Anchor Struck

My first exposure to satire, even before MAD magazine found its way into my pre-pubescent hands, was the comic strip Li’l Abner. Its creator Al Capp countered the leftist leanings of Walt Kelly’s strip Pogo (“We have met the enemy and he is us.”) with characters like SWINE (Students Wildly Indignant about Nearly Everything), and I was all the less naive for them.

One of the characters in Abner was Joe Btfsplk, whose last name, according to Capp, is pronounced like a Bronx cheer/raspberry. Joe was the world’s worse jinx. Bad luck followed him everywhere. He always had a dour expression and a rain cloud above his head.

Stephen Miller, a real life Joe, isTrump’s most loyal lackey. Wikipedia tells us his politics have been described as “far-right, ultraconservative, anti-immigrant, ultranationalist and white nationalist.” He is the most negative person I’ve ever seen, and I worked for years on psych wards.

Not surprisingly, due largely to lackies like Miller, Aging Orange is unfazed by the thorough thumping of last week. He rails on with his misinterpretations of reality, and I have no reason to believe anything will change that. I’m reminded of the scene in Cheers when the psychiatrist Frasier Crane asks the perpetually clueless Cliff Clavin “What colour is the sky in your world?”

Dig in for seven more weeks of unadulterated elephant shit from the GOPers until reality starts seeping into Congress. Expect the worst from Miller. May he experience no better success than the original Joe, last seen in a Head and Shoulders dandruff shampoo commercial.