"I have tried to be the most uncontroversial person this past year, and somehow it has made me controversial still."

"I think it comes back to the fact that these people, they don’t understand me, and anything that I do or say somehow gets taken out of context and is used against me. And it’s so sad because everything that I try to put out is positive, it’s trying to connect with others that maybe don’t understand me, it’s to make people laugh or to make a kid feel seen."

Said Dylan Mulvaney, quoted in WaPo article with the confusing title "Bud Light chief says he ‘never intended’ boycott over trans star Dylan Mulvaney" (WaPo)(who would think the Bud Light chief intended a boycott?). 

Also quoted, Donald Trump Jr.:

"Inside, the church was less than half full. There were plenty of Hermès bags but few boldfaced names from the gilt-covered slice of Manhattan society the couple had inhabited..."

"... in the 1980s and 1990s.... 'In the tumultuous times of the last few years, with all the attacks we faced,' [Donald Trump Jr.] said, 'she was the first person to call and see if I perhaps wanted, or maybe needed, to move back in with her. That call was simultaneously the sweetest and most emasculating thing ever. And she could do that with the best of them, and usually it was on purpose.' When he was a small child, Mr. Trump said, he went with his family to the Hamptons. While there, he acted at Gosman’s (Montauk’s best-known seafood spot) in a way that 'exceeded the limits' of everyone’s patience. His mother, he said, took him to the bathroom and showed him 'what Eastern European discipline was really all about.' When it was over, he said, she told him, 'And if you cry, we’re going to come back in here and do this again.'... [Eric Trump] told another story about his sister Ivanka destroying a very pricey chandelier while playing in the house with a beach ball. 'Ivanka managed to quickly convince my mother that it was me,' he said. That time, the 'remedy,' as he put it, was a 'wooden spoon,' and what made his mother even more irate as she spanked him was his fervent denial of having played any role in the misbehavior. 'Not only had I broken the chandelier, but now I was also lying to her,' he said. But by the time she realized he was telling the truth, Mr. Trump said, she was 'too tired to deal with Ivanka.'"

From "At Ivana Trump’s Funeral, a Gold-Hued Coffin and the Secret Service" (NYT).

I'll just say it was mean of the Times to say "the church was less than half full" and tag this post with "mothers," "domestic violence," and "gender difference" and move on.

"Donald Trump's son sent the White House chief-of-staff frantic texts calling for his father to intervene during the Capitol riot on 6 January...."

"'He's got to condemn this shit ASAP,' the younger Trump wrote, according to US lawmaker Liz Cheney, vice-chair of the committee investigating if the former president had foreknowledge of the riot."

BBC reports.

"If you thought they were gazing at the earth, and feeling small, and reflecting on the trouble the planet and its inhabitants are in, they weren't. They were trying to catch skittles in their mouths."

A comment at a Facebook post by the NYT: "Watch Jeff Bezos and his fellow passengers on the Blue Origin flight play with Skittles and experiment with gravity on their trip to space on Tuesday."

What if you had to argue: The Skittles-catching foolery in space was the best form that philosophical inquiry could take under those circumstances.

 

If the "what if you had to argue" game seems alien, read my 2012 post "What if you had to argue that it's good for children to play 'What if you had argue?'"

Here's a similar game — I just thought it up — "What if you had to write a book about...?" To play the game, you don't have to write the book. You just sketch out ideas about how this subject could fill an entire book. Now: What if you had to write a book about candy and philosophy?

The Skittles company — the aptly named Mars — must be pleased to get this relatively jaunty moment in the limelight — lime, not green-apple — after the unpleasant associations that have come its way in recent years. See "Skittles can’t seem to escape political controversies" (WaPo 2016). 

First, there was the incidental presence of Skittles in the possession of Trayvon Martin (whose killing riveted the country in 2012). Then there was an absurd Donald Trump Jr. tweet "'If I had a bowl of skittles and I told you just three would kill you. Would you take a handful?'/This image says it all. Let's end the politically correct agenda that doesn't put America first."  

