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Who will win the World Cup? To answer that question, I turn to the number one name in sports betting: Yoko Ono.

A bold prediction. Alas, it was wrong: The World Cup has been won by the random German soccer fan traveling through the American South tweeting everything he encounters like he’s discovered Shangri-La. Here are some examples of this modern-day Alexis de Tocqueville’s work.

I love this guy — he’s going to make it hard for me to keep my negative stereotypes about Germans. Don’t get me wrong: I will keep my negative stereotypes about Germans — I’d lose my membership in the Comedians Guild if I didn’t. But it’s hard to not be won over by a positive guy having an awesome road trip while evoking Robert Smigel’s The Baby, the Immigrant, and the Guy On Mushrooms sketch.

And Freddy is right about several things, including: Waffle House is good. There’s a type of person who would try to gaslight us into believing that chain restaurants are bad, and by “a type of person” I mean “communists”. Godless, beatnik communists. These people are not only wrong on the specifics — if you covered a piece of rebar in as much butter, salt, and cheese as chain restaurants use, it would at least be okay — they are wrong about what chain restaurants and mass production mean for quality of life. Because large-scale processes that create good products for low cost are modern miracles in every way deserving of the awe of your ordinary, everyday Josef Sechs-Lager.

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I feel guilty about writing yesterday about the activist duo who recruited Graham Platner. There are, after all, far more important things than a maddening interview with a couple that seems like an AI-generated caricature of smug leftists. My first line of defense is simply that I’m a comedian, and that guy’s Henry-Kissinger-if-he-was-a-Valley-Girl style of speaking forced my hand.

If I was a news organization and not a professional jagweed with a laptop, my editorial choices would be indefensible. It’s not just yesterday: In the past two weeks, I’ve written about Platner five times but devoted zero column inches to the Iran War,1 the immigration enforcement bill, or several other things that objectively matter. These days, I complain about the socialist left more than the MAGA right, which might lead people to think that I’m experiencing a Heart of Darkness-style slow drift towards Trump. But I want to make it clear that it’s exactly the opposite: I write about the Democratic Socialists of America and their fellow travelers because I think that’s the key battle line in the fight against MAGA.

Let me calibrate. The big topic this week for the president and other Republicans is a conspiracy theory about the LA mayoral election being rigged, even though there’s no evidence of fraud and the theory’s internal logic is idiotic. Republicans have their own ethically-compromised dimwit Senate candidate — Ken Paxton of Texas — and their main line of attack against his Democratic challenger is “He’s a homo!”2 Trump is still pushing for $1.8 billion in taxpayer money to pay the January 6 rioters, and he’s nominated a clearly unqualified hack to be Director of National Intelligence now that the previous unqualified hack has resigned. That’s stuff happening today, and I could write a similar paragraph at any point in Trump’s presidency.

More broadly, Trump is failing even on his own terms. The Iran War has been neither quick nor decisive, and Trump can’t get the nuclear deal that he swore would be so easy. Inflation has ticked up as the war and tariffs have had predictable effects. DOGE was a failure that the bards will sing about for a thousand years, and the effects of letting pill-popping math twinks tear apart a government that they didn’t understand are starting to hit home. Trump’s budget management has been horrendous. His attempts to stifle speech have been shameful. He’s staffed the government with hacks and cranks and heads an administration so corrupt it makes Tony Soprano’s Bada Bing club look like Bailey Building & Loan. Simply put: This is not a government that an advanced country should have. I just don’t write about it every day because I can’t picture the reader who was fine with the first 12,647,870 Trump outrages but will get their dander up when they learn of the 12,647,871st.

I take the question of whether we need to change course as a given. I’m much more interested in how to change course, and to where. And that’s why I focus on the fight between normie Democrats and DSA Democrats: I think that’s currently the most relevant ideological rift in the country. If sane, solution-oriented Democrats win this factional fight, then I think we can turn the tide against MAGA and elect a competent government. But if we lose, then I think that will be good for MAGA and very bad for sanity, generally.

I won’t rehash the billion pieces of evidence that lead me to believe that voters generally prefer moderate views to left-wing ones; though I think that voters’ preference for moderation is as well-established as the law of gravity, I’ll concede that I can’t prove that I’m right. Maybe the Glorious Revolution is just around the corner — Marxists have been wrong about the revolution’s arrival for 65,124 consecutive days,3 but maybe it’ll happen tomorrow. I’d rather talk about how cultish and out-of-touch the DSA left is; that’s the factor that makes me think that even if I’m wrong about their electability, I’m right that their capture of our last remaining somewhat-sane political party would be a bad thing.

The leftist narrative of a working class suffering under the boot of an ever-more-powerful oligarchy is flat out wrong. In a dark bit of irony, the socialist left’s surge within the Democratic Party has coincided with a pretty damn good decade for low-wage workers. If we broaden the aperture, it’s totally obvious that the past century has been one of remarkable human progress. And now comes the sentence where I say “that’s not to say some people aren’t struggling” and “there’s certainly room for improvement” — yes, sure sure. But on the other hand: Fuck that, I’d rather say the big true thing, and that is that we know what creates broad-based prosperity — let’s stop acting like we haven’t solved this riddle. Welfare state capitalism is the system that works, which is why it’s used by every advanced country, very much including the DSA’s precious Sweden. One of the many questions we’ve solved in modern times is the basic recipe that creates wealth, and carrying a torch for socialism is like believing that HD-DVD might prove the haters wrong and miraculously emerge as the technology of the future.

And what does the DSA left believe? Their views on antitrust policy are so cultish that I won’t be surprised if neo-Brandeisians all start dressing alike. One of their leading lights just published a degrowth manifesto that has people debating which is funnier: The “academic research” behind the work or the author’s century-behind-the-times recommendations. Bernie Sanders’ twitter feed is a source of misinformation topped only by Trump. It seems that every DSA candidate has a social media feed full of absolutely insane statements, especially about Israel. They are — in a word — delusional. Or, if you prefer a paraphrase of the soul-destroying putdown from Succession: These are not serious people.

And in that way, they’re similar to MAGA. They can’t craft workable solutions because they don’t even know what the world looks like; they’re delusional idiots tilting at windmills. MAGA dominates the Republican Party, and the DSA would like to dominate the Democrats. I don’t blame the DSA for that — of course they want influence! But if they succeed, then both of this country’s major political parties will be insane.

And that’s why I devote a lot of column inches to factional Democratic politics — I think that’s the fight that matters most. I’ve never seen the party this divided; I honestly don’t know at this point which faction is bigger. And “Republican vs. Democrat” arguments seem pointless when who “the Democrats” even are is TBD. Democratic infighting is simply far more interesting to me than Trump’s wacky escapades, and the result of that infighting will determine what wacky escapades we’re forced to endure in the future.

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How did the Graham Platner disaster happen? A curse monkey’s paw wish for more Democrats plucked from the SNL “Who’s More Grizzled” sketch? Barack Obama hitting a leprechaun with his car, causing the entire Democratic coalition to be struck with an ancient Celtic curse? I wouldn’t rule either of those things out, but The Wall Street Journal has found the more proximate cause: Meet the couple who discovered Platner and convinced him to run.

Before we get to substance, let’s address the elephant in the room: That guy’s voice. You know how Jackie Kennedy had a hard-to-pin-down accent that made you certain that she knew which spoon is for consommé and which is for adding a dollop of cream to your île flottante? This guy has the modern version of that accent. I don’t want to condemn someone based on their accent; I used to have a southern accent that made people picture me riding a pig and drinking from a jug marked “XXX” every time I opened my mouth. But that guy’s accent is, by itself, a small indication that he might not be the ideal person to speak to the needs of the common man.

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The world is coming to North America for the World Cup, so fans are arguing about whether American stadiums are super-sized monuments to sports awesomeness or soulless corporate money pits. It’s a brainless, zero-sum debate shot through with cultural chauvinism, and I want in. To hell with the soccer — let’s let this fight determine once and for all which is better: the United States, or the countries people have long fled to come to the United States.

But first, some ground rules: I won’t say anything positive. I won’t say anything fair. In keeping with the sacred traditions of the internet, I will only offer the most cynical, inflammatory, glass-half-empty takes I can summon. I will lean into broad-brush statements and crude cultural stereotypes, especially about the French. I’ll do this because fair-mindedness isn’t funny, so the real goal here is to personally profit while leaving the world a little worse-off.

Let’s get started.

Are American sports stadiums soulless corporate creations designed to separate people from their money like a caveman sucking the marrow from a defeated enemy’s bones? How dare you question the authenticity of Liberty Mutual Stadium at Bagel Bites Point powered by Dorito’s. Some of my most cherished memories are going there with my dad to see the ABC/ESPN/Disney/Hulu Game of the Week brought to you by KFC/Taco Bell/Tampax. And sure, we couldn’t see the game from our seats in the 8 jillion level — my dad was but a humble working man (cardiac surgeon) — but we could catch it on the flat screens at the Hooter’s/Budweiser Fan Beer-porium. At least: We could watch from there if my dad had saved up enough money for a single stadium buffalo wing for me and my 12 siblings.

If you ask me, there are no better sports fans in the world than employees of a law firm that booked at $40,000 suite for a mandatory work event. Their vague awareness that some sort of sports event is happening as they try to score facetime with the boss makes the atmosphere absolutely fucking electric. When you combine their passion with other folks you see at American stadiums — influencers, celebrities, OnlyFans stars hoping to grow their business through a viral appearance on the Jumbotron — there’s really nothing like it. And when you combine that with cues from the big screen about when to cheer, how to cheer, and how to sing along with the Black Eyed Peas being blasted into your face at eyeglass-shattering levels, there’s nothing quite like the American sports experience.

