I Didn't Say It ...

Pete Hegseth, Fox & Friends co-host, on _____’s response to investigations:

“It’s interesting you hear the narrative from the left that they’re getting under his skin. I think it’s opposite. This guy has the thickest skin considering the investigations and the resistance he’s been under. And when he gets asked a question, he answers it.”

Does Hegseth get paid by the lie?

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Seth Rogen, actor, saying he regrets the homophobic jokes in some of his earlier films:

“We do not want people to feel bad when they’re watching our movies. I’ve had people come up to me and be like, ‘That made me feel like sh*t when I was in the movie theater and everyone was laughing about that.’ Like the ‘How I know you’re gay’ thing [from The 40-Year-Old Virgin], it’s something people have been like, ‘It’s not fun to be in the theater when people are laughing at that, knowing what they’re probably actually laughing at.’ And I don’t want anyone to have that experience watching our movies.”

Too bad it took him so long to learn it, but maybe others will now learn the same thing.

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Pete Buttigieg, on Colin Kaepernick’s right to take a knee during the national anthem, and on _____ going after the protesters:

"The way I feel about it is the flag that was on my shoulder when I served represented, among other things, our right to free speech. You don't have to like it, but one of the reasons we serve was to defend that right, the right of peaceful protest and the idea that we can protest what is wrong with our country. If the president had served, maybe he'd feel a little more strongly about some of those freedoms. And, I get that there's a lot of strong opinions about this, but that's part of why we served."

For freedom, something _____ wants to take away.

Use your right to Free Speech, often, and loudly.

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Scott Pelley, former CBS Evening News anchor, on being ousted for complaining about the news division’s “hostile work environment”:

“I lost my job because I wouldn’t stop complaining to management. Four or five years ago, I went to the [David Rhodes] president of the news division and explained to him that this hostile work environment couldn’t go on, for women and men. And he told me if I kept agitating about that internally then I’d lose my job. I went to [ousted CBS president Les Moonves], who told me he didn’t share my concerns, and so, having exhausted the possibilities in the news division, I went to the chairman of the CBS corporation who listened to me very concerned for an hour, asked me some penetrating questions about what was going on. I didn’t hear back from him but in the next opportunity in my contact, I was let go from the Evening News.”

Looks like CBS doesn’t want anyone to know about the way they treat their female employees?

Of course, with Moonves in the picture is anyone surprised.

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Grant Stinchfield, NRA TV host, in a money beg for the Hate Group:

“The battle for the soul of this nation has to be won. We have no choice but to win. So today I declare this: you are either with us or against us. The NRA fights for all our freedoms, protecting the Second [Amendment] first, because once the Second is gone, they all implode. That’s why they come after us. That’s why they pounce on the NRA like hyenas feeding off prey. They want us destroyed. The only problem is, we aren’t prey and we can’t be destroyed. So here is the reality, the NRA wins, the NRA is the most successful civil rights group in the history of this nation. They can kick and scream about how we get it done. They can try to make all of us, the members, look bad. But in the end, we do get it done. We always have and always will. To feed this machine, of course, takes money. It is a massive engine that runs on all pistons firing. The NRA’s winning record cannot be disputed.”

First off, any group that wants to continue selling assault weapons after children were murdered at Sandy Hook literally has no soul, so STFU.

Secondly, actually, it’s without the First Amendment that everything crumbles, because not everyone wants or needs a weapon, but everyone wants and needs to ability to think and say what they choose, so, again, STFU.

Lastly, STFU.

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Mackenzie Bezos, ex-wife of Amazon billionaire, and adulterer, Jeff Bezos, promising to giveaway $17 billion to charities over the course of her lifetime and in her will:

“There are lots of resources each of us can pull from our safes to share with others—time, attention, knowledge, patience, creativity, talent, effort, humor, compassion. In addition to whatever assets life has nurtured in me, I have a disproportionate amount of money to share. My approach to philanthropy will continue to be thoughtful. It will take time and effort and care. But I won’t wait. And I will keep at it until the safe is empty.”

I like that, a lot, but let’s be clear, Mackenzie could give away 95% of all her money this instant and still be set for life, so, yeah, you know.

Still, it’s nice …

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Bobservations

One day, while driving home, we encountered a traffic backup right here in Smallville! I know! Que horror! Luckily, I knew of a shortcut down an old dirt road called Chestnut Ferry; Carlos asked what I was doing.

