Even if you aren’t old enough to remember the heyday of Columbia House, you’re probably familiar with the scam at its center. The mail-order club would offer customers eight to 12 CDs, tapes, records — and, in later years, DVDs and blu-rays — for a penny. By agreeing to the arrangement, users were signed up for a scheme where they agreed to purchase a certain number of products over a specific amount of time at full price. Each month, they were sent a mailer promoting the “Selection of the Month,” and if the customer failed to return the rejection form, Columbia House would send them the new release and charge their account.  

The practice of requiring customers to opt-out or be charged is called negative-option billing, and it inspired no end of complaints from customers. Columbia House drew further claims of bad business by allegedly refusing to acknowledge payments, discounting items so that users’ purchases fell just below the agreed-upon threshold and being a notoriously difficult subscription to terminate.

Columbia House was a bum deal for musicians as well, selling the CDs at a reduced price and offering the artists a smaller royalty percentage, the argument being that the cut paid for the mail-order club’s marketing. That Columbia House was owned by massive record labels for much of its existence, and that the club manufactured their own cheaper versions of the releases to cut costs, gave the whole process an even more corrupt odor. Pearl Jam protested the practices of Columbia House, and the bum deal it gave artists, but made little headway as the club boomed to 16 million members in the 1990s. 

Given all that, I was somewhat surprised to see heartfelt eulogies for the mail-order racket when Columbia House announced it was ceasing operations later this year. Social media buzzed with stories about how “magical” it was to get CDs in far-flung locations. One academic who immigrated to the United States said junk mail from the retailer helped convince her that she’d really become an American. Others lamented the death of a “part of their childhood.” 

Most of the rosy posts made some mention of the fact that Columbia House’s operation was unethical at best, but that the customer-service runarounds, unwelcome bills and general scuzziness had all faded with time. Where the company was once the best-known name in media rip-offs, it now leaves behind only mass-produced plastic and fuzzy memories. 

Like Blockbuster, which was decried in its time as a killer of mom-and-pop video stores that ripped off customers with steep late fees, Columbia House died long after the average music consumer ceased doing business with it. That can account for at least some of the paeans to building a music collection on the cheap, or paying extortionate prices for movies once your skeevier dollar-video-shop was run out of town, but it’s far from the whole story. Awash in constant robot spam callers seeking sensitive information, in a country where the president is running his own cryptocurrency grift, the Columbia House swindle feels quaint.

In part, this is thanks to the technology at the heart of Columbia House. In an era before widespread tracking technology followed everyone’s consumption habits around the internet, Columbia House was remarkably easy to scam back. People signed up their pets, used aliases and played games with mailing addresses to bilk the company out of new releases for less than the cost of a penny. The ads, which came as paper mailers — in contrast to soon-to-be popular malware, pop-up ads and phishing emails — were decidedly less invasive and easily ignored. (After all, their easy-to-miss nature was a key part of the Columbia House business model.) 

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And unlike the bank-draining, generative AI-boosted rip-offs of 2026, you did actually get something for your trouble. Customers who forgot to send a postcard saying they wanted nothing to do with ‘90s Steven Tyler can still point to a copy of “Nine Lives” on their shelves. My own classic-rock-loving father ended up with copies of Whitney Houston and Alanis Morissette albums that he, left to his own devices, wouldn’t have sought out. But “Heartbreak Hotel” and “You Oughtta Know” were regularly spun in the car.  

Nowadays, the taboo around scamming has fallen out of fashion with Gen Z, who see devious business models as a way to get ahead in a rigged economy. Amazon and other online marketplaces created a boom for drop-shippers to mark up products without providing any further value to customers. The internet-savvy and unscrupulous were quick to cash in. More than a decade after scam rap emerged from the buzzier, grimier corners of Detroit hip-hop, a scammer anthem from a South Floridian is arguably the song of the summer. 

Americans lose more than $100 billion to scams every single year. As more and more of the country’s citizens feel like they’re being had, the Trump administration doesn’t seem to be rushing to stop the con. In fact, there’s plenty of evidence that they could be in on it.

