SAY WHAT? - Honestly, we dunno if there's any good or godly reason to go there, stomach-churning as it is, but what the fuck is wrong with these sick soulless cretins like Alex Jones and Sean Hannity whose sole purpose in life is evidently to cause pain, stir chaos and otherwise mess with what one rightly horrified observer calls "the very underpinnings of civilization...the gestalt of the social universe"? On Wednesday, a Connecticut jury ordered far-right psychopath Alex Jones and his heinous Infowars to pay a $965 million penance to the families of young Sandy Hook victims for a decade - their kids would be teenagers now if not slaughtered - of trauma and terror and grief upon grief. As the verdict was read - 15 plaintiffs awarded from $28 million to $120 million each - the families quietly wept, bowed their heads, reached out to each other. And in a split-screen video, a deeply demented Jones cackled through a live-stream, grotesquely cheering on each award - "Yes! Get those numbers up!" - like a fat witless ghoul, pausing only to hawk diet supplements. What the ever-loving fuck. Parkland father Fred Guttenberg captured the all-round revulsion: "Alex is a scum-sucking low-life dirtbag who deserves his place in hell." One wistful observer, skeptical of a smiting God: "I actually wish I believed in hell just so Alex Jones could go there."
Ever lowering the bar, meanwhile, the night before Sean Hannity inexplicably spent his foul time on Fox replaying an anguished, loving voicemail Joe Biden had left his son Hunter in 2018 when Hunter was in the throes of his addiction. A leering Hannity played the phone message, reportedly obtained by the Daily Mail, because he seemed to think revealing Biden as a caring father showing up for his troubled and only surviving offspring would be a killer gotcha; he evidently didn't realize most people saw the stunt as bewildering and repulsive, especially since so many had heard or voiced the same pain in a father's voice in a country where millions likewise struggles with addiction. So one more time: What is wrong with these sick fucks? What depravity - America? Capitalism? MAGA? A hole where a heart should be? - could drive such a ghastly, uncomprehending calculation and forge these vile human beings? For now, Hannity lurches malevolently on, untouched. Jones has been held accountable for his lies and could face financial ruin, but he's still spewing bile and, said one victim, "There will be more Alex Jones in this world." Their attorney Christopher Mattei called the verdict "a resounding affirmation that people of good will, dedicated to the truth, (can) come together (to) set right a historic wrong," adding, "You reap what you sow." We can always hope.
“In separateness lies the world’s great misery, in compassion lies the world’s true strength.” - Buddha
(Abby Zimet has written CD's Further column since 2008. A longtime, award-winning journalist, she moved to the Maine woods in the early 70s, where she spent a dozen years building a involved in women's, labor, anti-war, social justice and refugee rights issues. Email: [email protected]). Photo: Nelba Marquez Greene (L) and Nicole Hockley (R), both mothers of Sandy Hook victims, console each other during a press conference in Newtown a month after the shooting at an event for Sandy Hook Promise. Photo by John Moore/Getty Images
