Friday, May 12, 2017

Josh Marshall has my favorite ready-to-mix metaphor of the whole sordid affair


As a fan of the extravagantly mixed metaphor, I wish Marshall had jammed these two together, but they are both good enough to stand alone, funny and remarkably apt.


Last night came word that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein reportedly threatened to resign Tuesday night when he realized that the White House was making him the key decision-maker in the firing of James Comey. This tells us a lot, but not necessarily what it might appear on first notice. The main significance is that no more than 30 hours in, the White House’s absurd cover story about firing Comey over his misdeeds toward Hillary Clinton – a lie that virtually everyone at the White House has now publicly repeated and vouched for – is coming apart at the seams. We can also see the staggering fact that after no more than two weeks on the job, Rosenstein’s public reputation, which was formidable, has been destroyed. He now joins a legion of Trump Dignity Wraiths, men and women (though mainly men) of once vaunted reputations or at least public prestige who have been reduced to mere husks of their former selves after crossing the Trump Dignity Loss Event Horizon.



What Rosenstein seems not to have realized was that Trump would blame him firing on him. To put it in mafia terms, ‘I said I’d help you whack Carlo. But you didn’t say you’d tell everyone it was my hit!’ This is why Rosenstein’s threat to resign rings hollow and indeed why I suspect he hasn’t resigned. What’s his argument? That he knowingly participated in the bad act and put his legal knowledge to work justifying it but is outraged that he’s being asked to take the blame?

And now our video accompaniment. First on the subject of event horizons. Before buying the Star Wars franchise, Disney first tried to make their own knockoffs. It did not go well.




Going from the ridiculous to the sublime... When the subject is mafia hits, particularly hits with nasty unexpected consequences, there really is no other choice.

No comments:

Post a Comment