Do not forget the clueless! The Spy's brazen Christmas appeal

Editors' Note:  Among the most beloved recurring features of the Spy is its moving holiday appeal.  Like such campaigns in other media, it works like this:  we guilt trip you into giving money and then take credit for your generosity.  It's so easy!  Unlike those other appeals in fading media outlets like newspapers, ours as in years past focuses on a group so pitiable that none could resist sending their checks to The Massachusetts Spy, The Spy Building, Worcester, Mass.  Remember, with your help, some of these poor bastards might someday get a clue!

Appalachia

How long has it been since night came to the Cumberlands?  We'll say more than 60 years ago, as the effort to rebuild that ravaged region began in earnest with the War on Poverty, which was ended with Honor by the most corrupt President in the history of the United States, pre-2017.  Since then, it's been an endless series of environmental disasters, public health collapses, and job losses, due to the replacement of coal by cheaper and less toxic fuels, like natural gas.

Over the last eight years, the Democrats under the leadership of President Obama worked tirelessly to bring hope to the meth-blackened hollows of Appalachia.  They refloated the American economy.  They brought health care to those who had gone without since the collapse of the United Mine Workers and their hospital network.  They tried to pass a massive infrastructure program to bring good-paying jobs to less-skilled workers, like, for example, unemployed coal miners.

And how did the good white folks of Appalachia respond to these valuable policy initiatives?  By voting en masse for a Tangerine-Faced Grifter who will do nothing but make them sicker and poorer while enriching himself, his mouth-breathing children, and his gang of finaglers and thieves to whom he will entrust the United States Government.  After all, he had the qualities that the folks in Butcher Holler could identify with: he wasn't black, he wasn't female, and he talked like he was on meth.

No health care, no jobs, no hope – it looks like a rough four years for the clueless voters of Appalachia.  Unless you help.  Or at least buy some of their meth.

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Republican Columnists

Almost all of American journalism betrayed its fundamental cluelessness in 2016, with a few honorable exceptions, like David Farenthold of The Washington Post.  Indeed, we first thought that we'd add the entire profession to this appeal, but then decided we might squeeze a few more bucks out of you if we focused in on the most pathetic among them.

Surely in that group were a number of supposedly thoughtful conservative Republican columnists who added much-unneeded bullsh*t [Surely, balance? – Ed.] to op-ed pages from New York to Washington.  Take the case of poor David Brooks, whose sure-fire combination of windy theorizing, straw-man arguments, and classy references to real writers have delighted his editors [Surely, readers? – Ed.] for years.  In measured tones, he seemed to conclude that the Tangerine-Faced Grifter was on balance a slightly greater menace than a superbly-qualified and brilliant woman whose faults included: (1) she wanted to take a few bucks from the rich and spend it on benefiting the poor and (2) she kept her emails on her own server.  His effect on the Republican electorate was so profound that they . . . well, you know.

Almost as sad was former Likud cheerleader Jennifer Rubin, who found herself unable to stand still for a grope from the T.-F. G.  It turned out to her surprise that the Republican intelligentsia, such as it was, didn't place support for Benjamin Netanyahu at the top of their priority list.  In fact, they regarded the neocon itch for perpetual war in the Middle East as a distraction from the main task of f**king over people of color regardless of nationality or religion, or as the Republican Party would call it, its platform.

To make matters worse, their rice bowl – the claim that their columns were needed to “balance” wild pinkos like Hot Air Force Generalissimos Tom Friedman and Freddie Hiatt '76 – showed signs of cracking as desperate editorial page editors put out a call for pro-Trump but not neo-Nazi columnists to peddle their wares.  It's one thing to be ignored and dismissed; it's another thing entirely to find a cushy gig in an economy ruined by President Obama's 70-month record of job growth.  Not to worry, Jen and Dave: we hear that Sheldon Adelson's Vegas Hayom is hiring!

PS to Freddie: She's available.  And she has plenty to say!






















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The tramp stamp reads: "Bernie 4-ever"

Millennials

We used to think that Millennials had it tough: their parents had run up a giganto debt paying themselves Social Security and pumped so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that the younger generation might have to swipe left underwater.   Even worse, they had to endure endless cliché-ridden style pieces in the New York Times about their penchant for kompuchea tea cleanses on hoverboards or some such crap.

Then came this election: a last opportunity for Millennials to salvage their future.  Of course, they fucked it up:

Of the estimated 24 million people under 30 who voted in the 2016 presidential election, a large majority supported Hillary Clinton. But Clinton received notably less support from young voters (18-29) than Barack Obama did in 2008 and 2012, particularly in the crucial battleground states she lost to Donald Trump.

Not only did the slackers not turn out (according to the same study), an astonishing 8% voted for Ethan's crazy mom or Aleppo Gary Johnson.

Why?  Apparently some of these delicate flowers were still upset that their favored candidate, Grandpa Bernie, wasn't the nominee.  Then they were shocked to learn (thanks to Vladimir Putin) that some establishment Democrats wanted the candidate with the best chance of beating the Tangerine-Faced Grifter to get the nomination.  And then some heard something about “emails,” which they despise because it's how their parents check up on them when they're out of town.

Frankly, we don't give a toss why this clueless generation couldn't be bothered to put down their cat videos and save themselves from losing their Social Security, not to mention their planet.  We only know that staying home on election day because Hillary Clinton was a “politician” who used “emails” has got to be the very definition of cluelessness.  Their prize?  A lifetime on Mom's basement sofa, temping to pay off their student loans (assuming that rising sea levels don't flood the basement).