Hello, good afternoon, happy Friday. Going to be a little light on commentary this week, because reasons. Just a busy day. Stream Montero and Wildest Dreams.
Inflategate
This week’s top story, well, it couldn’t really be anything else, could it:
Some of you will see this tweet and laugh considerably, and perhaps even give yourself the hiccups, like I did. For the rest of you, here, let me catch you up:
Rap superstar Nicki Minaj, living up to her “you need the bad guy” ethos, ignited a firestorm this week with a series of tweets discussing vaccines for COVID-19. Although she confirmed that she’s not vaccinated herself — which might have been controversial enough — this revelation was overshadowed by what may go down as the most notorious piece of misinformation in this pandemic. According to Minaj, the vaccine gave her cousin’s friend a hugely swollen scrotum.
Right. And then Tucker Carlson jumped on this, and Nicki tweeted the clip with a bullseye emoji, further promoting anti-vaxxer bullshit. And so Our Lord Above HasanTheHun, a/k/a hasanabi, a/k/a azan, went to war:
And this whole saga is funny but it’s also ultimately depressing, I think:
For many of us, anti-vaxxers aren’t just wacky strangers on the internet, they’re friends or family or coworkers. People we know and care about - or at least cared about once. It’s hard to see them go down these rabbit holes, and it’s important to help them get out of the quagmire of disinformation that got them to that point in the first place. But it’s also hard, and we don’t always succeed.
Get vaccinated. STDs will make your balls swell, the COVID vaccine will not.1
Civil war
In mid-March, Mark Zuckerberg used his Facebook page to announce a goal that was both ambitious and personal. He wanted his company to use its formidable resources to push 50 million people toward Covid-19 vaccines.
In a post and a press release, the chief executive discussed Facebook Inc.’s initiatives to promote vaccines. He unveiled collaborations with global health organizations. And he touted that his company had “already connected more than 2 billion people to authoritative Covid-19 information.”
Inside Facebook, staffers were warning that Mr. Zuckerberg’s own platform, the globe-spanning powerhouse built on code he wrote 17 years ago, was compromising his effort.
For more than a month, Facebook researchers warned that comments on vaccine-related posts—often factual posts of the sort Facebook sought to promote—were filled with antivaccine rhetoric aimed at undermining their message, internal documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show. The comments ranged from personal objections all the way to debunked falsehoods and conspiracy theories.
This is America
It matters who writes our shows:
Carl Winslow, the protagonist of the ’90s sitcom Family Matters, wore his badge with honor. On the show, about a middle-class Black household in Chicago, Winslow (played by Reginald VelJohnson) loved being a police officer almost as much as he hated seeing the family’s pesky neighbor, Steve Urkel (Jaleel White), popping up in his home. Carl was a quintessential TV-sitcom cop, doughnut clichés and all. In one scene, he announces that he’s just had the worst day of his life: “I was in a high-speed car chase and ran out of gas.” The humor did not always break new ground.
Stagecraft
Every development I read about this story is more unbelievable than the last:
The prominent South Carolina lawyer whose life has unraveled in the months since his wife and son were fatally shot was arrested on Thursday after he admitted to trying to stage his own murder earlier this month, but he maintained that he had no involvement in the killing of his family.
Alex Murdaugh, the lawyer, was charged with insurance fraud, conspiracy to commit insurance fraud and filing a false police report, all felonies, in connection with the suicide scheme, which his lawyers said was meant to ensure that his other son could collect on a $10 million life insurance policy.
The call is coming from inside the house
This is, incredibly, not satire:
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on Thursday criticized some in the judiciary for veering into the role of legislators and politicians, saying it is not the role of judges to make policy or to base decisions on their personal feelings or religious beliefs.
Speaking at the University of Notre Dame, Thomas said judges “venturing into areas we should not have entered into” is part of why the nomination process, particularly for federal judges with lifetime appointments like himself, is so contentious.
“The court was thought to be the least dangerous branch and we may have become the most dangerous,” Thomas said. "And I think that’s problematic.”
He did not cite any specific examples.
Thomas is the most senior justice on a court that grew more conservative under President Donald Trump who placed three justices on the court.
Healer, heal thyself, etc.
Cleaning house
Part of holding elected officials accountable to the principles and values we cherish means doing so even if they are “on our team,” even when it is dispiriting:
WASHINGTON — Last May, Rep. Pramila Jayapal introduced the Paycheck Recovery Act, aimed at curbing layoffs during the pandemic by having the federal government pay people’s salaries. Publicly, Jayapal contended that passing the bill was a matter of survival for workers. But privately, former staffers said, the lawmaker acted very differently.
In November 2020, she laid off two staffers without severance, two people familiar with the incident told BuzzFeed News. Chris Evans, a spokesperson for Jayapal, said the decision to consolidate was made to “best utilize” the office’s resources, and the staffers were given six weeks’ notice. But one staff member who was told they were being laid off was invited to reapply for a new job in the office that would consolidate the two roles, those familiar said. The staffer was required to go through the full application process, despite the job being nearly identical to the one they had been laid off from. And then, without advance warning, they found out in an all-hands meeting that they did not get the job. The staffers who were let go declined to provide comment for this story.
The incident upset at least four staffers in the office who spoke with BuzzFeed News. It was, they said, one of many instances in which Jayapal’s interactions with her employees have run counter to the public persona she’s built for herself.
Copaganda
Please do not believe tweets from police unions:
The city of Philadelphia will pay $2 million to a Black woman who was pulled from a car, beaten by officers and had her toddler used for social media fodder by the police union, officials said.
Nursing aide Rickia Young was headed home in the early morning hours of Oct. 27, 2020, when she unknowingly drove into a large protest over the police killing of Walter Wallace Jr.
She tried to make a three-point turn to get away from the tense scene when officers smashed out her windows with their batons, according to her attorneys.
Big bad Wolff
Here’s something wild:
It’s early 2019, a few months before Jeffrey Epstein will be arrested on sex charges, and he is sitting in the vast study of his New York mansion with a camera pointed at him as he practices for a big “60 Minutes” interview that would never take place.
The media trainer is a familiar figure: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s campaign guru and onetime White House adviser. Mr. Bannon is both conducting the interview and coaching Mr. Epstein on the little things, telling him he will come across as stupid if he doesn’t look directly into the camera now and then, and advising him not to share his racist theories on how Black people learn. Mainly, Mr. Bannon tells Mr. Epstein, he should stick to his message, which is that he is not a pedophile. By the end, Mr. Bannon seems impressed.
You deserve some good animal content
Have a good weekend.
Addendums
Activision Blizzard employees file unfair labor practice suit against company. Please Help Us Figure Out What the Hell This 'Cucks' Device for MAGA-Lovers Actually Is. Team wears protective gear to avoid getting shocked while performing surgery on electric eel. Video Games Are Slowly Opening Up to More Black Characters. Six Things We Learned From Lil Nas X’s ‘Montero’. Activision Blizzard lawsuit has video game workers using union tactics — but not unionizing. Are you a little lad who loves berries and cream? Lil Nas X is doing what was once inconceivable. A Former R. Kelly Assistant Said He Threatened Her. Amazon Sellers Are Price Gouging Ivermectin.
And maybe if you are going to lie about the vaccine, have the lie you use be at least partially true? These are not even good grifters!