Let us prey: Cheeto Jeezus wants to save the soul of 'Murica

I can't run no more
With that lawless crowd
While the killers in high places
Say their prayers out loud

~ Leonard Cohen, "Anthem" (from The Future, 1992)

Mark your calendar for May 17, Year of Our Lard 2026. For that is the day that #neverwasmypresident Donald John Trump, aka Cheeto Jeezus, aka Mango Messiah, aka Cantaloupe Caligula, has declared that he shall lead a "National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise, and Thanksgiving" on the National Mall to "rededicate America as one nation under God."

Trump first announced this momentous event back on February 5, 2026 at the National Prayer Breakfast, where he boasted about his regime's efforts to forcefully shove religion back into the public arena, whether the public arena wants it or not. (When you're a star Messiah, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab 'em by the 1A.)

The upcoming National Jubilee is intended to be part of the greater celebration of America's 250th birthday. And the MAGAts who consider themselves People Of Faith are beside themselves with bliss; they've been all over social media with words of praise for the Orange Overlord. They practically wet themselves with reverent joy over the fact that their idol sat at his desk and droned out a few passages from the Old Testament during a marathon Bible reading on April 21. And this May event has had them super psyched for months.

I have written a lot on this Whirled over the years about the cynicism and hypocrisy of Christofascist leaders who suck up to Trump, and about the gullibility or naivete or willful blindness or (in some cases) the stupidity of his followers who have apparently swallowed his religious shtick. And many millions of other words have been written by others about Trump's utter lack of biblical virtues. So I don't need to go over those points in detail; they speak for themselves. (If you want to review some of those points anyway on your own time, here, from a Bible believer and self-described Christ-follower, are just 21 of them.)

I do, however, feel a need to reiterate another oft-repeated point: the idea of Trump as any type of savior or religious leader is screamingly hilarious on one level, but dangerous on another -- at least it's dangerous if you actually believe in the First Amendment and are worried about the crass and unprecedented politicization of religion that we're seeing from the Turd Reich. That politicization began during Trump's first reign and has accelerated alarmingly since he slithered into office again.

In an April 27, 2026 editorial on The Hill, opinion contributor Svante Myrick wrote that April has been a strange month for American Christians whose religious identity is not bound up with the adoration of Trump. For instance:

We watched a president who postures as a defender of the faith pollute the holiest days of the Christian calendar by invoking God while making profane threats to commit war crimes and annihilate an entire civilization.

The same president offended Christians of all stripes by sharing an AI-generated image of himself appearing as a Christ-like figure, surrounded by prayerful and adoring supporters and carrying out a miraculous healing. Oh, yeah, and he responded to the pope’s calls for peace by rudely insulting the spiritual leader of the world’s Catholics.

We also had Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, our self-proclaimed “secretary of war” and bloodthirsty crusader wannabe, treating the U.S. attack on the Iranian regime as a holy war to be waged without mercy and with “overwhelming violence.” Meanwhile, he urged Americans to pray for American victory “in the name of Christ” — or was it in the name of Quentin Tarantino? 

Religious MAGAts will brush all of that off, saying that what's important is that Trump is returning America to the "Christian" roots in which it was founded. Oh, good lord, how many times have we heard that lame rationalization? Here's Svante Mryick again:

It has indeed been a rough year for Americans who support the religious freedom and pluralism that thrive here thanks to the constitutional separation of church and state.

Trump’s devotees claim that he was anointed by God to carry out a divine mission to save America from people they see as their enemies — secularists, feminists, gay and transgender people, non-white immigrants — and to ensure that America remains, or returns to being, their version of a “Christian nation.” 

But that’s more fantasy than history. If our country’s founders, who were unhappily familiar with Europe’s state churches, wanted to create a “Christian nation,” they could have written Christian dogma into the Constitution. Instead, they included a ban on any official national religion and an explicit ban on any religious test for public office.  

So no matter what George Washington or some other Founding Father did or didn't say about faith and God and all of that stuff, the brand of Christian nationalism that Trump is enabling is running roughshod over all of our freedoms, and not just our religious freedoms.

And Trump himself as a leader of a national prayer event? Gimme a break. The man who has spent a lifetime worshiping at the altar of his own ego is now calling on the rest of us to bow our heads in reverence. It’s a level of hypocrisy so dense it could bend light.

Those of us -- and there are many millions of us -- who don't have orange-stained noses from spending so much time rooting around in Trump's secondary mouth can see what this event actually is. It’s not a spiritual awakening; it’s a campaign rally with a gospel soundtrack. It is the ultimate branding exercise. By wrapping himself in the flag and holding a cross, he is trying to sell himself as the divinely appointed savior of the nation.

Of course he has a lot of support for that branding from the evangelical "leaders" who regularly infest what my favorite potty-mouthed pundit, Jeff Tiedrich, calls the Oval Bordello, where said "leaders" regularly gather 'round their orange savior and pray over him while he slumps at his desk with eyes closed and hands folded, looking properly humble and reverent. (Actually, his eyes are most likely shut because he's snoozing yet again. Tiedrich has often referred to him as a "narcoleptic old fart factory.") Also lending support to the con is the Christofascist wing of the GOP, which in recent years has become much more than a wing; it's practically the whole big fat stupid turkey. And naturally there are the gullible MAGAts who take everything that their Cheeto Jeezus says at face value.

And that prayer jubilee? It’s classic political theater, designed to keep Trump's base energized while the rest of us are left shaking our heads in disbelief or disgust. It's all just another way for the career grifters to prey on the gullible. I can already see the merch table now: "Make America Pray Again" hats, gold-plated Trump Bibles and gaudy, overpriced jewelry (he's an old hand at that), and maybe some commemorative holy water bottled straight from the tap at Mar-a-Lago or one of Trump's other vermin-infested golf motels (as Tiedrich calls them).

Rededicating America to God is a lovely sentiment for those who are religious, though not so much for those who aren't, or those who are of the "wrong" religion by Christofascist standards, or those who care about the separation-of-church-and-state angle of the First Amendment. And having a rededication-to-God ceremony led by a man whose entire public persona is built on pride, greed, and wrath feels less like a holy moment and more like a rejected movie script for a third-rate political satire.

So on May 17, as the crowd of the faithful gathers on the Mall to gawk at the consecrated carnival barkers who will be in the spotlight oozing their religion, I'll be here in the corner, longing for the day that America is delivered from Mango Messiah and his merry band of ersatz spiritual leaders who constantly urge us all to pray while they continue, endlessly, to prey.

Even darker: it's deja screw all over again, but even worse than last time

 Congratulations, Trump voters. I'm very much afraid that this is what awaits most of you, and unfortunately most of the rest of us too:

(If the embedded video doesn't play, here's a direct link. )

And yes, I know I cited this very video in my Election Day post on November 5. But it bears citing again, just because.