White House insiders are reportedly using privileged information to place wagers on grey-area betting platforms. Nine accounts on the platform Polymarket made millions on U.S. military actions in Iran, winning nearly all of their 80 wagers on U.S. strikes and ceasefire negotiations. The former White House teleprompter operator allegedly made tens of thousands placing bets on what words Donald Trump might use in his speeches. The president himself has spent much of his second term accepting luxurious gifts and donations that sure read like bribes in the right light. Trump has increased his net worth by more than $2 billion in his second term, largely through the launch of a crypto firm operated by his sons. He accepted a $400 million jet from the royal family of Qatar and has pardoned multiple people after their families made large donations to his campaign. Former White House ethics czar Norm Eisen told the Washington Post that Trump had “fully monetize[d] the Oval Office” and was carrying out “corruption on a scale that . . . has few rivals in world history.”

What’s paying full price for an Ugly Kid Joe CD you never wanted compared to all that?

The post Columbia House closure sparks nostalgia for a bygone music scam appeared first on Salon.com.

Now that Donald Trump no longer has a White House press secretary with a ready cherubic smile and a ton of snark, we can all see that the paint is peeling off his delusional presidency. 

I’m not just talking about the Reflecting Pool.

Republicans like Rep. Byron Donalds, now the GOP nominee to succeed Ron DeSantis as governor of Florida, has habitually and enthusiastically repeated and amplified Trump’s whims and still claims with a straight face — as he did on Fox News this week — that Democratic policy and the actions of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are responsible for the horror under which we currently live. Never mind the fact the Democrats currently hold no power in Washington and can’t implement any policies of any kind.

At least Republicans are finally, if obliquely, admitting that things aren’t so good in the country. Trump, however, isn’t ready to concede that. According to him, America would have burst into flames and melted into the bedrock mantle if he hadn’t come to town. Now? We hear many in and out of government saying that his presence ensures the outcome he predicted the Democrats would visit upon us all. 

Like I say, the paint is peeling. 

Time for this commercial break. On Wednesday, Trump was seen on the South Lawn praising a brand of fertilizer made by a company that, as he noted, had given him a sizable campaign contribution. Trump says it’s great stuff. Hey, they paid. He played. Very often, he is exactly as transparent as he claims to be. At the end of this live commercial he said that this fertilizer made for “happy grass.” He sounded like he’d been smoking some of that stuff. 

On the one hand, this is incredible corruption, but if you’re a CEO, having the president push your product directly in front of the White House isn’t a bad thing. You can’t blame business for doing what business does. You can blame the rest of us for not stopping it before it got this bad.

Yep, the paint is peeling.

To overcome the absence of departed pep secretary Karoline Leavitt, Byron Donalds and the rest of Trump’s puppets have been dancing long and hard lately. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson told reporters the economy had taken off and was on its way into the stratosphere until we experienced this little detour “called Iran.” You could say he unwittingly justified every American’s anger over a pointless, useless war that is making all our lives more difficult and more expensive. He was trying to back up his leader, but accidentally threw him to the wolves. But was it really accidental? 

The key point here is that the GOP has been in charge in D.C. for more than a year and a half. Republicans control the Senate, the House, the Supreme Court and the presidency. They vowed they’d fix the economy and have only moved the needle backward. Everyone who pays rent, utilities and grocery bills and worries about what they’ll do if they have to face a sudden health crisis knows it.

Republicans are screaming about socialism ruining the country while those so-called socialists are pushing free healthcare. Who do you think the American public will listen to? The GOP’s pitch was, roughly speaking, that they could use extreme methods to take care of the cleanup on aisle seven. They have obviously failed. Now other folks are making the same claim from the opposite side of the court. I remain skeptical that any political party in this country can affect real and lasting positive change. They’re too busy demonizing each other, with Trump as lead demon who, along with other minor imps, feed on the filthy lucre of oligarchs and billionaires.

Even if Trump and his lesser demons, in their bacchanalian zeal, were right in pinning blame for how the country got the way it is on Biden and the Democrats — and I’m not saying they are — their self-incriminating statements amount to admitting that they can’t handle the problem either. If you got elected to fix the system and nearly two years later everything is much worse, then it’s time to hire a new plumber — and not the Richard Nixon type.