Much better product placement this time, Skittles.

The Democratic convention was famously boring, but apparently the Republican convention is so damned exciting that...

... "coked" is trending on Twitter!

A taste of why...

“Passionate” = Coked out of his frigging gourd https://t.co/iyntSitHxE

— Hal Sparks (@HalSparks) August 25, 2020

Was @DonaldJTrumpJr ‘coked out of his mind’ during RNC speech? #RNC2020
https://t.co/U38EVrijei

— Raw Story (@RawStory) August 25, 2020

I’m not watching the #RNCConvention2020 but did see part of kimberly guilfoyle speech. All I gotta say is I worked in a chemical dependency office for years. That girl was coked out. pic.twitter.com/zwWPY0I5z8

— I’m The Mary⭐️ (@CMUnimpressed) August 25, 2020

This should mean more people will watch the speeches. I watched Guilfoyle in real time last night and thought it was wild how much she was yelling. But see for yourself:



And here's Don Jr. I've only watched a few seconds of this, and I will just observe that it appears that his makeup artist put a dot of a high-sparkle product under each eye, presumably with the notion that it would make his eyes "pop":



ADDED: "What's the Deal with Dots?"

How could Don Jr. not have anticipated this? Or is this some kind of genius that I'm failing to grasp?

Hard to believe you went there but sure let's go pic.twitter.com/zoRQR6mKuy

— Kellum Dander (@kellumdander) August 18, 2020

"Instagram has deleted a post by Madonna in which the pop star shared a coronavirus conspiracy theory with her 15 million followers."

"She captioned the video with claims that a vaccine for Covid-19 has 'been found and proven and has been available for months.' She continued: 'They would rather let fear control the people and let the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.'... Pop star Annie Lennox commented on the post: 'This is utter madness!!! I can’t believe that you are endorsing this dangerous quackery. Hopefully your site has been hacked and you’re just about to explain it.' Donald Trump Jr was banned from tweeting for 12 hours after posting the clip later shared by Madonna. Facebook and Twitter have previously removed it, citing it as misinformation."

The Guardian reports.

I don't think Donald Trump Jr claimed there was a vaccine and that it's being hogged for use only by the rich! However bad the underlying video may be, the material added by Madonna is especially cruel. It fits with the larger protest culture, which relentlessly tells people that the world has been engineered to oppress them.

Some Trump video clips for your amusement or pain.

This is art. pic.twitter.com/ZPJxHu20TV

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) June 21, 2020

The walk of shame. pic.twitter.com/u0GRFnnKeY

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) June 21, 2020

Out of context this is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in my life pic.twitter.com/6xzFFfpaGV

— Rachel Fisher (@TheRachelFisher) June 21, 2020

How to happy father's day pic.twitter.com/2utaibecfE

— Sarah Cooper (@sarahcpr) June 21, 2020

"If Trump owned a media company, which advisors say he discussed when he believed he would lose the 2016 election, it might look something like 'Team Trump Online'..."

"... the current production. And if he or his family start one after he leaves the White House, this could be the pilot. 'This is the warm-up act,' said Frank Sesno, a former CNN anchor and the director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University. 'There's nothing he would like more than to throw his name on a channel, a digital brand'.... Biden, also hoping to reach supporters during the coronavirus shutdown, has a podcast called 'Here's the Deal' and appears at times on YouTube. But the Trump channel is on almost nightly, while Biden's shows are intermittent... [T]he content on Trump TV is purer, if a bit clunkier, than even on avowedly pro-Trump OANN. And the hosts are closer to Trump's inner circle. They include Donald Jr., his girlfriend and former Fox host Kimberly Guilfoyle, the president's daughter-in-law Lara Trump, and a small group of campaign officials and surrogates in the tight-knit Trump family troupe.... [U]nlike 'The View,' which has one conservative panelist to spark tension and debate, 'The Right View' hosts never disagree as they review current events. In a recent episode, they took turns blaming Biden 'for the dangerous "Defund the Police" movement.' The former vice president has specifically rejected calls to defund police.... 'Imagine what we would live in in Biden’s America — with open borders, no police and 'CornPop' on the radio,' [Katrina] Pierson said... Lara Trump laughed, and Guilfoyle, on a separate screen, smiled and said she can't get 'CornPop' out of her head...."

