I just learned that there will not be a second season of “A League of Their Own,” and that is a big bummer. Abbi Jacobson is a goddess and a genius and a star and this is an outrage.
To be clear, I do not blame the striking Hollywood writers and actors. I support them 100%. I blame higher ups in the industry who don’t give a shit about the artists who make their “product” and would be happy to pay them next to nothing and/or replace them with AI bots.
I am disappointed. I know that this is but one small disappointment in the grand scheme of things, but there have just been SO MANY lately. Would a second season of “A League of Their Own” solve the issue of transphobic laws being passed across the country? Would it have stopped libraries from taking LGBTQ+ books off of their shelves? Would it have made Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump drop out of the presidential race and enter lives of hermetic silence? We’ll never know.
Granted, it probably wouldn’t have stopped Abigail Jo Shry from leaving incredibly racist voicemail messages for Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) and U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is overseeing the criminal prosecution of disgraced former president Trump for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election.
Shry, from Texas, called Chutkan a racial slur and said “You are in our sights, we want to kill you. Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you, so tread lightly, bitch.”
According to NPR, she also threatened to kill “Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat, all Washington Democrats, broadly, and all members of the LGBTQ community, according to the Department of Homeland Security special agent who signed the court filing.”
That’s… an awfully long list. I mean, the energy it takes to hate that many people, not to mention plotting their murders.
According to reports, Shry has been charged four times for doing similar shit in the past year.
“According to her father,” The Advocate reports, “she is a nonviolent alcoholic who sits on her couch watching the news all day, becomes drunk and agitated, and then calls around making threats.”
Not unlike the disgraced former president himself (just replace alcohol with Diet Coke).
Look, I don’t know what Shry’s issues are. If she’s an alcoholic, I hope she is able to recognize that, ask for help, and receive it. That said, calling people up to tell them you want to kill them doesn’t sound like the hobby of a nonviolent person. Also, there are no doubt plenty more Abigail Jo Shrys in this country.
“Even though this individual may have certain issues we don’t know, who else is thinking about it?” Jackson Lee told CNN. “The temperature needs to be brought down, and the former president needs to be actively engaged in stopping the hysteria and egging people on, provoking them to do things that are against the Constitution and the order of this nation. Law and order has to prevail, not only for us, but for him.”
Alas, Trump is engaged in exactly the opposite. And he has no real incentive to stop. This is the stuff his followers love. They love his hate because his hate is their hate. At least, that’s what they think. But Trump sycophants like Shry don’t seem to realize that Trump hates them, too. In his eyes, they’re losers because they aren’t rich like him. But he’s perfectly happy to let them wreck their lives defending his name.
And they are apparently happy to do it. As USA Today reports, “Last year, federal officials charged more people over public threats — against elected officials, law enforcement and judicial officials, educators and health care workers — than in any of the previous 10 years, according to research from the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center at the University of Nebraska, Omaha.”
And this isn’t a “both sides” issue. “The majority of the threats currently being prosecuted by the federal government are coming from the far-right,” according to USA Today.
Sadly, it’s only going to get worse as we move toward the 2024 election. Brace yourselves.