EVERYTHING IS AWFUL

LegalDispatch 149

Jan 30, 2026

Howdy.

Greetings from America, where everything sucks.

I was recently on a phone with a friend, a fellow liberal, who lives in Kentucky. We were talking about what, if anything, we can do to un-fuck the country. (Spoiler Alert: There’s nothing we can do.) And he was mentioning — thinking of his neighbors — that “Whatever we do, we have to figure out how to mend the fences with our neighbors.”

And I thought… Do we?

I mean, I’ve heard some variation of “we all have to figure out a way to come together” for decades now. But it takes two to tango and I think we need to begin to wrap our brains around the idea that they’ve not interested in coming together with us. As the tragic events in Minnesota demonstrate, they don’t want to reconcile with us, they want to — say it with me — kill us.

If we’re going to spend any energy on winning hearts and minds, I humbly suggest that those efforts should be directed towards getting the tens of millions of Americans who didn’t bother to vote in the 2024 election to — oh, I don’t know — fucking engage in the democracy that they’re allegedly supposed to be a part of.

All of which is to say that the people who didn’t vote in ‘24 can go fuck themselves — just not as much as the people who voted for Trump or Jill Stein can go fuck themselves. And I draw that distinction in the form of: If you voted for Trump or Jill Stein, there’s nothing I can do for you, but if you didn’t vote, I’m willing to engage with you and try to drag you out of your apathy.*

*I have a theory that for many who don’t vote, it’s not apathy that explains their inaction but, rather, self-righteousness. They love nothing more than to hold themselves above the fray saying, “Both sides are equally bad so I won’t vote for either.” Dumbass: Show me the Democrats who are executing people in the streets. While you’re at it, you should know that the decision not to vote is still a decision that affects the outcome of an election, so a non-vote is a vote, moron.

FEEDBACK

Cayden Ferzon asks:

Do you think Donald Trump is antisemitic?

Is the Pope Catholic?

Seriously though, I think Trump is an equal-opportunity bigot. He’s prejudiced against anyone who isn’t a CIS straight white male Christian. Full stop. Jews just happen to get caught in his very large net of small-minded hatred.

Matt Moore writes:

Two words: Rum Sleg. Brief preview for Star Wars: Jar Jar looks great. Can't wait to read it.

Thank you! SFX magazine just did a nice little article about it:

Don’t Bother Reading commented:

I had to look up CSAM. Now I have to live with that.

I’m sorry.

Funny story: I think it was Season 4 of Arrow where we had a storyline where Thea Queen had this bloodlust that her father suggested sating by killing a pedophile. Broadcast Standards & Practices, however, told us that we couldn’t say the word “pedophile” on-air. WTF? Well, the fuck was that, according to the BS&P exec, “A pedophile is someone who sexually abuses children and we don’t want the dialogue to conjure that image.”

Leaving aside the questionable assertion that one word of dialogue can make the audience visualize something and leaving behind the even more questionable assertion that BS&P has providence over not just what the viewer sees on TV but also sees in their mind’s eye, I pointed out that, according to any dictionary, a “pedophile” is a person who is sexually attracted to children. (Link.) In other words, it’s possible to be a pedophile without laying a hand on anyone.

But I digress.

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WELCOME TO THE PARTY, PAL

Hollywood journalist Matt Belloni writes a weekly newsletter on all things Hollywood. In a recent edition, he published this:

To which, all of my unemployed writer friends (i.e., my writer friends) say… DUH.

I do think that the dearth of new shows is starting to hit the general audience. In other words, I think they’re starting to get hip to the fact that they’re paying $15 a month for less “new content.” The next, and most critical, step is that they begin canceling their subscriptions as a result.

The problem is that television production isn’t exactly something you can just flick a switch or turn a dial on. Even if our tech oligarchs were to open the spigot tomorrow, it would be at least a year before those new shows start hitting people’s eyeballs.

OKAY, THIS MIGHT BE MY FAVORITE HEADLINE EVER