InstaPunk Rules

Contrary to official opinion, we’re not dumb. We know he’s a risk. A big one. But we’re all in. Why?

Because we cannot go on as we have been. Seven years of Obama have shown that this unique and glorious nation is in danger of dying. While every single establishment institution has played along, caved, hid under the bed, pretended that business as usual would somehow see us through to another better day.

We have a president who hates his country, who hates Jews, is probably a jihadist Muslim, and has done everything possible to foment race war while dismantling the prospects and lives of a once sturdy middle class. He wants to dissolve the America we grew up in. He flings open the border to illiterate, criminal speakers of a foreign tongue he laughs at our opposition to. Meanwhile we have a party which cheers this destruction on, thinking they can make electoral hay of it, and a party which supports or blinks at every rotten tactic because they’re beholden to a monolith of millionaires called the Chamber of Commerce, who don’t care about black Americans or the middle class because they just want cheaper labor, no matter who they have to buy to get it.

Who could possibly stand up against such a successful and deep seated conspiracy? Well, it would take someone wildly unlikely, wouldn’t it? What would his attributes be? He would have to be a politician and not one at the same time. He would have to be enough of an insider to know exactly how this scheme is being organized and run. He would have to be unafraid of the powers that be due to some acquired immunity over a long life of wealth, power, and influence. He would have to be unusually self motivated, a kind of born again rebel against evils he has been party and witness to. A kind of Augustine, coming to the light later in life. He would have to be the kind of man Donald Trump says he is. And then we would have to believe him because there is essentially no other choice. We’ve seen all the earnest pretenders attain office and fail their principles immediately. Only the richest of rich men can be hoped to be above temptation.

We know. We know we could be placing our faith in the wrong man. But where else should we place our faith? Eric Cantor? Paul Ryan? Every first term goober in the senate? Every old dinosaur in the senate? Justice Roberts? They’ve all failed us utterly.

So Trump is the Hail Mary pass. We’ve watched the prevent defense of the Republican establishment fail every time. We have the ball this one last time. And if we don’t score a touchdown the game is over, for ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren.

And we’re the stupid ones, beneath the contempt of the pundits and the oppressed lowlifes who think it’s more important to be smarter than Trumpsters than to fight for our dying nation. But let me ask you. Is there any one of you who truly believes that not one of us knows this is a game of Russian Roulette? Of course it is. But we’re willing to play. You just want to sit on your smug asses and wait for the end of the world. Like you always wanted it to come.

In Trump algebra, guess what. We’re the winners. You’re the losers. Because we still dare.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x5kXnq5IjdU

He called it the Trump Campaign Juggernaut and linked this.

“New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie offered up the latest twist of the Republican presidential primary when he endorsed Donald Trump on Friday, saying the GOP frontrunner is “rewriting the playbook of American politics.”

“The backing from his vanquished primary opponent came the day after Trump found himself under fierce attack from Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz in the final debate before next week’s critical Super Tuesday nominating contests.

“The single most important thing for the Republican Party is to nominate the person who gives us the best chance to beat Hillary Clinton,” Christie said at a news conference in Fort Worth, Texas. “I can guarantee that the one person Hillary and Bill Clinton don’t want to see on that stage come next September is Donald Trump.”

**************

This after I spent a whole day yesterday watching the Trump haters smacking their lips over one more Trump-ending event in which they imagined the yapping puppy Rubio taking down The Donald. They were licking themselves in glee.

Instead, Christie just won his way back into the Veep sweepstakes, and Trump motors on to the next big delegate gain on Super Tuesday. He still leads the yapping puppy by double digits in Florida, while Mark Levin and Rush Limbaugh do belated damage control to the prospects of Ted Cruz.

Cruz was my original favorite of the field, with distinct caveats. He is brilliant, no doubt about it, and the ideological heir to Reagan. But Reagan had the common touch, was immensely likeable, and charmed his way on top of principle to the presidency. Cruz has the principle, but not the common touch. That was always my worry about him, that he was not Reagan but Goldwater, a sacrificial precursor to the one who would one day win.

We don’t have time for a Goldwater. And, yes, Trump is a huge gamble. But all the charges and accusations hurled against him are more than equaled by the treachery on record of the Republican establishment. They lie, they change their positions nakedly and arrogantly, they ignore the common man and woman, and they don’t even care how transparently we see them doing it. Yet Trump is uniquely held to account for daring to stand up and say “No more.”

