HEY YOU, WORKING THE FRY MACHINE! DON’T GET COCKY: The Chronically Underestimated Kamala Harris. The “caricature of Kamala Harris as a bumbling dunce makes it easy to underestimate her, particularly in the closing weeks of an exceptionally close and high-stakes presidential campaign. Harris’s past is littered with older and more experienced men who saw her as easy pickings and came up short on Election Day.”
Author Archive: Ed Driscoll
October 21, 2024
WE’VE ENTERED SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH PIERS MORGAN IS A VOICE OF SANITY: Trump’s genius McDonald’s stunt will fry Kamala at the ballot box.
“Even if you flippin’ fries at McDonald’s,” Oprah Winfrey once said, “if you are excellent, everybody wants to be in your line.”
I thought of this quote when Donald Trump turned up yesterday at a McDonald’s restaurant in suburban Philadelphia to work a shift making French fries, then handing bags of food to drive-through customers.
As political stunts go, this might have been the best I’ve ever seen, because it served two very powerful purposes in the presidential race.
First, it reminded voters that his rival, Kamala Harris, has repeatedly boasted about having a summer job at McDonald’s to make her sound more relatable to her fellow Americans, but to date, not a single person has been able to verify this.
This is quite extraordinary given how specific she has been, with her campaign team stating that she worked at McDonald’s on Central Avenue in Alameda, Calif., in 1983 after her freshman year at Howard University, working on the cash register, french fries station and ice cream machine.
But then, she didn’t mention it in her memoir, nor does it appear on the 1987 résumé she submitted when applying for a position at the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office despite listing her other work experiences.
It was like it never happened at all!
Even more intriguingly, the New York Times reported on Sunday: “In subsequent years, Ms. Harris talked so little about her long-ago job at McDonald’s that even some of her friends and close aides did not know she had worked there.”
Hmmm.
Forgive me, but I smell the same gigantic, disingenuous rat that Trump’s been smelling about Kamala’s supposed McDonald’s career move.
And it matters because it goes right to the heart of the Democratic candidate’s persistent pitch that she is the truth antidote to fork-tongued Trump.
If you’re going to position yourself as a bastion of honesty, you can’t tell brazen, self-promoting “I’m middle class just like you” fibs about working at McDonald’s.
McDonald’s issued a very carefully written statement yesterday, droning on about the unique American qualities of the Golden Arches:
Did you catch that, buried four paragraphs into the boilerplate?
Though we are not a political brand, we’ve been proud to hear former President Trump’s love for McDonald’s and Vice President Harris’s fond memories working under the Arches. While we and our franchisees don’t have records for all positions dating back to the early ’80s, what makes “1 in 8” so powerful is the shared experience so many Americans have had.
“While we and our franchisees don’t have records for all positions dating back to the early ’80s” is a polite way of saying, “In spite of our best efforts, and believe me, we really tried, because as a ‘modern, progressive burger company,’ we really, really hate the Bad Orange Man, but we couldn’t find any proof she worked for us, either. What was she thinking doctoring her bio in the age of the Internet?”
(And why is the Kamala campaign sending out a tweet under Tim Walz’s name rather having Harris out front and center to dispute this story and/or offer proof she actually worked at Mickey D’s?)
The other benefit of Trump working at McDonald’s is that’s causing the DNC-MSM to massively overreach (or to borrow from their vernacular when they report on the response of the other side of the aisle, “sieze!” and “pounce!”) in condemning a politician for having fun with an obvious election season stunt. QED:
BROKEN MEDIA: CBS's Caitlin Huey-Burns SEETHES over Trump workday at McDonald's, calling it a "political stunt" pic.twitter.com/djiD8zKvzf
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) October 21, 2024
As the Book of Saul tells us, “A good tactic is one your people enjoy. ‘If your people aren’t having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.'”
October 20, 2024
SAY ANYTHING: Bernie Sanders On Kamala Flip-Flopping On Major Issues: ‘Goal’ Is To ‘Defeat’ Trump.
Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) admitted over the weekend that Vice President Kamala Harris is flip flopping on major issues because she is trying to beat former President Donald Trump, not because she believes her new alleged stances.
Sanders made the remarks during a Sunday interview with Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” while discussing the state of the 2024 presidential election.
“In addition to the Green New Deal and Medicare-for-all single-payer for health care, and ending fracking, in addition to those being positions that you hold, Vice President Harris used to be with you on all three of them and now is against you on all three of them,” Tapper said.
