satire

A Confederacy of Doofuses

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In the first quarter of the 21st Century, there was an imperial president so exceedingly fond of adulation that he appointed his cabinet officials based, not on experience and competence, but on their television chops and their talent for groveling and abasing themselves. This president cared nothing about the welfare of US citizens who weren’t millionaires but rather spent his days playing golf or monitoring his presence on television and social media.  

For example, in the wee hours Wednesday last, as the Russian Ukrainian war raged and disease and starvation racked Gaza, the imperial president complained on his favorite social media platform that “There is a sick rumor going around that Fake News NBC extended the contract of one of the least talented Late Night television hosts out there, Seth Meyers [. . .] [who] has no Ratings, Talent, or Intelligence, and the Personality of an insecure child. So, why would Fake News NBC extend this dope’s contract. I don’t know, but I’ll definitely be finding out!!!”

So, he spent most of his days bragging about himself or castigating his enemies on his favorite platform, Truth Social, an Orwellian name if there ever was one! Unlike most presidents, who might devote their time in office analyzing budgets or conferring with world leaders, the imperial president squandered almost all of his time on Truth Social making preposterous claims like he’d reduce drug prices by 14,000%.  Otherwise, when not posting on social media, at great expense to US taxpayers, he rode around golf courses, hopping on and off of carts, taking mulligan after mulligan.

But what the imperial president really loved the most were cabinet meetings where his obsequious department heads heaped upon him praise so hyperbolic that it might very well cause Kim Jong-un’s plump cheeks to blush.

For example, at the most recent cabinet meeting, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer told the imperial president, referring to a three-story banner of his visage hanging from the facade of the Labor Department. “Mr. President, I invite you to see your big, beautiful face on a banner in front of the Department of Labor, because you are really the transformational president of the American worker.”

The Imperial President’s Big Beautiful Face

Not to be undone, the imperial president’s special envoy to the Middle East and Russia, Steve Witkoff, gushed, “There’s only one thing I wish for: that the Nobel committee finally gets its act together and realizes that you are the single finest candidate since the Nobel Peace, this Nobel award was ever talked about.”

Wow, the only thing that Witkoff wishes for isn’t world peace or a cure for cancer but that the imperial president, who famously fomented a riot on 6 January 2021, receives a prize for peace.

And although these cabinet ministers were every adept at praising their leader, they were also very inept at running their agencies. The Pentagon and the CDC were both in shambles, and many of the imperial president’s subjects were growing increasingly unhappy as farm workers were deported, crops rotted in the fields, and grocery prices continued to rise.

To make matters worse, the imperial president was not only mentally unwell, but he also suffered physical ailments.  His “big, beautiful face” was in fact, despite the inch-thick orange make-up he wore, puffy and haggard, his ankles grotesquely swollen, and his hands bruised from IV punctures.  If Labor Secretary Chavez-DeRemer were more honest, she might have very well called him “a fat, decrepit fuck.”

Many of his subjects speculated that the imperial president was suffering from dementia as well, as he obsessed about non-existent gigantic water faucets and, like Don Quixote himself, tilted at windmills. Increasingly, his observations devolved into rambles so disjointed that the reporters covering the president put their fingers in their ears so they wouldn’t have to quote him.

Although the president continues to rule, it seems that his days may be numbered, which is especially bad news for him because he can’t sue or denigrate Death, which is his favorite way of dealing with adversaries. 

After the imperial president’s demise, what will become of his cabinet members is anyone’s guess. 

Trump’s Golden Age: A Photo Essay (or as they say, “a jpeg is worth five-thousand keystrokes”)

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ICE Agents trying their luck at Bert’s Market on Folly Beach

“The golden age of America has only just begun – it will be like nothing that has ever been seen before.” Donald Trump January 2024

Trump swearing to uphold the Constitution with his hand on a God Bless the USA Bible, the only Bible officially endorsed by Lee Greenwood and Donald Trump

Post Inaugural partygoers celebrating at Mar-O-Lago (and unconsciously channeling Fellini)

The Golden Age begins

Future deportee

Hastily called up National Guard sleeping on the floor of a warehouse because former talkshow host and drunk failed to arrange accommodations

Senator Padilla about to get cuffed at Press Conference

Happy couple Trump and Melania chilling at the Kennedy Center before a performance of Les Miz.

War breaks out between Israel and Iran

Fin

By the way, the concept of the photo essay originated in Germany in the 1920s. Here’s a photograph of my son Ned who lives in Nuremberg enjoying a fascinating memoir.

“Go Away, Lindsey; You Bother Me.”

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Let me say right off that I’m an avid admirer of WC Fields, who, in fact, is the inspiration for Colonel Duckenfield, the amiable but drunken calculus teacher in my novel Today, Oh Boy.[1]

Here he is in action:

Colonel Dukenfield has charged his minions with two in-class problems using the squeeze principle, so he has excused himself, ostensibly to use the restroom. A huge veined bulbous nose dominates his round, puffy, flushed face, though there’s still a gleam in his squinty blue eyes, especially when he’s talking to a pretty lady. His knees, though, are killing him, along with his corn-riddled toes stuffed into a pair of scuffed wingtips, the only dress shoes he owns. Once he reaches the faculty men’s room, he closes the door and takes out the pewter flask that bears his name and the name of his plane, the Flying Fortress, etched handsomely in ornate, old-fashioned cursive. He sloshes the Jameson’s whiskey around before taking a long, hard draw. Carefully, he screws the cap back on and places the flask in the right pocket of his blazer.

I mean, what’s not to love?

So I don’t intend any disrespect to Field’s surviving progeny (his great granddaughter’s wedding picture appeared in the Santa Cruz Sentinel in 2018) when I suggest that Lindsey Graham could be plausibly cast as an older Fields in a biopic once his political career is over, which may be sooner rather than later, given that he could get primaried on the one hand, and the country is on the road to economic and geopolitical ruin under our unhinged Dear Leader on the other.

What a great pairing of buffoons, Fields’ cinematic persona with Graham’s real life personality!

I know you might be thinking that Graham’s a little long in the tooth at 69 to embark on a new career; however, look at me at 72, getting ready to make a cameo in an upcoming short feature based on a chapter from Today, Oh Boy.[2]

So, Lindsey, see, it’s never too late to segue into something new. Look, man, you’re addicted to the limelight, and look, even if there’s not a Fields biopic on the horizon, maybe some enterprising filmmaker will buy the rights to Today, Oh Boy, and you can end up playing the Colonel himself.

As my wife Caroline says, “We can hope. We can dream.”

[1] You can read a review and purchase it here.

[2] I’ll be sitting at a bar, sipping a PBR, a role that I was born to play.

What Do Barron Trump, Shane MacGowan,  Sandra Day O’Connor, and George Santos Have in Common?

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This week, i.e. 7 November 2023 – 2 December 2023, certainly has been an eventful one when it comes to obituaries, politics, and the rule of law.

I’ll start with the last item first. 

In the insurrection realm of the Trump inditements, Roy Cohn’s protege isn’t even bothering to claim innocence anymore but arguing that he shouldn’t go to trial until he finishes his second term as president in 2029, when he’ll be even older and more morbidly obese. His crackerjack legal team argues that trying him for treason during his campaign for president amounts to election interference.[1] Of course, if he wins again and again mouths the oath of office to protect the Constitution, he won’t have to worry about the term ever ending as he’ll follow in the footsteps of his good buddy Kim Jong Un and declare himself President-for-Life, perhaps bestowing succession to his sons North Korean style, which means that one day we’ll have a President who also holds the title of Bar(r)on. 

By the way, when’s the last time you’ve seen a photo of Barron Trump? He’s essentially invisible, drifting ghostlike through the rococo rooms of the Mar-a-Lago family compound pioneering a brand new literary genre, Glitter Gothic.

I’ll continue to reverse order with George Santos, the Inspector Clouseau of con men, who funneled campaign contributions into his own coffers, and dig this, stole contributors’ identities racking up thousands of dollars on their credit cards. 

Here’s a pithy summary from the NYT: 

The [Congressional] report detailed “substantial evidence” of the congressman funneling campaign funds to cover personal expenses, including at luxury retailers, on cosmetic procedures and on travel. 

Examples include: $4,127 at Hermès; “smaller purchases” at OnlyFans, a website that hosts adult content, and makeup store Sephora; $6,000 at Ferragamo; nearly $3,000 on Botox; and $3,332 for an Airbnb, when Santos was “off at [the] Hampton’s [sic] for the weekend.” 

Yesterday, in a rare example of bipartisanship, the House expelled him. Certainly, he must suffer from some form of mania, some Murdaugh-like disorder that prevents him from perceiving future consequences of wholesale criminality. 

At any rate, I’m going to sort of miss him.

Last, but not least, death.

Sandra Day O’Connor died, which was news to me because I was shocked to discover she wasn’t dead already. 

(Photo by T.J. Kirkpatrick/Getty Images)

Also, Shane MacGowan, founder and front man of the Celtic punk band The Pogues finally, as they say, bit the dust. Ever heard the phrase, “live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse?” 

Hey, Shane certainly satisfied the first piece of that triad of terrible advice. According to one obituary I read, “He was repeatedly injured in falls and struck by moving vehicles.” My son Ned remembers “chatting with some Irish people who had seen him perform in a wheelchair and vomit on himself onstage.”

When I was teaching, I told my classes whenever they all made a hundred on a reading or vocabulary quiz, we’d have a “Fethibal,” that I’d turn them on to some cool video.

By far, the most popular one was the Pogues’ cover of “Dirty Old Town,” which inverts the tropes of Romanticism where lovers woo one another beneath factory walls.

Here’s a link. Enjoy! And Happy December! Click the link “Watch on YouTube!”

[1] Have you heard that Irony has committed suicide? You can read about it HERE.

Nancy Mace’s Scarlet Letter

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I know from personal experience that the Citadel has a pretty good, if not excellent, English Department. I took a topnotch graduate class in Victorian Literature there and used much of what learned in the British survey I taught at Porter-Gaud.

How is it then that Nancy Mace, a famous Citadel alum and representative of South Carolina’s First Congressional District, doesn’t know that the scarlet letter in the famous Hawthorne’s novel stands for Adulteress?

In case you missed it, yesterday Representative Mace had a scarlet A emblazoned on a white tee shirt because after voting against Kevin McCarthy for Speaker, she has received a shitload of criticism from several of her Republican colleagues[1]. After all, McCarthy had, according to the Huffington Post, donated “millions of dollars to Mace’s campaign.” 

Nevertheless, feeling martyred, Ms Mace, an Olympic-grade flip-flopper, whined, “I’m wearing the scarlet letter after the week I just had being a woman up here, and being demonized for my vote and for my voice.” 

She plans to vote for Gym Jordan for Speaker, the firebrand former wrestling coach accused of turning a blind eye to sexual abuse by the team physician at Ohio State. When asked about the allegations on one of the Sunday talk shows, she claimed ignorance, which suggests she’s just as clueless about current events as she is of American literature.

So there she was, strutting around the Capitol Building seemingly advertising her violation of the Seventh Commandment.

However, as I used to tell my students, you have to interpret a symbol in its context. Here the A could very well stand for “ATTENTION!”

“Or asshole.”

[1] A more refined and learned commentator would have substituted “Augean-stable load” for “shitload,” but then if Mace were somehow stumble upon this post, she wouldn’t know what the fuck he was talking about.

I’m Not One to Talk, But Some People Ought to Keep Their %$&*&^%@# Mouths Shut

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Example One: Andrew Tate

I had never heard of former professional kickboxer, world class misogynist, and current jailbird Andrew Tate until this week when he trolled Greta Thunberg on Twitter asking for her email address so he could “send [her] a complete list of [his] car collection and their respective enormous emissions.”

Her response, “yes, please do enlighten me. email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com.”

With an atomic bomb boom, her tweet went nuclear, racking up 3.5 million likes and 650K shares as of yesterday.

Caught off guard, Tate tweeted back a surprisingly effete “How dare you?!” echoing Thunberg’s famous speech to the United Nations.

Stung, he attempted to salve his black-and-blue ego by posting a minute-long wit-bereft video featuring cartoonish cigar puffing and a red robe that Oscar Wilde might have found a bit much.[1] During the video, he calls for two boxes of pizzas and announces that he won’t recycle the boxes as he drones on about Greta, the matrix, etc.

