Alternative Facts: We’re Not Gonna Die and That’s The Bad News
January 31, 2017

Israel Daramola is the acting Attorney General

[Ed.- The country seems to be disintegrating at a remarkable pace. Every day brings a fresh deluge of horror. In Alternative Facts, Israel Daramola pauses for a second to look back and take stock of the previous week to ten days. There’s danger in retreating into a shell and letting it wash over you; it’s important to catalogue each new, impossible wrong.]

Last weekend was the Women’s March: a giant protest against the Tampico Commander in Chief that spurred much debate over things like “who is the Women’s March really for?”, “what is the message being sent?”, and “for the love of God is anyone thinking of the men?” These are all valid question and I–a dreaded man–am not the one to decide what’s valid and what isn’t (although, my one message to men everywhere is that it’s ok that things aren’t about you), I will say though that I was at the Women’s March in DC and… it was fine. We marched around in circles, people chanted and there were plenty of wonderful signs and by the end of it, I felt pretty ok which I’m sure was part of the point. We all came together as traumatized survivors of the 2016 election and decided to comfort one another in the face of our impending doom at the hands of our cheese faced president. I have to be honest: I’m not big on marches–of any kind. Unless you’re going toe to toe with the establishment directly, most marches are an exercise of panicked people who want to feel like they’re doing something because doing absolutely nothing in bad times feels criminal. There seemed to be a lot of that at the Women’s March and the questions about whether these same people would show up when the next black kid is killed is valid, but I’m not thinking about them. I march for my family and my community and I don’t really care what type of people stand with me. Plus I march because I’m lost and scared and want my voice heard by someone, even if it’s just the sky.

And now the week’s stories:

Speaking of that melting wax figure we have to call a president, in his first week of office he wasted no time in his plot to destroy the country. He installed a freeze on most federal hiring, signed executive order after executive order to restrict immigration, reinstall the Global Gag Rule, move forward with the Dakota Access and Keystone Pipeline, kill TPP once and for all and BUILD. THAT. WALL to name a few. Granted, just because you sign an executive order doesn’t mean it’ll come to fruition but it’s pretty obvious that everyone in Washington right now is too chicken shit to stand up to the physical embodiment of impotence.
Not content to just destroy America from behind a desk, this week also saw his attempts at tampering down the voices of science through a media blackout of the EPA and a continued war with the media because he just cannot believe you guys don’t think there were a bunch of people at his inauguration. It was really big guys, very massive and throbbing and satisfy anyone fond of large crowds. Also, stop bringing up that he lost the popular vote, he SO won it, it’s just that Hillary’s illegals voted so many times that it just looks like he lost. Our president, a child covered in Cheeto dust, is not content to have all the power, he also demands our love… and honestly why not. We’re living in a time where a bunch of navel-gazing progressives intellectualize themselves into knots over whether punching Nazis is ok. The thinking is that violence doesn’t solve anything and to change the minds of terrible people we need to use love and understanding instead. A quick rebuttal:

In other news, the Oscars, the awards by and for America’s self-important dads, released the official list of nominations this week. On the one hand, this year’s awards features an array of nominations for movies made by and starring people of color, which seems to be an accomplishment and a show of progress after last year’s #OscarsSoWhite callout. On the other hand, La La Land, a musical love letter to white Jazz, racked up 14 nominations and is almost assuredly gonna win the big prize because it is the perfect kind of Oscar bait: a feel-good movie about artistry, Hollywood and musical theatre. But on the brightside, Casey Affleck and Mel Gibson are nominated for Oscars too because, if nothing else, we are always ready to forgive white men, even if they don’t apologize. That’s how benevolent we are.

I don’t know if anyone reading has been watching The New Edition Story on BET, a 3-night limited series, but it’s been a true delight. The last bastion of unity to be had (besides hating Trump) is watching a made-for-TV biopic as an internet family and languishing in all the predictable beats of shady record deals, infighting, drugs, going broke and tearful reunions and so, so, so much terrible hairstyles. A movie that depicts a 15 year old Bobby Brown snorting coke in a car with two women immediately after a tearful scene in which he just became a father. That is the fucking King of R&B right there. My only quibble was there wasn’t enough time given to solo Bobby Brown which could honestly be another week’s worth of movie in itself, but it’s still in need of a little attention in this film. I also would’ve loved to have seen Bobby and Whitney’s first (probably cocaine-fueled) meet-cute as well as Johnny Gill and Eddie Murphy’s first (probably cocaine-fueled) meet-cute.

Song of the Week:

Speaking of Bobby, our first song of the week is not only a testament to Bobby’s status as an American hero but also a call for love, which our Nazi-punching country apparently needs more of:

Recommendations:

There’s a new Migos album out this weekend which will be fine and good to drown yourself with rather than refreshing the news app on your phone to see if World War 3 has started yet. If nothing else, Migos is almost certainly the New Edition and Jackson 5 of our era; but the real recommendation I have for you this week is HBO’s The Young Pope. Look, I’m sure many people are still having more fun making memes out of the show than actually watching it but you are doing yourself a disservice. This thing is bonkers: a surrealist, masturbatory political dramedy in which Jude Law looks handsome and is seemingly always on the cusp of burning down Vatican City. It is an example of the creator, Paolo Sorrentino, making art for art’s sake but straddles the fence between being too self-indulgent perfectly. This show is kinda nonsense and is incredibly gripping. We all need to be watching.
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And that’s it. RIP Mary Tyler Moore and Q, founder of Worldstarhiphop: two equally important figures in pop culture. Toss up your halo and let the camera freeze frame on it Mary and record some angels getting into an altercation in one of Heaven’s many parking lots Q. I know we’re all scared right now but we have to stay angry and unified in fighting against our moldy sack of newspapers called a president. While he’s spent a lot of time signing things he probably didn’t read, he still hasn’t become truly dangerous yet. We can stop him. We’ll be fine.

YUP. WE’RE TOTALLY GONNA BE FINE.

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