“Is she making a mistake having reversed those positions?” he asked.
Sanders responded: “I think what we’re seeing is a coalition of people, more establishment Democrats and progressive Democrats and progressive independents — I’m the longest serving independent in American history — come together with the goal of defeating a very dangerous candidate. And that is Donald Trump.”
So it’s safe to assume that she still believes everything she espoused during the 2020 presidential campaign: Kamala 2020 Makes Obama 2008 Look Positively Right Wing.
THIS IS THE WAY: The GOP Makes Democrats Pay the Price for Trans Insanity.
There used to be a time when Republican elected officials and candidates shied away from talking about trans issues.
They didn’t want to appear extreme or intolerant. Why bother wading in to a fraught cultural issue when there were so many other things to talk about? Deferring to “medical professionals” or “the experts” seemed the easy way out.
Now, though, Republicans have emphatically found their voice. Across the political landscape, GOP Senate candidates are hitting their Democratic opponents on their trans radicalism and have them on the run, while the Trump campaign is pounding Kamala Harris on the issue with perhaps the most prominent ad of this election cycle.
The chickens have come home to roost, and they are apparently all cisgender.
* * * * * * * *
For the longest time, Democrats have gone along with the steadily evolving trans orthodoxy as established by the cultural Left. Existing in a bubble, they assumed that doubters could be isolated or embarrassed into going along and didn’t realize just how wildly out of touch they’d become.
For his part, Donald Trump is airing an ad during football games highlighting how Kamala Harris said in 2019 that she supported government-funded transition surgery for prisoners and detained illegal immigrants. As the ad notes, it’s hard to believe that anyone seriously seeking public office would advocate such a thing.
Now, in the final weeks of an extremely tight election, Harris and her Democratic colleagues are being held to account for their ideological excesses. They can cry foul, but they brought it on themselves.
As Roger Simon wrote in 2022: Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Big Lie to Sen. Blackburn Exposes Progressivism.
When Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) asked Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to define the word “woman,” during Jackson’s U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, she got the response “I can’t.”
When Blackburn responded with an incredulous “You can’t?” Jackson replied: “Not in this context. I’m not a biologist.”
It takes a biologist to define “woman”? Does Jackson think we’re morons?
In a way, yes. Or she doesn’t care.
She’s a progressive, and progressives have been redefining language—English and many others—to fit their purposes dating back to the Spanish Civil War and undoubtedly earlier. (See Davis Hunt III at The Pamphleteer.)
Jackson very well knows what a woman is. The nominee has known this all her life, as we all have. But these days, in her part of the political world, she’s not supposed to.
So she lied.
She simply parsed her words in order not to offend a constituency that has become imbued with “transgenderitis.” By that I mean a group taking what we all know—that a small percentage of people suffer from gender dysphoria to a degree that they seek to change sexes—and extending it into absurd public policy for reasons of power and control and, ultimately, money, not to mention a completely distorted and harmful view of gender itself. (In this case, see swimmer Lia Thomas.)
Those with that form of dysphoria, as do all with serious problems, deserve our sympathy and support, but no more so than everyone else with difficulties.
Nevertheless, they’ve been singled out for now and are being manipulated and exploited by the left, just as many minorities before them have been.
The transgendered are the favored class du jour. Tomorrow—I’m sorry to tell them—it will be someone else.
The one-two punch of Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissembling and Matt Walsh’s What is a Woman? documentary in 2022 should have been a reminder to the left at how over their skis they’ve gotten on this issue, but once the left collectively loses its mind on a topic, it’s very difficult for them to reverse course.
MCDONALD J. TRUMP: He Did It! President Trump Makes McDonald’s Fries (WATCH).
ICONIC 🍟 pic.twitter.com/TeSI0ffffO
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) October 20, 2024
Next up, the drive-thru: Trump Practices Drive Thru Diplomacy as Woman Begs Not to Let U.S. Become Like Her Native Brazil (WATCH)
“Mr. President, please don’t let the United States become Brazil!” pic.twitter.com/ZEgujQMS35
— Margo Martin (@margommartin) October 20, 2024
To be fair, this isn’t the first time Trump worked for McDonald’s:
Meanwhile, this is CNN:
Do they really not get it?
