Holiday Break - 2020-2021

"Brutally Honest" is currently on its annual holiday break.

New commentary will return on January 25th, 2021 (pending any last-minute Armageddon actions from a certain outgoing resident of the White House).

Week of 11/30/2020

 

The 2020 Brutally Honest Awards
– by David Matthews 2

And so, we have come to the closing weeks of 2020. 

We started with a gross injustice, of a rigged impeachment trial of a corrupt narcissist, and we end with that same corrupt narcissist now actively trying to subvert the American electoral system.  And in between all that we have had to deal with multiple disasters, an overwhelming number of hurricanes, riots, protests, racial attacks and racial murders, economic collapses, oh, and a global pandemic that a certain corrupt criminal narcissist declared was a political hoax even after contracting it.

To borrow from Queen Elizabeth, 2020 is certainly an “annus horribilis” if there ever was one.

With that in mind, before this commentator takes his annual end-of-the-year break, it is time to recognize the best of the best and the worst of the worst – and some are the worst of the worst of the even worst – that made up this dumpster fire inside a train-wreck in the middle of a radioactive toxic waste dump that is 2020.

The Absolute Worst Person In The World For 2020 (and for the whole 2010’s): Narcissist President Donald John Trump – Let’s get brutally honest here... if there is anyone that not only deserves, if not epitomizes, the title of “absolute worst person in the world”, it is him. 

A corrupt narcissist who started the year impeached, who manipulated the equally corrupt enablers in the Senate to rig the impeachment trial so he would never be convicted, who knew about how lethal the coronavirus was and still told people that it was a “hoax”, that it was “no different than the flu”, that it would “magically go away”, even after contracting it himself and ended up being rushed to the hospital, that encouraged his extremists to “liberate” states with Democratic governors from trying to enact measures to contain the spread of the virus, and demanded that businesses open up quickly and sports teams start playing again quickly and kids go back to school immediately regardless of the fact that the spread of the virus had not slowed. 

This is the so-called “tough guy” who cowered in his bunker like a scared little child when peaceful protesters were in front of the White House, and then sent his literal-jackbooted goons to attack the protesters and the media just so he could stage a photo-op in front of a church that he never went to, and held up a bible like it was a trophy.  The huckster who claimed that the November elections were “a fraud” months before a single vote could even be cast, and put in place a Postmaster General that sabotaged the US Postal Service in an attempt to block mail-in votes because he knew that during a global pandemic more people would be voting that way.

And while it should not be surprising that he is refusing to concede the election to President-Elect Joe Biden – because the conceited can never concede – it also does not justify his endless legal chicanery to challenge every single vote and every single count and every single recount in every single city and every single state on claims of “fraud” that they never produce in court and yet scream about to everyone outside the courtrooms.

Narcissist President Donald Trump is a loser and a failure.  He failed to deal with the global pandemic and instead politicized it and tried to blame China for his gross ineptitude.  His band-aid approach to the gaping laceration that has been America’s economy because of the global pandemic had only profited the millionaires and billionaires and not rest of America, including many of the red-hat cult supporters that worship him like Jesus.  The same red-hat cult followers that are now overcrowding hospitals because they refuse to wear masks and practice social distancing and are telling overburdened nurses and doctors that it’s “just the flu” and it’ll “soon go away” while they slowly die.  He is a loser that cannot even win by cheating.

The only good thing to say about this pathetic, orange-skinned, man-child loser for this year is that – barring any last-minute cheat that happens during the break – he will be leaving in January.  Whether slipping out in the dead of night like the coward that he is, or dragged out kicking and screaming, he will be gone.  And, hopefully soon after, the wannabe third-world junta crime-lord will have to face both civil and criminal charges for what he’s done both before and during his nightmare tenure in office.  State charges that he cannot pardon himself out of.  Civil charges that he cannot weasel out of or hide behind the office he so profaned.  Hell, he has one multinational bank and the whole country of China after him for his debts.

But that will be his nightmare next year, not America’s.

The Second Absolute Worst Person In the World for 2020: Senate Majority Leader Mitch “The Bitch” McConnell – Narcissist Trump may be the worst, but he never would have been if not for his legions of enablers, and none were any more despicable than Mitch “The Bitch”.  From sabotaging the impeachment trial in the Senate to ramming through his personally-hand-picked judicial replacement for the departed Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg despite his so-called “tradition” from 2016, McConnell has been the monster enabling and sustaining the orange-skinned monster.

