... and if you didn't watch live, you can still watch the video and thereby have your own opinion of what happened... and of the way the mainstream media are reporting it. You're unlikely to sit through the whole thing, as we did. We were there in real time, like the people in the auditorium, to hear Trump answer some questions.
Trump comes out at 1:05:00. He speaks for 15 minutes before any question is asked. Then he takes the first question and then the second and third, but at 1:38:00, there's a medical emergency that goes on for quite a while.
Four minutes into the incident, Trump says "This is a little bit of a tough one, I think." After the crowd begins singing "God Bless America," Trump asks his music person to play the recording of "Ave Maria"... which makes me think the person in the audience is dying. Trump seems to have determined not to restart the town hall until it can be known that the person has been helped. It's a silent demonstration of caring, so perhaps he's calculating that this is as good a statement as anything he might say and that speaking would be an implicit statement of not caring.
At 1:45:00, there's an attempt to return to the town hall format, but 3 minutes later, there's another medical emergency.
"... such annual or semi-annual non-events as the Biennial Conference of the American Hippotherapy Association or the Pro Bowl. I would be tempted to suggest that the latest affectless, indifferently written Woodward volume is a matter of at most seasonal interest, like the early September appearance of Halloween candy in supermarkets, except that unlike the former, Rage is unlikely to bring pleasure to any living American.... Why do presidents talk to Woodward? Is it some kind of tradition, cloying but innocuous like the White House Turkey Pardon? His modus operandi is by now fairly well established: Speak to him because if you do not he will publish hundreds of pages of decontextualized gossip from disgruntled agenda-driven current or ex-employees. He will in fact probably do so regardless of what you say to him and when, but why spoil the fun? What Woodward does is not journalism. It is, as Joan Didion memorably put it, 'political pornography.'"
But I see from Googling that a lot of people are talking about it. For example, at Townhall, 4 days ago, somebody wrote, "'Donald Trump's House Of Wings' Belongs In The Smithsonian" ("This video has been making the rounds on Twitter after a One America News video researcher rediscovered the gem").
"Am I saying that I'm a chicken wing expert? No. But I am telling you this, the wing is hands down the best part of the chicken. Better than the head. Better than the torso. Better than the back...."
Torso... now that's funny. By the way, for decades, I've found the word "torso" funny. There's the line "and the torso, even more so" in "Lydia the Tattoed Lady," and once, when I was in Rome, visiting the Vatican Museum, there were a lot of posters showing a statue that was only a torso, with the word "torso," and, after seeing these posters all over the place, I overheard a young woman, who must have seen what I'd been seeing, and she said, "What's with the torso?" Even now, 2 decades later, I hear her inflection in my head, and I laugh out loud.
I wish I could find the old Vatican Museum poster, but I do think this is the torso in question, the most famous torso at the Vatican Museum, the "Belvedere torso":
It was once believed to be a 1st-century BC original, but is now believed to be a copy from the 1st century BC or AD of an older statue, which probably dated to the early 2nd century BC..... Legend has it that Pope Julius II requested that Michelangelo complete the statue fragment with arms, legs and a face. He respectfully declined, stating that it was too beautiful to be altered, and instead used it as the inspiration for several of the figures in the Sistine Chapel....
So that's what's with the torso!
If you don't know what that is, but you just keep seeing that, with nothing but the word "Torso," it really does make you the perfect audience for the line "What's with the torso?"
ADDED: That kind of laughing — my laughing at "What's with the torso?" — is premised on ignorance. It's like what makes "Beavis and Butt-Head" funny. They're so stupid and don't know the value of anything. They look at things and say "What's that?" Now, I don't remember what, if anything, I knew about the Belvedere torso when I went to the Vatican Museum 20 years ago, but, obviously, I knew from the museum's cues that it was an important artwork and I felt calmly assured that it was something profound and dignified. But the young women — in the manner of "Beavis and Butt-Head" — were just seeing it as a torso with the word "torso" (and, I think, a this-way-to-the-torso arrow) and reacting to it as if it was a completely random torso in no particular context. And I am still laughing out loud.
CORRECTION: The post headline originally said 2015, but it was 2004.