From "Trump gets an all-Trump channel. It could be his future" (MSN (originally L.A. Times)).

It sounds perfectly awful, but I think all the usual cable news channels are awful. As for network news — I never look at it. Haven't watched it since the 80s.

I have been assuming that if Trump loses the election, he will go on to found a significant media organization. I'm willing to believe he is some kind of media genius — "The Apprentice" and the 2016 political victory and his wild Twitter persona prove he is — and I think he's better at that and more suited to that than he is at being President. If he wins in 2020, he can never run again. He will be, forever, not a candidate. But if he loses, he can run again. From the sidelines, he can attack the new President and really swing freely. He can tease a 2024 run for the presidency the entire time and we can watch that crystalize (or not). He will be in his element.

But reading about Trump TV, I think: Where's the genius? This sounds awful. And yet, I don't expect the L.A. Times to make anything Trump does sound good. I could watch a little Trump TV myself, but to tell you the truth, I googled and I couldn't find it. Is there some internet conspiracy to hide it? Whatever. I don't really want to spend time watching this stuff, and I don't think what it is now proves what it will be once Trump is out of the White House and into the enterprise of building a media empire.

ADDED: I guess this is the YouTube channel. That's just the "Donald J Trump" YouTube page. There's no YouTube channel called "Team Trump Online." Not that I could find.

If she doesn’t find a better speller, Don Jr. stands ready.

Really sad and touching at the same time. Good for her for standing up to the nonsense.
P.S. If she doesn’t find someone better count me in. I’ll walk her down the isle. Lmk. https://t.co/9IGbrZvxl8

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) May 6, 2020

ADDED: Quite apart from the aisle/isle mixup, there's something off about this. The young woman has made an attention-getting TikTok video, but we do not know the parents' side of the story. There's an assertion about a sexual molestation and something her parents said about it, and I think there is much more to be understood here than the idea that they are rejecting her because the man she wants to marry is "conservative." In responding to this, Don Jr. is getting in on the attention and, at first look, he seems considerate and generous, but you really should not side with one person who's made a video and against some people who are getting talked about.

"Ricky Gervais’ Golden Globes Jokes, Ranked in Order of Dickishness/From the righteously provocative to the just plain mean."

At Slate.

I don't care enough about movies and TV shows and awards to watch the Golden Globes, but I almost did, just to watch Ricky, and I kind of regret missing it. And I missed it hard, because I was sitting with the remote control within reach when I knew it was on, and I knew I could record it and then just watch the Ricky parts, but I actively held back, because I didn't want to see the Hollywood faces in the audience, phonily howling at jokes (or otherwise making faces, if something crosses whatever line they're able to calculate has been crossed).

But NBC gives us the whole monologue on YouTube, so I have no regrets:



ADDED: The stars object to SO many of the jokes. Now, that's pretty funny. I like the grace with with Martin Scorsese takes the joke at his expense. Scroll to 4:29 to see that segment.

AND: Don Jr. loved it:

OMG🔥🔥🔥 If you watch one thing today watch this. It’s about time someone in Hollywood says is it. RT!!!pic.twitter.com/DhGeMvyWNZ

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) January 6, 2020

It wasn't an "honest mistake"...

As long as I'm on the subject of Newsweek's attitude toward Trump, let me give you this. (Jessica Kwong is the Newsweek reporter who wrote the Trump-trashing Thanksgiving article — "HOW DID TRUMP SPEND THANKSGIVING? TWEETING, GOLFING..." — that needed updating when his trip to Afghanistan came to light.)

