First off, I awoke this morning to the most depressing news from the Hollywood Reporter — not one of my usual a.m. stopovers, but there it was, seductively displayed by an online aggregator: "Roger Stone Banned From Twitter After Threatening CNN Anchors."
Oh my. One of my few Twitter pleasures was monitoring the mental crackup of Trump's close friend and adviser, since Stone's deterioration seemed to mirror Trump's. But now Stone "has been banned from Twitter permanently after a vulgar meltdown Friday aimed at CNN reporters" — after the network "reported Robert Mueller approved the first charges into his investigation on the Russian meddling of the 2016 presidential election" — "which included threats."
As a private voice reflecting Trumpian sentiments, Stone generally missed the mark of intellectual sophistication by a rather wide margin. To wit: "[email protected] stop lying about about the Clinton's and Uranium you ignorant lying covksucker !!!! You fake news you dumb piece of shit." On occasion I would even be moved to engage Mr. Stone, such as my last tweet to him: "Nice touch, very revealing, you're quite the intellect." Alas, no longer, for Stone is no more.
I then encountered the curious news that Alexandria, Va. parishioners of Christ Church are now secure from the unbearable assaults of history. "This week the church announced it was pulling down a memorial to its one-time vestryman and the country’s first president, saying he and another famous parishioner, Robert E. Lee, have become too controversial and are chasing away would-be parishioners." Said the church's most right and divinely revered leaders: "The plaques in our sanctuary make some in our presence feel unsafe or unwelcome. Some visitors and guests who worship with us choose not to return because they receive an unintended message from the prominent presence of the plaques."
Would not accompanying plaques elucidating that George Washington was tormented by slavery and that Lee wrote in 1856 that "slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil" have been a mitigating compromise? Perhaps an additional note explaining that both men were captives of their cultural times — that we mustn't project our multicultural modernity onto ghosts of misbegotten eras, and that 200 years from now we will be seen in some ways as nearly as barbaric. Exhibit A — that in 2017 we would tolerate the presence of a cruel, racist ignoramus in the White House.
Speaking of whom, finally I ran across a Hill story that informs, "Trump traveled to his Virginia golf club on Saturday for the fourth consecutive weekend…. This is Trump's 76th day spent at one of his golf properties since taking office." Slaving away at selling those idiotic tax cuts, I see. Anyway, as of this writing the cruel, racist ignoramus has been in office for 281 days, 17 hours, 3 minutes and 57 seconds. Would that he had spent all that time at this Virginia golf club, rather than listening to Scott Pruitt in the White House.
(By the way, if he's such a "great" golfer, what in hell is he doing knee-deep in the rough?)