The following is a transcribed excerpt from one of Dr. Jordan Peterson’s 2015 lectures. You can listen to or watch more from Dr. Peterson on DailyWire+. “Pinocchio” is a story that includes an initiation ritual and a journey to the depths (the underworld). It is a story of the consequence of a collapse of previous personality and the disintegration of that previous personality into a chaotic state prior to rebirth. Pinocchio, a puppet, tries to become a real boy. In the beginning, he is a marionette. Carl Jung explained that is your habitual state of being: Something else is pulling your strings. Even the idea that you are autonomous is the consequence of something else pulling your strings, so for Jung, what you needed to do was find out exactly who and what is pulling your strings and decide if that is the direction in which you want to go. That is what happens to Pinocchio in the story. Pinocchio is a marionette made by Geppetto, a good father. He is a marionette with a benevolent puppeteer. But as soon as he develops some autonomy, he becomes prey to forces that are elements of the demonic archetype. In fact, the worst bad guy in the entire story turns into Satan himself. So Pinocchio goes through a series of temptations of various sorts, including a Freudian temptation to remain weak and sickly instead of becoming a real person. Another temptation Pinocchio faces is being offered false celebrity as a way of solving his life’s problems. He is offered the opportunity to become an actor when a deceitful fate constructs a persona that makes him appear far more valuable than he really is. These are two pathological modes of movement towards maturity — one being a phony, and the other taking the easy way out and hyper-valuing pathologies to the degree he becomes dependent. The third pathological development offered to Pinocchio occurs on Pleasure Island, which is to do nothing but engage in short-term impulsive and destructive play. But when he goes to Pleasure Island, he finds that the island is actually ruled by demonic forces, faceless entities who are transforming all the pleasure-seeking marionettes into donkeys who are slaves. Pinocchio escapes from that by jumping into the unknown, represented by jumping into the water, which is equivalent to plunging into chaos — his exposure to his initiation. In other words, chaos was an escape from pathological tyranny. Now, the cricket. While I cannot tell you everything about this element of the story, I can tell you a couple strange notions about it. The initials are J.C., and Jiminy Cricket was a common, mild-form of Southern American cursing; it is the equivalent of Jesus Christ. So you might think, and of course, the cricket is Pinocchio’s conscience. So why in the world would a pejorative term for Jesus Christ be applied to a cricket who is guiding a puppet into the water to rescue his father from a whale? Why would any of that happen? You know why but you cannot say why. You cannot say why you know or what it is you know, but the mere fact that it makes sense — and it does — is an indication from a Jungian perspective that you are operating at an archetypal level. Further, the cricket is a bug. Why might this be? Well, things bug you. You should do something about the things that bug you because that is your conscience calling to you. It is destiny, in some sense, manifesting itself as an unconscious impulse. Now, there are a lot of things out there that might bug you; some of them do not, but lots of them do. Why do certain things bug you and not other things? That is a complicated question, but one potential answer is that there is part of your psyche that is oriented towards further development. Jung would call that the self — essentially, the totality of everything you could be. It is a strange sort of entity because it is partly potential and it is potential that expands across time. But the way that your potential totality calls to you in the present is by placing things in front of you that are your problem. They announce themselves as your problem by bothering you. So if you pick up the task of fixing the thing that bothers you, then you find the pathway to further expansion of your personality. WATCH: Dr. Jordan B. Peterson’s podcast on DailyWire+ That is what happens with Pinocchio. Part of