How much of this outrage is performative?

We are now fed a regular diet of outrage about the most trivial of things. The latest are the ones about the Muppets, the Potato Head toy, and some Dr. Seuss books

These things are definitely ginned up in order to get viewers and clicks. I am pretty certain that the people on Fox News and similar sites (even the most dimwitted) know that these things are silly even as they feign outrage over these pseudo-controversies. But I wonder about their target audience of older, white, right-wing viewers. Do they view these things as serious issues and get angry or do they see them as merely entertaining? I am sure that some do get genuinely fired up but I cannot imagine that it can be a large number. Maybe there is an unspoken agreement in which the people in the media pretend to be outraged and their audience pretends to be angry. Or maybe I am just naive in thinking that adults can’t surely care that much about such things.

Stephen Colbert had a very thoughtful segment on the Dr. Seuss books faux-controversy and gives some children’s books recommendations of his own.

McConnell begins groveling again to Trump

Just when you thought that Mitch McConnell could not sink any lower in political grubbing, he does. After the attack on on the US Capitol building on January 6th, McConnell made a speech on the floor of the senate and wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal unequivocally placing the blame on Trump. But when asked if he would support Trump if he became the party’s nominee in 2024, he gave a resoundingly affirmative answer.
[Read more…]

Bernie Sanders on raising the minimum wage

Bernie Sanders is holding a senate hearing on why the federal minimum wage should be raised to $15 per hour.

US taxpayers should not be “forced to subsidize some of the largest and most profitable corporations in America”, Bernie Sanders told a Senate hearing on Thursday.

As Congress debates the first rise in the minimum wage in over a decade, the Vermont senator said he had “talked to too many workers in this country who, with tears in their eyes, tell me the struggles they have to provide for their kids on starvation wages” even as the chief executives of companies including McDonald’s, Walmart and others take home multi-million dollar pay packages.

Executives from Walmart and McDonald’s were invited to the hearing, titled Should Taxpayers Subsidize Poverty Wages at Large Profitable Corporations?They declined to appear.
[Read more…]

John Oliver on the Texas freeze fiasco

He roundly criticizes all those responsible for what was a foreseen and avoidable disaster.

Meanwhile, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shames Ted Cruz by raising $5 million to help Texans while he was gallivanting off to Cancun.

We should also recall that Cruz was one of those people who objected to aiding people in other states who got hit with natural disasters. I am sure that he is opposing all federal aid to Texas now because he is a person who stands on principle, right?