Year End Corsair Awards, Part the Second
Slow kisses to 2023, as it recedes into the rear-view mirror.
Unsolved Mystery of the Year: What vexes Commander Biden? Crude thoughts and fierce forces are my state this afternoon. The President’s two year old German Shephard, Commander, was dragged by the leash into the fractured American political process this year. But the larger mystery less asked is why is Commander biting people — Secret Service agents, in particular? Are they that delicious? Is this some sort of nutritional imbalance or mineral deficiency? Gastrointestinal disturbance? Is Commander protecting his human from MAGA infiltration? Whither Commander’s compulsion? Does Commander know something that we don’t? What does Commander know and when did he know it? Or, is it better to just let sleeping dogs lie? Runners up: The Mystery of Little Miss Lake Panasoffkee and The Zambian Plane Mystery.
Least covered international story: Sudan. So much is said of Gaza and the Ukraine — but who in high profile, other than Pope Francis, is talking about Sudan? There is little good to be coming out of Khartoum, where the rebels are said to control 70% of that important city. And most recently, in the eight month old war that too few in the Beltway talk about, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have taken control of Wad Madani. From Robbie Gramer of Foreign Policy:
Sudan erupted into chaos this April after rival factions of a military junta—the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF)—broke apart and began fighting for control of the country. More than 10,000 people are estimated to have been killed in the ensuing conflict since then, and at least 6.7 million people have been displaced. Aid agencies say more than 6 million people in Sudan are at risk of famine. The conflict took a grim new turn this week when the RSF captured and ransacked Wad Madani, Sudan’s second-biggest city, which was viewed as one of the last major safe havens in the country and a major hub for humanitarian operations.
Runners-up: China in Angola.
In Memoriam: Sinead O’Connor. The truth is that the media was not good to the “machete cutting truth teller.” Her emotional range was, quite frankly, too disturbing for the pop medium. And it is only after her death that her influence on music and culture is now better appreciated. What’s that passage from Luke about the prophet not being recognized in their own country? Sinead O’Connor was almost too raw for 80s and 90s pop music. “Her devout mother was mentally and physically abusive, an experience immortalized in her 1987 single ‘Troy,’” Drew Fortune wrote in Vulture. “As a child, she was sent to Dublin’s An Grianan school, a notorious Catholic ‘training center’ for troubled young girls with a decades-long history of neglect, where she scrubbed floors and cried day and night.” That is her origin story; it explains much about her dialectic. Now, liberated from the flame-throwing masses, may her influence continue to soar. RIP, Sinead O’Connor.
Retribution of the Year: Elise Stefanik. Congressional “leader” Elise Stefanik gave us all a taste — just a taste — of what retribution looks like in actual practice. In 2021, she was removed from the Harvard Institute of Politics advisory board, a pretty sweet deal for a then 38-year old, because she had made unfounded accusations of voter fraud during the ‘20 election. Granted, the Republican Party, allegedly Christian, is now a backwards mirror-image of the cracked interior of its Master, Donald J. Trump. But imagine the length and breadth of “retribution” that Elise Stefanik went through to try to fuck up the three elite college Presidents that graciously accepted her summons before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
“Elise Stefanik’s viral line of questioning of an elite trio of university presidents last week over how to respond to calls for the genocide of Jews didn’t just spark bipartisan outrage and lead to a high-profile resignation,” as Politico’s Adam Wren described it. “It settled a personal score the congresswoman had with her alma mater, which had all but disowned her in the wake of Jan. 6.” While Stefanik didn’t capture the pelt of her main quarry — the President of Harvard — she had to settle instead for UPenn, the alma mater of her Master, who must be so very proud.
Haters Gonna Hate: Vice President Kamala Harris. Never underestimate the magnitude and — dare I say it? — subtlety of bigotry against women of color. It is, to connoisseurs of racism la chef’s kiss. The ne plus ultra of racism. Harris has been as solid a Vice President as any other political figure that has occupied that liminal Constitutional office. And yet the hate that Vice President Kamala Harris elicits and endures, particularly among Democrat elites — who should be her natural allies — baffles me. I mean, yes, haters are going to do what it is they do in their grotty little mind palaces (Averted Gaze). But, what is the meaning of this thusness?
The first woman and first daughter of immigrants and first woman of color to hold the role of Vice is going to get some blowback, for sure. But the degree to which irrational hate of the Vice President permeates everything from news commentary to podcasts this year was just down-and-out alarming. Some commentators have even publicly questioned whether or not the Vice President speaks fluent English (the old “articulate person of color” argument). “Forget the fact that Harris has been exemplary on African diplomacy, omnipresent on African-American college campuses during Commencement season, barnstorming on the abortion issue and the Courts. Still, even Dan Abrams — not particularly relevant, politically, but a media voice with some clout — is sounding the alarm that Harris might be ‘not likeable,’” is how this Substack described it in July. Runner-up: White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
Ticking Time Bomb: The Migrant Crisis. What, pray tell, is the Democrat party’s official position on the migrant crisis? The fact that I am asking this question in earnest is a large part of this problem. Everyone should know the position of the Democrat party on the migrant crisis which, through the machinations of several Republican Governors, now spills onto the streets of urban centers in blue states, threatening to turn things magenta.
In New York, for example, more than 100,000 new migrants have come to the city since Spring; the shelter population has doubled. And yet the response of Mayor Eric Adams to this ongoing political reality is to cry “help” on any cable news outlet that will let him on. Governor Hochul, only late in the year, accepted the magnitude of the problem. But, as with the crime issue in the 2022 midterms, NewsCorp has been bludgeoning the left. How are we supposed to flip George Santos’s seat with no discernible immigration stance even as the former Creedmore Psychiatric Hospital — in the district — is now overrun with migrants in a residential district? A Modest Proposal: Why not make McCain-Kennedy (S.1033 - Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act) the official Democrat position. Yes, the Progressive wing will be angry (even though the late Ted Kennedy signed off on it), but at least it is a start, and actually had a respected Republican Senator’s name on it as well. Or do we, as Democrat allies, prefer the current, nebulous strategy on immigration? tickticktick….
Strangest Far-Right Trend: Hereditary Monarchy. The far-right is suffering from some major, major “Daddy” issues. They have been yearning for their own Pinochet for some time now, in whispers, in the quiet of their souls. But they are sotto voce no longer; now they talk of such things in their angry, outdoors voice. “The link between hereditary royalists and the American far-right is indeed strange, first and foremost because we are a democracy that broke off from the British monarchical system 245 years ago in a sanguinary war,” I wrote in this Substack in May. “And yet, the Heritage Foundation -- nominally the premier incubator of American conservative policy -- recently ran a virtual event titled, unironically: ‘The Crown Under Fire: Why the Left’s Campaign to Cancel the Monarchy and Undermine a Cornerstone of Western Democracy Will Fail.’”
The United States was formed, for among other excellent reasons, to escape the whimsy of unjust hereditary monarchs. And yet, here we are, centuries later, debating the pros and cons of benevolent monarchies. Loving on King Charles, who is by all accounts, a design dumbass. Libertarian-authoritarian-billionaire Peter Thiel, who doesn’t so much contradict himself as much as he contains multitudes, is referred to as something called a “techno-monarchist.” Ayn Rand, somewhere down below, is almost certainly cursing in Russian at what Silicon Valley hath wrought.