what makes the “Pinocchio” story so incredibly sophisticated is that despite the fact the cricket is an avatar of Christ, so to speak, the cricket has things to learn just like Pinocchio. That implies that you do have a conscience that guides you, but until you establish a dialogue with it, both you and the conscience are immature. You have to establish a conscious dialogue with it and interact together, which propels your development across time. That will stop you from being a marionette of external forces. Many events at multiple levels of reality happen simultaneously when Pinocchio goes home, which is characteristic of an archetypal story. On one level, Pinocchio is too old to go home; he cannot go home to his father because, in some sense, he has already transcended his father Geppetto. That is on the personal level. On the transpersonal level, the deeper archetypal level, what is happening to Pinocchio is exactly what Nietzsche described at the end of the 19th century. Geppetto is his creator, and now he is dead; he is gone. So Pinocchio is bereft of placement. His soul has been corrupted, and he does not know what to do about it. When he returns to his family home, or to his tradition, he finds nothing. But then a dove comes along and drops a note right in front of Pinocchio. The star from which the dove comes is a representation of the blue fairy, who is the positive element of the unknown. What this scene is basically saying is: When you are despairing because your father has died and your tradition has nothing to offer, the positive element of the unknown may provide you with a message of where to go if you pay enough attention. That is an intuition of the automatic attraction of your interests to a new thing by forces you do not understand. One of the real ways of coming to grips with the active unconscious is by understanding you cannot control what you are interested in. If it is not you, then you might ask who or what it is. And if you think about that problem long enough, you will start to understand what Jung was talking about. That is the way you can understand in your own life that the things that direct you as a being are not things that you consciously choose. In fact, they are not even things you can consciously choose. * * * Dr. Jordan B. Peterson is a clinical psychologist and professor emeritus at the University of Toronto. From 1993 to 1998 he served as assistant and then associate professor of psychology at Harvard. He is the international bestselling author of “Maps of Meaning,” “12 Rules For Life,” and “Beyond Order.” Be sure to order his newest book, “We Who Wrestle with God” (Portfolio/Penguin). You can now listen to or watch his popular lectures on DailyWire+.

'Nobody wants to hear an excuse'

The witness and his grandson are playing with Legos. A piece falls off the table and is unable to be found. The next day, the grandson tells his grandparents that it dropped out of the ceiling!I received the following account:"Hi, Lon. I was recently putting together a Lego set with my grandson when he dropped a little Lego helmet. It bounces off the floor several times and I finish what I was putting together. When I look for the Lego helmet it is nowhere to be found. We have a nook with a tall table, it’s where we always sit and put his Legos together.I can’t find it. I pull everything out of the room, wipe down the table, although we both clearly heard it hit the floor, and sweep the floor by hand, my hand, it’s a 6x6 foot room. It is absolutely gone, no doubt. I’m bummed, he’s kinda bummed, but he’s 6 years old and he keeps playing with his other Legos.Fast forward to the next day, he’s playing with his Legos in the same area and I go outside for a quick minute and come back inside to hear him excitedly telling his grandmother something. When he sees me he is really happy saying he found the lost Lego helmet. He was standing there playing with his Legos when he heard something hit the floor. He turns around and it’s the missing Lego helmet on the floor. I asked him where it came from and he pointed to the ceiling and said it came from there.Several points to add. I don’t think he was playing tricks on me, I was the one looking, not him. Also, he wasn’t going to take it home because it wasn’t a full set. Once he found the helmet, he took it home with him.Also, we’ve been playing Legos twice before and had a small Lego piece fall out of nowhere and land once on the table and once more on the floor in another room. Both times I made sure I wasn’t crazy by asking him if he also saw the same thing. He did.Also, he told me when it hit the floor that time it disappeared, and he said, "Well, that’s gone forever." And he said that when he heard it hit the floor on its reappearance, he knew what it was.So, do I have a portal in my home or a child who makes objects disappear and reappear?  