S A T U R D A Y, O C T O B E R 5 , 2 0 1 9 . T H E W A S H I N G T O N P O S T EZ RE A
T
his is a case of negligence to the point of
cruelty: The District’s only public psychiat-
ric hospital, St. Elizabeths, has been oper-
ating without running water since last
week.
As first reported by Joshua Kaplan for Washing-
ton City Paper, evidence of dangerous bacteria was
found during a routine water-quality test. Since
then, the patients and staff have not been able to
use tap water to wash their hands, shower or wash
clothing, or drink from the water fountains. Phyllis
Jones, chief of staff for the city’s Department of
Behavioral Health, which runs St. Elizabeths, told
City Paper that until the water is found to be safe
again, the staff is using “an extensive supply of
bottled water, hand sanitizers, personal care body
wipes, and body wash spray” to keep patients clean
and hydrated. Oh yes, it’s reported that the city has
brought in portable showers.
Let this sink in.
St. Elizabeths, currently serving 273 patients,
takes in people with the most serious and persis-
tent mental illnesses who need intensive inpatient
care. It’s where the courts commit people for
mental-health evaluations and care.
It is now where the water supply is contaminat-
ed with pseudomonas and legionella bacteria.
This isn’t the first time such a water crisis has
occurred, City Paper noted.
Three years ago, it said, St. Elizabeths had to cut
off its water after a pipe ruptured, contaminating
the supply. Patients couldn’t wash their hands from
the faucets for five days. They couldn’t drink out of
the taps for six days.
Adam Kushner, a surgeon who has studied
hospitals in developing countries, told City Paper
that when patients and staff are not able to keep
themselves or the linens as clean as usual, it can
lead to hospital-contracted infections. One such
infection, MRSA, killed 20,000 people in the
United States in 2017.
“Not having any running water is horrible. Can
anyone imagine Johns Hopkins or Mass General
not having water?” Kushner told City Paper.
“Maybe for a day. But then it happening again? It
just wouldn’t happen.”
But it happened in the District. And it’s going to
happen again, because the problem isn’t being
permanently fixed. That’s neglect. When the vic-
tims are some of the most dependent people in our
society — people with mental illness — it’s cruel.
It simply doesn’t have to be this way.
The city can’t cry poor-mouth, pleading a lack of
money as a defense for allowing this outrageous
condition to exist.
It’s not a lack of cash; it’s lack of concern and
compassion.
The city has the money.
Here’s how I know.
The D.C. public school system, because of poor
management and internal controls, found itself
facing a $23 million budget shortfall earlier in the
year. School leaders said not to worry because they
planned to end the fiscal year with a balanced
budget.
That promise was as off the mark as the budget
projections that officials asked the D.C. Council to
approve. With the fiscal year ending on Sept. 30,
the school’s budget hole stood at $10.1 million.
To balance the budget, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser
(D) robbed Peter to pay Paul. Aided by the city’s
chief financial officer, Jeffrey S. Dewitt, Bowser
shifted funds to the school system from other city
agencies.
Oh, the District’s got money. Enough money to
fix St. Elizabeths’ pipes, to keep bacteria out of the
hospital’s water supply.
Patients are distressed because there’s no run-
ning water to wash their hands after using the
bathroom; miserable not being able to use the
showers. But they have to wait while, as Jones told
City Paper, St. Elizabeths works “with D.C. Water
and D.C. Health to evaluate options and solutions.”
To hell with that. Fix the damn problem.
The District has the money to do it.
How do I know? The mayor told me so.
It’s right there in a “Letter from the Mayor” dated
Oct. 3.
Bowser said with the start of the new fiscal year
on Oct. 1, she is going to spend “$2.5 million to
ensure every resident is counted in the 2020
Census.” Money is going to be distributed to a
select number of community groups to get the
word out. Cynics might call it “walkin’ around
money.” But I’m not a cynic.
She said she is also going to shell out $2.5 million
for the Immigrant Justice Legal Services grant
program to help fend off anti-immigration forces.
Money, we got.
Enough, according to Bowser, to spend
“$4.7 million for hiring a new bike lane parking
enforcement team and other improvements as part
of Vision Zero” — a plan to shore up pedestrian and
bicycle transportation safety.
