Are We Not Entertained?

Squid Games, Running Man, and the Long Walk

A “Dive for Cash,” in which ten teachers got on their knees to fight over $5,000 for school supplies, was held on December 12 at an ice skating rink in South Dakota.

A spokesperson for CU Mortgage Direct, which sponsored the event, told the Argus Leader, “[W]e thought it was an awesome group thing to do for the teachers. The teachers in this area, and any teacher, they deserve whatever the heck they get.” Apparently this includes the humiliation of scrambling for dollar bills on your knees in front of hundreds (and now millions) of people.

South Dakota teachers are among the lowest paid in the country. According to a recent report by the National Education Association, South Dakota teachers in the 2019-20 fiscal year earned an average annual salary of about $49,000, behind only Mississippi.

Teachers in S. Dakota fighting over dollar bills so they can buy school supplies.

What are the helmets for, anyway? My guess is the sponsor of this “Dive fo Cash,” was hoping not just for a spectacle but a violent spectacle in which the ten teachers, on their knees in the middle of an ice skating arena, would fight to the death for a few bucks. I’m not sure why, but the fact that they were fighting over a pile of dollar bills does make it worse. The Argus Leader interviewed one of the participants, a fifth grade teacher who managed to grab $592, who said “I think it's really cool when the community offers an opportunity like this for things that educations [sic] a lot of times pay out of pocket for.” Perhaps we are doomed after all.

It’s easy to say, “Well of course something like that would happen in South Dakota. That’s Kristi Noem’s state” but we all know versions of this this can happen—and have happened—anywhere in this country.

I hope this will spur a lot of people to join the Clear the List movement, in which people purchase items off of teachers’ Amazon wish-lists of much-needed school supplies, which is great. This begs the question, though—why is it even necessary? Why are so many school districts unable to purchase the most basic supplies for their students? And how can so many people live with the cognitive dissonance that must be experienced when they contemplate the dystopian ethical bankruptcy of such contests being held in what they believe is the greatest, most perfect country on the planet?

Brian Tyler Cohen’s original post of the “Dive for Cash” video has received, as of this evening, about 18,800 likes but 31,300 retweets. I’ve never seen a statistic like that on Twitter. This video clearly struck a nerve.

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In addition to the COVID, economic, and political crises we’re still in the middle of, the crisis of the mainstream media seems to be worsening (and is, in its turn, contributing to the worsening crisis of American democracy).

A couple of weeks ago Chris Christi, traitor-adjacent lickspittle, was given an inordinate amount of time on broadcast and cable news programs to hawk his new book. The fact that said book sold about 2,000 copies in its first week would be abysmal under any circumstances. For somebody with his high profile— given all of the free press—it’s gruesome. Schadenfreude aside, it should concern us that Christie got more air time that week than the passage of the Build Back Better legislation.

Shortly before passage of the Build Back Better bill the mainstream media complained that nobody knew what was in it. And yet, as the MSM had copies of the bill, couldn’t they have, you know, told us?

Perhaps most galling of all is the way the press is covering the economy. During the Trump administration the stock market, as long as it was doing well, became the metric by which economic success was measured. Now that Biden is in office and the Dow Jones is up 5,400 points (just under 18%), fear of inflation is the suddenly the only thing worth reporting. This despite the extraordinary decrease in unemployment (its lowest in 52 years), 16 million fewer people on unemployment, child poverty cut in half—the list could go on and on.

Linden is not happy, partially because of the disingenuous coverage of the economy but also because of what the MSM is not focusing on:

It’s heartening that the January 6th Select Committee seems to be doing genuinely good work that may indeed lead to consequences, but that work would have a much more significant impact if the MSM not just educated people about all of the new earth-shattering and damning information that seem to revealed on a daily basis, but to treat it with the seriousness it deserves.

The attempted insurrection wasn’t simply financed by Republican donors (like Clarence Thomas’ wife), it was meticulously planned. There are memos laying out legal justifications for overturning the results of a free and fair election. There were pressure campaigns against Mike Pence, and now the existence of a fucking Power Point presentation has come to light. In addition, we’ve just found out that former chief of staff Mark Meadows—using his personal email and phone—wrote to an unnamed individual that, according to the Committee’s report, on January 6th, "the National Guard would be present to 'protect pro Trump people' and that many more would be available on standby." Separately and together these are above-the-fold, 80-point font stories. But, yes, let’s do keep talking about inflation and how it’s going to destroy Joe Biden’s presidency.