European sports are often more authentic, by which I mean: They have the showmanship of a Presbyterian church service and no one has invested in them since before the Great War. All non-Champions League European soccer teams play in stadiums made of concrete, tin, and the bones of the Irishmen who built them. They have nicknames like “Old Firetrap” or “The Vomit Trough”, they have three toilets at most, and there is a stand dedicated to the victims of the collapse of the stand that stood there before. Dining options include beer, ale, lager, stout, pilsner, porter, and some ungodly meat-cooked-in-a-pig’s-vagina thing that seems like something you’d eat on day 900 of a medieval siege.

At these stadiums, you can find the most passionate, boisterous, and — let’s just say it — Nazi-adjacent fans in all of sport. Each stadium has a section devoted to the city’s underemployed, sexually frustrated losers, who yell all the things at the opposing team that they’d like to yell at whatever God rendered them so ill-equipped for life. It’s not recommended to sit in this part of the stadium if you’re female, Jewish, non-white, literate, or if you’d like to continue to believe that euthanasia is a bad idea. This section is separated from the visiting fans’ section by a security presence rivaled only by the Chinese at Tiananmen Square.

Of course, things are different for the big-name European teams. Champions League teams typically play in stadiums that seat 70-80,000 people, there are luxury boxes and corporate signage…it’s all pretty damned American. And there’s a reason for that: Those teams want to win. Good teams need good players, good players cost money, and the only way to get that money is squeeze it out of your most committed suckers fans. Or at least: That’s the only way to get the necessary money except for being a third world oil baron with more money than Gilgamesh and Satan combined. Some such people own the big teams, and they don’t shake down their fans because they need the money — they do it simply for the love of evil.

Whichever stadium experience you prefer, it’s important that you go on social media and express your thoughts in the most obnoxious way possible. Surely, one experience is “better” — let’s find out which one! And let’s use this fight as a proxy for whether the US or Europe is “better”. Let’s also use “the US” and “Europe” as proxies for “right-wing thought” and “left-wing thought” so that we can find out which one of those is better, too — there’s a lot riding on this! But let’s get this settled before the start of the main event: Yelling at each other on social media about whether soccer is good or bad.

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As of this writing, Graham Platner scandals include:

• A Nazi tattoo that Platner explains1 by saying (in so many words) “I know very little and make poor decisions — anyway, vote for me!”;

• Being a man in his 40s who not only knows what Kik is, but who created a profile on that app with a semi-nude pic;

• Texting with 28% of the female population of Maine while married;

• An ex-girlfriend describing him as a hard-drinking, abusive asshole;

• Serial lying about the provenance of the Gus T. Oysterman character that he plays and about the finances of his alleged oyster empire;

• Enough assholish Reddit statements to make you want to swim to the bottom of the ocean and yank out the big plug that powers The Internet.

Those are the scandals as of this writing — 7:46 PM Eastern Standard Time on Thursday, June 4, 2026, Anno Domini. Though one suspects that Republicans might be sitting on a gargantuan opposition research folder that they’re going to drop on Platner like Wile E. Coyote getting crushed by an anvil the second it’s too late for Democrats to pick someone else.

But some Platner diehards have an interesting take on his scandals: They say that these revelations are not only not that bad — they might be net positives because they make Platner more relatable to “real people”. Here are some examples:

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I want to talk about Jon Ossoff, but first, I have to disclose this connection: My wife went to junior high with Ossoff. And yes, I have dirt on him: There are unconfirmed reports that he had a Jimmy Neutron lunch box, which a source with knowledge of the situation described as “hella lame”. He was also in a production of Into the Woods, and my source reports that his performance lacked a certain spark. I don’t know if these revelations doom his presidential chances — let me reiterate that the Jimmy Neutron lunch box is unconfirmed — but journalistic integrity compels me to disclose those ties.1

Anyway: Ossoff recently went viral with this clip.

IMHO, this is good stuff. Uniting, positive — kind of like if you typed “Obama me hard in the face” into Chat GPT. And Ossoff’s media team upped the leadership vibes by giving him the “hero’s framing”, i.e. shot from the ground up. Look at this angle — is a toddler holding this camera? Ten degrees lower and we’d be able to see his crotch inseam.

As much as I like this clip, I’ll concede that it’s not mind-blowing. It’s a clear and articulate rebuke of Stephen Miller-esque blood and soil nationalism, but a fair response would be “Sure — now what else?” The leftist retort would be that it’s easy to tell happy stories about American exceptionalism while literally trillions of Americans are starving to death every day (also: Gaza!)! Personally, I’d call that response a wee bit overcooked, but I’d agree that a broad statement about America’s character does not constitute a platform.

But — counterpoint to the counterpoint — that clip did go viral. It scratches an itch for somebody. So, maybe it’s time to consider the possibility that our discourse is such an open biohazard pit that “America good” counts as a bold and refreshing political statement.