As for making and keeping St. Elizabeths’ water
permanently safe — well, the vulnerable and
dependent patients are just going to have to wait
until the city finishes evaluating “options and
solutions.”
Neglect to the point of cruelty.
[email protected]COLBERT I. KINGThe water crisis
at St. Elizabeth’s
“L
OOK AT THIS PHOTOGRAPH.”
These words were made immortal
first by the Canadian band Nickelback in
the 2005 hit single “Photograph,” a very,
very bad song that did very, very well on the radio —
and then again this week by President Trump in a
tweet featuring a snapshot of Joe Biden, his son
Hunter and another man labeled “Ukrainian gas
exec.”
The conceit is simple. The “Photograph” music
video shows Nickelback frontman Chad Kroeger
walking down an empty street, holding a framed
image of Kroeger and the band’s producer up to the
camera. Trump’s riff on an existing meme replaces
that image with a Tucker Carlson “scoop” circulating
on right-wing media.
Trump’s display sent the Internet into fits, partly
because it seemed to crystallize the complete crazi-
ness of the president’s current impeachment-
inspired frenzy. This Ukraine scandal is all so
serious, and yet at the end of day it’s all so silly: The
commander in chief ’s tenure is under existential
threat, and his response is to send out a dumb clip of
Kroeger preparing to ask “what the hell is on Joey’s
head?”
Dumb or dumber, the meme bears demystifying.
It illuminates a basic truth about our president.
People in the meme-generating depths of the Web
did not make Nickelback memes because they liked
Nickelback. They made Nickelback memes because
they did not like Nickelback, and because Nickel-
back was everywhere anyway. The music was barely
musical; it was a crummy commodity foisted upon
the citizenry by people trying to sell us stuff. The
record industry shoved “Photograph” in our faces
the same way Kroeger thrusts the frame toward his
audience, as though commanding us to care.
So this begat Nickelbacking, a relative of Rickroll-
ing that involves, basically, calling someone on the
phone and playing Nickelback. It begat a Facebook
page setting up a contest for likes between Nickel-
back and a pickle. (The pickle won.) It begat the
“Photograph” bit, which struck at the emptiness at
the song’s center. You could replace that picture with
anything at all, because it meant nothing.
Nickelback didn’t exactly become famous for
being famous. The band became famous for being
famous despite being horrible. That makes Trump
the Nickelback president. He was elevated to the top
of society despite being utterly deplorable — and
also because he was utterly deplorable.
But there’s more to it. The initial transformation
of Nickelback from anodyne Top-40ers to detested
Webwide phenom actually spawned an intelligent
critique and is an excellent example of what Dale
Beran, author of “It Came from Something Awful:
How a Toxic Troll Army Accidentally Memed Donald
Trump into Office,” argues that memes are all about.
Disenchanted netizens spent their time dumpster-
diving for societal detritus and mushing it back
together to mock the world that created it, or at least
to underscore its meaninglessness.
Trump, however, wasn’t sharing Nickelback be-
cause he’s a nihilist, or because he’s addicted to
irony, or because he gets it at all. He was sharing
Nickelback because he doesn’t get it.
There’s something known to those who grew up
online as a “cursed boomer meme.” These memes are
cursed because they are, basically, bad: occasionally
indecipherable and almost never achieving the
effect they intend. They’re boomer memes because
they come from that crowd-of-a-certain-age that
seems to have stumbled onto the Internet and now
keeps bumping into things.
Many of these memes are variations on formats
popular among millennials but warped to the edges
of recognition by some soon-to-be grandfather who
has recently discovered the wonders of Photoshop:
“Orange man is a scary monster,” a sign reads in
front of a flannel-clad student at a table. “CHANGE
MY DIAPER.” Some are originals, borrowing only
the conventions of meme-making — macros with the
white Impact typeface, say, or excessive collaging —
to build something bafflingly new. Most of all,
they’re deadly earnest, which is sort of the opposite
of what memes are supposed to be.
It’s not that the president loves memes, though
he does. It’s that he loves these cursed memes in
particular. Because as much as Trump is the
Nickelback president, or the post-truth president,
or the reality-TV president, or the 140-character
president, he is, above all, the cursed boomer
president.
