"Obama’s lacerating takedown of him at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner."
From "How Jokes Won the Election/How do you fight an enemy who’s just kidding?" by Emily Nussbaum (in The New Yorker).
Here's video of the "lacerating takedown" (including the unsmiling Trump).
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"How Jokes Won the Election/How do you fight an enemy who’s just kidding?"
-- Most the time, when someone says something mean and appends, "just kidding," or gets caught doing something stupid and says, "just kidding," or insults you and asks, "Can't you take a joke?" -- they're not kidding.
Obama's reign felt like a comedy routine. Joke was on us.
The joke is now sitting in the White House watching TV and tweeting on his unsecured phone.
"His rallies boiled with rage and laughter, which were hard to tell apart."
Seriously?
Wow, imagine what Robert Reich would say if our current president launched that kind of attack on a private citizen.
Jeb Stuart once said of a Union cavalry officer that "He will regret it but once, and that continuously."
Obama will regret his comedy schtick just once, but it will be for the rest of his life.
It looked like Trump was smiling. It looks to me like he was taking it all in good fun. As takedowns go, it was pretty so-so.
President Obama had every right to poke fun at Trump after Trump tried to delegitimize him as the President, by promoting the Birther nonsense.Trump deserved that and more.
Are you laughing yet? The president of Mexico said that absolutely NO, Mexico wil not pay for the wall and the meeting next week will be cancelled. American taxpayers will pay for the wall, hilarious.
...And that’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter –- like, did we fake the moon landing? (Laughter.) What really happened in Roswell? (Laughter.) And where are Biggie and Tupac? (Laughter and applause.)
That "list" of Trump insanities may be funny and apocryphal, but it isn't even as weird as the real list:
What happened to Trump PR man, "John Baron", who sounded just like Donald J. Trump?
Was the book of Hitler speeches really in his bedside table?
What about General Pershing, executing muslims with bullets dipped in pigs' blood?
How about that link between childhood vaccines and autism?
"Are you laughing yet?"
Is Obama still laughing? I'm guessing no.
@Will, wait. Watch. Learn (if you can).
Oh yes, we're waiting.
There's an element of Greek tragedy in the idea that Obama egged Trump into running by being an insufferable jerk.
Hubris begets nemesis.
Not even mentioning the bragging about pussy grabbing and the odd comments about his own daughter's sex appeal.
Obama has always struck me as someone who reacted badly to sudden prosperity. He spent years and years as a not very important backbencher, then suddenly vaulted to the Presidency over the course of four years.
And what did he do as President? He did all those things he couldn't do as a little person. He partied with celebrities. He was rude to rich people. He froze out Republicans instead of making deals, because after all: I won.
Trump's critics describe him as a joke, a buffoon, a man who couldn't get elected dog catcher in a town that would vote for anyone to be dog catcher.
Yet the Bush and Clinton political dynasties are in ruins, and Trump is in the White House with his super model wife, signing executive orders and tweeting absurdities.
In 1988, Trump had flirted with the idea of running for president in the GOP primaries. In 2000, he formed an exploratory committee to run for president as the Reform Party nominee.
Running for president was on Trump's mind for awhile. After Obama, with no experience and a head full of dumb ideas won, it cleared the way for Trump. Just as W made Obama possible, Obama made Trump possible.
Mein Gott, it's only one week and the reverbs from the newly spawned TDS are already tickling my cochlea. Four whole years of the theater of the absurd and existential angst. It's like the fifties and sixties all over again. Man life does not get better than this. Yippee ai oh kai yea!
Obama made Trump inevitable.
Chuck,
The Pershing thing is true, it was done by officers under his command, and both before and after (sometimes long after) his Philippine service. Notably by officers commanding units of the Constabulary.
"Will said...
Are you laughing yet? The president of Mexico said that absolutely NO, Mexico wil not pay for the wall and the meeting next week will be cancelled. American taxpayers will pay for the wall, hilarious."
Like I said earlier today, idiots on the left will never stop underestimating Trump. Here are some other "laughers" Will. John the club!
@buwaya, the story about Pershing is unproven. But did it have to be proven? I think the case is very solid that the mere rumors of Pershing's men dipping bullets in pig blood or wrapping captured Muslim terrorists in pig skins before hanging them were enough to make the Muslim Moro terrorists in the Philippines think twice.