The very victims of 15 years of betrayal and national destruction are somehow proud to pronounce themselves superior to the stupid, boorish, phony, liberal pretender who was the only one with the courage to stand up and say “No more.”

In recent weeks I’ve been called stupid, uneducated, and a fool for calling out their stupidity and folly in reducing argument to lists of nasty adjectives and unsubstantiated assumptions about the canniest politician we’ve seen on the national stage in a generation.

I’m not stupid. I’m an American in the old sense of the term, meaning I’m willing to take a risk to pull America back from the brink of utter catastrophe.

So sue me.

Thunder Road.

Close in. The way it will go. Rubio Ringo versus Trump Holliday. The callow versus the Killer.

Rest in peace, little Cubano.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DT3GnJStVEw

Rubio’s the one with flop sweat. And sheer terror.

See that blue background between them? What’s in there?

The stats are out there, but no one on either side has tried to make sense of them. The figures for turnout in Nevada.

“The Nevada Republican Party reported Wednesday morning that more than 75,000 voters participated in the contest. While that might not seem like a stunning number in a state with a population of somewhere around three million, that turnout absolutely demolished the participation record from 2012, when only about 33,000 Republican voters showed up to caucus.

“In fact, Donald Trump alone captured 34,531 votes in his near-landslide victory in the state, surpassing the total votes cast in the same contest four years ago.

“It’s a pattern that has played out in each of the previous Republican 2016 contests to date….

Bottom line being a 130 percent increase in Republican primary voters in Nevada.

“On the Democratic side, the story has not been as rosy. After notching record turnouts in the 2008 Democratic primaries during the epic battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the party’s participation this cycle has fallen short of those numbers in every nominating contest to date.

“Here are those Democratic turnout numbers:

Iowa 2008: 239,972
Iowa 2016: 171,109
New Hampshire 2008: 288,672
New Hampshire 2016: 250,983
Nevada 2008: 120,000
Nevada 2016: 80,000”

Meaning the Democrats in Nevada were down 33 percent from the last election cycle.

Nobody has connected the dots. Hillary versus Bernie. Has anybody anywhere figured out that Hillary versus Bernie is two fringes battling over nothing? Bernie has the know nothing, do nothing kids. Hillary has the 65+ old lady feminists. Which doesn’t account for the 33 percent of Democrats who are staying home and sitting on their hands.

It’s the hole where Democrat voters are supposed to be and no longer are.

Two silly fringes dueling over who can be more ludicrous and extreme. And neither has the wit to realize what they’ve left behind in their pursuit of polls and friendly interviews on the Today Show. Bill knows. Why he’s fading into a blurred and unfunny background.

What color is the hole? Appropriately, black.

Guaranteed. Some part of this demographic both Bernie and Hillary are missing.

And what part are the know-it-alls missing. You tell me.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o_sf8XFkmUg

At least that many, Hillary.

Never stop, never stop, never stop breaking down…

Alice eventually found her way out of the hole. Hillary never will.

The cognoscenti have descended on last night’s debate as if it meant anything. It didn’t, doesn’t. Trump shows up. The moderators talk, the desperate also rans attack, and Trump is basically, well, bored by the check the box attendance requirement.

Nobody on the stage with him knows much about winning, ugly or otherwise.

Cruz has been courageous and valiant, but he has lost every confrontation he has sought out. Not his fault. But his senate record is one of losing. Every time.

Rubio is just a player. He still thinks he can spin huge losses and humiliations as sorta kinda wins. Wrong. Given his disgraceful, self congratulating, personal, borderline pansy lockerroom gossip performance on stage today, it’s safe to say he’s learned the ugly part, just not the winning part.

John Kasich thinks winning is about convincing people Ohio is a stand-in for the entire nation. No, it isn’t. He’s a big fish in a small pond, and he thinks everything outside his pond is the ugly. Wrong. If he’s not wearing white shoes and a white belt, everyone in the audience thinks he is.

Ben Carson has made himself a shining footnote in American history. Not the same thing as being a winner in the Big Game.

Trump. Listen to the song up top. That would be Trump. He can take a left hook to the head and keep brawling. Winning is the end result of what happens after all the rounds have been punched and clawed and kicked till the closing bell.

What his supporters know about him. The good fighters get stronger as the challengers get meaner. What’s most interesting is the punches he does not throw. They call him stupid, uneducated, ignorant, a dumbass. Does he ever mention that he went to a New York Jesuit prep school where education is a certain by-product? No. Rubio says Trump never punched anybody. Does Trump mention he was a varsity athlete in secondary school? No. He just keeps on rolling. Because he knows Marco is the one who looks like a scared little boy acting out as he’s losing the election for class president.

Trump intends to be THE president. Rubio is just trying to suck up to his donors. See the difference anyone?

Think what you like, all ye pundits and poseurs. Dream your delusions of perfect Justice. Life ain’t like that. At all.

Saw a cop show the other night where there was a lot of talk about following a hunch, or more colloquially, your gut. Then by accident I was reminded today of the most extraordinary statement ever made in American politics. “If nominated I will not run. If elected I will not serve.”

His name was William Tecumseh Sherman. He is still hated today in the south, more than even Lincoln, because he was, in the words of British military historian B. H. Liddell Hart, “the first modern general.”

Long before I studied the Civil War I looked at pictures of it in my Grandpa Miesse’s books. He was a student of the war, had all the books, and knew all the battles inside out. Most of the pictures of generals looked pretty much the same to me, stiffly posed super-confident men with an abundance of beards, mustaches, and side whiskers. Only one looked out of place. His name was William Tecumseh Sherman.

I mean, you couldn’t walk down the street in Salem today and see General Ambrose Burnside, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, George McClellan, James Longstreet, Ulysses Grant, or George Custer.

Ambrose Burnside

Robert E. Lee

Stonewall Jackson

George McClellan

James Longstreet

Ulysses Grant

General pro-tem Custer

See what I mean? Thing is, you could walk down the street in Salem and see a man who looks like this.

Forget the uniform. Look at the eyes.

Okay, okay, I can hear you thinking So what. He’s a little more fashion forward, a little less vain, a little less cocooned in the Christian certainty of the age, a little more, uh, modern in affect. So what, right?

But there’s this from the Wiki entry on Sherman.

“Sherman was born in 1820 in Lancaster, Ohio, near the banks of the Hocking River. His father Charles Robert Sherman, a successful lawyer who sat on the Ohio Supreme Court, died unexpectedly in 1829. He left his widow, Mary Hoyt Sherman, with eleven children and no inheritance. After his father’s death, the nine-year-old Sherman was raised by a Lancaster neighbor and family friend, attorney Thomas Ewing, Sr., a prominent member of the Whig Party who served as senator from Ohio and as the first Secretary of the Interior. Sherman was distantly related to American founding father Roger Sherman and grew to admire him.

“Sherman’s older brother Charles Taylor Sherman became a federal judge. One of his younger brothers, John Sherman, served as a U.S. senator and Cabinet secretary. Another younger brother, Hoyt Sherman, was a successful banker. Two of his foster brothers served as major generals in the Union Army during the Civil War: Hugh Boyle Ewing, later an ambassador and author, and Thomas Ewing, Jr., who would serve as defense attorney in the military trials of the Lincoln conspirators. Sherman would marry his foster sister, Eleanor, at age 30 and have eight children with her.”

All of which is true except for the part about William Tecumseh Sherman. My own family, on my mother’s side, were all from Lancaster, Ohio. My grandfather spent his career working for Anchor Hocking Glass, first in Lancaster and then in Salem, NJ. Their parents and grandparents knew the Shermans. Lancaster was a small town. (Still is. I’ve been there.) There was no son named William.

But the Methodist church records show that there was a great great grandson named William, who disappeared sometime in 1945, shortly after his military service in World War II.

I once asked my grandpa about General Sherman. Lancaster and all that. He brushed it aside. “A mistake is all,” he said. “The Shermans weren’t the ones had the general. Some other folks in some other town maybe.”

Yeah, I know it’s a slender thread. But what if? What if we lost World War II because we were a divided nation, two or more separate countries, and William Tecumseh Sherman figured out a way to go back and apply the lessons of Total War against the Confederacy?

A closing note. I went to a prep school about a half day’s drive from Lancaster. There was one old decent hotel/restaurant. It was called The Tecumseh Inn. Founded in 1938.

Again, from a wiki, things still contested…

“Sherman’s unusual given name has always attracted considerable attention.[5] Sherman reported that his middle name came from his father having “caught a fancy for the great chief of the Shawnees, ‘Tecumseh.'”[6] Since an account in a 1932 biography about Sherman, it has often been reported that, as an infant, Sherman was named simply Tecumseh. According to these accounts, Sherman only acquired the name “William” at age nine or ten, after being taken into the Ewing household. His foster mother, Maria Willis Boyle (Maria Ewing), was of Irish ancestry and a devout Roman Catholic. Sherman was raised in a Roman Catholic household, though he later left the church, citing the effect of the Civil War on his religious views. According to a story that may be myth, Sherman was baptized in the Ewing home by a Dominican priest, who named him William for the saint’s day: possibly June 25, the feast day of Saint William of Montevergine.[7] The story is contested, however. Sherman wrote in his Memoirs that his father named him William Tecumseh; Sherman was baptized by a Presbyterian minister as an infant and given the name William at that time.[8] As an adult, Sherman signed all his correspondence – including to his wife – “W.T. Sherman.”[9] His friends and family always called him “Cump.”

You see? Or not.

He nearly went insane toward the end. There were no refrigerators.

Well, in no particular order, here are our candidates.

So I never had a job. Look at me. Is that MY fault?

Servers? Talk to my publicist.

Been busy here since I wented home. That Akita called. Couldn’t reach the phone from here.

Is this Ohio? I do good in Ohio. In Ohio they know I can bite them. Is this Ohio?

If nominated I would run. If elected I would serve.

I just fired my communications director and Christ is my savior. Need any help with that French translation?

Is Mitch mad at me? What did I do now?

I got perfect vision. Perfect. I can see all the way from here to 2020.

Every dog has his day. Maybe only one has his day.

We all know Obama is down with the bro’s, right?

Has this been running in your TV market? I couldn’t believe it when I saw it. After Dr. Ben Carson said something or other about Obama, we got a blizzard of ads with these images featuring Obama endorsing Ben Carson for the Republican nomination. They were even narrated by the well known Voice of Allah, by name, uh, I’m working on it. (I’m a SADD sufferer, so give me a minute.)

The Uncle Ben butler?

hmmmmm.

Call me paranoid. But “wild rice” is the only thing they could think to put up in deference to his long and distinguished career?

Oh. I remember now. Morgan Fairchild. Who also recently did this little voiceover masterpiece for Hillary.

The ad said some nice things about Uncle Ben. Like how he rarely killed the widows and orphans in his care, even if he refused to give them the abortions they so sorely needed. And how he went to Johns-Hopkins on a scholarship endowed by the very same old white men who were killing all the widows and orphans who didn’t survive until Uncle Ben’s residency. An evenhanded montage of gracious plaudits, I’m thinking, from a high yellow man to a black man.

For the record. If it has to be an image of Uncle Ben, I’ll go with this one.

Never give up, good doctor.

The Command Center is always Ready!

From our roving reporter, presently in ICU somewhere in the trunk of Hunter Thompson’s old Lincoln…

Who knew that Dr. Ben Carson had a sense of humor? He’s just now accused Obama of having been raised “white.”

Carson and “Whitey.”

Of course, what does Carson know? He doesn’t have a doo-rag, a clapped-out Caddy with a Bentley grille and 19 inch spinner wheels, a Sig-Sauer in the glovebox, seven baby mamas over 200 pounds of booty each, a gold front tooth, and a thousand watt stereo screaming FU to everybody else at every red light. WTF would he know about being an African American?

Did you ever even see the spinners, Ben?

Thought not. We don’t need no education. Fool.

We don’t need nothin’ but Shake Your Booty.

Spapp witcha.

But Dr. Ben is chillin’ with his new bodyguards though. So don’t be thinkin’ you can cap THAT big unkatom ass. Know what I’m sayin’?

Dr. Ben’s the guy in the tie behind the, you know, Panthers. Know what I’m sayin’?

Because almost every black life matters, dontcha know? Unless they’s be cops or like whiteman shit or like Ben Carson. Cause we got bidness to do.

And Trump is the worst thing ever? You never heard anybody so vulgar? Two words occur to me I will not say.

The Command Center is always Ready!

From our roving correspondent…

During my second screwdriver at the Trump Hotel’s All-U-Can-Drink breakfast buffet, the server in that amazing skirt gave me the straight skinny on Kasich’s night in Nevada. Like every old guy in a white belt and shoes from Ohio, he wanted to see the “casino action.” Unfortunately he got arrested trying to order a complimentary drink at the Nellis Casino (shown on the map below), to which he had special access because of his connections to Republican consultants at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio.