Or something stranger?" WNOTE: That's a bit of a conundrum. I believe that it is either one of the two possibilities asked by the witness. I'll be interested to find out if it happens again. Lon**********RISSA MILLER - LEGEND OF 'HELL HOUSE' - LON STRICKLER - Live Chat - Q&A - (CREEPY MARYLAND HISTORY)PHANTOMS & MONSTERS VIDEO LIBRARYPOLL: WHAT DO YOU THINK? Vote & comment on paranormal, cryptid & unexplained mysteries!LISTEN TO NARRATIONS OF PHANTOMS & MONSTERS REPORTS & CASES - PLEASE SUBSCRIBE, LIKE & SHAREPHANTOMS & MONSTERS RADIO Podcasts on SpotifyPHANTOMS & MONSTERS READING LISTCHICAGO MOTHMAN / O'HARE BATMAN YouTube PlaylistHave you had a sighting or encounter?Contact me by email or call the hotline at 410-241-5974Thanks. LonOUR SOCIAL MEDIA LINKSBigfoot and Other Cryptid Videos on YouTubeLYCANS! - PENNSYLVANIA'S CRYPTID CANINES UPDATE'KILLER BIGFOOT' HUNTED BY U.S. SPECIAL FORCES / GLIMMER MAN / MANTIS HUMANOIDSCRAWLER HUMANOIDS - GRUESOME INVADERS! (REAL EYEWITNESS ENCOUNTERS!)WEREWOLVES: DO THEY EXIST?'DOGMAN IN OUR YARD!' - AN OHIO FAMILY'S 12-YEAR SAGA WITH CRYPTID CANINESHey, folks. Thanks for the congrats on 'The Mothman Revisited' episode on Unsolved Mysteries. As a result, we are receiving more sighting reports and are very excited and grateful for the new information!I sincerely thank the Unsolved Mysteries team and Netflix for allowing us to tell the world about this phenomenon.If you have information about this or any other cryptid or unexplained sighting or encounter, please feel free to contact me by email or at 410-241-5974. Thanks again! LonCHICAGO MOTHMAN / O'HARE BATMAN YouTube PlaylistChicago / Lake Michigan Winged Humanoid Regional Interactive MapEXCLUSIVE VIDEO of CHICAGO MOTHMAN RECORDED---------------Become a Phantoms & Monsters Radio Insider - just $2.99 monthly, and receive these perks. Thanks for your support!-Members-only live chats-Exclusive members-only videos-Priority reply to members' commentsHave perks suggestions? LMK-----YOUR SUPPORT IS APPRECIATED! THANKS-----Have you had a sighting or encounter?Contact us by email or call the hotline at 410-241-5974Thanks. Lon Noted UFOlogist Dr. Raymond Keller believes the idea of extraterrestrials and even ultra-dimensional beings from many different planets and alternate realms living and working among us clandestinely is more than just another conspiracy theory.Available on Amazon.comSan Francisco Book Festival Honorable MentionNew York Book Festival Honorable MentionAlso available with audiobooknarration by Terry Springs,CBS-TV Las Vegas affiliate.OUR PRIVACY POLICYThis blog and newsletter are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Work 3.0 United States License.Registered trademark PHANTOMS AND MONSTERS ® / PHANTOMS & MONSTERS ® - USPTO #90902480 - Lon D. Strickler© 2005-2025 Phantoms & Monsters - All Rights Reserved

"It fits the bill of a Nightcrawler; long legs, they bent both ways and, you know, like as soon as I saw this entity. I about crapped my pants, man, I'm not gonna lie."Dustin from Elkhart, Indiana called in to tell of his weird encounter:“I got a whale of a tale for you if you want to hear it. Are you familiar what the cryptid known as the Fresno Alien or the Nightcrawler? So I've been interested in these beings and I ended up finding this little stick in my yard. I ended up messing with it a little bit, planting it in the ground. It was kind of, I made it into kind of like a totem or like an effigy to these beings because, you know, they've been seen in cities. I mean the first video was in a parking lot in Fresno.So a few months passed after I stuck this in my yard and I kept envisioning, you know, using that intention, I kept envisioning meeting one of these beings while I was walking around