I’ve had a lot of comments on the ninety-three blogs I’ve written–mostly complimentary–but “Peeves,” in which I dumped on people and trends I found abhorrent, resulted in warm, ego-satisfying applause from many readers.

So here’s a sequel: people and circumstances I can’t stand. As I write this I think of W.S. Gilbert’s “I’ve Got A Little List” enumerating people of Victorian England whose obnoxious twenty-first century relatives abound: third persons who on spoiling tete-a-tetes insist; the people who eat peppermint and puff  it in your face; the idiot who praises with enthusiastic tone all centuries but this and every country but his own; the judicial humorist.  They’d none of them be missed!

Here goes.

News stories about what politicians “really think” while they make public statements to the contrary. This is all the rage in the fourth estate with respect to DJ Trump. “Privately,” the stories report, Republican members of Congress loathe DJ and think his claims of a stolen 2020 election are a psychotic crock.

“Publicly” these unnamed  liars go along with the charade in order to “move on,” to avoid primaries, and to be go-along folks so that they can achieve  their policy goals with the support of the leadership in the House or Senate.

These stories are a reflection of journalists’ need for access. If they curry favor by keeping hypocrisy secret, they keep the source.

But that is not true of editors. They should not publish stories reporting the views of anonymous politicians who speak out of both sides of their mouths. They should just stick to the record.

Reports on Democrats are not innocent of this kind of malarkey. How about the stories about how politician “A” loves Biden’s policies but “privately” thinks he may have trouble tying his shoelaces and gets “tired?” There are a lot of those reports too.

Matt Gaetz. This guy is just a jerk with a bad haircut who allegedly likes having sex with the Tik Tok set.  A cooperating Joel Greenberg, that deft felon, may catapult Matt into becoming the pinochle champ of the Federal Correctional Institution, Allenwood.

Michael Flynn. Can you court martial a retired army general who calls for a military coup in the United States, using Myanmar as the example?

Outdated Covid precautions. Does anyone keep up with “the science?” (I love that phrase, “the science;” just plain “science” is from the 1950’s!) Spraying surfaces is unnecessary because “the science” tells us that people can’t catch the disease from surfaces. This surface-angst is similar to the whopper that venereal diseases can be contracted from a toilet seat.

Of course, you can get another bug from a dirty surface but it won’t be Covid. Precautions involving surfaces persist even though they are well past their fresh date.

Online performances. Every time I watch one I keep thinking that I am engaging in “second best”:  first is the real thing.

Marjorie Taylor Greene. It’s hard to imagine a worse politician. Is she the real thing or just doing an act? If she’s real, even moving in with her psychiatrist would not work to get her head on straight.

Mark Reed Levin. This Fox News commentator and radio host worked in the Reagan White House and as chief of staff to Attorney General Edwin Meese.

Although Levin has the dour look of a chronic depressive, he is the gold standard of incendiary speech. According to Wikipedia, a 2016 study of ten prominent radio and tv shows known for incendiary discourse on politics scored content on the basis of “misrepresentation,”  “emotional display” and other factors. It found that Levin was the radio host who engaged in the most outrage, using outrage speech or behavior at a rate of more than one instance per minute.

According to Politico, Levin has a “penchant for hysteria.”

There is no point in listing Levin’s nutty outbursts. Just watch or listen, if you dare, and have a supply of Maalox nearby.