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On December 7, the House of Representatives passed legislation by a vote of 222-212 which kicked off a multi-step process to lift the nation’s debt limit. The US Senate passed the bill two days later and now it heads to Biden’s desk for signature.

Raising the debt ceiling shouldn’t just be a no-brainer, it shouldn’t even require a vote. The debt ceiling simply allows the U.S. government to pay bills it’s already accrued. It’s exactly like our having to pay our credit card bills. It’s absurd that Republicans, time and again (at least when there’s a Democrat in the Oval Office) wield the debt ceiling as a political weapon in order to paint Democrats as the party of fiscal irresponsibility. Just a reminder: 28 Republican Senators voted against a bill that would fund the U.S. government through February because they are against government federal vaccine mandates.

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The Supreme Court agreed to allow abortion providers to sue Texas officials over the draconian anti-abortion law SB8 but SCOTUS is allowing the law to remain in place for now. So for the 104th day in a row, women in Texas are second-class citizens no longer able to exercise one of their most fundamental Constitutional rights.

It’s good news that California Governor Gavin Newsom has decided to (try to) beat the Supreme Court at its own game and allow private citizens to sue "anyone who manufactures, distributes, or sells an assault weapon or ghost gun kit or parts in the State of California."

Newsom’s move is, of course, one of the unintended consequences of upholding SB8 that Justice Kavanaugh seems concerned about—states would theoretically get to change all sorts of federal laws they don’t like.

Anybody who doesn’t think the five “originalists” on the Court aren’t hypocritical enough to strike down any state law that imposes restrictions on gun owners and manufacturers while allowing SB8 to stand hasn’t been paying attention.

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UNDER (AND OFF) THE RADAR

• This article came out a couple if weeks ago but it’s worth bringing to the fore: “Trump allies work to place supporters in key election posts across the country, spurring fears about future vote challenges.”

  We need to be really clear that the efforts to undermine democracy are happening in many states across the country and the groundwork is being laid to challenge the results of elections of 2022 and 2024 if things don’t go the Republican’s way.

• President Biden has put in place a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic s citing China’s continuing human rights abuses. I hope the silencing of Peng Shuai, a professional tennis player and three-time Olympian, factored into his decision. At the beginning of November, Peng posted a video alleging sexual assault against a former top official in the Chinese government. Minutes later her post disappeared, as did all mention of her on Chinese social media. Peng herself went missing for 18 days and, even though she has resurfaced, there is no way to know if she’s safe. Steve Simon, president of the Women’s Tennis Association, has since suspended all WTA tournaments in China. The International Olympic Committee has offered lame statements regarding “quiet diplomacy,” but it seems clear the organization won’t take any decisive action. The IOC is probably the only entity that could bring pressure to bear on the Chinese government but it’s a corrupt organization through and through, so the Winter Olympics will proceed as if everything is just fine.

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This is not to be missed:

Mallory McMorrow @MalloryMcMorrow

This morning, a woman in my district who teaches at Oxford messaged me saying she and her colleagues who survived the shooting "need to do something more tangible than cry." Because if we continue to do nothing, this will keep happening, again and again and again and again.

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I was talking last night to my friend, Marissa Rothkopf—whose newsletter, The Secret Life of Cookies, and podcast of the same name are essential reading and listening respectively—about Mozart’s Adagio and Rondo for Glass Harmonica. (If you want to solve the mystery of why we were having this conversation, please read tomorrow’s Twofer Tuesday.) I had completely forgotten what a glass harmonica sounds like so I listened to the adagio (um, no) and it reminded me of Renaissance music which in turn reminded me of this piece, Rose, Liz, Printemps, Verdure (Rose, Lily, Spring, Nature), a 14th century Rondeau for four voices written by Guillame de Machaut:

Rose, Liz has been described as “lilting.” I think it’s glorious. And I hope it helps make the news a little more bearable.