false representation isn’t only the province of pathological liars living in a medicated state; politicians are also guilty of this, and in a much more profound and disturbing way—although it is useful to point out that feminists who claim that the Depp verdict was akin to the far-right attack on Roe v Wade are simply wrong:  feminist attacks on men's right to due process, and the believing only women mantra, is itself more akin to the tyranny of far-right extremism.

But back to the political angle. The other day, in response to the start of the public hearings of the January 6 committee, House minority leader Kevin McCarthy made the ludicrous claim that “everyone”—meaning the “whole country”—was “responsible” for the insurrection. Or maybe what he hoped that people would think is that no one was "responsible." This delusional assertion merely reveals a man bereft of moral and ethical credibility, which of course is to be expected when McCarthy has refused to do surgical work on the pathologies in his own party, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and Paul Gosar.

We need not belabor McCarthy’s “justification” for his assertion. Like Ted Cruz and that pathetic ilk, he claims that the George Floyd protesters are just as “guilty” as the Trumpist insurrectionists, and they should be charged similarly for federal “offenses.” The absurdity of this claim just shows you how desperate Republicans are to protect Donald Trump so as not to incur the “wrath” of his rabid dog following from what is sure to be revealed in the public hearings: not just Trump’s, but their own (who I would call “everyone’s”) culpability in enabling Trump’s attempt to destroy democracy and undermine the Constitution.

McCarthy is frankly unfit for any office of authority such as House Speaker, and that means that the Republicans must be prevented from taking control of the House in the mid-term elections. And then of course there is that raging narcissist Trump, who puked out a 12-page statement in which he naturally doubled-down on his election lies and defended the motivations of all who enabled his lies and the subsequent insurrection—and of course pulling an “Amber” like most Republicans have been doing, denying any and all personal responsibility for his own crimes and those of his confederates. As I said before, this is what should be foremost in voters’ minds when they go to the polls in November and say enough is enough, just as Depp had the courage to do.