You’re probably wondering why the featured image is of Elizabeth Taylor and Rex Harrison in Cleopatra. Here’s why: Harrison played Julius Caesar and the month of July is named for him, Julius, not Rex. I’m not much of a podcast guy but I enjoyed Ben Mankiewicz’s podcast about Cleopatra and his writer-director Uncle Joe Mankiewicz. Ben’s Uncle Joe was irked before, during, and after the production. He was never quite the same. How irksome is that?

Pondering Ben’s Uncle Joe’s scapegoating by the studio suits makes me cranky. You know what that means: It’s time for our monthly exercise in vexatious venting about irksome things.

I’m irked by the paranoid and mendacious withdrawal speech by disgraced Maine senate candidate Graham Platner. Before dropping out, he tried to dictate who will run in his place: Accused rapists don’t get to do that.

I’m sub-irked that I failed to call Platner an entitled nepo baby yesterday. He’s from a well off and well connected family. He’s just another phony working class hero.

I’m irked that the legacy media continues to beat around the bush about Platner’s now removed Nazi death’s head tattoo. They refuse to call it what it is: The SS Totenkopf, which was on every SS war criminals’ hat. Want some proof: Will a picture of behatted chicken farmer and Holocaust honcho, Heinrich Himmler suffice?

I nearly forgot to post a tattoo tune. Here’s one by some real working class lads:

Speaking of phony working class heroes, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage got caught with his hand in a £ 5 million cookie jar. Make that a crypto cookie jar. Like his pal Trump, Farage is an attention whore, so he resigned his seat in parliament to stand in a special election in one of the UK’s poorest constituencies, Clacton, which evokes this guy’s name:

You say excuses; I say alibis. Let’s call the whole thing off.

Speaking of impoverished places, I’m irked that the Ken and Barbie of Trump world, Jared and Ivanka, want to despoil an island in Albania and make it another boring resort. It’s helped fire up what the Albanians call the Flamingo Revolution.

Have I told you lately how much I love Oscar Peterson? I’m fond of the Frenchman as well.

I’m irked that a French court has lifted the ban on Marine Le Pen running for office. She’s a second generation fascist leader with her eyes on the French presidency. Hopefully, the European populist wave has crested and Paris will remain free, man:

I’m irked that the Insult Comedian slimed the World Cup by getting FIFA’s sycophantic boss Gianni Infantino to reinstate a red-carded American player. It backfired: Belgium beat the US team, so Trump corrupted the World Cup for nothing.

Did Trump even know what a red card is when he called that infantile idiot Infantino? I didn’t know from red cards myself until recently but I’m willing to admit to gaps in my knowledge unlike a certain Insult Comedian with a dead nutria pelt atop his head.

Finally, I’m irked that the Kaiser of Chaos is trying to revive the red scare. He claims to see reds under every bed and commies everywhere. The last thing the country needs is a fresh round of McCarthyism, Joe, not Kevin. It worked in the Fifties because there was a bona fide red menace in Europe. The best way to deal with this is to tell Team MAGA to fuck off and go learn some history.

Who needs another red nightmare?

The last word goes to King Crimson: