10 things we're getting wrong about the Biden/Harris swap
And before I make a decision: What is Kamala's golf handicap??
I miss when politics was boring and only for losers. Anyway…
10 dumb things people are saying about the Biden/Harris swap
Lemme rail on a few arguments going around online:
1) “The elites pushed Biden out.”
Comedians have done bits for YEARS about Biden being old and decrepit because they always worked. His age and deterioration were unspoken truths everyone could see yet the media ignored. Anyone who thinks the elites "forced" this move is just revealing how much they're out of touch with normies. In reality, the elites finally caught up to the people.
2) "If Biden can’t run, then he's not fit to be President either."
Six months is six months. Four years is four years. Four years is longer than six months. Someone can want to do a job for the next six months but not the next four years. This is dumb.
3) “Project 2025 is gonna [insert dystopian nightmare future here].”
Maybe in some places. But go ahead, try to Project 2025 in NYC. We'll spit that MAGA crap out within 6 months just like we do red state people who show up here and think they're gonna "make it."
4) “We need to lower the temperature in our politics.”
Sure, right. Watching Republicans spend a week pretending to care about this was pretty rich. "We need to tone down the violent rhetoric. No more hanging Mike Pence, okay? We'll just torture him a little bit until he caves."
5) “An open contest would create chaos for Democrats.”
If Dems were to host an open contest for President, it would wind up dominating the news cycle for weeks on end...and introduce a bunch of younger candidates to the American public...and turn the DNC into must watch TV.
We can’t have that!
Too bad politicos don't understand earned media. We've anointed Kamala cuz she gets Biden's $240M when an open competition between her/Shapiro/Big Gretch/Mayor Pete/etc. woulda dominated media for a month and coulda been worth a $500M+ ad spend. In a way, Dems are leaving money on the table.
6) “Republicans keep posting misinformation.”
OK, but Dems are out here grooving to the bullsh*t too:
Posting a photo from a sound check and claiming it's the actual performance is peak internet. I know, you wanna hate on Kid Rock. But trust me, there are so many better ways to dunk on him. No need to invent nonsense ones. (See caption below.)
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7) “Kamala is a crappy candidate. Just look at how she did in 2020.”
Yeah, but also she had to run in Dem primaries during BLM as a former prosecutor and, well, good luck with that. Now she gets to “prosecute” a felon for law-and-order-loving swing staters.
In fact, not having primaries is a great way to avoid having to kowtow to the wacko extremists in your base. I’m here for it. And I hope she leans in to the 🥥 emoji and it becomes her red hat. Americans love dumb identitarian symbolism.
Anyway, it sure is nice to see someone non-geriatric running. I saw her greet some kids on the tarmac and I sincerely thought, “Whoa, we might have a President who can bend down. Nice!” Also, she digs Roy Ayers. Everybody loves that, sunshine.
8) “The assassination attempt has been explained.”
Hey…um…which doctor treated Trump in Pennsylvania? Does he have a name? Do we ever get to hear from him? Because that note from Doc Ronny (who’s medical license expired due to ordering 34 fentanyl packs, 40 morphine packs and 34 ketamine packs in a nine-month span) was eyebrow-raising. Just saying, I’ve watched enough pro wrestling to know all about “the guy who disappears from view for a moment and then comes back bleeding” move.
That said, it’s probably all true. Occam’s razor and all that. Riiiiiight?
The craziest thing of all is how much that day is old news now. We’ve got mass societal ADHD and can't focus on anything for more than 48 hours. The former President was shot and it now feels like the 7th most important thing that happened in the news this month. Truly wild times we're living through.
9) “Tech VC’s are backing Trump which means the Silicon Valley tides have shifted.”
I'm starting to think that maybe, just maybe, Silicon Valley executives and investors have been Republicans all along and were just paying lip service to progressive ideals. Shocking, I know!
It’s funny how much rich, old, white, Libertarian, Ayn-Rand-lovin’ tech guys get off on telling the rest of us not to trust the elites. Too bad their Manchurian VP pick (y’know, that Appalachian/Yale/VC man of the people) is out here bombing harder than Jo Koy with his Diet Mountain Dew jokes. I hope George Clooney goes full oppo Kid Rock and films himself shooting up a case of Diet Mountain Dew cans. Guaranteed #viral.
Speaking of Vance, for the love of god, will someone please do a “Panic! at the GOP Disco: JD’s Emo Makeup Tutorial” video? It's. Right. There.
10) “The era of the ‘double haters’ is over.”
C’mon! We gotta hang onto the phrase “double haters” – it could come in handy if there’s another Team Aniston/Team Jolie battle…or if I’m asked to describe my relationship with my parents.
Share this newsletter with people who get it. They’ll be impressed and think you have good taste.
