ADDED: The Matt Gillow piece in the Independent begins:
Mention the President of the United States in day-to-day conversation and you’ll get the inevitable; a sigh, a shake of the head, a brief eulogy on how Donald Trump is unfit to be president. I’m no different. I’m the first to criticise Trump. I wouldn’t have voted for him if you’d paid me, and think he’s got some pretty damaging, regressive points of view.Of course, that's not the one that's not like the others. The one that's different is the "clown car" one in The New Yorker, which — as I see it at the link — is titled "Donald Trump and the Stress Test of Liberal Democracy/Resistance must take the form of the affirmation of the values and institutions that the President has scorned and threatened." No clowns. The text does begin with the "wheels coming off the clown car" metaphor:
But during a recent, daily grumble about The Donald, I got thinking; if you look past the ridiculous Twitter pronouncements, and the President’s general veneer – what has he actually done? How bad has the 45th President of the United States actually been for the country?
The answer, it might surprise you, is not that bad at all....
Minute by minute, the wheels are coming off the clown car that is the Trump Administration. The circus animals are deserting, wriggling through every available window and door....Bad metaphor. A clown car is a little car full of clowns, not the entire circus. There are no animals in it. Only clowns:
Either call it a circus or call it a clown car. Commit to your metaphor and make it work.
And then there's a whole other metaphor going on. It's in the current title and appears only in a stray paragraph in the middle: the stress test.
The next significant chapter in this stress test for liberal values will be the midterm elections of November, 2018. If the Democratic Party fails to win a majority in either the House of Representatives or the Senate, Trump will be further emboldened. His capacity for recklessness will multiply and go unrestrained. The Republican leadership, which has already proved shocking in its cowardice, will be even less inclined to challenge him.I don't like the arrival of a completely different metaphor. We're nowhere near the circus anymore. Suddenly, we're in the doctor's office and our "liberal values" are some kind of human body that is getting monitored while it runs on a treadmill to figure out how well it functions. The shift in metaphor would be less annoying if the text committed to that metaphor and made it work. But Remnick only seems to be saying that the Democrats need to win in the 2018 elections. How does that work within the metaphor? If Trump is "further emboldened," isn't the body doing well? I guess the "liberal values" are running and running on the treadmill, huffing and puffing and we'll see if they — the "liberal values" — have greater strength than the illiberal values that are — I don't know — running on some other treadmill.
AND: Meade prompted me to look up this post from May 26, 2015 — as various Republicans were announcing their candidacy for President — "I'm keeping track of the media's use of the 'clown' metaphor to describe the GOP":
My theory is that this is a tell and that what it really indicates is anxiety about there only being one candidate on the Democratic side. The "clown" idea is usually expressed as "clown car." That is, it's a way to say there are an awful lot of individuals crammed into a space that shouldn't be able to hold so many.If the use of "clown car" to describe Republicans is a tell for Democrats' anxiety about their own predicament, it may help us understand what lies behind Remnick's disheveled remarks. Remove the fright wig, and there is a frightened man.
But this morning I'm seeing "clown show," which either assumes we know the "show" is the old car routine or hopes to get away with simply portraying Republicans as ridiculous:
"The Koch brothers try to rein in the GOP presidential clown show." (A WaPo headline for an article that doesn't contain the word "clown." This article currently ranks #1 on WaPo's "most read" list.)
ADDED: Remember the time Obama was portrayed as a clown? It was a time of outrage!
Posts
137 comments:
Well, the usual Trump critics who troll here will never budge from 100% Trump hatred 100% of the time.
Trump's primary promise was to drain the swamp. Considering the wasteful spending of his cabinet members (private planes, really rich people charging the government for their wife's travel, secretary of HUD buying $31000 dining sets for his government office and shuttling funds to his son, Kushner's use of his position for personal gain, etc.) it is not so much draining the swamp as introducing new creatures to it.
The wall has not been built, Hillary is still free, and healthcare (we were promised lower premiums and copays, and better coverage) is in even worse shape. The economy is not expanding any faster than it was before he was elected.
Drop PC and you can address problems.
we were promised lower premiums and copays, and better coverage
Why are you blaming Trump for Obama's failure?
MadisonMan said...
we were promised lower premiums and copays, and better coverage
Why are you blaming Trump for Obama's failure?
Didn't you hear?? NOTHING is EVER Obamas fault.
RE: The item not like the others-
Maybe we should turn NYC into an insane asylum and commit all of its residents unless they can prove they don't have TDS.
Why are you blaming Trump for Obama's failure?
Because Trump promised to fix Obama's failure. Trump, because of the way the law is written, is actually increased the cost of the ACA in his attempt to destroy it. His piecemeal destruction will ultimately result in a disaster as there is nothing to replace it.
Remember the good old days when everybody derided trillion dollar plus deficits?
His piecemeal destruction will ultimately result in a disaster as there is nothing to replace it.
The people coming along after Godzilla can’t be blamed for “destroying” the city.
Because Trump promised to fix Obama's failure.
ACA was a failure ? News to me.
Because Trump promised to fix Obama's failure
I'm glad you admit ACA failed. That's the first step.
OH MY GOD!!!!
