Whoa, I think I need a smoke...
JoJo from Jerz is just magnificent.
I have a reputation for snark, more than a little casual profanity, and weaving strong themes. Once, a reader paid me a humbling comparison to the incomparable Jeff Tiedrich, but I am a mere piker in this world. And not just to Jeff’s phenomenal ‘stack, but others like “Welcome to Garbage Town” by Catherynne Valente, and even before Substack was a twinkle in some douchebag’s wet-dream, way back to the platform Blogger (long owned by Google) where Lee Papa wrote under the penname “The Rude Pundit”.
However, today, I bring you a righteous rant by fellow substacker, JoJo from Jerz. Her latest post, titled “The arsonist blames the wind, the building, the alarm & anyone who dares to douse the fire.”, wherein she’s at her son’s Little League game, and one of the parents in the bleachers says to her:
And another parent, with whom I don’t exactly align politically, asked me if I felt bad for him.
“Do I feel bad?” I asked.
“Yes, the poor man can’t even leave the house.” She continued.
Now, JoJo has a bit of a mouth on her, and it is glorious. But she also has monstrous levels of self-restraint. Her inner thoughts to this asinine query is this next-level rant:
“Poor man?!? Did you just call that traitorous, rapist, business fraud, sexual predator motherfucker a poor man? The piece of shit scumbag waste of human life sociopath who shrugged and struck golf balls while friends of ours were burying their parents alone? The psycho who couldn’t handle being fired by 81 million of us and couldn’t find a motherfucking mountain of Addy big enough to crawl into to help him cope so he plotted a coup and sent a violent mob from places like our very town to kill our lawmakers!?? You want me to pity him? To feel sorry for him? That sick fuck who has been calling his foes “vermin”, immigrants “animals” and the January 6th terrorists “patriots”, you want me to cry for him because some nutjob got his hands on a fucking machine gun and stood in the woods pulling his pud while Donny Tampax-ear bragged about being under par? Fuck that. You wanna know who I feel sorry for? I feel sorry for the Capitol Police Officers who died in the wake of that attack. I feel sorry for Ruby Freeman and Shae Moss because their lives were destroyed over that fuckstain’s lies. I feel sorry for all the mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and sons who will forever face an empty chair at the dinner table because the son-of-a-bitch who was SUPPOSED to protect them was too busy musing about motherfucking Lysol cocktails. So, to answer your stupid fucking question as succinctly as I can in a way you just might not need a language arts class to understand, I do not feel bad for him. I feel bad for America. I feel bad for the reality of violence he has created. For the culture of vengeance he has curated. I feel bad for every brain-rot addlepated dumbfuck who isn’t wise to the delusions he cultivates every single fucking day of their sad, stupid, small lives. And I really, really feel bad for the kids of those lobotomized lemmings who have never ever challenged a single fucking thing they’ve ever been told. That’s who I really feel bad for.”
I took a massive amount of joy reading that. I read it again. … and then I read it a third time, basking in the interplay of accurate descriptions of the Mango Mussolini, with gleeful snark rolled in. I let this wash over me, and I rejoiced.
Naturally, she was anodyne in her actual response, because us on the left do have some self-control, a self-control that is almost universally lacking from the MAGA fucksticks.
“While I will take issue with your description of him as a poor man, I do not wish harm on anyone. No matter who it is. Even if he so often does the opposite.”
The handful of Dem friends I have at these games seemed to exhale in relief in unison. And I went back to cheering for my son.
I urge you to read this post, and to subscribe. JoJo is a treasure, to be imbibed and enjoyed, to relish.
I promise that you will not be sorry.
I read JoJo's *every* post. She's a breath of fresh air in this poisonous right-wing climate. There are quite a few potty mouths on Substack that defend democracy and I love them all. My kind of people.
The art of smartass living the good life. 😆😉