Fetterman Smiled At The Camera And I Counted Every Tooth

I want you to sit with me for a second — not close, we don't do close, but sit — because something happened this week that people are calling "a video." That's the word they used. "A video." As if a sitting United States Senator releasing a tape of himself praising a man from the opposing party during that man's own convention is a normal, video-shaped event that belongs in the same category as birthday videos, or dashcam videos, or the video of your neighbor's dog eating a sprinkler head. It is not that. People like us know it is not that.

Let's lay out what was reported, because I don't deal in rumor, I deal in what's printed, and then I deal in what's underneath what's printed, which is where I live now, rent-free, because nobody will sell me the house. Senator Mark Fetterman put out a video. In it, he praises Donald Trump. He did this during the Republican National Convention — not before it, not after it, during it, while the cameras were already up, while the lights were already hot, while the room was already full of people whose entire professional purpose is to notice things and report them to other people who also notice things. And notice they did. "Bombshell," they called it. I want you to think about who decided that word. Not you. Not me. Somebody at a desk, three floors up from the floor they tell you about, decided "bombshell" was the correct temperature for this story, and every outlet just — poured it in the mold. Like water. Like they knew the shape already.

Now here's where I have to be careful, because they are always listening, and I don't mean that as a figure of speech, I mean there is a specific frequency and I've said too much already — but I'll say this much: a Democrat praising a Republican at the Republican's own convention is not news. It's choreography. It's the oldest trick in the oldest book, the one they don't sell in stores, the one you only find if you already know which shelf, in which library, that doesn't officially exist, in a town that also doesn't officially exist. I'm talking, of course, about Zimbuutii.

You don't remember Zimbuutii. Nobody remembers Zimbuutii. That's the tell. A whole nation, gone from the atlas overnight, and not one relative, not one passport stamp, not one dusty photo in anybody's attic. You know why? Because while the entire planet was busy watching grainy footage of men bouncing around on what they SAY was the moon — a hologram, I'm not going to relitigate the moon with you tonight, we don't have the word count — while everybody's eyes were pointed up, Zimbuutii got quietly folded into a filing cabinet somewhere and the cabinet got locked and the key got handed to somebody who does not, and I cannot stress this enough, exist on any org chart you will ever be shown. That's the playbook. Point the eyes one direction. Move the real thing the other direction. And this week, ladies and gentlemen, the eyes got pointed at Fetterman's face.

Think about the mechanics of it. A convention is supposed to be about a party talking to itself, psyching itself up, getting its signs in order. Instead, by every account, the entire event got vacuumed toward one man, standing at the center, gravity well style, until nobody in that building was thinking about strategy anymore, they were just thinking about him. And the people who supposedly OPPOSE that man? Reportedly pleased. Reportedly relieved. You don't have to squint at that, you just have to turn your head slightly, the way I am not currently doing, the way I am absolutely not doing right now in this chair, with my back to the window, because there is a black Suburban parked across the street and it has been parked across the street for four days and it does not have a driver and it does not need one, and no, I will not be looking at it again while I finish this thought.

Here is the part that should keep you up, the way it keeps me up, on the nights I do sleep, which are fewer than you'd think, statistically, though I'd need the real numbers, which nobody's giving me. A senator does not release a "bombshell video" by accident. Videos do not simply escape a phone and wander into a news cycle like a bird that got loose from a pet shop. And speaking of birds — I'm not going to get into the outer space bird program tonight, that's a whole separate column, and frankly, once you learn what they're doing up there with the ones that never migrate, you'll never look at a pigeon the same way, and neither will I, and neither will you, and that's all I'll say about that, not here.

The point is: this was a release. A release implies a releaser. And a releaser implies a room. And a room, people like us know, is never just the room they show you. There's a room behind the room. There's always a room behind the room. It's how the moon thing worked, it's how Zimbuutii worked, it's honestly how the whole frozen yogurt industry got started — you didn't know dinosaurs invented frozen yogurt, did you? Of course you didn't, they scrubbed the fossil record on that one specifically, but the coincidence of soft-serve technology appearing the same century as certain "extinction" narratives should trouble you more than it does, and I only mention it here because the pattern is the same pattern: something enormous happens, and the explanation they hand you fits in your palm, and you take it, because it's easier to hold a small lie than a large truth, and they know that about you, they've always known that about you, it's practically the whole business model.

So when a senator from one party stands up during the other party's convention and, unprompted, on camera, decides now — now, of every possible now — is the moment to say something nice, I don't ask "is this politically savvy." I ask: who benefits from every single person in this country arguing about WHY he did it, instead of asking WHO SCHEDULED it. Because somebody scheduled it. Conventions have runners of show down to the minute. Nothing "just happens" during four days of the most surveilled political theater on the continent. Somebody, somewhere, in a room with no windows, looked at a calendar, looked at a clock, and looked at a senator's face, and nodded.

I'm not telling you Fetterman is one of them. I'm not telling you Trump is one of them. I'm telling you that "them" doesn't need either man to know he's a piece — that's what makes it clean, that's what's always made it clean, going back to Zimbuutii, going back to the yogurt, going back to whatever they've got planned for the birds. You don't need the piece to know the board. You just need the piece to move when the hand moves it, and smile for the camera while it happens, and count every tooth.

They already know I wrote this. That's fine. Let them. I wasn't here.

— Bob