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Monday, March 18, 2024

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News + PoliticsOPINION: Donald Trump, Sid Vicious, click-bait, and media imagination

OPINION: Donald Trump, Sid Vicious, click-bait, and media imagination

Sometimes you need a president -- and a bass player -- who actually knows how to do the job, even if he doesn't make as good copy.

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Texas senator John Cornyn (a stern-faced Republican who is either “distinguished looking” or a “faux Foghorn Leghorn” depending upon one’s point of view; I lean fowl here, myself) is complaining now about Joe Biden’s tweets being ordinary and his apparent lack of interplay with the press.

I quote: “The president is not doing cable news interviews. Tweets from his account are limited and, when they come, unimaginably conventional. The public comments are largely scripted. Biden has opted for fewer sit down interviews with mainstream outlets and reporters.”

Sid Vicious, with Johnny Rotten (who actually had talent) in Norway. Wikimedia image from the National Archives of Norway

This is a grave concern, you see—and a truly important matter. The US must have a colorful leader that stokes the media’s imagination. And provides click-bait for an eyeball dependent business model.

Me being me and all, a first-wave punk rocker, this reminds me of the 1977 replacement of Glen Matlock with Sid Vicious way back when in the now-legendary Sex Pistols. Glen was a regular guy, too straight-seeming, not anarchic. Sid was a train-wreck, dope-fiend, and dangerous, and fit the band’s image. (Glen, famously, had the temerity to be a Beatles fan, which was excruciatingly offensive to the band’s singer and its manager as is belied their “we have no past” stance. Which was, well, total crap.)

Never mind (the bollocks) that Matlock is an excellent bass player and gave the group tremendous power and punch, or that he wrote the music for their best songs, “Anarchy In The UK” and “God Save The Queen.” He was dullsville, y’see, and a square.

However, Sid couldn’t play or sing or really write anything and shortly after joining, the band imploded, partially because he took the heart out of the rest of the rhythm section with them carrying him. His public image, as it were, was incapable of hitting notes which, costumes and sneering aside, is the bassist’s job.

Sometimes competence without drama is good.

Same in the opposite order with President Biden as opposed to the man he replaced. A competent and capable administrator whose focus appears to be “making things work” as opposed to giving half-witted pseudo journalists copy or lazy US senators more time to fleece their donors as opposed to bettering their constituents. Uncle Joe may be kind of somnambulant at times and clingy as per the status quo, but he does offer the not insane opinion that it’s better to inject a vaccine than bleach into one’s muscles and veins.

As per Senator Cornyn’s “concerns”? This is how you know how utterly useless these reactionary pols are—and how their positions exist solely to milk and bilk as their “principles” exist solely to keep a ridiculous racket and grift alive.

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