MAGA is ambivalent at best about the American project. They like the US when the US is a sports team (US women’s soccer team excepted), but they’re openly hostile to things that many people would consider foundational American ideals. Obviously: Respecting the electoral process is not Trump’s bag, baby. MAGA is hostile to the pluralistic ideas in Ossoff’s speech, even though this country’s founding documents are explicitly universalist, and expanding American identity to include ever-more groups is a key part of the American story. MAGA — like many right-leaning movements — likes the “paradise lost” narrative, which is: The country was great, but it was ruined by sissies and beatniks. And that’s why America needs to be made great again. It’s impossible to marinate in “crumbling city” narratives and “this is what they took from you” memes for as long as some Republicans have and still believe that America is exceptional.

Of course, parts of the left are openly hostile to America. I’ve written at length about how every leftist narrative is some version of “Amerikkka sux”, and how some forms of activism are just expressions of anti-social tendencies. The doomerist rhetoric of a left-populist like Graham Platner is extremely similar to Stephen Miller’s “American carnage” vision of America — they agree that things are really bad! And included in the anti-establishment, burn-it-all-down viewpoint is the notion that things are irredeemably bad, which is why the people, institutions, and ideas that led us here need to be replaced.

In this political climate, simply saying “America good” arguably counts as really saying something. It contrasts Ossoff with Trump — which you would expect from a Democrat — but also tells us what kind of Democrat Ossoff wants to be. And as much as Ossoff is repudiating Trump, he’s repudiating the “race is everything” views of the woke era — he’s returning to Obama’s call for color-blindness. It’s a conservative message (“back to foundational principles”) in service of a liberal idea (“anyone can be American”). And that’s possible because some liberal ideas have been part of America for so long that it’s possible to “RETVRN” to them.

So, I think it’s fair to call this clip elemental and incomplete…but not trite. It would have been trite ten years ago. Now, it’s a good starting point for a candidate looking to introduce himself to the country. It’s worth remembering that for most people, their nationality is part of their identity, and “we are garbage” isn’t what they want to hear. Anyone arguing that Ossoff’s words aren’t new is correct, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not refreshing.

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If you read this blog, you probably know that I hate populism. And I really do hate it: I think it’s the enemy of progress and an endorsement of humanity’s worst impulses. When leaders adopt widely-held beliefs that are good, we call that “common sense politics” — we only call it “populism” when the ideas are dumb enough to warp the space-time continuum.

I like sports. I follow soccer and baseball closely, and I dabble in football and basketball when I have a reason (e.g. my friend’s team is terrible and their anguish gives me joy). I listen to podcasts and radio shows about my favorite teams, because sometimes the game ends but I’m not done neglecting my family — I want more content! Some of the stuff I listen to is good, but I also listen to shows by museum-quality morons just because they’re talking about the team I like — I’m like Lisa Simpson getting her fix from The Corey Hotline:

Listening to these sports shows helps me understand populism and hate it even more. The same attitudes and ignorance that stymie political progress are the coin of the realm on sports radio. I think that every political consultant should have to listen to sports radio, which for Democrats would have the added benefit of making their social media feeds sounds less like a gay Dartmouth student whose butchest influence is the T-Rex from Toy Story.

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My article about how I don’t like Graham Platner but would still vote for him generated feedback both positive (people like the SenateBot 5000 joke!) and negative (people want to see me struck by a train!). Some people noted a similarity between my logic (i.e. Platner sucks but would be a net benefit for the country because he’d check Trump more than Collins) and the logic that many Republicans are using to stand by their own ethical Chernobyl of a Senate candidate: Ken Paxton of Texas. Many examples of Republicans standing by Paxton exist, but I think the most succinct formulation came from Dan McLaughlin of The National Review.

There it is again: The Flight 93 election logic. That is: Finding a way to convince yourself that the other side is worse even as your candidate runs through a nursery school with a flamethrower. This type of thinking is a boil on the taint of American civil discourse. And I wonder: Am I guilty of it? I’d like to say “nah” and go back to praying for my critics to be tied up on the beach and devoured by crabs, but…maybe I am guilty. Let’s talk about this.

Convincing yourself that your opponent is Hitler-if-Hitler-also-said-“schedz”-instead- of-“schedule” (the only thing I can think of that would make Hitler worse) is a great way to avoid all ethical choices. There is never any real decision to be made if the alternative is an eternity of darkness. This type of thinking is the calling card of brainless partisanship and the philosophical core of every cable news channel.

Of course, your ethical standards for the candidates you support can’t be absolute: You will inevitably vote for candidates who do some things that you don’t like. And if you think about it: You will only vote for candidates who do some things that you don’t like — no candidate holds your views on every issue, and no candidate is a flawless paragon of unimpeachable virtue. There are no Christ-like candidates, including — hypothetically — Jesus Christ, who, though possibly the son of God, was obviously a bad hang. At the Last Supper, his “banter” is just airing grievances about other people in the group — some party, Jesus! Every candidate you support has flaws, the real issue arises when a candidate’s flaws become so big that just having their sign in your yard starts to feel like making an animal sacrifice to Cthulhu, The God Of Blood.

