I had to bid farewell to a friend yesterday, something I don’t do easily or willingly if you know me at all.  Actually, he was more of a business bud, someone who would rely on me as a resource when he was an entertainment reporter for a major newspaper back in the days when such positions existed and mattered.  But mich like many of us, he became expendable when business targets weren’t met and we didn’t have any established tick marks on our CVs that would mattered to those in power desperately trying to save their own jobs.  At one point, we actually bonded over those realities.  He was an early believer in these musings and offered me a path to turn the more timeless and meaningful of them into a book.  For a substantial fee, of course, and upfront at that.  That is how these things typically work.  And since I already knew that, and also know how minimal my net worth is then and especially now, that’s the main reason why my first edition is still pending.

This business bud eventually wound up as a contributor to RAW STORY, which Wikipedia identifies as an American progressive news website…reporting is a combination of syndicated articles, aggregated material, and its own independent reporting…(w)ith its focus on “news that’s downplayed by mainstream media outlets”.  It has a robust array of multimedia offerings on Substack and YouTube that supplement its digital home page, which as of this writing contains no less than fifteen pieces pointing out something ridiculous, triggering, idiotic or inane that a certain obese incontinent incompent does in a given day.  Practically every one of them hits my devices as breaking news, as do similarly urgent stories from the self-righteous swashbucklers at THE ANKLER.  Yesterday those worlds collided, which combined with yet another bout of migraines intensified by the latest heat wave pushed me to my breaking point of tolerance.

Everyone’s favorite tennis addict Elaine Low assembled her fellow defenders of all creators for an emergency podcast in the wake of what just about everyone else was seeing as a breakthrough in the escalating drama surrounding the Warnermount deal.  TOO MUCH TELEVISION’s Rick Ellis, finally healthy enough to superservice his subscribers after blaming a recent convention for a throwback bout of COVID, offered one of the more detailed and even-handed versions:

A California federal court issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) on Monday, preventing Paramount Skydance from moving ahead with its $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery as state enforcers challenge the deal. U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín issued a 10-page order with granted a 14-day TRO, with a motion for a preliminary injunction due on Thursday.  To his credit, Ellis actually provided excerpts of the order for folks to peruse at their leisure.    Much like what was discovered after said obese incontinent imcompetent pre-empted at least a couple of linear networks the other night  when folks immediately followed his lead to review his actual receipts, the degree of significance was perhaps a tad below the expectations that were set.

But that didn’t stop Low from delivering something that was clickbaited with this screaming headline:

Rob Bonta: How We Plan to Kill the Paramount-WBD Deal

The ensuing paragraph pretty much lays out the scorched-earth approach that someone looking to follow in the footsteps of Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris has orchestrated:

“We love the judge’s order,” Bonta tells Elaine Low in an exclusive interview recorded just hours after the ruling. The decision gives Paramount as long as 28 days to choose among three bad options — settle, fight or walk away — and Bonta argues it has already undercut one of the company’s central defenses: that the merger would help it compete with Netflix, Amazon and Apple, even if it reduces competition in theatrical film and cable. He explains why more states may now join the challenge, what happens at the pivotal preliminary-injunction hearing on Aug. 3 and whether any concession could persuade him to stand down. His answer, essentially: Don’t merge.

I do urge you to actually click on the link provided above which Low’s far more auspiced Sean McNulty–who actually has been a media executive–supplied.  The summative statement in front of the paywall does put a bit of a damper on the party that Low and Bonta impulsively threw:

If the injunction goes into effect, the deal doesn’t just slow down. It goes on ice, potentially for months and likely into next year. In practical terms, an injunction pushes the fight toward trial.

PSKY has options short of the courtroom. During the TRO window it can go back to the state AGs and offer concessions to address their objections. Also keep in mind that two other clocks are running at the same time: The EU is due to weigh in with its own antitrust assessment by Wednesday, and the WGA’s separate suit — still without a procedural timeline — is on its own track entirely.

Nowhere in all these rambling and idealistic visions of maintaining production and job quotas was any acknowledgement from the very creators dancing in the streets that maybe they didn’t all make produce the most popular and/or cost-effective product, and they don’t have the resources to finance most of what they would otherwise do on their own.  No matter who winds up with the keys to these kingdoms they don’t have to blindly greenlight projects they don’t believe could actually achieve business goals.  I think Business Bud and I both know this to be an uncomfortable but inarguable truth.

Look, I get we all desperately want to take the power to determine our lives out of the hands of detestable oligarchs who literally spit in our faces.  I’m well aware that THE ANKLER and RAW STORY have way bigger megaphones, and clearly larger bank accounts, than I do–even if that book had been written.

But may I ask where Bonta, and for that matter the entire ANKLER and RAW STORY staffs, outlined anything even close to a game plan for what happens if they somehow were able to pull off the bloodless coup they maddeningly continue to demand?

My business bud who is part of the RAW STORY movement supplemented his Facebook feed by delivering his followers and friends his works from outside the paywall, so I’m most familiar with his work.  Anytime I would politely ask what or who’d he recommend would be a viable alternative once their wet dream of seeing Trump leave office in a manner similar to Nixon or, better still, Kennedy I would not only not get anything close to a suggestion but his followers proceeded to assume and gang up on me as being red-pilled, toxic and probably worthy of at least tarring and feathering.  Obviously, they don’t follow these musings, or are too lazy or inept to Google.  They likely missed these two– not to mention a third that hasn’t aged all that well.

That’s at least three more names that any of the Facebook resistance provided–and aside from Pete Hegseth, the entire RAW STORY gang didn’t provide a single story on anything or anyone else who might offer some sort of way to deal with their source of derangement besides a 100 emoji or confessing how they are kept up nights doomscrolling like mad.  You already know what keeps me up at night, and it ain’t him.

But this did allow me to catch the full DAILY SHOW episode last night where Jon Stewart interviewed Ben Wikler, who was opportunistically booked on the eve of the release of his latest book THIS IS THE PLAN.  The Amazon blurb sure provided a lot more hope than anything Business Bud–the professional journalist–has offered up:

If you are looking at the spiraling crisis of American politics in the Trump era and wondering how the hell we get out of this mess, This Is the Plan is the book you’ve been waiting for..Wikler led the Democratic Party of Wisconsin to a string of improbable victories in a state with a political system so rigged that it was dubbed a “democracy desert”―which is, coincidentally, Trump’s goal for the whole country…Wikler distills lessons from the front lines in America’s most closely divided state to map out a comprehensive plan to dictator-proof American government, defeat MAGA at every level of the ballot, and build a future of democracy, opportunity, and freedom for all.

The Stewart interview was downright applause-worthy:

(Oh yeah, please remind me who owns the media conglomerate that allowed this interview to air on one of the few original series they are electing to continue production on?)

So yeah, I downloaded the Kindle copy, and read the whole damn thing.  Wikler indeed names names and points out that even the most minute and obscure victories in contests as inconsequential as a school board election–ones actually decided by as few as a handful of actual votes–are the molecular building blocks of the very movement that they clamor to conquer, and offers an actual game plan to move forward after oligarchs who actually can afford to foot the bills are literally chased out of town.

Considering the relative percentage of net worth that was required for that download is a LOT less for Business Bud’s buds I couldn’t encourage them more to do same.  (and you good people here also should).  It’s a LOT more productive than preaching the same freaking thing to the same freaking choir every waking moment.  It’s not like any one of us is getting OUR book published anytime soon.

For as much as we all may want to gasp in abhorrence at the playbook that is being used almost verbatim from the script that was PROJECT 2025 one must concede its architects worked diligently and passionately for practically every minute of the four years that at least somewhere in their minds they conceded was the gap between the TWO Trump terms, and they identified and empowered people capable of at least following it to the letter.  At least Ben Wikler has contributed a few hundred pages of his own.  Not to mention an awful lot of time providing counsel to and amplifying those theretofore unknown that helped Wisconsinites at least achieve a few wins.

Maybe if and when Business Bud, or for that matter Low and her sardonic and curmedgeonly compatriot Richard Rushfield, decide to take that approach I might actually be able to offer a mea culpa for what I concede was likely deemed to be some over-the-top discourse.  Until then, TTFN, peeps.  See you at the next book signing.

Until next time…