Said Senator Bob Corker, quoted in "Republicans embrace the ‘cult’ of Trump, ignoring warning signs," which is The Washington Post's response to this week's primaries, including the one in South Carolina, where a promising GOP newcomer, Katie Arrington, beat the well-known Mark Sanford in the Senate race the race for his congressional district. WaPo identifies Sanford as "a firmly conservative member of Congress who had survived earlier scandal." It doesn't mention that he was the governor of South Carolina (when he became a national laughing stock, "walking the Appalachian Trail")( and that explains why my tag for him is "Gov. Sanford").
Why shouldn't WaPo celebrate Arrington's victory and exult at the rejection of the disgraced Mark Sanford? Why not use the template Women Triumph Over Sleazy Men? I know WaPo has that template, but I assume the answer is that everything must be understood through the loathing of Donald Trump.
Sanford criticized Trump, and Trump tweeted in support of Arrington. That seems to reflect the simple popularity of the man who got himself elected President, but somehow that's a "cult." By the way, was Obama a cult? I don't mind the use of the word "cult" to describe and explain personal political popularity, but WaPo is so aggressively slanted these days. It's propaganda. It's the cult of hating Trump.
Trump’s closest allies have largely dismissed the “cult” commentary, as Corker put it, as evidence of cultural and class tension inside the Beltway.
Oh! As Corker put it. It's Corker's word, and when WaPo uses the word, it puts the word in quotation marks. Well, all right then. Journalism credibility protected — with scare quotes. And they go to the other side for balance. Look, it's Scaramucci again:
“They keep saying the cult stuff because they don’t like the disruption and change,” said former White House communications director and financier Anthony Scaramucci. “He doesn’t speak with an elitist vocabulary and the savoir faire that Washingtonians are used to,” referring to Trump.
The next line is a warning:
Disruption works both ways, however, and is no guarantee of success in midterm elections, which are often perilous to a president.
As if the Washington Post is inclined to give good advice to the GOP.
And then it's back to the Trump antagonists, this time to address the unstated question that WaPo must know readers have (and I said it myself, above, was Obama a cult?):
“I don’t think we, or any president, demanded personal loyalty to the degree Trump has,” said David Axelrod, an Obama adviser during his first campaign and term. “We made appeals around shared goals, ideals and agendas. We didn’t play in primaries. Popular as he was, Obama’s party was not the cult that the GOP is today.”
Here's the influential Trump tweet:
Mark Sanford has been very unhelpful to me in my campaign to MAGA. He is MIA and nothing but trouble. He is better off in Argentina. I fully endorse Katie Arrington for Congress in SC, a state I love. She is tough on crime and will continue our fight to lower taxes. VOTE Katie!
Ha ha. Argentina. Click on my "Appalachian Trail" link above. Sanford, as governor, told people he was off to hike the Appalachian Trail — so wholesome! — but he went to Argentina — to commit adultery.
Most interesting thing: He comes right out and calls Steve Bannon a leaker and says if it were up to him Bannon would be gone.
Colbert is kind of annoying for 2 reasons: 1. He's straining too hard to get Scaramucci to do what makes comedians love him while at the same time trying to step on all of Scaramucci's jokes and claim all punchlines for himself, and 2. The audience over-screams with laughter any time Colbert gets off any kind of line, which really spoils the experience for me, watching at home. I want to decide what's funny, not have a bunch of sycophants continually informing me which of 2 men in a man-to-man interview they're rooting for.
I liked the way the band played the "Scaramouche, Scaramouche" section of "Bohemian Rhapsody" as Scaramucci walked on. The song choice is the complete opposite of surprising but I liked the way they played it. Just a cool variation on an old theme.
Oh, wait. There's a Part 2, after the break...
ADDED: Scaramucci doesn't know if Bannon is a white supremacist, but he doesn't like Bannon's toleration of white supremacists.
From the beginning of his time in the Trump White House, way back on July 20, critics said that Scaramucci was too similar to Trump, too eager to be on TV, to last...
“If you were 7 inches taller, I’d be worried,” Trump told Scaramucci, according to someone familiar with the conversation who asked not to be named quoting the president....
And this:
Scaramucci strongly denies having a sexual relationship with [Kimberly] Guilfoyle. [Roger] Stone, a friend of Guilfoyle’s, explained that Scaramucci and Guilfoyle “are very close friends but nothing more.” He added, “He is way too short for Kimberly.” ...