Well, fellow karma lovers, police were able to locate Tate and his brother Tristan from delivery records from the pizza provider. He and Tristan are now languishing in a Romanian prison on charges of human trafficking.[2]

And let’s not forget to congratulate capital crime fighter Elon Musk, who by reinstating Tate’s Twitter account, made his arrest possible.

Perhaps, irony isn’t quite dead yet.

Example Two: George Santos

I don’t have the energy to construct the epic catalog of lies Santos (if that’s actually his real name) spewed in his successful run for Congress in New York’s 3rd Congressional District.

Let this one suffice: After claiming to be descended from Holocaust survivors, after investigative scrutiny into his actual ancestry, Santos backtracked by saying he didn’t mean he was literally “Jewish” but nominally “Jew-ish.”

Um, George, no. If I were you, I’d don a disguise and slink off to some obscure Montana off-the-grid outpost.

O shame, where is thy blush?[3]

[1] Polonius is a fool, but he is right about this: “brevity is the soul of wit.”

[2] [cue Hamlet]: “For ’tis the sport to have the engineer/Hoist with his own petard.” 

[3] That makes three Hamlet allusions in one post. Alas and alack!

Guest Post: Post Hoc, Ergo Procter Hoc[1]: Post Dobbs Bralessness

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You Do Hoodoo is honored to welcome Archibald Ascot Anderson, Professor of Social Sciences Emeritus of the University of Greenville, who has contributed the following WesTalk. The Editors of Hoodoo (i.e. I-and-I) do not necessarily agree with our guests’ suppositions, but we do take pride providing a wide range of provocative views on newsworthy topics.

So, with no further, ado. Dr. Anderson, you’re on.

[tepid studio applause]

Um, thank you.

I’ll start this sensitive subject with a confession: Even more than your typical heterosexual male, I –especially in my younger days – suffered an unhealthy obsession with female mamilla. I remember when I was five sitting on the sofa of our roach-infested two-bedroom rental on Laurel Street drawing pictures of mermaids and my mother informing me that once I started kindergarten, I couldn’t draw mermaids anymore, at least not at school. I don’t remember if I asked why or not, but I do remember feeling sort of weird, wondering why it was bad.

Of course, my mother is to blame for my early obsession because, as the story goes, she breastfed me until I was three or so and only began to wean me when I began sliding my hand under her blouse and unhooking her brassiere.[2] Not surprisingly, I associated breasts with comfort, love, food, and my buxom raven-haired bovine Mama. For me, a pacifier offered no succor comfort. I’d spit it out in disgust when they attempted artificially to soothe my anxiety.

Being born in 1950 would turn out to be propitious because in the late 60s during the full bloom of my adolescence, bralessness became a thing with young women sporting halter tops, tube tops, gauzy peasant blouses, etc. And still today, even in my testostretonic-challenged semi-dotage, I find the unfettered soft sway of braless bosoms aesthetically pleasing.[3]

What has prompted me to write about such a potentially touchy sensitive subject is that I’ve noticed a marked increase in bralessness on the barrier island where I live, admittedly a spot more inclined to hedonistic behavior given its sea, salt, sand, and all that jazz.[4] However, I hasten to add, this discarding of foundation undergarments is a recent change. I recall around the 4th of July a bartender friend remarking that if he were an investor, he wouldn’t be buying shares in the Bali or Maidenform corporations. He smiled, I smiled. We’d noticed. We dug.

Last week, a colleague texted from New Orleans and in a postscript added, “I’ve been here 8 hours and haven’t encountered one bra.

Based on these two examples, I think we can say confidently that bralessness is on the rise. But what are the factors that have contributed to this fashionable discarding?

I have a theory. Women shedding the undoubtedly uncomfortable harness is, whether conscious or unconscious, a reaction to the Dobbs-Sayonara-Reproductive Rights decision of 24 June 2022. Women have had it. They’re not going to take it anymore.

It’s possible, no probable, and with that, I bid thee a fond goodnight. I just can’t talk about it anymore.

[tepid studio applause]

Well, thank you, Dr. Anderson, for your fascinating theory. Of course, we welcome your feedback. Do you think overturning Dobbs has prompted an increase in bralessness? Let us know by flinging your two cents worth in the comments box.