It wasn’t an “honest mistake” you tried to dunk on Trump and ended up dunking on yourself because you couldn’t resist. Notice how there’s never been a story that broke in Trump’s favor & had to be corrected the other way? These aren’t mistakes, they are a very consistent pattern. https://t.co/HmyrHrOjqB

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) November 30, 2019

Donald Trump Jr. gets in on the travel shaming... as a joke, presumably.

https://t.co/O7JXMb6A3z pic.twitter.com/dVZtZUWoD8

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) November 28, 2019

ADDED: I'm reading the responses. There's this:

Donald Trump Jr. — talking about his book "Triggered" at UCLA — was heckled offstage by "diehard Make America Great Again conservatives."

The Guardian reports.

The audience was angry that Trump Jr and his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, would not take questions. The loud shouts of “USA! USA!” that greeted Trump when he first appeared on the stage of a university lecture hall to promote his book Triggered: How The Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us quickly morphed into even louder, openly hostile chants of “Q and A! Q and A!”...

When the shouting would not subside, Trump Jr tried – and failed – to argue that taking questions from the floor risked creating soundbites that leftwing social media posters would abuse and distort. Nobody was buying that....

The fiasco pointed to a factional rift on the Trump-supporting conservative right that has been growing rapidly in recent weeks, particularly among “zoomers” – student-age activists....

Two [supporters of Nick Fuentes, a 21-year-old activist with a podcast called America First, said that] the pro-Trump movement was being infected with “fake conservatism” and that the president himself was at the mercy of a cabal of deep state operatives who wouldn’t let him do many of the things he campaigned on.... “We wanted to ask questions about immigration and about Christianity, but they didn’t want to face those questions.”

I'm creating a new tag, "Trump attacked from the right." I had a comparable tag for Obama, "Obama attacked from the left." We'll see where the hard-core right attack on Trump (and son) goes. The tag is here to collect the stories. It's very interesting that Trump Jr. went to UCLA with his book "Triggered," perhaps as some sort of demonstration of his own courage and to cause liberals to act triggered and prove his point. That's not what happened!

That's the story as told by The Guardian. The Washington Post has "Donald Trump Jr. went to UCLA to decry ‘triggered’ liberals. He was heckled offstage by the far right." If you get far enough into the WaPo article, there's an indication that the protesters were not against Trump Jr. but against Turning Point USA:

He's right. They are hacks. And it was blackface.

Now fact check the results rather than writing a tweet that makes it appear to be a false accusation you hacks.

I guess you’ll run cover for anyone in media i.e. Matt Lauer??? https://t.co/0Vxi0o6lCu

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) November 9, 2019

Trump Jr. on "The View": "We've all done things that we regret. Joy, you have worn blackface. Whoopi, you said... Roman Polanski… it wasn’t 'rape-rape,' when he raped a child."

Yikes. He came ready to spring:

In the span of 10 seconds, @DonaldJTrumpJr called out Joy Behar for wearing blackface

& Whoopi for saying Roman Polanski wasn’t guilty of “rape-rape.”#TheView pic.twitter.com/9R6S8hTiBF

— #ThePersistence (@ScottPresler) November 7, 2019

Did Joy Behar ever wear blackface?!! Yes!

Here's @TheView's Joy Behar admitting on national TV that she in fact wore blackface. Why are they denying it now? https://t.co/B9ReOYrwXY

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) November 7, 2019

Whoa!

He had a lot of nerve going on that show, and they were all set to bully him. I almost feel like buying the book he was flogging — "Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us" — even though I assume I already know everything in it. All these subtitles that begin with "How"... I already know how the left blah blah blah. But I did not know how to instantly fight off a pouncing double team of Whoopi and Joy. That was quite something. They totally deserved it. And I would have never have noticed that Joy Behar had a blackface incident lurking in her past. So rich!

