The social medias have been afire with the Mad Dog Greene malaprop of gazpacho police instead of Gestapo police. No one talks about the redundancy of saying the Gestapo police, the police being superfluous, I’ll note.
In case you were encased in an iron lung or trapped in a mineshaft cave in during the past week, here’s the clip that no one will watch because buffering:
The Field Day
Here are some of the choicer tweets:
Seriously, these were funny. Maddog Greene provides us all with much needed unintended comedy breaks during the daily deluge of distressing, discouraging, depressing news, but in our rush to pile on the hapless representative and chase likes, shares, and follows, I think we lost something important.
The Danger of #Resistance
MTG: Malaprop Moment
Not only do we have the DC jail which is the DC Gulag, but now we have Nancy Pelosi’s Gazpacho police spying on members of Congress, spying on the legislative work that we do, spying on our staff, and spying on American citizens that want to come talk to their representatives. This government has turned into something it was never meant to be, and it is time to make it end.
Listen to what she said. Check the sidebar for the actual transcript because no one will watch the video because buffering or something.
Did you catch the real message there? The really important bit?
Okay, so she’s using hyperventilating hyperbole to attack Nancy Pelosi, but there’s nothing new there. Okay, so she’s completely fucked up the Nazi reference — Who knew Mad Dog even knew what Gazpacho was much less have primed in her brain making it more accessible than Gestapo. What did she do, have it for lunch? See it for the first time and have someone explain it to her? Who knows the back story there, right? — but, again, there’s nothing new in Mad Dog saying something totally stupid.
It is the last line there, This government has turned into something it was never meant to be, and it is time to make it [this government] end. She didn’t say that it was time to throw the Dems out of Congress. She didn’t say it was time to elect a Republican majority to Congress. She said it was time to make this government end.
Given that she tweeted Pelosi’s whereabouts during the 6 January Insurrection and was armed during the insurrection. Given that she gave tours of the Congress to insurrectionists on 5 January. Given that she met with Trump and his cabal in the War Room helping plan the insurrection. The only way that that line can be interpreted as openly advocating for the overthrow of the US government.
By focusing exclusively — note the operative term there, exclusively, we all like to have a bit of fun, right? — on the fuck up and not on the further signaling to the base that they are continuing to plan of over throwing the government, I think we miss out on important information about what is happening in our democracy.
By comicalizing Mad Dog, we dismiss her influence and importance in the efforts to replace our democracy with an authoritarian regime. She’s part and parcel of the planning and execution of those plans. She’s telegraphing her intentions to end our government.
We really need to seize upon this and other signs as a way of firing up our base so that we can make 2022 a single-issue election about saving democracy not about eliminating Yogi Berra-isms from our public officials.
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“even the dogs are smiling” by gnotalex is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
The Psy of Life 
I agree mtg is a danger—for the reasons you cite at the end. But every time she makes a ridiculously dumb comment and the libs rush in to poke fun, she gets a gazillion dollars of free publicity. Not a winning strategy for taking her down, IMHO.
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Howdy Annie!
She gets lots of free publicity and lots of donations. It all looks like grift to me.
When she says something as directly and unambiguously threatening as “end this government,” I feel like that needs to have attention drawn to it.
I’m surprised by how quickly the right has accepted the necessity of ending our democracy and how openly they talk about it. I can’t imagine anyone being this frank about creating a minority-rule state being tolerated in Republican politics during the Obama years. There was always talk of Texas seceding from the union or some other such nonsense, but it was always on the fringes. Now, it’s gone mainstream.
If we’re going to survive their frontal assault on our democracy, we need to focus squarely on the threat. Laughing at MTG is not helping our cause; recognizing the threat she poses, is.
Huzzah!
Jack
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I don’t see how anyone can see that word and not recognize it. While I doubt she has actually seen the word gazpacho I’m not so sure she wasn’t trying a troll: trying to Califonia-ize it in the churlish fashion these kind seem to find funny.
You’re right though, both content and context: it was a dogwhistle too few are paying attention to.
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Howdy Ten Bears!
When I was a kid, we went to the stock show and rodeo every year when it was in town. One of the events was riding a wild bull. It was easily the most dangerous act they had. The cowboys would get thrown and the bull would try to run them down, gore them, and trample them. So, they kept a few rodeo clowns hanging around the perimeter who would rushout and distract the bull from a down rider. They would try to get the bull to charge at them while someone helped the thrown cowpoke.
That’s Mad Dog Greene’s role in the stupid coup. She’s the rodeo clown who is supposed to keep us distracted with her stupidity while they steal our democracy.
Huzzah!
Jack
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You do know I’ve been to a few rodeos 🙂 ?
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I figured, but I’m enough of an ass without assuming such things.