And this is what Chuck misses. He says it's not proven so it never happened. Maybe it did happen, maybe it didn't. But as psychological warfare it was genius.
It is a story for the ages. A is man mocked to his face by the ordered ranks of his betters - more than once - seen as a clown. Who then, mocked again at every turn, takes their power away, humiliates them, and makes them his supplicants. Its a subject for operas, for ballads, for an epic.
It may not have been a blood libel. But the story Trump told to several audiences was, in a word, false:
http://time.com/4235405/donald-trump-pig-blood-muslims-story/
So, no. It is a binary choice, "true" or "false." Trump's typical inflamed telling of the story was false. Untrue. "Something similar," happening with some other people, at some later time, maybe, is not the same thing.
And remember the psychotic enthusiasm, the absolute certainty, with which Trump told that story. "Look it up!", he crowed. "It's in the history books!" Well it isn't in any good history book, if it is in any book at all.
And of course the madness with Trump is a many-layered thing. Trump was telling that story about General Pershing to illustrate how tough he would be on prisoners in the war on "Radical Islamic Terrorism." Defying all odds, the guy was elected president, and now that he is the Commander in Chief and is assembling a Cabinet, his nominees have all disowned the waterboarding and the enhanced interrogation techniques that were such fodder for Trump's campaign trash-talking.
Big Mike,
This sort of thing can't be proven, conclusively, just like the killing of most rebels at the time couldnt be proven, because there simply wasnt the documentation, civil records or photographs to do this. The mere fact that some Moros were killed on some expedition was a matter of a verbal report by some officer, who would also simply assert that it was a legitimate act. Who would also assert whether the bodies were mistreated, etc. There is, now, no proof that those alleged to have been killed, in so many of these cases, had ever existed.
Yet there is published testimony by Constabulary officers (American officers of the Philippine Constabulary) that this was a regular practice.
In a war like that, under circumstances like that, thats all the proof you are going to get. This is about as much proof of many accepted historical facts. Read enough history and you figure out how thin so much of it is. It suffices for me.
Like many people who voted for Trump, I laugh at people like Will, he is smarter than us and likes to show us. We never had any illusion about Trump, yet Will was ok with HRC. Who's dumb? After 8 years of Obama, they couldn't see this coming.
The "lacerating takedown" seemed marginally funny and moderately insulting to me. Who knows how it seemed to Trump. If he was upset, he hid it well.
"Is Obama still laughing? I'm guessing no."
All the way to the bank, baby. He was the second happiest guy around at Trump's inauguration and thereafter. Never saw him so relaxed as in his "farewell" to his staff at Andrews.
buwaya said...
...
...
... It suffices for me.
Naturally. What wouldn't suffice for you? Trump knows you. He could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, using bullets dipped in pigs' blood, and you'd still support him.
http://insider.foxnews.com/sites/insider.foxnews.com/files/styles/780/public/field/image/012516_trump.jpg?itok=LJMaQQc3
The Pershing Philippines story sounds like propaganda. But whose propaganda?
Silly and you are just reinforcing the concept that Trump is vindictive and petty.Projection on your part? We all know that you didn't vote for Trump - the apple doesn't fall to far from the tree.
Chuck,
Under his command, certainly. Pershing was in charge of all troops in the theater, including those very credibly alleged to be doing this, at that time, and before and after also.
This is not a court of law. There is no pinning down of facts in the open, clear to all. Nothing like that in that place and time. Or even today, really. You have to live in a place like that to understand. People are said to have done this or that, and there is no DNA evidence or cctv or multiple credible witnesses or even a recoverable body out there in the bundok.
Contrarily, it is a demonstration of ferocity. Thats why Duterte claims to have killed men himself, shooting them or throwing them out of helicopters. And denies it later, but you keep that thought in the back of your mind. It is a barbarian way of looking at things. But often enough you have to deal with barbarians.
I am used to barbarians. Facts of life.
Band of Brothers: Did Speirs really kill those German prisoners?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JhIFd-iKz8
I read that Major Winters reported that Speirs told him he did kill them. I suspect this is why Speirs never made full Col...and was later made the Governor of Spandau prison. German prisoners would be wise to not F with Speirs.