Making a sale to the electorate as a Republican this year is a difficult task indeed. Even the disorganized Democrats might be able to crawl over that low bar. We can’t say a GOP victory is impossible, but it seems conditional on a variety of narrowing possibilities, especially considering the accused criminals, domestic abusers and otherwise morally bankrupt candidates they are offering us. Then there are the Democrats. All the Republicans can do is accuse the party that’s out of power of somehow wielding the power, and doing so as part of a sinister communist conspiracy. These midterms promise to be fun: the old and befuddled far right versus the young and arrogant far left, vying for attention and a chance to feed at the public trough.

Even corrupt public servants deserve a second chance. Sure, some of them should have to work in soup kitchens for a decade to earn that second chance — you know, in addition to whatever prison time they serve. After all, we want good people. 

But no one who’s been convicted of 34 felonies should get another chance. If he never goes to prison, he should be forced to work the rest of his natural life handing out free meals in a soup kitchen in an impoverished  county in the Deep South, with weekends spent answering phones on the substance abuse hotline. 

Paint peeling. Hear it?

Remember Michael Cohen? He was the former Trump “fixer” who testified against his ex-boss in the New York criminal case. He also testified in a highly publicized congressional hearing on Feb. 27, 2019, telling the House Oversight Committee that Trump was a “racist,” a “con man” and a “cheat.”

On his podcast, Cohen he has often referred to Trump with a scatological insult (“VonS***zInPantz”), which even entered the official court transcript during the 2024 hush-money trial when Trump’s defense attorney brought it up.

But the paint is peeling, and Cohen recently got a chance to interview Trump for his podcast. Some liberals who have welcomed Cohen’s criticisms of Trump are now calling him a weasel, a sell-out and worse, turning the scatological nickname back at him. Hey, the American public can be crude and cruel. Those two guys definitely know about that.

For the documentary “The First 100 Days,” I asked Cohen in January 2025 what he might ask Trump if he got the chance to talk to him. Cohen said he believed he was owed an explanation.

Many journalists would love to get the opportunity to interview Trump one-on-one, and might pursue more ambitious lines of questioning. The fact that Trump gave an interview to someone who has publicly called him a racist, a con man and a cheat, and who has suggested that the president is incontinent, says a lot about both men. Hey, it should give us hope. It sounds like Trump is desperate to tell his story to literally anyone.

Few, perhaps, would have employed the same tactics Cohen used. But the folks at Breitbart, News Nation and similar outlets who preface their briefing-room questions by referencing “mainstream media” can only wish they were as successful as Cohen in getting Trump on their show.

Those who do interview Trump should treat him no differently than we used to treat the accused criminals we interviewed on “America’s Most Wanted.” That’s why I’ll never interview him while he’s president. 

So how did Cohen’s interview with Trump turn out? On Thursday we got a preview. It sounded a lot like Trump’s standard stump speech. He began by saying the country is doing well and Cohen responding, “Thanks to you, Mr. President.” Both said they were victims of a “weaponized” Department of Justice. Later on, Cohen volunteered to stage a presidential press conference and played “Reunited” by Peaches & Herb. People are too busy searching for things “to be enraged about,” he said. Cohen ended the 20-minute preview by saying that he’s putting the past behind him and that the $40 trillion national debt is a huge problem. Then he played “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” by War. 

Would it surprise me to see Cohen named as the next press secretary? Not as much as it should. And Trump would throw him under the bus, first chance he got. Why not? He’s done it before.

Again, the paint is peeling.

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Jokes aside, if I got the opportunity to sit down with Trump, I would treat him with the respect due his office, even though he has done nothing personally to deserve that.I would make clear the interview is for the American public at large, not for my entertainment. I would ask the questions. In a sane world he would provide answers that could facilitate greater understanding of his actions and motivations, and how he believes those actions will benefit the American people. 

Trump’s gift in the past was the ability to sell an alternate reality. He now does that very poorly, and by asking the proper questions we might be able to clarify this country’s predicament — as if many of us haven’t already come to the conclusion that we’re terminally screwed.  

When people get a chance to interview the president — any president, not just this one — the issues and questions should be well researched and precise, in hopes of eliciting responses that are concise and specific. Too much of today’s political discourse consists of “gotcha” moments. Those of us in the press do it. Politicians marinate themselves in it. Trump perfected it. No other president has ever called a reporter “Piggy,” much less gotten away with it.

And if reporters are not playing the gotcha moment, then we are too often serving  as propagandists for those in power. Then again, many of us just don’t know how to ask real questions. 

Yeah, the paint is peeling.