"This isn’t real stuff. It isn’t. It truly isn’t. That part of it, that Barnum and Bailey—you know, say anything, do anything you want, you know, I mean, like, you know, Donald Prince Humperdinck—Trump Jr. is not somebody that I really care about."

Said Hunter Biden (in the "Good Morning America" interview) embedded in the previous post. I had to look up the reference. I did understand the children's book reference he made to "Alice in Wonderland," but even though I've seen the children's movie "The Princess Bride," I did not remember this particular character name. Let's read the Fandom Wiki on Prince Humperdinck and see if we can understand what Hunter Biden was trying to get across:

Prince of Florin, he becomes betrothed to Buttercup (in the novel on the excuse that he will need to continue the royal line because his father is dying). He does not care who his bride is, as long as she is very beautiful....

The primary antagonist, Prince Humperdinck is incredibly intelligent, cocky and has excellent tracking and hunting instincts. He can track the location of animals, and is able to trace events that have happened in a particular place.

Buttercup herself says there is no greater hunter than him, proclaiming that he "Can track a falcon on a cloudy day."

Humperdinck is the prince of the fictional kingdom of Florin. He is the finest hunter in the world; his tracking abilities are so great that he is able to tell which of two sets of tracks belonged to the loser of an hours old swordfight, and to determine that a wrestling match had occurred between a man and a giant. Behind his princely demeanor, however, he is vain and cowardly, "with a heart full of fear."...

So... to Hunter, Trump Jr. seems like... the hunter? 

Oh, who knows what Hunter meant. Probably some combination of cartoonishly, pointlessly evil and the way he looks:

"In addition to being a re-gifter, the president is also reported to be a double-dipper, low talker, and master of his domain."

My son John blogs his reaction to the Bloomberg News story "Donald Trump Jr. Says His Father Is a Regifter."

(Links to all the relevant "Seinfeld" clips at the first link, which — helpfully — does not go to Facebook.)

"Normally, I would not comment on something as egregiously misstated as today’s story. However, the assertion that I punched anyone over a parking spot is false."

"I wanted to go on the record stating as much. I realize that it has become a sport to tag people w as many negative negative charges and defaming allegations as possible for the purposes of clickbait entertainment. Fortunately, no matter how reverberating the echos [sic], it doesn’t make the statements true."

Tweeted Alec Baldwin, after his humiliating arrest, reports Page Six. Video at the link shows him hounded by the press as he leaves the police station.

"Hey, Alec, what kind of example are you setting for your kids with your little temper tantrum?" taunts someone in the crowd, maybe a reporter. Baldwin has 4 children under the age of 5.

"Huh? Can't you afford a garage at this point with the money you make?" continues the taunter, who was, presumably, disappointed when Baldwin did not charge into the crowd and take a shot at him. Baldwin calmly entered an awaiting car and rode off.

Trump — the man Baldwin is famous for impersonating — was informed of the arrest and said, spontaneously, "I wish him luck." Trump Jr., on the other hand, tweeted, "Is anyone shocked at this piece of garbage anymore? As if the phone calls to his daughter weren’t bad enough. He’s a lib so he gets chance after chance to be decent but always fails!"

I have a very negative reaction to these pictures of Donald Trump Jr. showing off "his new girlfriend" Kimberly Guilfoyle

"Donald Trump Jr. has taken his new girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle to her first official White House event on the Fourth of July. Don and Kimberly have been dating since late March, around the time Trump Jr. and wife Vanessa, 40, announced their split. They have since made a number of public appearances together..."

The Daily Mail says, with lots of pictures.

Junior is not even divorced yet. He and his wife have 5 children.

He should be more discreet. Which, I know, obviously doesn't sound like a Trump concept.

I like to read the most-disliked comments at The Daily Mail. In this case: "I think they are a perfect couple! His soon to be ex wife seems stuck up and probably a liberal elitist," "Cutest. Couple. Ever," "They look cute together. It's working for them right now, and that's what matters."