Dem
51
GOP
49
Wow. What a downer of a day when it comes to the news. At least we can now report a bit of somewhat happy news, namely a pair of jerks getting booted from their high-profile perches.
Jerk #1 is Sean Spicer. We presumably don't need to explain what he did to earn that sobriquet, but just in case, he spent his entire time as White House Press Secretary gaslighting the American people, starting with the notorious incident in which he tried to force everyone to accept that "more people" means "less people" when the "more people" appear in a picture of Barack Obama's inauguration. After that, he wrote an apologia for the Trump administration, and then went on a "rebuilding my image" tour, during which he appeared on a bunch of shows that the kiddies like, such as Dancing with the Stars. Thereafter, he was hired by NewsMax to do a show, at which point Spicer resumed his gaslighting, hostile-to-democracy ways. This included "stop the steal" propagandizing, much like what we heard from Tucker Carlson. The only reason you didn't hear nearly as much about Spicer's nonsense is that nobody watches Newsmax.
Even by the low viewership standards of that channel, however, Spicer's show did not draw well, and he was eventually knocked out of his prime spot in the lineup by Greta Van Susteren. Still, he is the living embodiment of the old adage "born on third base and thinks he hit a triple." So, when his contract came up for renegotiation, he demanded star-level pay, despite not being much of a star. Newsmax declined to meet his price, and so he's out. Yesterday was his last day working for the network. He doesn't yet know what he'll do next, although he might want to take note that Hot Dog on a Stick is hiring:
Looks like a perfect fit to us.
Jerk #2, meanwhile, is Jeremy Corbyn, who was once the highest-ranking member of the Labour Party, and was theoretically in line to become Prime Minister (which would have put to the test if it's possible for a PM to be even less popular than Liz Truss). In his case, the jerk behavior is antisemitism. There is little dispute that: (1) Corbyn helped sweep antisemitic behavior by members of the Labour Party under the rug, and (2) He and his allies made vicious attacks on John Ware, the U.K. journalist who drew attention to the matter. There is more debate about the extent to which Corbyn himself indulged in antisemitism. The answer is not "zero," but beyond that, it's tricky. He's excused various high-profile incidents he was involved in as either mistakes or with the defense that "criticism of Israel is not the same thing as antisemitism." How much you accept those explanations dictates how much of an antisemite you think he is, personally.
Current Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, for his part, had heard and seen enough. So at Starmer's instigation, after a long and ugly process, Corbyn was expelled from the Party. He's not giving up his political career without a fight, but now he'll have to get reelected as an independent backbencher. The odds are pretty good that Labour loses the seat, either to Corbyn, or to a Conservative because the lefty vote ends up being split. So, Starmer was willing to risk the loss of a seat in service of larger concerns. Meanwhile, American readers are left to wonder how things would be different if U.S. political parties had the means to expel members. (Z)