“I hate the traffic on Dekalb, so I’m going to avoid the light and that intersection and go this way.”

“Oh—”

“And I can avoid the traffic coming out of Walmart—”

To which Carlos replied:

“You mean the Walmartians?”

And he is right.

In the height of ignorance, this week _____, in Japan, said he was not “personally” bothered by recent short-range missile tests North Korea.

Sadly,  Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, standing beside _____, said the missile tests violated U.N. Security Council resolutions and were “of great regret.”

But they don’t bother _____.  Asshat.

Don't bet on seeing a Harriet Tubman $20 bill anytime soon because the redesigned bill bearing her face, which was supposed to debut next year, will not be coming out for nearly a decade … because _____.

Tubman, who was born into slavery and became a noted abolitionist and political activist, would be the first black woman to have her face on U.S. currency and would appear in 2020 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.

While running for office, _____ said he did not support putting Tubman on the 20, calling the plan "pure political correctness" and saying they should put Tubman on the oh-so-popular "$2 bill".

_____ is a huge fan of slave owning  Andrew Jackson so, yeah, there’s that. Racist.

UPDATE: someone has made a Harriet Tubman stamp and is stamping her face over Jackson’s on the bill. I want one!

Mississippi Congressman, and a cosponsor of that state’s abortion ban Doug McLeod was arrested last week after punching his wife because she took too long to get undressed for sex.

McLeod’s wife said her husband had “just snapped,” and often did so when he was drinking, and ALLEGEDLY whenever a woman doesn’t do what he says. McLeod was taken into custody on a charge of misdemeanor domestic violence and then released on a  $1,000 signature bond.

That’s your GOP, America.

And, from our Self Loathing Gay File comes the news that a bunch of so-called gay Republicans—quite the oxymoron—including former head of the Log Cabin Republicans, have launched a petition to Senate Majority Leader Mitch Bitch McConnell demanding that he squash any attempt to give LGBTQ people equal rights.

Even for themselves; these are gay men and women asking to be denied equality. They are literally opposing their own civil rights.

Just shows to go you  that there are stupid, asshatted gays, too.

And keeping with this WTF Is Going On thing, a group of panelists on Fox News’—yes, that Fox News—Special Report actually criticized _____ for citing murderous dictator Kim Jong Un in his comments abroad about Joe Biden.

Fox News digital politics editor Chris Stirewalt pointed out to anyone wondering why _____ is “underwater” and trailing in polls at a time when any other incumbent in his position would be “crushing it,” that it’s “stunt like this stuff in Japan are exactly why.”

And co-host Marc Thiessen agreed:

“You don’t attack your political opponents from foreign soil [and especially not by] citing the murderous dictator of North Korea.”

Again, that Fox News bashing _____.

Oh, what a world.

Now for some good LGBTQ news … the Supreme Court has denied review of Doe v. Boyertown School District, leaving a ruling in place that allows students to use the locker room or bathroom that matches their gender identity.

The march goes on …

Finally … man candy in French ballet dancer Andreas Gieson.

He looks gorgeous in a suit, gorgeous in the dance, and gorgeous when he’s nekkid.

What’s not to love?

Luke Evans. If this is what he looks like on Monday mornings, I want some. 

Hell, even is this is a one off, I want some.

Architecture Wednesday: Courtyard House

This one is about the views, of water and mountains.

The architect was also challenged with squeezing all that between a narrow private lane and the lake, while maintaining privacy and yet opening the home to expansive views.

To that end, DeForest Architects created a main floor that flows from private entry courtyard through the great room and out onto a series of waterfront entertaining spaces.

Floor-to-ceiling lift-slide doors and hidden steel structure maximize the sense of openness, and modernity, while the home is still warm and cozy, thanks to a weathered limestone floor, fir ceiling, oak and walnut cabinetry.

The second floor features a band of channel glass that runs the length of the house yet affords privacy while admitting natural light, glimpses of the courtyard and a view to the eco-friendly green roof.

Still, it’s all about the lake views and a sense of privacy so each of the four bedrooms has a view of the lake form its own private deck.

I can get behind all the windows, and yet keeping that sense of privacy, with just a lake and the mountains, and several decks and lawns and green roofs, right outside.

