December 31, 2020

2020's Top Ten

It's time to look back at the year that was. Here are the top 10 posts of the year, based on your pageviews. 

Coming in  at number ten? My recap of day four of the Republican National Convention. The Trumps and the RNC decided the best way to abuse us with pageantry and falderol was to hold the final day  at the White House, in violation of general principle and ethics rules. In addition to those violations, the speeches themselves violated my sensibility, but some of them sparked my sense of humor, for sure.  

For example, here's the current Senate Majority Leader and Chief Cunctationist, Kentucky's Mitch McConnell.

I’m immensely proud of the work the Republican Senate has done.  (We refused to allow witnesses in the impeachment and made sure the president stayed in office so we can sit around waiting for him to tell us what to do, or for more judges to die.)  Like President Trump, we won’t be bullied by a liberal media intent on destroying America’s institutions. (We will instead be bullied by the president, and ignore the wishes even of you Republicans out there, who elected nearly 200 members of our party to serve you in the House).We will stand our post on behalf of the millions of Americans whose stories aren’t told in today’s newspapers, whose struggles are just as real. (Well, really, we'll sit on your stories, and drag them out at times like this, when it suits us. Other than that, we're just an ineffective part of a co-equal branch of government. You know what? I think that makes us 'flyover country' too!) 

Number nine came from back in March, and I was Ranting and Raving about a column in the Washington Post that tried to convince readers that the impeachment hindered the president's response to the coronavirus pandemic. Here's a part of my response to the column, addressing the author's contention that Trump couldn't have done better early on, because 

...impeachment managers were regularly calling Trump a king or incipient dictator, a more forceful response against the virus in January or early February likely wouldn't have gone well.

That one made me laugh out loud. We're talking about Donald Trump, who blurts out whatever he feels like blurting, whether it's a policy change, a threat against a Republican who dares disagree with him, any number of insults at any number of Democrats or just random crap directed at random citizens. He doesn't shrink away from anything - he tells us that all the time. If you need an example, ask the McCain family.

A Trump in Transition post from May was the eighth most popular post. This one focused on a series of four tweets, sent within the same minute, the morning after the president was whisked to "tour" the White House Bunker. I included the tweets after my comments, which began thusly.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the president of the United States. 

Hear his voice as you read his tweets,
talking about 'frisky' protesters, 
vicious dogs, ominous weapons, and
changing front lines of young Secret Service agents
 ready to 'practice' on protesters outside America's house.

He is SO full of himself.
Himself is SO full of crap.

A Sunday School Extra Credit from June was number seven. It included comments from Washington Gov. Jay Inslee on how it would be helpful for some leadership out of Washington DC. In his conversation with John Dickerson on Face the Nation,he was not gentle when talking about president Trump or the veep.

  • On messaging: ...when I hear the vice president talk about how things are just hunky dory, it's just - it's just - it's just maddening. The situation is critical in many places...all the happy talk and wishful thinking in the world is not going to wash that away. 
  • On mask requirements: ...we put an order in effect, including businesses' obligation in this regard. And we sure could use some leadership from the president. It is so difficult. From day one, he has downplayed and distorted and disabled our ability to fight this war... So right now, we are in an urgent national mission - or should be - to mask up... Donald Trump is for masking up like George Wallace was for integration.

The sixth most popular was a Sunday School post from mid-April.  This is a post I went back to frequently, when talking about the vice president and his particular skill at not answering questions. He does it by saying a whole lotta words - hundreds, even, when he could literally answer that question in one note.  

In the interview, how long were Pence's generally non-specific and nonresponsive answers?  321, 219, 279, and 282 words. You'll understand why I'm not including excerpts, right? I encourage you to read them, though - they're pretty interesting.

Coming in at number five was another Trump in Transition post, from May. Whenever Trump talks about the pandemic, you can be sure he's going to follow Pence's lead and not answer the question. And while David Muir really tried to pin Trump down, he wasn't successful. 

For example, Muir asked (I'm paraphrasing here) if workers going back to their offices could get testing if the wanted it, or if they'd just have to trust their employer that everything's safe. Here's one take of Trump trying to answer.

