Or what?

 

With a court ordering Donald Trump to restore White House access to media outlets he banned earlier this week, there is one important question to ask:

Or what?

What’s going to happen if he doesn’t?

The constitution only matters to constitutionalists. The rule of law, without enforcement, only applies to those who believe in it.

So, if Trump refuses to restore access as ordered by the court, what happens? Sure, he can be held in contempt, but then what?

Checks and balances? That’s cute. Both houses of Congress are controlled by Trump lickspittles and so is the Supreme Court. That would be the same Supreme Court which ruled that the president is basically untouchable so long as he deems whatever he does to be an official action. Nixon must be kicking himself in his grave.

The more likely outcome in this particular case is that Trump will comply with the court order this time. It gives him a face-saving way to reverse the self-inflicted wound of cutting off television coverage which is like oxygen to him.

And then he will complain about it. A lot. On television.

But this is just one of many Trump orders tied up in the courts for being illegal and/or unconstitutional.

The problem is that Trump has already proven he has no respect for the law, the courts, or the constitution. Anyone else could be arrested and jailed for breaking a court order but what about the president?

The supreme court can order him to leave journalists alone, cease tearing public buildings down, and desist from building monuments to himself but so what?

Who’s going to stop him?

Your line in the Sandilands

 

You know what, Jackie? I don’t doubt you’ve been traumatised by your experience. I’m sure many of your ‘guests’ have been as well.

The difference is, none of them chose to spend the prime of their life being the socially acceptable enabler for a vile, abusive shitbag. That’s the trade-off for the millions you made from it.

You could have chosen to walk when your mate decided to hook a 14yo sexual assault victim up to a polygraph in front of her mother for shits and giggles. People would have respected you for that. But it wasn’t until the abuse affected you that you found your line in the Sandilands.

Your occasional tut-tutting does not absolve you of responsibility. It only gave deniability to your co-host and network.

By all means take the cretin and the network to the cleaners. But my violin remains firmly in its case over the fact you’re the latest victim of the monster you helped create.

How about we stop using soldiers’ lives as a thought experiment?

 

As the second Trump administration did the totally bloody thinkable and started a war with Iran, many are digging up old, and not so old comments from Trump and his cronies about how Obama and then Biden and then Harris were going to [checks notes] start a war with Iran.

The hypocrisy is a given and it will not hurt the administration one bit. They revel in it and their supporters love them for it. That’s not the point.

Ever since Vietnam, war has become an entirely abstract concept to the greater American populace, and to most of the westernised world for that matter. That was the last war where most people had a human connection. Since then, war is just something that happens to other people. Say “God bless our troops,” and you’ve done your bit. Paying taxes to make sure they’re properly equipped and supported if and when they return? That’s communism.

During the last Iraq war (and just think about that opening for a moment), when PBS Newshour showed the names and pictures of those killed in that war at the end of each bulletin, even that was labelled left wing bias. Apparently supporting the troops means keeping them nameless and faceless.

Even the president – any president, with or without appropriate headwear – having a photo-op with a coffin keeps the occupant anonymous. Do you know the name or face of the person in the box the president was saluting? Didn’t think so.

It’s said that the first rule of war is to dehumanise the enemy. It’s easier to kill someone if you don’t think they are a fellow human being who was thrown into this situation through no fault of their own just like you were.

If that’s true, then the second rule of modern war is to dehumanise your own side. It’s easier to get the people at home on board with “Send the Marines,” and “America, Fuck Yeah!” if you treat them as mere equipment, and not actual human beings. And it’s best to let the people think it’s a true volunteer army and not point out the fact that many of them have literally bet their life on a better future because they saw no other way. It’s not conscription if you do it by stealth.

And this is why PBS was accused of bias in honouring the dead. Giving a human face to the people whose lives are wasted in another international pissing contest isn’t good for the polls.

This is also why those who oppose a war with Iran – and up until a week ago, this included all of MAGAworld – invoke “your sons,” just as senior White House Ghoul Stephen Miller did in October 2024.

Predictably, and rightly, opponents of the administration clapped back:

But what do you notice about both sets of comments?

They’re still taking about other people. Whether it’s “your sons,” or “our kids,” they’re still talking about other people. The only difference is one of the appeals to empathy comes from people who are on record saying empathy is a weakness.

None of them have any real skin in the game. They know it won’t be their kids and they’re still using other people’s kids as a tactic, not as real people.

The most offensive aspect of this debate – and it’s a trap anti-war people fall into as well – is treating those who are sent to war as entirely hypothetical, without any agency of their own.

It’s true that soldiers have no agency in what they are sent to do. That’s how the military works. And as mentioned above, many had very little agency in volunteering to sacrifice that agency. But they are real people. They have hopes, and dreams, and they vote.

