a very stupid man convinced of his own brilliance and surrounded by lapdogs and yes-men

kanye
elon
trump

keep em coming in this masochist thread

morrissey

Rob Schneider

Jordan Peterson

umair hague

Musk

also West & Donald

Allen West

Ye

DJ Khaled

Putin, except he is not at all stupid. Blinded by his own myth, maybe, but not stupid.

can't help but feel like everybody is overlooking Kanye West and Donald Trump

Rogan

Kanye

billy corgan

The founder of Tesla, controversial social media star and billionaire Nikola Tesla

Jared Leto

Boris Johnson, Bolsonaro, Erdoğan, Duterte...

Edmonds

(Noel)

ronaldo
although he was brilliant for a long time

Kyrie Irving

Matt Walsh

Jack Posobiec

Tim Pool

howard stern

Charlie Rose

elon reeve musk

Ricky Gervais

King George VII

Sgt Pepper

The concept of phlogiston.

Marie de Medici

Scott Adams

the thought of Scott Adams' yes men... goddam

David Dennison

King Charles III
Prince William
Prince Harry

visionary director zack snyder

i was gonna go for Nolan but that's a good shout

eric adams

However the Eric Adams from Manowar rules

i was gonna go for Nolan

otm

Jon Krakauer (presumably has yes-men? I don't really know)

Skeletor

The Elector Palatine Frederick V

The Thirty Years War produced a lot of these guys. Frederick V was maybe one of the more defensible ones iirc?

uh how about fuckin uh jesus christ, what about that?!

surrounded by yes men and death men

Thom Yorke

vince mcmahon

glem

surely jack white of blues traveler is surrounded by dudes that dress like him and wear the same hairstyle going “oh yeah, great idea there” all the time

Johnny Depp

Andrew Tate

Miles Bron

Win Butler

haha good one

Christopher Nolan upthread is one of the more inspired suggestions. My brother-in-law had a chance to work on one of his films but turned it down because he’s known for being incredibly obnoxious and arrogant

It’s sad that the same university which pays piece of shit Jordan Peterson’s salary also has the patent for Salk’s polio vaccine

LMAO. I heard during the making of one of his films (maybe all of them?) Nolan demanded that no hard copies of the screenplay be printed for anybody. Then one day he walks into a room, sees one lying on a table and throws and enormous fit. After screaming at everyone for a good long while, he realized it was one he personally made for himself, and then never bothered to apologize. Classy!

Also, I thought Salk's polio vaccine had no patent? IIRC that's partly why they were able to more or less eliminate polio so quickly in so many places (in start contrast to how the COVID vaccine was handled, which was kept under tight corporate ownership, allowing new variants to emerge from enormous surges in countries without a vaccine).

damn typos

*throws an enormous fit

*in stark contrast

I thought Salk had essentially gifted it to the U of Toronto, but that they cannot profit from it in any way

Salk was brilliant, but reportedly a total dick.

I looked into it, and the polio vaccine is indeed public domain. Edward R. Murrow interviewed Salk about this, and his response - "there is no patent - could you patent the sun?" - became a famous in those circles.

However, there are some articles that look further into why it wasn't patented, and reportedly the foundation behind it DID look into a patent but their attorneys concluded that the vaccine didn’t meet the novelty requirements for a patent, i.e. the application would fail.

Already said it but can't be said often enough, Prince Harry.

vince mcmahon

― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Wednesday, December 7, 2022 7:59 PM (four weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

my friend had a job at WWE and there's a big gym at HQ, he had started with this other guy the same day and apparently when it's Vince's time in the gym they start playing "Hell's Bells" by AC/DC as a warning of sorts that he's coming and you are to clear out. anyway this guy was new and didn't clear out and then apparently was clanking stuff too loud and annoying Vince and he got fired.

if i was in a position of some authority and a person came to me with "fired by vince mcmahon" on their resume, i'd hire them on the spot. well done, friend!

john lennon seems to qualify at least half the time - thought he seems to have needed the lapdogs in order to be convinced of his brilliance at all and even then it only often works. his form of "stupidity" is specifically his extreme gullibility (inevitably followed by some kind of opposite-of-that backlash/mood swing) and weird self-defeating all-or-nothing approach to literally everything but especially his personal relations

it was a classy move by the british army to arrange it for Harry to get 25 kills without ever being at risk of getting a scratch on himself 👏👏👏

lennon would be so annoying if he were alive today

twitter would have totally broken him

He'd have ended up like John Cleese.

@jlennon

tired: music hall songs about changing the world
wired: actually changing the world

I could see the early lennon going cleese but if the later lennon went hard right it would probably be through some more esoteric spiritual/conspiracy type route. or else he'd reunite with paul and they'd just be boring rich liberals together

Sgt Vaxer's Lonely Big Pharm Clan

Honestly, I think Lennon would have mostly retired from music after putting out one trip-hop inspired LP during the 90’s. I could see him eventually leaving New York for Toronto and becoming more media-averse over the years

So Harry went to a party wearing a Nazi uniform, did a line of coke, smoked a joint, did some mushrooms, and had a punch-up with his brother. For some people that's a weekend.

