How’s everyone’s weekend going?
Thanks for spending a portion of your Sunday with the Six.
Let’s get right to it.
MASTERS OF DISTRACTION
There’s a scene in the beginning of the film “Wag the Dog” when Robert DeNiro makes a pitch to Dustin Hoffman.
DeNiro, who plays a political strategist, needs Hoffman, a Hollywood film producer, to help clean up a mess. There’s a scandal brewing in Washington and the administration needs a redirect. DeNiro is dispatched to the west coast in hopes of luring Hoffman into inventing a phony war.
While walking with Hoffman—dressed for a tennis match—through his expansive mansion, DeNiro goes through a litany of images from our nation’s past wars.
“V for victory (Churchill), five marines raising the flag (Iwo Jima),” DeNiro said. “We remember the slogans, we remember the pictures, we can’t remember the wars.
“You know why? War is show business.”
The inciting incident of “Wag the Dog”—a sex scandal—seems downright innocent when compared with the misconducts of modern day.
But the film’s premise holds up in its cynical view of the American public while politicians and institutional leaders wag and flutter.
A year into his administration, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson could give a master class on diversionary tactics.
He started the week with a Juneteenth-related speech straight out of the identitarian playbook. In announcing a $500k reparations task force, he justified the initiative by stating “Chicago still bears the scars of systemic racism and injustices that have been inflicted on our communities."
But Johnson was just getting started.
He produced a “cabinet launch” event to announce his “all-black” administration. Then, at another event, when asked about crime in the city, he blamed previous administrations, saying “the city was run into the ground. Everybody knows it…we’re left with the chaos and the mess caused by other people.”
Of course, all of the pomp and rhetoric is nothing more than kabuki theater. Johnson, who isn’t qualified to run a Banner Day Camp yet got elected mayor of a major city, has no answers, no solutions to the city’s problems. He isn’t all that interested in policy. What he cares most about is pleasing the New Machine Indentitarian Class that hired him, a class even less interested than Johnson in crime, as it’s a hard nut to crack with little political equity to gain.
Hiring ad agencies—sparing no expense, I’m sure—to produce photo shoots to show off the all-black cabinet? That’s what feels good. And it distracts the public from the weekly stat line of shootings, fatalities, burglaries and other unlawful acts happening all over the city.
(I’m not black, I’m a white guy, really white, a little bit Scot, Irish and German. But I’d like to think if I were black and a politician was speaking to me the way Johnson and others do at the local, state and national level, I’d see right through them. I’d see the pandering and condescension. That I’d be wise enough to see that these people have no respect for me and believe me to be too imbecilic to think for myself. The facts are out there for those who want to find them.)
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, no stranger to dog wagging, has become Big Shot Money Bags for the Democratic Party. With Chicago hosting this summer’s DNC convention, Pritzker has stepped up his attempted trolling of Donald Trump.
He posted a photo this week with a hawk on his arm. Yes, a hawk! Pritzker’s motivation for the ominous pose was not to show solidarity with the animal kingdom.
Advice for the hawk: check your ass. You just got taxed.
Pritzker is a destructive governor but an excellent Illinois politician. His Twitter feed is a non-stop barrage of swerves, veers and mistruths.
He wags on the insignificant to avoid the stuff that really matters.
An analogy: imagine home shopping and the realtor holds an open house in the garage. It’s gorgeous, stainless steel, Euro cabinetry, screens everywhere, looks like a NASA space shuttle. But when you ask to see the rest of the house, the realtor said no. A sensible person would not buy that house. Let’s say politicians like Johnson and Pritzker are the sellers of that house. They are banking on the buyer not being sensible and willing to buy the house based solely on the state of the garage. Then, on moving day, after the checks have cleared, the buyer walks in and sees raccoons running around, a grease fire on the stove and squalor and filth everywhere. Who’s fault is that?
The sellers concentrate on the little, showy things to divert attention from the big stuff that actually matters. It’s the big stuff that’s not fixed and they don’t want it fixed. They’ll keep selling those money pits until buyers wise up.
Later in “Wag the Dog,” Hoffman starts to understand what DeNiro wants.
“You want me to produce your war?” Hoffman asks.
“It’s not a war, it’s a pageant. We need a theme, a song, some visuals…it’s a pageant. It’s like the Oscars,” DeNiro said.
Welcome to the pageantry of our political times. Men like Johnson and Pritzker are wagging—and giggling—all the way home.
Let’s proceed with the Six.
1. Illinois Leading In The Wrong Things Like School Choice.
There are trends shaping our country as we head into an election cycle. One of those trends falls around school choice. What that means can be a bit different depending on the state, but basically, school choice programs allow for vouchers, tax-credit scholarships or savings accounts to be given to parents to use towards their child’s education. Don’t like the public school down the road? Use funds or credits to find another school. Many states are ramping up choice programs; Indiana and Iowa offer universal programs. Illinois, of course, likes to brag about being in the middle of everything, but when it comes to school choice, legislators bend the knee to the teacher’s unions. You’ll get no choice and like it! Wirepoints with the shameful details.
2. When Opiates Steal Your Parents.
This is just a fantastically reported story from The Free Press on how the opiate crisis wiped out a town in West Virginia. What’s happening in these cities in counties is grandparents—and sometimes great-grandparents—having to step in and raise the children of drug addicts. They are known as “grandfamilies” and there are tens of thousands of them in West Virginia alone. From the piece: “In West Virginia, which has the highest rate of opioid overdose deaths in the nation, half of all grandparents living with their grandchildren are also raising them. But here, in the state’s southwestern Lincoln County, where sleepy towns are tucked into rolling hills, an employee for the local school district estimates that the majority of kids are now being raised by their grandparents.” There are government services in place to help these people but not nearly enough to keep up with demand. The grandparents in this story are true heroes but opiate addition is still impacting large sections of our country with no end in sight.
3. Debut Novels Not Selling Like They Used To.
There is no shortage of books published these days. And some darn good ones, too (currently reading music writer Steven Hyden’s latest on Bruce Springsteen and the 1980s). We are buying lots of books, over 767 million in 2023. Then why is it harder than ever for debut novelists to find their footing? We find out in this excellent Esquire article which is as much a deep dive on the dispiriting state of publishing overall than just that of fiction.
4. The Story Behind The Found Berries Of George Washington.
Found this development fascinating: archaeologists working beneath George Washington’s Virginia home, Mt. Vernon, discovered 35 glass bottles in the cellar’s storage pits, most of which were intact and contained perfectly preserved fruits. According to researchers on-site, some of the bottles “still smelled faintly of cherry blossoms” and “[o]thers had a nondescript fruity scent, possibly containing gooseberries or currants.” This is obviously exciting for researchers, who have been studying the bottles, their contents, and the process via which the cherries and berries were preserved. But what about for bartenders and mixers? If any liquor entrepreneurs can get their hands on any of these cherries and use to open colonial-themed cocktail bars— “George’s Tom Collins” or “Martha’s Martinis”— there’s a lot of money to be made here.
5. There Will Never Be Another Baseball Player Like Willie Mays.
Another week, another sports legend passes away. Willie Mays, who played over two decades for the San Francisco Giants and New York Mets, died earlier this week at the age of 93. Mays’ Baseball Reference page lists his stunning array of statistics (a 24-time All-Star? How is that even possible?) and for years, many considered Mays to be the greatest living ballplayer. Who holds that distinction now? Position player, I’d Barry Bonds. Pitcher would have to be Greg Maddux. ESPN writer TIm Kurkjian does a nice job with this obituary.
6. The Best Argument For Robo Umpires.
Baseball for years has had instant replay. Since 2019, the minor leagues have used robot home plate umpires, or what’s known in the industry as ABS (automated ball-strike system). Eventually, Major League Baseball will go to ABS but there are kinks to work through with the technology. This clip from a recent MLB game is the best argument for using robot umpires to call balls and strikes. But then again, the human element can be much more entertaining. After missing an obvious ball call on a Seattle Mariners hitter, the home plate umpire admits to being “up since 3:30” and how “sometimes you are not good.” A robo ump would never be that honest.
Thanks for reading everybody and have a great rest of your weekend. There will be no Sunday Six the next two weekends. We’ll be back July 14.
Have a suggestion for The Sunday Six? Send email to jonjkerr@gmail.com.