Brendan O’Neill must be parodying himself.

The pubs are being closed. Oh noes, the backbone of Britain, remember the Blitz, where were you when the old King threw the first football/cricket ball/crumpet.

The barmaid tells us she isn’t sure if they will close at 8 or 10 this evening. ‘We are awaiting government instructions’. I can’t believe what I am hearing. I feel like I am in North Korea. British governments don’t close down pubs, right? Not pubs.

North Korea. Self-parody; has to be.

It is almost too depressing for words. I know that media people and luvvies for whom pubs are just places you go to for a hip gastro lunch consisting of overpriced dirty burgers will think this is over-the-top. Well, then they don’t know the centrality of the pub to life in this country.

Oh come on, that’s too broad even for parody. “media people and luvvies for whom pubs are just places you go to for a hip gastro lunch” – that has more clichés than it has words. It’s staler than ten-year-old bread. Parody is better if it’s a little subtler.

World Central Kitchen posted on February 3:

WCK’s Chef Relief Team first opened a kitchen at the US southern border in Tijuana, Mexico in November 2018. Families, including many children, are fleeing violence, poverty, and instability in places like El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Once the refugees get to the border to apply for asylum, they can be forced to wait up to a year for their case to be heard. Due to financial challenges or safety concerns, many families are unable to return home, leaving them stuck at the border while they wait.

More than a year after setting up our first kitchen in Tijuana, we have opened a second location to cook for and serve refugees living at the border in Matamoros, Mexico. Nearly 1,500 miles from Tijuana, Matamoros lies just across the border from Brownsville at the southernmost point of Texas. There are currently about 2,500 refugees living in tents in a camp.

Prior to our Relief Team arriving, local organization Team Brownsville had been providing daily meals to the refugee camp. Now, we have partnered together to continue ensuring all families at the border have access to fresh, hot meals while they wait.

Each day, our team in Brownsville prepares a meal from our new Relief Food Truck. Here, Chef Elyssa is sautéing apples, sweet potatoes, and carrots in milk and buttermilk to serve with pulled pork and salsa verde!

Once the food is ready, our team fills up Cambros – the insulated boxes we use to keep hot food at the proper temperature – with trays of dinner and takes them to the bus depot where we meet with our lead from Team Brownsville. With the help of many dedicated volunteers, it’s time to walk the food across the border. We cross the Rio Grande to get to the dining tent where we serve dinner to the families.

Good people doing a good thing.

Once we get to the refugee camp, we work closely with the families living there. Many of the kids like to help with cleaning the tent before and after dinner, as well as assisting us with handing out food during service.

…

Our team will continue to cook every day in Brownsville for families stuck at the border. These refugees have endured so much in an attempt to seek a better life for themselves and their children and they deserve the dignity of a delicious plate of food.

If you are in the Brownsville area and would like to volunteer with WCK, sign up here. Please note, we cannot provide transportation or accommodations for volunteers from out of the area.

If you would like to donate to support our efforts, please visit here.

When they say a delicious plate of food they mean it – World Central Kitchen is the brain child of José Andrés, that chef we’ve been hearing about using his closed restaurants in DC and NY to feed people.

Now for the bad news: the border is closing at midnight and WKC and Team Brownsville and all those volunteers are forbidden to cross the border. No more delicious plates of food for the people stuck in that camp in Matamoros.

Sixty EIGHTY years ago the US had Roosevelt. Now we have an evil egomaniacal clown.

In an extraordinary exchange on Friday, President Donald Trump viciously attacked an NBC News reporter who asked what his message would be to Americans who are frightened by the coronavirus pandemic that is spreading across the country.

…

Moments later, Kaitlan Collins, a White House correspondent for CNN, asked Trump if it was appropriate to embark on tirades against members of the news media during a public health crisis.

“You see yourself as a wartime President right now, leading the country through a pandemic that we are experiencing,” Collins noted. “Do you think going off on Peter, going off on a network is appropriate when the country is going through something like this?”

Roosevelt he ain’t. A decent human being he ain’t. A wartime president he ain’t.

Alexander said in a statement that he was “trying to provide the president an opportunity to reassure the millions of Americans, members of my own family and my neighbors and my community and plenty of people sitting at home, this was his opportunity to do that, to provide a positive or uplifting message. Instead, you saw the president’s answer to that question right now.”

“The bottom line is, this is a president whose experiences in life are very different than most Americans across this country right now,” Alexander said. “Not a person who likely worries about finances or had, not a person who in the course of his life is worried about his future, not a person who is worried about where to find a paycheck for his bills or for his rent and as evidenced by the president suggesting that an opportunity to provide for American some reassurance about how they should feel right now, the president instead took it out on me.”

He makes a point. Trump has no idea what it’s like to be vulnerable in the way the vast majority of people are vulnerable…and he spends zero time thinking about what it’s like. He spends zero time caring about it.

Meanwhile…

Possibly worst tweet of all time:

I found I needed to watch the whole sequence that led to that rage-fit at a reporter, so I found the complete video and watch-stop-watched until I got there.

It starts at 1:36:47. A reporter asks Fauci about the anti-malaria drug chloroquine and if there’s any evidence that it can be used as a prophylaxis against the coronavirus. Fauci says no, and explains that the evidence the reporter is talking about is anecdotal, and why that doesn’t count. So then Trump speaks up and – from his great pool of expertise on this subject, which is that he “feels good about it” – contradicts everything Fauci just said.

That’s the context in which Peter Alexander asked his question about giving the public false hope.

The guy who is there to provide the medical science says there is no genuine evidence that remedy X works, Trump babbles about feelings and who knows and it might or it might not and we’ll see and he feels good about it, the reporter asks, indirectly, if that kind of pie in the sky bullshit might give people false hope, and Trump erupts in a rage.

We’re in the flailing hands of a lunatic.

Full-on tantrum over a perfectly reasonable question.

Updating to add a better clip, with split screen.

There’s so much in that one minute.

There’s the way that during a press briefing on a fast-growing pandemic, he uses one of his snide pejoratives and then takes the time to tell the reporter he’s screaming at that it is one of his pet pejoratives. “…Concast – I don’t call it Comcast, I call it Concast – “

That’s everybody’s boring self-important right-wing cousin or neighbor or co-worker, so boring and self-important that they tell you what they’re doing in addition to doing it.

And then his idiot epistemology at the end:

Let’s see if it works. It might and it might not. I happen to feel good about it, but who knows. I’ve been right a LOT, let’s see what happens.

He happens to feel good about it (that “I happen to” is always a tell: that’s a self-important jerk you’re talking to, take evasive action) and he’s been right a LOT so you do the math.

I’m sensing a theme here.

Nobody’s going to tell HIM not to be a racist shit.

NPR reports:

The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee warned a small group of well-connected constituents three weeks ago to prepare for dire economic and societal effects of the coronavirus, according to a secret recording obtained by NPR.

Note what’s missing here: the word “everyone.” He didn’t warn everyone, he warned a small group of well-connected constituents.

The remarks from U.S. Sen. Richard Burr were more stark than any he had delivered in more public forums.

On Feb. 27, when the United States had 15 confirmed cases of COVID-19, President Trump was tamping down fears and suggesting that the virus could be seasonal.

“It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle. It will disappear,” the president said then, before adding, “it could get worse before it gets better. It could maybe go away. We’ll see what happens.”

Trump wasn’t “tamping down fears,” he was lying to us about an imminent danger which we could have been preparing for.

On that same day, Burr attended a luncheon held at a social club called the Capitol Hill Club. And he delivered a much more alarming message.

“There’s one thing that I can tell you about this: It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history,” he said, according to a secret recording of the remarks obtained by NPR. “It is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic.”

But he didn’t see fit to tell us that. Peasants can always be replaced, I guess.

The message Burr delivered to the group was dire.