Trump hasn't fixed everything in one year. He has immensely improved the economy. Destroyed ISIS (granted they are only the JV team). In the process of cleaning out the corruption in the FBI, DOJ and intelligence agencies. Took away the ObamaCare tax on the young. Gave us a big tax cut. Working on bringing back manufacturing jobs.
But thanks to Freder I now see I have to vote for the crazy, racists Dems who literally want me dead. Thanks Freder I can see my error now.
The wheel are always coming off the Trump clown car.
A clown car is a car from which "an implausibly large number of clowns [emerge] from a very small car, to humorous effect".
Isn't "an implausibly large number of clowns" a point in Trump's favor?
David Remnick is so last week.
The answer is, of course, the New Yorker piece. Interesting that just yesterday I ran across this, which argues that the New Yorker is one of the primary fonts of Trump hysteria.
Even if the wheels come off, the implausibly large number of clowns can still keep emerging!
The metaphor should be "the clown car is running out of clowns."
"Also, porn stars."
"Sister, Sister, call on me. I know, I know. Sister"
@Bill, the Democrats only want you dead if you’re Jewish. Some day a Jew can explain to me why they support politicians who support and suck up to people who want Jews dead. Makes little sense to me.
"The wheels are coming off the Trump clown car."
As I said in the SNL thread, the new anti-Trump theme seems to be personal dysfunction.
"HE USED TO BE HITLER. THEN HE WAS AN INCOMPETENT TODDLER..."
First the Dems came for the Jews. I said something because they also talked of elimination of whites and the irredeemable deplorables.
"the Democrats only want you dead if you’re Jewish."
No, I'm not Jewish and I've been assured by Democratic supporters here on this blog that they want me dead, too.
After 14 months of blocking and resisting Trump’s campaign promises and refusing to confirm his nominees or finish their security clearances some are getting traction and iup to speed. Now he is getting her done, and is set to use his button that works.
The SNL ridicule is not working at all. People now actually love Trump like they loved FDR who was effectively President For Life.
The treadmill metaphor may be more apt that Remnick realizes.
The way I recall it, Trump campaigned on "Repeal and Replace" to reliable whooping and applause, but he never pretended he could accomplish repeal by executive order. Like many of us, he may have been lulled into a false sense of confidence by all the repeal legislation that passed when it faced certain veto. But as soon as it emerged that senate republicans had jelly legs, Trump announced that plan B would be to let Obamacare collapse under the weight of its own bad design until senators from both parties who actually prioritize a functional health care system (if any) would finally be forced to move on replacement legislation. Repealing the individual mandate in the meantime was good because it was quite unpopular and its removal could only speed along Plan B. I agree with Freder that it's unfortunate we had to go to plan B in the first place, but I don't see how he blames Trump for that. (I do agree with Freder about the deficit spending, but I'm not going to take the trouble to research whether he is but a hatchling of a deficit hawk.)
Mixing metaphors is usually evidence of weak thinking.
In the New Yorker, however, it seems evidence of no thinking.
The left seems, these days, to be a bundle of nerve endings all stimulated at the same time.
That way lies seizures.
Field Marshall Freder has the solutions of course.
"Remnick only seems to be saying that the Democrats need to win in the 2018 elections."
Of course that's all he's saying. That's the whole point of this propaganda. Look at the scary things that will happen if we don't win!
Well, that, plus we goodthinkers must double-down on supporting the institutions we have subverted.
I think the clown car line was added simply to make it work as click bait. It really has nothing to do with the thesis of the article.
In one year, Trump has accomplished an incredible amount by any standard. The only way he could have done more already would be if he actually was a dictator. Thus the lefties admit that he isn't Hitler. I bet Hitler would have loved to be a tall strapping Aryan leader of personal accomplishment instead of a failed little twerp with bad hair and a drug habit. Trump and Hitler couldn't be more different in every way.
So, his own media, and half his country are aligned with our enemies and he's still beating them. Incredible.
Deficit spending is like cancer.
Short of an economic collapse, I see no way to stop it.
Any Congress that votes to reduce the entitlement spending that drives this will be quickly replaced at the next election,
The best that can be accomplished now is to try to revive the economy that has been destroyed by China and US trade policy since bill Clinton.
Once that has occurred, maybe some nibbling at the edges of Social Security could be tried. Bush tried and got nowhere. It was the only good thing he did in 8 years.
As for repeal and replace, you can't blame Trump or his supporters for believing the Republicans in congress actually meant all those votes they cast to do it before it was really possible. They failed us, not him.
The clown car is a discontinued metaphor model from 2010.
At the New Yorker office party they probably still do La Macarena.
"It’s a pattern repeated throughout history: Members of one group—say, the British aristocracy, or the Bourbon planter class in the South—come to dominate members of another group—the peasantry, or poor African-Americans and white farmers. In the minds of the elites, the advantages they experience must be the result of their innate superiority; they are more moral, more sophisticated, more intelligent than the lower classes. They’re just better.
On Inauguration Day, President Trump said, “January 20, 2017, will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.” But you can’t give power to “the people . . . the forgotten men and women” without taking it from those who have it. Members of the elite will fight for what’s theirs, because, they believe, what’s theirs is theirs by right.
