Grand, meaningless gestures abound on both sides of the current torment | MARK HUGHES COBB

Jon Lovitz called it Master Thespian. Acting! Grandiloquent, bombastic, driven by wild gesticulation. Shakespeare!

If you've watched films of say, Laurence Olivier, trained in stage work, where voices carry — without microphones or amplification — you can see the inspiration. As film and sound advanced, more naturalistic styles evolved. Performers saw that, with a camera that can magnify the pores in your cheekbones, less is more. At one absurd end would be pretty-boy kewpie dolls — Timothy Chalamet — or write-your-own-story faces, like Keanu Reeves.

Should you long for old school: classic "Star Trek." Yes, Shatner was trained on stage, so there are reasons for that breathy. ... Punchy! readingofcertainLINES. Joshing aside, his Henry V — replacing ailing Christopher Plummer one night in 1956, at Ontario's Stratford Shakespeare Festival — was said to have been dynamic, the launching pad for his career.

Where you won't see naturalism? D.C., TV, or the internet, where drama queens rule.

For the love of all that's intended to be good, don't spread the bull that Wallymart or Glamazon lost hundreds of billions on Friday the 28th.

There was a downtick in online traffic for some, and an up for others, including Bezosland, and Costco.

Valdemart makes $1.6 billion per day. So even if a day dropped to zero — which it didn't — those figures can't track.

No cause is helped by repeating stupid, easily disproven lies.

A one-day thing won't make a significant impact.

Ask Rosa Parks. Look at trade unions, battling inch-by-inch for workers' rights we take for granted today (and which may soon be grifted away). Sustained boycotts of a state have led to economic losses, which fed the changing of repressive, anti-human-rights bills.

None of that happened overnight.

Most don't spend a lot of money on any ONE day anyway. Not spending one day is nothing, as it's not a change. Much like not voting, it doesn't create a void, if no one registers you're even there to begin with.

Buying local, avoiding chains and massive retailers much as possible, should be an all-life choice. But even some of my most progressive friends shop big-box. It's cheaper. Practicality will win, in an all-too-capitalist society, when you have multiple mouths to feed, bodies to clothe.

Ponder human nature: Hearing news about a one-day shop-stop, some will buy MORE, just to "own the libs." And you should know by now how furiously a snowflake commits.

Ever seen a dying Chick-Fil-A? Did Colin Kaepernick get re-hired, after 200,000 people signed a petition against the NFL for its sanctions?

The moral correctness of a protest has NOTHING to do with its effectiveness. Tea doilies to knife fights.

When you expend precious, limited effort on something you know is going to fail, because it's been tried before, and failed then, that's a type of insanity.

Heard of compassion fatigue? It's when you try stuff that doesn't work. You feel a sense of defeat. Then, next time, you struggle to rise.

From an LA Times recounting of boycott efforts:

“Very few boycotts have led to changes,” said Maurice Schweitzer, a professor of operations and information management at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. “Most boycotts lack a sustained effort” and people lose interest or stop paying attention, he said.

Now that you've caused a small dip, where's your big splash?

A long-running issue for folks who see, and think, in layers: Passion soars fast, driven by a road-to-hell-paving thrust, then plummets equally rapidly. Progressive Southerners -- or those fed up with do-nothing, wasted-time, backwards-fumbling status quo in Montgomery -- rallied to elect Doug Jones over a twice-tossed from office, pistol-toting, Bible-thumpin' alleged pedophile.

So why didn't incumbent Jones get re-elected? Instead we got saddled with another sassy mess, Sen. Not-Telegelenic Tubby, who couldn't name the branches of government if you gave him Google, 19 guesses and a cheat sheet.

In the presidential race, leftist fatigue, the craving for something new and shiny, instead of old, predictable, yet largely stable and functional things, kept voters away. Doing nothing.

I resist defining this country as two sides. In sports, you get winners and losers. In the arts, and theoretically in life, there should just be winners, and other types of winners.

Look up "cooperation." It's a thing.

But there's no denying the divisiveness hammered for decades by Murdoch-led bull-machines, fueling anger, resentment and fear, the easiest emotions to stoke; the hardest to quell once triggered.

So on what for convenience's sake let's call the other side, they know about bold, empty gestures. For their latest fact-free stir-up-the-muck show, they tried one of the most dark-hearted tactics known to humankind: Using a sick child as a tool. Props-a-ganda!

And then wailed as only snowflakes can ― I'm still trying to picture that cartoon ― that the Other Side didn't stand and applaud their theatrics.

It was like a magic trick, the kind that leaves everyone feeling queasy, not awestruck, a bit lighter about the wallet, and the IQ. With this hand we'll snatch away science, research, healthcare and watchdogs! But looky over here! Sick kid! And abracadabra, we'll ... uh ... promise something we can't deliver, absent more funding for science, research, health care ....

The real magic is that of the con, knowing people relate to stories far more than to numbers, which numb, daunt with their mass. Real quick, how many of you have heard of Anne Frank?

Putting faces to facts is important, assuming you've got something important to share.

But claiming to be for the people, while firing (or trying to) tens of thousands of workers, simultaneously eliminating (or trying to) agencies that protect and support health care, education, national parks, public safety, and pretty much anything good about this country?

At what point do you just bend, and admit you've been lied to and scammed so often you're frothing at the mouth to blame a Fifth Avenue murder victim?

I promise not to smile when the leopard eats YOUR face, though.

Reach Mark Hughes Cobb atmark.cobb@tuscaloosanews.com.