Thirteen days before the State Department began to warn against travel to Europe, and 15 days before the Trump administration banned European travelers, Burr warned those in the room to reconsider.

“Every company should be cognizant of the fact that you may have to alter your travel. You may have to look at your employees and judge whether the trip they’re making to Europe is essential or whether it can be done on video conference. Why risk it?” Burr said.

He predicted school closures. He said the military would be involved.

“We’re going to send a military hospital there; it’s going to be in tents and going to be set up on the ground somewhere,” Burr said at the luncheon. “It’s going to be a decision the president and DOD make. And we’re going to have medical professionals supplemented by local staff to treat the people that need treatment.”

But he never told us.

But despite his longtime interest in biohazard threats, his expertise on the subject, and his role as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Burr did not warn the public of the government actions he thought might become necessary, as he did at the luncheon on Feb. 27.

NPR sent him some questions but he hasn’t responded.

But wait, there’s more.

Whether it’s insider trading or not…it’s scummy af.

Of course he did.

Corona CHiNESE

Remember that pause, and the sly sideways look? Before he said “Chinese”?

Oh dear, fallen down a wildly unpleasant rabbit hole.

That’s a lot of clashing figurative language for one tweet, isn’t it – overrun, dogpile, high ground, rabbit hole, fall down. Orwell would have a good laugh, because it’s exactly the kind of lazy reaching for a stale phrase that he was objecting to.

But the substance came later.

Well we don’t “screech,” we type, and saying we screech kind of gives away his misogyny – see there you go, lazy figurative language tripping him up again. But much more to the point, saying Xs are not Ys is not saying Xs don’t exist. It’s not the same thing. Not the same; different. Rabbits are not coconuts; that is not saying that rabbits don’t exist.

Now if rabbits had a noisy activism that insisted they are coconuts if they say they are, maybe they too would claim that saying rabbits are not coconuts is saying rabbits don’t exist…but they would be wrong too. Description is not existence. I exist but I can be wrong or dishonest about how I describe myself; so can you, so can they, so can anyone. We still exist even if we’re wrong or dishonest about how we self-describe.

This is a good thing, if you think about it. It means we don’t snap out of existence just by making a mistake on a form. Some angry dude can inaccurately call us screeching vile bigoted TERFs but we go on existing all the same.

One of the signers of the letter to the Guardian from the Guardian complaining of undefined “transphobia” is Alan Evans, ” Commissioning editor for science, environment, global health and the bike blog at the Guardian.” Science. Science, environment, global health.

Rereading the letter doesn’t help – it still talks wildly of “transphobia” and “anti-trans content” and “trans equality” without ever defining what it means by them. It’s not exactly “science” to say that men are women if they say they are. It’s not a wild leap to look askance at a science editor who apparently agrees that women are people who say they are women.

Suzanne Moore wrote a thing.

Here it is .You do what you want with this info. I.was denounced on a room of 200.when I was not there. This letter does not name me but associates my articles with walkouts. I have never heard of most of these people.

And they are not editorial.

Some people pretended to take that last sentence as snobbery, but her point was that they don’t work with the writers, aka the content-providers. Content is the issue here – the letter is about content and its providers.

We feel it is critical that the Guardian do more to become a safe and welcoming workplace for trans and non-binary people.

We are also disappointed in the Guardian’s repeated decision to publish anti-trans views. We are proud to work at a newspaper which supports human rights and gives voice to people underrepresented in the media. But the pattern of publishing transphobic content has interfered with our work and cemented our reputation as a publication hostile to trans rights and trans employees.

We strongly support trans equality and want to see the Guardian live up to its values and do the same.

We look forward to working with Guardian leadership to address these pressing concerns, and request a response by 11 March.

Below is a list of 338 of Guardian employees globally who signed this letter at the time of writing.

One thing about this letter jumped out at me, and that is the complete lack of specificity about what they’re talking about.

Let’s look at it again with the lack of specifics highlighted.

