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When it comes to COVID-19, Republicans don’t need no stinkin’ science. They invent their own
POTUS tested positive for COVID-19, but pretended he could beat it into submission with a show of maskless machismo and spluttering non sequiturs. FLOTUS tested positive too, and is taking time off from her private war on Christmas to quarantine in the East Wing while a leaked FEMA memo says nearly three dozen Trump staffers, […]
The GOP has suffered from a pathological fear of Black folks enjoying the full rights of citizens
Let’s talk about Democracy. It’s as endangered as the Florida Panther. Gov. Ron DeSantis could have granted a full pardon to the former felon who’s devoted his life to helping other former felons regain the franchise, but he wouldn’t, instead saying he’d “take it under advisement.” Desmond Meade, a former drug user who was dishonorably […]
Donald Trump’s and Ron DeSantis’ alternative reality: If you call yourself a ‘great environmentalist’ you are one
You will be thrilled, if perhaps surprised, to hear that Donald Trump is a “great environmentalist.” He said so himself — in Jupiter (the town in Florida, not the planet), where he declared he was “number one since Teddy Roosevelt,” bragged about his eco-friendliness, and signed an order extending the ban on oil drilling off […]
Donald Trump’s RNC was an orgy of nepotism and white panic
A Whiter Shade of Pale: On Day One of the Republican National Convention, Charlie Kirk called Donald Trump “the bodyguard of Western Civilization.” Kirk, a pasty youth not to be confused with that smirking MAGA hat brat from Kentucky (the kid railed against the media on the second night) or the equally pasty blonde owner […]
Kamala Harris confounds the white enforcers of America’s racial lines
That Sen. Caramel Harris or however you mispronounce her name? She’s not black. Yeah, she went to Howard University, a historically black institution, alma mater of Black History Month founder Carter G. Woodson, opera diva Jessye Norman, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, Black Power activist Stokely Carmichael, Peggy Quince, the first African American woman on […]
Amid COVID-19, student athletes are revolting against the football plantation culture
Sometimes a man — or, say, a 19 or 20 year-old kid — must be willing to sacrifice, to risk death for the greater good, the larger cause. Sacrifice is what America’s all about — as long as it’s sacrifice of other (usually younger, browner, poorer) people, who, in this case, must offer themselves up […]
Oh, for a return to the days when the Grand Old Party was actually grand
Younger readers may find it impossible to believe, but many Republicans used to be perfectly reasonable people. Some of them were even what you might now call “progressive,” deep believers in racial equality, women’s rights, and environmental stewardship. Without Nathaniel Reed of Jupiter Island, every inch of South Florida would have been paved during the […]
Trump has dragged America back to full-on Lost Cause craziness
The surrender at Appomattox was Fake News. The white South was just playing possum, lying low till another John C. Calhoun (who called slavery “a positive good”) or Nathan Bedford Forrest (slave-trader, Klan founder: What’s not to like?) arose to lead the light-complected to the pale Promised Land, and lo! when Donald Trump took the […]
This heritage isn’t worth preserving
NASCAR banned the Battle Flag. Quaker Oats fired Aunt Jemima. Jeff Davis has been run off Monument Avenue. There was a time America would have defended her heritage, from the racing that got its start in running loads of untaxed ‘shine down the mountain to the pancake mix that changed the world (or breakfast, anyway) […]
Excuse us, Trump’s America — your white sheet is showing
Later this summer, on Aug. 27, Donald Trump will deliver a speech accepting the Republican Party nomination for re-election in Jacksonville — named for a genocidal slave-holder — on the 60th anniversary of the day the Ku Klux Klan and a mob of fellow-traveling white folks beat peaceful civil rights protesters with ax handles. Later […]
Our Gov is hiding in the Mansion trying to figure out how to talk to people of color who appear to be upset
The American Empire is disintegrating before our very eyes, but what the hell? This is Florida: The beaches are open, baby! Still, a little guidance, some stirring words from the white folks in charge, wouldn’t go amiss. The state’s racking up between 600 and 1,400 new COVID-19 cases every day, totally messing up football practice […]
Republicans can try to run from science, but they can’t hide
Donald Trump and his government minions don’t know nothing about no damn science and boy, are they proud of it. Rudy Giuliani went on Fox last month to sneer at contact tracing to track the virus, wondering why, since obesity, cancer, and heart disease also kill you dead, we don’t contact trace for those bad […]