"The Cornish hotel flying a flag for QAnon’s cult delusion/Conspiracy theories spawned in America are taking hold in unexpected corners of British society."

 Reports the London Times.

The Camelot Castle Hotel in Tintagel, Cornwall, may be themed on Arthurian legends but the flag flown over its tower last year stood for a more modern myth.... Guests at the hotel, which displays a Q flag, said that the owner left conspiracy theory material in their bedrooms.... 

Since Mr Mappin, heir to the Mappin and Webb jewellery business, which holds a Royal Warrant, hoisted a Q flag above the battlements of Camelot Castle Hotel last January he has hosted a regular video broadcast called Camelot TV. 

In a coded message on Wednesday to his 20,000 subscribers, he likened QAnon to an oak tree. “If the roots are strong, all will be well in the spring . . . 2021 is all about the rebirth of our civilisation,” he said. 

Oh, come on. That's got to be an intentional reference to "Being There":

"You go not just where it’s comfortable but where it’s uncomfortable. And to me that means being there."

Being There! I saw that movie.



The quote in the post title is from Amy Klobuchar, interviewed by The New Yorker about "How Democrats Can Defeat Trump in 2020."

I'm the person who once said, "Why aren't the Democratic candidates better? I'm just going to be for Amy Klobuchar," so I guess I have to read this, even though I expect it to be boring. (I've often said I like elected officials to be boring, but that doesn't mean I want to consume their boring words, and I'm also wary that a boring candidate will not make it to the position of elected official.)

Let me put the quote in context. Unboringly enough, the context is Insect Inferno.

Klobuchar was asked how she (in getting reelected Senator) was able to speak to Trump voters. She says "you have to show up," and she visits all 87 counties in Minnesota every year:

One time I found myself in a business called Insect Inferno because we had run out of places to visit. It was near the Canadian border, a Trump county, and I was in this truck, and it said, on the outside of it, “Insect Inferno: we kill bedbugs with heat,” and the whole concept was they would drive around and you put mattresses in them and then they’d put the temperature up to three hundred degrees. So when I was in there they put it up to only a hundred. But, again, I thought to myself, You go not just where it’s comfortable but where it’s uncomfortable. And to me that means being there....

Insect Inferno?! Have you ever heard of insect politics?



Later in the interview (after some grilling — mild grilling — about the Kavanaugh hearings), Klobuchar is asked , "On a scale of one to ten, where are you in terms of running for 2020?" Her answer:

Well, as I have said before, I am considering it, but I never rate, scale things. So I’m not going there, but I have been talking to people in my state and people around the country about it. I think that there are a lot of good people considering this, but I do think you want voices from the Midwest....

The interviewer (Susan B. Glasser) observes that the 2016 election was determined by the voters of the Midwest, and Klobuchar — quite unboringly — comes out with an anecdote and a metaphor:

But I do think, on the Midwestern front, my husband is the third of six kids, and his mom, they grew up in a trailer home and... they would go out on vacation. And oftentimes when they came out of the gas station she would have them each count off to make sure they were all in the car, because my husband was always the sweet, quiet one, and she was afraid he would be left at the gas station. And the Midwest was left at the gas station, and we’re not going to let that happen again. And I think that is more than a metaphor just for the Midwest. It was a lot of middle-class voters, it was a lot of citizens that felt that they weren’t getting a fair shake in the system, that they were, like, having to ration their insulin, like a kid that died, a Minnesota restaurant manager recently was doing, they weren’t feeling like they were treated right. And I think our party and whoever is our nominee has to be able to respond to those people in a way that we weren’t doing in that last election.

"As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden."

"Yes. In the garden, growth has its seasons. First comes spring and summer..."



"... but then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer again."



"Yes! There will be growth in the spring!"

"This is when I knew he’s a true Republican."

Said Shirley MacLaine about Clint Eastwood:

"Quite brilliant, and funny… because he’s so laconic and doesn’t know it. I adore him… I remember when we were doing Two Mules for Sister Sara, his horse was acting up. This is when I knew he’s a true Republican: He got off the horse, looked at the horse, and socked him."

I ran into that today because — as noted earlier — we just watched "Being There." I was looking for more material about the character MacLaine played in that movie. Did "Eve" really love Chance the gardener? Not only is the answer yes, but Chance loved her, I think, because MacLaine says: 

"Two years [after I made 'Being There'], I’m at a restaurant and [producer] Dick Zanuck walks up to me and says, ‘What’s it like to have a love affair with Peter Sellers?’ I said, ‘He’s not my type, and I didn’t. What are you talking about?’ He said, ‘I would go into Peter’s dressing room, and he would be on the phone with you doing sex talk.’ I tried to put all this together… It was Dick who figured out, ‘Listen, he became Chauncey Gardner, he was in love with the character you played, and if he had interrupted it with a lunch or dinner, the whole illusion had been shattered.’”

"As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden."

We just re-watched "Being There":



Did we watch "Being There" now, because of Trump? Did "Being There" amaze and distress us with its continued relevance because of Trump?

Actually, not at all. Peter Sellers's character — Chance/Chauncey Gardiner — was just about the complete opposite of Donald Trump. Chance was a man who seemed to come out of nowhere and to make statements about gardens that other people perceived as brilliant political metaphor — "the most refreshing and optimistic statements I've heard in a very, very long time." His lack of any known background counted as a plus to the rich insiders who got the idea of advancing him to the presidency: "A man's past cripples him. His background turns into a swamp and invites scrutiny."

That's much closer to the story of Barack Obama than Donald Trump.

Trump has been so well known for so long. He had a huge weight of past baggage, and it didn't cripple him. He had that "swamp" of a background that invited scrutiny, but he made it anyway. He didn't make it because rich insiders chose him to serve their interests. He was the rich insider himself, and the other rich insiders were the opposite of delighted by his communication style. Trump didn't make simple abstract statements that worked because voters projected their own hopes onto him. He blabbed endlessly about all sorts of concrete problems and played upon our fears and our sense of loss at least as much as optimism.

(You can buy "Being There" at Amazon.)