Podcast
Get the Kind of a Lot with Matt Ruby podcast wherever you pod. Here’s a clip from a recent ep…
Quickies
🎯 I wear no-show socks but i have BSE (Big Sock Energy).
🎯 So what are we gonna call non-AI stuff moving forward? Organic customer support? Non-GMO music? Free range copy?
🎯 We've gotten so flaky that even restaurants come off as clingy now. 5pm text from restaurants: "We still on for dinner tonight? Didn't hear from you today so just wanna make sure." They're even charging for cancelled reservations now. I just wish we all could charge people who flake on plans!
🎯 Athletic Greens AG1 should just be called Skinny Boy Margaritas.
🎯 Uneasy lies the milkshake that brings all the boys to the yard.
🎯 Gen Z: works remote
Boomers: have multiple remotes
🎯 "I'd like to practice non-violent communication on you" just makes me feel like you really want to be violent with me but you're doing your best to hold yourself back.
🎯 Jews hate conspiracy theories. Because we know where they always end up.
🎯 They should make the whole plane out of the bloopers and the entire script out of the black box.
🎯 Gummy bears are like the word queer: They were a big part of my life until I was 10 and then they disappeared and then about five years ago they came back with a vengeance.
🎯 Waking up and meditating is like telling yourself, “Stop dreaming. Now, start daydreaming.”
🎯 One of the best things about the past is that young people got to make mistakes in private instead of blasting it out in public for the permanent record.
🎯 Dog adoption agencies have so many great euphemisms for behavioral issues. We should do the same thing with humans...Creepy stalker? You’re a “velcro guy." OCD? Your brain is “overly exuberant." Trauma issues? Just a “shy party girl.”
🎯 Design kvetch: I am consistently blown away that Google Maps shows you the name of every street on a map EXCEPT the one that is the location of your destination…
…how is this possible?!?
Comedy
🃏 Get jokes on my social media: Instagram – TikTok – Threads – X – Substack.
🃏 Watch my standup at YouTube.
🃏 My other newsletter is Funny How: Letters to a Young Comedian. It’s all about standup.
5-spotted
🗯️ This video sums up a lot of my thoughts on music then vs. now, what tech is doing to us, and how we keep trading quality for efficiency…
Quantized John Bonham = No, thank you. What we’re losing as a society (in so many other ways too) is SWING. It’s difficult to define so we don’t even see it evaporating – but we can feel it.
It’s all part of what the algorithm does to us: all quantity, no quality, all width, no depth, all magic tricks, no wizardry, all efficiency, no soul.
🗯️ Everyone famous is crazy. See: Steven Spielberg.
“The ramp came down on the Learjet and Spielberg walked down it and he never touched the ground,” Rodgers said. “He just stood there yelling at Jan. He never even got off the plane. He was just fucking yelling, pointing his finger at him, screaming at him. I don’t know what he said to him, but he barked at him for, like, 15 minutes and got back in the plane. The plane left without him even stepping off.”
🗯️ Writer Shalom Auslander on show business as sickness.
AUSLANDER: I think maybe celebrities and actors get paid so much money because the studios are paying them to stay sick. That if they were healthy, they might not do this job, and they certainly wouldn't do it as well, I think, and the same way as a writer. If I got all my stuff healed - I don't know.
MOSLEY: You wouldn't have anything else to write about?
AUSLANDER: No, I'd go garden. I'd go mow the lawn. I'd do whatever. I'd jog. I'd be fine.
🗯️ “Must ideology define us?” asked art critic Peter Schjeldahl.
Schjeldahl exited lockdown into a world transformed by new social and political forces, including Black Lives Matter. Art fueled by these forces could be galvanizing, by braving the “routine chaos” of the world, but it was too often predictable and prescriptive. “Must ideology define us?” he asked, in a review of another show dominated by political themes. “Can we demur from one extreme without implicitly being lumped in with its opposite?”
🗯️ Opinion Media scapegoating is our national psychosis.
People understand that journalists have to confirm things, right? That in all the commotion, all the confusion, it was impossible to discern precisely what just happened?…
Besides, the reflexive and facile supposition that media coverage drove this tragic event grinds against evidence that Americans have been increasingly tuning out the news, especially coverage of politics. Data, in other words, suggests that the American media is a collection of pipsqueaks, an industry struggling for influence, audience and paying customers. In the mind-set of the uber-critic, though, it’s a behemoth capable of rearranging with world with a few devilish keystrokes.
Thanks for being part of it. Bawitdaba da bang da dang diggy diggy, etc.
-Matt
On the non-AI thing. If you shift the letters in “HAL”, you get “IBM.” If you shift the letters in AI, you get sentences like “That’s BJ thinking, dude. Get with the program and make AI Microsoft.”
Nailed it. As usual. You crack me up man.
And it's not just the comedy side that I dig, it's also that you have a great view of how things are under all the bullshit posturing and the media hallucinations.
Thank you, and keep up the excellent work!