Narcissist Trump claimed the election was “rigged” and a “fraud”, and yet every proposal to secure the election died at McConnell’s feet without even going to the Senate.  Help out struggling Americans more than just that initial “stimulus” program?  Every attempt to help also died at McConnell’s feet without going to the Senate for consideration.  No, McConnell’s emphasis was to rush through the confirmation of red-hat judges for vacancies that he himself had personally kept vacant during President Obama’s eight years in office.

Mitch “The Bitch” is the one that is truly guilty of “packing the courts”.  You know it.  I know it.  He knows it.

And the only way he will be stopped will be during the break, when the voters of the State of Georgia have their runoff for both their Senate seats.  If the Dems win both seats, McConnell is neutered.  Otherwise, he will single-handedly resume his sabotage of the incoming Biden Administration.  You know this.  I know this.  He knows it.

Either way, he is still a monster that needs to be stopped next.

The Biggest Losers of 2020: Narcissist President Donald Trump and the American People – It’s hard to say which of the two are the “biggest” losers for the year.  Obviously, Narcissist Trump is a big loser, and not just because he lost the 2020 Presidential Election and is currently attempting a coup.  Even if he legitimately won, he would still be considered a loser for the gross ineptitude in handling the pandemic, the economy, and the plethora of natural disasters that have hit Americans hard, including wildfires and multiple hurricanes.  He hasn’t even bothered to toss so much as one roll of paper towels for the Gulf Coast after being hit by multiple hurricanes.

But equally so the American people have lost big this past year.  The Gross Domestic Product had its biggest single-quarter drop in the history of American economy due to the global pandemic.  Worse than the Great Depression and the Great Recession combined!  Millions are still unemployed because of it.  Millions are facing evictions and foreclosures because of this.  The global pandemic is still running wild and unchecked in America, with more and more people getting the COVID-19 virus, ending up going to the overburdened and over-capacitated hospitals, and many dying.

And, no, I don’t see any kind of help coming our way from Washington.  The lame-duck loser in the White House doesn’t give a damn, and the slack-jawed turtle-dick in the Senate certainly won’t allow any kind of help past his desk.  You will see a record number of evictions and bankruptcies after Christmas.  Some of them are already starting.

It will get worse before it gets better, people.  And you can thank the orange-skinned narcissist and his slack-jawed enabler for that.

The Biggest Winners for 2020 (3-way tie): COVID-19, Rich People, and President-Elect Joe Biden – Obviously the COVID-19 novel coronavirus is a big winner for the year, even though it doesn’t have the capacity to understand or appreciate the win.  Yes, it came from China, and they screwed up in not letting the world know about it until it had already reached Europe, but that does not excuse the gross ineptitude of the orange-skinned super-spreader in the White House and our anti-mask COVIDiots in fighting any attempt to slow down the spread, never mind try to contain it.  That is decisively on us.

Rich people are also the big winners this year, even with the GDP sinking like a stone.  They get to celebrate the Dow Jones hitting 30,000 while the rest of the American people have to wait in long lines for food pantries and unemployment benefits.  Rich people are buying houses – with cash, no less – while the rest of us struggle to find toilet paper again.  Because, you know, hoarding.

Speaking of, I’ve been informed by Santa Claus that he saw what we all did with the hoarding, and he says that nobody is getting anything this Christmas.

As for our future 46^th President of the United States, you have to admit that Joe Biden pulled off a pretty good win this year.  He was the last to join the campaign orgy, with pretty much no campaign money.  People were predicting him to fail early.  And yet, on his name alone, he would beat out all of the other contenders, including the one that would eventually become his running mate, and he ended up winning with the highest number of votes in American history.  Eighty-million-plus votes is nothing to sneeze at!

So… damn you, COVID-19; screw you, rich people; and, congrats, President-Elect Biden!

The Best TV Program/Special for 2020: The CW’s “Crisis on Infinite Earths” Parts 4 and 5 – Yes, parts 1-3 aired in December of 2019, but the best parts aired in January.  Part 4 of “Crisis” had the few surviving heroes (and Lex Luthor) hold up outside of time and space, and the ghost of Oliver Queen, now the Spectre, giving them the means to travel back in time to try to fix things.  Queen’s life is reviewed, and in the middle of it we were given the biggest surprise of them all… when CW’s Flash (Grant Gustin) met Zach Snyder’s Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) from the DC movies.  Previously there were fleeting connections to DC’s TV and movie past, with Brandon Routh as both CW’s Atom and as Warner Brother’s Superman from “Superman Returns” and representing the late Christopher Reeve’s four movies, but this was the biggest surprise ever.