We feel it is critical that the Guardian do more to become a safe and welcoming workplace for trans and non-binary people.

We are also disappointed in the Guardian’s repeated decision to publish anti-trans views. We are proud to work at a newspaper which supports human rights and gives voice to people underrepresented in the media. But the pattern of publishing transphobic content has interfered with our work and cemented our reputation as a publication hostile to trans rights and trans employees.

We strongly support trans equality and want to see the Guardian live up to its values and do the same.

What is any of that? What are “anti-trans views”? What is “transphobic content”? What are “trans rights”? What is “trans equality”?

This is nothing new, of course; as I’ve mentioned more than a couple of times, slogans replace argument in this form of activism as a matter of policy. Slogans are all there is.

Why is that? Because if they did provide the specifics it would be all too obvious how absurd the whole thing is. “Transphobia” doesn’t mean “hatred of trans people,” even though that is the literal facial meaning. It means “failure to agree that people are whatever sex they say they are.” But it doesn’t mean that. It’s deployed that way, but that isn’t the literal meaning – but calling it phobia sounds so much worse than calling it failure to agree that people are whatever sex they say they are.

All the invocation of phobia and exclusion and rights and equality is just manipulation. It’s a way to make us forget that we’re simply seeing reality as opposed to fantasy, and that we couldn’t do otherwise even if we tried, we could only pretend to.

Wow indeed. That question.

One fragment from his run-on unpunctuated don’t you dare try to say anything while I’m talking reply:

I think I came up with the term, I hope I came up with the term, it’s fake news

Yeah sure he’s the first person ever to put the word “fake” together with the word “news.”

I had to look up OANN – One America News Network. Makes Fox look liberal.

The reporter asks the question and he does his usual know-nothing blather – “I would hope very soon” and variations on that empty bromide. We don’t care what you hope, bozo. He gets more and more bullshitty and at peak bullshit the reporter cuts in to point out a contradiction – and he holds up his flabby hand like a traffic cop and says “Excuse me, excuse me” and goes on amping up the bullshit. How dare this peasant interrupt Donald Trump’s string of bullshit and lies?!

Another White House press conference on the pandemic. Look how this festering sack of shit starts it.

Look at how he does it. Look at that pause after “defeat” – look at that guilty glance sideways before he says it.

It’s not written down. That’s what the pause and the glance tell us – along with who would do that? – they tell us he ad-libs it.

It’s racist, obviously, and it’s all the more racist given that he’s been told it’s racist repeatedly, but even more – it’s not even technically correct, it’s not what the health officials are calling it, it’s not the epidemiological or medical term for it, it’s not the generally-agreed name for it, and during a rapidly exploding pandemic a head of state should not be using his own whimsical racist nickname for that pandemic.

Ya know?

How are we supposed to be able to trust that the incompetent racist toad has finally stopped lying and is getting serious when he does this every day?

Fox News is getting credit for cutting back a little on the lies.

Rupert Murdoch’s Fox cable networks, amid this crisis, have not been diverted from their primary mission, even if misinformation is the price. Apologia and advocacy for both Donald Trump and the Republican Party has typically taken precedence at Fox News and Fox Business. Even at a time when such a collective public effort is required to combat a global pandemic, the danger wasn’t a deterrent. Some anchors and guests likened COVID-19 to the flu, which is patently false. Fox Business’ Trish Regan theorized that media alarm about COVID-19 was “yet another attempt to impeach the president.” They encouraged Americans to congregate and travel, ignoring safety advice from medical experts and even government officials.

Because which is more important – giving the public good information during a developing pandemic or propping up Donald Trump while he lies to the public during a developing pandemic? Who matters more, Donald Trump or all the other people on the planet?

