That might be one of the worst trailers I have ever seen
If you don’t already know who or what the Slender Man is, this trailer for the film inspired by the creepypasta meme won’t give you much to go on. Instead, the first preview for Sylvain White’s film, which stars Mama’s Javier Botet López as the titular ghoulish figure, is just a montage of vaguely eerie tableaux with…
Lets all make sure we acknowledge the few times that good things happen these days
The moment Nathan Bedford Forrest was lifted from his place of honor and then removed from it.
Hi y’all, Memphis Wonkette here! When news broke early Wednesday evening that the Memphis City Council had just voted unanimously to remove the two nasty Confederate traitor loser statues sitting in two of our city parks (one of Nathan Bedford Forrest, which is also his grave site, and the other of Jefferson Davis, whose dumb bones are nowhere nearby), the immediate collective reaction was, “Wait huh? How they do that?”
We’ve had the same fights about monuments everybody else had, but Memphis had hit some unique snags. City Council voted in 2013 to knock the damn things down, but also in 2013, the Tennessee state legislature, which LOVES local government except for when “local government” does something it does not like, approved the Tennessee Heritage Protection Act, which is just exactly what it sounds like. You can’t be taking down statues of precious Confederate traitor losers in Memphis because the state of Tennessee says that’s a sin against HERITAGE NOT HATE.
But the fight raged on, led by a grassroots activist named Tami Sawyer, who created a group, #TakeEmDown901, that never lost sight of the ultimate goal. (“901” is Memphis’s area code, and, um, we in Memphis are kind of in to that number.) Jim Strickland, the city’s first white mayor since we cannot even remember, had insisted all along that he wanted the monuments gone, but he also insisted he wanted the process to be “legal,” contra the wishes of those of us who wouldn’t have given a damn if they had just dropped an anvil on the fucking things from outer space and apologized in the morning. Strickland had been petitioning the state for a waiver, but as of October, the state was ignoring him.
Not good enough, let’s try something different!
The process that played out Wednesday was indeed very legal, but it was also hilarious. State of Tennessee, you say we can’t remove these fuckers from public land? OK fine, the city of Memphis just sold those two parks to a nonprofit for $1,000 a piece, which means they are now on private land, and HOLY SHIT HOW DID THOSE CRANES SHOW UP SO SOON, IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE CITY COUNCIL VOTE? It’s like it was a coordinated plan!
WATCH: Statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest, Confederate Army general and early leader of the Ku Klux Klan, removed from Health Sciences Park in Memphis, Tennessee. pic.twitter.com/QpeZ2KoGX5
How you like us now, racist Republican state lawmakers from middle and east Tennessee who don’t pay any attention to Memphis any other day of the week? What’s that? Sorry, Memphis cannot hear your sobbing over our triumphant giggles.
People flocked to the site of the Forrest statue, in the very sexxxily named “Health Sciences Park” (so called because they quit calling it “Forrest Park” a few years back and clearly never had a contest to rename it), and watched and cheered as the Memphis Police Department surrounded the area for the statue removal, because again, this shit was all very planned. It’s just that most people weren’t in on the plan. (Jefferson Davis was removed after they were finished with Forrest.)
In local online parts, the reaction was mixed. The city of Memphis is majority black and deep Democratic, but our TV viewing area includes surrounding areas, and some of the most vocal residents of “surrounding areas” are racists scared to set foot in Memphis, and who will tell you daily in the comments section of the newspaper or the TV station that they SURE ARE GLAD they got out of that HELLHOLE where you get MURDERED just for WALKING YOUR DOG. The general consensus among those folks was that they were not pleased to see their beloved white supremacist leader removed from his honored perch in the city they are scared of. (Oh, and some of them went apeshit about grave desecration, apparently not realizing Forrest’s nasty bones were moved once before, in 1904, from their original spot in the historic Elmwood Cemetery. Also nothing happened to Forrest’s actual grave last night, ‘less somebody managed to piss on it when MPD wasn’t looking.)
Others in the Channel 3 viewing area were very upset that WREG Channel 3 pre-empted broadcasting of the “Survivor” season finale to carry the statue removals live. We didn’t want to spoiler it for them (yes we did), but you know who DIDN’T win on “Survivor” last night? That fuckin’ Forrest statue, and also old Jeff Davis.
So now, the damn monuments are down, well ahead of the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., which happened a short drive away from the Health Sciences Park at the Lorraine Motel on April 4, 1968. It’s a new day in Memphis, yes indeed.
Oh, and because this is how this town rolls, guess what time Nathan Bedford Forrest’s dumb ass officially came down? That’s right, it was 9:01 PM.
Told you we’re kinda obsessed with that number around here.
Most Chicagoans know about the Walking Man, the tall dude with the long hair and mustache who silently stalks the downtown streets. His reappearance each spring is usually good for a few lines in the papers or a few thousand tweets on the net. One hundred fifty years ago the city greeted another walking man. […]
Today the United States government ordered Chicagoans to stop smiling. It said so on the front page of the morning paper. The saga begins in late October, when the Chicago Herald-Examiner published an article about eccentric millionaire Harry Phillips. He was passing out money to complete strangers, just to see them smile. The Herald-Examiner was […]
by Kate Bernot on The Takeout, shared by Katie Rife to The A.V. Club
Original Prongles, a wart hog-emblazoned brand of chips in a very familiar cylindrical can was released this past week as something of asocial media mystery. Who was behind such this fun, zesty, delicious-verging-on-copyright infringing snack? Internet sleuths eventually figured out the strange minds behind the game …
Amidst all the bad tweets, obnoxious attacks on his enemies, and general, all-purpose odiousness, it can be easy to let ourselves be distracted from the fact that Donald Trump is also, at his core, just kind of a big dumb awkward goober. Luckily, the universe was happy to provide a reminder of Trump’s inner oaf today,…
by Hamilton Nolan on Splinter, shared by Barry Petchesky to Deadspin
“Golf is a good walk spoiled,” a famous man once said, speaking to the author of A Book of Quotes. Would it not, in our modern world, be more accurate to say, pithily, “Fuck golf—golfing ass motherfuckers?”
Ten months into Donald Trump’s presidency, America has had to contend with inadequate responses to gun violence and natural disasters, human rights violations, and an onslaught of political scandals. Because of America’s position in the world, any actions Trump takes has international repercussions. Sir Patrick…
The cruelest thing a person can do to themselves is envision an alternate future, one that you could have if only you’d made a different decision at some crucial point in your life. We all have moments where life seems to confront us with the specter of what it is we could’ve had, but rarely does that happen on…
If you superimpose the Mediterranean Sea (and the Black Sea) over a map of the United States — creating geographic landmarks like the Confederate Sea, the Great Salt Islands, the Straits of Pismo, and a coastal Las Vegas — you get a real sense of how big each of them is. I confess, I didn’t think the Mediterranean Sea was this large. The other surprising thing is that the latitudes of the superposition are pretty accurate…only a degree or two off, if that.
Oh, Jared, you scamp! Last week you took a secret trip to Saudi Arabia, and this week all hell is breaking loose over there! COINCIDENCE????? Did you maybe tell your BFF Mohammed bin-Salman (MBS) that your father-in-law doesn’t care who they arrest as long as they round up that one Saudi billionaire who tweeted mean shit at Poppy Trump during the campaign? Did you tell them that they could kill all the Yemenis they want if Saudi Arabia will just use the New York Stock Exchange for the IPO of its sovereign wealth fund??
And when you and MBS were staying up giggling until 4AM, were you like, “Mo, how do you grow such a lush, manly beard? And do you maybe have a spare billion in the seat cushions so that my family business doesn’t go under?” Because it would be insanely reckless to solicit funds from a foreign government while Bob Mueller is all over you like white on rice. Nobody would be stupid enough to do that, right? RIGHT????
The Back Story
Saudi Arabia was founded 115 years ago by Abdulaziz Ibn Saud, a man with 45 sons and infinity oil. Because the country is basically a giant oil well in the middle of the desert, it never developed a diverse economy — money comes out of the ground whether people show up to work or not. And because the royal family is so large, everyone is getting paid by the government, and the line of succession is murky. In June, King Salman demoted the heir apparent and gave sweeping powers to his 32-year-old son Mohammed to clear out the deadwood and bring KSA into the 20th century.
So, we don’t know for sure what went down at Jared and MBS’s secret sleepover party. But if we had to guess, MBS said, “You guys cool if I take out all the locals who threaten my power so that I can modernize the economy and gear up for a regional war with those assholes in Iran?” And Jared said, “Whatevs, Bro! You know Vanky’s dad has a hard on for Iran. Plus Rex Tillerson’s busy canning everyone at the State Department so he can run through the halls naked. Dude’s into some weird shit!” And then they did some more manly sword dancing.
This weekend, dozens of Saudi princes and other leaders were arrested in an ostensible crackdown on corruption. Also this weekend, the Ritz Carlton in Riyadh evicted all its guests and cleared the calendar for November.
It looks like the Ritz Carlton in Riyadh is fully booked for the next 25 days 🤔 pic.twitter.com/0oc4OuHqHO
Members of the royal family are barred from leaving the country, and many of them are currently “guests” of MBS at the Ritz Carlton.
Among those booked at the hotel is billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who owns stakes in Twitter, Lyft, Apple and Citigroup. Unlike many of his fellow residents at the Ritz, he doesn’t appear to have been a rival to MBS. But there was this.
Let’s not dwell on Donald Trump criticizing someone for making his fortune off “Daddy’s money.” This way madness lies. All we’re saying is that Alwaleed bin Talal pissed off Trump, Jared had a secret meeting with MBS, and now the guy is in jail. You do the math.
Also ALSO this weekend, Prince Mansour Bin Murquin, who had been crown prince in 2015 before being demoted by Prince Salman, was killed in a helicopter crash. Nice of Prince Mansour to wait until after Jared was wheels up to crash his helicopter in the middle of the desert. AHEM.
Welcome to the 20th Century
It’s hard to modernize your economy if the rest of the world thinks you’re a medieval backwater with public floggings and women forced to walk around dressed like beekeepers. The prince can’t turn Riyadh into Dubai with the morality goon squad arresting people over pop music and alcohol while courts refuse to enforce “un-Islamic” contracts. This summer MBS reined in the clerics and issued edicts allowing women to drive and attend soccer games. With his conservative cousins taking a rest cure at the Ritz, MBS is ready to present the world with a new, modern Saudi Arabia just in time for the planned IPO of KSA’s ginormous sovereign wealth fund Aramco.
SUBTLE. Safe to assume Jared mentioned this to his buddy Mohammed.
So, Who’s Excited For Total War?
In the past, Sunni-led Iraq and Shiite Iran kept each other more or less in check. But then George Bush decided to take revenge for a handful of Saudi hijackers in September 2001 by destroying Iraq. Which made no fucking sense, and also unleashed a wider regional conflict between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran that is still ripping apart Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon. Well-played, America!
(Yes, we are aware that Saddam Hussein and Bashar al-Assad were murderous despots. But the entire ME is on fire, and we’re going to abandon the Kurds AGAIN. So we fail to see how this is better.)
In May, Kush agreed on a $110 billion arms deal between KSA and the US. And he made clear we don’t give a shit which civilians they shoot. Which is good because Saudi Arabia is busily inserting itself itself into the Yemeni civil war and turning it into a proxy conflict with Iran. Yemeni kids are starving, cholera is spreading, and there’s no functioning government. Saudi Arabia has responded with humanitarian aid in the form of UK-made cluster bombs dropped in civilian areas.
Iranian-backed Houthi rebels have seized Yemen’s capital Sana’a, and yesterday they fired a ballistic missile at Riyadh’s airport. The Saudis managed to intercept the missile, which they insist was supplied by Iran. The whole thing is a humanitarian catastrophe with no end in sight.
And in case you’re still with us here, Lebanon’s Prime Minister Saad Hariri just happened to resign this weekend while on a visit to KSA, ceding control of the government to Iranian-backed Hezbollah. We can’t tell you what will happen now that Bashar Assad has regained control in Syria, sending hordes of ISIS fighters over the border into Lebanon. But it is NOT going to be good.
In sum, we know that Donald Trump is an existential crisis here in the US. But if you have any extra bandwidth, maybe pay attention to this. Because the Saudi-Iran conflict is reaching the boiling point, and if that fuckwit Jared doesn’t get indicted first, he’s going to lead us into yet another endless ground war in the Middle East.
You don’t know me, but you are the Speaker of the House of Representatives. That makes you the number one guy for impeaching a president, due to the Constitution and the rules of the House (I checked.)