Which is to say: A decision is never automatic — there are always different considerations and tradeoffs. It doesn’t make sense to say “I would never vote for a candidate who ______,” because you might end up with a choice between a candidate who ______ and a candidate who ______ and also says “schedz”. “I would never vote for someone who suspends habeas corpus” sounds reasonable, except that Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, so now you oppose Lincoln, so you support slavery, and bad news: You are cancelled just for reading this sentence.

Bias is introduced when a person inflates the failings of the other side or minimizes the failings of their own side. IMHO, this is exactly what McLaughlin does in that tweet. I share McLaughlin’s aversion to court packing, an idea that has become disturbingly mainstream among Democrats (though I don’t think it will happen), but I have no earthly idea what McLaughlin means by “efforts to shatter the American constitutional system of government”. I can’t think of anything he could mean that isn’t Blanche Dubois-level histrionic. McLaughlin also claims to know which interpretation of Christianity is true and which versions will “cost [people] their immortal souls" — I’d say that claim needs substantiation! I would also argue that “your candidate will cause people’s souls to be cast into the fiery pit of hell” is somewhat catastrophizing rhetoric.

But look — the left can exaggerate their opponents’ flaws, too!

Collins is not my cup of tea, but calling her “one of the most evil people in public life” proves that if this Simpsons joke did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it.

Am I exaggerating the threat Trump poses? I don’t think so; I’ve spent years trying to precisely quantify the exact level of Trump’s badness. Just yesterday, I gave a lengthy response to a question about how bad things have gotten. I sometimes feel like an anesthesiologist — I’m trying hard not to overshoot or undershoot the mark — and I hope I’ve accurately described Trump’s badness without succumbing to McLaughlin-esque “he’ll compromise your immortal soul” characterizations.

Am I downplaying Platner’s flaws? Boy I don’t think so — just how hard am I supposed to roast this clown? Platner’s mistakes — all 105 of them — paint a clear picture of a guy with terrible judgement who is also an edgelord asshole. Recent news that he either cheated on his wife or tried hard to cheat on his wife but failed (which is worse?) didn’t faze me, because my take on Platner was already “He’s an unstable shithead”. Platner also continues to talk like a total dummy: Here he is complaining about “collapsing housing markets” even though the problem with housing is that prices are too high! Literally the only thing Platner has going for him — besides the piercing blue eyes of a Yeti — is that he might serve as a check against a guy who has all his same flaws times 100.1

And then there’s the murky question of how much Collins would check Trump. The answer is “some” — the debate is really over whether she’ll check Trump “loads” or “just a smidge”. Collins voted to convict Trump of impeachment the second time but not the first. She vote against Pete Hegseth but in favor of RFK, Jr., Pam Bondi, Tulsi Gabbard, and every other Trump cabinet appointment. The effort to round Collins up to a cackling supervillain is clearly absurd but so is the notion that she’s a floodwall holding back Trump’s ocean of insanity.

My math still leads me to extremely tepid Platner support, but a reasonable person could plug different values into the same equation and reach a different conclusion. I honestly think we might grope our way towards sanity if we at least cut the bullshit about who these people are. Paxton is a sleaze and a con man who enthusiastically supports Trump’s most destructive habits. Platner is an unstable dickhead who just happens to match an idiot’s idea of what working class guys are like. Whether those are big enough negatives to alter your voting person’s depends on your values, but we can stay sane if we at least agree that these fellows are less than ideal.

And we should try hard to avoid situations in which we’re forced to vote for the lesser of two evils. Speaking of which: Janet Mills would like you to know that she is: 1) Still alive, and 2) Still on the primary ballot. And this guy is running, I know absolutely nothing about him, but he talked for 60 seconds without saying anything idiotic or whipping out his dick — he might be the class of the field! I assume that Platner will win and we’ll be treated to whatever unspeakable horrors are sitting in a Republican oppo research file right now, but I’m hoping for a miracle. And I don’t know how to do the math about how bad is too bad; the best I can do is talk about what values I think the variables hold and let people run the numbers themselves.

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***Hello! I’m doing a Q&A on the podcast either this week or next week, so please send your questions, thoughts, and insults to questions@imightbewrong.org. Paid subscribers are far more likely to have their questions answered, because — as it says on the plaque beneath the Statue of Liberty — “Paid subscribers before free imbibers”.

I’m on record saying that I would vote for Graham Platner (if things went disastrously wrong for me and I ended up living in Maine). I’m also on record calling Platner “an edgelord asshole” and “a bottomless pit of douchey behavior” whose ideas are “a bunch of misguided nothing”. I frankly wouldn’t hire the guy to work at Blimpie’s, but, oddly, I’d vote for him to be a US Senator.

Many Democrats — six of whom actually live in Maine — are wrestling with The Platner Dilemma. Massachusetts Representative Jake Auchincloss recently called Platner’s covered-up totenkopf tattoo1 “disqualifying”. That, of course, helps Platner’s opponent, Susan Collins. Auchincloss’ statement led to blowback from people who noted that Collins treats Trump the way a lazy parent treats a toddler: She stands up to the shithead one time in 50 and thinks that counts as “setting boundaries”.

