Said Dan Savage, writing about GOP strategist Rick Wilson — we were talking about it yesterday — saying that Trump supporters are mostly "childless single men who masturbate to anime."
He also said it like there's something wrong with being childless, like there's something wrong with being single, and like there's something wrong with being male, but I take it that observation is already implied in Savage's line and is what makes it especially funny.
There must be one of those Greek words for rhetoric, something for the device of creating an expectation that you are talking about one thing, then surprising us by going somewhere else.
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Maybe it was meant as a back handed War On Women metaphor: that fantasy figures replacing the role of real women is like President Trump replacing role of a real Bush legacy.
No, he was acting stupid to get airtime on MSNBC as a fantasy Republican jerk off.
Exactly my sentiment--there is nothing wrong with any of those things, and the fact that it's "acceptable" to mock such attributes is a shameful thing.
Are these anime masturbators harming anyone? Are they leeching off of others? If not, then let them be. When they start being a net loss to civilization let me know.
I shot my wad in the previous "Great American Nudes" post.
As it were.
I am Laslo.
So, I believe the word you're looking for is "paraprosdokian". I know this, not because I am a scholar of the classics (though I would have liked to have been in another life) but because one of my favorite pre-internet joke lists--the kind people used to mimeograph and pass around--was a compilation of paraproskokian humor.
Correction of my second typing: Paraprosdokian. Sheesh. If you're going to throw around Greek words, you really need to spell them correctly.
One of my children read this over my shoulder and informed me that if you masturbate to it then, technically, it is hentai. Apparently there is also a form of anime that is designed to be hentai, though people watch it without the notion of sexual pleasure. For the art.
This is like those Japanese game shows I don't quite understand, I think.
-XC
For DSavage there is something wrong with anything a GOPer does.
The message here is, "If you support Trump then you're as pathetic as childless, single men who masturbates to anime."
Rick Wilson's message is the political-consultant equivalent of "Yer motha wears combat boots!"
Rick Wilson's message appears to be content-free, except for whatever it says about Rick Wilson.
At a minimum it makes one wish to ask, "How's your anime collection, Rick? And is any of it a little, umm, stained?"
This story is the cable television version of trolling.
Ugh, if Trump promises to drop Dan Savage into a live volcano I just might vote for "The Donald."
Okay, it can be a inactive volcano but I'd prefer a live one. Has to be from a helicopter at a great height.
No one is more odious and oily than Dan Savage.
This comment from yesterday's linked article was cute:
"I'm not saying [Rick Wilson] is wrong. I am saying his claim is SUSPICIOUSLY SPECIFIC."
One of my children read this over my shoulder and informed me that if you masturbate to it then, technically, it is hentai. Apparently there is also a form of anime that is designed to be hentai, though people watch it without the notion of sexual pleasure. For the art.
Hentai is hardcore animated porn. (though often with the genitals pixilated because of Japanese law) Tentacles are often featured prominently.
IHNJ IJLS "Fan Service"
Totally unrelated, I just noticed you have Hyperbole and a Half in your link list. I love that comic.
I suppose this does leave many open questions. For instance, if Rick Wilson has a nude photo of himself on the ceiling of his bedroom for "his pleasure" how does that rank him relative to his supposed Trump supporter?
(takes a look at a picture of Rick Wilson)
Well, those Trump supporters are looking pretty good in comparison.
But what if it is an anime version of Rick Wilson? What then?
Someone needs to go to Japan and sort this out.
Nothing Dan Savage says is funny- although if he were to say "I am dying of AIDS", then I would laugh.
Something tells me that ol' Rick Wilson knows his way around Japanese anime.
Yes, there is. Perpetual bachelorhood, self-stimulation, animated fantasies, and objectification are in the moderate case indications of a Peter Pan Syndrome, and in the worst case symptoms of progressive morality.
Jonah Goldberg wrote a short humorous essay on the term paraprosdokian a few years ago. Tried to find it, but can't. I think it was in one of his g-files.
If we are going to start talking about things that are okay with Dan Savage's view of decency in behavior, there aren't many things that will be off-limits.
Guy: "I had a terrible case of the flu; so I licked the keyboards, doorknobs, pens, pencils, coffee cups and everything else I could rub or lick in the office of my political enemies, because I wanted to transmit the virus to them."
Dan Savage: "You say that like it's a bad thing."
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/germ-warfare/Content?oid=3092
But it's not even a believable stereotype! Aren't Sanders' supporters be more likely to be in the right childless/weird porn watching demographic, which seems a young overeducated liberal kind of thing? Japanese cartoons aren't really what the proletariat watches. If you're going to stereotype Trump's supporters, you ought to say "inbred hicks with old Calvin-peeing-on-something decals on their pickup trucks" or something.
It is a fun game, though.
Bush: country club republicans that worry about using the wrong fork
Clinton: angry feminists with too many cats
O'Malley: Guys who like guys with abs
Paul: 9/11 conspiracy theorists
YOUR CANDIDATE HERE: Smart, sensible, good-looking people
My social circle includes a lot of the demographic Wilson and Savage are arguing about. As far as I can tell, they're mostly going for Sanders or Cruz depending on their ideological leanings - and I suspect overall they're mostly Sanders people, because my personal political leanings *will* cause some bias in the sample towards Cruz types. Your average Trump supporter isn't exactly... the sort of xenophiles who watch "Jap cartoons". I ribbed a lefty unemployed (and frankly unemployable, despite his impressive intellect and programming talent) friend about my expectations that he was a natural Trump supporter, and he angrily denied doing any such thing, because these guys are above all status-insecure, and they tend to prize sounding intelligent over anything else. They want a candidate that makes them sound sophisticated. Trump makes them feel... common.
Last week I overheard a conversation between a mother and her two angry left-wing daughters in a pizza parlor, the mother, who definitely had that Appalachian older-than-her-age look to her - was talking about supporting Trump. That's your Trump demographics - stubborn, unafraid of being thought common or trash, possibly not especially well-educated, but even if they are, disinterested in displaying that education one way or the other.
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