For them, that means the 2016 election must be nullified, by any means necessary."
https://amgreatness.com/2018/03/09/welcome-to-the-new-class-warfare/
" Remember the good old days when everybody derided trillion dollar plus deficits?"
At least they cut back on the posing. Other than that, nothing has changed, and nobody really expects it to, which makes Trump the most likely guy to change things. Nobody ever expects what he does.
Freder: Remember the good old days when everybody derided trillion dollar plus deficits?
When all you've got is bad faith and it just isn't working anymore.
I don't think "Keep America Great" is a very catchy slogan, but I guess it has a bit more win than "Trump sucks because he hasn't fixed Obama's massive fuck-ups".
Michael K --
I share your gloom, but I'm not so sure economic collapse is the only endgame. A combination of lots of economic growth and lots of inflation could resolve the problem, though of course that would be very tricky. One way or another (and inflation would be one of the less painful ways), the Youth of America is going to have to figure out a way to put the Boomer generation on an ice floe. It's not like we don't (collectively) deserve it.
The wheels aren't "coming off" - they are being pulled up as the plane lifts off and gains altitude. It should be at cruising speed well before November.
Freder "the mediator" said: "The economy is not expanding any faster than it was before he was elected."
Huh?
Liberal values are when government officials use preposterous evidence to wiretap US citizens and then leak the transcripts to journalists.
It is always amusing to see Althouse carefully parsing the details of something like David Remnick's selection of a metaphor... But never questioning the flatly outlandish things in a Trump stump speech.
I see Althouse as having one set of rules for journalists and commentators writing about Trump, and an entirely different set of rules for Trump himself.
I rather expect that Althouse just might be among the first to say that indeed there are different rules that apply to Trump, as a politician/actor, versus a journalist. Personally, I draw the line at "outrageous lies." And I am happy to condemn the national media whenever they cross that line. What is the Althouse record, over a year or two of Trump, in calling out Trump misstatements and lies?
Huh?
here you go
Poor Remnick, having to scrounge for his next meal. Trump calls, go to him, you can't refuse.
In Remnick mixaphor, he's got a heart of Rolling Stone.
David Remnick's yearlong agita and dyspepsia are one of the enduring accomplishments of the Trump presidency. What a joy it is to see him suffer. Is that wrong?
When the wheels come off the clown car, its not going anywhere for another 7 years. Maybe David Remnick is metaphorically delivering the same message as the SN cold open. (I'm always trying to give The New Yorker the benefit of the doubt, its just the kind of guy I am.)
Remnick has a world view that can take any topic, any story, and funnel it through his far left filter so that it will always come out looking and sounding the same- no matter the topic. Like all lefties, his hands are always wringing with dread. You can put 'sunny day' into Remnick's filter and it'll come out 'smog-filled torture test because Republicans don't care about children'. He and his fellow New Yorkers are drowning in this narrow mindset. They live in a world of doom. It's making them sick, crazy, and just simply annoying.
Chuck,
I think you just need a good cry.
Forget it, Jake; it's NYT-town. Ingrown idiots, the lot of them.
The fly is not reasoning well just now. A man buzzes at its ears. This is enough to render it incapable of good advice. If I would have it find truth, I should chase away this animal which holds its reason in check and disquiets that intelligence which governs kingdoms.
Lautreamont
What "liberal values," exactly? The liberal value of allowing illegal immigrants to break the law with impunity? The liberal value of the CIA, the FBI and an unleashed prosecutor abusing their power against a sitting president, a political campaign, and American citizens? The liberal value of extracting as much money money as possible from corporations? The liberal value of creating government agencies unconstrained by congressional oversight? The liberal value of undoing the lawful result of a presidential election by any means necessary?
What "liberal values," exactly?
You can find them enumerated here: Stuff White People Like. It's all about Class, not Policy. Government has fallen into the hands of the Wrong People.
Was just about to ask the same Sebastian. Would it be too much trouble for the author of the piece to provide a list? So as not to burden him too much, it could be a high level list rather than an extensive set of detailed policies.
But, then, any such list would give me the opportunity to have a reasoned argument with him, which I rather doubt he's not interested in having.
-sw
All articles of the "maybe Trump isn't Satan" genre appear to be required to open with a version of this stock paragraph: "Yes, Trump is a horrible person in every way and a threat to Our Sacred Values and his administration is a chaotic disaster, and even the people who voted for him think so, too, but..."
I am Canadian and I think it is interesting how Trump derangement syndrome has infected progressives around the world.
I know three progressives quite well, they are part of group I belong to that gets together on Saturday evenings to play board games and these three men have been unhinged about Trump since primaries. Guys always talking about conspiracy theories or latest stupid thing Trump has allegedly done but when I try to talk about Canadian politics or news, they have no idea what PM Trudeau up to or what is on daily news.
Independent journalist likely lives in London where he surrounded by other left wing and they talk daily about Trump, I bet they don't talk that often about their own leader, PM May.
Progressives triggered by Trump election and I really don't understand what happening, why are they allowing Trump to live rent free in their heads and he is not even their president.
Everything proceeds as I have foreseen. Democrats are running from Russia. The economy is exploding as the DC tick is being removed. Trump is being amazingly successful on the foreign policy stage. All it took was an actual American who didn’t work for the rest of the world like the previous 4 presidents.
