Just when you think you’ve seen everything, former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer dons a flouncy, lime-green-over-white outfit and makes his debut on Dancing with the Stars. Spicer’s garb made former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s candy-striped shirt and red pants on the same show in 2009 look like an R.O.T.C uniform.
Just when you think you’ve heard everything, Bill Maher appears on MSNBC warning that far, far, extremist, politically-correct progressivism is a “cancer on progressivism.” It’s a noteworthy critique coming from Trump’s comedic basher-in-chief, but most conservatives already believe that progressivism is the cancer. Does that make the Democratic Socialist progressivism of “the Squad” and their ilk a malignancy upon a malignancy?
Just when you think you’ve smelled every stench that Deep State Democrat Washington is capable of producing, Jerrold Nadler and his impeachment bitter-enders lumber out of Mueller-induced dormancy with another investigatory circus that never plays out of town.
Then Fox News’ Laura Ingraham Show preempts the grand conclusion of President Trump’s New Mexico rally to start her show on time, causing Trumpservatives nationwide to reach for their remotes in search of CSPAN. It was a flashback to the Oakland Raiders’ notorious “Heidi Game” that this viewer could have done without.
It was a challenging cycle for news-watchers, but with Iran’s drone strikes, the fentanyl death spikes, and Democrat presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg’s religious condemnations of Republicans ringing from his pro-late-term abortion pulpit, we’ll take the comic relief where we can get it.
What possesses an ostensibly macho, well-spoken political professional like Spicer to bound onstage in a get-up that would have raised Liberace’s eye-lined eyebrow? Out here in conservative televisionland, it’s almost harder to fathom than Trump’s hiring of Omarosa Neuman. But truth to tell, nobody has any right to stereotype the former Trump administration official (or anyone else) just so that their comfortable preconceptions are not violated. If this was something Mr. Spicer thought would be a fun, off-the-nose way to present himself, who are we, (and who is Sean Hannity BTW) to take umbrage?
I thought Spicer looked like a gay Buzz Lightyear without the helmet, but that’s just me. I guess in some interpretations, Spicer’s flight of fancy took a certain kind of guts. I’m at a loss to explain what kind.
Bill Maher looked worried in the MSNBC clip, and who can blame him? He seems to actively loathe the president, is willing to express the desire for a catastrophic recession to unseat him, and is just now wrapping his admittedly often hilarious comedic mind around the fact that he’s probably going to have 45 to kick around for another four-year term.
The problem for Maher–and the benefit to the right–is that the left won’t listen to him. Abortion rights for transgendered females (?) will remain on the Democrat menu, as will gun confiscation and healthcare for illegal immigrants, three policy positions Maher cited. Impeachment, which Maher harped on until “Russia, Russia, Russia” nosedived, is the losing issue that the host of HBO’s Real Time didn’t mention. He doesn’t joke about the pee tape anymore because he now knows it never existed.
Maher will be funny in the future, especially for his like-minded audience after Trump’s 2021 inaugural ceremony. He will continue to mercilessly ridicule and vilify the president. In the meantime, he will provoke mirth and merrymaking among conservatives when he prophesies accurately about the Dems tanking prospects for 2020.
Regarding Nadler and company, this has become just…sad. They’ve got nothing, they never had anything, and all they’re succeeding in doing now is driving home the hate-Trump song and dance demanded by their base, a tune that has Nancy Pelosi worried and that even relative moderates like Chuck Schumer and presidential candidate Joe Biden must keep time to.
Jerrold Nadler is poisoning the general election well, and no amount of two-stepping will undo the damage.
Finally, Fox News and Laura Ingraham. I’m a fan, hardly ever miss her show. I listened to her on the radio back in the day, every morning on Portland’s Fox News radio affiliate. But here’s the thing. If a Trump rally gets started, and your network is broadcasting it, you’ve simply got to follow through to the end.
When NBC cut away from the nail-biting end of an American Football League (this happened before the NFL/AFL merger) Raiders/Jets tilt in 1968 so that the broadcast of the television movie Heidi could start as scheduled, the uproar from football fans could be heard from coast to coast.
The reaction was so negative that the preemption changed football history. The future National Football League would contractually stipulate that all game telecasts be shown to their conclusion in the markets of the visiting team (and later in the markets of the home teams, assuming a home stadium sell-out).
For the record, as an Oakland homeboy, I’m required to cite that the Raiders scored two touchdowns in the last minute, and won.
I’m not suggesting that if a network starts to broadcast a Trump rally it should be contractually obligated to follow through all the way to the making America strong, wealthy, safe, and great again part. But after bearing witness to a news cycle-full of questionable decisions, depressed prognostications from a funny-man, and more Quixotical Democrat impeachment delusion, viewers might be forgiven for wishing it were so.
Mark Ellis is the author of A Death on the Horizon, a novel of political upheaval and cultural intrigue. He came aboard at PJ Media in 2015. His literary hangout is Liberty Island. Follow Mark on Twitter.
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