It feels like just yesterday I was getting in trouble at G/O Media for making fun of Mitch McConnell, certified bad man, for falling up some stairs at a campaign event (to be clear, I made fun of him because I was unaware that he’d had polio as a child). And now he’s stepping down as Senate minority leader after becoming the longest-serving Senate leader in history.

While he’s leaving the leadership role at the end of the year, McConnell said on Wednesday he plans to serve out his current term, through 2026. It feels like the writing has been on the wall for a while, and McConnell knows it.

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“I know the politics within my party at this particular moment in time,” he said. “I have many faults. Misunderstanding politics is not one of them. That said, I believe more strongly than ever that America’s global leadership is essential to preserving the shining city on a hill that Ronald Reagan discussed.”

[insert world’s longest jerk off motion here]

Anyway, so long to one of the worst people currently walking the face of the earth. As we bid farewell, it pays to remember some of the lowlights of McConnell’s terrible career.

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The explosion of internet streaming and the global audience’s vast appetite for entertainment has created a vast glut of television. There are, to put it simply, so many shows. Making good shows, however, is difficult, and while the past several years have been rife with successes (White Lotus, Succession, The Bear) and things that are not good but have comfortably poleaxed my frontal lobe in tough times (Emily in Paris, 5,000 other things like The Recruit on Netflix), we have, since the ignominious end of Game of Thrones, had a conspicuously sword-shaped hole in the essential, big-budget TV viewing lineup.

Shōgun, which began airing on Hulu yesterday, is hitting that spot. That’s all I can say! It has swords. It has guys talking in funny little accents and voices and a whole lot of other dudes talking in another language (in this case, Japanese) that they use aesthetically pleasing sans-serif subtitles for. It has, most importantly, a budget that is going to work.

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This last point is what makes Shōgun so appealing to me. It does not look cheap. It looks good. There is plenty of CGI, of course, as no show can exist without it these days, but much of the action appears shot on real sets with real people and in real lighting conditions. There is no use of deep shadow to conceal an overreliance on second-rate visual effects. There is no use of deep shadow to create… I have no idea, unwatchable bullshit? Sure, there are dark scenes. But you can see the things you want to see, and see them well, and they are good (the cinematography is excellent). Look here: a gorgeous collection of shots from the first episode.

But all of this belies perhaps the most important point: swords. I have only seen one episode of Shōgun but so far it features quite a lot of swords. The swords look good. We have yet to see anyone actually fight anyone with swords (we have had an implied seppuku, a quick decapitation, and some general sword-waving), but I am confident that when we do get to the parts with sword fighting it is going to be good. This is important to me, as a man with the interests and temperament of a teenage boy. The costumes are fantastic. The sets are fantastic. The acting is competent and at some points compelling. In my group chats my friends are saying things like “TV is back, baby!!” They are planning for watch parties, which in my experience are always way more fun conceptually than they are in practice (Unless your home can devote an entire couch or at least half a couch to each guest then it is inferior to my home, where I have one very big couch that my wife and I can lie on.)

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It is clear that this show was both a labor of love and a tremendous financial gamble. Period shows are expensive to make; period shows with expansive sets and lots of battles (assumedly) even more so. They are putting money money into this thing; $250 million, allegedly. It is all based on a popular but not ubiquitous novel of the same name from the 70s. There are many intersecting plotlines and a vast power struggle playing out between morally complex characters. The “protagonist” per se is a bloodthirsty imperialist anti-hero who hates Catholics, and his foils in the Japanese kingdoms are equal parts sympathetic and psychotically ruthless (they put a guy to death in a particularly “Viserys Targaryen but worse” way in the first episode.) There are High Stakes and assumedly Romance and a whole lot of Plotting, all given their full due. I love it. I am going to watch the rest of it. Finally, a good show with swords.

Last weekend, Washington Post columnist Taylor Lorenz published an extensive piece on how LibsOfTikTok operator Chaya Raichik became one of the most powerful, and powerfully harmful, voices in the Oklahoma school system, despite not living in, or having any personal connection to the state or its educational apparatus.

The article is well worth reading for the way it compellingly links Raichik’s hateful online presence to the struggles taking place in Oklahoma schools (and beyond) for LGBTQ+ kids—including, most poignantly, 16-year-old nonbinary student Nex Benedict, who died one day after a vicious beating by fellow students in the bathroom of his suburban Tulsa high school, where he’d allegedly been bullied for his gender identity.1

However, the piece—which, again, is quite good!—has largely been eclipsed by Lorenz’s accompanying video of her nearly hour-long interview with Raichik, which she published on her personal YouTube account this past Saturday.

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In it, an extremely patient Lorenz presses Raichik on her intense transphobia and her fascist fan base. Raichik, on the other hand, spends the bulk of the interview sounding, well, dumb as shit. And not dumb in the “this woman is a hateful monster whose entire public persona is based on a hodgepodge of pseudoscience and ill informed grievances” (although there’s that too). I mean dumb as in, y’know…dumb. Really, sincerely, genuinely stupid.

As clip after clip of Raichik’s bumbling non-answers was shared across Twitter, the discourse quickly coalesced around the basic question of how someone so influential could at the same time be such a painfully public moron.

The answer, of course, is “easily,” as you can see for yourself in the video below.

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On Sunday, Aaron Bushnell, an active-duty member of the U.S. Air Force, went in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington DC. “I will no longer be complicit in genocide,” he said. “I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest. But compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.” Then he set himself on fire and yelled “Free Palestine.”

Bushnell has reportedly died from his injuries. He was 25.

There is video of Bushnell’s self-immolation, which you can watch here (the footage of him actually burning has been blurred out, but the sound is still there) though I very much understand if you’d rather not. In the video, you can see some kind of cop or security person rushing over to Bushnell and then aiming a gun at him while a firefighter tries to save him. The American way of death.

