Bomb threats

Interviewed earlier this week, 80-year-old American actress Jane Fonda said that she has dropped some of her oldest friends for holding political opinions that are at odds with her own and that she is so afraid of Donald Trump that she can ‘hardly breathe’. She needs to see a doctor. Apnea is no laughing matter and whether her condition is attributable to President Trump or to other factors, she must have it seen to. Many women complain of breathing difficulties following plastic surgery operations to their noses and breasts. Could her air pipes have deteriorated from years of bouncing around on videos in tight leotards? Or might the orgasm machine into which Dr Durand Durand placed her in Barbarella 50 years ago have something to do with it?

Andrew McCarthy, writing in National Review Online a couple of days ago, was certainly correct that it would have been outrageous and irresponsible to have suggested, at that early juncture of this still-unfolding episode, that the pipe ‘bombs’ were hoaxes devised by leftist activists to make it appear that nebulous right wing activists are targeting famous critics of Donald Trump, from Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, all the way down the food chain to Senator ‘Spartacus’ Booker and Mad Maxine Waters. But the fact that McCarthy’s column is titled ‘Why No One Trusts the Media’ tells you that his prudent restraint is redolent of that device rhetoricians denominate apophasis or praeteritio.