The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

It seems cruel to pick on my pal Mark Zuckerberg now that everybody and their friends are piling on the poor guy when he’s down. I was just listening to an inspirational little speech he gave to his adoring employees the other day, imploring them to go out and make the world a public forum, one that would bring the world peace, capital P. It was positively evangelical. Facebook would bring love and understanding to the community space that was expanding like an exploding nova. The cheering and clapping Facebook minions ate it with a silver spoon, their faces upturned to the jumbotron the way Apple worshippers used to gaze at Steve Jobs. Somewhere in the back they must have been pouring Kool-Aid into those ubiquitous water bottles everyone carries with them to hydrate. Enlightenment Now! Kum Bah Yah!

A few blogs back I was mumbling about Bill Gate’s comments concerning the future of Artificial Intelligence, how he thought it would probably be positive, robots cleaning up spills on the factory floors and all, and my take was here was one of the guys who brought us personal computers but didn’t have a real keen sense of where his innovations might ultimately lead. Give him credit, he’s a little busy curing malaria and other world diseases, not much time to ponder the ramifications of Microsoft down the road to the future which is now in our rearview mirror.

Mark Zuckerberg put together a social club, mostly a way to hook up his Ivy League pals, then kept extrapolating, turned it into a global network of ‘friends’. Got himself some folks who knew how to monetize it, went public and now has billions in corporate worth. Or, I guess we should say, had. That stock of theirs is bleeding bitcoins with all the investigations into information sharing with everybody from Russian bots to the Trump campaign to every advertiser on the planet. Did Mark have a far-reaching vision of where things would lead?

I think he did. Just not a real accurate one. Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men? Looks like he saw himself as Santa. Or Jesus Christ. Either way, kind of missed the mark, Mark. Instead, you opened us all up like a corporate can opener, like we were a Pandora’s box you thought you knew what was inside of but really didn’t. You turned us all into marks, targets for advertisers, targets for politicians, targets for Russian bots. You laid the groundwork for faux news, for a world where truth and fiction become indistinguishable, where charlatans undermine democracy and demagogues become presidents. You made a fortune, Markie. You made a mess too. Thanks for the Big Vision. Oh, and thanks for the Kool-Aid.

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Every day I hear from friends who are alarmed and depressed by the current State of the Union. Democracy itself hangs in the balance, they say. War is imminent, they tell me. Racism is on the rise, they cry. The economy will go down the toilet, they moan. Idiots and imbeciles are running the government, they write. The sky is falling, the sky is cracking up, they scream.

I confess, there are days, even weeks, when I feel exactly the same way. Liberal Malaise. Progressive Polio. Left Wing Lassitude. It seems like it can’t get worse, then it does. Stormy Daniels spanks the President with a rolled up magazine bearing his mug on its cover. After he’s pulled down his pants. Then he tells her she reminds him of his kid daughter Ivanka. Sure, we feel queasy. Who wouldn’t outside Judge Roy Moore? He hires John Bolton as his national security advisor, the guy who still thinks the Iraq War was a smart move and whacking Iran and North Korea would be even better. I guess I feel nervous, all that talk of who’s got the bigger nuclear button on his desk. Now we got a trade war starting up, mostly against our allies. You could question the intelligence of this, I suppose, and yeah, I do. But what do you expect when half the cabinet and advisors are the flotsam from Fox and Friends?

You know in your heart the Russians got something nasty on our Commander-in-Chief. Something so embarrassing he’s willing to kowtow to about anything they pull, from Crimea to Ukraine, from nerve gas murders to election manipulations, something even the Donald would shrink from having become public. Pissing prostitutes on film, who knows? Something even worse? C’mon, in this era of daily outrage, why not?

But I have to remind myself and my horror stricken liberal pals, this is the same country that elected Obama, not once, but twice. The same nation that leapfrogged from a homophobic country to one that has made gay discrimination illegal. And even included the trans community! You think that was possible a few years ago?? Now we have the #MeToo movement, the kids protesting the proliferation of guns, the Black Lives Matter movement.

I know, we still got a bullying, narcissistic, ignorant real estate huckster for a President. We voted him in, a majority of us. I have to think, though, we’ll see he has no clothes. And not just when Stormy is whacking his ass with his own face. God Bless America. When She stops laughing.

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In the latest White House revolving door, here’s yer hat, what’s yer hurry? incident, President Trump announced that he was replacing his vice president, Mike Pence with Fox News analyst Sean Hannity. “I watch Sean all the time and I have to say, the man is brilliant. He agrees with me 99% of the time.” When asked how an elected official such as the Vice President could be legally and constitutionally fired, Mr. Trump stated that his stable of lawyers had assured him he was the President and could do whatever he wanted. “I want Sean Hannity,” the Commander-in-Chief declared. “I don’t want a yes man, I want a Hell Yes! Man.”