* * * * *

One of my Whirled posts in the early daze following the disastrous 2016 US presidential election was titled, "You want it darker." That was a reference to the title, and title song, of a then-new collection by Canadian songwriter/singer/poet/novelist/artist Leonard Cohen, who had passed away just one day before the aforementioned disastrous election. Having been a lifelong Cohen fan, I was as devastated by the revelation of his death as I was by the news that Mango Mussolini had won, and I wrote at length about both events a few days after the "Darker" post.

Well, Leonard, things have just become even darker. Trump won. As CNN summed it up:

The former president will return to the White House in a moment of historic consequence for American democracy. He’ll head back to to the nation’s highest office four years after losing the 2020 election, attempting to overturn the results, facing two presidential impeachments, a criminal conviction and many other criminal charges.

Yes, and now we get to see just how far into fascism this country will really descend. It doesn't look pretty. We were screwed in 2016, but it looks as if we're even screwed-er now.

But we're not storming the Capitol, and Vice President Kamala Harris has delivered her gracious concession speech. It's a speech that's far more hopeful than I feel right now, but maybe I'll catch up to her optimism at some point.

It's not that none of us saw this coming. After 2016, and then eight long years of hearing Trump's increasingly unhinged rhetoric that still didn't seem to alienate his cult followers but only made them love him more, we always knew that another Trump victory was a distinct possibility. Yet it was still a shock.

Journalist Jonathan M. Katz wrote in a "morning after" piece for The Racket:

The thing I knew most of all, the thing that is the most embarrassing to confront in the cold light of this unnervingly hot November day, was the lesson that decades of imperialist violence and dehumanization abroad comes home, sure as the sun, in the form of fascism. I wrote a whole book about it, a book that is still very much in print. For years I was bellowing at anyone who would listen: No, we are not immune. Yes, it can happen here. There were many off-ramps we could have taken. I wanted to believe, even still, at this late date, that somehow a loud enough series of warnings — from the former president’s former staffers, from the former president on the campaign trail himself — would spur enough people in enough states into action. What I did not know, and what I should have known, is that these warnings wouldn’t be enough. We will know soon enough if the critical margin who meandered into his camp, and those who did not go to the polls, understood what they voted for and will like it once they see it in action. But for now, it was not a dealbreaker, and that was enough.

You can lead voters to the truth, but you can't make them think. Especially if they're devoted cult members, so blinded by the orange that they can't see the multiple shimmering colors of that truth.

I know that it wasn't just the hardcore cultists who pushed Cantaloupe Caligula past the finish line. Other voters were sucked in by his erratic messaging and relentless fearmongering, many if not most of them no doubt driven by the same cognitive biases that I discussed on my previous post (here's that link again): negativity bias ("awfulizing" the current administration, the state of the economy, etc.); and euphoric recall (forgetting how genuinely awful the first Trump administration was).

Some have suggested that a combination of irregularities in tallying the votes, various forms of voter suppression, and foreign interference were the real causes of Harris' defeat. If there's even a remote possibility that any of these things occurred, or there's any doubt about the results, I would expect legal challenges and recounts.

For now, I'm going to take Trump's "victory" at face value, even though it casts a horrendous light on the faces of millions of American voters. Is this really "who we are" as a country? Jordan Zakarin, writing for Progress Report, says we might as well own up to it.

Americans knew Donald Trump, were fully aware of his mendacious personality and mental instability, the hateful crew of ideological madmen who accompany him, and had a clear idea of what he'd do in office. And they chose to make him president again, anyway.

It’s a painful thing to admit, but this is just who we are as a country, at least right now. A majority of voters experienced all four excruciating years of Trump’s presidency — the scandal and corruption, mass pandemic deaths, the elevation of three vicious Supreme Court justices, and an actual attempt to overthrow the government — and either enjoyed the depravity or did not see it as a dealbreaker when they chose a new president.

But in a thoughtful piece on Meidas News, Ron Filipkowski suggested that it wasn't just the Trump voters who are to blame, and he offered a list of the major mistakes and missteps by Biden, Harris, and the Democrats that helped lead to the unfortunate election results. Several of these blunders were in essence messaging failures; numerous opportunities were missed to adequately counter the attacks and outrageous lies by Trump and the republicans. It's a list well worth perusing.

Like Harris, however, Filipkowski refuses to give up hope, viewing the devastating loss as an opportunity to revive the Democratic Party. After all, as the sub-head in the article says, we do have the talent to win, and win big.

The Trump presidency will likely be a complete disaster for the country if he is able to implement even 10% of what he has proposed. The people he plans on bringing in to the government are arguably even worse tha[n] he is in many respects. I believe this second Trump Admin will seek to radically transform our institutions, alliances overseas, budget and tax code, economy, environmental regulations, health care, the food supply, separation of church and state, along with all the usual drama that surrounds Trump and his minions.

While all of that is bad for the country, so much so that many of us have dedicated our lives over the last 5 years trying to prevent it, it will also provide an opening for Democrats to reposition themselves to take back the presidency, House and Senate in 2028.

But we can only do that if we stick together, remain united while hashing out differences in good faith, and broaden our coalition. Americans will be hungry for a change after four more years of MAGA and Trump toxicity, and we have to be a party that appeals to them for reasons other than the fact that we aren't them.

It won't be easy, but it's doable, provided of course that dissenters don't all get thrown in jail by the Mango Mussolini regime before they can accomplish anything.

Jonathan Katz, whose "morning after" post I quoted above, concluded his post with this:

The main thing I’m keeping in mind is that this is the same country it was yesterday. We are just now seeing it in a new light. Tens of millions invited this future in, yes, but ten of millions more tried to choose a different path. We may be more constrained in making them now. But there will still be many more choices to come.

Let us hope. I'm grieving now, but as I said eight years ago, I am definitely not giving up. And as I also said eight years ago, I don't want you to give up either.

Before you leave...
All politics aside, this has been, for several reasons, a nightmare of a year for me personally. Money, alas, cannot make the nightmare go away, but it can make it far easier to bear. Now more than ever, donations are urgently needed and profoundly appreciated. Here are some ways to do it:

• New: Venmo -- username @Connie-Schmidt-42. Here is a direct link to the Venmo page.
• New: PayPal -- Here is a direct link to my PayPal page.
• Old but still good: You can click on the "Donate" icon that currently appears on the right-hand side of every page of this blog on the Web version. There's also a donation link at the end of many of my older blog posts. In the case of both the icon and the links on the older posts, as well as the link in this sentence, this is also a PayPal link, but it references the email account of my husband, RevRon -- which is cool, because it all ultimately goes to the same place.

NOTE: If you are donating by PayPal, please specify that your contribution is a gift, which it is (as opposed to a conventional purchase, for which PayPal deducts a percentage for their fee).

Whether you can donate or not, thank you for visiting this Whirled.

Overturning Roe: The Handmaid's Tale takes another giant step towards reality

With the not-unexpected but nevertheless disastrous United States Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v Wade on June 24, 2022, Margaret Atwood's famous dystopian novel, The Handmaid's Tale, just took another giant step towards being art imitated by life.

And the late great singer/songwriter/poet Leonard Cohen was wrong: it's theocracy, not democracy, that's coming to the USA.

I don't believe that any thinking person on either side of the abortion issue thinks that the theocrats and Christo-fascists are going to stop at Roe, despite implied assurances within the majority opinion that the June 24 decision is solely about the constitutional right, or lack thereof, to abortion. Senior SCOTUS fascist Clarence Thomas, in his concurring opinion to the decision, has called for the overturning of other precedents that are founded in principles such as the right to privacy: specifically, decisions protecting the right to contraception, to same-sex intimate relationships, and to same-sex marriage.

Notably, in his opinion Thomas apparently did not mention the Loving v Virginia SCOTUS decision that, in June of 1967, finally legitimized interracial marriages. A few wags on Twitter have suggested that he add the Loving decision to his list of cases to be reconsidered/overturned, since it would most likely be cheaper than a divorce, should Thomas be considering a break from his seditionist, bat-crap crazy wife Ginni. But I digress.

In their dissenting opinion, Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan made the significance and utter gravity of the SCOTUS decision on abortion very clear:

For half a century, Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113 (1973), and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U. S. 833 (1992), have protected the liberty and equality of women. Roe held, and Casey reaffirmed, that the Constitution safeguards a woman’s right to decide for herself whether to bear a child. Roe held, and Casey reaffirmed, that in the first stages of pregnancy, the government could not make that choice for women. The government could not control a woman’s body or the course of a woman’s life: It could not determine what the woman’s future would be... Respecting a woman as an autonomous being, and granting her full equality, meant giving her substantial choice over this most personal and most consequential of all life decisions....

The dissenting Justices also made it clear that the abortion decision is almost certainly not the end of the line for the theocrats. They're just getting started.

...no one should be confident that this majority is done with its work. The right Roe and Casey recognized does not stand alone. To the contrary, the Court has linked it for decades to other settled freedoms involving bodily integrity, familial relationships, and procreation. Most obviously, the right to terminate a pregnancy arose straight out of the right to purchase and use contraception. See Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U. S. 479 (1965); Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438 (1972). In turn, those rights led, more recently to rights of same-sex intimacy and marriage. See Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U. S. 558 (2003); Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015). They are all part of the same constitutional fabric, protecting autonomous decisionmaking over the most personal of life decisions.

In a statement sent to People magazine, Jim Obergefell, one of the plaintiffs in the historic Obergefell v. Hodge case that legitimized same-sex marriage, wrote:

"Clarence Thomas is a Supreme Court justice appointed by humans, he is not the Supreme Deity. The millions of loving couples who have the right to marriage equality to form their own families do not need Clarence Thomas imposing his individual twisted morality upon them. If you want to see an error in judgment, Clarence Thomas, look in the mirror."

Indeed.

All in all, things are looking pretty grim, and on track to get even grimmer. So hold on to your white wimples, Handmaids; it's going to be quite a ride -- and the fight is far from over.

Addendum, June 25, 2022: SCOTUS wrecking ball targeted other issues besides Roe
Unfortunately, Roe wasn't the only matter this past week in which the high court managed to do significant damage to more than a half century of progress. Here are its other major achievements for the week:

June 21, 2022: Kicking another big hole in the wall between church and state (and thumbing its nose at LGBTQ rights)

In a 6-3 vote, the court ruled Tuesday that Maine could not prohibit parents from using a state-funded tuition assistance program to pay for their children to attend private religious schools while permitting them to do so in private secular schools. The two schools cited in the case have a history of homophobic and transphobic policies.

The ruling in Carson v. Makin is a continuation of the conservative-majority court’s recent willingness to poke holes in the barrier between church and state. A number of LGBTQ advocacy organizations and other supporters of queer rights are sounding the  alarm about what the decision signals about the court’s direction, especially when it comes to reconciling religious freedom with safeguarding lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people from discrimination. 

June 23, 2022: Seriously weakening states' rights to impose their own gun control laws

For anyone concerned with the havoc associated with guns in this country, Thursday was a day of highs and lows. The Senate, after decades of inaction, passed a bipartisan gun-safety bill by a vote of 65–33. And the Supreme Court, in its biggest gun ruling in more than a decade, struck down a New York law by a vote of 6the case, New York State Rifle & Pistol –3. The majority opinion in Association v. Bruen, was written by and joined by the Court’s Clarence Thomas five other conservatives, and it is broad and reckless. It will expose any number of well-established laws to similar challenges, and rattle efforts to arrive at a national consensus on guns. If the Senate was the scene of a true breakthrough, the Court was the site of a major breakdown.

June 23, 2022: Kneecapping Miranda

Today, in Vega v. Tekoh, the court backtracked substantially on its Miranda promise. In Vega, the court held 6-3 (over an excellent dissent by Justice Elena Kagan) that an individual who is denied Miranda warnings and whose compelled statements are introduced against them in a criminal trial cannot sue the police officer who violated their rights, even where a criminal jury finds them not guilty of any crime. By denying people whose rights are violated the ability to seek redress under our country’s most important civil rights statute, the court has further widened the gap between the guarantees found in the Bill of Rights and the people’s ability to hold government officials accountable for violating them.

As someone on Twitter wrote, "I went to bed in 2022 and woke up in 1950." If the current SCOTUS majority and the fascist political infrastructure that supports them continue to prevail, the US is going to be plummeted even further back than 1950.

Addendum, July 12, 2022: The worst may be yet to come
The cases above are just a few examples of the destruction SCOTUS wreaked in their latest session. For a more complete review of their "accomplishments," see this.

And the worst may be yet to come when SCOTUS hears and rules on Moore v. Harper, a North Carolina case that is potentially the biggest threat to American democracy since January 6. The case, which will be heard in October 2022, involves independent state legislature doctrine and gerrymandering. If SCOTUS rules in North Carolina's favor, that could seriously impact the outcome of the 2024 presidential election, not to mention numerous local and state elections across the US. In practical terms, it could put the rethuglican party in power in the US indefinitely, regardless of actual popular vote or Electoral College outcomes. And regardless of your party affiliation, that should bother you. A lot. If it doesn't, you are definitely part of a very big problem.

 

2021, how COULD you?

 

With the month -- and the year -- fast running out, I was all set to finish up and publish a post about one of this blog's favorite serial scammers. But then... this happened.