Muir tried to get an answer to whether people going back to work should have access to testing or "do they have to go back to work, having faith in their leaders and you, Mr. president, that the workplace will be safe?" Trump talked about some new data on testing, noting among other things that "it's also, very importantly,  we have the best testing. We have the best testing."  Which wasn't an answer, so Muir tried again. Workers "should have no problem" getting tested, Trump said, adding,

 And as good as this is, we're even getting better. We came up - don't forget, the cupboard was bare. The other administration - the last administration left us nothing. We didn't have ventilators, we didn't have medical equipment, we didn't have testing. The tests were broken. You saw that. We had broken tests. They left us nothing. And we've taken it and we have built an incredible stockpile - a stockpile like we've never had before.

So, are people safe going back to work? Who knows, even now, several months later. The president surely didn't tell us then, and can't tell us now.

Number four on the list?  Me, sharing My Middle-aged White Lady Perspective, in response to a widely shared "You see Trump as x, I see Trump as y' letter to the editor. The author tried really hard to depict the president as a patriotic leader and not a politician, as pro-LGBTQ, as not being anti-immigration  "because he married an immigrant." Honestly, there wasn't much I of the column I found credible - especially the non-politician part.

You see Trump as an unpolished politician; I see Trump as a breath of fresh air. Donald Trump pretends to be unpolished, and not a politician. He is not a breath of fresh air, he and his lies and his bullying and his threatening comprise a toxic cloud that hangs over our country, and over our allies. And he is a classic, arm-twisting strongman pol, who threatens members of his own party who might disagree with him. Don't go along with me? No endorsement. A barrage of negative tweets. Attacks against you in your district. Support for your opponent. And you think he's not a politician? That's laughable.

Your number three was a Middle-aged White Lady Perspective post, about speech and law enforcement and Black Lives Matter and about outrage. It's a twisting tale of a rookie police officer gunned down in the line of duty, and people getting 'triggered' by things they see, hear or read, and how colleges handle speech. And the outrage part? 

I honestly share the outrage, expressed by my friend, a policeman's mom, over Corona's senseless death, and of the deaths of all the other officers killed in the line of duty. I hope that her son stays safe, on duty and off, and that other police officers do as well.

I honestly share the outrage, expressed by my friends - people of color and otherwise - over the senseless deaths of those who have been killed by police officers. I hope my friends' children, family members, and friends stay safe, and aren't caught up in what we know happens to people of color, particularly black men, in our country.

I just as honestly wish it was socially acceptable to be equally outraged by both circumstances - because honestly, I often feel like it's not.

And, I guess not surprisingly, we've got another Trump in Transition post filling the number two spot on our list. This series seemed to strike a chord, or a nerve, depending on which side of the Trump you were on. This one was me, channeling Trump after the upside-down Bible appearance during the protests this past summer, and saying what he wished he could get away with. Here's how it started.

Look at me! 

LOOK AT ME!

Did you see me on the news? Even the fake news, MSDNC and the rest of them, they had my picture, did you see it? 

I was holding a Bible!!

Someone asked if it was my Bible. Nah, it's 'a' Bible, not 'my' Bible - heck, I don't even know where they found it, probably in the nightstand in one of the rooms in my hotel or something, I don't know. It's a good book, they tell me. Very good, good words. Good words. I don't have time to read it, but I hear it's very good. I'll ask Mike. Is Mike here? Where's Mike?

Sadly, I bet he could have gotten away with saying what I said. His actions that day embodied everything I don't like about him. And that surely came out in the post. 

Those same feelings came out in the top post of the year, one of the top posts of all time on the blog. It was an Irony Board post, about Rev. Franklin Graham and his comments on the Democratic National Convention, including that God was missing from that event.

Graham also reminded us all of the Ten Commandments, as if Dems and leaning Dems and former Dems like me, heathens all, I guess, needed the reminder. I took offense to that.

  • He  is the graven image upon which his eyes rest most comfortably: his name on a clothing label; on the side of a building, writ in gold; carved in stone on an embassy wall; emblazoned in countless gaudy hotels, his golden club, his golf carts, and more; his giant signature, held up to the cameras for all to see, to bow to, to venerate, no matter how nonreligious, how faithless, how merciless are the words above it.

To Rev. Graham, I had one question: Tell me again, where is God missing?

There you have it -- the top ten most viewed posts of 2020. I hope you stick around for next year!

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