Mixed in with the supposedly sober tone of the new Fox News rhetoric is the regularly served glorification for the president. Last Friday, prime-time host Sean Hannity, known to advise and fraternize with the president, sounded not unlike one of his counterparts on North Korean state television. Hannity argued that “a bold, new precedent is being set, the world will once again benefit greatly from America’s leadership,” despite the fact that we’re still desperately short on tests and vital hospital equipment. Hannity celebrated “the federal government, state governments, private businesses, top hospitals all coming together, under the president’s leadership, to stem the tide of the coronavirus,” all before any tide has actually been stemmed.

And long after all this coming together should have started. Oh thank you Donald Trump for finally admitting the pandemic is a problem after weeks and weeks of brushing it aside.

Two recent polls, one from Pew Research Center and the other from YouGov and The Economist, indicate that regular Fox News viewers both are the only American media consumers who believe Trump is doing a good job of responding to the crisis and that the press has greatly exaggerated the risks of contracting COVID-19.

There’s a loop here. It’s not just that Fox viewers think Trump is awesome because Fox tells them he is, it’s also that the kind of people who like Trump are the kind of people who like Fox News.

Misinformation can be fatal, and that’s why Americans need to be more vigilant and shrewd about the media that they consume, especially now. That is the lesson that we all should be conveying, particularly those of us in the press. We cannot rely upon the visceral danger this pandemic presents to encourage people to make smarter choices about citizenship, let alone what and who they allow to influence their thinking. And that starts with thinking critically about oneself, which too many Americans fail or refuse to do.

Thinking critically about oneself is unAmerican. I think it might be against the law here.

Owen Jones on the other hand found that wretched content-free “ooh somebody said” piece of dreck in the Independent a prompt to make another soaring declaration of allegiance.

To trans people, one of the most besieged, marginalised and oppressed minorities in Britain: you have few vocal allies in the media. But we are not going to stop using our voices to stand by and fight for you, whatever happens.

Who says trans people are one of the most besieged, marginalised and oppressed minorities in Britain? What does that mean? Is it true? It’s a claim that people make, in a similarly redundant fashion (most oppressed and oppressed and oppressed), so often and noisily that it’s become formulaic, but is it even true?

I don’t buy it, myself. I can believe that trans people are more subject to random street violence, but what about all the other ways of being oppressed? Are they systematically confined to specific neighborhoods that everyone else is warned away from, with the result that they can’t build equity by buying property? Are they systematically confined to underfunded schools in those neighborhoods, are they systematically confined to low-skilled jobs and kept out of unions, are they denied promotions and raises, are they stifled and stunted and stymied in every way a dominant majority can think of?

No.

I don’t think Owen Jones’s hackneyed formula is even true, and I don’t think the fact that one guy agreed with another guy about trans activism’s conflict with women’s rights is a good reason to recite the hackneyed formula yet again along with a boastful histrionic vow to “fight for you.”

I also wonder if Owen Jones ever gives a single thought to women.

The “Chinese flu” thing just won’t quit.

And not just agree but agree 100%.

This is not journalism, this is passive-aggressive finger pointing and hissing. Ellie Harrison in the Independent:

Jonathan Ross has been branded “transphobic” after he endorsed comedian Graham Linehan’s controversial views on Twitter.

Wtf is that supposed to mean? What’s it doing in a newspaper? Branded by whom? “Branded” how? Anybody could say that about anyone. It’s meaningless. It could mean that Ellie Harrison has “branded” Jonathan Ross that way by saying it just before she started typing.

New lede:

Somebody called somebody something.

You don’t say; what a shocker.

There’s also the sleazy “controversial” pasted onto Linehan. Controversial according to whom? Controversial according to what standards?

Newspaper editors should spike this kind of shit. It’s childish gossip and fight-picking and it doesn’t measure up as journalism.

She sticks to it though. All she’s got is “people do say.”

Linehan, the creator of Father Ted and The IT Crowd, has repeatedly been accused of transphobia. Last month, he was widely condemned for comparing doctors treating transgender children to Nazis conducting medical experiments on prisoners in concentration camps.

All passive voice, all no-agents passive voice – where is all this branding and accusing and widely condemning coming from?

Oh, you know – people on Twitter.