(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To The Last Post Of The Week From The Blog’s Favourite Living Canadian)

Yes, he is an angry, racist bag of sins. Yes, too much of his staff is made up of racist bags of sin. Yes, too many of his supporters are angry, racist bags of sin. Yes, too many of the people in his political party are perfectly fine with angry, racist bags of sin. The evidence is now too ridiculous to ignore. From The Washington Post:

The night before Trump delivered his first speech to Congress in February 2017, he huddled with senior adviser Jared Kushner and Miller in the Oval Office to talk immigration. The president reluctantly agreed with suggestions he strike a gentler tone on immigration in the speech. Trump reminded them the crowds loved his rhetoric on immigrants along the campaign trail. Acting as if he was at a rally, he then read aloud a few made up Hispanic names and described potential crimes they could have committed, like rape or murder. Then, he said, the crowds would roar when the criminals were thrown out of the country — as they did when he highlighted crimes by illegal immigrants at his rallies, according to a person present for the exchange and another briefed on it later. Miller and Kushner laughed.

Of course, they did. Because they belong in the reptile house.

Getty Images

Kelly grew so angry during the June meeting because he thought the president was uninformed, and he later told associates that it was a staffing problem and a reason he was willing to become the next chief of staff. “The president deserves better,” a White House official said, describing Kelly’s reaction. As Trump harangued Nielsen for more than 30 minutes in front of the Cabinet this month, other aides grimaced and fidgeted. Nothing she said seemed to calm the president, according to people familiar with the meeting. “We’re closed!” Trump yelled at one point, referring to the border.

He doesn’t get to say that for the rest of us. He doesn’t get to say that for all of us. He doesn’t get to trash decades of the country’s commitment to the world just because it gets him applause from the nervous goobers who flock to his rallies. We are not closed. He does not speak for the nation. And he never should.

On Friday, the Motherland held a referendum on a provision of the Irish constitution that forbids abortion in most circumstances. The campaign had been a long and noisy one. As was the case in a marriage equality referendum a few years back, members of the Irish diaspora from around the world came home to vote, a development that filled me with hope.

For years, Ireland has been trying to shake off the remnants of what was in many ways a practical theocracy that developed when the Republic was taking shape between 1920 and 1949. (Irish historian Liam Hogan put up an interesting thread on the electric Twitter machine that demonstrates what the situation was like in the early years, with some truly awful maneuvering from Eamon de Valera.) The constitutional provision against the right to choose would be the last serious relic of that age to fall.

Getty Images

The control of the Roman Catholic Church over Irish secular life was virtually destroyed by the cascading scandals of the past 20 years—the Cloyne Report, the Christian Brothers, the Magdalene Laundries, the horrors of the Bon Secours Home in Tuam. In 2011, in response to the findings in the Cloyne Report, then-Taoiseach Enda Kenny rose in the Dail Eireann to tell the Vatican that business as usual in Ireland was over. It was a remarkable speech and a giant gust of fresh air coursing through a relationship that had gone corrupt and rancid long ago.

As of this writing, the people of Ireland were still voting, and the result was supposed to be very close. But there is very little doubt that what the late author John B. Keane, in his fine novel The Bodhran Makers, called “the Clan of the Round Collar” has had its deadening grip struck off many of the institutions of a secular Irish republic. People are coming home to be free. That is never a bad thing.

I am very torn by this whole Stanley Cup final business. First, Alex Ovechkin is the best shooter of the puck I have ever seen, and he is having a postseason that is redeeming him from all the stupidity heaped on him through the years because he and the Washington Capitals kept losing early in the playoffs. Defining an athlete’s greatness by the number of championships his teams win is a mug’s game. Ovechkin has moments of transcendence. That ought to be enough.

But then, there is the great story of the Las Vegas Golden Knights, who are more fun than any team that has appeared on the scene in decades. Their “game presentation” – awful phrase, by the way—is fun for all ages, and they also are a model in how to build an expansion franchise. So, in conclusion, I hope Ovie gets a hat trick in every game and Vegas wins the thing in 7 and the Stanley Cup does a week in the lobby of Caesar’s.