Way to suck even more, 2021.

Celebrity deaths don't usually faze me all that much, with the exception of Leonard Cohen in 2016, which was made exceptionally awful because of the other horrifying thing that happened around the same time.

But... Betty White?!? I only wish it were a hoax, but I can't live my life in denial.

I will be back early in the New Year with more bloggish material. For now, I hope you have a safe New Year's Eve. Stay off of the mean streets, and stay far away from crowds... in fact, if I were you I'd stay in altogether and watch Life With Elizabeth or Mary Tyler Moore (beginning with Season 4) or The Golden Girls or Boston Legal episodes, or find a way to watch Lake Placid. Or The Proposal. Lake Placid is on Ron's and my schedule tonight.

Rest in power, Betty. And as for you, 2021, as Mrs. Delores Bickerman said in Lake Placid, "If I had a dick, this is where I'd tell you to suck it."

A sigh of relief before more sh-t hits the fan (but still, a sigh of relief)

  

I freely confess to having been moved to tears several times today while watching the Inauguration coverage. From Lady Gaga's joyous rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner," to J-Lo's mashup of "This Land Is Your Land" and "America the Beautiful," to #FinallyAPresidentICanSupportAgain Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s "unity" speech... it all added up to a powerful experience for me -- made all the more potent by the fact that it has been such a long, hard road to this moment.

Arguably, the person who stole the show today was young poet Amanda Gorman, whose poem, "The Hill We Climb" pretty much said it all (and if the embedded video above doesn't work for you, try the link).

Even so, I am not some starry-eyed idealist, a point you surely know if you're even a casual visitor to this blog or to my social media. To me, today felt not so much like the clear beginning of a bold new era of hope and healing (though I would love to believe that it is), but more like getting the news that a very serious and possibly fatal disease has gone into remission. Because I know that the crazies are still out there, and while some of them are merely silly or dim-witted, like the rank-and-file (or maybe just rank) QAnon/Trump-cult Facebook warriors...

Somebody needs more help than The Universe may be able to provide. Just saying.

...others are dangerous, like the violent insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol two weeks ago. Most of the United States -- and indeed the world -- may be celebrating, but Trumpism isn't going anywhere. While a clear majority of us may be breathing a collective sigh of relief, I think most of us are also keenly aware that more sh-t is going to hit the fan, and most likely sooner rather than later.

Still, as the late singer/songwriter/poet/novelist Leonard Cohen sang in his famous song "Democracy" (and yes, I know I've quoted this several times before on this Whirled), "...I'm still holding up this little wild bouquet." Our democracy may have been seriously trampled on for the past four years, but it hasn't been destroyed.

 

Hallelujah, gonna sue ya: Trumpublican misinfomercial abuses Leonard Cohen's most famous song

You took his greatest song in vain
Though we'd made our refusal plain
You think you got away with it, now do ya?
You used this song to spread Trump's blight
You violated copyright
So now it seems we just might have to sue ya
Have to sue ya
Have to sue ya
Have to sue ya
Have to sue-ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo-ya.

[Apologies to the estate of Leonard Cohen]

The Trumpublican misinfomercial, more commonly known as the 2020 Republican National Convention, has come and gone, thank goodness. The list of lies spewed, shouted, or screamed during that gaudy four-day spectacle, as well as the violations of various laws and norms, have been well covered. These are pretty big issues, to be sure. But since I am a nearly lifelong fan of the late singer/songwriter/poet/novelist Leonard Cohen, and have mentioned him numerous times on this Whirled over the years, I'm going to focus on what is, in the larger scheme of things, one of the more trivial violations. That would be the RNC's misuse -- not once, but twice -- of Cohen's most famous and most-covered song, "Hallelujah" (originally released on his 1984 album, Various Positions).

Leonard Cohen died one day before the most disastrous presidential election in modern US history, though the world didn't hear about his death until a couple of days after the election. Cohen has had a very devoted following for decades, a following that arguably has only increased and intensified since his death. So it's not surprising that fans were furious over the co-opting of "Hallelujah" by the RNC.

Yet, as anyone who is actually familiar with the lyrics knows, there is also unintentional humor in this song choice. For despite the repeated use of the word "Hallelujah," this song is not triumphant or celebratory, except perhaps in an ironic sense. Nor is it a religious or holy song, at least not in the traditional "Christian" self-righteous sense embraced by so many republicans and fake-embraced by Caligula himself -- though it does reflect Cohen's longstanding themes of the symbiotic relationship between eroticism and holiness. The point is that "Hallelujah" is in essence a breakup song. It is all about disillusionment, cynicism, bitterness, and ultimately resignation in the wake of a failed love affair.

I have little doubt that Cohen himself would not have approved of this exploitation of his song by the RNC. When I first wrote about this on Facebook on August 28, 2020, I mentioned that I would be interested to see if there are any responses from his estate and/or from Cohen's children, Adam and Lorca. I also expressed curiosity as to whether the Trump campaign paid applicable licensing fees for the public performances of this song (or any other copyrighted songs they've used, for that matter). After all, music copyright holders are pretty fussy about these matters. You have to pay a licensing fee for public performance of a copyrighted song, and even for quoting song lyrics in a book.

Some of my questions were subsequently answered. Representatives from the RNC had indeed approached the Cohen estate to obtain permission for a live performance of "Hallelujah." Their request was denied. But they went ahead anyway, with a recorded cover by Tori Kelly on the third night of the show, and, following Trump's 70-minute, lie-filled rant on the final night, a live performance by opera singer Christopher Macchio. The Cohen estate was not pleased.

Michelle L. Rice, the legal representative for the Cohen Estate, said the family was “surprised and dismayed that the RNC would proceed knowing that the Cohen Estate had specifically declined the RNC’s use request, and their rather brazen attempt to politicize and exploit in such an egregious manner ‘Hallelujah’, one of the most important songs in the Cohen song catalogue.” As such, the Cohen Estate is “exploring legal actions.”

Rice added that “had the RNC requested another song, ‘You Want it Darker’, for which Leonard won a posthumous Grammy in 2017, we might have considered approval of that song.”

Leonard Cohen is far from the only artist whose work has been co-opted by the Trump campaign without the permission of the artists and/or other copyright holders. From Vulture.com, here's a rundown of that growing list. (And as a bonus, also from Vulture.com, here's a list of performers who reportedly turned down an invitation to perform publicly at Trump's 2017 inauguration.)

I've never been one to advocate litigation to resolve every conflict or disagreement that comes along, but in this case, I hope Cohen's estate aggressively pursues legal action. After all, the Trump campaign has been suing and threatening to sue a number of media outlets and individuals for years in a desperate but ultimately futile attempt to control the narrative about Trump -- even going so far as to sue a tiny TV station in Wisconsin for a political ad. Litigation seems to be their life's blood. So... fair's fair.