Does “vote blue no matter who” literally mean no matter who? Like literally anybody — if Platner blew up a school bus, would some people say “yeah, but he didn’t vote to confirm RFK Junior”? Isn’t that just “Flight 93” logic, i.e. “the other side is always worse”? And isn’t that logic what made it possible for Trump to treat American laws the way he treats Tiffany, i.e. with something between complete disregard and outright hostility?

But also: Aren’t purity tests a fast track to irrelevance? After all: What if Collins blew up a school bus — would Auchincloss still feel that Platner’s tattoo is “disqualifying”? Politics requires compromises, and anyone who doesn’t understand that should go meditate on a mountain so that they can be as pure and useless as they aspire to be.

This Platner situation sure is a corker! Here’s my two cents.

Much of the anger towards Auchincloss comes from leftists, who are incredulous that after a lifetime of centrist Democrats urging them to cast pragmatic votes, some centrists are balking at Platner. Of course, the situations are different for two reasons.

The first reason is that Auchincloss and others are objecting to Platner’s specific…let’s call them “quirks” (and if that doesn’t win me the Nobel Prize for Euphemisms, nothing will). No mainstream Democrat drew a line at Bernie or AOC or Elizabeth Warren or any other far-left congressional Democrat, but none of them have tattoos that are too-Nazi-adjacent-for-comfort. And, sure: Warren has a huge tattoo of a skateboarding iguana with “BLINK 182 4 LIFE” on her back, and Bernie got his confederate flag face tattoo removed in 2015, but that’s different from having a totenkopf on your chest for 20 years and also going on an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist’s podcast and saying “I love your show”.

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The Catholic Church and Star Wars: Those two institutions have let down people in my life more than words can describe. I’m neither a Catholic nor a Star Wars guy, but many people close to me are one or the other — a few cursed bastards are both — and watching them wrestle with the implications of swept-under-the-rug child abuse/tragic botching of probably the most beloved IP in entertainment history has been hard to watch.

It’s hard to overstate how much reputational damage Star Wars IP has suffered: The ninth Star Wars movie grossed only half as much as the seventh. The Mandalorian and Grogu just had the lowest opening for a Star Wars movie in the Disney era. The Acolyte is discussed with the hushed tones that one might use to describe an uncle who went on a shooting spree. Things are so bad that I just likened late-era Star Wars to a horrific child abuse scandal and the comparison strikes me as deserved.

So, I went into The Mandalorian and Grogu hoping for a win. The fact that the movie’s opening weekend didn’t stimulate anyone’s midichlorians barely matters: Those numbers are partly due to the fact that movie theater business model is so antiquated that theaters might as well be old West saloons. What Disney really wants for this movie is for it to be highly rewatched on Disney Plus; Disney wins if parents in the year 2040 find themselves saying “If I have to watch that goddamned Baby Yoda movie one more time I’ll blow my fucking brains out.” But that will only happen if the movie — which is a spinoff of one of the few Star Wars things in recent years that worked — is good. So…is it?

You’re not going to believe this, but IMHO: Yes, this movie was legitimately good. That is a shocking statement — I’m someone who enjoys TV and movies so infrequently that I legitimately wonder if my brain is broken. Me saying “I enjoyed that Star Wars movie” is like a Wahhabist Imam saying “that drawing of the Prophet Muhammad is awesome.” But I call ‘em as I see ‘em, and I truly did think that The Mandalorian and Grogu was a fun, well-made action movie in outer space.

Which pretty much fucks me with a pickaxe — I do these columns specifically to shit on hilariously misguided monuments to hubris. And if I don’t shit on something I lose my comedy license, so how ‘bout this: Let me compare some things that I think earlier Star Wars movies got wrong with what I think The Mandalorian and Grogu got right.

The 16 years between the original Star Wars movies and the prequels put the franchise in a weird spot: Their biggest fans fell in love with the movies as kids but had become adults. So, if your goal is to recapture the Star Wars magic, do you make a movie for kids or a movie for adults? And, follow-up question: If you make a movie for kids, should it contain a pratfalling space rabbit who speaks in a space-Caribbean patois that practically forced the word “problematic” into the English language?

The Phantom Menace was geared at kids; I saw it in theaters with one of my diehard Star Wars friends, and by the second act I could practically smell the embarrassment seeping through his skin. The next two movies tried to correct this error, but raised the question of whether George Lucas is even capable of making movie for grown-ups. Lucas’ ham fisted solution to the movie-too-kiddie problem was to advance a convoluted plot involving trade economics, and I happen to have a graduate degree in that shit and even I didn’t give a wookie’s dick about the plot.