What could be more symbolic of the depths of depravity we’ve hit than a president literally giving a paid testimonial on the White House lawn for fertilizer? While the punchlines write themselves, I never had that on my bingo card. I never even imagined such a possibility. It’s a criminal act and an empty and meaningless prostitution of the office. It demeans the entire nation, and adds to the instability in the world.

And what can your average White House reporter do? Not much, beyond watching the turgid, disconcerting vomitorium we call politics with a jaundiced eye, careful of the manipulations and machinations of those who are out to feed their own greed while screwing the rest of us into the ground. It helps if we can laugh about it. 

As we can clearly see this week, the paint is peeling and we have no way to fix it.  

Can I interest you in some fertilizer? Everybody needs “happy grass.”

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Donald Trump showed up at a Las Vegas rally on Wednesday night singing the same out-of-tune song he has belched out ever since he got his revenge over the Democrats in 2024 and clawed his way back into the White House. During that time, he has waged illegal wars, killed innocent people and committed war crimes against enemies real and imagined. 

Since his return Trump has consistently alienated and enraged U.S. allies while going out of his way to coddle and occasionally enrage nations more often viewed as enemies. Except for Iran, of course, which he alternately bombs, demonizes and flatters. He invaded Venezuela to serve  a warrant. He has ordered missile attacks on boats at sea without cause, evidence or due process. Hey, the crews have to stay sharp, right? 

Here at home, Trump has destroyed the East Wing, the South Lawn, the Kennedy Center and the Rose Garden, while crowding the city with young National Guard troops who have little or no desire to be there. Trump doesn’t care. Those men and women in uniform are just props used to exercise control so he can crow about how safe the city is. If he decides to call for martial law, he’ll conveniently already have boots on the ground in D.C. 

While preparing for the country’s planned celebration of its 250th birthday, Trump decided to do a little housecleaning and update the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, vowing  to make it better than ever. As usual with this guy, we got a lot less than he promised, though he continues to tell us how “big and beautiful” the pool is — or rather was, until “vandals” destroyed it. 

He issued a no-bid contract to a company that botched the renovation, according to staunch Trump loyalist Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C. That revelation came out only after former Olympic canoeist Jeff Hearn got hit with a felony charge, apparently for picking up a piece of the pool’s peeling paint from the renovation. 

Immediately after his arrest, Pirro and Trump claimed they had definitive proof Hearn had caused more than $1,000 in damage. He was then indicted. Only after that did Pirro bother to review the evidence and conclude the renovation was at fault.

Wake up, kids: I’ve seen this behavior before.

When I was just a little boy, standing to my daddy’s knee, my pop took me to visit my Aunt Bill and Uncle Beverly on their farm outside Bardstown, Kentucky.

Yes, Aunt Bill and Uncle Beverly. I thought they’d gotten named backward when I first met them. They were great people and it was a great place to live. Their farmhouse was already old when I first saw it in 1966, complete with a chicken coop out back.

It also featured what we’d now call a “vintage” kitchen, featuring antique appliances. The end of the Great Depression was just 25 years in our rearview mirror, but the stains were still easily seen throughout rural Kentucky. 

A few minutes after I met Aunt Bill for the first time, she said something that struck me funny. I may have heard this expression before, but to this day, I hear Aunt Bill’s voice in my head saying, “Honey, quit running around like a chicken with its head cut off.” I heard that as I fled a pursuing bumblebee, with an emphasis on “quit” that sounded like a meat cleaver going through a chicken’s neck. 

I laughed trying to visualize what she said. The only thing I could think of was a Bugs Bunny cartoon. My parents assured me that Aunt Bill’s description was every bit as accurate as she was colorful. I refused to believe them, and must have been strident enough that my aunt asked my mom if she’d allow me to witness her prepare the chicken casserole she planned to serve that night. I was a bit suspicious of the use of the word “witness” instead of the more familiar “watch.”

What was this all about? I soon found out. My aunt took me out to the chicken coop and demonstrated, with a large cleaver, not only the origination of the saying but how one “prepared” an appropriately sized hen for the family dinner.

What I felt in that moment is exactly how I feel about American politics in 2026.You could make the argument that most of what passes for culture on this planet resembles a headless chicken spewing blood everywhere as it stumbles around aimlessly for a few minutes before falling over dead and becoming food for something else.

