This week, our first and second place winner on the insightful side is PaulT, on our post about the pro-Trump 12-year-old who was told that people calling him a defender of racism and sexual assault is protected speech. One commenter asserted that this means these terms have lost all meaning and can be lobbed at anyone you don't like, and Paul put that notion to bed:
You do know that Trump was sued several times for the former and one of the most famous parts of his campaign was him openly admitting to the latter, right?
Yes, words do lose meaning when the person displaying himself as being well defined by them faces no consequences from doing so, but that has nothing to do with the media showing you that person's own words.
For second place, it's Paul's prior comment with thoughts on the same post:
"In one popular clip, C.M. called Hillary Clinton “deplorable.”"
Well, that is the level of insight and originality I'd expect from whoever pushed him into this...
"They’re calling Donald Trump a psychopath. They say he’s mentally unfit"
...and he's done nothing since the day of his election to disprove that, and seems to be getting steadily worse. I wonder how the 22 million unemployed confirmed today feel about his fitness for office as he ensures his name is on their pity cheques that might keep them fed for a few weeks while he sneaks in more tax breaks for the rich.
"It was this interview -- along with C.M.'s interview with Alex Jones"
How am I now shocked by that association? Did Dan and Jordan do an episode? I'll have to track it down.
For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start out with an anonymous comment about the French government forcing Google to pay newspapers for sending them traffic:
I have no sympathy. Zero. Any company that doesn't want to show up in Google search results, or have a snippet shown, just has to set a flag. The news agencies want to get paid rather than pay for something which they claim is essential to their survival. (I mean, in the aggregate search results are essential for Google too, so it seems the current price of "free" is about correct once you take the monopoly power out of it.)
From the linked article:
Google may have treated in the same way, economic actors with different situations outside of any objective justification, and therefore of having implemented a discriminatory practice.
Discrimination by treating them the same! I wonder if this makes more sense in the original French.
Next, it's Thad with a response to a common oversimplification about congress:
FFS, spare me on the "everyone in Congress is the same" crap. There are good people in Congress and there are bad people in Congress.
There are deep and serious problems with money in politics, and they go deeper than partisan divisions. But this tedious bullshit about how everyone in Congress is alike is both wrong and lazy.
Maybe you're the one who should be reading up on your representation in Congress and their specific strengths and weaknesses. There is, after all, an election in November, and you've probably got a House seat and possibly a Senate seat to vote for. To say nothing of down-ballot offices.
But actually familiarizing yourself with who's sitting and who's running and who's taking money from where is a lot more work than painting 535 people with the same broad brush.
Over on the funny side, our first place winner is another comment from Thad on our post about an unexpected tweet-thread from Steak-umm:
I think we've already established Trump doesn't know how to sell steak.
In second place, it's Stephen T. Stone with another comment on the post about the 12-year-old Trump fan:
Roy Moore isn’t a racist and a sex abuser. He’s a Republican.
…whoops, tautology!
For editor's choice on the funny side, we start out with one final nod to Thad, this time for responding to the comment that the 12-year-old does a good Trump impersonation:
That's because Trump does such a good twelve-year-old impersonation.
And finally, we've got a comment from Norahc about our post entitled Senator Tillis Angry At The Internet Archive For Helping People Read During A Pandemic; Archive Explains Why That's Wrong:
You do realize you could have stopped the headline after the first six words, right?
That's all for this week, folks!
