HEAVENS TO MERGATROYD! This blog is twenty years old!

Yes the name of this blog was inspired by
one of Snagglepuss's favorite exclamations.

My first blog post was not very inspiring: 

I'm still working out the kinks, come back later, it will be better. Thanks.

Back in those days we thought that George W. Bush was, and ever would be, the worst president of the United States. 

All these years I've been hogging the domain name mcclernan.com for myself, in spite of having many relatives, close and distant, who share the name. But so far nobody has complained.

I recapped the first ten years, back in 2015. Obama was president then, so things were looking up from the Bush years. 

So what's happened since November 2015?

I was blogging pretty heavily from 2015 through 2018, averaging about 300 blog posts per year, more or less. But blogging fell way off in 2019, when I only managed 59 posts and after that only managed 42, 28, 23, 29 and 34 posts each year after that. This year I have 43 posts, counting this one, so far. 

The reason blogging dropped off so much on Heavens to Mergatroyd is at least partly because I started my blog Pinkerite and instead of writing about politics and especially race pseudoscience on this blog, I started writing about those things over on Pinkerite instead.

I see that in 2015 I expressed my admiration for the feminist writer Sady Doyle who since then became Jude Doyle. I mentioned him in January of this year in a blog post on Pinkerite. 

2016 started out on a high note when I moved from Astoria back to Manhattan, to the Upper West Side in a quaint hundred-year-old walkup. Then I moved out thanks to unpleasant neighbors in 2021. 

Trump was elected. I immediately became interested in Canada and in the French language. I had been in Canada once, in 2005, before I started this blog. Since Trump was elected I visited Canada in 2017, 2018,  twice, then not again until January of this year. 

Part of the reason for the gap, I think, was because Biden defeated Trump in 2020, and I didn't feel as much of an urge to get out of the United States during that time. But when Trump was elected again in 2024, I went to Montreal during the inauguration, just to be out of a country full of morons who voted for a rapist fascist disgusting felon psychopath, clearly in the early-mid stages of dementia. 

And of course there was Covid.

In the past ten years I traveled to France and Slovenia.

I've written about learning French quite a few times. Thanks to my French studies I ended up learning more about Peppa Pig and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic than someone my age would ever expect to know. Dear god I know so much about My Little Pony now.

I  also created my own animations in French, but they are pig and pony-free.

I discovered Murderbot, Justin Trudeau and Emmanuel Macron. I knew J. D. Vance was a creep in 2016.

I've continued to express my appreciation for the Beatles and in particular for Paul McCartney in the past ten years. 

I've memorialized Earl Rich, a friend of mine who was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1997, several times on this blog.

Quite a few people I have known have died in the past ten years. My childhood arch-enemy John Sayers, my young adulthood arch-enemy Laura Garth, my actor friend Tony White, another actor friend Doug Rossi, my college friend Geri Tuckett. And of course my cats, poor Miss Willow and poor Mr. Fuzz. But at least my cats lived about as long as cats normally live, the other people I mentioned here died before their time. Since my cats died, I've switched to caring for plants instead.

Theater-wise, things have been slow. I only managed to eke out one production, Norma Jeanne at the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic about Marilyn Monroe in the past ten years, but I've written three solid full-length plays since 2020 and am working on a fourth.

Pete Duel, Judy Carne, Ben Murphy
-----------------------------------------

Here's a funny coincidence - I've written about Pete Duel on this blog - first in 2005, then again in 2015.

And the Pete Duel Memorial Site is still going strong in 2025. The entire series "Alias Smith and Jones" is now available on the Internet Archive.

One of my favorite episodes, "The Root of it All," was quite feminist for 1971. In the episode, Smith and Jones meet a feisty woman played by Judy Carne and another woman played by Victoria Thompson. 

Well Thompson showed up in a playwrights group I was part of for a couple of years in 2022-23. I knew I had seen her name before and after Googling around I discovered she had been in AS&J - but I never got a chance to ask her about the experience. But still, it was a funny coincidence.

In addition to this blog, I've had my blog NYCPlaywrights going since 2010, and Pinkerite since 2018.

TOP TEN POSTS IN THE PAST 10 YEARS

1. Did Brigitte Macron and her first husband appear in an episode of "French in Action" - mystere et boule de gomme! - over 16,000 visits.

2. Move over Dr. and Mrs. Vandertramp! - 15.6K visits.

3. Steven Pinker's right-wing, alt-right & hereditarian connections (before I moved my politics to Pinkerite and also updated the diagram.) - 4.2K visits.