HomeDSGN

Another Scorcher In Smallville ... Tuxedo Has The Right Idea

Tuesday Thought #3

Tuesday Thought #2

Tuesday Thought #1

Happy Memorial Decoration Day

As I often say, here in South Carolina it's not the heat it's the stupidity, but I learned a few years ago about Decoration Day, which would go on to become Memorial Day, and which began right here in South Carolina, where good, sweet, wonderful things do happen.

Happy Memorial Decoration Day.

 "The First Decoration Day"

by David W. Blight, Yale University

Americans understand that Memorial Day, or "Decoration Day," as my parents called it, has something to do with honoring the nation's war dead. It is also a day devoted to picnics, road races, commencements, and double-headers. But where did it begin, who created it, and why?

As a nation we are at war now, but for most Americans the scale of death and suffering in this seemingly endless wartime belongs to other people far away, or to people in other neighborhoods. Collectively, we are not even allowed to see our war dead today. That was not the case in 1865.

At the end of the Civil War the dead were everywhere, some in half buried coffins and some visible only as unidentified bones strewn on the killing fields of Virginia or Georgia. Americans, north and south, faced an enormous spiritual and logistical challenge of memorialization. The dead were visible by their massive absence. Approximately 620,000 soldiers died in the war. American deaths in all other wars combined through the Korean conflict totaled 606,000. If the same number of Americans per capita had died in Vietnam as died in the Civil War, 4 million names would be on the Vietnam Memorial. The most immediate legacy of the Civil War was its slaughter and how remember it.

War kills people and destroys human creation; but as though mocking war's devastation, flowers inevitably bloom through its ruins. After a long siege, a prolonged bombardment for months from all around the harbor, and numerous fires, the beautiful port city of Charleston, South Carolina, where the war had begun in April, 1861, lay in ruin by the spring of 1865.

The city was largely abandoned by white residents by late February. Among the first troops to enter and march up Meeting Street singing liberation songs was the Twenty First U. S. Colored Infantry; their commander accepted the formal surrender of the city.

Thousands of black Charlestonians, most former slaves, remained in the city and conducted a series of commemorations to declare their sense of the meaning of the war. The largest of these events, and unknown until some extraordinary luck in my recent research, took place on May 1, 1865.

During the final year of the war, the Confederates had converted the planters' horse track, the Washington Race Course and Jockey Club, into an outdoor prison. Union soldiers were kept in horrible conditions in the interior of the track; at least 257 died of exposure and disease and were hastily buried in a mass grave behind the grandstand. Some twenty-eight black workmen went to the site, re-buried the Union dead properly, and built a high fence around the cemetery. They whitewashed the fence and built an archway over an entrance on which they inscribed the words, "Martyrs of the Race Course."

Then, black Charlestonians in cooperation with white missionaries and teachers, staged an unforgettable parade of 10,000 people on the slaveholders' race course. The symbolic power of the low-country planter aristocracy's horse track (where they had displayed their wealth, leisure, and influence) was not lost on the freedpeople. A New York Tribune correspondent witnessed the event, describing "a procession of friends and mourners as South Carolina and the United States never saw before."

At 9 am on May 1, the procession stepped off led by three thousand black schoolchildren carrying arm loads of roses and singing "John Brown's Body." The children were followed by several hundred black women with baskets of flowers, wreaths and crosses. Then came black men marching in cadence, followed by contingents of Union infantry and other black and white citizens.

As many as possible gathering in the cemetery enclosure; a childrens' choir sang "We'll Rally around the Flag," the "Star-Spangled Banner," and several spirituals before several black ministers read from scripture. No record survives of which biblical passages rung out in the warm spring air, but the spirit of Leviticus 25 was surely present at those burial rites: "for it is the jubilee; it shall be holy unto you… in the year of this jubilee he shall return every man unto his own possession."

Following the solemn dedication the crowd dispersed into the infield and did what many of us do on Memorial Day: they enjoyed picnics, listened to speeches, and watched soldiers drill. Among the full brigade of Union infantry participating was the famous 54th Massachusetts and the 34th and 104th U.S. Colored Troops, who performed a special double-columned march around the gravesite.

The war was over, and Decoration Day had been founded by African Americans in a ritual of remembrance and consecration. The war, they had boldly announced, had been all about the triumph of their emancipation over a slaveholders' republic, and not about state rights, defense of home, nor merely soldiers' valor and sacrifice.

According to a reminiscence written long after the fact, "several slight disturbances" occurred during the ceremonies on this first Decoration Day, as well as "much harsh talk about the event locally afterward." But a measure of how white Charlestonians suppressed from memory this founding in favor of their own creation of the practice later came fifty-one years afterward, when the president of the Ladies Memorial Association of Charleston received an inquiry about the May 1, 1865 parade.

A United Daughters of the Confederacy official from New Orleans wanted to know if it was true that blacks had engaged in such a burial rite. Mrs. S. C. Beckwith responded tersely:

"I regret that I was unable to gather any official information in answer to this."

In the struggle over memory and meaning in any society, some stories just get lost while others attain mainstream dominance.

Officially, as a national holiday, Memorial Day emerged in 1868 when General John A. Logan, commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, the Union veterans organization, called on all former northern soldiers and their communities to conduct ceremonies and decorate graves of their dead comrades.

On May 30, 1868, when flowers were plentiful, funereal ceremonies were attended by thousands of people in 183 cemeteries in twenty-seven states. The following year, some 336 cities and towns in thirty-one states, including the South, arranged parades and orations. The observance grew manifold with time. 

In the South, Confederate Memorial Day took shape on three different dates: on April 26 in many deep South states, the anniversary of General Joseph Johnston's final surrender to General William T. Sherman; on May 10 in South and North Carolina, the birthday of Stonewall Jackson; and on June 3 in Virginia, the birthday of Jefferson Davis.

Over time several American towns, north and south, claimed to be the birthplace of Memorial Day. But all of them commemorate cemetery decoration events from 1866. Pride of place as the first large scale ritual of Decoration Day, therefore, goes to African Americans in Charleston. By their labor, their words, their songs, and their solemn parade of flowers and marching feet on their former owners' race course, they created for themselves, and for us, the Independence Day of the Second American Revolution.

The old race track is still there — an oval roadway in Hampton Park in Charleston, named for Wade Hampton, former Confederate general and the white supremacist Redeemer governor of South Carolina after the end of Reconstruction. The lovely park sits adjacent to the Citadel, the military academy of South Carolina, and cadets can be seen jogging on the old track any day of the week.

The old gravesite dedicated to the "Martyrs of the Race Course" is gone; those Union dead were reinterred in the 1880s to a national cemetery in Beaufort, South Carolina. Some stories endure, some disappear, some are rediscovered in dusty archives, the pages of old newspapers, and in oral history. All such stories as the First Decoration Day are but prelude to future reckonings. All memory is prelude.

David W. Blight teaches American History at Yale University; he is the director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, the author of the Bancroft prize-winning Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, and the forthcoming A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Narratives of Emancipation.

The Funny Papers

Adam Zyglis, Nick Anderson, Michael de Adder, David Fitzsimmons, Joe Heller, Drew Sheneman, Darrin Bell, Mike Luckovich, David Horsey, Jim Morin

I Ain't One To Gossip But ...

Well, Constance Wu seems to be loving her diva attitude … at least until the phone stops ringing and she stops getting hired.

Now the Crazy Rich Asians and Fresh Off the Boat ‘star’ is accused to sh*tting all over a rented penthouse. Well, to be fair, Wu rented the penthouse and then allowed her pet bunny—oh, isn’t she just so twee—roam wild around the space and take dumps wherever it pleased.

Wu rented the $6.5 million Chelsea apartment in NYC while she was filming Hustlers with JLo and, without the owner’s consent, she brought along her pet rabbit, Lida Rose, who proceeded to defecate and pee freely all over the place.

A housekeeper—hired by the owner to clean once a week—noticed the piss-and-shiz show and told the owner, who warned Wu to keep her pet in its cage, but Constance Wu only cares about Constance Wu so she ignored the warnings and the defecation continued until the owner eventually called Wu’s management and threatened to throw her out.

Wu is not talking because she’s an irresponsible egotistical wannabe star who will be a has-been before you know it … with a bunny who poops in a cardboard box under an LA overpass.

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If you’d ever thought that the Kardastrophe Koven was just a petri dish of incestuous relationships, you’re right on the mark.

Tyga, who is Kylie Kardastrophe’s—let’s face it, she’d lose the Jenner as fast as she could if given the chance—ex-boyfriend, was once married to Jordan Craig.

Jordan Craig has a child with Tristan Thompson.

Tristan has a child with Khloe Kardastrophe.

Tyga also has a kid with Blac Chyna.

Blac Chyna has a child with Rob Kardastrophe.

Do those people not know anyone else they can date or impregnate or be impregnated by?

That whole Klan needs a Silkwood Scrubdown™.

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When a family has spent decades relying on one person to pay their bills and buy them shiz, what does that family do when the Coin Machine™ is dead? Send them out on the road as a hologram.

Yes, Dead Whitney is going on tour because the Houston family needs the coins. Despite the fact she’s been dead for seven years, Whitney Houston’s estate is planning on releasing a new album and sending Whitney out on tour in the form of a hologram.

Estate executor, and sister-in-law to Dead Whitney, Pat Houston has plans for a Dead Whitney album, a Dead Whitney Tour, and a Dead Whitney Broadway musical because even a Dead Whitney makes more money than Pat Houston, or the family.

Funny thing, though, in 2016 there was supposed to be a duet between Dead Whitney the Hologram and Christina Aguilera, but Pat put the kibosh on that because it was tacky. I think they thought it was tacky because Christina would get some of the coins and the Houston’s want all of them for themselves.

It’s all about the coins that can be made off selling your dead family member,like Whitney Houston: Dead In Concert!

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So, to recap … two years ago Real Housewives of New York City‘s very own ex-Countess and wannabe singer Luann De Lesseps was arrested for trying to have sex in an empty hotel room and then attacking the police officers dispatched to haul her drunk ass to jail.

To avoid jail time. Luann agreed to go to rehab, and, to be fair, she did complete that stint, only to be released and start a new life as ex-con, ex-countess, ex-drunk cabaret star Luann De Lesseps.

But then she had a relapse and was sent back to rehab where she stayed for less than three weeks before leaving to take her act—whatever that is—on the road.

And that brings us to her third strike; Luann recently violated her probation by admitting to her parole officer that she’d had some cocktails after one of her recent “shows”. She says she just had mimosas, which aren’t really drinks, unless you’re a three-time arrestee who can’t stay sober for more than a few months at a time.

And the judge who heard her sob story was all, Sorry, bitch, and put her in handcuffs. Luckily, she wasn’t taken to jail, but  she was hit with more conditions added to her probation …

She will have a breathalyzer in her car, making it impossible for her to drive drunk, for which America thanks the judge; she will be getting weekly telephone counseling sessions, for which she cannot use the bartender at the nearest Red Lobster; she will have monthly in-person meetings with a psychiatrist; and she must start taking the prescription drug Antabuse, which treats alcoholism by giving Luann the effects of a very severe hangover should have even one drink … including a mimosa.

Luann’s representative, which may or may not be one of her drinking buddy backup dancers, told the media:

“She looks forward to completing the last couple months of probation and putting this entire situation behind her and moving on with her life.”

Funny, that’s what she said the first time she got arrested, and then when she went to rehab, and then when she fell off the wagon and went to rehab again.

It’s the same old song. Hey, maybe she could find a spot for that in her cabaret act?

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Boy George is a bit of a diva, though nowhere near Wu-level diva-ness, but … as a judge on The Voice Australia one contestant got under the Boy’s skin and he was off … literally.

During the blind auditions 20-year-old Daniel Shaw sang Beneath Your Beautiful while playing the piano, and it made all four judges—Kelly Rowland, Guy Sebastian, Delta Goodrem, and Boy George—turn their chairs and hope he’d pick them. Boy George asked if Daniel played guitar, and Daniel replied:

“I can play guitar, but no one really cares if I play guitar.”

Now, there was a touch of rudeness there, and Boy wasn’t having it. He asked:

“No one cares?” 

When Daniel shook his head, Boy George said:

“I do.”

Then he suggested Daniel pick any other judge, grabbed his phone and left the building!

Of course, though, because there's a contract and a check involved, the Boy came back and claimed he’d misheard Daniel.

“I just misheard what was said, and I just went, you know when you go in the moment? I am kind of fine now and I’m a bit embarrassed. I’m cool, I’m not annoyed, I was just annoyed in the moment. I’ve got to go and find somewhere not to be embarrassed. I’ll have to be tied to my seat.”

Now, to be fair, that’s not high gossip, because he came back, but it does give me a moment to share my favorite Boy George story: years ago, during the height of Culture Club realness, Boy was in Japan doing a photo shoot. After they put him in his wardrobe, he announced that he didn’t like the pants because they reminded him of a cheap hotel …

"No ballroom."

Get it?

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