In a few months Mueller is going to be resigning from his post and hiring defense attorneys. Hundreds of democrats and not a few “republicans” are going to be posting bail.
Just in time for the midterms.
Then we will see how committed the sheep like Freder are. We know they want us dead. They are just now realizing neither democracy nor the “Russian Collusion Investigation “ will do it for them.
The numbers show an economy that was stalled since mid 2015. After the first quarter of 2017 it's been relatively strong. It's important to note that at that point we were not coming off a recession where improvement virtually automatic, although the slowest in modern history. Trump's GDP growth is post recovery - the hard kind.
It's not an amazing change, but it's also not the disaster were were told by the well-educated Nobel laureates. In fact, it's the opposite.
Peeps need to remember why we have massive deficits.
In ye olden days, the Republicans would make a big fuss about deficit spending & the Dems would paint them as mean old number crunchers who didn't care about people.
"We owe it to ourselves" the Dems would crow.
So the Republicans learned & they put tax cuts ahead of Balancing the budget. Which causes the Dems to issue phony cries about the Deficit, which no one takes seriously, because we all know the Dems would rather spend & Borrow and will only balance a budget if the R's in congress force them.
Like every other major Fed Government problem - it'll only get fixed when the Democrats change. Which will be never.
A fellow worker responded to a particularly idiotic head manager pronouncement by enrolling him in a real clown school.
David Remnick is losing track of his image because he is trying to upgrade his clown car image with a higher-falutin' allusion: Yeats' "The Circus Animals' Desertion" which begin "I sought a theme and sought for it in vain."
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43299/the-circus-animals-desertion
The most famous bit of this famous poem comes at the end:
. . . Now that my ladder's gone
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.
I wonder if Remnick really reread and reconsidered the poem before he wrote or if he just pulled it out of the ragbag of his mind (which is what I just did), because the "I" in the poem is, if anything, questioning his own certainties. As I recall, it was written on the eve of WWII with all the added complications of Irish politics mingled in.
Most businesses operatate at the edge of bankruptcy. If you lower costs, a huge number of businesses survive; if you raise costs, a huge number fail.
Hence the effect of removing regulations.
I think the Dems’ panic is almost palpable right now. They are destroying one institution after another: NFL, Oscars, Delta and United Airlines, etc. This morning, my partner came up disgusted after watching Sunday Morning on CBS, because it was so deep into progressive orthodoxy, and severe TDS. She thought that only the road trip segment to Estes Park was redeeming. We have been watching it for > 30 years now, and it is mostly pretty innocuous- if you want controversy and politics on Sunday Morning, there is always Meet the Depressed, Deface the Nation. Sunday Morning has, for decades, been the refuge. Not anymore apparently. Don’t they realize that all that they are doing, shitting in one bed after another, is putting good little progressives out of work, at a time when deplorable Trump voters are going back to work?
“So the Republicans learned & they put tax cuts ahead of Balancing the budget. Which causes the Dems to issue phony cries about the Deficit, which no one takes seriously, because we all know the Dems would rather spend & Borrow and will only balance a budget if the R's in congress force them.”
So, the Democrats’ current policy proposal, in response to an economic boom at least partially a consequence of cutting taxes, is to raise tax rates. Can’t have those deplorable getting bonuses or raises. Just isn’t done.
Death Wish 5 starts with a new girlfriend and her daughter. Things do not look good for them, if the formula is any guide. That's the 5th girlfriend with some number of daughters.
Look for Trump Derangement 1-5 soon.
Interestingly,the PBS soft toned voices have one upped these old cartoon ridiculing approach to anti-trump tirades. The had a 10minute discussion repeating wonderment over Trump's hubris.
They had a point. Trump does tell us over and over how great he and we are thanks to his leadership. Is that hubris? Bragging rights maybe , but as Dieon Sanders would say, "It's not boasting if you can actually do it."
Impeachment as the balance to Trump's boasting of High Acomplishments and arrogant demeanors. Hmmm?
Bad metaphor. A clown car is a little car full of clowns, not the entire circus. There are no animals in it. Only clowns
The NYT is a little newspaper full of clowns, not the entire journalism industry. There are no journalists in it. Only clowns!
Nancy Pelosi's presumable replacement, Steny Hoyer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=10&v=wQLYhMQyHyU
Here is the source of the circus animals' desertion allusion. Did Remnick build on this in the essay?
Metaphor Nazis
And Cooke beat me to it.
I don’t think that a lot of those complaining about the tax cuts have any idea of how powerful they are, and esp the corporate tax cuts. Our family company is now facing essentially a 25% aggregate (state and federal) tax rate, versus the old 44% rate. A 19% rate cut on increasing sales. I was shocked yesterday, looking over the F1120 that we are filing this week, and applying the new tax rates to our Taxable Income last year, how bad our cash position is likely to be by the end of this year. Cash that desperately needs to be profitably invested. Which is a big change from a year ago, when we were more worried about tax avoidance than investing. Multiply this hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of times across the country. And this isn’t rocket science - you just need to multiply line 30 of F1120 by the new tax rates (21%), and subtract that number from the tax you actually paid (@39%), or simply by just multiplying Line 30 by 19%. And the Democrats’ response is to raise the tax rates back up%
Cooke wrote:
"I wonder if Remnick really reread and reconsidered the poem before he wrote or if he just pulled it out of the ragbag of his mind (which is what I just did), because the "I" in the poem is, if anything, questioning his own certainties."
