On this day in 2018, the Washington Post published an allegation of attempted sexual assault against Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump’s second Supreme Court nominee. He would survive the scandal and take his seat on a court lurched far to the right.
Morning, all. Martin here, writing from Washington, DC, a city under the sway of Mad King Donald, who for the moment is focusing his Sauron-esque gaze on the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, threatening to destroy that unique monument to a murdered predecessor because… he’s not allowed to put his own name on it, basically.
We’ll consider that tawdry saga below, and give thanks for the efforts of those who would stop a man whose idea of high culture is a playlist featuring lots of Andrew Lloyd-Webber. Then we’ll take a look at another dispiriting cultural tale, in which the rapper Macklemore was silenced for speaking up for Palestine and his big-name friend Ed Sheeran declined to speak up for him, only to rapidly lose other support acts appalled at his cowardice, thereby pitching his tour toward disaster. There’s Iran news too, and more. In we go.
Blockhead Steals Blocks
In The Art of the Deal, the ghostwritten book from 1987 that did much to create his foul legend, Donald Trump proudly tells how, as a young child, he stole building blocks from his younger brother, Robert, and “when I was done, I’d created a beautiful building. I liked it so much that I glued the whole thing together. And that was the end of Robert’s blocks.”
He didn’t do it to upset his brother, he says. He did it because “for some reason I liked to stir things up, and I liked to test people.”
No shit. In and out of the White House, Trump has been testing the American people for a decade and change. And as it happens, Tuesday’s blunt assault also involved stealing somebody’s blocks.