John Holbo

I think Jeff Sessions abrupt stint as AG in the first Trump admin was funnier. The moment when the lawful evil cleric realized the chaotic neutral thieves he’d partied up with to rob the lawful good temple of its treasures didn’t have a license - and so he recused himself from the campaign.

Taps head meme: Cab’t have Uni tended bad consequences of vast social engineering projects if you just intend all the bad consequences.

Obviously it’s going to turn out Luke is Tarkin’s son. The poster practically gives that away.

Yes it’s one design for the original poster. It’s a big, central Tarkin head orbited by secondary characters like Vader and Chewie and Obie Wan.

Poster don’t lie.

I notice they omitted the ‘Athens and Jerusalem’ formula.

Ugh. What the hell.

He is takemaxxing and overton windowframemogging.

The thing needs a Matt Taibbi to look into it.

"Nor of Renown less eager, yet by doome Canceld from Heav’n and sacred memorie, Nameless in dark oblivion let them dwell. For strength from Truth divided and from Just, Illaudable, naught merits but dispraise And ignominie, yet to glorie aspires Vain glorious, and through infamie seeks fame: Therfore Eternal silence be thir doome."

First guy to get cancelled.

It's Bear Patrol, minus even one real bear to set off a panic.

I dunno, it MIGHT be more maddening that they have to cite 'widespread mistrust' - a problem they deliberately caused - because of course they can't point to a single instance of significant mail-in and/or in-person voter fraud, nor explain how it even could be a problem as things stand.

Elegance of the art nouveau elevator and staircase in Majolika House in Vienna, designed by Otto Wagner in 1898

Jacques Callot (1592-1635)

Have you ever once seen the New York Times quote Trump like this?

People are biased.

The head of Palantir is a - Mosleyite?

That’s just terrible.

Reactionary centrist standup comedy is just Carl Schmitt, but with a job in the writer's room: hilarious is he who notes the moment when the sitcom setup demands an exception.

Falling Down movie poster.

"Falling Down" is just standing up to tell jokes, minus standing up and telling jokes.

Stand-up comedy is not inherently reactionary centrist, politically. But the fact that Americans have such advanced stand-up comedy (and sitcom) technology - we are good at it - means reactionary centrism has an endowment advantage, consisting of a vast vault of ready-made rhetorical templates.

Waiting for Wurman to argue that, understood originalistically, the 19th was a one-time offer. If you weren't a woman alive when the amendment was ratified, who took advantage of it at the time - sorry, it doesn't apply to you. It was meant to apply to living suffragettes!

... do the math.

Final point: Dillon is self-conscious of all this. He is aware of the force of the meta-inductive argument from his case. If he is surrounding by un-self-aware idiots & assholes, & is regularly buffeted by the effects of all that, in ways that make him seem, superficially, also that way ...

Apologies for that long digression. That guy up in Maine is not a comedian, but his appeal is explicable with reference to the appeal of popular comedians.

He's currently on a tear over the Epstein stuff. Just go over to X and search 'Tim Dillon' and watch clips. It's bad for Trump that Tim Dillon is tearing into MAGA and mocking Bari Weiss and Pam Bondi no end, and complaining about ICE atrocities, but there isn't really a formula for the left here.

If it had a Nazi tattoo, it would have a perfectly hilarious story about how THAT got there, due entirely to all THESE idiots and clowns! Tim Dillon is highly entertaining. (I don't suppose he has a Nazi tattoo, just these frequent outbursts that are quite insanely entertaining.)

Dillon's comedy cadences aren't distinct from those of your basic white guy comedian. Think Patton Oswalt, but bro & minus nerdiness. But that result is punctuated with extremism that is joking-not-joking - and if it were to grow into that mask, it would be wildly reactionary centrist.

The 'stuck in the middle with you' vibe, which is fundamentally friendly and nostalgia-glazed, is always in danger of tipping over into something crazy. (Hence Tarantino's choice of that track for the soundtrack.)

punctuated by his own insane outbursts, which are half-serious and made to seem semi-sane by always being presented as involuntarily and humanly reactive to others' even more insane insanity. He likes Bernie Sanders but his comedy hinges on striking comic low notes of sheer nihilism.

Sitcoms are places where Murc's Law rules, forcing agency-challenged protagonists to turn weird in innocent response, in ways that are hard for them to explain (the pirate shirt). Hence, the complex irony of Podcast Bro politics. Dillon's politics is a mix of perceiving others' insanity -