If you're wondering: He's 5'8".
And this is interesting, about his last day at the White House. In a "very polite conversation," John Kelly demanded his resignation. After that, he spoke, by telephone, with Ivanka, Jared Kushner, and President Trump: "All were gracious, he said. 'The president told me he knows I have his back, but he has to try to tighten the ship.'"
Asked what he's going to do now, he said: "I am now going to go dark." Later? "Then I will reemerge... As me.”
"Chanting 'Bring back Mooch,' the irate funnymen and funnywomen argued that the abrupt removal of Scaramucci was akin to taking the food out of their families’ mouths.... Buddy Schlantz, the owner of the Bethesda, Maryland, comedy club known as the Laff Pagoda, travelled to the White House to protest what he called 'a direct assault on the comedy community. Most comics I know are in a state of shock,' he said. 'Years from now, comedians will be asking each other, ‘Where were you when you found out that Scaramucci was canned?'..."
Writes Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker humorist, who probably did regret losing Scaramucci as a joke target. Or maybe not. It was too easy to use Scaramucci for comic purposes. Anyone could directly observe him and find him funny. He was funny even to those who liked him. What can you do with that? How many times can you riff on "Bohemian Rhapsody"?
One of these years I'll figure out this Comedia dell arte business. The English upper classes must learn about it in grade school, because it's in Christie, Father Brown, and nearly every other English writer I read. I fail to see anything funny in what little I know about it.
Here's the Wikipedia article on Commedia dell'arte (note the spelling).
Commedia dell'arte... was an an early form of professional theatre, originating from Italy, that was popular in Europe from the 16th through the 18th century.... Some of the better known commedia dell'arte characters are Pierrot and Pierrette, Pantalone, Il Dottore, Brighella, Il Capitano, Colombina, the innamorati, Pedrolino, Pulcinella, Sandrone, Scaramuccia (also known as Scaramouche), La Signora, and Tartaglia.
Scaramuccia (literally "little skirmisher"), also known as Scaramouche or Scaramouch, is a stock clown character of the Italian commedia dell'arte (comic theatrical arts). The role combined characteristics of the zanni (servant) and the Capitano (masked henchman). Usually attired in black Spanish dress and burlesquing a don, he was often beaten by Harlequin for his boasting and cowardice.
I think. He wrote "Read Shakespeare. Particularly Othello. You are right there. My family is fine by the way and will thrive. I know what you did. No more replies from me."
Scaramucci believed he was writing to Priebus. He wasn't. He was fooled by a prankster who posed as Priebus. That was stupid. The inability of government officials to handle email competently is appalling, but I want to talk about the meaning of the "Othello" reference.
In the NY Post, where I'm reading the story, it says: "Scaramucci shot back with a veiled threat to destroy Priebus Shakespearean-style." That is, the NY Post, attempting to grope though the veil, imagines that Scaramucci saw himself as the villain Iago and Priebus as the hero Othello. How does that make sense?!
I think the intended implication is that Trump is the Othello character — Trump, like Othello, is the leader — and Priebus is Iago — the close associate who hates the man he pretends to serve and tricks him into destroying himself.
Scaramucci expressed the view that Priebus is "right there" in the play "Othello." He doesn't say which character, but I think it's obvious. (Here's a plot summary of "The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice.") Scaramucci wouldn't align with Iago. Iago is the quintessential back-stabber...
... and Scaramucci proudly called himself — not a back-stabber — but a "front-stabber." And why would Scaramucci plot to destroy Priebus? Priebus was already out. The message of the email was "I know what you did." That pegs Priebus as the disloyal schemer. Scaramucci wasn't threatening to ruin Priebus. He was saying he knows what Priebus was doing to Trump.
Will the blabbermouth Scaramucci resist inquiries to explain his Shakespearean interpretation of The Tragedy of Trump, the Billionaire of Manhattan?
"President Trump has decided to remove Anthony Scaramucci from his position as communications director, three people close to the decision said Monday, relieving him just days after Mr. Scaramucci unloaded a crude verbal tirade against other senior members of the president’s senior staff," the NYT reports.