Related on this Whirled:

• November 13, 2016: And even though it all went wrong...
  I wasn't the only one to view Leonard Cohen's death as darkly symbolic of the looming era of Trumpism.
• November 10, 2016: You want it darker
  I wrote this one shortly after I found out about Cohen's passing.
• November 9, 2016: Mourning in Amerika, and what to do next
  Written the day after the election. Even then we knew it would be bad, but our expectations have been surpassed many times over in the years since then.
  

So wrong, Marianne

Step out of the race now, my little darlin'
We've heard your lofty talk before
Your words of love won't cure the loathing
Your thoughts on peace can't win the war

You're so wrong, Marianne
To win, we need a plan, which
You don't have, so just go back to writing books again

~ With apologies to the late, great Leonard Cohen


When McSpirituality/New-Wage guru Marianne Williamson made her appearance in part 2 of the first Democratic pageant last month -- I can't seem to bring myself to seriously call those two nights of sound bites, posturing and constant interruptions "debates" -- she reportedly won the Google search war for the evening, as herds of the curious and perplexed stampeded to their favorite search engine to find out more about her, or in many cases to find out just who the hell she is. No doubt her ascent to fame in the 1990s predated the birth of many of the searchers, and she hasn't exactly been front-page news in recent years.

But many others -- me, for instance -- have known about her for years and years, and I daresay that many of us knew most if not all of what National Review recently declared to be "Twenty Things You Probably Didn't Know about Marianne Williamson." Being a former long-time resident of Houston myself, I knew, for instance, that she is a native Houstonian, and furthermore I know very well that she used to make quite a big deal of being a Texan, making her current strange-sounding accent, which some have described as "mid-Atlantic," seem all the more like an affectation.

More importantly, many of us think that her presidential campaign is a colossal waste of our time, though probably not of hers; after all, look at all the renewed attention this once fading star is now getting as a result.

Williamson didn't speak much compared to some of her co-stars on the Democrats' stage, and in fact didn't speak at all for nearly the first half hour. But what she did communicate drew a lot of attention, particularly her apparent disdain for plans.

I tell you one thing, it’s really nice if we have all these plans, but if you think we beat Donald Trump by just having all these plans, you’ve got another thing [sic] coming. Because he didn’t win by saying he had a plan. He won by simply saying, “Make America Great Again.”

She did follow that up immediately with a valid if abstract point about America having a "sickness care system" rather than a health care system, and a slightly more concrete point about some of the possible roots of chronic illness. And later on, after the performance, she clarified that she has nothing against plans but believes crafting plans is the province of the president's Cabinet.

But it was Williamson's closing statement that arguably got the most jeers across the Interwebz:

I’m sorry we haven’t talked more tonight about how we’re going to beat Donald Trump. I have an idea about Donald Trump: Donald Trump is not going to be beaten just by insider politics talk. He’s not going to be beaten just by somebody who has plans. He’s going to be beaten by somebody who has an idea what the man has done. This man has reached into the psyche of the American people and he has harnessed fear for political purposes.

So, Mr. President — if you’re listening — I want you to hear me please: You have harnessed fear for political purposes and only love can cast that out. So I, sir, I have a feeling you know what you’re doing. I’m going to harness love for political purposes. I will meet you on that field, and sir, love will win.

Williamson sounds a tad arrogant when she insinuates that she is the only one who has any idea about the damage that Trump has done, not just to American ideals but, as she says, to the American psyche. In truth plenty of people, inside and outside of politics, have been speaking to those very issues nonstop for years. And as for the "love will win" rallying cry... well, for a brief time during the 2016 campaign, as it was becoming ever more apparent that Trump was emboldening and empowering the hatriarchy in ways that hadn't been seen in decades, the Clinton campaign tried #LoveTrumpsHate. That didn't work out so well.

The past as prologue
Perhaps you know Williamson's back story, but in case you don't, and you don't feel like following all of the links I'm providing, here's a capsule review.

After years of being an adventurous, free-spirited dilettante whose colorfully dysfunctional past is currently being portrayed in the media as wild, crazy, exotic, and even "controversial" -- but really wasn't all that unusual for many who were born during the first half of the postwar American baby boom -- Williamson shot to New-Wage guru stardom in 1992 with the publication of her first book, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles." (The Amazon link is for the 1996 reissue/update, but the book was originally published in '92).

The original A Course in Miracles, as you may know, was a ponderous three-volume work by a woman named Helen Schucman (1909-1981), who claimed that Jesus Christ Himself dictated the words to her between 1965 and 1972. Marianne Williamson's book was a much more marketable distillation of ACIM -- and her own attractiveness and charisma certainly didn't hurt -- and her career took off like wildfire. Numerous books and other info-products followed over the years, and Williamson became a McSpirituality minister to the stars -- even officiating at one of the late Liz Taylor's multiple weddings -- and, of course, she became an Oprah pal.

I lampooned Williamson back in the early daze of her stardom, originally creating this fake ad for "A Correspondence Course in Miracles" in 1992 and including it a few years later in my self-published BLP (book-like product), Cosmic Relief: Honoring and Celebrating the Global Paradigm Shaft, which is apparently a very, very rare book, though I still seem to have a few copies lying around the garage, and if you ask me very nicely, I will sell you a copy for much less than the $1,071.50 or even $425.00 currently listed on Amazon.

As her star rose, Williamson caught a lot of flak about a lot of things, including her temper and her seeming fondness for using colorful language. In a long-ago essay (posted on my currently inactive Cosmic Relief web site) about Houston being "Spaced City," due to the city being a breeding ground for numerous New-Wage/McSpirituality/selfish-help luminaries, I swatted at Williamson in passing, describing her as having a sweet face but a foul mouth, and making a reference to "A Curse in Miracles." On a more serious note, Williamson was also accused of mis-managing some of her charitable organizations, essentially using them to promote her various shticks. Some of those early-days criticisms are detailed in this 1992 Entertainment Weekly piece. And Mother Jones published a more than slightly mocking profile in 1997.

Like many New-Wage gurus, some of whom I've also written about on this blog, Williamson had a tendency to throw the criticism right back at the critics, strongly insinuating that they were the ones with the problems, not her. But she was not above invoking her Texas background as a partial explanation for some of the problems people had with her, nor of using her Jewish heritage as a rationale, and indeed on more than one occasion she used her "Jewish Texan" creds to explain why she was such a bad-ass. I don't have any specific links to the latter point; I am just going by long-term memory.

In more recent years Williamson was no longer front-page news -- or maybe I had just grown bored with her so she slipped off of my radar -- but she kept producing whatever it is she produces, and in late 2010 she came out with a weight-loss book that her pal Oprah enthusiastically endorsed in what was clearly a very contrived promotional scheme. Natch, I had to write about that.

Back to the future
In many ways Williamson was and is a personification of the passive-aggressive reality that so often lies beneath the thin veneer of the SNAG (sensitive new age guy/gal) "love and light" mindset. That sometimes disturbing inconsistency, so often seen in New-Wage "leaders," is another topic I've covered on this blog, and as a matter of fact I'll be writing about it again very soon regarding a hypocritical and profoundly narcissistic New-Wage guru/scoundrel I've written about many times before.

But back to Marianne. While it's true that women who assert themselves in any way -- in business or in politics or in their personal lives -- have always been more harshly judged than men (a phenomenon that holds true even today), the new-age love-and-light hypocrisy is a separate issue from that. Following Williamson's stage performance as a Democratic presidential candidate, my friend Barbara G, who lives on the West Coast and is about as astute an observer of the cultural milieu as I've seen, wrote about Williamson on a Facebook thread, saying, "She is so phony with her hostile, aggressive 'love'. She drones on & on with her prepackaged pseudo wisdom and spirituality. My skin crawls when I hear and/or see her obnoxious demeanor. YUK!" She added, "Something off about her. She talks love but emanates something opposite." I concur.

That said, I don't see anything bizarre or terribly offensive in Williamson's rhetoric about "leading with love," nor in her implicit and explicit messaging that so many of America's problems are rooted in a deep spiritual malaise. While it may have seemed laughable to many when she preached it from the stage at the Democrats' show, consider the fact that Williamson is, after all, a long-time proponent of a McSpirituality "religion" of sorts. So her message is hardly surprising, and to tell the truth I don't find it nearly as objectionable as the right-wing theocrats' booming declarations that America's problems are mostly rooted in a Jesus deficiency or in Americans forgetting that the US is a "Christian nation."

In addition to lampooning her in Cosmic Relief, I have, as indicated above, taken a few potshots at Williamson on this blog over the years, as has my friend and blogging colleague Chris Locke at the dormant but still germane and well-worth-reading MysticBourgeoisie blog. I'll say again as I've said before that I met Williamson in person once at a book signing/reading that I attended with a star-struck friend. The event was to promote her recently released work, A Woman's Worth, and if you're interested, I do have a signed first edition of that book, which I will gladly sell you for only a few hundred dollars. Anyway she seemed genuinely nice during our brief exchange, though this doesn't invalidate the points about the faux-love-and-light syndrome I mentioned above. Williamson is also clearly intelligent, writes lovely and poetic, if rambling, prose, and has lofty ideals and a strong sense of social justice.

But she is -- to put it mildly -- not a credible presidential candidate, any more than her g.f. Oprah is. Granted, Williamson actually did manage to make a couple of valid points during her performance at the Democratic gathering in June, even if most of those points were so abstract as to be useless. And she made one highly pertinent comment that, unfortunately, was immediately drowned out: she mentioned the historic role that US foreign policy in Latin America has played in the current immigration crisis. Williamson was spot-on when she said that none of the other candidates had mentioned this core problem during the entire evening's performance. In fairness, it's hard to dig deeply on any issue when you're restricted to 90-second or less sound bites, and when folks are constantly hollering over you, which is why these "debate" formats are such a joke. Even so, someone should have at least mentioned the US' foreign-policy baggage, and Williamson did. I have to give credit where it is due.

But none of the above means that Marianne Williamson is a viable candidate for the presidency. She might have a place in an agency such as Health and Human Services, due to her long history of advocacy and activism, or perhaps in the Environmental Protection Agency, assuming that any of these agencies survive the Trump disaster. But president? Please, girlfriend.

Joke's on us?
Hilarity aside, Williamson isn't being completely dismissed across the board. Even though she is widely considered a joke candidate, there seem to be two schools of thought regarding even this matter. Some think she's nothing but a joke. Humorists have been having a field day mocking her; Saturday Night Live alum Kate McKinnon did a fair imitation on Seth Meyers' show, and comedian Trae Crowder took to Twitter to recap Williamson's platform "as I understand it":

Healthcare plan: lol plans are stupid
Biggest issue: Holler at New Zealand
Ultimate takeaway: See y'all in the Love field
#KookyAunt2020 #DemDebate2

The second school of thought is that Williamson may be a joke, but, as Arwa Mahdawi reminded us in a July 2 opinion piece in The Guardian, we might still be wise to take her seriously; after all, Trump's victory in 2016 taught us that a joke can win an election. A writer on The New Republic web site, Alex Pareene, suggests that Williamson is a possible Democratic version of Trump, being "a proper outsider, with a great deal of TV experience giving her both name recognition and some degree of respect among the 'base' despite the 'establishment' not taking her seriously." Yet of course she is also Trump's opposite, Pareene hastens to add, being "not just female but powerfully and unabashedly feminine, aiming her message not at the raging car dealer dad but the anxious Wellness Mom."

Maybe so, but we don't need another TV star in the White House, no matter how opposite she may be to Trump in all of the ways that matter.

Williamson herself seems to have been a good sport about the laughter at her expense, noting, according to the Guardian article I linked to above, that America could use a good laugh. (She did, however, get a bit huffy about being left out of a Vogue profile of female candidates, which perhaps indicates that the "good-sport" facade can only cover up so much.) And notwithstanding Trae Crowder's snarky tweet, Williamson does have some solid progressive ideas that are not mired in abstraction and flowery new-age language, at least as outlined on her campaign web site. Her words on those pages don't sound nearly as flaky as the Marianne we saw on stage in Florida. Again, that ludicrous "debate" format left little opportunity for thoughtful remarks, much less elucidation, on any issue; with such a large pool of candidates, everyone would have been better served had the show been stretched out over four nights instead of two. But it was what it was. Time to move on.

In any event, however much or how little of a joke you may think Marianne Williamson is, the joke may be on all of us. As of now it appears that she has reached the requisite donation and polling thresholds to make it to the second crop of debates at the end of this month, apparently thanks in no small part to donations from Republicans, who reportedly want to keep her in future debates for her entertainment value. This is both funny and scary.

These Republican donors fully understand that Marianne Williamson is in over her head, and no doubt they are chuckling at her wacko pronouncements, and patting themselves on the back for their efforts in the service of sabotaging the Democrats, even as they're clicking the "Donate" buttons or writing out their checks. But I should point out that these are most likely some of the same folks who supported the profoundly stupid-sounding Sarah Palin or even bonkers Jeezus freak Michelle Bachmann back when those women were in the running for national office, and who now wholeheartedly support the ignorant, lying, gaffe-prone poser who currently occupies the Oval Office, and who has said more than his share of just plain stupid things. Clearly these GOP hyper-partisans don't even raise an eyebrow over a candidate or even a president saying unintentionally hilarious or completely wackadoodle things, nor do they object to that person's core unfitness for office, as long as he or she is on their side. But I do mind, and I have no problem with calling out Williamson even if I agree with her on some matters.
 