Following on the heels of the President’s hiring of John Bolton as National Security Advisor and Larry Kudlow as economic advisor, both Fox commentators, as well as a few others from the Fox network in lesser roles, the White House team now looks more and more like it’s finally Fair and Balanced. The President feels comfortable with his new inner sanctum and rumors abound that the purging of the first year’s cabinet has only just begun. Fox News is scrambling to fill its vacant seats by hiring interns straight out of high school, primarily students who refused to march against the NRA gun lobby. Unfortunately there aren’t as many as there are vacancies.

Team Trump, aka Faux Fox, seems positioned to reinvent government and while not entirely fulfilling campaign promises to ‘drain the swamp’ of D.C., they certainly are poised to tip the ship of state and sail on without the original crew of what are now seen as Deep Staters. The S.S. Donald is steaming full speed ahead into turbulent international waters, manned by Fox sycophants and psycho-rants who happily applaud the captain in his search for white whales and beached bikini models. Network ratings are through the roof, the Skipper exulted. ‘Like nothing before. And you ain’t seen nothing yet.” Where oh where is Gilligan when we need him?

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I think the saddest story I heard all week — and as you know, there were plenty coming out of the White House — was the one where Karen McDougal apologized to Melania for the affair she had with Melania’s husband Donald J. This is the stuff of trashy novels, soap operas and high-minded porn films, but the sad part was she loved the jerk. I know, it’s hard to imagine, but maybe we judge the man too harshly. Something underneath that braggart exterior, deeper than the bullying and the lying, more complex than the 10 year old angry punk who has a germ phobia, must be loveable. Vulnerable. Attractive to a Playboy model anyway.

Maybe we’re all too sensitized by the faux news stories that depict our President as a moron, a mean-spirited monster, a shallow dildo of a man interested in only himself and his next sexual and/or political conquest, a greedy knee-jerk real estate huckster who, despite winning the highest office in the world, still wants to sell Trump MAGA hats. An imbecile who Karen McDougal fell in love with over a prolonged affair. Maybe, just maybe, we’ve judged the man too harshly.

Who knows? Maybe he had a tough childhood. A cruel father. A mother who bottle fed him skim milk. A nanny who sexually abused the boy. An allowance so low he had to buy used Chevys. We don’t know what molded the man, do we? But Karen might. Karen was intimate with him. Karen loved him. And she thought maybe he loved her for more than her centerfold personality. Well, until he offered to pay her. And of course then she felt like … not the love of his life. Like … well, a woman who gave him sex and was now in a fiscal negotiation.

You think that isn’t sad?? You think maybe that’s the saddest sorry story you heard this week. It makes the Stormy Daniels tell-all coming up tomorrow on 60 Minutes look like a com/rom movie. Stormy didn’t love the jerk, she’ll be the first to tell you. And she wasn’t hurt and humiliated when he paid her to keep their tryst quiet. It was, after all, just a business deal. Maybe not too artful, but a deal’s a deal. And they’re made to be broken, as Donald has said many times. That right there is the Art of the Deal. And Karen, a word of advice, the next boyfriend, be a better judge of character. If he acts like an asshole, chances are, he probably is.

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Last season’s episode of the Wild Women of the West Wing ended with Melania storming out of the White House after an explosive argument with her husband concerning which of his last two affairs was his favorite, Stormy Daniels or Karen McDougal. The Donald refused to answer her questions but eventually claimed he’d never met either woman. This cliffhanger set the stage for what promises to be a hilarious round of legalistic semantics in this coming season.

Season Two of WWWW begins with the Donald fuming in the White House as 60 Minutes airs the Stormy Daniel interview. Hysterical comedy ensues as the Prez’s personal attorney threatens to sue the sassy porn star for millions over violation of a non-disclosure agreement DJD never signed. And an affair he claims never to have had.

Meanwhile a constant stream of advisors and cabinet members rotate through the second season’s episodes in a kaleidoscopic blur of firings and hirings. The cast by the second season is larger than Spartacus. At one point the President shouts at Kellyanne Conway, “Bring me more bodies! Bring me more bodies!!” If you thought Season One was preposterously hilarious, Season Two promises to up the ante on farcical absurdity to levels never seen before on daytime TV.

The producers, Steve Bannon and Paul Manafort, promise plenty more shenanigans in the second season of this Emmy nominated series. Two or more spin-offs are in the works from Alt-Right Stay Left Productions, the successful folks behind WWWW told Fox and Friends just yesterday. The Sarah Huckabee Sanders Truth or Dare Show is in the final planning stages and filming has already begun on Firing Line, starring Jim Comey, Andrew McCabe and Robert Mueller, a 10 part HBO original critics have given rave reviews. ‘Gone with the Wind meets South Park’, one anonymous critic said. ‘Racism never played with such comedic flair. Dark and twisted, but hilarious.’

Strap yourself in for a wild ride with the Stormy Season Two’s first episode until its exhilarating surprise finale. Season One is available on Netflix streaming.

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