The conclusion brought an epic battle with the heroes now on a merged Earth, with the ending leading to the formation of the Justice League, and the revelation that there is still a multiverse, and a place for other DC shows like “Titans”, “Swamp Thing”, “Stargirl”, and others to still exist without being part of the new CW universe.

The only sad part about this is that “Crisis” came at the cost of three shows.  “Arrow” ended as per their original plan, but “Supergirl” and “Black Lightning” will also end their shows in 2021.  And even though the CW’s “Superman and Lois” will start next year, “Batwoman” will start 2021 with an all-new actress and character in the title role.  For all the talk about starting the CW’s “Justice League”, many of the founding members will soon not be there.

Hopefully the folks at CW will figure out how to make this merged Earth really work.

The Death Nobody Acknowledges for 2020: The Death of the “Republican Party” – This commentator has said over and over again that there really is no “Republican Party” anymore.  It had been co-opted by Narcissist Trump in 2016, and pretty much carries on in name only.

But this past summer, during the so-called “GOP National Convention,” did the formal death of the party took place.

Up until this point, the GOP could point to their party platform to say that this was what they believed.  That they were an entity that was more than just one man or a group of elected officials.

However, in 2020, the members of the “GOP” suspended their platform and instead issued a statement pronouncing their fealty to Narcissist President Donald Trump.

For all intents and purposes, the GOP officially killed itself on that day and became a party of and to Narcissist President Donald Trump.  It became officially the Trump Party.

The media need to stop calling those folks “Republicans” anymore.  They need to stop putting that “- R” next to their names.  It refers to a party that ceased to exist as of 2020.  They’re Trump Party people now, even without their messiah.  They need to be called “Trumpians” and have a “- T” next to their names.

And if you have any doubts, understand that not only is their messiah planning on running again in 2024, provided he isn’t in prison or in exile, but his family is planning on taking over the party leadership and running for office on his name.

They are not “Republicans”.  They are not the “GOP”.  They are Trumpians now.

The WTF Award For Bad Business Decisions in 2020: AT&T and Warner Brothers/DC Comics – So let’s see... DC ends up cancelling several comic series, firing about half its staff, getting rid of Dan DiDio... wait, that was a good thing... oh, and shuttering their streaming service DC Universe and turning it into a comics repository.  All of those really good shows that were on DC Universe?  They will go to both the CW and their other baby, HBO Max.

Oh, and HBO Max?  Nice service, provided you have an Android phone/tablet or an iPhone/iPad.  It’s currently not available through Roku and only recently made the jump to Amazon’s Fire Stick.

The people at AT&T have clearly showed that they did not know how to handle purchasing a huge media company like Time Warner.  Warner Media was smart to arrange their DC Universe service with Roku prior to launch.  They kept “Titans” on the service instead of sending it to the CW because it was decidedly an “R”-rated program.  Same with “Doom Patrol”.  Warner Media knows how to handle media.  AT&T seemingly only know how to handle mergers and acquisitions.

Sound familiar?  Yeah, American Online made the same mistake in the 1990’s when they first bought Time Warner.

It’s funny, though, because they also get this last award...

The Competence Award for Smart Business Decisions in 2020: AT&T and Warner Brother/DC Comics – It’s strange because while AT&T have been acting like vulture capitalists, there have also been some smart decisions coming from them this year.

Because of the global pandemic, pretty much every convention since the spring have been cancelled.  Can’t have people gathering and spreading COVID-19, can we?  So the decision was made for DC to have their own virtual convention.  A place for fans to get the latest information and to meet with the stars virtually without having to pay for overpriced hotel rooms and a $10 plate of warmed-over nachos.  DC’s FanDome was probably the best convention of the year... or at least the first part was.

The second-best decision for them was revealed during DC’s FanDome.  It was the decision to release “The Snyder Cut” version of “Justice League”.  Yes, it was supposedly an unfinished project, but Warner Brothers (with AT&T’s apparent okay) to let Zach Snyder finish the work using all the footage never aired in the theatres and a handful of re-shoots. 

