Ordinarily, I'm not a fan of schadenfreude, but. . .

. . . in this case I'll make an exception:

Too little, too late

Michael Bloomberg has amassed a fortune of over $60 billion. He could buy and sell me a thousand times out of petty cash. I stipulate he's a brilliant businessman and an impressive figure. But he is a terrible politician and a malevolent human being. He's now forced to admit that a time serving hack with a rictus grin has a better chance of being president than he does. If you can't get your schadenfreude on for that, you're missing out.

Feel the Bern? I don't feel much of anything

Sleep with the fishes

The saga of Kevin Williamson, acerbic Never-Trumper, went into full-on frog and scorpion territory yesterday, as he was ashcanned from the Atlantic only a few weeks after he'd been hired to be the fully caffeinated Jennifer Rubin on their masthead. Where to begin?

• Williamson is a talented guy and his primary value as a pundit is his willingness to call things as he sees them. Who could forget his initial discussion of the Trump campaign, Witless Ape Rides Escalator? You want invective? Have some! 

Donald Trump, being Donald Trump, announced his candidacy at Trump Tower, making a weird grand entrance via escalator — going down, of course, the symbolism of which is lost on that witless ape. But who could witness that scene — the self-made man who started with nothing but a modest portfolio of 27,000 New York City properties acquired by his millionaire slumlord father, barely out of his latest bankruptcy and possibly headed for another one as the casino/jiggle-joint bearing his name sinks into the filthy mire of the one U.S. city that makes Las Vegas look respectable, a reality-television grotesque with his plastic-surgery-disaster wife, grunting like a baboon about our country’s “brand” and his own vast wealth — and not see the peerless sign of our times?

• So, if you're looking for a guy who can bash Le Grand Orange with flair, he's a great choice. But the problem is a guy who can write like that might have a few other opinions that might frighten the neighbors. And Williamson does: 

KEVIN WILLIAMSON (CO-HOST): And someone challenged me on my views on abortion, saying, “If you really thought it was a crime you would support things like life in prison, no parole, for treating it as a homicide.” And I do support that, in fact, as I wrote, what I had in mind was hanging....

 Later in the same episode of the podcast, Williamson continued that when it came to punishment for those who had abortions, he “would totally go with treating it like any other crime up to and including hanging” -- going so far as to say that he had “a soft spot for hanging as a form of capital punishment” because “if the state is going to do violence, let’s make it violence. Let’s not pretend like we’re doing something else.”

• Was Williamson serious about that last part? You could read it as an argument against capital punishment, but not if your goal is to get a guy ashcanned. And so he was.
• Now, in some ways this is a classic frog/scorpion moment -- you would think a guy who has lived in the media world as long as Williamson has would recognize that liberals like his former boss, Jeffrey Goldberg, aren't really his friends, and that he liable to get the Luca Brasi treatment at any moment that seemed propitious. But at the same time, if hacks like Jennifer Rubin can collect that sweet sweet Bezos money from the Washington Post simply by being reflexively against the Leader of the Free World, why wouldn't a more talented writer assume he could cash in, too, at a different portside enclave?
• In some respects, Williamson is no different from Cindy Sheehan or the latest flavor of the moment, David Hogg. Williamson was potentially useful as long as he did the dance as it is choreographed, but the only opinions his minders really wanted were the ones they could sell to their audiences. He wasn't allowed to have any opinions of his own. And if you want a "peerless sign of our times," that's it.

We'll get to Al Franken anon

Get your Götterdämmerung on. And getcha popcorn. If anyone deserves a trip through the sex creep spin cycle, it's our self-satisfied, sanctimonious junior senator. In the meantime, forgive me for a post with more tags than text.

The Full Polanski

I don't think he's coming back:

Harvey Weinstein is boarding a private jet Tuesday night, bound for a rehab center in Europe for sex addiction ... sources connected with the former mogul tell TMZ.

We're told Harvey has decided to take the advice of the people around him and leave immediately. We're told he will enter a live-in facility and will deal both with sex and other behavioral issues.

Extradition may not be one of the behavioral issues in question, but it wouldn't surprise me. If half of the reporting about ol' Harvey is accurate, he really ought to be in jail. But I suspect he'll be hanging with Roman Polanski instead.

Of course, other people see the bigger picture:

Bet he doesn't even have UCare

Hollywood-style debauchery is a very old story. The sensational trials of Fatty Arbuckle are almost a century in the rearview mirror now. I recently read a book about the still-unsolved murder of William Desmond Taylor, essentially from the same era, which goes into detail about the murder, the various stars and hangers-on around the case, and the studio executives who saw the dangers the moral scolds provided to their nascent industry. What happened in 1922 isn't terribly different than what's been going on in the Weinstein cases.

I don't care about that world; I'm not part of it and never wanted to be. Nor do I have any brief for moral scolds. Watching Weinstein get his comeuppance is pure schadenfreude. And for me, it's less about Weinstein than it is about his dwindling supply of defenders, who were all too ready to give Weinstein a pass on his behavior as long as he made successful movies and kept the political donations coming. All that is over now. Now all that's left for Weinstein is the inevitable:

ESPN starts to fade

I was going to write about what's going on at ESPN, but my friend, the estimable Brad Carlson, is on the case. A taste:

Speaking for myself, I have a cable package which includes NFL Network, MLB Network, NBA TV and NHL Network. If I want to see highlights/analysis within a particular sport, any of those aforementioned channels fulfill that specific need. As such, I don't have to endure, say, NCAA Lacrosse highlights while awaiting footage of the latest Twins game. 

Bingo. It's very easy in 2017 to get the sports news you want, when you want it, rather than to sit through a mishmash of other things you don't care about. The witty banter of SportsCenter in its heyday is long past. The SJW crap is annoying, but it's hardly the most important reason for ESPN's problems. Brad has more at the link. You should hit that link and get what you want, when you want it.

State of play

There is a downside to being #NeverTrump -- in this cycle, it means you have less to write about. We've made our case concerning the qualifications of The Donald. He would be a horrible president. People don't seem to care. Now that the Washington Post has come up with a poll showing Trump leading Hillary Clinton, it's become evident that logic and reason aren't in the saddle.

It's not particularly tough to understand how this is possible. Hillary Clinton is a terrible candidate. It's amusing to watch my lefty pals on social media pretend otherwise. They know it in their bones; she has nothing to offer except a connection to a time gone by. And because Trump understands how to attack people, he's made the correct strategic decision in going after Bill Clinton first. I imagine the Democratic high command is in a panic right now.

Bust some Kaeps off

From the Newspaper of Record:

Losers of three consecutive games, the 49ers can place much of the blame the last two weeks on quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Last week Kaepernick threw four interceptions, two of which were returned for touchdowns, and this week he failed to get anything going, passing for just 160 yards and an interception. It was the third time in four games that he failed to break 200 yards passing, and he was sacked six times.

Piling on to Kaepernick’s misfortune, television cameras picked up Packers linebacker Clay Matthews taunting his rival, saying “You ain’t Russell Wilson, bro” in reference to the Seattle Seahawks’ Super Bowl-winning quarterback.

Why so personal? You might remember this image:

Young and pleased with himself

Matthews and the Packers exacted their revenge yesterday:

Of course it's childish. That's why it's great

All that said, what's happened to Kaepernick's career is pretty astonishing. The guy looked like the next great quarterback not that long ago, a new age weapon capable of beating you with his arm or his legs. Not any more. At this point, he's just a guy.