Jack
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Those questions about MTG came to me from this about the guy who started Birds Aren’t Real playing a character: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/09/podcasts/the-daily/why-would-anybody-claim-that-birds-arent-real.html
And this one relates to what’s going on between the GOP and #Resistance and the convoys: https://www.npr.org/2022/02/11/1080086898/remembering-activist-todd-gitlin-who-helped-lead-the-60s-antiwar-movement
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Howdy Bob!
I love the Birds Aren’t Real folks. They either had been or still are touring the country, staging rallies. It is one of the few parodies that is out there enough to still work.
I’m hoping that the publication of all of the organizing and funding efforts by outside groups blunts some of the appeal of the convoys. The new concern is that the trucker protest is clearly designed to appeal to a US audience, affect the US economy, to hurt a US political party. It is a weird development in the globalization of our world.
Huzzah!
Jack
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I realized today that much of the appeal of the truck convoy idea comes from most of the guys involved being in age groups who came of age or grew up with the song and movie, “Convoy”. It is part of their mythos of the rebel trucker (even those who only have a small truck). It sort of runs parallel with the Outlaw Biker and Independent Cowboy images.
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Howdy Bob!
I remember the song, Convoy, and Burt Reynold’s Smokey and the Bandit movies and the CB craze. Good times. A lot of good old boys were part of all three of them. It is that American mythos of being the rugged individualist who sees the truth of what is really happening and willing to risk it all for what is right.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Yep. And don’t forget the “ordinary guy goes vigilante” genre.
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We’ve got a long list of characters who win through deviance and violence. It’s no wonder we’ve got the problems we have.
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Yes, indeed.
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Reblogged this on cabbagesandkings524 and commented:
Calico Jack – Its about what she said after the soup
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It is a mistake to see someone like MTG as simply a clown, as hopelessly incompetent. The malapropism effectively hid the last line from the Libs, and probably a lot of others. Those who didn’t catch the difference between soup and cops could hear the real message. Now, I have to wonder, (1) Does she really write her own material? (2) Is she really that dumb, or are we seeing a character? IDK, but such rhetoric coming as the tactic of the truckers’ convoy “protest” gains popularity (and funding) among the far Right in more countries can’t be a good sign.
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Howdy Bob!
I tend to think Mad Dog is that dumb and just follows a Jean Dixon approach: say about of shit and some of it will appeal to someone. It is a curious error to make though. Gestapo is a far more well-known word than gazpacho. It seems a weird confusion to have unless she had been primed with gazpacho in the time before the statement.
On the other hand, to believe that she had the thought, I’m going to signal MAGA Nation to engage in revolution, but I need to distract the press and liberals… hmmm… what can I do? I know, I’ll say the Gazpacho Police instead of the Gestapo (no one ever said the Gestapo Police), and everyone will go wild making fun of me and not focus on my real meaning seems a little far fetched.
More than likely the whole statement is the result of the comedy of errors that seems to characterize her time in office so far. Someone on her staff may have been pranking her or making a joke that didn’t get corrected before the final piece went out.
The error is focusing on trolling her instead of taking the seditious threat seriously and her ability to instigate real violence.
Huzzah!
Jack
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You’re probably right. Deliberately putting in the wrong word to distract the opposition would be a very sophisticated move. But it is a strange error to have made. We can hope that the Jan6 committee and DOJ are focusing on the last sentence.
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Howdy Bob!
I thought it was strange when it first came up just because the words have elements that overlap, but one is much more likely to be primed than the other. I don’t think Mad Dog has the smarts or the people who could orchestrate such a thing, you know, Occam’s Razor and all that.
The 6 January committee does seem to be on the ball and being very aggressive. What the DoJ does with it, well, we’ll find out.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Probably so. As far as the party managers are concerned, MTG is, like Trump and a few others, a case of just turning the bull (or cow) loose in the china shop.
Much is being made of the handling (and retention) of documents in the Trump White House and after. People are scratching their heads about him tearing things up and throwing paper in the toilet. Of course he did! He’s Dyslexic and a narcissist. It hurts him to read. It hurts him to read, or be expected to read anything not about him, or bad news. So he tears thing up. As for the 15 boxes at Mar-whatever, the “Why?” of that will be interesting, but there are clear grounds for criminal charges that have nothing to do with Jan6 or the Big Lie.
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I always figured Trump would leave the WH much like I used to move every time I had to until I was about thirty something: just throw everything in a box, load it into the vehicle, and drop it in the new place with no rhyme or reason for doing it. Everything done at the last minute. I doubt Trump really knows what’s in the boxes. He may have an aide who does.
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And, he will blame the aide for the boxes being in the wrong place.
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It’s always wash, rinse, repeat with Trump. Nothing new under his fat, lilly white, hairless ass is there?
Jack
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One Trick Pony – or maybe two
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