Mike Lee was always a weasel, but @basedmikelee is on another level | Private Eye | Salt Lake City Weekly
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Mike Lee was always a weasel, but @basedmikelee is on another level

Private Eye

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Among the notable, rock-steady true things in life, we know the sun rises in the east. We know water flows downhill. We know the New York Yankees and the Chicago Cubs are the only Major League Baseball teams worth rooting for, principally because both are so lovable.

We know tomatoes grown in Greece taste better than anywhere else in the world. We know that with or without tomatoes, the best skiing in the world is in Utah.

We also know that on any given day, Utah Sen. Mike Lee will soil himself on the social media website X, formerly known as Twitter. He does that constantly, Xcreeting all sorts of panicked and divisive nonsense at all hours of the day and night using the handle of @basedmikelee. On much rarer occasions, he will even use his official U.S. Senate account on X, I presume to remind us all that he once regarded his elected position as being of some importance.

But alas, as @basedmikelee, he is more comfortable these days revealing his inner child in the same manner a flasher exposes his weakest attributes from behind a stack of hay or along a sanguine hiking path. He just comes out of the dark and lets loose, never minding that women and children might be witness to his insecurities that he is only making worse and more obvious.

This is not the same Mike Lee whom I never supported in the first place. I don't know who this @basedmikelee is, but he sure is creepy.

So, there's one more thing you should all know by now that is another rock-steady true thing in life: I believe now and for all time and eternity that Mike Lee is a weasel. I say that with some caution, wondering if he might be ill (for which he'd get a hall pass from me).

But he barely resembles the healthier and more-full-head-of-hair fellow who I thought was a weasel from Day 1, but who at least seemed like a virile weasel at the time. I guess being U.S. Senator wears one down. For instance, Google a photo of 42-year-old Chuck Grassley. Good works take a toll, apparently.

It's best I leave Mike Lee alone this week—leave him to his quixotic fight to ensure that he forever retains his personal freedom to subvert our democracy. Given his proclivity to far more frequently act "based" instead of senatorial, more opportunities will come. Besides, even a good-natured fellow such as me—one with 40 years of negative snail mail, email, texts, online and social media commentary—can barely take another broadside questioning my mostly Democratic Party bona fides.

I frequently get emails that assail me for being an uneducated, brainwashed libtard who should stop trusting the MSM and "do some research." What can I say? I've always been a poor student.

I don't really mind the name calling and weak assumptions about who I am. I do mind, however, that those who write nearly always decline to have their opinions published in City Weekly's letters to the editor. I respect those who aren't afraid to sign their names to their thoughts. But the rest? Not so much.

I guess they expect me to grab a beer (the drinkers do, anyway) and tune into Infowars for Alex Jones, or to check out Bannon's War Room podcast to make sure I "see both sides." Ain't gonna happen. There was never an adult figure I respected—not a teacher, member of the clergy, supervisor or historical icon—who ever came close to endorsing the kind of dangerous and hateful rhetoric espoused by just those two men, and they are in a class of many these days.

Whatever became of decent role models? I don't like it that so many Americans cannot remove themselves from the flypaper nonsense of Bannon and Jones.

I do like the idea of a beer, though. Just this past weekend I was in New York, where our group happened upon some very, very good German food. Trust me.

As a Greek, it's very difficult for me to endorse anything harder to pronounce than kolokithokeftedes, but certain items on a German menu rise to the occasion. And like all things mysterious, they are surprisingly tasty more often than they are not.

It's no surprise then that our table enjoyed the bratkartoffeln (German cottage potatoes)—especially since among the beer offerings was none other than Bud Light. What a pairing! It was such a relief to learn that Bud Light remains in favor in certain parts of this country.

Sure, there were German pilsners available, too, but ahh, Bud Light. Fully reassuring!

The only thing I'd have done differently is make sure there was a Spicy V-8 juice to go along with it. That is one helluva combination, folks.

I've said before that I'm not the biggest fan of boycotts of any kind, but I'm especially raw to the sorts of boycotts that hurt American companies and American workers. Some Americans have no qualms about that, or at least they do not until it's their own paycheck that is affected. In their world, there are only two types of Americans, anyway: Them and not-them.

That is not an unusual precept if one grew up in Utah. But at least—so far—Utah's "thems" have not tried too hard to eliminate the "not-thems" in the same manner that the irrational political "thems" tried to eliminate Bud Light.

Oops, that does discount that certain ancestral relatives of Mike Lee laid waste to the Baker-Fancher Party in Southern Utah at the Mountain Meadows massacre. Based Mike makes me think he wants to finish the job.

Send comments to john@cityweekly.net