Williamson (unlike Palin and Bachmann) is smart, and she seems to have a pretty good idea about what is going on, so I find it hard to believe that she thinks she truly has a chance to win. Call me a pessimist or a cynic, but it seems clear to me that the toxic combination of Trump's cult of personality and GOP dogma and obstructionism have brought American politics far beyond a simple battlefield where love meets hate, and love wins out. Williamson and some of her supporters may truly believe that her metaphorical placing of a flower in the barrel of a rifle will go straight to the core and fix what's wrong with the republic, and she might even be able to best Trump in the unlikely event that she would participate in a one-on-one debate with him -- assuming, of course, a format where candidates were quizzed intelligently on issues and allowed time to give substantive answers -- but Trump isn't the only problem.

There's his base, too: a firewall of irrational, tenacious MAGA soldiers who stick with their leader through thick and thicker, through dumb and dumber. Included among these supporters are viciously hateful MRAs (men's rights activists) who fancy themselves "alpha males" and spend their social media lives raging against women, feminism, "SJWs" ("social justice warriors"), and all manner of "snowflakes." (I've most recently discussed them on my previous blog post, in the context of the way some of them have been defending motivational stuporstar Tony Robbins against #MeToo allegations; see section under the sub-head, "Alphabitching and other reactions.") Then there are the theocrats who still think new-age spirituality is the work of the devil. And of course there are the random racists, xenophobes, and garden-variety ignoranti who won't even consider anyone but Trump, because they see him as their only hope to save America from a host of real and imaginary (mostly imaginary) threats. The hatriarchy truly has Trump's back. And beyond Trump's base, there is a wide field of powerful Republicans who are bent on remaking America in their own image and that of their wealthy donors. That's a lot for one faux-accented, love-spouting guru to tackle, even if she is a bad-ass Jewish Texan.

However solid some of her ideas may be, Williamson's public persona and general flakiness, not to mention her utter lack of qualifications for the most powerful position in the world, overshadow all of those good ideas. I hope she doesn't let her ego get the better of her, and that she has the good sense to step out of the race soon, perhaps donating all of that Republican money either to another, more credible candidate (like Elizabeth Warren, for instance, who actually does have credible plans as well as a solid understanding of who Trump and the GOP power structure are and the damage they are doing), or to any number of worthwhile causes that Williamson holds so dear. We can't afford another four years of what we have now, and Williamson's candidacy is counter-productive to the urgent mission to #DumpTrump.

Note: I have added links and clarifications to this post since it was first published on July 5.
~ CC, July 6, 2019

Addendum, July 23, 2019: Last week, Tarpley Hitt at the Daily Beast reported on Marianne Williamson's return to what she described as her "soul base" in Los Angeles. Said Marianne to her appreciative audience at the Saban Theatre, "There has always been a sense for me that I was seen and heard in Los Angeles, because I think like so many people here think. You don't actually think you're wacky when you're here. You just think like everyone else." (Not a good selling point for a nationwide candidacy, but whatever.) Yet despite her rapport with that audience, some folks clearly wanted her to talk about concrete issues.

For a homecoming—one which could strengthen her standing among California primary voters—the event was largely untethered to Los Angeles, a city currently bogged down by disasters, from record-setting earthquakes and looming wildfires, to one of the worst housing crises in the country. Just last month, Los Angeles County Homeless Services Authority announced the results of an annual homelessness count, which showed that the number of people experiencing homelessness in the county had grown by 12 percent since 2018, to a staggering population of 58,936. Housing is one of the most pressing issues in California—and no shortage of attendees expected Williamson to talk about it...

...At one point, as Williamson waxed Goopish, someone in the back yelled: “Talk about homelessness!” She didn’t.

The choice left more than one fan disappointed. “Marianne says, ‘If you see a hungry child, feed that child,’” said Jess Torres, a formerly-undocumented organizer with the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Human Trafficking and a longtime Williamson supporter. “But I can tell you that 100 people passed a hungry person on their way here, and nobody fed them. I’m looking for a candidate who’s willing to point that shit out.” 

And in another Daily Beast article published on July 7, Sam Brodey wrote about how Marianne Williamson squandered $2 million when she unsuccessfully ran for Congress "in one of California's most New Age-y districts" a few years ago. It's a cautionary tale for those who still might be considering supporting her presidential campaign. For the rest of us, it comes as no surprise whatsoever.

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Pardon, schmardon: will tRump ever get around to Kevin Trudeau?

Imprisoned serial scammer Kevin Trudeau, aka KT, aka Katie on this Whirled, has been pleading for many months with the Orange Oaf of Office, #NotMyPresident Donald J. tRump, to commute the ten-year prison sentence Katie is serving for criminal contempt of court related to false claims he made about his fatuous diet book, and to grant him a full pardon. I've written about this several times on this blog.

So far Katie's pleas seem to have fallen on deaf ears, despite his fans and friends inundating the White House with multimedia begging and whining and shameless sycophancy. One of the Free Kevin Trudeau contingent apparently received a form letter from the White House acknowledging some communication or other, but that seems to be the extent of it. And Katie and his pals perked up a bit when Herr Twitler pardoned loathsome civil rights violator Sheriff Joe Arpaio (whom Katie professes to admire), but so far Katie continues to languish in the government sleepaway camp (Federal Prison Camp in Montgomery, Alabama) that he so fondly refers to as Camp Cupcake.

But look here, Katie and minions, maybe the time is ripe to step up the campaign. For tRump seems to be on a real pardon spree these days, with the latest-as-of-the-time-of-this-writing being conservative wingnut Dinesh D'Souza, a former intellectual turned troll who in 2014 entered a guilty plea for campaign finance fraud. In case you're not familiar with D'Souza, who is loved by conspiracy nuts and Obama/Clinton haters everywhere, Slate gives a brief recap of some of the highlights of his storied career.

Dinesh D’Souza is a right-wing writer and speaker who began his career as an ostensibly respectable intellectual but has since become the familiar kind of relentless alt-right goon-troll who suggests, for example, that the Charlottesville white supremacist rally was staged by liberals and that Barack Obama is a “gay Muslim.” (You can click here to read an interesting piece, pegged to a D’Souza book about how the modern Democratic Party owes its intellectual foundations to Nazism, about how he is able to market transparently ludicrous ideas persuasively.) In 2014 he pleaded guilty to circumventing campaign finance laws by funneling donations to an (unsuccessful) New York Senate candidate through straw donors. And now he’s getting pardoned by the president!

An opinion piece on CNN is just one of many noting a pardon pattern here.

The D'Souza pardon is all of a piece with two other presidential pardons made by Trump during his first 16 months in office. D'Souza, former Bush White House aide Scooter Libby and former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio were all seen, by some elements within the conservative movement/Trump's base, as martyrs -- people unfairly persecuted by some combination of out-of-control Democrats and the "deep state."

"Bravo! @realDonaldTrump," tweeted Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. "Dinesh was the subject of a political prosecution, brazenly targeted by the Obama administration bc of his political views. And he's a powerful voice for freedom, systematically dismantling the lies of the Left—which is why they hate him. This is Justice."

D'Souza himself played into that idea with a tweet of his own. "Obama & his stooges tried to extinguish my American dream & destroy my faith in America," he tweeted. "Thank you @realDonaldTrump for fully restoring both."

Somebody call the waaahhhhmbulance!
Rolling Stone goes a little further into the issue, pointing out that this pardon is just the latest example of Herr Twitler abusing his pardon power.

Typically, someone seeking a pardon applies for one and the application is heavily vetted by lawyers at the Department of Justice. Trump just went ahead and did it. "Nobody asked me to do it," the president said of his D'Souza announcement. "I read the papers. I see him on television." The same applied for the Arpaio and Libby pardons as well.

"None of these pardons has gone through the vetting process and gone through the pardoning attorneys at the Department of Justice," Griffin says. "These have all been cases in which the White House has circumvented the conventional procedures and norms about pardons."

Each of these three pardons is red meat for the base. They've got the fingerprints of Trump's vindictive streak all over them. But above all, these pardons signal a growing willingness by Trump and his White House to use the power of the pardon in troubling new ways and for the benefit of political allies in legal trouble.

But it may not be just a political thing; there's a celebrity motif going on here too (including, notably, a Celebrity Apprentice theme), for Drumpf hinted today that he will also pardon Martha Stewart, who, though a Democrat and professed Clinton supporter, hosted the 2005 Celebrity Apprentice spinoff series, The Apprentice: Martha Stewart. He also said he was seriously considering commuting the sentence of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who is serving 14 years for corruption and, though also a Democrat, was a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice in 2010.

And just yesterday Trump met in the White House with professional narcissist and personification of a hopelessly shallow culture Kim Kardashian, ostensibly to talk about "prison and sentencing reform," but mainly to hear her plea the case of a 63-year-old woman, Alice Marie Johnson, who was given a life sentence without parole for a first-time drug offense. I'm not saying that Johnson belongs in prison (she doesn't), or that Kardashian is wrong for embracing her cause (even predominantly useless celebrities are good for some things), but since she had Drumpf's ear anyway (and possibly his ogling eyeballs), I'm thinking that maybe she could have also tried to convince him that his support of the private prison industry is a really, really horrible thing. But I doubt that the conversation went that deep. As the writer of the New Yorker piece I linked to above noted:

What was most upsetting about Kardashian’s audience with Trump on Wednesday, then, was not its novelty. It was that, more than two years after Trump met with [Kardashian's husband Kanye] West, this type of meeting—this Boschian spectacle of horrors, this stand-in for the reflective, responsible work of actual public service—is, somehow, still happening.

While we're on the topic of horrible things, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is set to review Trump's pardon of the vile Sheriff Joe. If they uphold the pardon, it may go to the Supreme Court, and if it is upheld there... well, that could be another step towards the tyranny that wingnuts always feared under Obama but which is a looming reality under Drumpf.

But thinking about those things is kind of a downer, isn't it? (And to think that this Whirled was originally conceived as a humor blog...) Still, Kevin Trudeau's attempts to get Donald Trump's attention provide at least marginal comic relief in this grim reality show that we're all being forced to live thanks to a combination of ignorant voters, bigotry, hostile foreign meddling, and complicit news media who are taken in by celebrity. If Katie really wants to be freed and absolved by Cheeto Jesus, he needs to hitch his wagon to a real celeb.

And, sadly, former Apprentice contestant and long-time Trump brown-noser Troy McClain probably isn't an option. To begin with, as I've previously reported, several credible sources have indicated that Troy intensely dislikes Kevin, even though Troy benefited significantly from Trudeau's huge scam GIN (the Global Information Network). He continued to reap the rewards even after Kevin was sent to sleepaway camp and no longer had any involvement in GIN (on paper, anyway), and the GIN MLM scam had been pared down to a mere affiliate scheme. Troy, with the help of a few cohorts, had purchased GIN in 2014, and Troy was at the helm for a couple of years, re-branding it to something called "GINEvolve," though reportedly he was exceedingly unpopular among the remaining staff. But -- and I'd not yet reported this, and it's long overdue (mea culpa!) -- Troy departed GIN for presumably greener pastures late last summer when he and his cohort David Cohen sold their interest in GIN, and long-time Trudeau pals Blaine Athorn and Greg Kramer became the primary owners. So for several reasons, Troy probably isn't a guy that Katie could call on.

Still, he needs someone with some sort of celebrity connections that will capture the attention of the celeb-obsessed Thief Executive. It's not enough that Katie has been kissing up to Trump for years, and has expressed some of the right-wing, xenophobic views that Trump and his base seem to embrace. Katie's problem is that despite being a legend in his own mind and the minds of his addled loyalists, he is simply not quite enough of a celebrity to get the president's attention. If is serious about getting pardoned by Trump so he can go back to committing wide-scale consumer fraud with fewer restrictions than he has in Camp Cupcake, he needs to find himself a Kardashian or some equally insipid fame whore, and get that person to set up an appointment with Trump to plead Katie's case.

After all, as the writer in the article linked to in the previous sentence concludes, "Presentation is everything in the Trump White House, even for pardons." Maybe especially for pardons.

This post was updated June 1, 2018 to include information about the Celebrity Apprentice connections and about Troy McClain and GIN. ~ CC

Addendum, June 4, 2018 ~ It could very well be that Herr Twitler ends up pardoning himself before he gets around to pardoning poor Katie. "I am the State, and the State is me!" Tyranny much?
 
PS ~ If you haven't visited the Salty Droid blog lately because you despaired of ever seeing a new post there, you're in for a treat. Jason is blogging again, his latest being a nod to yet more Trump-related media mayhem.

PPS ~ For that matter, my UK pal Longdog is blogging again after a months-long absence, noting that the stupidest and most evil man in Scamworld, cancer quackadoodle and former Kevin Trudeau buddy Not-Doktor Leonard Coldwell, has once again changed his "credentials."

 PPPS ~ And while we're at it, an even more infrequent blogger, my husband Ron Kaye, recently wrote again on his RevRon's Rants blog. Show him a little love and send some comments.

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