Movies 7, 8, and 9 tried to recapture the series’ adult fans by aggressively calling back elements of the first three movies. This worked some, but came at the expense of new characters that never really caught on. Star Wars Episode VIII: Emo Luke Watches His Friends Die boldly attempted to make Luke more complex in a gambit that brought to mind Jack Lipnick’s monologue about the dangers of “fruity movies about suffering”. It was an effort to make a movie that appealed to adults and kids that ended up appealing to neither. Episode IX: The Studio Executives Strike Back would have easily won the Academy Award for Pandering if such a thing existed; I saw it with my wife, and when I asked her recently what she remembered about the movie, she said “I remember being bored.”

IMHO, what these movies got wrong was that they misunderstood what it meant to make a movie “like” the original Star Wars. Lucas tried to run the same plays that worked the first time; the sequels tried to literally remake the first three movies as much as possible. I think The Mandalorian and Grogu succeeded because it stopped trying to recreate the original characters and plot points and tried to mimic the original feel.

My unsentimental, non-Star-Wars-guy view of the first movie is that it’s a mediocre B-movie for about 80 minutes that suddenly gets awesome when they start having dogfights in space. The first two acts are only made tolerable by an amazing John Williams score, a few great effects like the Imperial Star Destroyer in the opening shot, and Harrison Ford having the most Big Dick Energy in any galaxy. But the plot is mediocre, the dialogue is terrible — I honestly think it would have flopped if there hadn’t been 40 minutes of effects-laden ass kicking at the end. But there were 40 minutes of effects-laden ass kicking, Gen X had their minds blown so thoroughly that the shock wave is still echoing through space, and the rest is history.

The Mandalorian and Grogu keeps it simple and goes straight to the ass kicking. Instead of crushing us with a galaxy worth of plot, lore, and characters, they simply say “Here is a bounty hunter who hunts bad guys, if you want to know exactly who he is and what the conflict is about, that information can be found in the Who Gives A Shit system.” There are basically two characters, one is played by a good actor (Pedro Pascal) and one is a puppet who is so damn cute that he makes Lambchop look like a drug-addled prostitute. And not for nothin’: The movie couldn’t get woke even if it wanted to, because it’s a guy in a mask and puppet who doesn’t talk. That might not sound like a big deal, but I promise you that executives were grateful to not have the insatiable ghouls on social media scrutinize their casting choices.

The result is two hours of meaningless space fun. Does the movie build on the original trilogy, and expand Jedi lore, and perhaps explain what the fuck midichlorians are and whether they can be cured with penicillin? Hell no, but from where I’m sitting, the space fun is the cake and the lore is just frosting. Maybe I’d feel differently if I was a Star Wars guy; maybe they do demand lore and will feel that this entry is too slight. And come to think of it, the fact that I liked this movie probably means that it’s financially doomed. But it seems to me that the Star Wars franchise has been degraded because people thought that they could recreate the Star Wars feeling by making Star Wars again. But actually, “the next Star Wars” will actually be something totally different. And maybe this movie wasn’t Star Wars again, but for me, it felt surprisingly close.

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***Hello! I’m doing a Q&A on the podcast either this week or next week, so please send your questions, thoughts, and insults to questions@imightbewrong.org. Paid subscribers are far more likely to have their questions answered, because — as it says on the plaque beneath the Statue of Liberty — “Paid subscribers before free imbibers”.

I recently wrote a piece criticizing policies that produce a few lucky winners and a whole bunch of losers. And speaking of “a whole bunch of losers”: There were critics of that argument.1 Some people felt that my distinction made little sense because every policy creates winners and losers, and that the luck involved was no different from the luck involved in virtually any outcome. My response to that criticism is that I was criticizing policies that create more losers than winners, and also that my critics should be pecked to death by crows for daring to contradict me.

Even so: I think luck is an important concept, especially when it comes to policy making. An implicit idea behind a social safety net is the notion that not all outcomes are moral verdicts passed down from the almighty. Also, anyone with any life experience has seen well-made plans go to shit and quarter-baked dumbassery come up aces — luck stalks all of us, always. There’s an entire branch of philosophy about “moral luck”, and I don’t intend to review that body of work in that post, but I do intend to pluck out the parts that I care about, add some dirty jokes, and then dive behind my “I’m just a comedian!” reinforced lead shield the minute I get pushback.

Imagine two people. I’m going to make them movie producers, because as far as I can tell, movie producing is the most capricious and unknowable endeavor mankind has ever attempted — the only hard rule seems to be “Don’t let actors write”.

Suppose that Producer A invests in a big-budget space epic based on Pop Rocks. Meanwhile, Producer B invests in a CGI kids movie about a rapping hedgehog that’s actually an allegory for the Seven Years War. This scenario is bizarre, but also standard in the movie business — I assure you that there are people agonizing over decisions at least this stupid at this very moment.

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***Hello! I’m doing a Q&A on the podcast either this week or next week, so please send your questions, thoughts, and insults to questions@imightbewrong.org. Paid subscribers are far more likely to have their questions answered, because — as it says on the plaque beneath the Statue of Liberty — “Paid subscribers before free imbibers”.