The whole “Snyder Cut” situation was something that had been brewing pretty much since “Justice League” flopped in the theatres.  It made money, but people said it was a bomb, and obviously none of the footage we saw in the trailers made it to the finished product, so that opened the door for people to demand to see the “unfinished” version.  And even though the idiot in charge of Warner Brothers at the time kept on denying its existence, everyone pretty much knew there was that “original director’s version” somewhere.  So, kudos, Warner Brothers.  And we’ll find out how good this incarnation will be in 2021.

And the third-best decision just came out a few weeks prior to this column.  It was the decision to release the “Wonder Woman 1984” movie not only in the U.S. theatres on Christmas Day, but also air it for one month on HBO Max.

I know that decision pissed off a few folks who now believe that the movie “has to be a flop” because it’s going right to streaming, but it actually was a very smart decision for Warner Brothers.

We’ve seen what happens when the studios try to release a movie in the middle of a pandemic.  They don’t get the huge box office numbers they otherwise would have gotten.  Remember “Tenet”?  And rather than just push the movie release back over and over because we ‘Muricans can’t be responsible when it comes to the global pandemic, Warner is just releasing this movie in the theatres and in streaming.

Oh, and don’t forget that HBO Max is not a free service!  It’s subscription.  So they’re going to make money one way or another.  If you wanted to see the movie and you don’t want to risk getting COVID because of the COVIDiots, you will pony up the subscription fee if you don’t have it already and you watch the movie at the privacy of your own home.

Yes, HBO Max is not available through Roku yet, but there’s still time for Warner Brothers to make the deal just like Disney did with Disney+ and Comcast/NBC did with Peacock.  And, if they do, that would be the fourth smart decision.

So... that’s pretty much if for 2020.  I wish there was more to go over, but the whole COVID thing really diminished a lot of other subjects to cover.  And we don’t know what will come during the break.  We still have an unstable person with access to soldiers and nuclear weapons for a few more weeks.  It’s still anything goes.

Good luck everyone, and hopefully we’ll see each other in January of 2021.

 

Week of 11/23/2020

 This Year’s Holiday Misery Is Our Own Fault
– by David Matthews 2

This week’s column is being posted three days before the U.S. celebration of Thanksgiving.  Yes, ‘Muricans, the Internet is not an American-only thing.  There are plenty of people around the world who do not celebrate the same holidays as us.

That said, it is safe to say that the 2020 Holiday Season is certainly going to be far different than previous years.  Yes, Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang will have their specials on PBS instead of CBS, and people have started putting up the Christmas stuff far earlier than previously.  Some right after Halloween.  And the stores are sure as hell starting their “Black Friday” sales a lot earlier and pushing them even harder.

But there’s more to it than that.

This year, there is a push to not gather for the holidays.  Stay at home.  Don’t get the family together.  Mail your gifts and chat via Zoom and Teams and whatever other chatting program we can put to use.  Don’t bring the grandparents over for the holidays.

Because 2020 is the year of the COVID-19 global viral pandemic.  A pandemic that has killed millions and infected millions more and the numbers are going up and up and up here in the United States. 

The majority of the world is having to deal with a second wave on infections; but, here in the United States, it’s all just one wave.  Because America has still not yet dealt with the initial infections.  We reduced the spread, temporarily.  We brought down the numbers, temporarily, but it never went away for us, and those numbers are now back and they’re even higher than in the spring when the initial outbreak hit America.  So there is no “second wave” for America to worry about, because it’s all just one viral outbreak.

And so the message is for us to basically cancel the holidays this year.  Don’t bring the family together for Thanksgiving.  Don’t go mad-shopping on Black Friday.  Take it all online.  Stay at home for Christmas and New Year’s Eve.  Be together in spirit and online.

Even the movie studios are adapting.  After being delayed a few times, Warner Brothers has announced they will release the movie “Wonder Woman 1984” not just in the theatres on Christmas Day, but also through their brandy-new streaming service HBO Max.  A very smart move if you think about it, because the supposed “big blockbuster” movies that have been released previously have not delivered the box office money they had hopes… because either nobody is going to the theatres because of the pandemic, or because the big theater chains like Regal Cinemas and AMC are shutting down.

The holiday season is all messed up this year.

And it is all our collective fault.

It’s all our fault because we have not taken the necessary precautions to deal with the pandemic.

