The news keeps getting weirder and weirder. Not just in the US&A, but in France where President Emmanuel Macron was slapped by a far-right medieval swordsmanship buff.

It’s unclear if the incident had anything to do with misdirected rage over the atrocious final season of Game Of Thrones.

On a more serious note, as much as I may have wanted to slap W or the Kaiser of Chaos, I would have never acted on such an impulse. Lack of impulse control characterizes the populist far right across the globe. Think of any MAGA rally or the Dipshit Insurrection.

Here’s how the slapper was described by Al-Jazeera:

The man alleged to have slapped French President Emmanuel Macron in the face subscribes to several far-right YouTube channels and is a fan of medieval swordsmanship, media reports and sources close to the investigation said on Wednesday.

A police source identified the suspect as 28-year-old Damien Tarel, who had no previous criminal record.

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Tarel, dressed in a khaki T-shirt, can be seen slapping Macron then shouting “Down with Macronia” and “Montjoie, Saint-Denis”, the battle cry of the French army when the country was a monarchy.

Macron’s tenure as president has been a rocky one. He was elected mostly because he was NOT far right leader Marie Le Pen. Macron stands a decent chance of being the third consecutive French president to lose reelection. That’s worrisome because the hard right’s vote increased from 17.9% in 2002 to 33.9% in 2017.  I’ll leave it there as my knowledge of French politics is limited. I know what I don’t know.

When I saw the clip, I pondered how the Impeached Insult Comedian would have reacted if President Biden were slapped. Marie Le Pen denounced the Macron slap. My hunch is that Trump would have either been silent or mildly deplored it publicly but allowed his real reaction to leak via the usual suspects. Vicarious violence is his jam.

Slapping someone is a gesture of contempt. It means that they’re unworthy of a punch. It’s another sign that democracy is in trouble in 2021. The good news for Emmanuel Macron is that he’s not up for reelection until next year. The bad news is that the slap heard round the world happened at all.

I nearly called this post Slap Unhappy until I learned that slaphappy was one word.. Who knew? You learn something new every day.

The last word goes to Squeeze even though the Macron incident was all slap and no tickle:

Yeah, I know what slap and tickle means in British slang. I was in the mood for some Squeeze. Sue me, just don’t slap me.