The Friday Document Dump - A Weekly Compendium of the Crazy From Our Culture

AP featured image — (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

The possible launch of a regular feature gathering the off-kilter from the news cycle. As a way to contend with our ever-evolving dose of dementia that we are seeing playing out across the media and cultural landscape, this is the launch of a new weekly feature where some of the more obtuse offerings will be...offered. Hopefully this can serve as a way to combat the emotionally-challenged by staying abreast of the distemper to be found.

Looking across the sites from the Townhall landscape there is plenty of head-scratching to be had, so here in easily digestible capsule form are some of the items to pour forth from the feverish minds of the press, the left, the entertainment, and the political spectrums. As always, govern yourselves accordingly. The Viagra Metropolis It is tough to outperform the opener here, as The Guardian went all the way with this one, not resorting to playing ‘Just The Headline’. It turned over its pages to feminist author Leslie Kern and she went the Full Monty with her editorial, ‘’Upward-Thrusting Buildings Ejaculating to the Sky -- Do Cities Have To be So Sexist?’’ You guessed it, those phallo-centric skyscrapers are a patriarchal nightmare, according to Ms. Kern. But as you could also guess, this was more than just a case of Obelisk Envy -- Leslie Kern is the recently published author of ''Feminist City’’, a full-sized tome pouring forth with this type of wisdom. One can only hope, based on her turgid writing, that it is going to be a pop-up book. Oppress / Don’t-Oppress We all know it is a common refrain to suggest that leftist activists see racism at every turn. It would be cliche’, if so many in the media were not so intent on proving it accurate. Over at Medium writer David Kaufman went looking for his chance to stride into the racial battle zone, and he saw the sign he was looking for. Kaufman has deduced that crosswalk signs depicting a light up walking figure

are -- in the most literal sense -- a sign of white oppression. We have yet to receive word from David on what the impression is of the various pedestrian signs that depict black walking figures. Next Debate Question: Should We Hold One? With the Covid still swirling and politicians still undecided how they feel about gatherings (thousand of rioters do not spread the contagion, barbeques and people rafting on rivers DO) the idea of holding a presidential debate is actually up in the air. A number of noted political writers are actually arguing against the idea, suggesting that Trump should be forced to concede a number of factors - like submitting to instantaneous fact-checkers - or Biden should simply refuse to debate. Of course, this call to shield the Democrat has nothing at all to do with his growing evidence of diminished faculties, difficulties staying on task, and promoting his gothic agenda of car paint selections with Serbian whatever the thing is we saw while antiquing...but I’ve taken too much time in writing here… https://twitter.com/michaeljknowles/status/1281061818497036288?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1281061818497036288%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.redstate.com%2Fbonchie%2F2020%2F07%2F09%2Fjoe-bidens-brain-collapses-so-thoroughly-that-it-spawns-a-new-meme%2F Possibly Worse Than Voiding a Land Treaty There are few things as pathetically hilarious than watching the strained efforts of leftists and entertainers desperate to gain approval from a rabid activist set. The posing and genuflecting with insincere gestures is cringe-inducing and also transparently shallow. One country music group has very quickly gone from making a soaring social gesture to creating a smoldering crater of a PR nightmare. You are sure to remember the group formerly known as Lady Antebellum made the announcement they were changing their name, as a sign of wanting to distance themselves from a racially insensitive moniker. No one had really complained, and that is because the term in its title refers to a form of architecture, but they boldly announced their bold decision. The new sobriquet for the trio would be ‘’Lady A’’, but a problem arose; there is a blues singer who has used that very name already, for decades. So the group, whose ‘’hearts are stirred with conviction’’ over racial sensitivities is doing the only proper thing and

they are now suing the POC singer in court over the name. It remains to be seen if this story will become a great country song, or a deeply stirring blues ballad. Remember, Hitler Wanted to Form The Aryan Rice The President of Goya Foods visited the White House and in a press briefing he spoke glowingly of President Trump. The reaction on social media has been a flood of accounts claiming they are boycotting Goya Foods now because the company supports a man they claim hates immigrants and is a Nazi sympathizer. Logic will not permeate the emotional minds, so explaining how Trump is a second-generation American of immigrants married to a naturalized citizen, as well as having immediate family members who are Jewish will have little effect. His outreach and policies that have helped Latinos will be ignored, as will his growing approval numbers with Hispanics. So too has it been overlooked that Goya Foods is a longtime community supporter by helping to stock food banks, donating supplies for hurricane relief, and even delivering food and medical masks for the pandemic effort. No, the company founded in the 1930s in New Jersey are now clear Nazis. Hating Cancel Culture And Censoring Those Who Agree Harper's Magazine took what is a rare step these days and became a media outlet NOT in favor of canceling voices. In an open letter signed by 150 notables in the media landscape the magazine was speaking out against the canceling of voices and encourages the free exchange of ideas, even those deemed ‘’

caustic counter-speech’’. Even though the letter trashed conservatives (While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture...) it had great values contained -- you know, the very warnings conservatives have been intoning about cancel culture and censorship over the years. Well, as if to prove those on the right correct, when the list of signatories came out a number of the signers expressed outrage about who had been included. They were actually appalled that a letter calling for the acceptance of opposing ideas had been signed by people who they in fact accused of holding views they opposed. If the Babylon Bee had written this it would not have been as funny to watch playing out. Max Has Punted on Common Sense In a hilarious dose of ‘’whut, waitaminute’’ punditry Max Boot has been on an educational tear this week, concerning President Trump. Now see, this may come as a surprise, but the member of the Never-Trump Brigade thinks very lowly of Trump’s mental faculties, as well as those who support the President. In a column this week Max slammed the President's lack of educational heft; ‘’I suspect there is a lot of overlap between anti-evolutionists, anti-maskers and climate deniers. That hostility to science, found far more on the right than the left, makes it much harder to deal with major crises such as global warming or the coronavirus.’’ The problem; at the same time Max has been also deriding President Trump vehemently regarding plans to open up states and federal institutions this fall. This means that in the same breath he criticizes the lack of education on the right AND fights against the plan to send kids back to school. It was properly ripe for satire.

https://twitter.com/TheBullwork/status/1280947000226316289?s=20 Turns Out Fake Hitler Quotes Are ALSO Bad The Philadelphia Eagles came out of the July 4 weekend with a controversy few could anticipate; wide receiver DeSean Jackson posted some quotes attributed to Adolph Hitler that said things about the Jewish people believing that blacks were the true children of Israel. There was a bit of a furor, as expected, since the Eagles have a Jewish ownership. However it never rose to a real level of scandal. For a time the debate had been over the fact that these are not actually quotes from Hitler, as if this mitigated the idiocy of posting it in any fashion. Mistakenly or not, posting anything attributable to the man is not a wise mose. It could be something as innocuous as Der Fuhrer’s Blueberry Cornbread Recipe, and you still do not print that out. What is more surprising is that there has not been any real fallout for Jackson. As Matt Vespa mentioned at Townhall, Jackson incurred no wrath approaching that seen for a college football coach who wore an OANN t-shirt on a fishing trip. I guess as we are seeing on a daily basis, not all intolerance matters.