Horny/hungry, f**kless and losing patience...

In the comments to this morning's post about Robert Kraft's arrest for paying for hand jobs, Meade wrote:

Robert Kraft was horny, f**kless and losing patience.

An aide, joining him on a trip to Florida, had googled and found a high-priced escort service for his boss while hauling their bags through an airport terminal. But once onboard, he delivered the grim news: He had lost his cell phone before reaching the gate, and with it, the contact information for the escort service.

What happened next was typical: Mr. Kraft berated his aide instantly for the slip-up. What happened after that was not: He pulled into a strip mall featuring a day spa massage parlor.

When Mr. Kraft returned to the car, he handed something to his staff member with a directive: Clean it.

That's a riff on something we talked about last night, a New York Times article that began:

Senator Amy Klobuchar was hungry, forkless and losing patience.

An aide, joining her on a trip to South Carolina in 2008, had procured a salad for his boss while hauling their bags through an airport terminal. But once onboard, he delivered the grim news: He had fumbled the plastic eating utensils before reaching the gate, and the crew did not have any forks on such a short flight.

What happened next was typical: Ms. Klobuchar berated her aide instantly for the slip-up. What happened after that was not: She pulled a comb from her bag and began eating the salad with it, according to four people familiar with the episode.

Then she handed the comb to her staff member with a directive: Clean it.

"The immediate reaction is born of pure emotion, prompting phrases such as 'Oh my God!' and 'He did what?' to escape your lips without thinking, to cause the breath to catch in your throat and the eyes to pop in your head."

"Friday’s news stops you in your tracks, immediately flooding your mind with more questions than you know can be answered, sending your thoughts into a spiral of tangled emotions. Anger, disgust, disappointment, shock, denial, disdain . . . all of them with the right to course through your veins, even as you await the avalanche of detail that is sure to follow the initial revelations. Sadness, too."

From "Troubling charges against Robert Kraft leave us wondering what to think" — Tara Sullivan is emoting up a storm at The Boston Globe.

In that "spiral of tangled emotions" that have "the right to course through your veins," isn't there something that makes you just want to laugh derisively? This guy had everything. Who has as much?! He had a lot more than Jussie Smollett, and he exposed himself to ruination — not for a fantasy porn star like Stormy Daniels — but for a strip mall hand job? This is stupider than what Smollett did — if he did it — so crudely staging that attack and paying for it with a check — get cash, man — which had Charles Barkley laughing at him on television and modeling the spiraling, tangled emotion called hilarity:



ADDED: Maybe hilarity is an emotion that doesn't have "the right to course through your veins." It is — as I've said — The Era of That's Not Funny. Maybe we feel we don't have the right to laugh anymore. I can see that much of the reaction to the Smollett has been that he himself committed a hate crime — a hate crime against MAGA people — and we must take umbrage and express outrage and keep a stern, grim face. Then, thank God for Charles Barkley for transgressing and inviting us into the emotion we might think doesn't have "the right to course through your veins."

And I mean to laugh at the idea of emotions with rights. People have rights, and you have a right to feel whatever you feel... including ashamed of yourself for feeling something that you disapprove of.

ALSO: Laughing at Kraft for getting a hand job in a strip mall is like laughing at Trump for eating a McDonald's cheeseburger. Why doesn't the billionaire use his money to buy the fancy version of every damned little thing that he wants? Asks the nonbillionaire.