And stay tuned for next week’s WesTalk when Congresswoman Nancy Mace will discuss what it’s like standing in line waiting a turn to be photographed with Donald Trump.

[1] “After this, therefore because of this” – an informal fallacy which argues A occurred, then B occurred, so A caused B. E.g., I didn’t wear my lucky Gamecock baseball cap; therefore, USC lost to Clemson 55-10.

[2] BTW, breastfeeding was the opposite of “all the rage” in the early 1950s with Ike and Mamie in the White House. At least in the small provincial Southern town (pardon the redundancy) where I was reared, breast-feeding was for poor people. (Also, c.f., Toni Morrison’s Son of Solomon.)

[3] In, of course, a wholesome, detached non-objectifying way. By the way, since my near fatal pickleball injury in 2018, I have been confined to a wheelchair.

[4] In fact, it ranks second to Nashville as the most popular bachelorette party destination on the East Coast.

Ain’t Got You

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A aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick, so what shall I do with this absurdity, O Heart, O Troubled heart, decrepit age that has been tied to me as to a dog’s tail? What am I gonna do? Make a fool out of myself, that’s what. Here’s exhibit A. The Old Scarecrow Boogie.

Ain’t Got You

I’m sixty-five, got cataracts,
Hump-forming on my back,
A candidate for a heart attack,
But I ain’t got you . . .

Got nurses to the left of me,
Nurses to the right of me,
Nurses all around me,
But I ain’t got you.

Got a wheelchair, a walk-in tub,
Teeth ground down into little nubs,
Got a membership to the Rotary Club
And you lookin’ good in your hot pink scrubs!

Got a closet full of robes,
And no matter where I go
Got hair in my nose.
But I ain’t got you.

But I ain’t got you.
No, I ain’t got you.

Give Yourself an Ill-Deserved Slap on the Back

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Every now and then on Facebook or Twitter, I run across a give-yourself-a-point list like the one below.

I remember my first one. I was maybe twelve or thirteen, hadn’t even broken a bone, much less skinny-dipped or enjoyed a one-night stand.

In fact, I scored a 19.  I had appeared on a local kiddie afternoon TV show where preadolescents celebrated birthdays between Hanna and Barbara cartoons. There was an elephant named Suzie-Q. chained up outside the TV station. That was the extent of worldliness.

Anyway, the list made me feel like a loser.

How bittersweet it must be for Mormons and Liberty University alumni to encounter these lists. Sure, some probably feel righteous, but I suspect that more than a few feel somehow inadequate, inexperienced, left out.

Therefore, in the spirit of solidarity with my inexperienced brothers and sisters, I have compiled a list where they, too, can achieve a low score.

GIVE YOURSELF 1 POINT FOR EACH THING YOU HAVEN’T DONE

  1. Eaten at Appleby’s
  2. Discarded gum underneath a desk
  3. Jaywalked
  4. Seen a PG-13 movie
  5. Stubbed a toe
  6. Talked behind someone’s back
  7. Farted in a bathtub
  8. Forgot to floss
  9. Ogled natives in a National Geographic magazine
  10.  Dreaded going to school.

How’d you do? I don’t like to brag, but I scored a 0! What a badass!

The ABZs of Auto-Obituary Writing

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Look, I’m vain, love attention.[1] Therefore, there’s no way I’m going to let anyone get in the last word after I have checked out of this Motel 6 of Life. 

No, I’m writing my own obituary before I expire, and you should as well. After I succumb, I certainly don’t want my cousin Zilla to compose my obituary. Rather than merely “dying” or “passing away” or “entering eternal rest,” I might have “left the world to be with the Lord,” or worse, “entered the loving embrace of [my] Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”  Though I wouldn’t mind getting a hug from Jesus, I’m agnostic, so I want my obituary to be an accurate reflection of my life. 

Don’t trust others to do right by you. Do it yourself!

So, what follows is an easy guide for composing your very own obituary.[2]

Okay, let’s get started.

Rule #1. Know your audience. Chances are the readers of the obit are friends, family, or acquaintances. Most people don’t read strangers’ obits (yours truly being a notable exception), and if they do, you can bet they’re retired, likely former English teachers, and/or grammar Nazis. Therefore, make sure to proofread carefully but address the audience in a familiar fashion.