4. No, Erik Satie did not only eat white foods(!!!) - 2.98K visits.

5. What do the evo-psycho bros think "race" is? (before I moved my politics to Pinkerite). - 2.74K visits.

6. Qui était Jeanne de Bret? - 2.68K visits.

7. #Free Melania - yes I know Melania has only herself to blame for marrying Trump, but my god, you can see what a grotesque psychopath he is in this video. No wonder, according to Trump's biographer Michael Wolff, she hates him. -  2. 22K. visits.

8. RIP MTM - I discussed the death of Mary Tyler Moore. 2.15K visits.

9. Watching Justin Trudeau talk about feminism is the most erotic experience of my life - still undefeated - 1.94 K visits.

10. Manhattan statuary - surprisingly popular at 1.94K visits.

Will I manage to blog for another ten years? Time will tell.

You can read about the history of blogging here.

Hurray for Justin Trudeau!

Justin Trudeau's post-election speech: Full transcript - Macleans

Glad for Canada they still have a good, liberal leader. And it's mon premier ministre d'amour!

Trudeau again

I just don't think it's possible to take a bad photo of Trudeau.

Trudeau vs. Nazi Barbie

Justin Trudeau ignoring Faith "Nazi Barbie" Goldy of far-right Sun News. And I gotta say, looking mighty fine doing it. That hair - I love it when he lets his hair grow a little. And those jeans. Oh dear god you're killing me over here JT.

I'm just going to turn the sound off and watch it on a loop. 

Adam Scotti

Adam Scotti is the official photographer of Justin Trudeau. What a great job. I would pay to do that job.

And Scotti does great work too. He has also on occasion been mistaken for Prince Harry.

Will this Canadian lawlessness never end?

Canada is a country so lacking in real scandals that their news media has to get its scandals anywhere it can. It's especially a problem since Canadian media looks south and sees that Donald Trump probably breaks the law more in a typical week than Justin Trudeau has done in his lifetime.

I really think that the press holds good people who are politicians - like Trudeau and Hillary Clinton and Obama and Macron - to a much higher standard than assholes like Trump. 

Anyway, so the Canadian media takes any little thing they can and blows it up into a scandal.

The latest is that Trudeau ate a chocolate bar during a Conservative filibuster.

Just stop, Canada. Count your blessings and stop.

"OTTAWA" by Adam Scotti

by Adam Scotti

I follow Adam Scotti on Twitter and so often see wonderful photos of Justin Trudeau. Scotti is the official photographer for Trudeau. It must be nice to be a photographer when your main subject is not only a world leader but an attractive man. 

I also follow Soazig de la Moissonnière on Twitter. She is Macron's official photographer.  She also provides wonderful photos.

De la Moissonnière and Scotti follow each other on Twitter and often retweet each others' work - they have professional mutual admiration society.

by Soazig de la Moissonnière

Back from Canada

The name of the company means
"late night" in French, although
literally it is "bed late."

I had a nice weekend in Canada in Montreal and Quebec City, although I did too much driving again.

The logo here is for a Canadian convenience store chain, "Couche-Tard" which I was happy to see on Sunday night when we didn't get a chance to get dinner before seeing a theater production in Quebec.

Claude Montminy, one
of my interviewees.

Also because I love that logo. It means "Canada" to me as much as maple syrup or Justin Trudeau.

I've interviewed several Canadians for the upcoming podcast and it should be a pretty good episode. 

I was excited to get a chance to speak French too, and I even asked Claude Montminy, a native francophone, one of my interview questions in French, namely: "Pourquoi tu-es devenu dramaturge?" ("Why did you become a playwright?")

Although most people, even in Quebec City, speak English as well as French and will switch to English in a heartbeat if you sound at all anglophone.

My continuing studies of the shameful career of Steven Pinker

Yes I was very disappointed that Justin Trudeau, mon
premier ministre d'amour, would say nice things about
a racist, misogynist & lazy thinker like Steven Pinker

I've had this blog for twelve years now - it will be thirteen as of November 2.

So what was I blogging about this time twelve years ago?

Surprise surprise - I was blogging about Steven Pinker and his connection to the racist right!

I have consistently discussed the career of Steven Pinker in the last 12 years on this blog, although some years I have not mentioned Pinker as much as others: in 2012 I only mentioned him twice and in 2008 I did not mention him even once. 