Trump is full of the emptiness in the “Photograph”
frame. He is more commodity than man, and his
every absurd action makes a mockery of the culture
that created him. The problem is, unlike the Web
dwellers who originated so much of the vernacular
he has adopted for his own — whether they’re his
friends on 4chan, or his foes on Twitter, or a mix of
both on Reddit or anywhere else — he doesn’t know
there’s anything funny about it.
The Nickelback meme’s appearance on a Wednes-
day afternoon dramatized a contortion that is a
constant in today’s America. Trump is dangerous,
but he’s also ridiculous — a peril and a parody at the
same time.
Twitter: @mollylrobertsMOLLY ROBERTSThe Nickelback
joke Trump
doesn’t get
“There are different ways to bake the cake, de
pending on what sort of cake you want. Different
flavoring, different temperatures, different ingredi
ents yield different types of cake, and the president
as the master baker is testing recipes and deciding
what type of cake he wants.”
— A senior administration official
explaining President Trump’s approach
to impeachment to The PostF
or the last time, this is all part of the plan.
Getting himself impeached is actually a
strategic triumph for President Trump, and
anyone who thinks otherwise is just not
playing chess in enough dimensions. Consider what
is the greater mark of strategic genius: to mire
yourself and your administration in an endless
series of idiotic and pointless controversies, often
rife with misspellings, damaging your standing at
home and abroad, or to NOT do that? If you say thesecond, you are a fool. This is all part of the plan.
Actually, this is good. Actually, this is great.
I repeat, every move that Trump makes, has made
or is making, currently, with the president of
Finland sitting helplessly by his side, wearing an
expression of alarm, is planned. It is a genius plan. It
might look like the random, haphazard flailing of a
cat that has gotten its head stuck in a bucket. But
actually, he is in total control.
He is like a master baker, preparing everything
just exactly the way he would like it. You can’t make a
cake without breaking eggs! That is why he has
broken all the eggs and will not stop breaking eggs
until there are no eggs anymore. He is baking the
chess pieces into a cake, and it is brilliant, and that is
why no one has thought to do it before. If it looks
messy, if it looks like he is covered in batter and
surrounded by trolls and incompetents and family
members (but I repeat myself ) — well, that is not
correct. I’m embarrassed that you would think thatmaybe he did not know what he was doing, just
because he looked and sounded and acted as if he did
not know what he was doing. Really, the fool here is
you.
Ah, the genius of this man! Moriarty wept, and
also the Borgias, and also Jesus, although that may
have been for unrelated reasons. His is the shrewd-
ness of Alexander the Great, cutting through the
Gordian knot. He has the vision to cut through
things, even if the things he is cutting through say
“THIS IS LOAD-BEARING. DON’T CUT.” He dares to
push the buttons labeled “DO NOT PUSH: WON’T
DO ANYTHING GOOD, AND WILL RELEASE
OPOSSUM.” There is no puzzle, norm or rule of
whatever degree of complexity he cannot immedi-
ately dismantle with a single movement.
Don’t embarrass yourself by saying, “This is
embarrassing!” or “That is not how you spell ‘little’ ”
or “That isn’t a hyphen” or “A *MOAT* with
ALLIGATORS? Oh, for blank’s sake.” Don’t you see?You are playing into his hands. He wants you to get
caught up in this! Only to someone with a small, sad
brain like yours would these seem like the move-
ments of a lost, perplexed, damaged person who did
not understand what a hyphen was and was too
embarrassed to ask, who thought “jock strap” was a
dirty word, who genuinely has a temper tantrum
when told a moat full of alligators around the
country would be neither good nor feasible. This
man is astronomical units beyond our frail capacity
to understand. The kind of chess he is playing has
not even been invented yet. If he appears to be
chewing on the pieces and crying, that is his strategy.
It has to be! It cannot be that he is exactly as he
appears, that I am doing all this on my own, that I
have poured all my intellect into a bottomless void
around which time itself seems to warp. It cannot be
that he is exactly as he appears. Or why else would he
be defeating me?
Twitter: @petridishesALEXANDRA PETRIFor the last time, Trump’s every move is brilliant and calculated
D R A W I N G B O A R DBY CLAYTOONZ.COMBY MATT DAVIES FOR NEWSDAYBY KAL FOR THE ECONOMISTBY DANZIGER FOR THE RUTLAND HERALD