Setting yourself on fire—consciously putting yourself through such horrendous pain—is very difficult to imagine doing. But self-immolation has been a form of protest for thousands of years, by people all over the world. Its horrific power comes precisely because of the seemingly unfathomable choice at its heart. What would make someone do that? Why would they inflict that kind of agony on themselves?

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You wouldn’t know if you read many of the leading headlines about Bushnell’s self-immolation.

I’ve written thousands of headlines in my time. Trust me when I say that these outlets could have found a way to work Gaza in.

But Bushnell was clear why he did it. The genocide being carried out in Gaza is inhumane in a way that can sometimes feel beyond our capacity to understand. So is the fact that the world, and the United States in particular, is letting it happen, day after day after day.

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Now Aaron Bushnell has committed an act that, in its suffering, is commensurate with the suffering of the Palestinian people. Nobody would wish the pain he went through on themselves, and almost nobody would actively seek that kind of pain out. But people in Gaza are dealing with that kind of pain every second of every day, and the United States, led by Joe Biden, is ensuring that the pain goes on. So here we are.

There have been far too many martyrs for Gaza recently, and now there is one more. Rest in peace, Aaron Bushnell. May your final words come true. Free Palestine.

Last Friday, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are children, and that those who destroy them can be held responsible for wrongful death. The decision is a landmark one. It's the first of its kind (in the bad way!) and one that (by design!) will have huge and devastating implications for reproductive rights in Alabama (where reproductive rights are already awful!) and for America as a whole.

Normally I might build up to this, but let’s just get where we’re going: The ruling that frozen embryos should have the same rights as a human being is insane—and certainly an insane decision for a state Supreme Court in the United States in the year 2024 to make.

The decision wasn’t regarded as insane, though. It didn’t make anyone question the mental capabilities of its executors, or even get them fired. It was called “unprecedented” and stunning, sure, and it was met with shock, confusion, and outrage. But things that once seemed out of the realm of normal, expected outcomes—things that once seemed insane—are now becoming alarmingly commonplace. These are simply insane times, and the fact that there’s a certain level of acceptance and understanding about that these days is perhaps the most insanity-inducing thing of all. 

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Most immediately, the decision throws the practice of in vitro fertilization—in which an egg is fertilized outside the human body—into what is essentially an existential crisis. In IVF, not all embryos are successfully implanted. In IVF, embryos that aren’t implanted are often destroyed. So how could an IVF facility continue to practice if doing so could mean facing a wrongful death claim every time a fertilized egg is lost or discarded? Well, it can’t, and it only took a few days for the decision to start shutting down clinics in the state. 

On Wednesday, the University of Alabama at Birmingham announced that it was halting IVF treatments for fear of potential negative legal ramifications stemming from the ruling. In a statement, UAB spokeswoman Hannah Echols said, “We must evaluate the potential that our patients and our physicians could be prosecuted criminally or face punitive damages for following the standard of care for IVF treatments.”

In other words, while the Alabama court decision does not explicitly prohibit IVF, it makes the entire practice terrifyingly dangerous for providers and families. The inciting incident itself only adds to the sense of precariousness health providers are now facing: three sets of parents filed two lawsuits after their frozen embryos were accidentally destroyed at a hospital by a rogue patient who entered a room they shouldn’t have. That loss must have been extremely difficult for the parents on many levels, I’m sure, but the resulting ruling is not only legally thorny, it’s cataclysmic and ruinous for thousands of other parents who have now been stripped of their right to do what they want with their own property. 

As a consequence of the decision, parents will now, in theory, have to pay for storage fees indefinitely. On top of that, liability costs will soar, and any unsuccessful implant could become grounds for legal action. It feels important to note that those who engage in the expensive, exhausting, and often difficult process of IVF are perhaps some of our planet’s most dedicated advocates of human life. On the other hand, we all know that fact is entirely beside the point.

With hundreds of thousands of frozen embryos stored at clinics and facilities nationwide, this also has the potential to be a seismic logistical mess. It’s already causing panic and chaos in the lives of individuals and care providers. It doesn’t matter that IVF provides a valuable, life-affirming service—one that’s well-known and popular. Again, that’s not the point. The point is, and always has been, control. 

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The debate over when life begins has always been about co-opting and piloting women’s bodies, decisions, and lives. It’s not any more complicated than that, and that sense of basic autonomy is slowly being eroded in America’s high courts. It also isn’t going to stop, and this ruling is proof of that. The Dobbs decision was just one (albeit enormous) piece in a larger systematic dismantling of basic rights and protections. It’s not just affecting people with uteruses, either. These creeping, draconian decisions are exerting explicit control over entire families who are struggling with conceiving. And now that this effort has succeeded in Alabama, it will provide ideas, fuel, and ammunition for the next grenade in the war on reproductive rights. The decision is a huge victory for anti-abortionists and sets a terrifying precedent. It’s just a sign of the hell to come. 

Decisions like this might drive people to the polls, but it bears repeating until we’re hoarse that voting will not save us. The courts increasingly rule our lives now, and the progressive movement is fundamentally screwed as long as the system remains intact. We’ll fight and keep fighting, of course, but we must do so with eyes wide open. The enemy intends to debilitate, devalue, dehumanize, maim, and kill us. We have no choice but to do our damndest to remain shocked and active, and to extend the same kindness and consideration toward them that they extend toward us. Which is to say, none at all. 

Now that Israel has killed nearly 30,000 people; now that disease is rampant and famine is breaking out; now that the schools and the hospitals and the streets and the buildings have been pulverized; now that Israel has created something that is beyond hell on earth, it is apparently time for America’s liberal pundit class to begin lamenting how unfortunate this whole Gaza thing has turned out to be.

