Ode to Scum

Political homelessness isn't the worst thing

I’m having a Howard Beale moment. Mad as hell, can’t take it anymore.

The last few weeks of partisan squabbling first sent me into a depressed stupor, then I woke to a current of clarifying spleen. A voice explained: “It’s not your destiny to have friends. It’s your destiny to tell everyone, Republican and Democrat, male and female, what cunts they are.”

Cunts. Generally, taboo to say in America, but less so in England, where Tom Hardy says it once every 28.5 seconds on MobLand (co-star Paddy Considine made Dead Man’s Shoes a cult classic with one snarling use of the word). Americans call someone acting out a dick, a weak descriptor because you can fully picture it, while cunt is definitionally abstract, no one knows how deep it goes. It puts the imagination to work. No one wants to be called a cunt. But that’s what some people are.

Sorry, we were talking about politics. Recapping the last weeks: