If you’re a writer, you only wish you could write this well.
Some excerpts:
According to the news, Kyle Rittenhouse, the man who fatally shot two protesters during the 2020 demonstrations in Kenosha and then became the right-wing’s favorite little armed grievance goblin and mascot for gun worship and “self-defense” cosplay, was hospitalized after a venomous spider bite.
…first of all, let’s discuss why this was even breaking news. Because that is how ridiculous this country is. Somewhere, an editor looked at the state of the world, looked at democracy holding on by a press-on nail, looked at grocery prices, wars, climate disasters, collapsing institutions, and said, “Hold up. Kyle Rittenhouse got bit by a spider? Run that.”
Honestly, America made Kyle Rittenhouse news. Y’all turned that boy into a conservative Pokémon, dragged his ass from podcast to podcast, put him in little suits, handed him microphones, and treated him like the Rosa Parks of shooting people and crying afterward. So now, unfortunately, his spider bite is public affairs. Once you become a mascot for white grievance, even your swelling enters the national record.
What happened to Kyle is ancestral karma. It does not always come as fire from heaven. Sometimes it comes as one bad decision, one swollen ankle, one rash, one venomous bite. And I know somewhere, somebody’s auntie has already said, “That spider was somebody’s great-grandmama.” Y’all can’t tell me otherwise.
I wouldn’t dare try.
Your job as a writer is to read this piece in its entirety right here. First of all, because you can learn from it on multiple levels, but especially to inform your craft. There’s a line from an old song about a spoonful of sugar helping the medicine go down, and this doc is dishing up the bitter medicine of this nation’s racial and recent history with the sugar of a robust sense of humor, and she does it with style.
After I got all the way to the bottom, the grin spreading ever larger across my face as I read, I googled “Kyle Rittenhouse spider bite.”
I did not click through any of the links, because I prefer the doc’s take.
#thiswritinglife Chatter Dr. Stacey Patton The Ancestors Sent a Spider to Bite Kyle Rittenhouse
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Insects are now getting the respect they deserve? “Cork City Council will vote on the motion to build the “world’s smallest statue” in the city dedicated to a mosquito or midge that bit Oliver Cromwell during the siege of Cork.”