Buckle up, folks, it’s time for the Not-Really-An-Apology Tour!

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Anyone who was around during the Iraq War will recognize the tropes of this genre. You get a lot of Very Serious Thinkers who reflect with gravity on how the planning of the war was bad, or that noble aims were hijacked by foolish leaders; or that they really opposed it even though they also supported it.

If you weren’t looking forward to that nonsense coming back around, sorry. It is. I say this because this week we got a hall-of-fame addition to the canon, in the form of a piece by Vox writer Zack Beauchamp called “How Israel’s war went wrong.”

Oy vey. Come with me on a journey into the darkness.

Things start badly right at the top, with the way the piece is framed.

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The human mind is an incredible piece of work. It can, for instance, take two disparate and unrelated threads weaving themselves through the current zeitgeist and, through the magic of neurons and grey matter, conjure a memory so weird and delightful that you simply have to take a painfully slow news day to blog about about it.

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Today is, so the calendar tells us, Presidents Day. The day we all look forward to every year. The day of the presidents. You know, the people who really need honoring because nobody ever honors them.

I feel like we don’t tend to think too often about Presidents Day. It sort of flies under the radar in comparison to your Christmases or your Fourth of Julys or even your lower-tier Labor Day-level holidays. It’s just kind of there.

I was planning to spend almost no time at all contemplating Presidents Day this year, as is my tradition. But then Rafi asked a question in our Slack.

Rafi is always a heterodox thinker (recall his seminal blog “Scrambled Eggs Suck”) and, as ever, he zigged where others (me) had zagged. That “uh tbd” really means “This is the first time I, Jack, have contemplated not blogging on Presidents Day. Interesting thought.”

I love blogging, but I also love not doing work, and one of the nice things about owning your own business is that you get to just make up the schedule. So I was leaning towards not blogging today, and just putting up a quick “We’re not blogging because it’s Presidents Day” thing. But then I started actually thinking about this stupid day, possibly for the first time in my life. And I realized, wait a minute, I do have something to say today: Presidents Day sucks! In fact, I have scientifically concluded that it is the worst of all U.S. holidays—by far.

Let us count the reasons for this.

1: It’s commemorating some of the worst people who have ever lived

First of all, “presidents” as the reason for a holiday is wildly vague—the Associated Press wrote on Sunday that “for some historians the holiday has lost all discernible meaning”—and very, very stupid. Secondly, know who extremely does not to be celebrated? These guys.

The American presidency is, objectively, one of the most destructive institutions created in the 4.5-billion-year history of Earth. Between them, the 45 men who have occupied this office have inflicted great violence on their country and the world. They have shaped and led one of the most dangerous, blood-soaked, inhumane, calamitous organizations anyone has ever devised: the United States government. Obviously, they didn’t do this alone. But they were at the top of the ladder, and they’re the ones with the holiday, asking us to say how awesome they are as if winning the presidency wasn’t enough of a pat on the back for them. Absolutely not—particularly not when the current president is actively helping commit genocide in Gaza.

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2: You’re not guaranteed time off for it

My other job offered this day as a floating holiday, which I didn’t take, so I’m working today—as are most people who don’t work for the government. If you’re not an ironclad “nobody works today no matter what” holiday, you’re immediately bumped way down on the list.

3: It has an identity crisis

Not even Presidents Day is certain about what it’s really for. It used to be known as Washington’s Birthday, in honor of the guy on the one-dollar bill. (Not pictured on that bill: the many enslaved people he owned.) Then it got broadened out—first to be about Lincoln too, because his birthday is also around now (again: oh my god who cares) and then to be about all presidents. And now it’s known to basically everyone as Presidents Day, to the extent that the people who run the official Mount Vernon website made an entire page complaining about how their guy got shafted. There’s even a little box at the end of the page telling people to contact their representatives to get Washington’s name back on the day. Yes, I agree: loser behavior.

But there’s a big asterisk: the federal government never actually updated the name, so it’s still technically known as Washington’s Birthday in the White House or whatever.

So is this Presidents Day? Washington’s Birthday? Washington and Lincoln’s Birthday? Both? Neither? All of the above? I wouldn’t be excited about any of these, but can this day make a decision about itself for god’s sake?

4: It has no traditions at all

This is the entirety of the section on “Presidents Day traditions” in an explainer article from the Voice of America:

According to the White House Historical Association, presidents throughout U.S. history have celebrated the birthdays of Washington and Lincoln in various ways. For example, President Andrew Jackson celebrated Washington's birthday in 1837 with a 635-kilogram (1,400-pound) wheel of cheese he shared with guests.

In 1931, President Herbert Hoover addressed the nation via a radio address to commemorate the birthday of Lincoln, and President Lyndon B. Johnson held a Lincoln Day luncheon at the White House in 1965.

In 2015, President Barack Obama commemorated the day by revamping the White House web pages about each U.S. president to facilitate learning about their history.

For the public, Presidents Day celebrations occur throughout the country. Some notable traditions are the Presidents Day parade in Old Town, in Alexandria, Virginia, near Washington’s estate, Mount Vernon. This year, the parade will follow the theme of "George Washington: Alexandria's Oldest Living Legend."

In addition to parades, many go to national monuments to presidents such as Washington and Lincoln. On Presidents Day, Mount Vernon will be have free tours of the mansion.

Many companies also hold holiday sales on Presidents Day, particularly on furniture and appliances.

This is one of the saddest lists I have ever seen. It’s beyond padding. It’s desperation. Most of these aren’t even traditions—they’re just things that presidents did one time. Let me repeat one of these traditions: “In 2015, President Barack Obama commemorated the day by revamping the White House web pages about each U.S. president to facilitate learning about their history.”

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Ah yes, the famous “president updates a website in 2015” tradition. Need I say more?

