Category: From The Editor

The Allegory Of The Hottie

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I was hanging out in Richmond’s Fan area today sobering up and enjoying the hot afternoon, when I noticed an attractive young lady drinking, eating and talking with her friend. I sat there, looking straight at her and tried to figure out how I could possibly talk to her. She was wearing sunglasses and occasionally she would look straight back at me.

Now, I’m older and jaded so really my interest in her was more about how drunk I was and the fact that she was in direct eyeshot than anything else. I struggled to figure out different ways that we could meet. I thought about what little I knew about game theory and couldn’t think of anything.

Unless she did something really conspicuous to give me some hook, some reason to believe she wanted me to talk to her, I was at a loss. And that was that. I paid my tab, walked right past her, she seemed to subtly flinch when I didn’t talk to her and was on my way.

That’s how I feel about #FOTUS at this point.

Trump’s potential involvement is staring straight at me in the guise of that $1.6 million pay off, but I got nothing. Nothing at all. No evidence that the whole, “He was rich. She was pregnant. End of Story,” thing isn’t true. So, if you continue to read any of my rantings on this subject either you’re a hater who is hate reading, someone who thinks I’m a fool or a sympathetic conspiracy theorist.

But I have to accept that I’m never going to meet the girl. Unless New York Magazine writes a follow up or the SDNY has something up their sleeve, this story is, at last over.

He was rich.
She was pregnant.
End of story.

Guvf vf whfg fcrphyngvba, ohg vf vg cbffvoyr Furen Orpuneq arire unq gur nobegvba naq jung rirelbar’f yrneavat vf fur’f tbvat gb unir n xvq naq gurl jnag gb cebgrpg vg? Gung vg’f Oebvql’f naq fur whfg jnagf ure cevinpl?

Fgvyy qbrfa’g rkcynva gur $1.6 zvyyvba cnl bss. Pbura vf nobhg npprff, cher naq fvzcyr. Oebvql unf ab ernfba gb hfr Pbura fvzcyl gb pheel snibe vs gurer’f ab npprff vaibyirq. Oebvql zhfg unir xabja cyragl dhnyvsvrq AQN ynjlref va YN gung ur pbhyq gehfg. Pbura vf n svkre sbe Qbanyq W. Gehzc, abobql ryfr.

Bgure guvatf.

Bapr lbh pnyy ohyyfuvg ba ure pnfhnyyl orvat ersreerq Xrvgu Qnivqfba gura jung ryfr vf fur ylvat nobhg?

Orpuneq vf na npgerff. Crgre X. Fgevf vf ab qhzzl. Ur pbhyq pbnpu ure gb gryy nalbar jub nfxrq rabhtu gb znxr gurz oryvrir gur pbire fgbel.

Ohg ab bar unf rkcynvarq gung $1.6 zvyyvba gb zr. Lbh pna’g. Gung $1.6 zvyyvba cbcf bhg naq fvzcyl gryyvat zr V’z jebat naq gb fuhg hc qbrfa’g phg vg.

#FOTUS: ‘Wilson’

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

My plan today is to wait until about 11 a.m. and walk to the nearby Mexican restaurant, drink a Miller Light and drink a tequila or two, come home, take a nap and contemplate going to Richmond’a Fan district this afternoon to take pictures. Relative to me, as of right now, I have no reason to believe anything of note is going to happen other than waking up on the wrong side of the bed. I feel a bit of out sorts and I don’t know why.

Having said all that, I don’t know what’s going to happen.

I don’t want to speculate that anything of note on the #FOTUS front might happen anytime soon. I have too much of a vested interest at this point to be objective. I only say that because I’ve really put myself out there. A lot depends on how airtight the Broidy cover story is. If it’s a cover story at all. If it’s a cover story and when a journalist or two throws a rock into the Big Black Void and nothing pops out saying shut up, it Bechard was dating Broidy and here’s proof, then TrumpCohen has a problem.

A big problem.

And, let me note, the only reason why I even bring up “Wilson” as I think of it — named after the Cast Away volleyball — is that $1.6 million NDA payoff. You can explain everything else away. You can say that the reason why Broidy picked Cohen is he knew him through the RNC and he wanted to keep the matter private. That’s a perfectly logical explanation.

Except for the $1.6 million.

I still believe that’s an enormous sum for an NDA payoff, even if you say Broidy was extremely embarrassed by all of this and he was feeling exceptionally generous. Throw in that Bechard was represented by TrumpCohen best buddy Keith Davidson and that Broidy, Davidson and Cohen had every vested interest in screwing over Bechard by lowballing her and something does not add up.