“It’s unclear why the former President has latched on to Harris’ McDonald’s employment”
Just. Wow. 😂 pic.twitter.com/hjb7qSj64i
— Spitfire (@DogRightGirl) October 20, 2024
Naturally, conservative media cannot penetrate CNN’s self-imposed firewall: The Washington Free Beacon first dropped the “did Kamala actually work at McDonald’s story at the end of August: ‘I Did Fries:’ Kamala Harris Claims She Worked at McDonald’s, but She Never Mentioned It Until She Ran for President. Did She Really Toil Beneath the Golden Arches?
I’LL TAKE THIS HEADLINE AS A EUPHEMISM FOR “SHE NEVER WORKED THERE:” McDonald’s branch swears employees to secrecy over Kamala Harris’s employment history.
UPDATE: Achievement unlocked!
PRESIDENT TRUMP:
“Now I have worked at McDonald’s. I’ve now worked for 15 minutes more than Kamala. She never worked here.”
This whole scene is masterful. pic.twitter.com/BeUSQ4ebgb
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) October 20, 2024
OLD AND BUSTED: Nixon’s imaginary “secret plan” to win the Vietnam War.
The New Hotness? Obama’s imaginary secret plan to beat Covid:
RICHARD FERNANDEZ: The Embarrassment of Success (VIP).
If we want to abolish failure one must perforce abolish success. Then society will move into the sunlit uplands more slowly, but surely at the speed of the slowest ship, a convoy commanded by the right thinking. Success only makes future unfairness inevitable. SpaceX’s technical achievements are unleashing inequity on a cosmic scale. JD Vance openly proclaims, “I believe the destiny of this country is to conquer the stars. Whatever your views of Elon’s politics, this is something that should inspire all of us.” Can Vance hear how evil that sounds? Destiny. Conquer. Could the danger be clearer? SpaceX is extending settler colonialism to the universe, exporting “surfacism” to the new “sacrifice zone.”
Space colonization has been discussed as postcolonial continuation of imperialism and colonialism, calling for decolonization instead of colonization. Critics argue that the present politico-legal regimes and their philosophic grounding, advantage imperialist development of space, that key decisionmakers in space colonization are often wealthy elites affiliated with private corporations, and that space colonization would primarily appeal to their peers rather than ordinary citizens. Furthermore, it is argued that there is a need for inclusiveand democratic participation and implementation of any space exploration, infrastructure or habitation.
Unless the American billionaires are stopped the US will seize or claim the inner solar system before North Korea or Africa even put a man into orbit. Something must be done or success will unleash poverty — or so the argument goes. But then the question arises: why then do new industries arise without the intervention of government? Why doesn’t old wealth dominate forever even with the help of government? Could success be due to something other than ripping the poor off?
As Glenn wrote on Columbus Day, “Musk favors expanding horizons – economically, technologically, and geographically (cosmographically?) as humanity expands through the immense resources of the solar system. This, too, is anathema to the left, since socialism is always about dividing up poverty, never actually about sharing wealth. Churchill called it the equal sharing of misery, but that was actually overly kind – misery in socialist countries is never shared equally. The folks on top always do just fine. You couldn’t easily sell socialism in America when people could set off for the frontier, and you won’t be able to sell it when people can set off for Mars, the Moon, or the asteroid belt. Or even get steadily richer on the product of those who do.”
GREAT MOMENTS IN PERFORMANCE ART: Al Sharpton and Donny Deutsch worry they’ll be imprisoned if Trump us re-elected.
MSNBC host Al Sharpton and frequent guest Donny Deutsch expressed fears Friday that Donald Trump would place them on an enemy’s “list” if he was elected president again, suggesting imprisonment or worse awaited them.
Deutsch, known for his excitable anti-Trump screeds on “Morning Joe,” said Trump would put enemies in jail and there would be no free media in another Trump administration, turning suddenly to Sharpton and asking, “Are you worried, going forward, that you’re on a list if Donald Trump is elected? Yes or no?”
“I’m convinced I’ll be on a list,” Sharpton said, with Deutsch chiming in “I am too!”
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE:
A California teacher allegedly had students do a mock vote for Trump or Harris. Those who voted for Harris are rewarded with a pizza party while those who voted for Trump are not. pic.twitter.com/D7SHUsej6s
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) October 16, 2024
SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON BLASTS NEWS OF US INTEL LEAK OF ISRAEL’S PLANS FOR RETALIATION AGAINST IRAN:
I spoke with my friend Prime Minister @Netanyahu today, and I am happy to report he is safe, in good spirits, and undeterred.