So if we really care about the lives of those who are sent to war, and those who may be, whether it’s because we want them to win or kept out of harm’s way in the first place, how about we start by not treating them as a mere thought experiment? How about we stop treating an entire generation as an emotional bargaining chip, whatever the objective may be?

On phobia vs scepticism

John Cleese has issued a few tweets over recent weeks suggesting that a better word for what is often called Islamophobia should be called Islamosceptic. 

Dr Cleese has had a few bad takes in his time but a look at his feed shows he’s mostly on the right side. I can respect anyone whose opinion on any given subject isn’t instantly predictable based on their other opinions, and I wish to take him up on his point in the intellectual spirit it was offered in. 

I accept Dr Cleese’s definition of a phobia as an “irrational over-reaction, as with spiders.”

Here’s the problem:

We are not always rational about what makes something rational or irrational.

I have two major phobias – heights, and large bodies of water.

I have argued (albeit facetiously) that being afraid of falling to my doom from a great height or drowning in the ocean are perfectly rational fears.

However, history has shown us that so long as the risks are respected and proper safety procedures followed, there is no rational reason to be afraid of either. That doesn’t stop my balls from shrinking up towards my intestines any time I’m in such a situation – or even when I see such a situation on television. In fact, media induced trauma has a lot to do with what we’re talking about and we’ll get to that a little later.

Perhaps I should call myself an acrosceptic.

I’m none too fond of spiders either, but where-ever possible I live and let live.

So while John’s points about ‘phobia’ being an emotive term which implies irrationality, and scepticism being a indispensable part of scientific method are well taken, it doesn’t tell the whole story.

For example: there are people who disagree with the interpretation of scientific data on human induced climate change which is accepted by 97% of climate scientists.

While I may butt up against the appeal to authority fallacy here, this is not a rational position for anyone who is not a climate scientist to take. Yet those who adopt it get to call themselves “climate sceptics.”

To be a climate ‘sceptic’ today is not to hold a rational doubt in pursuit of the truth. This is shown in the way most of their arguments are non-scientific, from conspiracy theories to “it was cold where I live last week.”

None of this fits a valid definition of ‘sceptic.’ But it would be wrong to call them sciencephobes. They are not scared of science per se. They happily accept air travel, pain killers, plastics, the internet. Some even accept vaccines.

No, they only fear science when the science is inconvenient to them. Or not even to them, but to those they have been listening to. For, what is there to fear from mitigating climate change? Renewable energy sources? Cleaner air and water? New industries and employment opportunities?

To find a rational fear of reducing climate change, we have to look to who has the most to lose from it. That is, of course, those who profit the most from the fossil fuel industry. And it turns out, a lot of them own media companies too. Those who don’t directly own media companies make large contributions to those who do.

I’m not saying it’s only the fat cats who benefit from the fossil fuels industry. There are thousands, if not millions of oil rig workers and miners who will have to retrain and find other jobs if we do this properly. Just as there were thousands of workers in the photographic film industry whose jobs evaporated in a space of about five years. Unless you thought for five seconds about their plight before ditching your instamatic for a digicam and then an iPhone, I respectfully ask that you pipe down about job losses.

Now that we have discussed phobia vs scepticism on a less emotive example than religion, let’s return to whether we should be saying Islamophobe or Islamosceptic.

The problem with both terms is they treat Islam as a monolith, which is it not, any more than Christianity, conservatism, or Collingwood supporters.

To question the teachings of the Prophet Mohammad, and the tenets of the Quran is to be sceptical. It is not just part of scientific thinking but also theological thinking.

To fear for your safety because you saw someone on public transport in religious garb is irrational and can correctly be described as a phobia. The same goes for assuming a mosque is a terrorist hub for no other reason than that it is a mosque.

We all know (well, most of us do) that the antics of the Westboro Baptist Church (Hey! They call it a church!) is not broadly representative of Christianity, despite the disproportionate amount of media coverage they receive. To assume it is would be phobic, not sceptic. 

Dr Cleese makes the very valid point that Life of Brian is in no way Christophobic. But based on his own explanation, he would be right to take umbrage at the film being called Christosceptic too. As he says, it is not sceptical of Christianity, just certain types of Christians. 

Valid criticism of Westboro has nothing to with criticising Christianity. This much is obvious. What apparently isn’t so obvious is that criticism Islam as a whole is a long way from criticising how certain adherents practice particular facets of their faith.

It’s a pity that no one seems to be able to tell the difference.

 

Weather vane Zuckerberg has swung and will swing again

Does anyone remember the Metaverse?

It was Mark Zuckerberg’s grand vision for giving everyone digital avatars in virtual reality. Basically a bad cover version of Second Life which no-one remembers either.

A measure of its awfulness was when Zuck tried to impress everyone that Meta had invented legs.

He even changed the name of the company to Meta, which was in no way* related to the fact the company named Facebook had been caught out accepting billions of dollars from bad actors trying to influence to 2016 US presidential election.

