Satire

Cockburn attended Joe Biden’s virtual press conference on Wednesday afternoon. As he struggled to keep his eyes open, he noticed a small piece of paper by Biden’s elbow — a list of names, written in a shaky hand. So Cockburn screenshotted it, then turned his desktop upside down. Here’s Joe Biden’s shortlist for America’s first female vice president:  Eleanor Roosevelt Why sandbag the Senate when you can handbag it? Mrs Roosevelt is a rising star of the Democratic left’s woke wing. She’s never seen in public without her handbag, and it’s crammed with big plans for the post-COVID-19 bounce-back.

For the past few days on his Twitter feed, Donald Trump has repeatedly referred to the COVID-19 pandemic as ‘the Chinese virus’ or ‘the China virus’. In almost every press conference he has attended, he has doggedly used the terms ‘China virus’ and ‘Chinese virus’, despite criticism. I cannot stress enough how important it is that the media refrains from co-opting these shockingly racist epithets.It’s obvious to me why Trump is doing this.

As the COVID-19 pandemic permeates its way across the globe like toxic right wing opinions at a Trump rally, the world’s largest media outlets hunker down to cover its progress. Every day I find my social media inundated with advice and information pertaining to the virus and its potential deadly effects on the elderly, people with pre-existing respiratory ailments, and the immunocompromised. I’ve come across plenty of articles warning anyone over a certain age who suffers from COPD to stay away from crowds of people. I’ve seen guides on what to do if you’re a cancer patient in the middle of chemotherapy.

Sunday March 8 is the most important day of the year for women all over the world: International Womxn’s Day (and if you have difficulty pronouncing that, congratulations, you are a bigot). Yes, Sunday is the day when ALL women are recognized, not just the ones with biologically recognized female parts. Chaka Khan famously sang: 'I’m every woman'. Thankfully today she would be called out as the TERF she is because the correct term is ‘womxn’ (at a push I will except ‘womyn’, but I would require prior notice in order for me to set my acceptance levels to ‘moderate’).‘Womxn’ is being increasingly acknowledged as a more inclusive term when it comes to the complexities of contemporary gender recognition.

A TikTok video has been doing the rounds on Twitter the past 48 hours, and I feel I must express to you the level of disgust it has induced in me. The footage in question is of a black drag queen dancing seductively in front of a rather frightened-looking small child (around six years of age) as her (presumably) parents and other adults watch the scene unfold before them while smiling and cheering encouragement towards the drag artist.  https://twitter.com/MaryMargOlohan/status/1233398234028167168 Now I trust that you will be just as appalled by this as I was, otherwise there really is no decency left in the world.

I remember the ceremony as if it were yesterday. I was six-years-old. It was a beautiful summer’s afternoon in the forest clearing where my parents and I lived in an anti-capitalist pagan countercultural commune. The sun’s rays danced playfully around the lilies in my mother’s crown, while a gossamer-winged butterfly flitted gracefully above father’s hemp yashmak. The High Priestess held aloft the skull from a dismembered deer carcass which had died of natural causes, and we all wept. As we each gave thanks to the Oak King by placing one of our teeth on the sanctified Tree Stump of Renewal, I felt an unwavering connection to Gaia.

'Honestly, there should be themed debates,' Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter last night. 'Doing so educates the public far more on issues & actually serves the purpose of distinguishing who knows what they’re talking about +who doesn’t. Climate debate. Foreign policy debate. Healthcare. Racial justice. Labor&Econ. Can’t hide.' While the ninth DNC debate proved livelier than the previous eight combined, Cockburn can't help but think the New York congresswoman has a point, even if she did borrow it from former candidate Jay Inslee. A single topic, chosen from one of the key tenets of the Democratic platform, would certainly add some much needed focus. But AOC's ideas for topic areas seem a bit...lame. 'Labor&Econ'? What a snoozefest.

Valentine’s Day is here again to remind us all that we are still living in a rape culture. No matter how prettily the greetings card companies attempt to dress it up, an entire day dedicated to the celebration of men stalking women is beyond reproach. If you celebrate Valentine’s Day, you are actively participating in the continued normalization of sexual assault. Think about that. The majority of cards and gifts sent today will have been sent anonymously and without prior consent. As a society we are actively encouraging ‘gift rape’. If this doesn’t already sound sinister enough to you, then strap yourself in because it’s about to get a whole lot bumpier.

I suit up most days (thank you, casual Fridays) and with the stress of New York’s walking speeds and tremendous cleanliness of its streets, the closet life of suits falls somewhere between the lifespan of a monarch butterfly and a succulent fathered by a man in his twenties, another way of saying: cherish life.So, we will call it a Tuesday of last week. I found myself either a) running from hired guns of a Memphis law firm after I had uncovered their Cayman Islands-based money laundering scheme or b) catching my pocket on the armrest of a conference room chair, when I split my dress pants down the leg.

If you put an adequate amount of effort in, you will see that racism is everywhere. I myself spend at least 30 minutes per day practicing how to interpret things white people say as racist. Thankfully, there are many other tireless activists out there who have trained their mental gymnastic skills to an impressive degree so that we may ensure that no white person gets away with saying anything we perceive to be racist. Alastair Stewart is, or should I say ‘was’ (lol), a newsreader on a British TV station. He had held this position for 40 years. As a white male, it was only a matter of time before he slipped up and revealed his hatred of brown people to the public.

‘A woman’s place is in the House and the Senate’, read the shirts assembled by slave labor in Myanmar, the messaging likely dreamed up by graduates of a small liberal arts school whose annual tuition would make a generous stimulus package for a city in any developing country. I like seeing women in the Senate, don’t get me wrong. I just see the former option, the house, as much more preferable for myself for a variety of reasons. I went through my Girl Boss phase in my late teens — my hard working immigrant parents, the descendants of a long, long line of ‘tradwives’, wanted different things for their only daughter.