On the surface, things seem deceptively quiet, even normal, if you ignore the mass shootings, the war, the cyclosporiasis, the Trump “sports curse” and the hole that used to be the East Wing. Congress still meets. The president does whatever the hell he does. The Supreme Court hears cases. Wall Street keeps moving upward. Large media companies produce endless amounts of entertainment and news.

But look below the surface and you see a Supreme Court bought and sold to a cause that isn’t the Constitution. You see unending greed. Congress is paralyzed, brain-dead and greedy, a political zombie. 

Just consider Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And his brain worm. 

The HHS secretary recently and proudly told a reporter he had no gag reflex. While that may explain his affiliation with Trump, Kennedy also said he could literally pick up anything dead along the side of the road and eat it. 

Once again, I have to circle around to the movie “Idiocracy.” I have previously compared Trump’s administration to the fictional world of that movie, while noting that it wasn’t supposed to be a documentary. In fact, I’ve made a huge error. The world “Idiocracy” is much less stupid than our reality. Remember that this president suggested treating COVID by injecting bleach. His two terms as president will likely serve as textbook examples of extreme government corruption. His name is destined to become a rude punchline or be completely forgotten. Either will do.

If there are still ratings to be gained from reporting on his nonsense, the corporate media will continuously keep doing that until a more profitable scandal comes along. 

Still, I must insist that the existential angst of the United States is much larger than Donald Trump, though we apparently love hearing about him. So does he, I assure you. Cheer him, mock him or despise him; he’ll be here all week, so try the veal. He thrives on the attention. 

Unless the Democrats win decisive control of both the House and the Senate this fall, or miraculously find a boatload of Trump supporters to vote for impeachment and convict him — and both seem unlikely — Trump will be president until he dies or his term ends. In  both cases, we can’t be sure he won’t stick around. If Mitch McConnell can disappear for weeks and still hold office, there’s nothing keeping Trump from doing the same. 

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Are we Rome after the empire has fallen? Would we even know it if we were? Many Romans didn’t know that at first. Will it take years to recognize our current situation for what it really is?

We have a president who does commercial breaks in his own public speeches for corporations that make him money. He loves insider trading, and engages in it based on decisions he makes as president. He should really be wearing a NASCAR jumpsuit with  his corporate sponsors displayed on his back and sleeves. Make it brilliant white, with gold piping and epaulets, and I guarantee he’d wear it.

There are no principles in this administration beyond the principle of making money. There are no values that can’t be counted in dollars. If you don’t like it, you get to meet the muscle. At least until we run out of bullets, or Pete Hegseth quits staring at himself longingly in his full-length mirror.

Just as the Reflecting Pool debacle exposes Trump, it also exposes the real existential threat to America. We have abandoned many of the ideals that founded the country. We exercise no caution. We don’t respect our institutions, even the good ones. Many ignore the Constitution. Some want to gut it. Some openly embrace bigotry, deny science, despise free enterprise and hate the contributions made by immigrants — one of the coolest aspects of our national narrative. 

We have literally and metaphorically tried to erase our actual history in favor of a mythical past that never existed — even in bad LSD trips.

What we’re left with is an intolerant society where might makes right, the ends justify the means and Anthony Fauci is thought to be guilty of corruption, greed and crimes against humanity, with no more evidence than was presented in the Reflecting Pool case. 

That case has a singular importance because it displays Trump’s heartless and vindictive nature over the smallest issues. Indict before you investigate. Threaten the world, including your own U.S. attorney when the corruption is exposed. Rinse and repeat. Keep lying about everything.

There’s no case against the canoeist. There’s no case against Fauci. We can’t trust Trump on anything. He runs around like a chicken with his head cut off, trying to avoid questions about Jeffrey Epstein, his long list of no-bid contracts, and a wealth of other misdeeds. The press and the public also have that headless-chicken quality, running about reporting and consuming the latest outrages, while missing the larger point: Our government doesn’t work when we are at cross purposes. Of course being headless chickens we can’t think much. 

In other words, we cannot deal with the problems we face if we can’t face the fact that we have created most of our problems. Until we do that, all I see is my Aunt Bill “preparing” the chicken for dinner. And we’re the chicken.

The post Reflecting on Trump’s bottomless pool of corruption appeared first on Salon.com.