It so does not add up that just like when I was walking around work on Wednesday and the skies opened and a thunderclap of realization struck me, you have to stare into the Big Black Void and scream: WILSON.

Everyone’s lying. Or at least screw with people’s minds.


Wilson is to me that moment when you have taken your shoes and watch off and the plane abruptly goes into a tailspin. Everything changes and you have to hold on for dear life. But I have so often ventured out beyond the horizon of the known so many times only to be completely embarrassed that it’s very possible I’m delusional. It’s very possible that Broidy really was paying off a babydaddy issue and Trump was completely unconnected. That’s a real possibility at this point.

As I have said more than once, everything we know says Trump’s the babydaddy, and everything we don’t know says it’s Broidy. It doesn’t take too much for me to wince at how ridiculous I’ve been in my speculation. But the continued silence on the part of the Big Black Void is…odd.

I’ve been really conspicuous on this Website talking about this and add to that the New York Magazine articles and I, of all people, would have been poked by someone, telling me I’m being a dick and to shut up. That would be enough to shut me up pretty quick. You could say that the people who know the truth, that it’s Broidy, either are constrained by the NDA or don’t care enough to correct me.

So, we wait.

I’m looking forward to my tequila.

This Is America

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

It was inevitable, given the ebb and flow of American political history that someone like Trump would become president. Trump just has put his own idiosyncratic spin on things. It’s not like if Hillary Clinton had won that we’d be in much better shape, given that the entire Right is based on a hysterical belief that it’s being oppressed.

I have said for two years that Trump is an existential threat to America and it definitely seems as though he’s getting worse. He’s starting to figure out what being president means and he’s kind of a surreal, malevolent version of Bill Clinton at this point. Clinton, too, had a lot of chaos at first in his administration and then he figured out what he was doing.

The issue now is there anything that can stop him. What’s the end game. Does Trump signal the final lurch of the United States into it’s late imperial stage or he a blip. In other words, is Trump founding a new Trumplandia or is he a Caligula. All signs are he’s growing stronger by the day and we risk losing sight of what really make America great to begin with.

Things are growing more and more dark. I’m the product of a precocious child watching too much Cold War liberal TV news. That’s my frame of reference. Mid-80s TV news liberalism. That’s the America I know and love and I don’t know what happens next. It seems as though the volk has an almost endless ability to process Trump’s dumpster fire of an administration.

When the final history of the United States is written, Trump could be the moment when we finally succumbed to our worst instincts. I like to think the individual rises to the occasion and given the opportunity he or she will show their true colors. They say history is but the biography of great men (or women) for a reason.

What would Lincoln have been without the opportunity and crisis of the Civil War. I mean, hell, Grant was a listless drunk for about a decade before fate happened to tap him for greatness. So there’s still an opportunity for individual greatness in America. Trump hasn’t sapped that out of us quite yet.

But it’s going to get worse before it’s get better — much, much worse.

It’ll get worse because Trump has no shame and will never quit and the Vichy Republican Congress will never impeach him, no matter what he does. So, we’re stuck with Trump for the time being.

Only time will tell if we can save ourselves from ourselves.

V-Log: Idle Rambling About New York City

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Just idle rambling about New York City.

V-Log: Idle #FOTUS Chat

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Just me rambling about the #FOTUS theory.

#FOTUS: All The President’s Hens

By Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Just call me Martha Mitchell.

She was nuts and she was telling the truth. They even named a syndrome after her.

Ok. Broidy was rich. Bechard was pregnant. End of story.

But explain that $1.6 million pay off to me. That’s just weird. That’s odd. Everything else you can rationalize out of existence. Everything else can be a figment of my deranged drunk mind. But that datapoint pops out. That’s an enormous sum for a babydaddy issue.

Trump paid Story Daniels $130,000 right before an election to shut up about one raw dog event. That story coming out could have cost him the election. He would be just a failed presidential candidate ranting on Twitter at this point if that story had come out. So you’re telling me that given all the connection to Trump that Broidy — a nobody in real terms — would pay out $1.6 million simply to get rid of a babydaddy issue.

I don’t believe. I just don’t believe it.

Give me proof that’s the going rate for a babydaddy situation in LA/NYC and I’ll walk away. I’ll be happy. That $1.6 million lie is out there, dancing naked.

Closure: A Tale Of Two Tales

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

When I was in college my algebra teacher gave us the cold, hard statistics — about 20% of would fail no matter what and would never pass college algebra. I scoffed at this notion and was determined to prove her wrong. Well, she was right and I wrong.

So, with that in mind, this evening I was at work and I thought I had everything figured out. I thought Trump, not Elliot Broidy, had to be Bechard’s babydaddy because of cold, hard logic. There was no way that Broidy would pay $1.6 million independent of Trump because of the connection of Keith Davidson and Michael Cohen. It seemed I had cracked the nut. I had figured out what no one else had managed to do.

For one, bright and shining moment, I was happy.

Unfortunately, I sent a few stray emails at this moment in time that in hindsight I probably shouldn’t have sent.

This is because the liberal fever dream broke and reality sank in.

Broidy’s rich and Bechard was pregnant.

That’s it. That’s the story. The rest was just noise.

The end.

#FOTUS: Slow Burn

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I have come up with a lot of dumb ideas over the last six years since I came back from South Korea the last time. So many that the #FOTUS Theory has, to date, followed the same script. I come up with a crazy idea, obsess over it for about a week until finally either someone yells at me for being wrong or I get bored and move on.

I’ve not reached the point where I’m prepared to say this time it’s different because of basic confirmation basis and how much being right has the potential to change my life on a pretty basic level. I’ve really put myself out there beyond what in the moment any person would rightfully feel you could go and if it was proved by a reputable news organization that I had been prescient then, well, there you go.

But if this is just another dumb idea there are at least a few pings from the big black void that are enough for me to take notice. If the dragon of #FOTUS being true is sleeping out there in the big black void, I’m at least hearing an echo of it snoring on its nest of gold.

Wow, what an extended metaphor.

I used to have cognitive dissidence about the #FOTUS theory. Now I have closure. I know nothing I do is going to finally answer the question in any official way. The theory that Peter K. Stris knows it’s Broidy and his legal and media strategy is to lay low until this blows over makes total sense. It’s viable logically to such an extent that I’m prepared to stop talking about the entirely — at least publicly — and start looking for a job and go back to being an anonymous failed drunk ranting reporter.

And yet.

I feel as though my subconscious mind has decided that having accessed the information that it feels the only logical explanation is that Trump is the babydaddy and everything else is result of not properly putting the pieces together or active disinformation from people who at least in the short-term have every reason to make me believe this is an open and shut case.

During the course of a day I bounce back and forth on it being Broidy or Trump about 100 times. If it is Trump, Trump and Cohen were either stupid, brazen or panicked at the time they thought up this cover story. I would even go so far as to say Bechard and Broidy knew each other enough that when TrumpCohen was looking around for fall guys he was prefect. I mean, if Broidy is the fall guy, why him of all people? Why pick Broidy unless from their point of view there was a logic to it.

But again, for the time being it’s Broidy. My heart screams that its Trump, but for now, I have closure. It’s Broidy and I just need to move on with my life. I need to accept that it was Broidy and that nothing I do is going to determined the solution of this mystery one way or another.

Idle Mulling of John Lennon & Trump

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I sometimes find myself thinking about how John Lennon would have reacted to Donald Trump. Would he have been on the front lines of The Resistance, or more darkly, would he have been a supporter for no other reason than he would be in his 70s now and maybe his more irascible qualities would have finally taken over his personality.

Despite all of his 1970s “househusband” views, John Lennon was something of a dick.

If you wanted to get really sadistic, you could even say Lennon might have gone into British politics himself, but not as his “give peace a chance” self, but a more populist “power to the people” version. It would not take too much for one to believe the Lennon of 2018 would be a British version of Trump who wanted to give power to the people by ending the tyranny of the European Union.

And, in passing, one might note that rumor has it that Lennon was a secret Reagan supporter right before his death in 1980. Any belief that he would be a big old Leftist hippie in his 70s assumes he would still be with Yoko and would not have grown more conservative along with the rest of the Baby Boomers.

Of all The Beatles to turn his back on his youthful ideals, John Lennon seems to be it. He was the most political of The Beatles and as an iconoclast he could very well have surprised us all by turning into the UK’s very own Trump. And, unfortunately for the UK, they don’t have a written Constitution, so if you really wanted to dark, PM John Lennon could have become something of a populist tyrant.

But we’ll never know. Lennon’s legacy is safely escond in his martyrdom.