Losing My Perspicacity September 20, 2024

Happy Free Friday! Welcome back to another edition of Losing My Perspicacity, the newsletter where I spend all day getting mad at the news and thrust it all into a template doc for your reading enjoyment. I wanted to say a huge “thank you” to all LMP readers, and especially premium subscribers. I’ve been told many times that an “open rate” of over 50 percent is the goal for a newsletter. Well, thanks to you, LMP’s open rate on Free Fridays is over 75 percent and over 80 percent during the week. That makes me feel all warm and glowy inside, and I’m grateful to everyone who reads my drivel.

If you want to contribute to independent journalism, please consider upgrading to a premium subscription for roughly the cost of this chick’s Starbucks order per month.

Look, I’m not here to judge how anyone spends their money, but just imagine how many cases of Diet Mountain Dew (also referred to, by me, as “The nectar of the gods,”) you could get for $300 a month. Actually, I just figured it out: A case of Diet Dew is approximately $12.98. There are 12 cans in a case. That means instead of however many Sbux drinks this woman gets per month, she could instead get 277 cans of Diet Dew, IMHO, the far superior beverage. Okay, I guess I am judging her.

Today: Great job by the NCRNC in their choice of nominee for governor; Jordan Chiles kept all the receipts; Everyone watches women’s sports and the Solheim Cup; Remember when Shohei wasn’t ‘a draw?’; and a fond farewell to Adrian Wojnarowski.

Let’s get to it.

Congrats to North Carolina on their GOP candidate for governor

Mark Robinson, the MAGA GOP candidate for governor in North Carolina, has made the news for being a dumbass before. Back in June, this happened:

Robinson also demonizes the LGBTQ+ community as pedophiles, denies the Holocaust, has called Michelle Obama “a man,” and mocked the violent attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband in 2022.

But if you thought those were the craziest bits of news to come out about Robinson, you would be wrong. Because today CNN reported that Robinson “ made a series of inflammatory comments on a pornography website’s message board more than a decade ago, in which he referred to himself as a ‘black NAZI!’ and expressed support for reinstating slavery.” And, “Despite a recent history of anti-transgender rhetoric, Robinson said he enjoyed watching transgender pornography, a review of archived messages found in which he also referred to himself as a ‘perv.’”

Those are definitely the kind of things you want floating around out there when you’re running for office…or, like, ever. Robinson has vowed to remain in the race because of course he has. Why should a little thing like identifying as a Nazi and yearning for the return of slavery keep someone from winning an election? Hell, these days, having something along those lines in the as the proverbial skeleton in the closet is practically a requirement if you want to run as a MAGA candidate. I don’t care about the porn, but demonizing the trans community at every turn, while also admitting to enjoying trans porn, is certainly a choice. Oh, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention that Mark Robinson hates women. Funny how that, in and of itself, is never enough to disqualify a man from office.

To make all of this more ridiculous than it already is, Donald Trump once called Robinson “MLK on steroids.”

There is always a Trump comment. These guys knew exactly who Mark Robinson was when they nominated him, despite a history of denigrating women and the gay community, and they can stick with him now that he’s a self-confessed Nazi and slavery supporter. You would kinda think that suggesting women deserve to be raped and shouldn’t be allowed to vote would have been the deal-breaker here, but, as I keep saying, no one seems to care about misogyny in this race.

The plot thickens in Jordan Chiles’ appeal

USA gymnast Jordan Chiles, who was royally screwed over by FIG and the Court of Arbitration for Sport and stripped her of her bronze medal in floor exercise, has some new audio and video in her arsenal, thanks to a video crew that followed Simone Biles around at the Paris Games. If you’ll recall, the basis for the recall of Chiles’ medal was that the inquiry into her score, which resulted in a higher score that vaulted her from 5th to 3rd place, was filed after the one-minute time requirement. Per CAS, the inquiry came in four seconds too late.

But according to the Washington Post, who did a to-the-second breakdown of the audio and video, there is now what seems to be definitive proof that the inquiry was requested in time.

WaPo does a great job of breaking down the audio and video, and the entire piece is worth reading. I got my hands on a gift link for the piece, which I included in the second paragraph for anyone who wants to dive deeper.

In this video, you can hear Chiles’ coach calling for the inquiry within the allotted time. It is now on X for the entire world to see. Chiles has appealed the ruling stripping her of her medal to the Swiss Supreme Court. USA! USA! USA!

Everyone watches women’s sports

You may not have heard much about it, but the USA defeated Europe (15.5 to 12.5) to claim their first Solheim Cup since 2017 last weekend.

More to the point, and with a special shoutout to the “No one cares about women’s sports” crowd, check out the ratings.

That’s a spicy meatball! Gosh, I really am just all broken up to see that less than 100k people tuned in to watch the Saudi Blood Money Open or whatever the LIV tournament was called. That’s a real shame. Justice for Jamal Khashoggi and Manahel al-Otaibi.

There’s no one like Shohei

When you’ve got Jose Canseco saying nice things about you, you know you’ve done something huge. Keep in mind that this season began with Shohei finding out that his close friend/interpreter ripped him off to the tune of $16 million.

Remember when Stephen A Smith said Shohei wasn’t a draw? Let’s all remember together.

By the way, the Dodgers are averaging more than 48K per game and are leading MLB in attendance. And in the time it took me to write this post, Shohei went from 50/50 to 51/51.

Happy Trails, Woj

ESPN’s NBA reporter extraordinaire, Adrian Wojnarowski, announced this week that he’s leaving the Worldwide Leader and taking over the GM position for St. Bonaventure’s men’s basketball team. It’s hard to overstate how much Woj impacted sports reporting — how many other reporters have a bomb named after them? — and if you care about sports at all, Woj was undeniably the first person you had to follow on social media. In recent years, the competition between him and The Athletic’s Shams Charania to see who could scoop who first became a sport in and of itself, but was probably exhausting for the two people at the center of it.

I never got the chance to work with Woj personally, but I did want to share that, back in 2017, after #MoreThanMean came out, Woj reached out to me privately on Twitter, telling me to hang in there and that I was making the right people mad. He also told me to keep doing what I was doing at a time that I desperately needed to hear it, and reached out from time to time to check on me after that. I have always been grateful that a guy with as much on his plate as Woj took the time to be kind to me, and ever since, I’ve rooted for him to get every scoop. So happy trails, Woj. I’ll be cheering for you and the Bonnies!

There will be no LMP on Monday, as I’ll be out of pocket for most of the day and night, but I’ll see you all on Tuesday. That will be the last “short” week, and we’ll be back to normal after that.

Have a great weekend. See you all on Tuesday!