SO WHAT

 So What?                                                                                                                                                       I'm still a rock star                                                                                                                                       I got my rock moves                                                                                                                                 And I don't need you                                                                                                                               And guess what?                                                                                                                                       I'm having more fun                                                                                                                                   Now that we're done                                                                                                                                  I'm gonna show you tonight                                                                                                                     I'm alright                                                                                                                                                   I'm just fine                                                                                                                                             And you're a tool                                                                                                                                       So, so what?                                                                                                                                              I'm still a rock star                                                                                                                                         I got my rock moves                                                                                                                                And I don't want you tonight...

So What, Pink

Pink had the best "So What?", and the most famous, until Wednesday, when the court in DC ordered a partial disclosure of the evidence against the former president #45 and here's one of the things it showed: 

After the former president posted on X (formerly Twitter) that "Mike Pence (formerly the vice president) had let them all down", it enraged his supporters (formerly Americans) and the mob focused their attention on finding and harming (killing) Mike Pence which then caused the Secret Service to take extreme actions to save the Vice President.  

According to the Smith/Special Counsel pleading that was unveiled, that caused an aide to rush into the room the President was in watching television. The aide told the President what was occurring and the mob's desire to find and kill Vice President Pence, which caused the President to say.... wait for it....

"SO WHAT?'

From the special counsel's pleading: "The content of the 2:24 p.m. tweet was not a message sent to address a matter of public concern and ease unrest; it was the message of an angry candidate upon the realization that he would lose power." 

The "so what" utterance has become the most infamous idiom in American Presidential History.

Lincoln spoke about our better angels. 

FDR told the nation that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself. 

JFK challenged citizens to ask what they could do for their country.

Ronald Regan spoke of a shinning city on a hill where it would always be, for him, morning in America. 

And POTUS 45, after inciting a mob to storm the capitol and kill the vice president, sneered "so what" when told the secret service was worried about their ability to protect the vice president. 

Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is a mental health condition that causes people to have an inflated sense of self-importance, a need for admiration, and a lack of empathy for others. People with NPD may appear boastful, arrogant, or unlikeable.   

SO WHAT that we are not a doctor; we can make a diagnosis. 

This is one of our favourite non-Springsteen songs, enjoy:

                     

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

 Happy 100th Birthday to James Earl Carter, the 39th President of the United States. 

This op ed piece in the NY Times says it better than we can. 

I hope you know what it means to white Southerners like me, then and now, to have had your example at a time when there were vanishingly few role models among white Southerners. Or what it means to white Christians like me, then and now, to have had your example of what living by the Gospels really means.

...

You are a child of the Jim Crow South who grew up on a farm at a time when Black sharecroppers were hardly more than slaves. But even raised in that world, you understood the injustice of it. “The time for racial discrimination is over,” you said at your gubernatorial inauguration in 1971. Your audience audibly gasped, but for the rest of your political career, you worked to even the playing field for Black Americans.

...

Your presidency was doomed by wars and unrest in the Middle East that led to oil and gas shortages here and to a hostage crisis in Iran that broke your heart and ours. But you recognized the looming threat of climate change even then, understanding that reliance on foreign oil was not the real danger we faced. I can’t help but wonder where the world would be now if Americans had embraced the environmental policies you initiated nearly 50 years ago.

Much of what you worked to do for the environment during your presidency was nothing less than visionary. Using executive powers, you protected a vast swath of the Alaskan wilderness, in the process doubling the size of the national parks system. You directed federal funds toward the development of renewable energy and installed solar panels on the White House. You began an enormous federal effort to bring the country to energy independence and tried to lead us by calling on our own better angels to make it through the crisis in the meantime.