Hotshot casino located in the upper right corner of the map.

The Guv’s brain trust leaked him the info that the best game in the house was the Claw of Destiny, used by many aspiring politicians to achieve their life’s dreams.

All he could get was Rubio.

So he played and played hard. No one minded that he lost $1.36 billion of the Ohio State Treasury. But when he demanded a complimentary “Bloodsucker-tini” prior to his next run at the prize, the Nellis Security Team had had enough.

No one knows exactly where he is, although a spokesgirl in Columbus has assured the press that Kasich was being transported by C-130 cargo plane to Wright Patterson, for “physical therapy.” It’s going quite well. As well as can be expected.

He, like many politicians, still needs to learn the meaning of the term “complimentary drink” as understood by the voters.

Still working on the whereabouts and goings on of Dr. Ben Carson.

“Want a maraschino cherry this time?” asks my delightful server. She says her name is Lila. I think it’s Lam-eeee-ah. Why am I being billed for rohypnol?

Nix on the cherry, though. They’re too big these days.

–30–

The Command Center is Ready!

So now let the good times roll…

We’ll be back with news if there is any.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vLqKSv1F42A

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Raven knows.

Laughing are you? You should see her in person.

The white one is a swashbuckler. The black one is sinister, Snape, Aramis, Nazgul. You don’t even see her when you see her.

A test we took. She’s left brain and I’m right. As always. Of course.

Let’s see. We both spent the majority of our professional careers in the computer industry. We both despise chess. We both like fast cars. We enjoy the same movies and TV shows. We don’t like the same novels. I’m Fitzgerald, she’s Dostoevski. We compromise. She loves Renoir and Degas. I Love Edward Hopper (thanks, David) and Picasso. No conflict there. Her favorites I find dull, she finds mine maybe a bit weird. She studied German and Russian. I studied French, Latin, and Greek. We both love Shakespeare and Poe and Swinburne. We both love the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. We both believe in the Nicene Creed. We both love sighthounds, especially greyhounds and deerhounds. We both feel a hole in our hearts since the death of our Scotty. We both love feral cats and have an instinctive sense how to tame them. We both love pizza, her more than me. We both love college football, she more for Temple and Rutgers and Oregon, me more for Harvard and Ohio State. We clash over Michigan State and Alabama. It never comes to blows. I mean, we also clash over the proper pronunciation of Latin. She’s an Irish Catholic devoted to the vulgate version of the Latin mass. Whereas I am a scholastic Latin student, versed in Vergilian versification that demonstrates how Latin must have sounded in Ancient Rome.

However. According to this Internet pop quiz, we shouldn’t be with each other at all. Here’s her brain profile.

All smarty smarty.

And here’s mine.

All touchy-feely.

Thing is, we get along just fine. We love each other. Maybe brains interact in ways the scientists haven’t figured out yet.

Used to,play this every day before I went to work in corporate America. Now I know what love is.

Fox is having a very grumpy night. Megyn has a very brittle smile.

Back in the ancient past, about half a month ago, I posted a sexist, racist, etc, lampoon of Megyn Kelly and the movie Rocky IV. I’d like to take it all back but I can’t because it still holds.

Winner by knockout. The crude one, the awful one. Ew. We’re all repulsed, aren’t we, Zincavage?

In the last 24 hours there was all this wild GOPe hope, Fox News buoyant over word that new polls showed Trump sinking in South Carolina. The Rubio banners on the Fox & Friends set were burnished with new polish and glitter. We’re doing it! He’s finally done this time! The low class pretender will be sent to also-ran hell at last!

Alas.

Rocky wins improbably. Always and always improbably. It’s a Philly thing. Different song this time. For all the blue collar Philly glunks who think Megyn should wear less makeup and more class and respect for the rest of us.

Sleep tight Murdoch and the staffs of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal.

Beautiful. Symphony in white, designed by an Israeli.

But for a vision in white and shades of gray, how about this one?

My wife got this one after I failed repeatedly.

What’s the next best color to white? Maybe gold. Our Rikki’s racing name was Cuervo Gold. You can see why. He’s eleven going on twelve and looks like he could start at the dog track gate tomorrow morning.