Shakespeare would have done something amazing with Trump.
The scenes write themselves. The build-up, the mockery, the court of haughty nobles, peasant characters out of Henry IV and V, and comic relief - he would even have written in the jester Yiannopoulos and the scathing, clever Conway.
The election night, with its parallel, shifting complacency to dread, and vice versa, and the hysteria, the rending of garments and the wailing women. Wearing pussy hats ...
The modern world wont give us a dramatist or poet to do justice to this story, but we are I think seeing a far better story in real time than a poet could dream up. Literature of the real, in tweets and on Youtube.
The end remains TBD of course. Comedy or Tragedy?
Think about who the Democrats have put up since the 1970's and how they have run their campaigns.
1. Jimmy Carter, an unprepared obscurity, stumbled into the Presidency as the last gasping breath of the Democratic South. He proved such a bad President that he was defeated for reelection by a B movie actor who much of the electorate thought was a dangerous warmonger.
2. Walter Mondale committed political suicide by making his first promise a pledge to raise taxes.
3. Mike Dukakis blew a huge early lead and (literally) tanked the election. He had nothing to offer a national electorate.
4. Bill Clinton staggered to the nomination while tripping on his dick multiple times because his wife (for reasons we later understood) stood by him and because the more electable Democrats had stayed out of the race, wrongly believing that Bush would be unbeatable. Then Bush raised taxes, Ross Perot decided to run and Clinton waltzed into the Presidency with 41% of the popular vote.
5. Al Gore, who could have been President in 1998 and run as an incumbent if he had any balls, lost to George Bush because he did not have any balls (and could not figure out how to win his home state and Bill Clinton's home state.) In short Gore stuck with Clinton in 1998 when he should have ditched him, and then ditched him in 2000 when he needed Clinton to win Arkansas.
6. John Kerry thought mainstream voters would just love his rich boy windsurfing act, and the Democrats forgot that people still remembered what Kerry had done in the 1960's before Reporting For Duty in 2004. Indeed his reporting for duty line was one of the worst in a nominee acceptance speech in a long time.
7. Luckily for the Democrats Barack Obama had been fortunate when he lost an primary election for a house seat to some Democratic crooks, and then Obama lucked into a primary and general election win for Senate when his opposition imploded. The party got lucky again in 2008 when Obama exposed Hilary Clinton as a terrible candidate, and then proved to be a highly effective candidate himself and became President.
8. Failing to learn the lesson about Hilary Clinton that Obama had taught them, the Democrats rigged the presidential primaries in her favor, only to see her own weaknesses lose her the election, with a big assist from Professional Fool and former CIA Director Panetta, who proved as unqualified as Clinton.
People love to say that the Republicans are the Stupid Party, but the Democrats are at least their equal.
buwaya, I am sorry to tell you guys that you are winning the argument in convincing me that Donald Trump is comparable to some of the infamous figures of past and present, fiction to reality. From Hamlet, to Duterte.
Some of the most unthinkable comparisons in U.S. presidential history.
They chose the Form of their Destructor. They all laughed then; who's laughing now?
Not Obamandias.
With apologies to Shelley:
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Obamandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
I am dealing with a similarly "thin" piece of history, translating an account of the 1876 Spanish expedition to Jolo, much of it it seems based on contemporary interviews with officers involved.
How accurate are the incidents related in that thing, on the circumstances of a mans death, of anothers heroism, of the reason for some maneuver, on whether a man or place even existed? What I'm looking at and translating, much of it, is all there is or ever will be.
If Trump shot somebody in the middle of fifth avenue there is no doubt in my mind it would necessarily be justifiable homicide. Trump is that righteous.
He is already legend Chuck, he is Achilles or Arminius or Alfred the Great, all barbarians, note. It takes a barbarian to be a legend.
Thanks Chuck--right on cue.
The best part of the WHCD story isn't even Obama clowin' Trump: it's the many tweets and reactions of the reports present. They had such a good time! Trump was "destroyed," he was "demolished," he was "annihilated." They were so happy--it was so much fun to see Trump get cut down to size. Who did he think he was?! He's a nobody, and we're reporters. We showed 'im good.
What would really put the icing on the cake would be in 4 (or 8) years having taken a wrecking ball to both the Republicrats and the Demicans Trump sidles up to Obama at an inauguration and says "That was a funny routine in 2011. I got a big kick out of it."
