I took most of last week off from politics. It’s a healthy thing for a pundit to do from time to time. I’m uncertain if my battery is fully recharged but it’s the Monday after Black Friday so it’s time to give it a whirl.

The current news cycle is like a carousel that never stops turning. I nearly used the synonym merry-go-round but there’s nothing merry about most news. It just goes round and round aimlessly until it stops randomly.

A quick note about the featured image. It’s the first carousel scene in Hitchcock’s Strangers On A Train. Robert Walker is stalking Farley Granger’s ex-wife. The two principals will grapple on the same unmerry merry-go-round at the end of the movie:

It’s time to stop stalling, mount a carousel horse and get irked.

I’m irked that the Twitter war is consuming so oxygen. On the one hand you have the people who think staying on Twitter is an act of courage. It’s just Twitter. Nobody’s going to reach out from the app and pull you in to a vortex or some such shit.

Equally irksome is the virtue signaling by those who have opted to quit the Chief Twit. There’s nothing either moral or immoral about using a social media platform. I never had a high opinion of the content on Twitter: I’m staying because it’s the best way to publicize First Draft.

I’m trying Mastodon and remain unimpressed. It’s not exactly user hostile but not as user friendly as this Warren Zevon song:

I’m irked that the Herschel Walker-Joy Reid debate will never happen even though Joy accepted. It was my favorite political story last week. It’s an example of what a terrible candidate the dumb hypocritical jock is. Joy would knock him out in the first round. Fortunately, it wouldn’t end like the fight in *this* Zevon tune:

I’m irked by the sports washing involved in Qatar’s hosting the World Cup. It’s a nasty, vile, and oppressive place, especially for gay people. What the hell was FIFA thinking? That was a rhetorical question: they were thinking of money. Bribery has yet to be proven but the combination of oil money and FIFA is inherently corrupt. So much for sports washing.

I don’t give a toss about soccer but was interested to learn that New Order’s World In Motion was the theme song of England’s team in the 1990 World Cup. It was also the band’s only number 1 hit in the UK. You learn something new every day.

I’m irked by the MSM’s coverage of the Trump dinner with the crazy rapper and the white supremacist. They act as if we learned something new about the Impeached Insult Comedian. We already knew he was a bigot who panders to violent bigots. That issue should have been settled by the 2017 white riot in Charlottesville. The both sides narrative is hard to kick.

I’m NOT irked by what TPM’s David Kurtz wrote about the coverage of this disgusting dinner:

“The premise to the coverage: What does dining with Ye and Fuentes say about Trump?

Really? That’s an open question?

I almost headlined today’s Morning Memo: “Ye and Fuentes Tainted By Dinner With Trump”

Trump is the unabashed leader of the far right in America and has been since 2016. While in office, he unleashed a far-right coup attempt from the White House. Before, during and since being president, Trump has fomented racism, anti-Semitism, white supremacy, political violence, extremist groups, and Christian nationalism.

Everything that right-wing extremists have represented in the collective mind for the last 40 years, Trump has personally embodied. The notion that Kanye and Fuentes might somehow rub off on Trump and soil him in the process is to mistake the leader for the followers.”

Yeah, you right, Mr. Kurtz. The whole thing reminds me of a George Harrison song:

The world is a more irksome place since the Kaiser of Chaos came down that escalator in 2015 and threw his hair in the ring. And vexatious venting about the media who helped create that monster is always in order.

It’s time to get off the carousel. It’s making me dizzy.

The last word goes to Jackson Browne with the *other* song called World In Motion: