Good morning. It is November 14th. It is fairly cold and partly overcast in New York City in a totally reasonable way for the season. And this is your indignity morning podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

Is comedy a useless weapon in a world descending into fascism? Is parody impotent against the shamelessness of contemporary reactionaries? Maybe. But, while everyone thinks that over, The Onion announced this morning that it has bought Infowars, the far, far right conspiracy-mongering, supplement-hawking, misinformation empire created by the florid, evermore barrel-shaped lunatic Alex Jones, through the bankruptcy auction where Jones's assets are being liquidated to pay the $1.5 billion judgment he owes to the families of the Sandy Hook massacre victims for running a years-long campaign of lies and harassment against them. The comedy newspaper, according to Status.News, acquired Infowars' website, product inventory, customer lists, social media accounts, and intellectual property. The Onion's fictitious CEO, Bryce P. Tetraeder, announced in a post on the site that the vitamins and supplements will not be wasted on the general public, but that “We plan to collect the entire stock of the Infowars warehouses into a large vat and boil the contents down into a single candy bar sized omnivitamin that one executive—I will not name names—may eat in order to increase his power and perhaps become immortal. The Onion's mundane-world CEO, Ben Collins, told Status.News that the rebooted Infowars is scheduled to launch in January. 

The news site, The City, working in tandem with The Guardian, reported today that an already notorious Eric Adams fundraising event in which the then-nominee for New York mayor purportedly raised, as the city explains, 231 donations, many of them from supermarket cashiers, delivery people, and other low wage workers at the New World Mall in Queens, each listed as having made contributions of $249 or $250. That is, amounts low enough to trigger the city's generous matching funds program for a total of $362,000 in public financing. That event, the city reports, was captured on a video uploaded to YouTube, which shows that rather than being a humble barbecue for workers costing no more than $500 to put on, as the Adams campaign reported, it was, The City writes, “a private affair for a few dozen people replete with caviar. Remy Martin cognac, and $400 bottles of wine.” The low wage workers from the New World Mall in Flushing, some of whom had already told reporters that they had never made the donations that they were credited with making, were nowhere to be seen in the video of the fundraiser, which took place, The City notes, “more than an hour and a half by public transit from the mall.” Despite Adams's multiple indictments, including charges about campaign finance violations, he still has not been charged with anything connected to these apparent shenanigans.

Will any of it matter? The lead story in the New York Times is the same thing your indignity newsletter covered yesterday. “Gates nominated by Trump to lead the Justice Department. Right-wing firebrand. A president-elect vowing retribution chooses a compliant ally.” Here's another example of how the word “firebrand” in news writing needs to be plunged in a toilet and extinguished for good. It's a vague cliche that people deploy when they like it would be bad manners to describe someone's actual record. Here it doesn't even seem accurate. Usually a firebrand is somebody who has inspired other people to do something terrible that the headline writer doesn't want to address yet, but Gates is a distinctly non-inspirational figure whose firebranding pretty much only extended to knocking down the Jenga tower of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's speakership. “Sex crime suspect” could have fit into the same space as “right-wing firebrand,” although the lawyers might have balked, since the federal investigation into whether Gates committed any crimes personally while attending the sex and drugs parties that led his party pal and constant companion Joel Greenberg to plead guilty to federal charges of sexually trafficking a 17 year old, ended without investigators charging Gates with anything. But the lawyers might take heart if the House Ethics Committee releases its report on its inquiry into those same events. Anyway, the story says “President-elect Donald J. Trump on Wednesday named Representative Matt Gaetz the firebrand Republican from Florida as his nominee for attorney general, a provocative move to install a compliant ally at the helm of the Justice Department as he seeks retribution against those who prosecuted him. The pick,” the Times continues, “reflected Mr. Trump's determination to choose as the nation's top law enforcement official a fierce defender who would not resist his directives or question his claims as William P. Barr, his last confirmed attorney general did in the aftermath of the 2020 election.” 
“In the aftermath” being the keywords there since Barr was all in for trying to steal the election in the run up to it. But anyway, sure, he’s not as bad as Gates. “If Mr. Gates is confirmed by the Senate,” the Times continues, “no sure thing given the widespread bipartisan animosity toward him. His ascension to a powerful cabinet post would represent a remarkable turnabout that mirrors Mr. Trump's own whipsaw political comeback.” It sure would. 

Next to that one column and a poor column picture for the grim meeting of Joe Biden and Donald Trump in the white house The picture shows both of them looking withered and terrible in front of a fire Trump is slumped over Biden is sitting a little bit too erect “Enemies meet and play nice for a moment” is the headline “Biden and Trump talk transfer of power.” 

Down below the fold the Times writes’. “‘Rough day’ one senior aide texted during the meeting summing up the mood in the west wing where Mr Trump's new team will soon take over.” Yeah, maybe you should have locked him up when he tried to overthrow the government, but you didn’t, so here you are.

Next to that, “Kennedy's wish list for FDA raises red flags. Raw milk stem cells and unapproved autism therapy. As Robert F Kennedy Jr prepares through some unspecified role in the Trump administration to implement the dumbest possible ideas about health and safety. The Times writes, “Days before the election, in a post on X that has received 6.5 million views,” Mr. Kennedy threatened to fire FDA employees who have waged a war on public health. He listed some of the products that he claimed the FDA had subjected to “aggressive suppression,” including ivermectin, raw milk, and vitamins, as well as therapies involving stem cells and hyperbaric oxygen. Horse paste for everyone.

And over on the left hand side, “New York puts congestion toll back on track.” Back on track seems like an overstatement, but our flailing governor, Kathy Hochul, after ruining the ready to go rollout of congestion pricing in the summer, subjugating the city's needs to a half-assed plan to pander to suburban voters, she's now trying to relaunch it before the Trump administration can come in and destroy it entirely with a reduced fare of nine dollars, eventually working its way up to the statutory $15, a gesture of political compromise that was entirely available to her months ago when she chose to make a debacle of it instead. 

That is the news. Thank you for listening. The indignity morning podcast is edited by Joe MacLeod. The theme song is composed and performed by Mack Scocca-Ho. Our podcasting is sustained by the generous contributions through subscriptions and tips, of you, the listeners, and barring any unforeseen complications, we will talk again tomorrow.