I told him America stands strong with Israel and reiterated our ongoing commitment to help counter Iran and its terrorist proxies.
This is a crucial moment and America must deliver. It is vital that the Biden-Harris Administration stop slow-walking needed weapons to Israel and implement the sanctions on Iran that Congress enacted this spring.
It might be interesting to note that while both Johnson and former President Donald Trump spoke with Netanyahu after the attack, neither President Joe Biden nor Vice President Kamala Harris has done so as of this writing. Neither has released a formal statement nor commented on X/Twitter regarding the attack (or the intel leak).
On Sunday, Johnson joined Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” and blasted the reported leak, indicating that he will be receiving a classified briefing on the leak later in the day.
“The leak is very concerning. There’s some serious allegations being made there, an investigation underway, and I’ll get a briefing on that in a couple of hours. We’re following it closely.”
Johnson added:
“I talked to my friend … Prime Minister Netanyahu, yesterday to encourage him. I think that the United States needs to stand unequivocally by our ally there… we’re on a precipice… of a new era of security and freedom for Israel. And I think we’re very close.”
Per RedState Managing Editor Jennifer Van Laar, a U.S. intelligence source has indicated the documents in question were leaked from the Pentagon’s office of low-intensity/special operations — notably, the office where Ariane Tabatabai works.
Funny how this keeps happening in what is effectively, Obama’s third term in office:
RADICAL CHIC: Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s wife reportedly spotted with $32,000 Birkin bag as she went into hiding.
Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar’s wife was reportedly spotted fleeing into a Gaza tunnel with a $32,000 Birkin bag hours before the Oct. 7 massacre, Israeli officials claimed.
Sinwar, 61, and his wife Abu Zamar — holding what appears to be a super lux Hermes bag — can be seen helping their two young sons through the narrow bunker hallway at 10:45 p.m. on Oct. 6, 2023, timestamped footage released by the Israel Defense Forces on Saturday shows.
“While Gaza residents have no money for food, we see many examples of Yahya Sinwar and his wife’s special love for money,” IDF Spokesperson Avichay Adraee wrote on X, alongside a screenshot of the woman holding what appeared to be a pricey black leather purse.
“Did Sinwar’s wife enter the tunnel with him on October 6 carrying a Birkin bag estimated to cost around $32,000?!” Adraee wrote.
The Birkin is beloved by celebrities and billionaires — and everyone from the Kardashians to Melania Trump have been spotted out and about with similar black leather handbags.
The bag is worth $32,000, but…:
October 19, 2024
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Carlos Mencia: The Anti-Woke Warrior We Need.
You might assume a Latino comic would trash Donald Trump, his big, beautiful Wall or both.
If the comedian is Carlos Mencia, you couldn’t be more wrong.
Trump barely came up during Mencia’s epic set at Denver’s Comedy Works Friday. Instead, he summoned the unironic spirit of “Team America: World Police.”
“America … f*** yeah!”
The show, the second of two from the “Mind of Mencia” alum that day, found him defending the nation against its angry critics.
What other country has people trashing it 24/7 but never leaving? We have obese poor people and complain about the slightest indignities. Meanwhile, citizens from other nations endure life-or-death hardships.
To paraphrase fellow comic “Yakof Smirnoff” – “what a country!”
This wasn’t empty rhetoric or an attempt to woo Red State USA. It flowed from the comic organically, buttressed by insightful punch lines.
Mencia also raged against Cancel Culture (without name-checking the cultural scourge), begging audiences to laugh about our differences. That unites us, and we’re all the same at the end of the day.
This wasn’t Colbert-level clapter or a TED Talk masquerading as stand-up. You might not hear a funnier set this year than what Mencia uncorked.
Great to hear, especially when Jerry Seinfeld has been crumbling recently under the left’s unending pressure: That’s a Shame: The Woke Left Finally Got to Jerry Seinfeld.
THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Kamala Harris publicly agrees with protestor accusing Israel of genocide: ‘What he’s talking about, it’s real.’
“I’m speaking right now,” Harris said before launching into her now well-worn response to similar interruptions.
“I know what you’re speaking of. I want the ceasefire. I want the war to end. And I respect your right to speak but I am speaking right now.”
“But what about the genocide? What about the genocide though?” the protestor, wearing a keffiyeh, yelled.
The man was then escorted out of the hall while yelling, “19,000 children are dead, and you won’t call it a genocide.”
In the silence that followed his exit, Harris turned back to the audience.