On the other hand, soccer people are just…weird.

For five glorious, heedless years, I worked for The Boston Phoenix, now defunct for five years, god rest its soul. I worked with marvelous, talented people, some of whom went on to fame and fortune and being portrayed in Oscar-winning films. (Our classical music correspondent, Lloyd Schwartz, won a Pulitzer. For poetry. We were quite a bunch.) We were encouraged to write what we wanted, how we wanted to write it. The reason we had this outrageous platform was a guy named Stephen Mindich, who passed away this week after a brawl with pancreatic cancer.

Lord, he could piss you off. He could squeeze a nickel until Jefferson’s head sang Nessun Dorma. He could be utterly ruthless. For a guy who founded and ran a lefty alternative newspaper, he hated the idea of a staff union like grim death. Twice, I saw him get into actual brawls over the issue—once with a staffer, and once with a janitor, and both times, it was at the staff Christmas party, because that’s the way things rolled at the Phoenix. But he fought like a wolverine to keep the paper alive and vital.

Getty Images

When I started at the place, there were two solid, viable alternative weeklies—the Phoenix and The Real Paper, estranged siblings as a result of a merger years before I got there. Mindich, who then ran an entertainment rag called Boston After Dark and, when he bought the Cambridge Phoenix, some staff members there revolted and founded The Real Paper. One of my last assignments for the Phoenix was to go across the river to Cambridge and cover the death of the Realp. There is only one real reason why the Phoenix hung on for three more decades while the Realp went under when it did: Stephen Mindich was the Phoenix’s publisher.

In these days when newspapers are published by hedge-fund cowboys and corporate layabouts, there is something to be said for a publisher whose entire identity is tied up in the newspaper for which you work. Even in his ruthlessness, Stephen Mindich had a soul. I will miss seeing him around as much as I miss his newspaper, for which it was my honor to work.

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: “Greens At The Chicken Shack” (Roy Hargrove Quintet): Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans.

Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: Here are the ANZAC Day ceremonies from 1932, commemorating the Australian and New Zealanders killed in the misbegotten Gallipoli campaign. (Thanks, Winston.) I chose this because it’s Memorial Day weekend, and it gives me an excuse to play the greatest anti-war song of all time. Don’t disagree with that, because you’ll be wrong.

Is it a good day for dinosaur news, Guardian? It’s always a good day for dinosaur news!

Paleontologists found tiny flakes of fossilised skin on a crow-sized microraptor, a meat-eating dinosaur that had wings on all four of its limbs. Tests on two other feathered dinosaurs, namely beipiaosaurus and sinornithosaurus, and a primitive bird known as confuciusornis, also revealed pieces of fossilised dandruff on the animals’ bodies. The prehistoric skin flakes are the only evidence scientists have of how dinosaurs shed their skin. The material shows that rather than losing their outer layer in one piece, or in large sheets, as is common with modern reptiles, the feathered dinosaurs adapted to shed their skin in tiny flakes.

OK, so personal grooming wasn’t a priority, but, wait a minute, this thing had wings on all four legs? That took some serious coordination to keep them all flapping in rhythm, I would think, and the very thought of a dino-copter like this is further proof that dinosaurs lived then to make us happy now.

The Committee was absolutely convinced that this week’s Top Commenter of the Week would be found among those moved to tears by the poetic stylings of former Oklahoma state rep Paul Wesselhoft. And The Committee’s faith was rewarded by Top Commenter Michael Bowen:

I'm not sure if the esteemed poet Wesselhoft realizes it, but penultimate means next-to-last, so if any of you doe-eyed maidens fall for his blarney, remember that he's already got a piece on the side.

That’ll be 90.11 holiday Beckhams to you, good sir, and thank you for cueing up the Pointer Sisters for us!

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

The shebeen’s going to be pretty much shuttered next week for psychological R&R. This, of course, means that El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago will sell Delaware to North Korea for 85 cents and an antique kimchi pot. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line, and, for the love of god, no mayo on the hamburgers. There have to be some norms left, after all.



Respond to this post on the Esquire Politics Facebook page here.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io