Gret Stet Senator John Neely Kennedy is a smart guy who pretends to be a dipshit. Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton is a dipshit who thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room. It’s gotten him in trouble again. And that is why Tom Cotton is malaka of the week.

I remember when Arkansas produced politicians of the caliber of William Fulbright, Dale Bumpers, Bill Clinton, and David Pryor. Tom Cotton is more in the tradition of Orval Faubus and Mike Huckabee. Shorter Adrastos: he’s a right-wing schmuck, which is Yiddish for malaka.

Tom Cotton always has a serious look on his face as if solemnity could conquer his ignorance. His NYT op-ed of June 20, 2020 reeked of American fascism. He’s a cut rate demagogue along the lines of the fictional Lonesome Rhodes in the classic Elia Kazan-Budd Schulberg movie A Face In The Crowd. Lonesome too was an Arkansan.

In contrast to Cotton, Lonesome Rhodes was folksy and charming; how could a character played by Andy Griffith be anything else? That makes Cotton a Joyless Lonesome Rhodes. If Cotton cracked a smile, his head would split open like an overripe melon.

Cotton was among soon-to-be Justice Jackson’s antagonists during her confirmation hearings. He took to the senate floor yesterday wielding a historical analogy like a cudgel. All he did was confirm his ignorance and egregious malakatude:

“You know, the last Judge Jackson left the Supreme Court to go Nuremberg and prosecute the case against the Nazis,” he said. “This Judge Jackson might’ve gone there to defend them.”

Tom Cotton should keep Bob Jackson’s name out of his nasty little mouth. He was one of the greatest Americans of the 20th Century as well as one of the smartest and most literate Supremes ever. That’s Mr. Justice Robert Jackson to you, Senator Malaka.

This monumentally ignorant statement is a classic example of how the Right misuses history. Make that abuses history.

There were NO American lawyers at the first Nuremberg Trial. KBJ couldn’t have defended Nazi war criminals because Jackson thought it best for the senior Nazis on trial to be represented by German lawyers. He wanted to ensure that it was a fair trial, not a show trial. Fairness mattered to Bob Jackson. It does not matter to Malaka Tom Cotton.

This is Tom Cotton’s second stint in the malakatude barrel. The first time was when he played shadow Secretary of State in opposition to the Iran Nuclear agreement in 2015. I said something that still applies:

It’s said (by whom I’ll never know) that a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing, that’s why Tom Cotton and his ilk are so dangerous. They’re fanatics with a peppercorn of knowledge who think they know best but, as always with Obama era wingnuts, they only know what they’re against, they offer no solution to the problem, which is a serious one that should be reserved for serious people instead of clownish malakas like Tom Cotton.

They were playing games with serious matters before the advent of the Kaiser of Chaos as their dear leader. He merely amplified their dangerous malakatude.

Tom Cotton should also be ashamed of himself for this passage in yesterday’s speech:

“Judge Jackson has also shown real interest in helping terrorists,” Cotton stated.

 

“Now, it’s true that you shouldn’t judge a lawyer for being willing to take on an unpopular case,” Cotton said, before doing exactly that. “But you can certainly learn something about a lawyer from the cases they seek out.”

 

He noted, “Judge Jackson represented four terrorists as a public defender, one of whom she continued to represent in private practice, voluntarily. And she voluntarily filed multiple friend-of-the-court briefs on behalf of terrorists while in private practice.”

That’s Bush-Cheney administration style nonsense. Remember when W said this:

That’s a page out of the same playbook that Cotton used in his specious attack on KBJ. The malakatude it burns.

Tom Cotton should keep both Jacksons names out of his nasty little mouth, but you can’t shame the shameless. And that is why Senator Tom Cotton is malaka of the week.

Let’s circle back to the Joyless Lonesome Rhodes analogy and give The Kinks followed by Tom Petty the last word: