by John Walters
Kill The Messenger
A White House official whose sole qualification for holding her present position, one for which she is woefully under-qualified, is being the daughter of POTUS, is overseeing a task force for Americans who’ve seen the coronavirus (kind of daddy’s responsibility) take their jobs. And the slogan they’ve attached to their initiative? TRY SOMETHING NEW.
Wow.
Weiss Words
An editorial page editor at The New York Times, has resigned, in essence, over the newspaper’s unflinching wokeness. Read Bari Weiss’ resignation letter. She’s correct, by the way.
Tom Cotton’s Op-Ed, in essence, claims another free-thinking voice at the Times. We completely disagreed with Cotton’s position, but we also completely endorse the column’s publication. In recent weeks the paper’s Op-Ed section has been one unending screed of Krugman and Blow and Friedman and Bouie all pitching from the same side of the mound. And whether or not you agree or disagree with their delivery, there should be no argument that there are contrarian voices and that those voices need to be heard.
Weiss writes that the NYT’s ultimate editor now is Twitter. And she mentions Slack once or twice. If I were a counter-agent attempting to take down American journalism, the first thing I would do is make Slack mandatory at news publications. That’s what they did at Newsweek in my final months there and I saw the devastation it wrought. Slack destroys contrarian thought. It is, at a publication, downright Orwellian.
Winners and Lou-sers
Former Alabama senator Jeff Sessions lost his GOP primary election last night to no-experience-in-politics former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville, who’s spent the past year treating Donald Trump the way he used to treat the Tigers’ most generous boosters.
Adding an extra element of incongruousness to the scene, President Trump praised Tuberville while also referring to Alabama’s football coach as “Lou Saban.”
Trump: “As he said … because of that, maybe we got ’em Lou Saban … And he’s great, Lou Saban, what a great job he’s done.”
Trump has hosted Alabama’s coach, NICK Saban, and the Crimson Tide at the White House. Lou Saban did coach in the NFL and college, but never in the state of Alabama. And he’s been dead for more than a decade.
This is the same president who boasted that he passed a cognitive test, the results of which the White House refuses to release, last weekend. With Trump, every document is his tax returns.
Ducey Doofus
Here’s Arizona governor Doug Ducey at a graduation party for students of my high school. Now, to be somewhat fair, the party took place on June 6, not July 6th.
But here’s what’s odd to me. In order to stay safe, my alma mater, Brophy College Prep, staged the graduation in a giant parking lot off-site. Students and their parents remained in their cars and listened to graduation speakers on a radio frequency, almost like being at a drive-in movie.
All those precautions taken, and then they hold a backyard graduation party. And the governor of the state there with no mask. You reap what you sow, Arizona. I think I learned that in Fr. LaCasse’s freshman year Salvation History course.
Office Space
If the past four months have taught us anything, and they’ve taught us plenty, it’s that there are tens of thousands of white-collar jobs that were performed at offices that could just as easily be performed at home. And whether or not the pandemic ever ends (sorry, Moderna, fool me once…), how much better if many of those jobs remain at home? Less traffic, for one example, is a boon.
So what do we do with all that office space? One friend suggested turn offices into homeless shelters. Now, the major problem I see here is that homeless people are not known to be fans of Keurig coffee, but all that shows is that they have good taste.
It’s an idea worth exploring….because the more that people are unable to FIND SOMETHING NEW, the more homeless we’re going to have.
If school districts proceed with having school in-person (not here to argue one side or the other), they should use vacated office spaces to serve as “hub” classrooms. For example, it was announced (may – probably – change) that the Omaha Public School System would have 3/2 format. That means that half of the student will attend on Monday and Tuesday, with the remaining half attending Thursday and Friday. They would alternate on Wednesdays.
You can throw all the best tools at distant learning. At the end of the day, no teenager (much less someone younger) will sit in one place in their home obediently for class lectures. Not to mention the strain this puts on parents if they don’t have a job they can do from home.
Back to the office spaces: Instead of having students learn from home, have groups of them go to school in office spaces. This allows them to social distant, get in-person instruction with their peers and not put an additional strain on the economy (i.e parents can’t work if they have to stay home and watch their kids).
The homeless idea is great, too, but our government (s) have already shown that they DGAF.
Amazing that Republicans always preach personal responsibility (don’t free ride off the government, pull yourself up by your bootstraps) but they, especially our current “administration” are the first ones to point and blame someone else. F*cking frustrating.
Also I like Jacob’s idea above about vacated office space, but I think it’s too early, a lot of businesses are probably thinking their employees will come back someday…
Ironically, Trump and his family used the Try Something New approach and became POTUS
First thought when I heard “Try Something New”—-Marie Antoinette
It should be about as effective as “Just Say No.”