From the editor:

In the wake of Kamala Harris’ 2024 loss, the Democratic National Committee commissioned an “autopsy” report to figure out what went wrong. But when the report was completed, DNC chair Ken Martin decided to keep it private, fueling speculation that the report contained information that would offend key constituencies. Last week, Martin reversed course and released the report, at which point the real reason for the secrecy became apparent: The document is incomplete, amateurish, and — in Martin’s own words — “Not ready for primetime”.

The man Martin put in charge of the report, Paul Rivera, has faced withering criticism. Then, last week, Mr. Rivera reached out to I Might Be Wrong requesting a platform to tell his side of the story. At least, that’s what we think happened — we received an email from “p.rivrea.loves.mcnuggits@askjeeves.com” that said “I words on you COMPOOTER!!!!!!” along with a picture of Mr. Rivera. Through great difficulty, we contacted Mr. Rivera and commissioned an op-ed, which arrived several days later in the form of glitter paint scrawls on a series of McDonald’s bags, handed to the I Might Be Wrong headquarters receptionist by a smiling and buck naked Mr. Rivera. That op-ed is published below.

Yo!

I have receeved super size crittercism four my dnc “ah top see” paper. This is bad, dumb, & gayballs. My re-port was MIGHTY and YUMMY and h8ters are gell-ass because this is truth:

R’eplert key find-os:

Harris didn’t do Enough vote’s

In electron, votes is key. Anyone n;ot doing votes 9shoul d get off there keesters & do votes untill their like “I COULD NTO P4OSSIBLEE EAT A’NOTHRR VOTE!!!!!”

Trump ddidd more vote’s

Trumps Stratego of morr vote’s prov;ed 2 bee D-cisisv. Trump did morr vote’s n Alibama, which gores first n the alfabit, and after th*at )peeple were “ah cripes hear wee go again :-(!!!”

McDonald’s shouldd bring back more sau^cases 4 McNuggets

Rememember when U could get says-shawn sauce?? says-shawn sauce was sooooooo gud!!! Also cajunn & sweet or spiicy but says-shawn was KING of the sauce!!! And who fire’d this guys??:

The McNugget Men were princes o’ Americuh in the 80s and un#like BILL COSBY and MIKE O’JACKSON not CANCLED 4 SEX CRIMES (alleggeddly). Demacrats shuld bring bac’k McNugget Men and have themm star in uh MOVIE that will heal Americuh!

That m)ovie wil be McNugget Men meets STAR WAR meets REMAINS O’ THE DAY.n Folows a smaal McNugget who want’s 2 B king butt cant b’ecaus unpure bloodlines. Forc’d to shoo horses & dig g>raves b’cause lowerr clas (and England). Then: LASERS! ALEX GUINASS! SPACE BATTIL!!!!!! McNugget becoms SPACE KI*NG and Kamama Haris wins PRESODENT in narow el”etron collij victorry!!!!

Mr. Rivera also enclosed scripts for three feature-length films based on the adventures of the McNugget Men; I Might Be Wrong has opted not to publish those scripts due to brevity concerns and because the scripts were shockingly pornographic. I Might Be Wrong remains committed to publishing a diversity of views, even — perhaps especially — views that are so goddamned stupid that they make you cringe on humanity’s behalf.

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For the lawyers: This was a bit. And the monster truck photo comes from Jenn Cox.

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Here’s how the end of The Late Show feels to me: It’s like I have a friend who’s been missing for ten years, and the police just called to tell me that they finally found the body. I watched Letterman religiously for 20 years, only sometimes flipping away — ironically — when The Colbert Report emerged in the late 2000s. These days, late night TV plays no role in my life; I never watch, I’ll almost certainly never work in the genre again, and my only connection to those shows is sepia-toned memories that feel like they should be accompanied by wistful French accordion music. This happens to me eight to ten times per day:

Conservatives, of course, are dancing on The Late Show’s grave. Fox News cutup Greg Gutfeld had some especially scathing remarks.

Gutfeld’s point about Colbert skewering easy targets to the delight of his highly partisan audience would have landed better if Gutfeld hadn’t been — at that very moment — skewering an easy target to the delight of his highly partisan audience. Greg Gutfeld is a man who tells jokes about Hunter Biden on Fox News — IMHO, that’s not exactly the second coming of Lenny Bruce. I haven’t seen that little self awareness since John Oliver chided people for talking about trans women in sports as part of his extra-long, 42-minute episode about trans women in sports.

Colbert and Gutfeld both do partisan comedy; the only difference is that one’s on the blue team and one’s on the red team. Their emergence would probably shock someone who teleported here from 1988, a time when a scathing late night political take might be “Dan Quayle — no philosopher prince is he!” The emergence of bespoke comedy for distinct viewpoints seems bad to me; it seems like a product of the same forces that brought feverish partisanship, unhinged conspiracy mongering, and 31 flavors of anti-Semitism into the political mainstream. And I don’t know what to do about that trend other than to talk about it so that we at least know where we are.

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