Gone to the dogs
Indignity Vol. 4, No. 162
CURRENT EVENTS DEP'T.
Donald Trump Ruins the News
THE NEW YORK City public schools chancellor, David Banks, gave his State of the Schools address yesterday and said that he wants to inject artificial intelligence technology into the educational system in multiple not-very-specific ways, including to develop "personalized learning plans for every child." This sounds very pernicious and stupid, and it could in theory harm the education of at least one of my children, but it's hard to focus on that given that Banks had his cell phone seized by federal agents two weeks ago, and it's also hard to even remember that Banks got his cell phone seized, given that investigators also seized devices belonging to his wife, first deputy mayor Sheena Wright, and his brother, deputy mayor for public safety Philip Banks, and his other brother, Terence Banks, a consultant—and also the phones of police commissioner Edward Caban, who just resigned, and his brother, the disgraced former NYPD officer James Caban—and other friends and connections of Mayor Eric Adams, too, like Timothy Pearson, the mayoral advisor who for some reason attacked the security guards at a migrant shelter last year, so that the actual state of the public schools (schools in which, again, my own children as supposed to be learning things each day) is a footnote to a sidebar to the blank space where a story will go when the entire executive branch of New York City government collapses around Adams, if these long months of hints and raids from multiple different federal prosecution efforts ever do come to anything.
But also Sean "Diddy" Combs was arrested and indicted for a harrowing list of alleged sex crimes, which led to investigators reporting that they had seized more than 1,000 bottles of baby oil from his properties. The indictment describes a system of exploitation that went on for years, with large numbers of people working on it, and appears to be one more case study in how much corruption a person can accomplish if they're rich and brazen enough. If there were time to make a case study of it, that is. But Israel apparently just remotely made people's walkie-talkies explode in Lebanon during the funeral for some of the victims, including a young girl, of the explosions of the thousands of pagers that Israel apparently rigged to explode in Lebanon yesterday. I read the paper each morning and try to summarize it, as part of the day's work, and I'm still behind. There are floods everywhere.
And meanwhile the press has spent days on end covering one thing that never happened and another thing that might have happened but didn't, because Donald Trump and JD Vance told lies about immigrants eating cats and dogs, and then the Secret Service spotted someone lurking in the bushes with a gun one hole ahead of Trump on the golf course and chased them off. The non-shooting on the golf course had a few features—Trump, an assault rifle—in common with the real shooting that clipped Trump's ear in July, so despite the other features that would put it in the file with all the other routine not-very-effective attempted assassinations the Secret Service deals with, it's been necessary to devote half a week to discussing the logistics of perimeter security on golf courses.
The cats-and-dogs thing is news, and important news, because it means that the Republican presidential campaign has given up on any strategy except trying to stoke hatred against immigrants, to help sell Trump's promise to drive immigrants out of the country if he's elected. It absolutely deserves to be reported, extensively and relentlessly, that a major party is trying to win the presidency with an outright white-nationalist message built on deliberately fake stories. It has real civic value.
That doesn't make it any less of a waste of time, though. This is what Donald Trump does: he wastes everyone's time. As long as he remains a viable political figure, the news will be filled with Donald Trump—witlessly, gratingly, alarmingly full of him, day after day. The pollsters report that they find people looking back on the Trump administration with positive feelings and I don't know what they could possibly mean. It was terrible and it was boring and each day brought a new load of it. Everybody wants to forget what the height of the pandemic was like as fast as they can, but I remember he was on TV every afternoon, hogging the microphone, blabbering out nonsense about a matter of life and death. It seemed like the whole world had to come to a halt, but it didn't at all, really.
WEATHER REVIEWS
New York City, September 17, 2024
★★★ A bit of sun defied the forbidding clouds long enough to shine on the opposite side of the avenue; a few dim hours later, another bit glowed briefly on the fig plant. Real sunlight arrived at midday, shining through nautically cool and damp air. A man sat at one of the first tables in the pastry shop with a straw boater on his head. Cars with Connecticut and New Jersey plates were parked where a dozen people would have been eating pizza in a street shed a few weeks before. A cream-colored oblong of cumulus stood tipped up over Amsterdam Avenue, and to the east a contrail stretched out improbably wide and dense, looking daubed on the sky with heavy transverse brushstrokes. In the night, past when bedtime should have been, the holiday moon finally appeared above the buildings, white in a light veil of clouds, its top edge flattened just enough to certify the eclipse as real.
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.
HERE IS TODAY'S Indignity Morning Podcast, now with transcript.
Tom Scocca
Click on this box to find the Indignity Morning Podcast archive.
TOM SCOCCA
ADVICE DEP'T.
GOT SOMETHING YOU need to justify to yourself, or to the world at large? Other columnists are here to judge you, but The Sophist is here to tell you why you’re right. Direct your questions to The Sophist, at indignity@indignity.net, and get the answers you want.
SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.
WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS in aid of the assembly of a sandwich selected from The Swedish, French, American Cook Book, by Mrs. Maria Mathilda Ericsson Hammond, published in 1918, and now in the Public Domain and available at archive.org for the delectation of all.
Cucumber Sandwiches (Sandwiches au Concombre)
Peel and slice cucumbers very thin; pour some French dressing over them and let stand for one hour. Cut bread very thin, and butter. Take cucumber slices out of the dressing and lay on the bread; put another slice of bread on top; press down. Cut in oblongs, and serve.
If you decide to prepare and attempt to enjoy a sandwich inspired by this offering, be sure to send a picture to indignity@indignity.net.
MARKETING DEP'T.
Supplies are really and truly running low of the second printing of 19 FOLK TALES, still available for gift-giving and personal perusal! Sit in the crushing heat with a breezy collection of stories, each of which is concise enough to read before the thunderstorms start.
ZERO COPIES LEFT: HMM WEEKLY MINI-ZINE, Subject: GAME SHOW, Joe MacLeod’s blah blah blah, etc., of his Total Experience of a Journey Into Television, expanded from the original published account that can still found here at Hmm Daily, but you know what? No more printed, expanded, more fun, tangible, printed-on-paper zine! No more! ALL GONE! Thank you! People like to reminisce about this special MINI ZINE, and how it featured other viewpoints related to an appearance on the teevee game show Who Wants to Be A Millionaire, but now it is just a memory, no longer available for purchase at SHOPULA. However, there are many other fine things to read over there! Go take a look!
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