L. "Zeeker" Brent Bozell IV Gets 45 Months

Until Donald Trump goes on trial, the most eminent 2020 insurrectionist will have to be this clueless and entitled scion of New Right royalty.

In Macbeth, bloodshed and treachery are relieved by a drunken porter’s darkly comic musings on hearing Macduff and Lennox knocking at the gate. The porter imagines that a farmer, an equivocator, and an English tailor each seek admission to hell. Thomas DeQuincy (1785-1859), in a famous essay about this scene, said the knocking at the gate

makes known audibly that the reaction has commenced: the human has made its reflux upon the fiendish; the pulses of life are beginning to beat again; and the re-establishment of the goings-on of the world in which we live, first makes us profoundly sensible of the awful parenthesis that had suspended them.

If we can chuckle after witnessing King Duncan’s brutal murder—regrettably, the scene was cut from an otherwise-great production starring Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma that the Washington Shakespeare Company put on last month—then surely we can chuckle in the context of January 6, 2021. The role of the drunken porter is here played by L. Brent Bozell IV, known to his friends as “Zeeker,” who was sentenced last week to 45 months in jail for his participation in the insurrection. One reason Zeeker got such a long sentence was that he really annoyed the judge by lying so outrageously when he took the stand. These lies resembled those of a four year-old—big, dumb, obvious and therefore funny. In his trial testimony Zeeker blended dull-wittedness with an almost Trumpian impunity. I quote several of these in my latest New Republic piece, and I’m sorry if you think I’m making light of an attempted coup, but Zeeker’s idiot falsehoods are the stuff of farce. I defy you not to laugh. Don’t worry, I’ll still believe January 6 makes you angry! You can read my piece here.