You Otter Be Outraged

As the guy said when asked to tap out the full 17-minute version of Iron Butterfly’s “In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida” on his glass eye using a shrimp cocktail fork, I don’t usually do this. But I think I need to deal directly, and at length, with a complaint from someone in The Dispatch community. 

Last week, Scott Lincicome, by far the most popular trade and nacho expert writing for The Dispatch, was back on my podcast, The Remnant, to discuss supply chain issues, inflation, trade policy. and some other things. And well, I’ll let this listener, first name Alexander, explain the rest. He writes:

Quite some time ago Jonah and Scott Lincecome did a podcast topic on “animals that get good press”. While listening to it I was perplexed as to why they did not discuss sea otters. Sea otters of course look cute! They put rocks on their tummies! It’s adorable!

 They also rape eachother, hold eachother hostage for food and have sex with other recently deceased sea otters. They are disgusting animals that humans should declare open war on. A quick google search will show countless pieces on the horrors of sea otters. Journalism 101 guys.

So imagine my surprise when on the most recent podcast episode, Jonah and Scott begin another riff about Animals With Good Press. Then someone mentions sea otters and I think “FINALLY HERE WE GO! TIME TO ROAST THE SEA OTTERS”! But nope! Instead of even the most mild criticism of these nautical rape rats, they praise how cute they are and such. It was textbook propaganda. I was screaming in my car. I wished the sweet meteor o’ doom would come and strike me down.

I can only take away from these discussions that much like Joe Manchin being in the pocket of corporate, neo liberal dark money, Jonah and Scott must be in the pockets of Big Otters.

Please do better.

Now, while I am tempted to get defensive and counter-punch (“Oh, really, the guy who thinks “eachother” is one word? What is this, Germany? You know what else happened in Germany!?”), the truth is that Alexander is entirely right. As the guy who bought a case of Xi Ha Happy Horse De-Wormer off the dark web likes to say, I did my own research. And it turns out that otters are, well, monsters – when judged by our bipedal bourgeoise primate standards.

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