The Left-Cheek Ass Clown for February, 2025

The pace of events and the tsunami of buffoonery roaring out of Der Furor's administration have greatly complicated the choice of Ass Clown awardees ... with so many amazingly "worthy" choices, how does one make the best choice?

One doesn't.

One just dips the net into the swirling cesspool, stirs it around, and sees which floating chunk it randomly comes up with. And this time, the dripping net has snared as

The Left-Cheek Ass Clown for February, 2025

"Vice-President"* JD Vance

In his debut on the world stage this month at the annual Munich Security Conference, Mr Vance almost singlehandedly** managed to undo decades of US leadership while deliberately insulting the nation's closest allies.

European leaders had expected Vance to speak about possible talks to end the war in Ukraine and explain the evolving direction of US foreign policy in the Musk/Furor administration. Instead, Mr Vance delivered a blistering attack on European democracies, claiming that European Union "commissars" were suppressing free speech, blaming the continent for mass migration, and accusing its leaders of retreating from "some of its most fundamental values" - a speech long on culture war talking points and short on meaningful ideas and leadership. As Cathy Young of The Bulwark wrote, "Vance’s culture-war tirade was not only pointlessly confrontational and ill-informed; it was also delivered at a moment when lectures on democracy from America have inevitable “Physician, heal thyself” overtones."

Mr Vance's speech was, to say the least, not well received by our European allies, although his behavior was praised by Putin ally and former Russian President and Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev. 

In addition, Mr Vance did not meet with the Chancellor of Germany***, but instead met with the head of the neo-Nazi Alternative for Germany party and other German political figures. 

Of course, all this is what we might have expected from a man whose idea of statesmanship was the  complaint that the country was being run by “childless cat ladies who are miserable in their own lives and the choices that they’ve made,” and who spread lies about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating the pets of their neighbors because "If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do."

Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Readers, the Left-Cheek Ass Clown for February, 2025, is "Vice President" JD Vance. You may blow your Bronx cheers now.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow, when Cartoon Saturday returns.

Bilbo

* Mr Vance's actual job title is unclear. While he ran as the Vice-Presidential candidate on the ticket with Der Furor, Elon Musk's  assumption of the presidency suggests that the Orange Airhorn is now effectively the Vice-President, leaving Mr Vance's exact role undefined. For simplicity's sake, we will refer to him as the "Vice President."

** He was substantially aided by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who threw Ukraine under the bus by calling a return to that nation's pre-2014 borders “an unrealistic objective,” ruled out NATO membership for Kyiv, and gave up US leadership of the Contact Group of more than 50 nations that the previous Defense Secretary formed to coordinate shipments of military and humanitarian aid to Kyiv after Russia’s full-scale invasion.

*** He did meet with Chancellor Olof Scholz at another conference in Paris earlier in the week. God forbid he should have to meet with one of our closest allies more than once.