“Listen, what he’s talking about, it’s real. That’s not the subject that I came to discuss today, but it’s real and I respect his voice,” Harris said.
The vice president has never previously suggested that Israel’s defensive war in Gaza amounts to a genocide of Palestinian people.
Why it’s as if Kamala is “The anti-Jewish candidate,” as Melanie Phillips warned in August.
As John Hasson tweets, “Protestors are important bc they force Kamala to go off-script And when she goes off her teleprompter, she accidentally says what *she* thinks, not what her handlers tell her to say.”
PHYSICAL GRAFFITI: A Total Mural Failure: Kamala Harris’s Campaign Hits a Brick Wall in Philly.
Watching the Kamala Harris campaign is like watching paint dry. Now, some sketchy surrogates of Harris have taken that truth to a whole new level in Philadelphia where they garishly graffiti-tagged a brick building with one word for their one-note candidate. While some say the mural is just flat-stupid, others say this latest AstroTurf attempt is all surface and no substance. It doesn’t take an art degree to know this brushwork is making some non-fans of the Democratic presidential hopeful bristle.
Here’s a look at the un-American graffiti.
But was it really ‘spotted’ or is something else going on here? You know they say a picture paints a thousand words but Kamala’s name isn’t the only writing on the wall.
So, let’s check the fine print … er, fine paint in this case.
Back in the 1930s, FDR’s New Deal created make-work projects for artists such as Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, and Ben Shahn. Today, Kamala’s election bid is commissioning graffiti, which speaks volumes about how the left’s cultural aspirations have fallen.
KINSLEY GAFFE: Lizzo Vows ‘The Whole Country Will Be Like Detroit’ if Kamala Harris Becomes President.
UPDATE: Lizzo is also pointing out America’s rapidly rising illiteracy rate (which apparently is uniquely high amongst sex workers) in her own inimitable style:
Kamala Harris’ latest celebrity campaigner is singer Lizzo.
“This is how a bad bitch saves democracy. You hoes couldn’t even spell democracy!”
Lizzo helped Harris campaign in Detroit. pic.twitter.com/pZrAe01YET
— Andy Ngo 🏳️🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) October 19, 2024
RIOTS FOR THEE, BUT NOT FOR ME: WSJ Opinion Doc: “Get The Jew” — The Crown Heights Riot Revisited.
This 20-minute documentary sheds light on the worst antisemitic riot in American history, which occurred in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in 1991.
Triggered by a Hasidic man running a red light and accidentally hitting and killing a young black child, the riot led to attacks on Jews. Stores and police cars were burned and a Hasidic man was killed.
David Dinkins, New York’s mayor at the time, allowed the riot to go on for three full days, while the media downplayed the antisemitism at the heart of the violence.
The film’s interviews include Rev. Al Sharpton and then-Deputy Police Chief Ray Kelly as well as WSJ Opinion writer Elliot Kaufman. The current wave of antisemitism makes these events newly relevant and worthy of reconsideration.
Here’s more about the incident, a deeper look at Al Sharpton’s role, and lessons for today:
Hey, I know someone who isn’t learning a lesson from the new documentary:
Earlier:
● How Al Sharpton Inflamed The Crown Heights Riot And How The Media Lied.
● The Riots Are Part of the Plan.
● Kamala Harris praised ‘defund the police’ movement in June 2020 radio interview.
(Classical reference in headline.)
GREAT MOMENTS IN COALITION BUILDING: Kamala Harris Mocks Audience Members for Proclaiming ‘Jesus Is Lord,’ Says ‘You’re at the Wrong Rally.’
At a rally in Wisconsin on Thursday, Vice President Kamala Harris responded to hecklers saying “Jesus is Lord” by telling them they were in the wrong place.
Yikes!
That “clap back” as USA Today called it came the same day Harris chose to skip the Catholic Al Smith Dinner in New York City. The last Democratic nominee who did that was former Vice President Walter Mondale, who lost to Republican Ronald Reagan 49 states to 1.
While speaking about abortion at a rally the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse’s Recreational Eagle Center, Harris said, “We’re not gonna be gaslighted on this. We remember, Donald Trump hand-selected three members of the United States Supreme Court, with the intention that they would undo the protections of Roe v. Wade, and they did as he intended.”
The issue has now been returned to the states to decide, which Trump has argued is where it should stay. At the presidential debate last month, Harris would not say what restrictions on abortion she would support, if any.