the city. I got back to my buddy's house one night. I come inside, change clothes to help my brother work on his car... getting the gas tank in really sucked but anyway, so we're standing outside smoking a cigarette and - dead silent out - I heard these leaves crunching over in these trees about half a block from my house. I look over there and I'm like, 'What the hell?' There's this black figure, white-like, white feet, taking really slow steps and then it walked behind a tree and I didn't see it. I was like, 'The hell?' You know, the Spidey sense starts tingling. So I go back to talking to my brother and then I hear the leaves crunching again and this figure, well, I'm about 6'4. It's probably about a foot shorter than me. There's, like I said, solid black, white feet had a little bit of blue on the head and I, like, there's kind of like a waving pattern on the bottom of the legs. It just took really slow steps in a direct line towards me and then it stopped. It scared me. I looked over to my brother. I was like, 'Dude, somebody is standing over there in those trees!' He starts wincing a little bit. He's like, 'Yeah, you know, I don't see anything.'So at this point, I started having a bit of an anxiety attack and my first instinct was to run over to the gate and shut it but I had this, I kept getting this intuitive pulse like a kind of punch to the back of the head that I should grab the staff that I made, and then go over there and talk to this person. I ignored that. I went over and shut the gate and at this point this entity began walking away, like, all right, you know, you don't want to come and play, screw it! And what walked away was, it definitely, fit the bill of a nightcrawler; long legs, they bent both ways and, you know, like as soon as I saw this entity. I about crapped my pants, man, I'm not gonna lie. (Jimmy asks him to clarify what it looked like) It was weird. Like it doesn't, it, like, every nightcrawler that I've ever seen has, it was white. All three videos have been white even when there were two in the same spot. This one had different colors to it. (Church asks if his brother saw it) It was the weirdest thing, he didn't see it. He didn't hear the footsteps either.”Source: Fade to Black with Jimmy Church – December 28, 2017**********RISSA MILLER - LEGEND OF 'HELL HOUSE' - LON STRICKLER - Live Chat - Q&A - (CREEPY MARYLAND HISTORY)PHANTOMS & MONSTERS VIDEO LIBRARYPOLL: WHAT DO YOU THINK? Vote & comment on paranormal, cryptid & unexplained mysteries!LISTEN TO NARRATIONS OF PHANTOMS & MONSTERS REPORTS & CASES - PLEASE SUBSCRIBE, LIKE & SHAREPHANTOMS & MONSTERS RADIO Podcasts on SpotifyPHANTOMS & MONSTERS READING LISTCHICAGO MOTHMAN / O'HARE BATMAN YouTube PlaylistHave you had a sighting or encounter?Contact me by email or call the hotline at 410-241-5974Thanks. LonOUR SOCIAL MEDIA LINKSBigfoot and Other Cryptid Videos on YouTubeLYCANS! - PENNSYLVANIA'S CRYPTID CANINES UPDATE'KILLER BIGFOOT' HUNTED BY U.S. SPECIAL FORCES / GLIMMER MAN / MANTIS HUMANOIDSCRAWLER HUMANOIDS - GRUESOME INVADERS! (REAL EYEWITNESS ENCOUNTERS!)WEREWOLVES: DO THEY EXIST?'DOGMAN IN OUR YARD!' - AN OHIO FAMILY'S 12-YEAR SAGA WITH CRYPTID CANINESHey, folks. Thanks for the congrats on 'The Mothman Revisited' episode on Unsolved Mysteries. As a result, we are receiving more sighting reports and are very excited and grateful for the new information!I sincerely thank the Unsolved Mysteries team and Netflix for allowing us to tell the world about this phenomenon.If you have information about this or any other cryptid or unexplained sighting or encounter, please feel free to contact me by email or at 410-241-5974. Thanks again! LonCHICAGO MOTHMAN / O'HARE BATMAN YouTube PlaylistChicago / Lake Michigan Winged Humanoid Regional Interactive MapEXCLUSIVE VIDEO of CHICAGO MOTHMAN RECORDED---------------Become a Phantoms & Monsters Radio Insider - just $2.99 monthly, and receive these perks. Thanks for your support!-Members-only live chats-Exclusive members-only videos-Priority reply to members' commentsHave perks suggestions? LMK-----YOUR SUPPORT IS APPRECIATED! THANKS-----Have you had a sighting or encounter?Contact us by email or call the hotline at 410-241-5974Thanks. Lon Noted UFOlogist Dr. Raymond Keller believes the idea of extraterrestrials and even ultra-dimensional beings from many different planets and alternate realms living and working among us clandestinely is more than just another conspiracy theory.Available on Amazon.comSan Francisco Book Festival Honorable MentionNew York Book Festival Honorable MentionAlso available with audiobooknarration by Terry Springs,CBS-TV Las Vegas affiliate.OUR PRIVACY POLICYThis blog and newsletter are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Work 3.0 United States License.Registered trademark PHANTOMS AND MONSTERS ® / PHANTOMS & MONSTERS ® - USPTO #90902480 - Lon D. Strickler© 2005-2025 Phantoms & Monsters - All Rights Reserved