Agreed.
It seems the word is out now that the Mueller Investigation was a big red herring used while Jefferson Sessions, following direction from DJT and his friend Q, has indicted thousands of Traitors and Paedophiles that looted the USA during the last three Presidential Administrations.
Rocket man is only DJT's first trophy.
"as Dieon Sanders would say, "It's not boasting if you can actually do it."
The original was Dizzy Dean. "It ain't bragging if you can do it."
Trump does make it hard for me to watch him with all the boasting but I'll take him over the H.
Coulrophobia, the fear of clowns, is trendy now, like claiming you have Aspergers.
But, like every coin, there is a flip side.
And that flip side is the group of people who love Clown Porn.
Clown Porn is pretty much what it sounds like: porn with clowns.
People in clown make-up and clown clothes, fucking. Clowns ass-fucking while wearing over-sized shoes.
Blowjobs given by people wearing a red rubber nose, with sloppy red-painted mouths.
Bondage Clowns.
Clown Bukkake.
CLIFs: Clowns I'd Like to Fuck.
Ménage à Clowns.
Clowns fucking Clowny-Style.
Clowns fucking while Crying On The Inside.
Actually, I am not sure this really exists.
But I believe in the unimpeachable integrity of Internet Rule 34.
So therefore.
The Germans have a word for this.
Sorry if my math was shoddy there. I tend to round a bit. The CO corporate tax rate is something like 4.63%, which I sometimes round up, and sometimes down, when doing back of the envelope calculations. We are actually talking an 18% (39%-21%), not 19%, tax rate cut. Heck, I have even been known to round it up to 20%, which lets me divide by five, something that I can do in my head.
2 out of those 4 are outside the MSM machine.
The Independent still is, being UK, and though left wing was alwsys odd in any case.
And the piece from the Hill is by Sebastian Gorka ex of the administration.
Anyway, its an interesting lineup. Was Scott Adams' prediction correct?
Don’t they realize that all that they are doing, shitting in one bed after another, is putting good little progressives out of work, at a time when deplorable Trump voters are going back to work?
If Netflix is any indicator, I don't think so.
Obama is going to create a new series for them.
“It seems the word is out now that the Mueller Investigation was a big red herring used while Jefferson Sessions, following direction from DJT and his friend Q, has indicted thousands of Traitors and Paedophiles that looted the USA during the last three Presidential Administrations.”
Bets anyone here on whether Mueller investigation, or the counter investigation, ultimately nets more jail time%.
Clown porn is a very Laslo concept.
FTR: Clowns In America is a nickname for the Central Intelligence Agency,
Freder, I think this is what you were looking for. I think you missed it.
Finance and insurance; durable goods manufacturing; and information services were the leading contributors to the increase in U.S. economic growth in the third quarter of 2017. According to gross domestic product (GDP) by industry statistics released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, 18 of 22 industry groups contributed to the overall 3.2 percent increase in real GDP in the third quarter.
"Everybody" said trillion dollar deficits are bad?
If only somebody had told Comrade Obama, surely he would have stopped the travesty.
And don't call Obama Shirley.
"It is always amusing to see Althouse carefully parsing the details of something like David Remnick's selection of a metaphor... But never questioning the flatly outlandish things in a Trump stump speech."
Click on the "Who is Althouse?" link in the blog banner and you will see:
"This blog is about nothing more than what interests Althouse at any given moment. She encourages comments, but don't try blaming her for not getting to a subject you think she should be talking about. Either she's not interested or she hasn't noticed that thing (in which case, try linking nicely to whatever you'd like to encourage her to notice)."
In my first few months of blogging, I let it bother me when people said why are you blogging about X when there is also Y, you need to talk about Y, but I got over that... 14 years ago.
So you don't understand this blog.
And also, you are lying.
Resistance must take the form of the affirmation of the values and institutions that the President has scorned and threatened.
The CIA? The FBI? Neo-liberalism (aka "Globalism")? Educated elites? Spoiled celebrities?
What side is Remnick on?
@Yancey Ward
Nice to find another Yeats reader here. I'm a bit surprised Althouse and others didn't pick up on it, because I would have thought that Yeats's poems, along with "Sailing to Byzantium," say, is among the most frequently taught, even in high schools.
Althouse is dropping the boom on someone.
In which Althouse contributes to Clown Porn by smacking fopdoodles, repeatedly, on the bum.
Not my thing but a fopdoodle begs for it.
You'd think the editor of The New Yorker would be capable of crafting a metaphor. That he can't is proof Trump corrupts everything, especially his enemies.
But the spectacle on Pennsylvania Avenue diverts attention from an arguably more consequential matter; namely, who now speaks for the values and the institutions of a liberal democratic country?
Notice that Remnick uses the phrase "a liberal democratic country" where you would expect him to use the more precise "the United States".
Bondage Clowns.
Clown Bukkake.
CLIFs: Clowns I'd Like to Fuck.
Ménage à Clowns.
Clowns fucking Clowny-Style.
Clowns fucking while Crying On The Inside.
Where are all the funny female clowns? Either we live in a heteronormative patriarchal society suppressing female comedy genius or chicks are not funny enough.
Send in the Clowns, there ought to be clowns - as Babs once sung.
It's true—Chuck is a sleeping son of a bitch.
In my first few months of blogging, I let it bother me when people said why are you blogging about X when there is also Y, you need to talk about Y, but I got over that... 14 years ago.
As Terry Teachout says (mockingly), "How dare you talk about A when B is infinitely more important?" And his (mocking) corollary, "If I disagree with you, you’re almost certainly arguing in bad faith and probably evil as well."
"Where are all the funny female clowns? "
"The View."
That he can't is proof Trump corrupts everything, especially his enemies.
If it was not for the enemies Trump has, I would be far less enthusiastic.
I watched most of Trump's speech that was posted here. He made fun of the media and his political rivals. It wasn't particularly vicious. I'd put it more under the category of raillery or kidding than a vicious attack on press freedom and our American values. I got the jokes and appreciated them. He is funnier and much less malign than the late night comics who relentlessly mock him. Their vituperation of Trump has become a kind of self parody. I've read that 91% of the media coverage of Trump has been negative, but, manifestly, his presidency has not been 91% unsuccessful. And an even higher proportion of late night jokes are directed against Trump with a zero probability of hearing any joke directed against Nancy or Maxine.......Trump could probably stand to be a little more reflective of what he says, but the media could stand to be super mucho more reflective of how they report on his presidency and hair style.
Prof. your answer confirms my thoughts that you are great. As for Chuck, I hope I got his name correct, I am sorry his rage for the loss of November 2016 has clouded his brains and vision.
Bay Area Guy said...
Althouse is dropping the boom on someone.
3/11/18, 12:58 PM
Some clown no doubt.
The New Yorker is a very funny magazine. Very.
Mind you, it's not intentionally funny, but still, it's very funny in a Doug Niedermeyer-type of way.
Send in the Clowns, there ought to be .....Clowns.
I'm surprised none of the first 95 comments mentions the gross illiteracy of Matt Gillow and his editors at the Independent. When he wrote the words "a brief eulogy on how Donald Trump is unfit to be president" he surely meant "elegy", not "eulogy". Even "elegy" is hardly the fittest word for the context, but you can't eulogize someone for incompetence unless you somehow admire incompetence!
Lewis Wetzel on Remnick quote: "But the spectacle on Pennsylvania Avenue diverts attention from an arguably more consequential matter; namely, who now speaks for the values and the institutions of a liberal democratic country?"
Notice that Remnick uses the phrase "a liberal democratic country" where you would expect him to use the more precise "the United States".
Imagine Robespierre lamenting the dangerous lack of respect for Throne and Altar.
Remember the good old days when everybody derided trillion dollar plus deficits? Freder the Totalitarian
Snort. A leftist claiming he was alllll for fiscal responsibility in some magical time.
You're not fooling anybody, boy.
I got thinking; if you look past the ridiculous Twitter pronouncements, and the President’s general veneer – what has he actually done?
A Hillary voting relative just said almost the exact same thing to me last week.
traditionalguy said...
"People now actually love Trump like they loved FDR who was effectively President For Life."
Repeal the 22nd Amendment!
Remember the good old days when everybody derided trillion dollar plus deficits?
Remember Krugman telling us that if we just had the courage to allow Obama to spend anything he wanted, on what didn’t matter, that economic utopia would follow?
What liberals resent is who is doing the spending, in this case, the people who actually, you know, earned the money, not liberals, who know much better how everybody’s money should be spent.
My favorite one is Democrats saying they are against the wall because it would cost 20 billion dollars. They don’t give a shit how many economic migrants it would save from dying in the desert if they were induced there by the attractive nuisance of an unguarded US border.
Good to see you're on to the Dem's attention to their languaging, more frequently using the adjective "democratic" in place of "Democrat". I've tasked myself with tracking this subtlety , and it really is telling! Small yes, but telling too.
(World Famous Lurker says....)
Rob @ 10:36am:
"David Remnick's yearlong agita and dyspepsia are one of the enduring accomplishments of the Trump presidency. What a joy it is to see him suffer. Is that wrong?"
No Rob, it's not wrong. And the Germans really do have a word for that!
And I feel the same way about Chuck.
The wheel are always coming off the Trump clown car.
Isn't that where he keeps the Democrats?
Thanks for the Yeats and elegy stuff. Will frontpage it when I am back at my desktop.
Freder said: “ The economy is not expanding any faster than it was before he was elected.”
#CNN fail: Network stopped updating 'Trump job growth tracker' in early January
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/03/cnn_fail_network_stopped_updating_trump_job_growth_tracker_in_early_january.html
Ann Althouse said...
...
...
In my first few months of blogging, I let it bother me when people said why are you blogging about X when there is also Y, you need to talk about Y, but I got over that... 14 years ago.
So you don't understand this blog.
Althouse, I know perfectly well that your credo is that you will blog what you wish to, on subjects that interest you. I am not telling you what to blog. I am speaking/writing what interests me.
You might likewise think about the notion of telling me how to comment. I am here observing what it is that you do, and don't do.
Then there was this (!):
And also, you are lying.
I have no freaking idea what you are talking about, and what it is that I might have "lied" about. I think you've got a lot of god damned nerve, tossing out a charge like that without backing it up.
Is this some sort of experiment on your part, in Trumpist counter-punching? You gonna hit back harder than anybody hit you? Because I don't think you are much of a hitter.
Dear Chuck,
I suspect these two will help you:
"never questioning the flatly outlandish things in a Trump stump speech."
"And also, you are lying."
Perhaps your hostess is practicing the Trumpian art of provoking a critic into revealing his or her true nature.
Let's have a show of hands: who has a freaking idea what Ann is talking about?
In which Chuck demonstrates his inability to look in a mirror.
I started to comment but this was just pathetic.
Sorry, fopdoodle.
Funny coincidence: Being an authentic hillbilly, I just saw the word "elegy" for the first time this morning. In the early morning hours I tend to binge watch old TV shows on Hulu. Lately it's been "Adam-12". This morning I watched a very unusual episode that completely departed from the usual: no plot, no dialogue, just a narrated tribute to a murdered cop, titled "Elegy to a Pig" - 1970. I kept thinking it was a typo for "eulogy" which is close enough to still make perfect sense.
I found it a very moving story. Adam-12 is fun for me to watch on a number of levels. It's set in 1970 Los Angles, when the freeways were practically empty and the cops had a very different job with drastically different rules of engagement from today. Most shows have hippies in some situation, and they are groovie, man. The criminals are all White. Blacks are treated like everybody else, there are lots of issues with drugs, and it has some lost character types that have disappeared from modern shows if not the culture itself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elegy_for_a_Pig
walter, your comment went up before I had the chance to add this afterthought...
It might be a wholly different matter, if I had watched the Trump speech in the Pennsylvania 18th, and I had no idea if Althouse had seen it all, and I nevertheless demanded that she blog it for my satisfaction.
That's not what happened. Althouse watched it. She announced on this-here blog that she was watching it.
And again, I never told Althouse what to blog. I never called her a name; certainly nothing like "liar."
What I did, was to comment on the gist of this post, along with a news-dominating speech that Trump gave last night, that by Atlhouse's own account was something she watched with interest.
I think she is still chapped about my calling her and Meade out, about their futility with blog "moderation" rules/suggestions, and how she removed the statement and seems to have given up altogether on enforcing any standards as to personal attacks, etc.
We are once again witness to the mathematically perfect correlation between republican success and lefty/dem/LLR Chuck anguish, anger and lashing out.
You should feel free to draw obvious conclusions.
Can you imagine the bile and rage that will be vomited up by LLR Chuck and his MSNBC/CNN allies when Anthony Kennedy retires and Trump nominates a real conservative as opposed to a "Jen Rubin"
"conservative" that the LLR's would prefer?
There wont be enough popcorn in the world to match the show LLR Chuck and his lefty allies will put on!
Its become clear that the coup plan by the obama/clinton/LLR types needed to have been completed quickly in 2017 for the lefties and their LLR allies to ve successful.
But once again Trump is surviving while the plotters have been exposed and we are now moving into the "oh how the worm has turned" phase.
Schiff, Schumer and LLR Chuck hardest hit.
Even now Ill bet LLR "I Believe Durbin" Chuck is emailing loving missives to Li'l Dickie Durbin exhorting him to hang in there!
No one knows what Mueller will or won't come up with. No one knows what Sessions will or won't do. No one knows if Trump can actually succeed with North Korea. What we do know is that bar death or illness Trump will be president this date next year.
Freder better the government runs deficits with me having more money in my pocket than the government running the same deficits with me having less money in my pocket. Until the day comes that no one will buy the government's paper the government will be running massive deficits. My main beef with Trump is that he didn't get the LLR's in Congress to reduce the personal rates even more and make the changes permanent.
"I think she is still chapped about my calling her and Meade out,"
I thought Meade wore the chaps?!
"You gonna hit back harder than anybody hit you? Because I don't think you are much of a hitter."
A commenter on the playground telling Althouse that he will not take her lunch money, but that he could definitely take her lunch money if he wanted to.
The Germans have a word for this.
"You gonna hit back harder than anybody hit you? Because I don't think you are much of a hitter."
Who said this:
1. Ike Turner
2. Floyd Mayweather, Jr.
3. O.J. Simpson.
4. Tommmy Lee.
5. Tommy Lee's son.
6. Just some guy with anger issues commenting on Althouse.
The Germans have a word for this.
A commenter on the playground telling Althouse that he will not take her lunch money, but that he could definitely take her lunch money if he wanted to.
The Germans have a word for this.
The idea is to get Mom's attention. Worked once today, so Twister tries again.
"I think she is still chapped about my calling her and Meade out, about their futility with blog "moderation" rules/suggestions, and how she removed the statement and seems to have given up altogether on enforcing any standards as to personal attacks, etc."
I think I see your problem here. You're laboring under the impression that Althouse/Meade, or anybody here for that matter, actually give a shit about your opinion. Let me put your mind at ease. No one here gives a shit what you think anymore.
Now that we've cleared that up you can start over. Secure in the knowledge that nothing you say will be taken seriously.