2018 has been a banner year focusing on Pinker's career, because he started out 2018 being more blatant about his defense of the right than ever before.

I hope to do even more going forward, justified by Bari Weiss citing Pinker as some kind of respectability high-point for the racist, misogynist, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-trans "Intellectual Dark Web."

Is it fair of me to link Steven Pinker to David Duke?

In her infamous article Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web, New York Times right-wing op-ed columnist Bari Weiss identified Steven Pinker as a member of the "Intellectual Dark Web," presenting him as its most respectable member:

Go a click in one direction and the group is enhanced by intellectuals with tony affiliations like Steven Pinker at Harvard. But go a click in another and you’ll find alt-right figures like Stefan Molyneux and Milo Yiannopoulos and conspiracy theorists like Mike Cernovich (the #PizzaGate huckster) and Alex Jones (the Sandy Hook shooting denier).

As I demonstrated in my diagram Steven Pinker's Rightwing, Alt-Right and Hereditarian Connections - a sort of Pinker-centric illustration of the Intellectual Dark Web published a month before Weiss's article - Pinker has connections to Molyneux and Alex Jones (Infowars), thanks primarily to his promotion of and admiration for Quillette, a web site founded by Claire Lehmann, contributor (along with Mike Cernovich who does not appear in my diagram) to Canada's far-right Rebel Media.

Bari Weiss also admires Quillette.

Weiss thanked by frequent Quillette contributor Andy Ngo
identified as a "free speech grifter" in this excellent GQ article.

I have been accused by Pinker fans of smearing Pinker in my diagram through guilt-by-association.

My diagram is a quick and handy guide, a picture being worth a thousand words and all, but it isn't the whole story. I included a text-based explanation with the diagram, justifying the Pinker connections, but Pinker's fans are inclined to be intellectually slothful and shallow - much like Pinker himself - and they just can't be bothered to read what I have written, much less come up with actual arguments.

In my original Pinker diagram there are four degrees of separation in the shortest route between Pinker and white supremacist David Duke, currently being portrayed by Topher Grace in Spike Lee's new movie BlackKKlansman, as in: Pinker to Quillette to (three Quillette authors) to Stefan Molyneux to David Duke.

But I explained in the footnote of my diagram, I don't include all the inter-connections for the sake of clarity. But this time, I am presenting the most direct connection between Pinker and Duke. And this time I included the text explanations so that even the laziest Pinker fan cannot miss them. You can click the image to see the PDF version.

I think it's likely that Steven Pinker is, on a personal level, even more right-leaning than his public persona would indicate. I think he reigns in his more extreme opinions (and so do some of his fans) because, I believe, Pinker is foremost a careerist. Which is why we see, for example, Pinker bragging about his meeting Justin Trudeau even though many members of the Intellectual Dark Web hate Trudeau, especially Pinker's good buddy Claire Lehmann.

Their hatred of Trudeau, a proud feminist, is what you would expect from people who have a seething, bitter hatred towards feminists. Lehmann herself not only hates feminists but is a straight up misogynist. So is her fellow Rebel Media contributor Gavin McInnes.

Apparently the Quillette gang has begun podcasting. All the more reason I need to start a podcast examining the "Intellectual Dark Web."

Bizarre video of 21st century man

Speaking of 21st century men (like Justin Trudeau) here is a very odd video - it's a documentary about people who participated in demonstrations in May 1968 in France.

This is what it says at francetvinfo - Google Translate didn't do a great job with it though...

It's a surreal scene from La Traversée *. In this excerpt of the documentary made in 2017, Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Romain Goupil, two figures of May-68, argue about the interest of going to interview Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee. But the director is against, believing that the film will lose its irreverence. 

"It's full of gilding the Elysée, it's not neutral, protests Goupil.You will become Mireille Dumas or Karine Lemarchand who wants to have a confidence!" And Cohn-Bendit, seated at a café in Frankfurt (Germany), replies: "But why are you so frozen?"
While they bicker, the frame makes appear Emmanuel Macron, sitting between the two men, waiting wisely, looking amused. The president then addresses Daniel Cohn-Bendit: "What you could do is meet him in a cafe, it would be a nice nod for someone who messed up at the university. , 50 years ago in France. "

So what this all means is that the film-maker is arguing with this guy about Macron, and then suddenly we see that Macron has been sitting right there the whole time. You can watch it for yourself:

I can sort of understand some of what they are saying - it's my goal to eventually get the whole thing.

