Afternoon Tea 12.2.2020 - Leopards & Faces

Selfie stores, Reconciliation, Festive Bob, and the sounds of hyenas laughing.

December 02, 2020

At a certain point, you just have to get out of the way of the carnage. Nurses strike, the poor couch surf, TikTok hacks creation, and the GOP might have finally discovered what a circular firing squad is. It’s Wednesday, December 2nd 2020, and this is the Tea.

US probing potential bribery, lobbying scheme for pardon (Associated Press) Honestly, you can’t convince me Trump thought pardons exist for any other purpose. I assume he 100% believes this is one of the privileges of the office.

What counts for Brad Raffensberger (AJC) It sucks that the GOP member, Trump voting, Georgia Secretary of State has been getting death threats. It kinda proves our point that so many in the GOP waited until they specifically were targeted by the tactics they really didn’t seem to mind when they were used on Barack, Ilhan, or AOC.

Articles of Impeachment filed against GOP Ohio governor over coronavirus orders (TheHill) In case you were wondering where state level GOP officials were in their election post mortem. We’ve reached the “turning on each other or anyone who tries to keep people safe” level of the school play of Scar’s Defeat at the end of the Lion King, that the GOP is currently acting out.

Albany Med nurses strike (Times Union) Speaking of people being needlessly harmed by the GOP! Albany Medical Center nurses remain on strike. Given how comprehensively our healthcare workers have been failed by the nation and even their own administrations, I am regularly shocked that there are any hospitals that have people willing to go into work.

Truth After Trump (Foreign Policy) You know those Truth & Reconciliation things that we keep saying we don’t need after presidents do dastardly shit? We should stop saying we don’t need them for Trump & his ilk.

“You might not like it but it’s smart politics” (PressThink) Stop LARPing politics. Stop using game theory, stop acting in bad faith. Stop pretending that being an absolute asshole doesn’t change the game. If people want to understand why the media sucks and how we got to Trump, you send them this:

In the 1990s the Republican Party started to reveal its present self with Newt Gingrich as Speaker of the House, Fox News as culture war headquarters, the Clinton Impeachment, Bush vs. Gore, cooked books in the case for war in Iraq, the Tea Party’s rebellion against a black man in power, the rejection of moderation after Mitt Romney’s loss in 2012 (despite a frank autopsy the party had conducted on itself), the collapse of immigration reform, followed by the Birther movement, and finally Donald Trump’s capture of the party and attempt at autocratic rule. (Yes, I am leaving a lot out.) 

None of these things fits the script of roughly similar parties with different philosophies winning elections by appealing smartly to the “vital center.” The savvy style was in crisis, but almost no one in the trade seemed to realize it.

Couch Surfing the Waves of American Poverty (Current Affairs) For all of those you’ve seen who lost their home, moved into a camper/RV, there are thousands more who are one couch away from that exact same fate. Without an address, how can you live?

How TikTok Hacks Creators (Pay Attention) Hank Green details how TikTok and other short form video platforms have started changing the way creators on those platforms. In the same way that Soundcloud & Spotify changed music, TikTok is changing snackable video.

New business centered around selfies to open at The Empire Mall (Sioux Falls Business) In light of that previous article about how TikTok and creators are changing, here’s an article about a store in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. That is producing back-drop inventories to take selfies with. Added for no particular reason

I Hate That Everybody In Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Can Read (Kotaku) While the historical accuracy problems associated with the portrayal of Assassin’s Creed: Viking Smash! (we would’ve also accepted “Danish Game of Thrones based out English Bogs” are much better detailed in this sprawling piece by Bret Deveraux (Editor’s note: h/t to Wedge for the read), this couldn’t be left alone. You produce Modern Political Intrigue but your team is all raiders, vikings, pagans, and refugees. Somehow they use proper diction and can write their plans out? Lol Ok.

Small Business of the Tea: While you’d expect that get around to shouting out musicians and performers, you’re definitely not going to see this one coming. My dear friend Cara Gonzalez turned me on to INSeries. Based out of DC, the theater attempts to connect opera and the classical fine arts with both the local DC but also wider internet and Latine communities.

Seriously, The Gonzales Cantata, a Handelian oratorio satirizing Alberto Gonzales’ 2007 congressional hearings. For all the kids in the audience, in 2005, the GOP was so different the president had a Latine Attorney General. This person said “I don’t recall” 72 times. In case you’re wondering how we arrived at our current enlightened style of discourse. So, go check out some Opera-At-a-Distance. It’s like Spooky Action at a Distance, but instead of physics weirdness, you get bad ass singers and culture.

Song of the Tea: Spotify told me Articulation, by Rival Consoles was the track I listened to most during this year in isolation. If you wanted to know what my head sounds like when there’s no one to talk to.

You have no idea how talented you are and what you’re truly capable of.

Yours,T