Yoko had a big part in shaping John's politics, so I don't think he would've swung right, but I don't think it's easy to predict with certainty. Looking back at how John's life and work went after he was more free to be his own person, it generally takes some big turns that probably weren't that predictable - when he became very outspoken politically and built a life (personal and professional) with Yoko, becoming a house husband for five years and completely withdrawing from his public life, then coming back with an album that was willfully intended to be soft and removed from youth culture (even rejecting a much better take of "I'm Losing You" with Cheap Trick on the basis that he didn't want anything that rocking on the album). He did have a world tour and Milk and Honey coming up next, but after that, I want to say it's impossible to predict what he would've done, especially with Sean growing into adulthood - he wanted to be there for him in complete contrast to how he was with Julian, and that closeness with Sean could've continued and evolved into an artistic/professional one as well.

FWIW, one of Yoko's assistants claimed John was a fan of Reagan when he died, but IIRC no one else has really backed up that claim much less gone on record saying they witnessed anything similar, and there's no recorded or physical evidence of John expressing support for Reagan or his policies. (John did indeed meet Reagan when they both attended a football game years earlier, but that's pretty much it.)

(Same assistant also had a less than great relationship with them - Yoko ended up suing him.)

Neil Young had a Reagan phase too, remember, and now he's a huge eco-hippie.

for the record i think he would have been annoying not necessarily a right winger

though sean is a borderline alt right just asking questions moron so who knows

xp I can't find any record of this so I'm not sure of the veracity, but years ago (I think 2004?) I remember someone telling me that Michael Moore had actually voted for Reagan in 1984 and when confronted with this fact, Moore's response was "of course I voted for Reagan, EVERYONE voted Reagan."

I can't imagine a presidential candidate today who could win anything close to 49 states in the general election, even when factoring in lousy opposition. I feel like there's a long list of artists whose work I enjoy who have expressed outspoken opinions that go against everything Reagan stood for, and yet they've vocally expressed how much they liked Reagan during his presidency. Even Prince of all people expressed his support in a rare interview in the '80s, never mind in song.

Thinking about it now, it may have something to do with the Cold War?

I think Neil Young Reagan fetishization has always been somewhat exaggerated. I wish I could find more quotes from him regarding Canadian politics, though. What did he REALLY think about Kim Campbell?

Lennon said quite clearly in his last interview that the '70s were in part a drag because the fringes of the left got disillusioned when things didn't turn out they wanted; he predicted that Reagan would disappoint the right too.

Not once did he express enthusiasm for Reagan, much less support.

gene simmons

Give Gene this: he denounces anti-vaxxers as the cretins they are.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d9PjZ1GOrg

I swear we have the same John Lennon conversation in here twice a year

It is a bit weird how anti-vax/Big Pharma is now associated so much with right wing sentiment, when a decade ago, every anti-vax person I knew leaned left and just took a wrong turn down Hippiedippieroad and conflated things that actually benefit the common good that happen to be manufactured by Big Pharma, with the actual things that they should have been mad about (price gouging, patent laws, unnecessary products).

Right wingers are only approaching it from a "lol what do scientists really know/I won't do what you tell me" contrarian angle and didn't care about the major legit reasons to hate Big Pharma, but pre-pandemic/Trump, my default reaction to a pro-vaccine Republican wouldn't have been surprise like it is now.

There were enough anti-vax libs in my sphere in 2015 that I felt like I was constantly in crazy town.

One of the actresses in a musical I did once had a mother who showed up to pick her up in a van with anti-vax messaging covering the rear windshield, so that she probably couldn't even properly see out the back.

She'd loan the car to the girl (who was in high school) who had to drive that embarrassing thing around

I swear we have the same John Lennon conversation in here twice a year

― Wet Legume (morrisp), Friday, January 6, 2023 2:48 PM bookmarkflaglink

We all post on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun

COVID denial and RW anti-vax sentiment is a new strain of the “Dying of Whiteness” disease.

otm really

Gene Simmons is always a good interview

Post that here: Posts you had second thought about and decided not to post - put them here

LOL

I had no second thoughts.

I met the man once--he is immensely entertaining. Weird af, but entertaining.

Simmons is entertaining in the way of a certain type of old-school (mostly Jewish) showbiz blowhard. I'd like him a lot more if he wasn't shackled to Kiss's music, which is The Fucking Worst.

Dropping the needle on Kiss Alive at age 10 was a watershed moment for me.

Sticking in a needle in my arm while playing Asylum was mine.

I never understand, because I always call them on their bluff. I’m the guy who says ‘Jump!’ when there’s a guy on top of a building who says, “That’s it, I can’t take it anymore, I’m going to jump.” Are you kidding? Why are you announcing it? Shut the fuck up, have some dignity and jump! You’ve got the crowd.

he's not stupid by any stretch, but do i like that rick wakeman moved on to lapdogs after he was done with yes-men

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41gy7I3ACaL._AC_.jpg

Asylum is the only Kiss record I would actually listen to now