I was mindlessly channel-surfing last night and happened to drop in on the old Ben Stiller movie "Zoolander." Had forgotten Trump is in it:
Look, without Donald Trump, American presidenting wouldn’t be what it is today.
I guess Ben Stiller feels some responsibility for the embedding of Donald Trump in the fabric of America. Here's Ben trying to unravel the damage by reading Trump tweets in his Zoolander voice:
ADDED: What an elaborate, devious plan The Donald executed:
February 2, 2018
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
34 comments:
He does well with a script.
Is that Melania standing behind him?
Thanks for finding that. It is a great way to start off Freedom Day. And DJT is making us rich again.
In the story about the Korean defector , he says the most impressive thing he saw in South Korea was their trash cans . Ho had spent his entire life searching for scraps of food in Communists trash cans, and then he found the Capitalists trash cans were full of food.
And that made him realize his life had not been worth trash in a Socialist Police State.
DJT had the guts and persuasion skills that it took to stop Obama/Clinton's war to make American's lives into not worth trash.
Yep. The left all loved Donald Trump until he won the Presidency
Marla lookin' good.
From a certain distance Trump seems to have moved from a focus on real estate, to being a celebrity, to a focus on entertainment. At some point he decided that the main asset he had to sell was himself, and a sometimes vague or hard to quantify idea that his mere participation in a project would make it successful. Many of the people who were "taken" in the Atlantic City fiasco were big-time bankers and lawyers who are supposed to know better. If they lose out, well, maybe it's as if they bought a very expensive ticket to a show, and then decided they didn't like the show. No refunds.
I've been reading a bit about P.T. Barnum. From early on he made certain kinds of "theatrical" shows more respectable--moving away from girlie shows (and probably gambling) at night, to more family-friendly entertainment, including matinees. Given the rising middle class, with women making spending decisions for families, this wasn't an alternative to making money, it was a very intelligent way of doing exactly that. Barnum moved away from hoaxes, and became somewhat more honest in a Victorian time that demanded or rewarded honesty. Then, unfortunately, there was the indifference to, sometimes cruelty to, animals.
Trump can probably look around and say he is no more dishonest than a lot of other people. Once you see your career as pure entertainment, you can say: look, people hand over their time and money for what is basically garbage. Why not quit the foolish moralizing? Why not join in?
How an ambition to be president came out of this, I'm not sure.
Trump was a plot-line spoiler in Two Weeks Notice, the problem being that it breaks the genre of fiction-story with an intrusion.
Melania dazzles again.
Behind every successful man is a woman, and behind her is his wife.
old saying
I remember a debit card ad where Trump is touting the perks of the card atop one of his buildings, accidentally drops it, says "Oops", goes down to dig it out of a dumpster head first, only to hear a passer-by say, "And I thought he was doing so well."
Trump's charm is sometimes based on self-parody. His critics don't get it.
@rhhardin, the way I heard it, behind every successful man is s good woman — and an astounded mother-in-law.
I watched the first season of the office recently and Trump and the apprentice were mentioned more than once. It was weird
"He does well with a script."
True, and his SOTU speech was good, but one thing that stuck out to me was the way he kept saying long "A" instead of "uh" (for "a") and "Thee" instead of "the". Checking back on past videos, I noticed he didn't do that in normal conversations.
It was A good SOTU, but he sounded like A fourth grader reading THEE report he copied from THEE encyclopedia for his social studies class.
It must be the way he reads from a teleprompter. It's a good thing nobody put a question mark where it didn't belong -- "I'm Donald Trump? Go fuck yourself, America."
Here's Ben trying to unravel the damage by reading Trump tweets in his Zoolander voice:
The cogency of the words in Trump's Tweets overcomes any allusion to the vacuous self-aggrandizement and superficiality of Derek Zoolander, which in the end was well-meaning, and if anything only softens Trump's image.
Always Be Priming.
David Bowie also had an endearing cameo in Zoolander. He would have been a fun president too.
To be fair:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTfmuLm56yQ
Trump was a member in good standing of the celebrity culture.
Invited to everything and as we see, a rather fondly regarded "character", sufficiently so that even the extremely partisan MSM was happy to use him to make money.
I think all this tells us something about the true nature of the modern US conflict. Its really not about Trump, the man. Or any statement, or policy, or even mannerism of the actual man.
Rather, Trump is a symbol, like a flag or animal totem, of a class. He is openly hated as a shorthand method of expressing the genuine underlying hatred of that feared and despised class.
Not that I haven't said this before, but this presentation certainly illustrates this point.
Buwaya, I agree completely. The MSM and the Left don't hate Trump nearly as much as they hate the Deplorables who voted for him.
A lot of other popular hatreds, movements or policy positions aren't more than symbols, as is Trump.
There certainly are a few people who are genuinely for free abortion or gun control as a public policy say, but for the vast majority who hold such opinions these are merely symbolic. The true reason for the position on the "issue" is as a displacement of hate of the other. An acceptable way to express tribal enmity.
I'm telling you. Go back, and dig through youtube.com. Trump has been running for President for the last 20-25 years. He has done his homework.
Trump was mentioned by name in the very last episode of Cheers, and the very last episode of The Sopranos.
Its a great story.
Trump the jester, the amusing, faintly ridiculous courtier among the truly serious and powerful, the comic relief, suddenly takes the throne. Shakespeare could have done something with this. Like Falstaff becoming king.
If he was planning to run for President that far back, much of his prep was creating an unthreatening image.
They only hate him now because they realize they were played.
If Trump were a Democrat president, does anyone think they'd care?
"If Trump were a Democrat president, does anyone think they'd care?"
won't they hate what he would be likely to offer as President?
he does not hate America - whatever else he may be.
he is not enough of con-man to think of the whole country as his mark.
The closest historical parallel, possibly, is the Emperor Claudius. Not the same personality of course, nor the circumstances, but certainly a similar reputation, as a lightweight, an inconsiderable fellow, no threat.
Go get Robert Graves' "I, Claudius" if you haven't yet.
Before he built the Great Wall, Trump was constantly breaking the Fourth Wall.
Ben Stiller is a secret Nazi.
Obviously.
Just like Alan Dershowitz.
Obviously.
Right lefties?
Lloyd W. Robertson if Hillary Clinton was merely as dishonest as Donald Trump she would be almost saintly. Thankfully, we dodged that bullet.
In the last episode of The Facts of Life, Trump comes out at the end and says that Hillary Clinton will never be President of the United States. Spooky.
I followed much the same path as Althouse. I saw that Zoolander was on TV and watched at least until the Trump scene. It seemed as if Trump was treated favorably in the scene and I got to thinking if he was so favored in other cameo roles. Sure enough, yes! Hollywood liked that guy when he was just an interesting billionaire.
The revulsion only came when he became a Republican politician. He would still be loved by the elite if he had only run as a Democrat, too bad it was a year in which the Republican nomination was easier to win.
(eaglebeak)
Here's one of my personal favorites in Trump's successful pursuit of ubiquity:
https://vimeo.com/94667191
Post a Comment