"I knew that she was scared and shaken. She literally had tears in her eyes. She told me in an almost sad voice that there were aliens outside."I received the following account:"This incident isn’t recent. It actually makes me cry thinking about and I will probably cry while writing it. Anyway, I’m 25 now but this experience took place when I was 12. The night this encounter happened everything was pretty normal. I was going back to school the next morning after summer break so I had to be in bed earlier than I would have liked. I remember falling asleep to the movie 'Meet the Robinsons' playing at probably around 10:30 PM. And then I woke up and I knew it had to be late, but the first thing I registered was the TV and it was completely scrambled. The image I mean, is almost like a DVD that doesn’t want to play so it skips. But it was frozen so the image was warped and boxy. Except the 'Meet the Robinsons' movie DVD wasn’t damaged. At this point, I guessed it was around 2:00 or 3:00 AM.The second thing I registered was the voices coming from the kitchen. I got out of bed to see what was going on because the voices were talking pretty loud and they sounded kind of panicked. When I got to the kitchen I realized that it was my mom and older sister, who was 18 at the time, and they were arguing. The first thing I actually picked up and comprehended in the conversation was my mom saying, “Those are definitely aliens. WTF else could they be?” She was almost hysterical. Neither of them saw me enter the kitchen but I asked what was going on and my mom looked at me and I knew that she was scared and shaken. She literally had tears in her eyes. She told me in an almost sad voice that there were aliens outside.At this point, we were all standing in the kitchen in front of our sliding glass door that looked out to our yard and the field across the road. I was confused so she pulled back the curtain to the kitchen door and I didn’t see anything initially because I didn’t look hard enough. But I saw my German Shepherd / Great Dane mix sitting in the middle of the yard, in the direction of the neighbors, which was to the right side. I asked my mom why he wasn’t on the porch like normal and why he was sitting so still. To that she slid open the door very slowly, to not make much noise I assume. Usually when the door to the house opens my dog will look towards the sound of it if he is around the yard, which he was, but he didn’t even look at us, his gaze remained undeterred. I didn’t realize what was going on but I was scared because my mom was clearly scared as was my older sister. My mom signaled my sister and me to be quiet. And we were.You could, on a normal night, hear the animals in the woods or the trees in the wind and crickets chirping because it was summer, but that night we couldn’t hear anything. It was completely silent outside, not even a breeze. This gave me chills that made me shake. Something was terribly off. My mom shut the door. And my sister and I followed her to her bedroom, where my dad was asleep and the window was open. There she explained to me what was going on. She told me that my sister was in my room looking for something and peeked out the window. My room is in the back of the house and my window looks out to the trees behind the house. She saw what she thought was a pack of coyotes but there were about 30 of them and the closer she looked she started to see distinguishable features and that’s when she dipped out of my room and went and told my mom. My mom told me that they walked outside, before my sister came to her about what she saw, and saw a tall dark, and slender figure walking down the neighbor's driveway toward our house. She thought it was the neighbor coming over for some reason. But then she got scared suddenly and felt like it would be best to pretend to be asleep so she wouldn’t have to talk to the “neighbor”. And those events led us to go to the kitchen window that overlooked the two neighboring houses right next to each other. It was dark. But we were looking very hard. And we could start to make out shadowy figures. Most of them were small and moved super fast. So fast that if you weren’t paying attention you wouldn’t have noticed. And if you paid even more attention, you could see the slower taller ones. They moved slowly and their silhouettes were darker than their background but they were almost fluid-looking. It just did not look real at all. And this sucks but we didn’t even think about grabbing a camera and trying to catch pictures. Which I regret just thinking back.Another thing I noticed and is worth mentioning I think, was that behind the neighbor's house, they had woods too. Well, within the trees and very low to the ground, there were three evenly spaced lights. One was green, the other red, and another blue I think. The lights were pretty dim but they were never there before. We watched out the window for about ten minutes freaking out. My mom was almost wheezing at this point, she was so shocked. After that she took us into her room and opened the window more, which I didn’t like, it made me nervous. She told us to be quiet. And since we couldn’t hear anything at all coming from outside we sat in silence. Until we heard what sounded like a car passing on the road. there was an engine sound but we could see the road from my mom's window and there were no cars, no headlights, nothing. But the engine buzz was loud and turned into sounding like a plane was passing over the house, that’s how loud it got. This lasted about a minute or so then it went completely silent again. After a few minutes, it would repeat the engine sound.After all of these happened, my mom shut the window and closed the curtains. And we sat in her room, all of us basically shaking. Anyway, another thing to point out was, I did eventually work up the courage to go back to my room. But that was a few hours later and was starting to get light out. The TV was still scrambled so I tried to eject the disc and it wasn’t working. So I ended up having to unplug the DVD player to get the scramble off the TV. That’s about all that happened that night. But it freaked me out terribly. I don’t mention it to anyone except the people I trust in my life. And even then they sometimes don’t get to hear the full story. But I want to know your thoughts on this. Is there any rational explanation for things I saw? The year was probably 2013. I don’t remember the day. It might have been a Sunday evening into Monday morning? It was at the house that I still live in currently, in southeast Indiana. Probably August since I was starting school. So summer. Which would definitely make the year 2013 now that I’m thinking about it.” L**********RISSA MILLER - LEGEND OF 'HELL HOUSE' - LON STRICKLER - Live Chat - Q&A - (CREEPY MARYLAND HISTORY)PHANTOMS & MONSTERS VIDEO LIBRARYPOLL: WHAT DO YOU THINK? Vote & comment on paranormal, cryptid & unexplained mysteries!LISTEN TO NARRATIONS OF PHANTOMS & MONSTERS REPORTS & CASES - PLEASE SUBSCRIBE, LIKE & SHAREPHANTOMS & MONSTERS RADIO Podcasts on SpotifyPHANTOMS & MONSTERS READING LISTCHICAGO MOTHMAN / O'HARE BATMAN YouTube PlaylistHave you had a sighting or encounter?Contact me by email or call the hotline at 410-241-5974Thanks. LonOUR SOCIAL MEDIA LINKSBigfoot and Other Cryptid Videos on YouTubeLYCANS! - PENNSYLVANIA'S CRYPTID CANINES UPDATE'KILLER BIGFOOT' HUNTED BY U.S. SPECIAL FORCES / GLIMMER MAN / MANTIS HUMANOIDSCRAWLER HUMANOIDS - GRUESOME INVADERS! (REAL EYEWITNESS ENCOUNTERS!)WEREWOLVES: DO THEY EXIST?'DOGMAN IN OUR YARD!' - AN OHIO FAMILY'S 12-YEAR SAGA WITH CRYPTID CANINESHey, folks. Thanks for the congrats on 'The Mothman Revisited' episode on Unsolved Mysteries. As a result, we are receiving more sighting reports and are very excited and grateful for the new information!I sincerely thank the Unsolved Mysteries team and Netflix for allowing us to tell the world about this phenomenon.If you have information about this or any other cryptid or unexplained sighting or encounter, please feel free to contact me by email or at 410-241-5974. Thanks again! LonCHICAGO MOTHMAN / O'HARE BATMAN YouTube PlaylistChicago / Lake Michigan Winged Humanoid Regional Interactive MapEXCLUSIVE VIDEO of CHICAGO MOTHMAN RECORDED---------------Become a Phantoms & Monsters Radio Insider - just $2.99 monthly, and receive these perks. Thanks for your support!