Interesting to note that Trump doesn't really look that much different almost six years later, but Obama aged a lot. The job does that to a man, even one who spends much of his time on the golf course.
The Pershing thing is true, it was done by officers under his command, and both before and after (sometimes long after) his Philippine service.
I have my doubts. This story is a chestnut that goes back to the earliest records of Muslim mischief. In the aftermath of the Battle of Tours it is said that Charles Martel had the bodies of slain Moors buried with the rotting remains of slaughtered swine. While in command of the Varangian Guard Harald Sigurdsson, aka Hardrada or Strongarm, is said to have dealt with captured Seljuks by force feeding them pig offal until they choked to death. In the wake of the Sepoy Mutiny thousands of Muslim mutineers were said to have been killed with bullets and bayonets dipped in swine's blood. And the Crusaders are still accused of outrages involving pigs by Wahhabis and other Islamists every day in schools and mosques around the globe.
An old old stories told by people who are never themselves the eyewitnesses.
Lacerating?
Give me a break... I thought it was funny. Plus, even the long form birth certificate was forged.
He wasn't born in Hawaii. But who cares, even Canadians can run for President.
I thought Obama's routine was very funny indeed!!! I doubt it had much to do with Trump's run, though. I think the dire prospect of another Bush combined with the economic situation created the Trump presidency.
Chuck said...
buwaya said...
...
...
... It suffices for me.
Naturally. What wouldn't suffice for you?
Chuck, you are aware that he is Filipino, yes?
I really don't know why you want to die on this hill. I learned this story in grade school. Was it authenticated with internet video? No. And you know what, even if it is a recurring meme, a legend like Arthur and his Knights, it's no less rhetorically effective. There's no video of Jesus either but you are a Christian aren't you?
If your Universe consists of what can be found on internet video, then you have a teeny tiny little Universe.
And FYI, Mattis, Pompeo et al will do what they have to do when they have to do it. God bless them.
I couldn't watch the video long enough to get to the Trump routine. I couldn't stand the sycophancy of the press in that room. They laughed uproariously at stuff that was mediocre and deserved a chuckle. Were they all drunk?
Normally, I think that most of what is in the New Yorker is high brow, elitist, twaddle. Telling inside jokes to each other that most of us don't get, and don't care about. In short, the typical Crooked Hillary voters. And we knew the author's sentiments when she laid out her history in the first couple paragraphs. She is ethnically Jewish, and, thus one of them, the sort of person who reads the New Yorker, getting all the high brow inside jokes, contributed to Clinton's campaign, and completely missed why Trump won. Indeed, that magazine and Crooked Hillary have a lot in common in that respect - attraction to a very small, elitist, group of people.
That said, she had some good insights. The opposition tries to pin Trump to reality, when what he is, essentially, doing is comedy. She was right - asking Putin for Clinton's (illegally) deleted emails is classic. Much of middle America got the joke, and the humorless MSM trying to dissect it just looked partisan, silly, and stupid. It was a joke, silly. Jokes aren't meant to be literally true, but rather you have to look at their inner truth. And, it was the inner truths of what Trump was saying that was so attractive to so many people, esp in flyover country, who don't have (or want) the sophistication of the New Yorker readership. So, every time the humorless MSM 'fact checkers' would criticize one of Trump's exaggerations as being not literally true, his supporters would laugh at them, because the statements were never intended to be literally true, but, rather, were vehicles for stating politically incorrect inner, or higher, truths. They got it, and it was even funnier that the sophisticated "fact checkers" did not. The author's analogy with South Park was astute. It has thrived in much the same way that Trump has.
Then, of course, the author goes off the rails about the alt-right, fascists, Nazis, etc, without the self-consciousness or realizing that the Italian Fascists and the German Nazis were far closer philosophically, morally, economically, and politically to her side of the political divide than the one she and her liberal friends are so panicked over, never realizing that the only allure of Hitler, Nazis, etc on the right is their ability to panic the left, likely because of its strong Jewish leadership influence. Essentially, it is a small group of Eric Cartmans running around screaming Nazi slogans in order to panic the adults in the room about the coming of the Fifth Reich. Nothing more. Just something politically incorrect to panic the silly adults. Which is another joke that the elitist so who read the New Yorker, and voted for Clinton, don't ger, but most of the rest do, and laugh at you for not getting the joke.
