The Wolff Is at the Door
As you have no doubt heard, there is a new book out, “Fire & Fury,” subtitled “Inside the Trump White House,” that raises more questions than it can possibly answer.
As you have no doubt heard, there is a new book out, Fire & Fury, subtitled Inside the Trump White House, that raises more questions than it can possibly answer.
To begin with, why did Steve Bannon, a newcomer to the Trump administration, grant Michael Wolff, a journalist of no particular distinction and questionable ethics, carte blanche to sniff into every corner of the White House?
The next question is why Steve Bannon said so many stupid things about Trump, his advisors and his relatives, referring to more than one of Trump’s nearest and dearest as “treasonous and unpatriotic,” although one would naturally assume if they were the first, you’d hardly need to mention the second.
It occurs to me that, as someone once observed about some other double-dealing swine, “With Steve Bannon as a friend, you don’t need any enemies.”
It would seem to me that Bannon’s attempt to portray himself as a kingmaker was every bit as misguided as Trump’s decision to make the lout an advisor. The one thing you can credit Bannon with is that he cost the GOP a seat in the Senate by pushing Roy Moore’s candidacy when Trump already had the man he needed, Luther Strange, seated in the Senate.
But with this latest betrayal, Bannon will have about as much influence in GOP politics going forward as Chelsea Clinton.
But the biggest question is why Trump and his lawyers are trying to get an injunction against Holt Publishing. The president has no chance of invalidating the First Amendment simply because he’s annoyed with the book’s content. Mr. Wolff has every constitutional right to freely express himself on the subject of Donald Trump. I’m sure Trump won’t be happy with the book. I’m pretty certain I won’t be. But I’d be a lot unhappier if politicians, even those residing in the Oval Office, had the power to censor books or articles that displease them or their followers.
What does upset me is that Trump’s lawsuit guarantees that Fire and Fury will top the best seller lists for the next several months. Why give Mr. Wolff such a gift when I’m willing to wager Wolff didn’t even vote for him?
Can you imagine how Trump could have hyped my book sales if he’d even mentioned them, let alone attack them?!
In New York City, a black person is 50 times likelier to shoot or be shot at than a white person. And although I’m sure that Mayor De Blasio would prefer to parrot BLM’s contention that it’s because of white racism and white cops, the truth is that it’s because too many urban blacks are raised by street gangs, not by the men who sired them.
In Chicago, more than two dozen black children under the age of 12 were killed in 2017, and not a single one was victimized by a cop. They were all killed by other blacks, generally as collateral damage when young black males were shooting at other young black males over drugs, money or sexual jealousy.
We keep hearing black activists in and out of Congress insisting that it’s high time we had an honest conversation about race in America. I still recall Attorney General Eric Holder claiming that white Americans lacked the courage to have such a conversation. Unfortunately, Holder, Loretta Lynch and Barack Obama were the ones who lacked the courage to deal with the truth.
The truth is that the main reason that urban blacks are on the bottom rung of society and are doomed to remain there for the foreseeable future is because black men have decided that getting an education, learning a trade, getting married and only then having children and raising them is “acting white.”
Black men demand respect, but very rarely do anything to deserve it. Then, to top things off, even the small percentage of black men and women who behave responsibly insist on voting for the Democrats, who know that if the welfare gravy train ever stops or even slows down, they will never win another presidential election.
I believe that the single biggest reason that sex scandals went on for so long is because the law condones non-disclosure agreements. Why should Bill O'Reilly, Harvey Weinstein, Mitt Lauer or their employers have been allowed to conceal settlements with injured parties, whether the payoffs were court-ordered or conducted between two sets of lawyers?
For that matter, why should manufacturers who produce a product with built-in problems — knowing the problems may very likely prove fatal, but deciding its cheaper to pay off the relatively small number of victims than spend the money to eliminate the problem — be allowed to conceal the eventual payoffs?
Gordon Strader sent me a video that apparently showed Hillary Clinton in a flowery meadow reminiscent of Julie Andrews in “The Sound of Music,” but instead of singing the title tune, Mrs. Clinton is singing a parody of “My Favorite Things.”
Because I don’t watch videos, Mr. Strader was kind enough to supply me with the lyrics to “My Favorite Excuses,” the work of some wag named Tony Olson.
Feel free to hum along: “Top Secret Data purloined by a gremlin/ Misdeeds exposed with some help from the Kremlin/ Wikileaks published the emails we tossed/ These are a few of the reasons I lost.
"Draft Beer and Vino and Vodka Martini/ All disappear like I’m a friggin’ Houdini/ It’s not a secret I like to get sauced/ These are a few of the reasons I lost.
"Girls in blue dresses, with DNA traces/ Bill has me threaten the girls he embraces/ With my assistance he’s free to accost/ These are a few of the reasons I lost.
Chorus: "When I’m lying, testifying, I concoct a tale/ I look for excuses and others to blame/ And then I won’t go…to jail.
"Tantrums and breakdowns and fake tears with tissues/ Obvious signs of some medical issues/ Fainting and stumbling and eyes that go crossed/ These are a few of the reasons I lost.
"Because of my gender I think I’ve been slighted/ There’s a good chance I may be indicted/ Image as cold as a New England frost/ These are a few of the reasons I lost.”
Harold Koenig sent me a list of test questions and the answers provided by school kids. I’m a tad suspicious, but a few of them made me laugh, so I’ll let you decide if they’re authentic.
Q. Name six animals that live in the Arctic. A. Two polar bears and four sea lions.
Q. What are the three things you want to do in the future? A. 1. Get a girlfriend. 2. Kiss her. 3. Rule the world.
Q. Where was the Declaration of Independence signed? A. At the bottom.
Q. Bob has 34 candy bars. He eats 25 of them. What does he have now? A. Diabetes.
Q. What ended in 1896? A. 1895.
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