-Members-only live chats-Exclusive members-only videos-Priority reply to members' commentsHave perks suggestions? LMK-----YOUR SUPPORT IS APPRECIATED! THANKS-----Have you had a sighting or encounter?Contact us by email or call the hotline at 410-241-5974Thanks. Lon Noted UFOlogist Dr. Raymond Keller believes the idea of extraterrestrials and even ultra-dimensional beings from many different planets and alternate realms living and working among us clandestinely is more than just another conspiracy theory.Available on Amazon.comSan Francisco Book Festival Honorable MentionNew York Book Festival Honorable MentionAlso available with audiobooknarration by Terry Springs,CBS-TV Las Vegas affiliate.OUR PRIVACY POLICYThis blog and newsletter are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Work 3.0 United States License.Registered trademark PHANTOMS AND MONSTERS ® / PHANTOMS & MONSTERS ® - USPTO #90902480 - Lon D. Strickler© 2005-2025 Phantoms & Monsters - All Rights Reserved

A man with a huge tumor on his jaw finally got life-changing surgery, after it got so big he almost couldn’t eat or speak. Alex first noticed a swelling on his jaw as a teenager. It turned out to be a non-cancerous tumor, but it kept getting larger and larger. By the time Alex was […] The post Man Gets Free Life-Changing Surgery to Remove Baseball-sized Tumor from his Jaw appeared first on Good News Network.

Michael Cohen is a frequent MSNBC guest because he can be counted on to attack Donald Trump. But there was what the late, great, Don Imus would have called a "tension convention" when Cohen turned up on Saturday's episode of The Weekend. When conversation turned to Cohen having petitioned President Biden for a pardon, Cohen said that he had applied for one because he believes himself to be on a Trump "enemies list." He continued: "Yeah, I put in the application for a presidential pardon because I believe that Joe Biden has the same responsibility to me that he had to his own son. And I would expect that the same exact pardon that he gave his son has to go to me." That prompted this pointed [see screencap] response from co-host Symone Sanders, a former Kamala Harris spokesperson: "I am struck by your, your, your, your comparing yourself and Hunter Biden. And I wonder if, well, I'm going to tell you, Michael Cohen, because we're on national TV, we're gonna have a conversation. I don't necessarily think that's your best way to go get a pardon. I mean, Hunter Biden is the president's last surviving son." Cohen retorted: "I'm also somebody's son." Countered Sanders: "Agreed. You are somebody's son. But to be very clear, you're not the president's son." The irony and hypocrisy of Symone's words were lost on her. She and the other hosts and guests had devoted much of the show to condemning the fact that Trump had been discharged with no punishment in the case brought against him by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg. In the previous hour, Sanders had complained that, in light of Trump's treatment, "there's not equal justice under the law." MSNBC legal analyst Andrew Weissman, who had been Robert Mueller's lead prosecutor in his investigation of Trump, replied: "There is a third system of justice reserved for Donald Trump. The courts have bent over backwards to give him something that no one else could get. He is being treated differently." So it's awful for Trump to be treated differently from others. But when it came to Hunter Biden being treated differently from Cohen, Sanders had no problem with it. To the contrary, Sanders scolded Cohen for daring to compare himself to Hunter—because he's "the president's son." We're no fans of Cohen. But MSNBC has a pecking order. The uncouth Cohen will be tolerated so long as he aims his barbs at Trump. But the minute Cohen criticizes Biden, he's told off in no uncertain terms. Keep it up, Cohen, and you could become persona non grata on the network!