Yeah, we shut down for a few weeks, but not long enough.  And not all of us did.  Way too many business declared themselves “essential”.  Businesses were more worried about making money than keeping their employees safe.  Red-hat governors were busy appeasing an incompetent orange-skinned narcissist who wanted a robust economy instead of worrying about the safety of their citizens.

But do you know who is the most responsible for our continual suffering of the initial COVID outbreak in America?  No, it is not the orange-skinned incompetent narcissist who was stupid enough to get COVID himself.  It’s not the fault of big businesses that demanded that workers go back to work ASAP.

The true fault for our continued COVID pandemic that is affecting our very being… is ourselves.

Let’s get brutally honest here… we could have had a great holiday season with all of the planned gatherings that we wanted, provided we all heeded the precautions back in the spring and summer.  Provided that we all stayed at home unless necessary and wore masks when we couldn’t and socially distanced ourselves when possible.  We could be celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas like we always wanted, had we did what we needed to do earlier in the year.

But we didn’t, did we?  Not all of us, anyway.

Instead we have had to deal with red-hat snowflakes that throw screaming temper tantrums when told they have to wear a mask.  That pretend to cover their faces instead of actually having a mask with them and wearing it.  That plot violent overthrows of state legislatures over mask mandates.  That look at the cases being reported and the ever-escalating numbers of those infected and those dying and to this very day are saying “it’s a hoax.  It’s no different than the flu.  It’ll just go away.”

It’s not.  It won’t.  Stop lying.  And it is your fault that we still have to deal with it today.

Yes, you.

You, my fellow readers, my friends and family and neighbors and co-workers.  You the business leaders and politicians and media personalities.  All of you.  Even the “you” that I see in the mirror every day. 

You are all at fault.

Every report in the news today of COVID numbers going up, every report of deaths due to COVID, every story you hear of families having to bury parents and grandparents and children because of COVID, that is all on you! 

Not too long ago I read a story from a former OR nurse that had to quit because she could no longer deal with being overwhelmed by the people infected and especially those that were being left to die at the hospital that she worked in.  She talked about her encounter with the last patient on her rounds who was in intensive care and was being moved to another room so they could free up the bed space.  He had COVID, but he still firmly believed that it was all being blown out of proportion.  He assumed it was like the flu and that it would magically go away.  The nurse told him, as she was wrapped up in plastic and latex and duct tape that this was her last day there and he was her last patient, that the pandemic is real, and that the whole wing is full of people just like him who had COVID and were either fighting for their lives or were dying.  And as she helped roll his bed out so they could have the room for someone else, he saw with his own eyes just how overwhelmed the hospital was, with infected people out in the hallway, some of them just as bad as him.  Afterward, he apologized to her, because, until that moment, he really believed the lies and falsehoods being told to him by his friends and family members and those on talk radio and the Internet.  It was only then that he realized how serious it was.

Think about it.  Hospitals are full of patients, people sick enough to need intensive care, people dying, people being left to die, doctors and nurses overwhelmed, and even those that are sick and dying still believe it’s all overblown, that it’s no different than the flu, that it will just magically go away.  Their willful ignorance is responsible for them being in that situation!

Yes, as of this column’s posting, there are possible vaccines being tested that are supposed to be 90-95% effective.  But it is still not an instant cure-all.  It will still take over a year for it to be implemented to everyone, never mind be effective enough to contain the virus spread.

It will still not magically go away, no matter how many of us want to continue to delude ourselves that it will!  Not today.  Not tomorrow.  Not even into next year!

And, yeah, our orange-skinned super-spreading narcissist had COVID and he got first-class accommodations and experimental treatments, all paid for by the American taxpayers.  Accommodations and treatments that the rest of us would never have, ever, unless perhaps we won the lottery.  Any of you feel lucky?

So get this into your thick skulls, people: if you bring your family together, with your spoiled kids in school and your entitled relatives and your immune-compromised grandparents, and have everyone together for Thanksgiving like you have done every year in the past, there is a chance that some of you will be sick and/or dead come Christmas.  Maybe it’ll be your kids, or your grandparents, or maybe it’ll be you or your spouse.  And because of your willful and selfish ignorance, this pandemic will continue to affect us all well into 2021. 

We can stop it.  We can contain it so that any immunization that gets rolled out can save us so we won’t have to deal with this come next Thanksgiving.  But it requires us all to stop being ignorant and start taking the steps now.  Is that too much to ask?