Justin Trudeau plays rope-a-dope and Trump is the dope

The Canadian Kid

It was so obvious Trump was going to come out of the G7 looking like a fool.

Like so many others, Trump completely underestimated Justin Trudeau - who long ago assembled a team to prepare for Trump to throw the inevitable trade tantrum. As the NYTimes said:

The Canadians could see the trouble looming in the summer of 2016. Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s trade minister at the time, found herself, along with millions of Canadians, fixated on the unfolding United States presidential election, and it was becoming impossible to overlook the gathering clouds of protectionism. 

Trudeau and team studied and learned well that you can't get down into the mud with Trump - he is a creature of mud and he has the home advantage. They are remaining calm and polite which is driving Trump crazy - he doesn't understand calm and polite.

And Trudeau set the stage long ago by being so cordial to Trump and the feckless Ivanka - Trump assumed Trudeau was another toady like the Republicans he so routinely rolls over. He thought he was going to roll over Trudeau.

If you watch the documentary "God Save Justin Trudeau" you can see Trudeau doing the same with the conservatives in his own country in 2012 who thought Patrick Brazeau was going to crush him in the boxing ring. They just couldn't imagine this polite friendly guy could be strong.

As this Guardian review of "God Save Justin Trudeau" notes: 

Film-makers Eric Ruel and Guylaine Maroist depict Trudeau’s spectacular victory in October as a fight, showing it was exquisitely planned from the start.

Trump of course doesn't understand planning & preparation as he famously kept saying he was going to go into talks with Kim Jong Un and just wing it.

It turns out Trump still doesn't get what happened with Trudeau, and still can't understand how Trudeau, whom Trump thought was a little wimp, just like the right-wing Canadians did before Trudeau crushed Patrick Brazeau in the boxing ring, could stand up to him. According to this piece in Vanity Fair, TRUMP SPENDS NORTH KOREA DEBRIEF OBSESSING OVER JUSTIN TRUDEAU: 

Yes, speaking to reporters in Singapore following his summit with gulag enthusiast Kim, Trump continued to lash out at our mild-mannered neighbor to the north and promised to mete out more financial punishments for allies that dare match his provocations. 

“When I got out to the plane,” Trump said. “I think that Justin probably didn’t know that Air Force One has about 20 televisions. And I see the television and he’s giving a news conference about how he will not be pushed around by the United States and I say push him around? We just shook hands. It was very friendly . . . No, I have a good relationship with Justin Trudeau. I really did, other than he had a news conference, that he had because he assumed I was in an airplane and I wasn’t watching. He learned. That’s going to cost a lot of money for the people of Canada. He learned. You can’t do that. You can’t do that. We have a big trade deficit with Canada . . . It’s either $17 [billion] but could actually be $100 billion. You know they put out a document, I don’t know if you saw it. They didn’t want me to see it, but we found it. Perhaps they were trying to show the power they have. It’s close to [a] $100 billion-a-year loss with Canada. They don’t take our farm products—many of them.”

In the movie "God Save Justin Trudeau" you can see Trudeau talking about how he is often underestimated. And nobody underestimated him more than narcissist ignoramus bully Donald J. Trump, the perfect target for Trudeau and his exquisite planning.

Reasons I'm so glad the royal wedding is over

Justin Trudeau makes any wedding more interesting.

1. It's a wedding. I barely find a wedding interesting if it's the wedding of someone I know.
2. I don't know anything about the couple except the groom is a son of Princess Di. I think the bride was famous before hooking up with the groom but I'm not sure.
3. The groom isn't hot. Most men look good in formal wear but there's only so much a fancy costume can do. I would watch the wedding of Justin Trudeau though.
4. It a royal wedding. There shouldn't be any royals in the 21st century. Royalty doesn't do anything except leech off the populace. And the ceremonial leeching is dialed up to eleven with a royal wedding.
5. It's a British royal wedding. As I recall, British royalty were the bad guys in the Revolutionary War. Why are Americans celebrating anything related to British royalty? I mean, I am an admitted Anglophile, but not because of hereditary monarchy. 
6. I can't believe how many people, British and non-British, care about the royal wedding. It really gets on my nerves.

Hard to believe Jonathan Kay used to be a real journalist

Trudeau did nothing of the kind. If Kay was an actual journalist he would have bothered to make an effort to find out what Trudeau said.

