When things go wrong
Evidently Max Azzarello was unfamiliar with the work of Richard Pryor. He probably thought death by fire would be quick and relatively painless. Had he listened to the man Roy Blount, Jr., called "the funniest living American" he would have known that self-immolation can also lead to months of excruciating recovery (and in the hands of a genius, comedy gold).
Azzarello lived only a few hours after igniting himself, probably pumped full of morphine. We must assume he traveled from St. Augustine to New York because that's where the world's media had gathered to relay Trump's daily exercises in self-pity, protesting his persecution as Nelson Mandela and Alexei Navalny never did. No matter how spectacularly you kill yourself in St. Augustine, it's a one-day story. In New York it took a full two days for the media to lose interest. The only detailed account I could find was from yesterday's Hindustan Times.
"We are victims of a totalitarian con," he is supposed to have said, words which are destined never to become a meme. Max Azzarello was old-school down to his handwritten sign. And pamphlets -- where do you even get pamphlets printed now? Why not hire a skywriter? (Not available in Tennessee.) The QAnon Shaman could have told him that if you want to stand out at a circus you have to put some thought into your costume. The New York Post speaks of "mental health issues," but nothing specific apart from the death of his mother in 2022. Just another sad symptom of the Trump prion disease which has afflicted this country for nearly a decade. Trump can't even claim him as another "martyr" like Ashli Babbitt.
Too bad, because the King of Grievance needed something to take the edge off this week, his first as a defendant in a criminal trial. None of the delaying tactics worked. Though predicted to take weeks, Judge Juan Merchan proclaimed, "We have a jury" and ordered that the state begin presenting its case tomorrow morning. Further humiliation followed the reports of Trumpian flatulence on Friday, with one blogger commenting, "No wonder those big strong men have tears in their eyes." (Giuliani is not there so he can't be blamed this time.) And then Joe Biden, who controls the weather through whale-murdering windmills, rained out the big airport rally in Wilmington, North Carolina. Wilmington? Wait, isn't that the city where the elected Reconstruction government was overthrown in a coup on November 10, 1898? And at least sixty people killed? It's Trump Country!
Now we can make a guess as to whose call he took in court on Friday -- somebody with the initials VVP is not amused by Speaker Johnson's passage of the aid bill worth $61 billion to Ukraine. Trump and Marge were supposed to stop this, not just delay it for two months. Rubles may dry up while kompromat is leaked. You had one job.
It appears that the Solid South is solid no more, at least when it comes to discouraging unionization through "right to work" laws and other, more questionable tactics. Workers at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga voted to join the United Auto Workers by 2,628 to 985, or 73 percent. What's more, management says it's pleased, since its workers in all other countries have long been unionized. It's seen as a big win for UAW President Shawn Fain and good news for USA President Joe Biden, who joined Fain on the picket line in Michigan last year. Solidarity forever.
It's just a minor humiliation, but residents of the 40-story Trump Plaza in New Rochelle, New York, are pushing to have the name changed, only partially because it depresses real estate prices. One woman who was cautious about her last name remarked, "He's just the devil himself...I hope he gets what he deserves." I thought I was the only one, Yvette.
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