Saturday, August 10, 2019

Schlockmeister

Image via Mayday Productions.

As I was telling somebody with reference to the death of Jeffrey Epstein (you can read my take at the link at bottom) and the immediate batches of conspiracy theories arising around it, I can't stand it when real life starts resembling this schlocky kind of fiction.
But the schlock never stops in today's news, and there's this other thing, with which I was briefly involved. Tito Anchondo, the body shop guy whose nephew Paul was the two-month-old orphan of two victims of the El Paso massacre, was interviewed on Wednesday on NPR in a very affecting segment, at the end of which he did something odd: started talking to the interviewer about how he'd like to meet Trump on his El Paso visit, really kind of asking the radio network to help him out:

The precise words, transcribed this morning by Connie Schultz, were, "I want to see his reaction in person. I want to see if he's genuine & see if my political views are right or wrong. And see if he feels maybe some kind of remorse for statements that he's made. I just want to have a human-to-human talk with him and see how he feels."

But then after he did manage to meet with Trump for that ghastly picture with Trump thumb up and grinning like an enraged chimpanzee and Melania uncomfortably holding the baby, it sounds as if they didn't have a human-to-human talk at all.
It doesn't feel quite right. And meanwhile from the side of the baby's mother, people who refused to meet with Trump, some pretty angry accusations found on her Facebook page:


Do you think Uncle Tito could have been asking the Emperor for some cash? OK, I'm out of here. I'll try to get back to thinking about more elevated topics soon.

Cross-posted at The Rectification of Names.

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