"and laugh at you for not getting the joke."
The Republican Party had been assigned the role of Straight Man of History. It wasn't supposed to be getting the comic bits.
Bruce Hayden said...
Normally, I think that most of what is in the New Yorker is high brow, elitist, twaddle. Telling inside jokes to each other that most of us don't get, and don't care about. In short, the typical Crooked Hillary voters. And we knew the author's sentiments when she laid out her history in the first couple paragraphs. She is ethnically Jewish, and, thus one of them, the sort of person who reads the New Yorker, getting all the high brow inside jokes
You really don't know how to differentiate between a person and a people, do you?
I wouldn't bother if it was coupe of cedarford but at one time I thought better of you, Bruce.
Bad Lieutenant: I really don't know why you want to die on this hill.
More and more of Chuck's comments are rhetorically indistinguishable from those of the DNC sock-puppets infesting the blog of late. I honestly took a couple of them for "Will"'s on first glance.
Just another example of Trump making his enemies humiliate and degrade themselves, I guess.
Hillary's story also has the elements of classic tragedy: the faithless husband, the hubris, the nemesis, the time in the wilderness, and (God help us) the comeback. Somebody could write an opera about it, but they'd have to do something about the voice.
Will said...
President Obama had every right to poke fun at Trump after Trump tried to delegitimize him as the President, by promoting the Birther nonsense.Trump deserved that and more.
Are you laughing yet? The president of Mexico said that absolutely NO, Mexico wil not pay for the wall and the meeting next week will be cancelled. American taxpayers will pay for the wall, hilarious.
Although I think you're wrong about who will ultimately pay for the wall, the wall is actually a legitimate gov't expense which I would be fine with paying for with my tax dollars (unlike most of the bilge we pay for). If I only get half a cup (just the wall, but Mexico doesn't pay), that is still WINNING. Get it? The wall is the important part, the paying is the icing on the cake.
"American taxpayers will pay for the wall, hilarious."
Keep laughing "Will." The lefties are so silly they think the rules are still the same as they were when Bush was "rising above" the hatred and insults that eventually brought him down.
What we are seeing is the "Strong Horse" that Osama and Bing West described.
Chuck's link says: Some reports do say that Pershing was engaged in burying Muslims with pigs or throwing pig's blood on them. According to the History News Network, a Chicago Daily Tribune article from 1927 describes Pershing sprinkling prisoners with pig's blood, then setting them free to warn others of being doused with the blood. "Those drops of porcine gore proved more powerful than bullets," the article wrote.
Christopher Capozzola, a history professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also cited an incident in which Pershing brought a pig's head to a ceasefire negotiation with a Muslim leader."So yes, there were deliberate efforts to offend Muslim Filipinos' religious sensibilities," Capozzola told TIME. "And yes, there was large-scale violence against their communities. But I know of no event like the one that Mr. Trump describes."
So now we are parsing "dipping" versus "sprinkling" to what end? Pershing obviously used pig parts to intimidate the Muslim enemy fighters. I love the pig head story! But Trumphaters gotta Trumphate.
asking Putin for Clinton's (illegally) deleted emails is classic. Much of middle America got the joke, and the humorless MSM trying to dissect it just looked partisan, silly, and stupid. It was a joke
Yes a perfect example of the "take it literally but not seriously" school of journalistic idioticisms.
Bad Lieutenant said...
Chuck, you are aware that he is Filipino, yes?
Could not care less. It does not make him, or Trump, right in this case.
I really don't know why you want to die on this hill. I learned this story in grade school. Was it authenticated with internet video? No. And you know what, even if it is a recurring meme, a legend like Arthur and his Knights, it's no less rhetorically effective. There's no video of Jesus either but you are a Christian aren't you?
If your Universe consists of what can be found on internet video, then you have a teeny tiny little Universe.
Like Trump's tiny fingers? Anyway, I get it. There are people, like you, who don't care that the things Trump says are lies. I have known that for a long time. I care, that they are lies. That distinguishes you and me. What else is there for you and I to say to each other. I'll point out the lies; you will say that you don't care. It makes you a lot more like an Obama supporter than I'd ever be.
