Backdoor Man

Better Call Saul wrapped its six year run this week on some cable network, perhaps AMC. A prequel to Breaking Bad, the series wandered back and forth between pre- and post its parent. For those of us victims of a series finale (Seinfeld would be notorious for sucking outrageously as would the Phil Spector version of Let It Be,) the finale exceeded expectations in ending on a grace note. Naturally, most of you have not seen it yet, or don’t care so I won’t spoil it for you. Or maybe I will so artfully that you won’t notice it until the tweets fade away or the Stories disappear..

Luckily, the air is filled with the firestorm over Trump’s Mar-a-Lago search, where the former president is discovered to have shoplifted virtually every thing he could get his hands on prior to being voted out of office. Pardon me if I don’t believe a word of this. The only thing he seems good at is evading truth or consequences. But Better Call Saul to the rescue, with the sad but poignant story of a con grifter and his bad-boy-loving partner painting a reasonable picture of why we continue to be bedeviled by this treacherous crowd. Perhaps it’s because we’d rather be entertained by the story than informed by the facts.

Liz Cheney just lost her seat in the Republican primary to a Trump-endorsed challenger. We admire her goal to keep Trump away from the Oval Office. We aren’t sure if that’s possible, but we’re willing to overlook her conservative positions on everything else. That’s easier done than said, because of Part A, the possibility of keeping Trump out of the Oval Office. Work from anywhere except there.

Watching Big Brother on the network formerly known as CBS is another reasonable way of surviving the run-up to the mid-term elections in November. The show is venal in its lack of integrity, but as our thought leaders have schooled us, it’s just a movie, or a limited series, or reality TV. In other words, the same definition as the house call at Mar-a-Lago. The contestants vie for various competitions: best interim liar, supposed showmance declarations not worth the airtime they’re given by duplicitous producers who inject drama where none exists, endless strategy sessions, more advanced lying, endless monologues for the benefit only of the omnipresent cameras and grist for the duplicitous producers. Intermittent crying, blowhard exultations by future losers who will be denied the ability to save themselves from being backdoored onto the chopping block, additional bonus lying replete with dubious cutaways of stand ins for contestants who actually care. Plus whimpering about the death of democracy. Or as Minority Liar McConnell would say: candidate quality.

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