Rule #2. Sentence one should state the sad fact that Wesley is dead and when and where that regrettable transition took place. Although it’s not necessary to state the cause of death, inquiring minds want to know. In the following I have bracketed words that can be omitted according to your own predilections. 

Wesley “Rusty” Moore died Monday [at his home/at a sterile assisted living facility/on the side of the road] [after a short/long illness[3]//months of neglect// stumbling in front of a car outside of Chico Feo].

Rule #3. It’s best to get the bio out of the way first. Make sure to include the occasional introductory subordinate clause; otherwise, these lists of facts are deadly tiresome enough without your bludgeoning the reader with an unrelenting barrage of declarative sentences.

Wesley, the first son of Wesley E Moore, Jr and Sue Blanton Moore, began life on 14 December 1952 in Summerville, South Carolina. After graduating from Summerville High, Wesley attended the University of South Carolina and received a BA in English in 1975.[4] [Because of the post-OPEC oil embargo recession of 1975 and the fact that he didn’t own a car and couldn’t score a job], Wesley immediately entered the English graduate program the fall after his graduation.

Tending bar as a graduate student, Wesley met his first wife, fellow bartender Judy Birdsong. After they decided to marry, Wesley [weary of scaling the mountainous molehills that characterize literary criticism] left the university without a Master’s. After [somehow] getting an adjunct gig at Trident Technical College, Wesley and Judy wed on 4 February 1978 [in Decatur, Georgia.]

[After a short stint of collecting rejection slips,] in 1985, Wesley started teaching at Porter-Gaud. By then, Wesley and Judy had two sons, Harrison and Ned, [who eventually attended Porter-Gaud and rode to school with their father, providing the boys the opportunity to amass quite a quantity of profane and vulgar words as their father battled traffic from the Isle of Palms and later Folly Beach on their way to West Ashley.]

After Judy’s death from lymphoma [on Mother’s Day] in 2017, Wesley fell in love and married Caroline Tigner.  Caroline, her daughter Brooks, and Wesley made their home in Folly Beach, a community they treasured [until it was overrun by Airbnb short term rentals that transformed the once funky residential island into a virtual Sodom and Gomorrah/ Myrtle Beach].

Bored yet? 

Rule #4. You should follow the bio with a paragraph that humanizes the deceased. I don’t know how many obits I’ve read that have short-changed the not-seemingly-so-dearly departed by expending a scant sentence or two. 

For example, Harold enjoyed fishing. That’s it; that’s all it says. Or Mabel enjoying playing with her grandsons.

In mine, I would mention my writing, particularly the novel Today, Oh Boy! and the handful of writing awards I’ve received. I would also mention my collage-making and blog and perhaps my four decades of surfing.

Papa Hemingway, Joyce, and Tom Waits in Wilmington, a collage by Wesley Moore

Rule #5. You should then list survivors and pre-decedents. By the way, if you’re old like me, there’s no need to specify that your parents preceded you in death.

NOT: The great-great-great-great-great grandson of Adam and Eve, Methuselah was predeceased by his parents . . . 

Rule #5. Although the time and place of the memorial service/funeral/burial at sea, can be stated at the beginning of the obituary, I prefer it at the end, though it’s completely up to you.

Now, all you have left is to designate where memorial donations should go and perhaps to thank anyone who was especially helpful in the dying process.

So that’s it, have at it, don’t put off until tomorrow because, well, you know why.

Fin.

[1] Hence this blog.

[2] I realize that most people (Prince Hamlet being a notable exception), don’t cotton to contemplating their own demise. However, look upon the exercise of auto obituary composition as a fond look back on a life well lived. On the other hand, if you consider your life a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, you can lash out at your enemies in your obit. It’s up to you! [insert smiley emoji].

[3] For me, the more specific the better. If possible, I’d like to precisely name the illness, for example, “after an acute case of cirrhosis of the liver.” BTW, I hate the trite trope of illness as a martial encounter. Waging heroic battles with Goliath-like adversaries such as inoperable brain cancer is yawn-producing. Certainly, there must be people out there who whined their way to the grave.

[4] Why are red-blooded Americans omitting the “from” in sentences pertaining to graduation, as in “graduated high school or graduated university?”