And FYI, Mattis, Pompeo et al will do what they have to do when they have to do it. God bless them.
Sounds like the typical Trump-supporter (and indeed, Trump himself) bluster. I like clarity. You seem to be saying that Mattis, Pompeo, et al, will break current law and will depart from pledges they made under oath in Senate testimony, and will engage in waterboarding and enhanced interrogation.
Of course, I say all of that as someone who strongly supported President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Jay Bybee and John Yoo in the matter of "the torture memos." And I still do. But John Yoo came out long ago against Trump and Trump's completely reckless language on this subject.
You like tough talk, even if it is complete bullshit. I like measured, accurate language that informs me and is reliable.
LOLz!
Everyone gives Obama credit for being a gracious, well manner person. But I think he only gives the appearance of it - he says and does some pretty nasty things - all with a 'crease in his pants'.
Mike I might not parse words, except that the way that Trump tells this false story is so psychotic. The certainty with which Trump tells this made up story is a big part of what gets me. That this one act of a breach of U.S. Military ethics resulted in "25 years" of there not being "a problem."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQMFSvjezzg
The one guy in this story who is frighteningly unbalanced, is Donald Trump.
Obviously, there are people for whom this sort of speech sounds great. For me, it is horrifying.
When Hillary described half of Trump’s followers as “deplorables,” she wasn’t wrong.
What an idiot. Hillary's comment was unnecessarily provocative, and unfair as well. Sure, there are bad apples in every barrel, but a lot of Trump's core supporters were normal people who've felt pushed aside and unrepresented by the current political elite - and they were right, I think. Trump saw them, and saw their struggles, they believed he would represent them. And then clumsy Hillary comes out and calls them irredeemably deplorable. It was both a strategically stupid and an offensively prejudice thing to say.
In this election, it was the Democrats who lost more than it was the Republicans who won.
How fucking metal is that? Obama slams Trump deep in friendly territory, gets his giggles and applause. Trump takes it, says "bitch, in two years I'll take your job".
That shit is biblical.
@Bad LT - sorry if it was in artfully said. And, yes, I was stereotyping. Sorry if it offends. I really hate it when I find myself doung it. I knew that it was time to leave DC 35 years ago when I found myself stuck in traffic, on the beltway, behind a car doing 10 below the speed limit, when I needed to be somewhere. I knew they were Black, and, sure enough, they were. The thing about American Jews, and esp NY Jews, is that they seem stuck in some tribal cognitive dissonance thing about their tribal identity and allegiances. I was in a fraternity that was maybe 1/4 Jewish at the time - closest thing we had to a Jewish house. And some of them are good friends to this date. And I tell them that they, as a people, as a tribe, need desperately need to rethink their political allegiances or they are going to lose their Israeli homeland, again, and spend the next two millennia wandering the wasteland. The Dems are not, deep down, their friends. They haven't been for quite some time. They will take Jewish money, but condone the sort of antisemitism that would repel most a Republicans. Obama is not their friend. His Muslim (and maybe Black) heritage is a probably a good part of why he sabatogued Israel whenever he could, culminating in the recent UN vote, and his trying to send the Palestinians that money his last day in office. Crooked Hillary isn't their friend either. Her closest aide's parents and brothers were/are fairly militant, anti-Jewish Muslims. And, the biggest group of foreign donors to the Clintons over the years are oil rich, fundamental Muslim rulers who have repeatedly talked about the destruction of Israel. Indeed, she blew up the Middle East at their behest (and esp the giving of control of Egypt to the Muslim Brotherhood, long time allies of the Abedin family). It doesn't matter. Tribe trumps rationality right now for the smartest ethnic group in the country (and maybe world).
Part of the humor here though is that many of the greatest comedians of the last century were Jewish. Many of those comedians she mentioned playing the Catskills were Jewish. And, yet, it is so hard, apparently, for so many of them to understand the point that this author was making, that Trump is using comedic skills (to a great extent invented by Jewish comedians) to sell himself, and that they shouldn't take what he says literally. It was never intended to be taken literally. In any other context, Jews would be the ones writing this. In this, so many of them seem completely oblivious.
