The Will of the Lisp

One thing I've noticed about MAGA is that too many Americans of Italian origin have allied themselves to MAGA.  Italian-Americans, who were considered non-white back in the nineteenth century and were lynched in New Orleans when an Italian community developed there, are now siding with their former Anglo-Saxon oppressors - largely because they, like their oppressors, hate black people.  As someone who is half Italian and is from northern New Jersey, I think you can trust me on that one.  Just look at the list of Italian-Americans among the MAGA elite. Rudolph Giuliani.  Jeanine Pirro.  Samuel Alito.  Leonard Leo.  Jack Ciattarelli.  Pam Bondi.  

And then there's Fox News Channel personality Maria Bartiromo. 

Maria Bartiromo, who somehow became a trusted financial reporter on television despite her merely basic knowledge of finance and an annoying lisp on top of an already irritating Brooklyn accent, saw her peculiar career come to a sudden end when it turned out that Fox News actually does have journalistic standards.  Here's what happened: Trump recently gave another speech about how the 2020 election was stolen and how Croatian space lasers or whatever helped Joe Biden commit voter fraud.  (Trump never actually blamed Croatian space lasers, but I think he blamed even more dubious suspects.)  Fox News chose not to cover the speech; after losing a legal case to the Dominion voting-machine company for lying on the air about Dominion and paying a huge settlement over it, Rupert Murdoch and his underlings wisely wanted to avoid putting the news channel in more hot water.  So they developed this policy of not covering everything Trump says because his lies could get them into trouble, and this speech was one of those times when they concluded that the risk of covering him was greater than the reward.  Bartiromo, a true believer in the MAGA cause, then relayed Fox's policy - not to be shared with anyone outside News Corporation( Fox's parent company), not even with what's left of the White House - to Trump.  She was taken off the air before being fired with cause.

I hope Bartiromo saved enough money over the years, because we won't likely see her - or, thank goodness, hear her - again in a professional capacity.  Or any capacity.

There are rumors that Trump might reward Bartiromo for her fealty to him by making her the next White House press secretary.  Not likely; he probably sees Bartiromo as too old (she turns 59 on Friday), too ethnic (though I've heard anecdotal stuff about her being compared to Sophia Loren, most likely by men who, like Bartiromo, need glasses but, unlike Bartiromo, don't wear them),  not blonde (Madonna is the best-known blonde of Italian origin - the end!!), and besides, there's that lisp (I have nothing to add here in parentheses except for saying that I have nothing to add!).  The truth is, Maria blew it.  She could have continued to be an annoying sycophant on the air and not blown it simply by following company rules at News Corporation, but she blew it.

Bartiromo will go into obscurity and be completely forgotten, and that will happen even faster if she joins NewsNation.  NewsNation, the news channel created out of the perverse idea that what a country already saturated by three cable news channels needs is a fourth cable news channel.  Good riddance.