Trump then asked the moderator to question Harris on whether she would allow abortions for any reason at the seventh month of the pregnancy and beyond, but the Democratic nominee again would not answer. Most nations set limits, with 12 weeks (3 months) being the most common, Time reported in 2022.
Some shouted in response to Harris’ Thursday rally abortion comments, “Jesus is Lord!” This prompted Harris to say, “Oh, you guys are at the wrong rally. No, I think you meant to go to the smaller one down the street.”
America’s Newspaper of Record reported the moment thusly: Kamala Harris Begins Melting After Rallygoer Says ‘Jesus Is Lord.’
Sadly, the damage was already done as Vice President Harris steadily melted. “This was a security failure of the highest order,” said aide Denise Thompson. “It is simply unconscionable that a man who believes Jesus is Lord was allowed to get so close to the Vice President. This sort of thing should never happen.”
At publishing time, the Democrats had reportedly replaced Harris with an actual witch, who immediately got a substantial bump in the polls.
Heh, indeed. But the Democratic Party is sure a long way away from JFK’s Catholicism and Jimmy Carter’s born-again Christianity. (Whatever their excesses in private.) Steve Hayward wrote in his 2012 obit of George McGovern: that “McGovern was unable to counter the image that Republican Senator Hugh Scott indelibly attached to him as ‘the candidate of acid, amnesty, and abortion.'”
But on the last issue—abortion—we can see how radical the Democratic Party has become since. McGovern’s position at the beginning of the campaign was that abortion was a matter that should be left to state legislatures (which is the default Republican position today), and although he resisted attempts at including a pro-abortion plank in the Democratic platform in 1972, he gradually conceded to the pro-abortion views of insurgent feminists. (Muskie and Humphrey, it is worth adding, both opposed abortion. “I am not for it,” said Humphrey. “It compromises the sanctity of life,” said Muskie. The Rev. Jesse Jackson had an even tougher opinion at that time, describing abortion “as too nice a word for something cold, like murder.”) While McGovern conceded under pressure from feminists, he wouldn’t embrace abortion-on-demand. There must be regulating legislation, McGovern thought: “You can’t just let anybody walk in and request an abortion.”
Flash-forward to 2024. As CNN reported last month: Harris puts abortion rights at the center of her campaign.
Just enter the letters “ADHD” into a search box and you’ll see. It’s like spilling blood into the water around Amity Island. The sharks begin to circle almost instantly. For younger generations, it’s online influencers. The ADHD hashtag on TikTok has more than 20 billion views; #adhdawareness has nearly a billion. And views mean money. #ADHD delivers clips and survival tips; hot girls in a hot mess, and not just an explanation for your unreliability but a blanket excuse. Are you always late? Do you let your friends and family down? Don’t worry! Don’t sweat it! That’s just your ADHD. Nothing to be done. Only a fascist would hold you accountable.
For older adults, the sharks come in the form of tests and then tailored life plans delivered to your inbox — thanks Impulse! — for just (let me check) $39.98 a week. (Argh! What was I thinking?) The tests pop up everywhere now, on every internet page I visit. And I marvel at the speed with which they convert self-pitying curiosity into an established diagnosis in a few quick tick-box stages. 1) Find out if you have ADHD. 2) What’s your ADHD type? 3) Here’s how to manage your unique ADHD type. A little begging the question, a little sunk cost fallacy and Bob’s your direct debit.
All the age-old huckster tricks are deployed in the adult ADHD grift. A TIME magazine piece, while of course not skeptical, did at least note that approximately half the ADHD TikToks made assertions so vague almost everyone could feel they applied to them. “If you don’t like doing homework, you have ADHD”; “If you zone out during meetings, you probably have ADHD.” These are known as Barnum statements, named after the showman P.T. Barnum whose catchphrase was: “A sucker is born every minute.”
Britain’s National Health Service has been so overwhelmed by the rise in adult ADHD that it’s launched a new taskforce, and as I read about it, up popped an ad for another clinic: “The letter you see here defines your ADHD type!” “Only adults with ADHD can solve this problem!”
Related: Is ADHD overdiagnosed and overtreated?
Yes to both. Next questions?
SCHRODINGER’S PRESIDENT: Dems: Trump is Hitler! Also Dems: Democrats in tight Senate races run ads touting their work with Trump. “It’s not exactly the behavior you’d expect from candidates who believe their nominee is winning,” the Trump campaign said.