So, I am writing to confirm that you will impeach Donald Trump after he signs your tax cuts.
I feel this is a very good idea for you, and also, everyone else.
About the tax cuts. I would prefer that you don’t do these at all, because the ones I’m hearing about don’t seem like a very good idea, since they give billions of dollars to billionaires.
I think the billionaires are already billionaires, and will just end up buying mortgage salad bonds, tech fantasies, tulip bulbs, video poker, I don’t know since I’m not a billionaire.
But you seem really focused on giving the billionaires and their businesses the billions, and I am sure you’ll do something with taxes that you and Trump will call the greatest gift to American liberty since God created S corps.
So after that, you’re going to impeach him, right?
If you’re still on the fence, please allow me to persuade you.
First, this assumes that Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation finds that he broke the law, because come on.
Now, I know it’s a scary idea to impeach Trump. You and him have mostly the same voters, and they like him more than they like you because he’s exciting, and mean, and you’re pretty bland, and try not to seem as mean.
So you’ll probably lose to Randy Bryce if you do it, and you might anyway. If you think about it, you might end up less embarrassed by losing if you can say you lost because you impeached Trump, and get all puffed up about it on tv.
But that’s just one thing to consider. There are many other upsides for you post-Trump.
One is that Trump makes everything your party wants to do more challenging and less popular. Once Trump says he likes what you’re doing, a bunch more people automatically hate it. I don’t see that changing.
2018 might be bad for your party if you impeach, but it’s going to be bad either way, and good luck in 2020 if you don’t.
Another nice thing is that once you lose your election, you are free! You can do whatever you want! Go take a million a year to run a super PAC. You can collect big checks for going on tv for a few minutes.
Look at Newt Gingrich. He seems happy enough!
You’re young anyway. You could probably run again and win after the Democratic base goes back into hibernation until the next Republican somehow tops the last one as the worst ever president in history.
Also, there is your legacy to consider.
As I have mentioned, Trump is very unpopular. Speaking for myself, I did not think I could despise any political figure more than I despised Dick Cheney. Trump tops Cheney for me, and Trump has more associates — that I also hate worse than Cheney — than I have fingers, toes, and gonads. By the numbers, I don’t think I’m alone. He makes millions of his countrymen feel violent urges in a way no president ever has.
Speaking of gonads, that’s where your legacy comes in. I know you exercise a lot so you can be, or at least appear to be, strong.
Well, impeaching Trump makes you look super strong. In the history books, you will be the strong man who stood up to Trump. If you don’t, you’ll be the weak man who rolled over for the guy only bad people liked.
I’ll never love you. My friends will never love you. But if you impeach Trump, for one brief shining moment, we’ll go on Twitter and say you did the right thing.
The beltway press and Sunday show people, though, they will LOVE you. It will be so exciting for them.
I also mentioned that impeaching Trump is a good idea for everyone else besides you, but having followed your career I doubt you’ll find such arguments persuasive, so forget it.
In conclusion, I don’t want you to do your tax cuts, but I know you’re going to anyway. I only hope that after you do, you’ll be the big strong Paul Ryan I know you want us to think you are, and impeach Donald Trump.
Don’t do it for me. Don’t do it for your country.
Do it for the flattering press.
Do it for the half a day of grudging nice tweets.
Do it for your treasured image as a statesman.
Do it for the fuck you to Donald Trump, who obviously thinks you’re a twerp.
Do it!
Please.
Yours in this hell you helped create,
A.
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Michael Kenna was known as Hinky Dink because he was a little man. Yet during the first half of the Twentieth Century, he cast a giant shadow in Chicago politics—if not actually in power, then certainly in image. Kenna was the model of the saloonkeeper politician. His bailiwick was the First Ward, which took in […]
Of the many clever flourishes within Netflix’s mockumentary sleeper American Vandal, the decision to not identify the eponymous graffiti artist—i.e. who drew the dicks—sticks out. With its central mystery still unsolved, American Vandal is now set to return for a second season sometime in 2018. Netflix announced the…
![I'm working on a car capable of evaluating arbitrarily complex boolean expressions on "honk if [...]" bumper stickers and responding accordingly.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/self_driving_car_milestones.png "I'm working on a car capable of evaluating arbitrarily complex boolean expressions on \"honk if [...]\" bumper stickers and responding accordingly.")