Here is my premier ministre d'amour in all his glory.

Sigh...

April in Paris with Macron & Trudeau

More pix of 21st century men

This cafeteria is where the infamous Cordon Bleu incident occurred. Please note the sign above Macron.

Justin Trudeau and wife Sophie

So many adorable pix of Trudeau & Obama - this is one of my favorites

Very recent Macron pic shared by his official photographer on Instagram

Jonathan Kay declares his allegiance to the alt-right

Jonathan Kay was once an admirable journalist, but has been going downhill for the past year or so and now appears to have hit rock-bottom - he's decided to declare his total allegiance to the alt-right by becoming the editor of Quillette.

Jonathan Kay once ghost-wrote for Justin Trudeau. Now he's pals with former associates of Ezra Levant, the obsessed and conflicted arch-enemy of Justin Trudeau. How sad.

But o my prophetic soul: I was just speculating yesterday that Quillette might be the beneficiary of Koch brothers money - this adds even more to the likelihood that Quillette is getting wing nut welfare, if not from the Kochs then from some other right-wing plutocrats. Kay's star is descending, but he at least has had an actual career unlike the usual grad students and alt-right extremists and Koch brother hacks like Jonny Anomly who normally contribute to Quillette. I assume Quillette has to pay real money for Kay, although I assume the gig will be part-time.

Faith Goldy is one of the more
notorious (former) associates of Ezra Levant

Kay has already contributed to Quillette as a writer, and he's really the perfect editor for a rag with such flimsy journalistic ethics. At Quillette they censor critics while shamelessly proclaiming: Quillette is a platform for free thought. We respect ideas, even dangerous ones. We also believe that free expression and the free exchange of ideas help human societies flourish and progress." 

What a sleazy & demonstrable lie.

But Jonathan Kay will go one step further - if he disagrees with you he will literally suggest you are insane. That's what Quillette means by the "free exchange of ideas."

But then Jonathan Kay knows who his real audience is.

Nice pix of 21st Century Men

It's nice to remember that there are plenty of men who are not misogynist creeps in the world, and sometimes they even hold the reigns of power. That must really bug the misogynist creeps who believe that the best path to success for a man is to treat women as lesser beings.

I posted the photos below not only because I admire the subjects but because I think the photos stand on their own aesthetic merits.

Nice to remember we once had a president who could run. This was taken by Obama's official photographer Pete Souza.

This recent one of Justin Trudeau is very cool - if I hadn't known it was taken by official Trudeau photographer Adam Scotti I might not have guessed the subject's identity. 

Very nice composition by official Macron photographer Soazig de la Moissonnière. She can be seen working in the documentary about Macron's presidential campaign Les coulisses de la victoire.

In case you forgot how much alt-right Claire Lehmann hates feminists...

I assume somebody is paying alt-right Claire Lehmann of alt-right Quillette to be such a hateful misogynist, the way the Koch brothers pay Christina Hoff Sommers. I actually hope so, otherwise there is something horribly wrong with Claire Lehmann that she is so obsessed with hating feminism and spewing bile on a daily basis.

Did a feminist kill alt-right Claire Lehmann's father?

And here's Justin Trudeau's ghostwriter Jonathan Kay re-tweeting an attack on Trudeau. Wow Jonathan Kay is an asshole.

And speaking of Christina Hoff Sommers, she's having a meltdown because - I am not kidding - the Southern Poverty Law Center mentioned her once in passing.  Of course an evo-psycho bro, Ben Winegard, likes it.

This is what they said:

 Prominent MRAs also include anti-feminist female voices, such as popular Canadian YouTube personality Karen Straughan, American psychologist Helen Smith, and the former head of a domestic-violence shelter for women, the British Erin Pizzey. Men’s rights issues also overlap with the rhetoric of equity feminists like Christina Hoff Sommers, who give a mainstream and respectable face to some MRA concerns.

But you know how Koch brothers hacks like to be drama queens.

Apparently it surprises Sommers that in spite of her spending her entire career on wingnut welfare spewing bile against women, she has somehow not become a beloved and respected public intellectual. Poor Christina Hoff Sommers! I'm sure she's crying all the way to the bank.

I made a podcast

I discuss increasing Canada-America friendships in this podcast.

Not talking about evo-psychos though, talking about playwriting & other theater topics including my forbidden love for Justin Trudeau.

It's part of Ken Wolf's Playwriting Podcast series.

The podcast I made can be heard here.