Do Better, RT!

Wherein I whine at the Russian propaganda outlet for whining at the American embassy by means of a projector.

Good Afternoon:

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so I suppose I should be flattered by RT’s recent protest at the U.S. embassy in Moscow, which bore a suspicious similarity to my modus operandi. And I am. Really.

RT is upset because of recent federal enforcement actions and the propaganda channel’s being banned from Meta platforms, and it chose a distinctive way to show it.

As the organization explained in a press release:

The United States government has recently issued new sanctions against RT and its State Department announced a new “diplomatic campaign” – “to rally allies and partners around the world to join us in addressing the threat posed by RT....” 

Tonight, as part of RT’s response, the bright green RT logo is lighting up the façade of the US Embassy building in Moscow, with a message: “We’re not going away”. Not in the US, not in the West at large, not in the rest of the world. 

Yet grateful as I am to the folks at RT for this homage, I am troubled by several aspects of this operation:

• First, the quality of the projection is low. Notice how blurry the English is. The Russian is essentially illegible at the angle this video was shot from. Even the logo is kind of muddy. The image is admittedly much better in the version that accompanies the press release, but dudes, nobody reads press release. You gotta get the Twitter version right. If you’re gonna run with the big dogs, RT, you gotta learn to piss in the tall grass.

• Second, notice how the U.S. embassy doesn’t respond. There’s no dramatic tension in this video because, well, nothing happens. Memo to some folks in a different embassy in a different city: the American response to this stunt is surprisingly effective, and the stunt got almost no attention. Who would have thunk it?

• Third, there’s something faintly ridiculous about a big, state-backed media organization doing an embassy projection on behalf of, well, itself. When I project on an embassy, I’m just a guy with a projector and a few friends. And I’m doing it on behalf of a lot of people who have no way of expressing their rage at Russian actions in their country. I would feel deeply ridiculous standing outside the Russian embassy projecting, say, “I need a visa, please” or “My tax refund is late.” How much more so if I were a powerful organization that, say, could broadcast my complaints to the four corners of the globe. Media organizations don’t need to project on embassies, because, well, they’re media organizations.

• Finally, fourth, I want credit, damnit! To be sure, when the crimes of the very unestimable Margarita Simonyan are catalogued, the theft of my concept for protests at embassies and its deployment against my own country will rank low. But yeesh, girl! Can’t you come up with anything original? As a Ukrainian friend texted me last week when I alerted her to the heist, “You are FUCKING KIDDING ME. They steal EVERYTHING!” It’s not a washing machine, but yeah.

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Here’s last week’s appearance by the estimable Renee DiResta on #DogShirtTV:

And here’s the podcast version:

And here’s this week’s #DogShirtTV schedule, which is a bit abbreviated because of the coming Rosh Hashanah holiday.

Tomorrow morning at 8:00 am Eastern time, the estimable Anastasiia Lapatina will join me from Kyiv for the first session of “Kava y Vyno,” or “Coffee and Wine”—so called because it will take place over my morning coffee and a glass of whatever late afternoon libation Nastya may wish to drink. This will be the first ever morning session of #DogShirtTV, and I’m excited about it, because live-streaming over morning coffee might just be a great idea. Also Nastya, whose

Yours Ukrainian

Substack I have flacked a few times and to which you should subscribe, is seriously smart, knowledgeable, and fun.

Then, on Wednesday at 4:00 pm Eastern time, I will be joined by the estimable Alan Rozenshtein, whose name I will make a point of mispronouncing. I have little idea what we’ll be talking about, except that it will surely involve the vice presidential debate and California Governor Gavin Newsom’s veto of an AI regulation bill.

Access to the live studio for both events is available below the paywall.

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As close readers of #DogShirtDaily know, there is a high bar for domestic dogs and cats to become the #BeastOfTheDay. Without the rule requiring that such animals, estimable though they may, perform an act of valor to win the honor, I would be inundated with requests for people’s pets to be the #BeastOfTheDay, and we just can’t have that.

But a cat named Rayne Beau has cleared the threshold with room to spare. The New York Times reports:

When a cat dashed into the woods of Yellowstone National Park during a camping trip in June, his California owners, Benny and Susanne Anguiano, thought they’d never see him again.

The couple searched for five days through the woods near their campground at Fishing Bridge R.V. Park but never found their 2-year-old male Siamese cat, Rayne Beau, pronounced “rainbow.” Mrs. Anguiano said that Rayne Beau’s sister, Starr, started to meow through the screen door of the trailer. Eventually, when the couple made the tough decision to drive home to Salinas, Calif., Starr, who had never been away from her brother, meowed all the way back.

“Leaving him was unthinkable,” Mrs. Anguiano said. “I felt like I was abandoning him.”

But almost two months later, Rayne Beau was found wandering the streets of Roseville, Calif., three hours north of where the Anguianos live and more than 800 miles away from Yellowstone National Park, as first reported by the news station KSBW.