Zuck was obviously the only person in the world who cared about the Metaverse and the various departments of Facebook Meta tasked with making it work referred themselves unofficially as MMH or Make Mark Happy.

It was eventually Elon Musk who saved Zuckerberg from himself. As Musk was incinerating Twitter, Zuckerberg launched Threads. And in the smartest move he’s made in a decade, Zuckerberg tied Threads to Instagram, which still has some cachet with young people, instead of Facebook, which is now social media for boomers.

Meanwhile, the whole Metaverse folly has been quietly buried.

Now Zuck has had another epiphany. In the Zuckiverse, the result of the 2024 US election – which he seems not to have interfered in this time – means truth is out of style.

With his typical awkwardness, he accused his own fact-checkers of bias in a deadpan echo of Stephen Colbert’s ironic assertion that reality has a liberal bias.

And also, “please don’t crush my business, King Donald.” This is notwithstanding the fact that the incoming president has no legal way to crush Facebook. It would be easier to make the Metaverse happen.

While billionaires act in what they think is their own self-interests and bugger the other people it affects, their interpretation of self-interest varies.

Elon Musk has quite obviously decided it’s in his self-interest to proactively support populist right wing causes. Zuck’s method is to curry favour with whatever he believes to be the dominant paradigm. 

While Musk, like Trump, thrives on bad press, Zuckerberg is clearly terrified of it, while still lacking the social and political skills to know what kind of bad press to care about.

Ultimately, Zuckerberg is a weather vane. I don’t believe his latest pivot to unmoderated speech and MAGA-lite notions of masculinity is the beginning or continuation of a post-truth dystopia. It’s just the current focus of the Make Mark Happy department and will eventually go the way of the Metaverse. 

It might take until the US mid-term elections, but eventually he will post another awkward and out of touch video apologising for the current policy and announcing a new focus on whatever he thinks will make him popular again.

 

 

Presenting my credentials

It’s been less than a week and already the hype over the Oasis reunion has jumped the shark.

I know this because none other than the Manchester Evening News has hung an entire article on the bleeding obvious observation that with the gigs over a year away, Oasis could easily break up again before they happen.

Who did they consult for the most daring prediction this side of “it might rain before then”? Apparently, you need an “Oasis expert” for that. With a PhD.

Don’t get me wrong, my love for Oasis is matched only by my disgust at Gen-Xers becoming everything we rightly mocked boomers for in taking ourselves way too seriously.

So, if “Oasis expert” is now a thing, and not just a category on Mastermind or Hard Quiz, I present to you all my areas of expertise which in a just world would be mocked, but I won’t walk away from fools and their money.

 

Latest research from Birmingham City
University faculty of YA THINK??

Senior research fellow at the institute of beer and chips

Beatologist

Cola connoisseur

Windows specialist

Chord sommelier

Satire historian

Honorary fellow in pre-internet isolation

Self-love consultant

Oasis expert (oh yes! Come at me Dr Matt!)

Lennonist

Smithsonian, including solo careers, specialising in the Decline and Fall of Morrissey

 

But, I have an eye to the future as well, so here are some fields I am moving into:

 

Professor of Swiftonomics

The socio-economic effects of streaming

Post-social media landscape navigator

 

So, reporters, editors, producers… if you have some space or time to fill, hit me up! Oh, and if this all seems a bit too highbrow for ya, I can also talk shit. 

  

 

 

 

The trans children’s TV character nobody noticed

It’s one thing for television to be inclusive of all types of characters – people feel accepted when they see themselves in art – but there will only be true equality when their difference is no big deal.

One long-running animated series has done just that, and done it so well that nobody even noticed.

The Penguins of Madagascar is a spin-off of the film Madagascar, and made by Nickelodeon. It features characters from the film, anthropomorphised animals, living in New York’s Central Park Zoo.

One refreshing aspect of the show is many of the animals go against the stereotype often ascribed to them in fiction. The elephant is a bit dim. The squirrel is basically a stoner. The kangaroo is an arsehole. And it’s the kangaroo I’d like to talk about.

The kangaroo character is named Joey after the word for a juvenile marsupial, proving the creators did a bit of research. He has a masculine name, a masculine voice, and is referred to as “he” by all the characters, including himself as he regularly refers to himself in the third person. He is selfish, aggressive, and generally a bit of a dick.

He also has a pouch.

We all know that only marsupials born female have a pouch. Clearly, Joey is the first openly pre-op transgender character in a mainstream television program.

And while the other characters have plenty or reasons to dislike him, this is never one of them. In fact, it’s never even mentioned. The characters don’t mention it, the producers never called attention to it, the fans didn’t seem to even notice. It is universally accepted that Joey is a male who happened to be born with a pouch.

Bravo Nickelodeon for this inclusivity. And it didn’t even trigger a massive right-wing cancellation campaign. Well played!