Somehow The Media Did Nazi This Coming
Also, why are billionaires so soft?
Here is how a typical day would go for me.
I would sleep in until around 10am. Maybe later, if I was up really late the night before. I would make a coffee, catch up on the news, get dressed and head outside. I live on a beach or out in sticks. Either way the weather is good, usually sunny, temperate, and beautiful. Maybe I live in Hawaii—only if the native folks are okay with it. I would promise to use my meager celebrity star in anti-tourism commercials. I make sure that every public school in my community has everything it needs. If you are a college graduate in my community, and you want to go to college, but you can’t afford it, I would pay for your first four years. I also provide local arts grants to young people and established artists. I am heavily involved in creating affordable, accessible housing, because housing should be a right, not a privilege. I would finance free community health clinics. Everyday I would read books, and I would probably have dreadlocks again. Maybe I do occasional stand-up comedy sets in a local club, but I probably think about doing that way more than I actually do. I’m still an awesome dad and family man. Hopefully, even more awesome, because I’m so content and relaxed. I would pay my fair share of taxes.
So that’s what I would do if I was a billionaire. How about you?
I’m not a billionaire, but even if I was, I wouldn’t have spent my day yesterday with Donald Trump, a man who has said repeatedly that he wants mass deportations. Trump is man who affirms his gender by using more bronzer than a Miss America contestant, and yet he declared from his inaugural stage that from now on it is official United States policy that there are only two genders. (So awkward for Trump stooge Caitlyn Jenner.) Trump is a man who, after his speech, quickly pardoned 1500 January 6th insurrectionists. He’s a man who, when he uses the phrase “colorblind,” you know he means “white.” If I was a billionaire I wouldn’t have been anywhere in the vicinity of that. Hopefully, I would have been exactly where I was yesterday, at a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. rally in Oakland.
If I was a billionaire, I would never spend my days giving up my personal dignity in order to curry favor with a 34 time convicted president who just four years ago had tried to insurrection his own government. I certainly wouldn’t be hopping on my private jet to hang out with a man who was also civilly convicted of being a sexpest. I certainly wouldn’t be giving a million dollars to that pervy-perp as a “bribe” to make sure he made it easier for me to not pay my fair share of taxes and so that my companies could run rough shod over its workforce and its customers. AND I CERTAINLY WOULDN’T WANT TO SIT IN HIS FRONT ROW!
My favorite part of the photo is RFK in the second row. His head is down like he suddenly realizes he isn’t important anymore.
I just have one big question. Why are billionaires so soft? And when I say “soft”, I’m not saying “soft” as in sensitive. I’m sensitive. I got called a “crybaby” or a “sissy” a lot as a kid. None of that makes me “soft.” And I’m not saying “soft” as in “not masculine.” Masculinity and hardness have nothing to do with each other, no matter what newly minted “bro” Mark Zuckerberg might think.
Heavy sigh. From one college dropout to another, let me say, Mark, just because you drop out of college, it doesn’t mean you should stop learning. Zuckerberg likes aggressive masculinity so much that he has put UFC C.E.O. and confirmed domestic abuser Dana White on Meta’s board.
When Mark Zuckerberg talks, it feels like he hasn’t progressed past the dude in the dorm room thinking it was cool to invent a program that helps men compare women by their looks. Zuckerberg is closer to a somewhat precocious 13-year-old than a fully-grown 40-year-old man. And with the new perm and the necklace, Zuckerberg looks like what you would find in the DSM-5 under the entry for “mid-life crisis.”
But let me be clear, when I say billionaires are “soft,” I’m saying “soft” the way an athlete says “soft” to another athlete when that athlete isn’t doing their damn job. I mean “soft” like an old hotel mattress that is bad for your back. I mean “soft” like a fast food french fry that you waited an hour too long to eat. Soaked in greasy oil, flaccid and tepid. Two words that never make things better when they are together. I mean “soft” like something that is of no use unless it is hard. (Use your own image here.) I mean “soft” like an opinion, when you worked hard to make your kid dinner, and you ask them how it is, and they say, “It’s okaaaaaaaaaay.”
JUST TELL ME IT SUCKS, ASHA! I CAN TAKE IT!
“Soft” is just a tart distillation of the sentiment…
“YOU AREN’T DOING A GOOD JOB OF DOING THE JOB THAT YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE GOOD AT!”
One of the things that I would like to think having a billion dollars would do is give you the ability to stand up for yourself. I would hope a billion dollars would give you the right to be your own person. To be as Shirley Chisholm said, “Unbought and unbossed.” I would think that having a billion dollars would make it so that you didn’t have to kiss the butt of anyone, not even our first president who is also a convicted felon. Actually, I would imagine that if you had a billion dollars you would be in the perfect position to tell that guy to kick rocks until there are no more rocks to kick.
“I’m a billionaire. Kick each and every rock that is on your path. And if you run out of rocks to kick, I’ll buy you some new rocks.”
But clearly, I’m wrong. Instead of telling Trump to kick rocks, these billionaires are polishing Trump’s rocks.
What is the point of working that “hard” and exploiting all that labor to get a billion dollars (or hundreds of billions) to then have to be like, “I hope this obviously and completely morally objectionable person likes me!”
Seriously, it is gross. And worse, all these billionaires are sucking up in public. I could maaaaaybe understand making some phone calls to check in with the future fascist. Maybe sending one of your people to Mar-A-Lago to see what the most Florida-est Florida Man is planning. Didn’t any of these Mooching-Americans ever see the movie The Godfather? Don’t they have a Tom Hagen? If you are really big-time, you don’t do your own dirty work. Otherwise you are going to get covered in dirt. These billion dollar dolts are giving their dignity away to a man who is clearly just using them. Don’t they have any real friends to say, “DON’T DO THAT!” I have to say if I was married to any of them that this public groveling would be a real turn off for me. It gives off real, Brush your teeth and gargle some mouthwash before you kiss me again vibes.
So many in our society who know they will never be billionaires themselves are happy aspiring to be billionaire adjacent. And that means they give away their dignity not for a billion dollars but for absolutely FREE. The saddest type of soft is the soft that gives itself away for free. Yesterday, Elon Musk, the ultimate proof that being upper class doesn’t always come with actual class, gave a speech at a Trump inauguration event. Musk opened his verbal footrub of Trump and his MAGA base with this…
Now of course the MAGA base came to the defense of Elon. They have been playing footsies with Nazis since Charlottesville, at least. And as Trump told us, he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue in New York City and get away with it. Elon slanging a couple of Nazi salutes is truly light work. But I immediately knew once I saw this that the media at large would contort themselves into human pretzels worthy of the most flexible Yogis, just to stay on Trump and MAGA’s good side. They did not fail to live up to my low expectations of them.
All those headlines should just be, “Elon Musk does a Nazi salute twice at Trump event.” And the subhead should be, “No surprise.” Simple and to the point. But our media has shown us that the only person softer than a billionaire is someone who wants to be a billionaire's friend. People started explaining his clear Nazi salute away with nonsense like, “It was a Roman salute!” What the f*ck is that? “Here are a bunch of still photos of Democrats extending their hand in the same way.” So weird that you don’t understand that video is different from still pictures when you love a guy who is supposed to be a technological genius. “It is because Elon has Aspbergers. He doesn’t know what that gesture means. You are being ableist against someone with autism!” Oh, so this is like the thing you do when you blame gun violence on mental health when most people with mental health issues only kill time or pints of ice cream.
It’s gotten so bad that it is only a matter of time before some folks start saying that Hitler wasn’t doing a Nazi salute either.
And while the Charmin-y soft press covers for the Charmin-y soft billionaires, the Charmin-y soft billionaires can continue to loot Americans’ wallets. Days before the inauguration, Donald Trump announced that he was coming out with a meme coin. For those of you who have no idea what a meme coin is, it is a subset of Cryptocurrency, the thing that embarrassed a bunch of celebrities and sent Sam Bankman-Fried to prison for fraud. So it is a subset of thing that is often a scam. The easiest way to understand it is that it is multilevel marketing (MLM) for dude-bros. Trump (and later Melania) started their own money making scams BEFORE they even got back into the white house. They couldn’t wait to oli-thier-garchs-off.
Basically, Trump has started selling a “coin” to his base. His base was more than happy to buy it. (Apparently his scam has gone so well that it now accounts for 89% of his net worth.) But unlike most MLMs, there is no actual product. It is just zeros and ones. And it is only worth something while the vibes are good. These meme coins regularly go from being worth a lot to literally being worth zero within days of their launch. Remember the Hawk Tuah lady? Well, she created her own meme coin and within days it was revealed that it was a scam. Trump must have been inspired. TRUMP TUAH!
This is more than dangerous for our country; it is dangerous for the world. It is dangerous because this doesn’t end up well for anyone. Eventually it doesn’t end up well for even the billionaires. But they will be the last to know.
I just truly don’t understand why Elon, Zuck, Bezos, and the rest of the billionaire boys would capitulate to Trump so easily and–even worse–so eagerly. I know the answer is that they are doing it for money, but they all have money. (Although disgustingly enough they are apparenlty racing to see who can be the first trillionaire.) The other reason given is that they want power. But what is “power” if you have to give up your own personal power to get it? What is power if you have to be a hypocritical fool in public just to get the “power”? Can’t these people just keep their humiliation rituals behind closed doors? Is a few more billion dollars on top of your other billions of dollars worth spending your time with Trump and with–God forbid!–Eric and Don Jr.? This is why I’ll never be a billionaire. What’s all that money for if you still have to keep your own nose up somebody else’s butt? I’d rather be sensitive than soft.
So… let me know in the comments what your typical day of being a billionaire would look like.
You’re With Me
I’m Going on Tour
The 2025 Stand-Up Comedy Tour
Here’s a timely excerpt from my 2018 Netflix stand-up comedy special Private School Negro to hopefully whet your appetite for the tour. Get your tickets below. More cities will be added if these go well. ✌🏿
Honestly, I don't think I would ever be a billionaire. The money would flow out of my hands so fast that I would never accumulate enough to reach that status. Every program that needed financial capital to sustain their work would get it from me (and to be clear, mutual aid organizations and grassroots campaigns would top the list). Maybe I would buy a super-conservative politician just to fuck with their sense of self. Imagine Lindsay Graham shilling for JVP and calling for an end to genocide. One can dream!
You are Awesome!! Bravo!! You are NOT soft. Bless you♥️