Perfect coat, perfect weight, and better, he loves me.

Did I mention, he loves me?

Raebert on the other hand is deep down mad at me.

Didn’t want me coming downstairs to visit Rikki.

Made it very clear up close and personal.

I hate you.

But then there was Rikki, a beautiful figure standing in the doorway.

While Rae was hating me, Rikki was anxious to see me. Now Rae is trying to make nice. Won’t work tonight.

It’s been that kind of day. Intense, liturgical, beautiful, beatific.

Me, unPhotoshopped for once.

My wife and I are both of an age where we keep having to ask each other, “Did I tell you about…?” and it doesn’t matter because if we did we don’t remember whatever it was and get to do the first time all over again.

One of us read, but neither of us remember who, the thing about Alzheimer’s tracking you down from the past, eating up your memories progressively and hence your whole life and identity.

This short term stuff is a different beast entirely, to the point I’m convinced it needs its own acronym and a bevy of TV commercials about how to treat it with expensive prescription drugs featuring legions of fatal and near-fatal side effects.

It’s called SADD. Senior Attention Deficit Disorder. It’s not actually a neurological syndrome as it is with the kids who can’t pay attention in class. This is about the true manifestation of what kids with no excuse call boredom.

You people who aren’t our age just try to imagine our plight. We went to school and learned stuff when you still had to learn stuff. We can still recite verses we memorized in fifth grade. We can still do arithmetic and solve algebra word problems if we can make out the fine print. We remember important dates from throughout recorded human history. And we have learned how to operate the various social network thingies that glue idiot children to their cellphones even as they stride obliviously against the light on a crosswalk.

So why do we nod off in the middle of conversations and forget what happened yesterday and the day before? Because all you twenty–‘ thirty–, forty–, and fifty-somethings just bore us to the point of coma. Everything you know is not true, everything you opine about is over your heads, and every argument you attempt to make falls apart at the first touch from a wrinkled old finger like the ones at the end of our hands.

Have to tell you, SADD is very very widespread. Some photographic proof:

I think this guy was trying to watch Megyn Kelly’s latest blistering takedown of Donald Trump.

Some ancient Brit knickers infiltrator was talking up a movie made by a bunch of SADD sufferers…

…and the Voice of God sitting next to him was just tired to death of hearing it all again.

I think this was during the latest SOTU address. No wonder.

They tried to wake her up by asking if she was ready to retire yet. She said “FU” and resumed her nap.

May have been from the same event. Again, no wonder.

Thing is, it’s not what you’d call a new thing.

Possible that Winston Churchill was Patient Zero.

Meanwhile, here I am just missing the plane on my attempt to escape Zero Nation.

Would you believe it? Nobody woke me up.

Of course, some might say I’m the only one who has been awake through this whole comedy of errors.

One day they can’t take away from Jesus Christ.

We are watching. On C-Span. No talking heads to talk over, interfere with, diminish, or otherwise sully a sacred and solemn farewell to a great man.

The Catholic Basilica in DC.

C-Span, for example, is not reporting the CNN rumor that the Pope is streaking toward Washington in his Gulfstream jet, Vatican One, to excommunicate Antonin Scalia at the gravesite.

So far, only MSNBC confirms. We’ll keep you posted.

Otherwise it’s a day for Americans, Christians, and (unfortunately) disenfranchised Catholics. The opening hymn was magnificent. (with a grateful nod to Westminster Abbey reminding us some hymns are shared across denominations)

The one and only.

No, it’s not her birthday or any other anniversary I know of. This post is here because someone just reminded me of her and I thought we could all benefit from the memory of style and grace and beauty she represented.

Go ahead. Google her and photos of her and her designs. You’ll find it’s therapeutic as tantric meditation, whatever that is, dahling.

Good friend of Truman Capote. He’d have told her to die younger.

It was an okay if overpraised book. She was the Margaret Mitchell of the Civil Rights era. White southerners were abolitionists and like that.

Gregory Peck could shoot as well as Clint Eastwood, sometimes, if the target was a dog.

The tragedy, the shame of it all, was the publishing world’s determination to present her first draft of Mockingbird as if it were a sequel. It wasn’t a sequel. It was the way things were in her time, place, and place in life.

Closer to Gone with the Wind than anyone ever imagined.

We thought it was this.

When it was really, always, this.

Sad. She shoulda died already.