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A very good end-of-year crop of tweets in the new Tweet of the Week poll. The winner last week was "The 6th day of Christmas was the worst day of Christmas because, after getting 5 golden rings, she thought he'd moved on to jewelry and did not expect more birds," by @imjustdiane which, to be honest, I didn't love. This week, my personal favorite is "My 7-year-old has been asking a lot of questions this Christmas season and I'm worried that it might be the last year he believes that Bitcoin is real," by @Elizasoul80.
Speaking of my personal favorites, in an upcoming column I will list roughly 30 of what I believe to be the best tweets of 2017. So you have that to look forward to!
Today's column, Trump says he won't fire Mueller. Don't believe him, does not equivocate:
Whether he's deviously or merely blithely careless with the truth, whether he believes in the moment in what he's saying or not, Trump's word is no good. No matter what he said on last Sunday, he could, and just well might, fire Mueller or otherwise torpedo his investigation by next Sunday.
Sunday I jumped in on the story of the Tennessee 6th grader whose video complaint about bullying went viral. Quack diagnosis: No, the bullied boy is not a 'Milkshake Duck' explored both this story and the Milkshake Duck meme, which refers to people who suddenly achieve fame online but then fail to hold up to public scrutiny.
Nothing that has emerged suggests that his pitiful tale of being picked on by school bullies in the cafeteria is anything less than genuine or isn't deserving of all the sympathy you feel for him when you first watch the video.
If anything, news reports that his father, now imprisoned, was a domestic abuser who police say once threatened to kill Keaton's mother "and everyone in her family, including the children," and who posted racist bile online, make Keaton a far more sympathetic figure.
I also took a whack at a tech giant with Google needs a little help at the agency, in which I express dismay at the new Google Home slogan, "It's a little help at home, like only Google can."
Sheesh. A company worth more than $100 billion has a two-bit ad copy writer.
What we see here is a failed effort at what linguists call an "elliptical construction," meaning that your brain is meant to fill in words that are otherwise missing.
When I posted an early version of this column on Facebook one of my readers quipped, "Love your work, Eric. But it must be a slow news day."
How touchy am I? Here's what I fired back at him.
That complaint is totally idiotic as well as a cliche. Not every column, not every post has to be an Earnest Reflection about Something Serious. Even high minded people like yourself don't like or read a steady diet of that stuff — is it a "Slow News Day" when you read celebrity puffery or sports or restaurant reviews? If not, add hypocritical to my list of complaints about the "slow news day" whine. All you're saying is that this little bit of non-earthshaking commentary didn't interest you. And you know what, not everything is going to interest you, so grow up, toddle off and read Foreign Affairs and economic journals and policy papers instead of farting around on Facebook. Sheesh.
Poke me with a stick, will you?
Friday I took off again after Democratic Cook County Assessor Joe Berrios in Desperate Berrios and the 'Republican' lie.
Is Berrios so desperate that he wants to make the campaign about ethical asset management in areas utterly unrelated to the duties of the assessor? And that he thinks branding his opponent as a secret Republican is the key to re-election?
Not that there's anything wrong with being a Republican. But city and county voting records show that from 1995, when his major opponent Fritz Kaegi was living in the city, through 2016, when he was living at his current address in Oak Park, he took a Democratic ballot in each of the nine primaries in which he voted.
Like many of you I'll be taking off next week, though if you keep an eye on my site you'll see the best tweets column and my traditional predict-the-news column show up.
The Mincing Rascals will be live streaming at 11 a.m. Wednesday on the WGN-AM Facebook page. A reminder to subscribe to The Mincing Rascals on iTunes or wherever fine, free audio podcasts are served.
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