All The Time In The World

One of the great things about social media is the mask often comes off of people.

Take Stuart Stevens. He ran Mitt Romney's 2016 presidential campaign. He's a Mississippi native, 8th generation! It's to him what being a vegan cross-fitter atheist is to bar jokes. He is what you think of when you think of an "establishment Republican." His twitter background is where he went skiing last year, for crying out loud! 

(If you follow him on twitter, it was the most extended and insufferable humble-brag in the history of humble-brags).

He's anti-Trump, and that's caused his mask to slip off quite a bit.  Ostensibly, he is a Republican...who just happens to be pro-abortion. He despises the average Republican voter. He despises his fellow Mississippians as racists, uninformed yokels, and marvels that we dislike the politics of New York and California, who "pay 40% of the state's budget."

(Never does he mention that much of that is in programs that are the nation's debt drivers, and also the drivers of much of our continued pathologies of poverty. After all, if you want more of something...you subsidize it). 

Yes, I don't like the politics of New York and California. One is a city-state that ignores 90% of its state in order to please the unpleasant city dwellers and the other is a place where it's basically legal to poop and use heroin in the streets. California is a state where a college professor that committed assault with a bike lock was allowed to walk away Scot Free. The great thing about federalism is that I can live freely with a minimal amount of input from New Yorkers and Californians. 

He was very vocal about Senator Hyde-Smith and Mike Espy, so he keeps an eye on what's going on in state. He was ashamed, y'all. Ashamed. But he's been strangely silent about something that's affecting a whole lot of people in the state, which is the flooding in the south Delta area.

If you don't know (and why should you? It barely gets covered on the national news. We didn't deserve coverage after Katrina, and I guess we still don't deserve it now), there's about half a million acres in the Yazoo backwater area that are currently under flood conditions. Due to the volume of water coming down the Mississippi, the Yazoo River and its tributaries are backed up and have spilled their banks. This has affected people throughout the lower Delta. People have lost their homes and livelihoods. Would you like to guess how many times that this influential Mississippian, with his numerous connections, presumably, has said anything on social media about the flooding?

None.

He's had plenty of time to tweet about Donald Trump (who hasn't?). He's had time to tweet about the threat that Robert E. Lee poses to the world (he's been dead since 1870). He will moralize until the cows come home. But he can't be bothered to summon up the humanity to do something that might actually help people in the state. He loves Mississippi. He just doesn't like Mississippians, especially those who don't blindly do what our betters who get to go on CNN tell us to do.

There's a word for that. Hypocrite.

So This Has to Happen, Right?

NFL players, after the Josh Brown arrest, pretty much have to refuse to wear the NFL shield, cause otherwise they're all culpable, right? Forget the fines.

That's how this all works, isn't it?

If not, they're hypocrites.

But you knew that.

Today's Bit of Media Hypocrisy

Bobby Harrison of the Daily Journal has an article about the confluence between interest groups and legislators. 

You can read it here, and conspiracies abound.

I will be interested to see if Mr. Harrison will also be doing a piece on what influenced Attorney General Jim Hood's decision to forgo his constitutional and statutory duty to defend the laws of Mississippi in the courts. I also will not be holding my breath while doing so. 

I will remind everyone that if any other elected official in the state refused to do his or her duty, Jim Hood would have thrown a library's worth of books at them. And he would be lauded for doing so by the press in our state. But he's Jim Hood, and they're the Mississippi press corps, so I will leave you with a bit of wisdom from ages ago:

He who expects little, is never disappointed.

Oh ESPN...

As I was driving yesterday, I was listening to one of ESPN's numerous talking head radio shows. I can't remember the hosts names, which tells me how deep on the bench they are. One of the things they were pontificating on was Carmelo Anthony's decision to speak out in regards to the recent spate of officer-involved shootings.

The two hosts stated that it was nice to hear an athlete using his celebrity to speak out on social issues. And how great it was that he was using the platform for social change. And how more athletes needed to speak out on societal issues.

And then the wham line.

"No matter what their view."

Hold up. Hang on. Stop. Wait just one freaking minute.

ESPN has given any sports figure who holds a worldview that is not in line with the coastal elite a beating since they've gone full-on social justice warrior. Mike Wallace, Curt Schilling, Chris Brussard, Matt Birk-all got raked over the coals by ESPN due to their beliefs. They've gone so far as to give a courage award to Bruce Jenner, in a year when a college basketball player played through a brain tumor and an amputee combat vet won marathons. They've turned an Entertainment and Sports Programming Network into the Entirely Social Justice Network.

Do not tell me that you want people speaking out "no matter their beliefs."

Mr. Schilling was unavailable for ESPN to get his comment. I assume he was busy picking his jaw up off of the floor.