Add this all up, and what do you get? A useless, worthless, pointless holiday—and the worst holiday we have all year.

Still skeptical? Let me run down the list of all the other federal holidays, and you’ll see that all of them have something better to offer.

• New Year’s Day: I mean. It’s better.

• MLK Day: Hmmm, who do I want to honor more, the presidents or Martin Luther King? Tough choice. Plus, it’s a “nobody works” day. Better, duh.

• Memorial Day: Nobody works. Better!

• Juneteenth: Nobody works and it’s about emancipation. Insanely better.

• July 4th: OK, this one is definitely in the danger zone because celebrating the United States is disgusting, but nobody works and there’s fireworks, so, you guessed it, better.

• Labor Day: Say it with me—nobody works. Also it’s on my birthday this year. Clearly better.

• Indigenous Peoples Day: In its guise as Columbus Day, it is in very fierce competition with Presidents Day for the worst holiday—about someone evil, you’re not guaranteed the day off, and its traditions are garbage. However, it inspired the much cooler Indigenous Peoples Day and gives us a great opportunity each year to reflect on the horror of European and American imperial genocide, so sorry, it wins. Better.

• Veterans Day: You probably have to work, and the U.S. military is, shall we say, bad. But a huge part of why it’s bad is the people in charge of it…the presidents we celebrate on Presidents Day. If forced to choose between an abstract group of people and a very specific group of despicable presidents, I’m going abstract. Also this used to be Armistice Day—a commemoration of people deciding to stop pointlessly killing each other—so even the history of the day is preferable. Veterans Day is better.

• Thanksgiving: Based on vile conquest, so…yeah. But really, so is Presidents Day. And on Thanksgiving, nobody works and there’s pie. Better.

• Christmas: I think Christmas is better than Presidents Day.

I rest my case. Worst holiday ever. What are we even doing here?

Well team, looks like we made it. After three weeks of incredible, gasp-worthy, fuck-me-up ducks, we’re at the end of the road. Duck Month ends here. But hey, don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened—and also know that we will definitely be doing more ducks for Bird of the Week in the future. We don’t need a themed miniseries to marvel at a duck!

Now, it might seem appropriate to end with some kind of showy banger of a bird. There are plenty of those out there, and it would be a fitting tribute. We thought about it, trust us. But last week, Jack messaged me with a salient point. He said, “I like the mini-tradition we've developed for always doing the iconic obvious bird during theme months.” Was I going to argue with that? Hell no. 

That’s right, our honoree this week is the supreme, ideal, all-out phenomenal… MALLARD. A bird absolutely deserving of all caps and nothing short of the highest praise.

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You know the satisfaction of hearing the first few chords of a beloved song for the 500th time (cue this blog’s second inclusion of a link to Shania Twain’s “You’re Still the One”)? That’s the feeling you should be having right now because you’re about to see a breathtaking photo of a MALLARD.

I’m gonna be honest, a lot of photos simply do not do this bird justice. Part of that might be because it’s so familiar, but man, when you come across a good one, it goes hard: 

What can I even say here? Mallards are among the most common, most recognizable birds in the world. They’re not only the duck you think of when someone says “duck,” they’re also “the ancestor of most strains of domesticated ducks.” The Adam of ducks! This is some king shit, truly. 

It’s safe to say we take these birds for granted. The males cut a striking figure with shades of brown, gray, and white, and unbelievably vibrant shocks of iridescent forest green, orange, yellow and blue. The definition of handsome! Don’t discount the females though—along with young mallards, they too are fully iconic in their own right with their mottled brown feathers and orange bills. Eeeee!

These birds are cute but they’re also hardy and adaptable, migrating from as far north as Canada and Alaska. They’re also dabbling ducks, which means they feed near the surface of the water by tipping their bodies forward, instead of diving. Classic duck behavior!!! In addition to grazing on subaquatic flora, they also forage and graze for their meals on dry land. And you better believe they waddle when they do it. They waddle, they quack, they’re the duck emoji (🦆!), and you sure as heck fed them some pieces of sliced white bread at some point in your life! (Don’t do that, by the way.) 

Here’s something you should do, though: If you’re looking for an internet rabbit hole to fall down today, do some reading on duck sex. Yes, duck sex. As the St. Albert Gazette puts it, ducks have “a sex life that would make even the most carnal Casanova blush, full of gang rapes and remarkably complex genitalia.” Seriously, these waterfowl have received enough attention in the media for their wild romps and fascinating anatomy that it’s a wonder a mallard hasn’t written a viral personal essay for The Cut (complimentary). I’m posturing as if I myself don’t care that much about this or don’t want to spend a lot of time on it, but the truth is, my behavior is a form of self-preservation. If I got started on duck sex in the pages of this blog, we’d be here all day. Needless to say, nature is completely WILD and astonishing. Anyway.

Literally the only thing that’s not cool about mallards (okay, aside from some of the questionable sex stuff) is that they are the exact image that comes to mind when you hear the word “decoy” and that sucks because these birds deserve to live for a million years in peace, not hunted!! That association isn’t on them though, it’s on us, as all bad things are. Relatedly, mallards can live in captivity up to 10 years, but the oldest known mallard was a remarkable 27 years old (at least) when he was shot in Arkansas in 2008. Like I said, people bad. 

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Bleh okay, we’re journalists here so I should technically also note that mallards are considered an invasive species in some regions and that is a legitimate problem, buuuut we simply can’t solve every problem here today so shhhhh. That’s enough. I did my due diligence.

This might be my end-of-the-week fatigue talking, but writing this blog has made my admiration for the distinctive, adorable, and ubiquitous mallard grow into full-blown love and obsession. I hope reading it has done the same for you. Sincere thanks to the Discourse Blog reader who initially suggested we devote more time to ducks. A brilliant suggestion! A month wasn’t long enough, but frankly, no amount of time would be. That’s the price you pay for perfection.

Remember, you can check out our complete Bird of the Week list here, and get in touch with your bird suggestions—for a single bird, or a themed month like this one!—at hello@discourseblog.com.

I’m currently visiting the lovely city of Los Angeles. Amid the sun and the lovely fruit trees in people’s front yards, I’m gripped with a frequent annoyance as I try to interact with anyone on the East Coast, where I live. My days have gone something like this: I wake up around 9 a.m. (PST) and have a text from my cat sitter, bizarrely timestamped 5:52 a.m. Why is she seeing my cats so early, I wonder. It takes me a beat: Ah, that’s 5:52 a.m. PST, which is 8:52 a.m. EST, a perfectly normal time to drop in and dump out some wet cat food slop before the day picks up. Today, the appointed day for me to have the pleasure of blogging about a personal grievance for Discourse Blog, I wake up even earlier (8 a.m. PST) to check in with my editor at 11 a.m. EST. I work back from there: I’m recording a podcast at 1:30 p.m. PST, which is 4:30 p.m. EST, so I’ll need to file my blog before I record, otherwise it’ll be too late (only on the East Coast, mind you).

This is madness. And I have a solution. The United States should only have one time zone, and it should be Central Standard Time.

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But Katherine, I can almost hear you saying, this is meeting madness with more lunacy. No. Very smart people agree with me.

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A few weeks ago at the bar, I got into a classic argument about American politics with an acquaintance. We were talking about George Santos, the short-lived and much-loved Republican representative of New York’s 3rd Congressional District. In his brief time in office, Santos was implicated in an almost unceasing cavalcade of scams, crimes, and scandals, eventually forcing his colleagues to oust him from the House. I said, right off the bat, that I loved him. He was special to those of us with a bleak, cynical view of the American government: a shining and in some ways honest—if only because he was so brazen and inept—example of the everyday corruption and moral vacancy that most of our elected representatives share.

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The acquaintance didn’t agree. She thought taking a flippant view of Santos’s crimes didn’t absolve their perpetrator from moral condemnation. She did not want to laugh at George Santos—she was angry he ever held office in the first place, and couldn’t wait to see him gone.

And now, at long last, he is. Democrat Tom Suozzi won Santos’s seat in a special election on Tuesday, beating an ultra-Zionist mega-Maga Republican named Mazi Pilip, denying the GOP a chance to hold on to a crucial swing district for the next few months, and giving them the incumbent advantage when Suozzi has to win the seat for real in November. If you’re keeping score, this is a good thing. Electoral wins for the less-evil party in Congress are good, insofar that they are less bad than the alternative. My acquaintance was right — she has always been right. And yet, I just can’t shake that Santos nostalgia.

Part of this is how the Democrats won back NY-3. Suozzi, a longtime fixture in the state’s political scene, beat his opponent, a vaguely batty MAGA disciple with a wild personal story1, by outflanking her from the right: leaning into the panic over the Biden administration’s migrant policy and saying that he at least had better ideas to fix it than Pilip’s vague hysterics, as well as claiming that he would stand up to the evil leftists from inside the Democratic party itself. This strategy—portray Democrats as tougher on crime and immigration than their opponents and run a mile from the floundering incumbent president—is as cynical and depressing as they come. Already, the national party is taking note.

If he wins again in November, Suozzi’s vote will likely be an important one if the Democrats manage to regain the House majority. But if we wake up in January and the Democratic majority is chock full of Joe Manchin-like “Democrats” who are determined to run as far right as they need to retain their seat, we’ll be only marginally better off than we were with Santos in charge. It’s almost enough to make you miss him—if only because he was an constant reminder of what a liability the amoral conservative movement is to people who generally want to be good to one another. I liked having that, to some extent: a bumbling, corrupt fool, whose antics were so cartoonish that he inspired ridicule instead of fear and disgust, unlike some of the more overtly violent bigots the GOP has elected to office.

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What I liked most, though, was that Santos paradoxically made me feel sane. Politicians spend the majority of their careers trying to burnish and shine their image for an optimistic public that wants to believe the people they’re voting for have their best interests at heart. Spend long enough engaging with politics, and the people in it, however, and you begin to realize that it’s George Santoses all the way down. Staffers and advisers and politicians themselves are often married to lobbyists from special interest firms, they make questionable stock trades ahead of major government announcements all the time, and their policies shift and bend as much as the borders of their constantly gerrymandered districts. It was nice in some ways to have one guy who was so bad at hiding this that he had to lean in. That, I think, is the real reason his colleagues kicked him out of the House. When it came down to it, he was too honest of a crook to make a living in Washington.

Joe Biden is old. This is simply an objective fact. It is an accurate description of reality. It is seeing the world for what it is, which—it turns out—is fairly controversial and offensive for some people these days. And by “some people” I mean the capital L Liberals for whom any reminder of the fact that Joe Biden is as much a subject of the same laws of linear time and biology as the rest of our species is, to them, heresy of the highest order.

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What does this have to do with Jon Stewart? Ugh. I’m sorry you asked. But here goes.

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Today, I am launching an important campaign that I hope as many people as possible join. It’s a campaign about sticking to the values we hold dear; about demanding more from the powerful; about safeguarding some of our most precious commodities; in short, about doing the right thing.

This campaign has one goal and one goal only: to get Julianna Margulies written off the Apple TV+ comedy classic The Morning Show.

I can already hear you scoffing. But I am not joking when I say that we will have struck a decisive blow for a better society if we successfully ensure that Julianna Margulies doesn’t return to The Morning Show.

Let me explain.

First of all, this country—this world, really—needs The Morning Show. No program has brought me more entertainment over this last terrible year than this trainwreck of a “drama.” When Reese Witherspoon went into space?? When Billy Crudup randomly started singing a duet with his crazy mom? When Jennifer Aniston and Jon Hamm had the most hilarious sex scene of the last 15 years? The finale????? Perfection. Not good, but perfect. The Morning Show is objectively terrible but somehow glorious. There is nothing more ridiculous, more shoddily constructed, and more addictive on television.

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And yet. My ability to watch The Morning Show is now threatened by the continued presence of Julianna Margulies, who plays famous TV lesbian Laura Peterson. Laura gets together with Bradley Jackson (played by Witherspoon in one of the worst performances you will ever see) in Season 2. In Season 3, they break up and then get back together, and then Laura yells at Bradley for reasons I will not give away here (seriously, the reasons are way too stupid to recount) and then the season ends.

Margulies and Witherspoon have whatever the opposite of chemistry is (physics? IDK I’m not a scientist) and watching them attempt to pretend to be into each other is painful. But I would have accepted a Season 4 Laura storyline because The Morning Show turns my brain into a Joe Biden-like sludge and I am too weak to protest.

HOWEVER. That was before the events of November 21, 2023.

On that day, Julianna Margulies went on a podcast and delivered one of the vilest monologues I have ever heard from a celebrity. Surprise surprise, it was about Palestine.

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Sometimes, the bird world makes it easy for us here at Bird of the Week. Take this week’s duck—the third in our Duck Month miniseries.

This duck is called….the long-tailed duck. It’s a duck. It has a long tail. What more needs to be said?

OK, moving on, this has been Bird of the We—

OH MY GOD HOLD THE FREAKING PHONE. IT’S A DUCK. AND IT’S GOT A LONG TAIL. LOOK!!!! DUCK!!!! TAIL!!!!!!!!!! TAIL! DUCK!!!!

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Also the jaunty little multicolored bill!!!!

And the snowy white feathers on top of its head like it’s an old-timey news anchor! Hey, is that an actually good-at-his-job version of Wolf Blitzer I’m looking at??? No. It’s something better: a long-tailed duck.

Holy cannoli. This DUCK.

OK, I’m done hyperventilating. Sort of. Before I go on, I should just give a shoutout to Elias Markee-Ratner, a New York-area bird expert and photographer who suggested this duck for us to feature. (This is why the birding community matters so much to Bird of the Week: because I am a bird idiot who needs smart people like Elias to steer me in the right bird direction.) A most excellent choice!

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Let’s get into some quick long-tailed duck facts.

• Their tail feathers really are long—up to six inches! They are used by the male ducks to attract the female ducks.

• If you want to see them, you have to wear some layers, because long-tailed ducks live in very cold places—from the north of Canada and Alaska into the Arctic, over to Greenland and across the north of Scandinavia and Siberia. When your teeth are chattering and you’re seeing more ice floes than usual, that’s when you know you’re in Duck Town.

• They used to have a racist name I will not repeat here. Now they are called long-tailed ducks. Crazy thought: when you’re naming an animal and your first idea is “what if I imported racism into the world of ducks,” maybe keep brainstorming.

• If you noticed that the ducks look a little different in some of the pictures above, that’s because they dramatically change their plumage from summer to winter. In summer, they’re that more brownish shade that you can see in the second picture. In winter, they’re a dramatic black and white.

• They are a harbinger of better days to come. From the Whitefish Point Bird Observatory in Michigan: “To the Inuit of Nunavut, the arrival of the Long-tailed Duck (or in their language, aggiarjuk) heralds spring’s coming. Traditional songs exalt the event–‘When we have survived the worst and the future looks promising, the Long-tailed Ducks have now returned. As they return, they are full of joyous spirit.’” 

• They are master divers. In fact, no other diving duck spends as much time underwater as a long-tailed duck. When other ducks are like “boy, it might be time to go back up to the air,” a long-tailed duck is like “are you KIDDING me I am staying down here.” According to this video, when they’re foraging for food, they spend 3-4 times as much time underwater as they do above it, and they can dive almost 200 feet down to get the seafood they love to munch on. For some reason, the video points out that this is a longer distance than the length of things such as the Challenger space shuttle or Big Ben. Good to know, I guess?

• They are loud as hell—way louder than ducks usually are.

Add that all together, and what do you get? You get an iconic duck. Let’s watch some videos.

Here’s a cool slow-motion one of all these ducks diving in unison. (They also like to travel in big groups, that’s another fact.)

(Said slowly) Wwwwwooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwww.

Here’s a video where you can hear their very loud call. Apparently it inspired the Cree nickname for them: Ha-hah-way. You will definitely be able to tell why.

Here is a video of them flying around. The music is annoying but the footage is not.

And, finally, here is a very soothing video of the ducks just swimming around.

Aren’t we lucky to be in a world with long-tailed ducks?

A reminder: you can check out our complete Bird of the Week list here, and get in touch with your bird suggestions at hello@discourseblog.com.

After years of fear-mongering about gang violence sweeping the nation to an audience of America’s most gullible peepaws and meemaws, the folks at Fox News finally landed their white whale: an honest-to-god instance of organized street barbarism, live and in person, and smack dab in the middle of prime time. Imagine if Ghost Hunters actually managed to film a poltergeist from beyond the grave, or if Bigfoot wandered onto the set of Unsolved Mysteries and introduced himself by name to the camera.

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Let me set the scene: a dreary winter night in Manhattan. An ordinary New Yorker, minding his business. Suddenly, without warning, he’s swarmed by half a dozen men, all wearing easily identifiable gang colors. They surround him, yelling and shoving. Their leader encourages them from the sidelines as he yells about staying off his turf. And throughout it all, Fox News’ Sean Hannity, the network’s main attraction, urges his cameras onward, demanding they pan and swivel to catch every detail of the assault to show real America that if it can happen in Midtown, it can happen in YOUR town, too.

Here’s where it all falls apart.

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Readers, we need your help. The death of Henry Kissinger has left a void in our hearts, a hole previously filled with righteous hatred for one man who we all saw as the ultimate avatar of a century's worth of American sins. Now that the devil has been banished to hell, we have the freedom to choose a new target for our collective ire.

So, we ask you: who should it be?

It’s not as though we’re short on options, but there are many things to weigh. The person should ideally be both a) evil, b) annoyingly long-lived, and c) still an actively bad influence.

There are clear villains like Stephen Miller, but is he too young? who sadly appear to have many years yet on earth. George W. Bush is an obvious option, given the magnitude of his crimes, but has he faded too much into the background? Donald Trump is another good answer, but his current prominence in American politics places him in a slightly different pantheon to Kissinger, who lurked and lingered for decades in positions of little real power but high relevance and influence among the elite.

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The proper successor to Kissinger, in my opinion, is someone with a uniquely destructive and violent political record whose actions have inspired evil acts by American politicians years after they left power. It should be someone conceivably close to death’s door but unwilling to cross it. Think Jimmy Carter, but supremely evil instead of placidly boring. Other candidates—Ronald Reagan, Donald Rumsfeld, Margaret Thatcher—have already passed, though they would also have been great to put on the big deathwatch board in our minds.

Here’s what we need from you: suggestions, comments, questions—not concerns, as we’re not concerned for any of these people. The opposite, in fact. So sound off in the comments, or email us at hello@discourseblog.com, with your ideas for The New Henry Kissinger.

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Ideally, we’d do this once a week—if only because our current Crowned Kissingers happily shuffled off this mortal coil that frequently. But alas, if ol’ Henry is any indication, this title may last some time. So choose carefully. We’ll be back to announce the winner soon, with an in-depth justification of why we think they deserve all the ill wishes of our modest subscriber base.

It took a lot to take down Kissinger, so we might as well start sending out the bad vibes to the next deserving villain now.

It’s not news to anyone reading this blog that the national news coverage of the crisis in Gaza has frequently been abysmal. From sycophantic devotion to the passive voice to bizarre profiles of female ​​Israeli soldiers (yes, The New York Times’ misdeeds alone could take up an entire blog!!), it’s been many long months of failure on the part of mainstream media to call the genocide of Palestinians what it is. Still, nothing we’ve seen so far comes close to what the Wall Street Journal ran last Friday.

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Honestly “ran” or “posted” don’t even feel like the right words for this. It’s a shitpost, it’s a virtual match to a virtual pool filled with gasoline, it’s hate speech, it’s full-on Joker mode. It’s one of the worst things you will ever read, and it’s already had dangerous consequences.

The trouble starts with literally the first paragraph.

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On Sunday, Politico’s Jonathan Martin quoted a House Democrat saying what is clear to everyone with a brain in their head: that Joe Biden’s decision to offer unyielding support for Israel’s destruction of Gaza is a calamity.

One House Democrat told me of a dinner last month with about eight other colleagues, a cross-section of the caucus ideologically and generationally. “It was unanimous that this Israel-Gaza war needed to end now and that Biden needed to stand up to Bibi,” this lawmaker told me, before offering his own view.

“This is a disaster politically,” said this House Democrat, who rarely criticizes Israel. “The base is really pissed — and it’s not just the leftists. I have never seen such a depth of anguish as I’ve seen over this Gaza issue. Bibi is toxic among many Democratic voters and Biden must distance himself from him — yesterday.”

Setting aside the fact that complaining anonymously about this situation—rather than, say, publicly pressuring Biden to call for a permanent ceasefire—is cowardly and of relatively little use, what this person is saying is obviously true. Try as the Nancy Pelosis of the universe might to portray the opposition to Israel’s campaign of mass murder as some fringe concern of Russian-backed crazies, more and more evidence piles up by the day showing that wanting this slaughter to end is a thoroughly mainstream position.

An AP poll on Friday showed 50 percent of Americans saying Israel has “gone too far,” a figure driven, according to the organization, “by growing disapproval among Republicans and political independents.” Biden’s overall approval rating is in the toilet. An NBC poll on Sunday found just 29 percent of respondents backing his handling of the war on Gaza; among voters under 35, that number is an even more minuscule 15 percent, with 70 percent disapproving. That figure is backed up by the AP’s poll, which also reported that “about 6 in 10 non-white Democrats disapprove of how Biden is approaching the conflict.”

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Taken together, these figures show the obvious: Biden has helped to carry out one of the biggest moral obscenities in modern world history, and all he’s gotten in return is an ever-spiraling quagmire in the Middle East; a close partnership with a fascist Israeli government that keeps spitting in his face and isn’t even winning the war on its own stated terms; and the growing revulsion of the people he desperately needs to win reelection.

It’s surely not helping that Biden keeps making impromptu comments that underscore the futility and hypocrisy of his policy. There was his instantly infamous response to a question about whether his attacks on the Houthis were actually doing anything—“When you say working, are they stopping the Houthis? No. Are they going to continue? Yes”—and his equally revealing statement that he holds Iran responsible for the attack on a U.S. military base in Jordan because “they’re supplying the weapons to the people who did it.” (If that’s the threshold for responsibility, then Israel isn’t the only country that should be staring down charges at The Hague.) That last comment is now being shown on the side of “Genocide Joe” trucks driving through Arab American strongholds in Michigan, as can be seen in this CNN clip.

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One big problem Biden faces in responding to all of this is that he very obviously does not want to give his millions of critics the thing they are asking for the most—a permanent ceasefire. He has had months and months to take real steps to end this carnage, and he has declined. So instead, he’s had to resort to things like imposing sanctions on some particularly evil West Bank settlers (a good but limited action) and saying that he doesn’t like anti-Arab racism or Islamophobia (the world’s lowest bar to clear).

But, if the Politico piece is anything to go by, an even bigger problem is that the White House really is as arrogant and stupid as it seems. Why do I say that? Take a look (emphasis mine):

The White House, in a reflection of their public confidence (hubris?) regarding the politics of Biden’s positioning on Israel, arranged a call with Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.).

Fetterman, who has delighted in trolling left-wing critics by resolutely standing with Israel since Oct. 7, told me young voters should consider the implications of enabling a candidate who would likely given Netanyahu even more of a free hand.

“If you sit this out, or throw your vote away, you now are effectively empowering Bibi, and you’re definitely going to be empowering Trump,” he said.

And, Fetterman added, don’t forget the lessons of Hillary Clinton: “I said the same thing in 2016 to voters, I said: ‘Hey, you know what, you don’t like Clinton, you know what, fuck around and find out what Trump is going to be about and, hey guess what, how’d you like it?’”

You must be joking. The White House knew that Politico was doing a big piece about the left-wing critics of its Israel policy, and it decided to respond to that by putting forth John Fetterman, whose contemptuousness for the pro-Palestinian movement has destroyed whatever reputation he once had as a progressive? And, far from saying anything conciliatory, Fetterman was as smug and deliberately inflammatory as possible? (Also, I’m not sure how much more someone could be “empowering Bibi” than Biden is doing right now, so these people need a better argument than that.)

They might as well have had Biden come out and say “fuck off” instead because the message being sent here is the same: your concerns are ridiculous to us and we don’t have to take them seriously. All we have to do is wave the Trump monster at you and you’ll shut up like you should.

Well, look around, Joe. That’s not going to fly. I’m sure these people want to win the election, but ask yourself: what would people who didn’t want to win the election be doing differently right now? Good luck in November.

Now that we’re firmly in the middle of Duck Month here at Bird of the Week, it’s even more baffling to me that we’ve failed so miserably when it comes to featuring ducks in the past. Did you SEE the freckled duck last week????? We had ENTIRE YEARS when we could have been raving about that duck, and all the other ducks, and we didn’t. If you’ll excuse me, I just need a moment to commission a gargantuan Jayson Blair-level internal investigation into this lapse of editorial judgment.

OK, that’s done. Let’s get to this week’s duck. Like Caitlin, I chose this duck purely because it made me go “adlfjdl;fgs;dlfg” when I saw it.

It’s the one, the only…..muscovy duck.

I’m tempted to just walk away after this picture. Like, this is a mic drop in photo form. Look at duck!!!!!!

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Not convinced?

Come ON now. Need I say more???

OK, I’ll say a little more. (Not too much because it’s been a loooong week.) There are muscovy ducks that have been domesticated, but there are also wild muscovy ducks all throughout Central and South America, and dipping into the edges of much of the southern United States. (They’ve also been found in New Zealand, because of course.) In particular, there are apparently a bunch of wild muscovy ducks in Florida, because people bought them as pets and then released them illegally. They breed like…ducks, I guess? Constantly, is the key fact anyway. So there are now so many muscovy ducks roaming around that there are literally pest control guidelines for them in Florida, where they’re seen as an aggressive invasive species.

I don’t know why people in Florida are so mad. Look at these little muscovy ducklings that someone in Florida found in their backyard:

I mean!!!!!!!! Look at this duck showing off its very large size (they’re one of the biggest ducks around), incredible iridescent blue-green feathers, and prominent caruncle!!!

You’re telling me you wouldn’t want that hanging around your state? Well, these are the people who foisted Ron DeSantis on the universe, so being hated by them is kind of a badge of honor.

It gets crazier—here’s a news segment about Florida crazies deliberately running over some muscovies because they didn’t like all the ducks hanging around their neighborhood. What the hell!

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This whole segment is incredible actually. “The ducks aren’t the problem, it’s the poop,” one woman who has tried to scare the ducks away (for real) with rubber snakes says. “For the most part, people hate the ducks,” someone else says. !!!! “Most neighbors here agree, running the ducks over isn’t the solution,” the reporter concludes. No kidding. FLORIDA.

Actually, this one’s worse—a Texas city actually told people to kill the ducks, but that, according to this report, “generally speaking you could not use a gun” to do it. They’re out here treating these ducks like spotted lanternflies, and it disgusts me.

When muscovy ducks aren’t breeding and dodging cars and bullets (!!), they’re more likely found in tropical areas (though they kind of do well in most places) where they can mate, eat all the stuff they like (and they like…just about everything) and generally chill. Here’s a duck flying.

Here’s some ducks in their natural habitats.

And here are some ducks (I think domesticated ones) having a little argument.

QUACK. QUACK. Keep making Floridians mad. Until next time!

A reminder: you can check out our complete Bird of the Week list here, and get in touch with your bird suggestions at hello@discourseblog.com.

I’m still not really sure what The Messenger was or who it was for, but clearly neither were its founders, who shut down the site “effective immediately” yesterday, less than one year after it launched. In that time, they hired some 300 journalists and burned through a staggering investment of $38 million, according to The New York Times.

If we’ve learned anything from mass media layoffs—which, if you’re in the industry, you’ve probably learned about firsthand by now—it’s that they’re never handled with an ounce of human decency. But, somehow, it seems like matters were handled even more poorly than usual at The Messenger. It’s hard to imagine how a company could treat people worse than they’re typically treated, but the severity and cruelty of The Messenger’s approach seems to have done the impossible.

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I base that on updates like this:

Unreal. And that’s just the start. As these following tweets show, it gets worse.

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