James 'Tony Soprano' Gandolfini was in the Tarantino-scripted movie "True Romance" as a hit man for the mob.
He is in a cheesy tourist hotel in LA, beating the living hell out of Alabama (Patricia Arquette) over the whereabouts of a large amount of the mob's cocaine.
During a pause, he goes into a prototypical Tarantino monologue:
"Now the first time you kill somebody, that’s the hardest. I don’t give a shit if you’re fuckin’ Wyatt Earp or Jack the Ripper. Remember that guy in Texas? The guy up in that fuckin’ tower that killed all them people? I’ll bet you green money that first little black dot he took a bead on, that was the bitch of the bunch. First one is tough, no fuckin’ foolin’. The second one… the second one ain’t no fuckin’ Mardis Gras either, but it’s better than the first one ’cause you still feel the same thing, y’know… except it’s more diluted, y’know it’s… it’s better. I threw up on the first one, you believe that? Then the third one… the third one is easy, you level right off. It’s no problem. Now… shit… now I do it just to watch their fuckin’ expression change. You gonna hit back harder than anybody hit you? Because I don't think you are much of a hitter."
Intimidating stuff.
Except that last line: it goes a little weak in the end, a little flaccid. It hints that the guy is a poser, a pretender, a wanna-be tough guy who talks big but only feels comfortable beating up women like Patricia Arquette.
Which is why Tarantino cut out that line of dialogue before the director began filming.
Because that line would have been embarrassing.
Because people in the theatre would've probably snickered and rolled their eyes.
Because the Great Ghost Spirit of Charles Bronson would've sadly shook his head.
Because Humphrey Bogart would've told Lauren Bacall to make him a sandwich, then have her go bitchslap the guy who wrote it.
Because Samuel L. Jackson would've rather said ten variations on 'motherfucking snakes on a motherfucking plane' than to try and make that line sound bad-ass.
Even Dick-fucking-Tracy would've smirked.
The Germans have a name for this.
Freder Frederson said...
"Why are you blaming Trump for Obama's failure?
Because Trump promised to fix Obama's failure. Trump, because of the way the law is written, is actually increased the cost of the ACA in his attempt to destroy it. His piecemeal destruction will ultimately result in a disaster as there is nothing to replace it."
Sorry Freder, but Trump has to destroy Obamacare before he can fix it. He as almost accomplished its destruction, now he build a much better one.
Ena grads know more than us commoners:
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12012/iran-france-drian
Cptrection he isn't an Ena grad, and he is a Briton nationalist
Chuck is not here in good faith. He didn’t vote for trump.
Every thing he does and posts here should be viewed through the prism of he is a person who hates trump’s supporters and supports nothing that a normal republican voter supports.
He is always 100% aligned with the leftists. He never disagrees with them. Ever.
”Chuck is not here in good faith. He didn’t vote for trump.”
He says he did, doesn’t he?
Original Mike said...
“He says he did, doesn’t he?”
George will. David French. Billy Kristol. Jennifer Rubin. Flake. McCain. Mcmuffin. Et al.
Chuck.
All people who claim to be conservatives or republicans but hate actual republican voters and do everything in their power to make the open borders “free” trade stupid foreign policy globalist agenda happen.
They are not honest people.
”Chuck is not here in good faith. He didn’t vote for trump."
He says he did, doesn’t he?
As Althouse has said several times....he is lying.
Chuck is not a Republcan or a conservative. He is a servant of the neocon globalist duopoly.
Bill Kristol, Jonah Goldberg, David French, David Frum, George Will and The National Review. They are all the same. Traitors and bitter enemies to the normals. To the people who voted for President Trump.
The Germans have a solution for that.
”As Althouse has said several times....he is lying.”
Yeah, I’ve come ‘round to believe that.
There is a pervasive lie in America that the police are there to protect innocent people from being victimized. As we have seen, most recently in the Parkland shooting, they are not.
The police are there to protect the criminals from the mob.
In a normal situation, Cruz doesn't make it out of that school. He is certainly not protected from society by armed men who have informed him of his rights. He is certainly not given a bulletproof vest and surrounded by men who would stop anyone who kept him from his lawyer, rules of evidence, and the possibility of living out his life a free man should he be acquitted through legal technicality.
In a typical situation, the mob makes sure Cruz never sees the setting sun.
On this blog, Chuck is like Cruz. He wants to be known, wants people to take him seriously. He will not stand to be ignored.
He is incapable of living in a normal society, where people give and receive respect out of a sense of shared community. He is only comfortable yelling "fire" in crowded theaters, secure in the notion that the police must escort him safely through the people whose evening he just ruined.
After all, it's in their policy to do so. He has memorized every word.
And once he's pulled this trick again and again, should they somehow tire of his antics and decide they have better things to do?
Well in his mind that only serves to further justify his attacks on the "unjust and hypocritical" community which no longer finds it necessary to send the police to his defense.
That's where Chuck finds himself. The police have stopped coming. They have better things to do.
Because Humphrey Bogart would've told Lauren Bacall to make him a sandwich, then have her go bitchslap the guy who wrote it.
Yep.
You really seem to like thinking about Trump a lot.
Do you dream about him at night?
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