And, yes, this was an ethnically Jewish woman who pointed the classical comedic nature of much of Trump's speech. Which is the exception maybe that proves the rule, and also, maybe, why she devolved into nonsensical paranoid ravings at the end about the alt-right, Nazis, etc. essentially, maybe to prove that she is still a dues paying MoT (member of the tribe).
So elements of Trump's story are true, but as with most oral histories with multiple differing sources, his telling differs from what "Chuck" decided are the actual facts.
Even though he wasn't there and doesn't know the truth.
Got it.
Sad.
This blog should have a holier-than-thou-comment-off.
I predict Robert Cook against Chuck in the championship round.
Mr Trump as barbarian, but a necessary barbarian. Buwaya supra made me think of this Cavafy poem.
What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?
The barbarians are due here today.
Why isn’t anything happening in the senate?
Why do the senators sit there without legislating?
Because the barbarians are coming today.
What laws can the senators make now?
Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.
Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is he sitting at the city’s main gate
on his throne, in state, wearing the crown?
Because the barbarians are coming today
and the emperor is waiting to receive their leader.
He has even prepared a scroll to give him,
replete with titles, with imposing names.
Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
and rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?
Because the barbarians are coming today
and things like that dazzle the barbarians.
Why don’t our distinguished orators come forward as usual
to make their speeches, say what they have to say?
Because the barbarians are coming today
and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking.
Why this sudden restlessness, this confusion?
(How serious people’s faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home so lost in thought?
Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come.
And some who have just returned from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.
And now, what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
They were, those people, a kind of solution.
Trump very may have decided to run for President at that moment. However, I doubt he could have won if (1) Hillary hadn't been such a terrible candidate (and a terrible person to boot, say I), and (2) millions of voters across America hadn't felt so disaffected by the political and media class, and so concerned about the direction of our county/culture.
Cavafy is yet another colonial poet, made in yet another subculture that is gone now, Anglicized Greeks of Egypt.
In many ways the world is much more homogenous than it used to be.
I dont know that, for instance, you could write something like Durrells "Alexandria Quartet" today.
Will said... [hush][hide comment]
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Are you laughing yet? The president of Mexico said that absolutely NO, Mexico wil not pay for the wall and the meeting next week will be cancelled. American taxpayers will pay for the wall, hilarious.
Guess you missed it. "Highly placed Informed sources said Saturday President Trump ordered Mexican President Pena Nieto to stay home until he agrees to pay for wall"
Funny how MSM is spinning it.
Birkel;
Too true and too funny. Chuck, who defines facts to be whatever he believes or wishes were true....and Cookie, who reserves the right to redefine words as he sees fit (or as Moscow orders). Classic match-up.
In the battle for Most Ignorant Mouth-frother I predict Inga and sunsong in the final froth-off. If garage were still around.... well, we'd all love to see Joe Montana (PBUH) vs. Tom Brady (Mr. PSI) in an ultimate SuperBowl(tm), but that ain't gonna happen.
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President Trump could be an excellent CEO of any large Silicon Valley corporation. I've worked at a fairly high level at a few and I've seen it up close. He has the drive, loves the game, is willing to engage, possesses sound people skills, has plenty of arrogance yet is open to criticism, and refusal to fail that marks the best of the execs I worked with. Obama's was a failed presidency because he possesses only one of those qualities that I can see.
> I dont know that, for instance, you could write something like Durrells "Alexandria Quartet" today.
It was already a chronicle of a lost world for egyptians who grew up after the war, at least by the report of some emigrant copts I knew in the 70's for whom it had no resonance. Then again, perhaps it was a world that hardly existed at any time.
Cuck has Sunsong envy. That simple.
I am no fan of Dear Leader, but that shit was funny. Excellent delivery and timing.
- Krumhorn
Livermoron,
Which quality? I don't think O has any of the six.
Livermoron,
Which quality? I don't think O has any of the six.
"In a perverse twist, Trump may even have run for President as payback for a comedy routine..."
"Obama’s lacerating takedown of him at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner."
From "How Jokes Won the Election/How do you fight an enemy who’s just kidding?" by Emily Nussbaum (in The New Yorker).
Here's video of the "lacerating takedown" (including the unsmiling Trump).
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Here's a thought: people should be nicer, not sadistic assholes who never miss an opportunity to hurt someone. Even/especially if there is collateral damage.
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