The decision to remove Mr. Scaramucci, who had boasted about reporting directly to the president not the chief of staff, John F. Kelly, came at Mr. Kelly’s request, the people said. Mr. Kelly made clear to members of the White House staff at a meeting Monday morning that he is in charge.
ADDED: Let's see if Ryan Lizza has anything to say. Oh, yeah, he does:
The sacking of Scaramucci signals that Kelly, a retired marine general, may actually be empowered to be a true chief of staff. There was no bigger test for Kelly than the fate of Scaramucci, who, in his Wednesday phone call, demanded that I reveal my sources for a trivial tweet about who the President had dinner with that night, threatened to fire his entire staff if I didn’t, alleged that he had called the F.B.I. to investigate his White House rivals, attacked Reince Priebus as a “paranoid schizophrenic,” and described Steve Bannon as engaging in auto-fellatio.
After the interview was published, several people asked me if I believed Scaramucci would be fired. My understanding at the time was that Scaramucci was already on thin ice with the President after a series of high-profile appearances.... But Kelly, apparently, as his first move as chief of staff, told Trump that he wanted Scaramucci out of the White House....
Read the whole thing. It also reveals that it seems that Kelly, before taking the new job, convinced Trump that it is unnecessary to build an actual physical wall between the U.S. and Mexico, and that Kelly may believe he "might be able to tame Trump and get him to back off some of his most cartoonish policy ideas, even the ones that were core campaign promises."
We all know that Trump used name-calling (at least during the campaign) to get the better of his rivals, mostly by attaching a relatively ordinary adjective to the first name: "low-energy Jeb," "little Marco." Trump would repeat his chosen phrase until it stuck in your head.
Scaramucci is like Trump, but a step beyond. He's using name-calling, but it's not presented for public consumption. It just (somehow!) leaks out. And what leaks out is so nasty that: 1. It supports the claim that it was never intended to be heard by the general public, and 2. You only need to hear it once to get it stuck in your head.
And then there is Scaramucci's notorious sideswipe of Steve Bannon: "I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own cock." It's not name-calling, per se. (No adjective attached to the name.) It's not even a direct insult, since he's talking about himself. You have to make an inference to get to Steve Bannon is trying to suck his own cock. But this is a characterization of Steve Bannon that only needs to be heard once to become unforgettable.
Some people think Trump is his own parody. No exaggeration needed to lampoon him. Just look at him as he is. Amazingly, Scaramucci shows the parody level that could be used by a Trump lampooner. But Scaramucci is doing it in real life and in service to Trump. We don't need a comedian to show us the leap from this service to Trump to sucking Trump's cock. (Remember the quaint old days of acting horrified that a comedian called Trump a "cock holster"?) Scaramucci has already said it about himself.
The source said that the Wall Street financier, 52, had been “hell-bent” on claiming his position at the White House after he was originally pegged for a senior role and sold SkyBridge Capital in preparation in January.
He was blocked by Reince Priebus, Trump’s chief of staff. But, after an aggressive campaign, Scaramucci was made communications director on June 21 by Trump, prompting Sean Spicer to quit.
The President likes people with backbone. And at the moment, Scaramucci is empowered: We're told the President loved the Mooch quotes. But President Trump doesn't like being upstaged. "Mini-me" can't forget the "Mini" part. Being more Trump than Trump, in Trump's house, is a dangerous game.
Scaramucci knew enough to say: "I’m not trying to suck my own cock." That means a lot.
"He channelled Priebus as he spoke: '"Oh, Bill Shine is coming in. Let me leak the fucking thing and see if I can cock-block these people the way I cock-blocked Scaramucci for six months."'"
Scaramucci also told me that, unlike other senior officials, he had no interest in media attention. “I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own cock,” he said, speaking of Trump’s chief strategist. “I’m not trying to build my own brand off the fucking strength of the President. I’m here to serve the country.”...
Unlike other Trump advisers, I’ve never heard [Scaramucci] say a bad word about the President. “What I want to do is I want to fucking kill all the leakers and I want to get the President’s agenda on track so we can succeed for the American people,” he told me.
Do you know the word? Had you noticed Scaramucci relying excessively on any particular word )or words)?
The word is "binary."
Now, when I first saw — in "The meaning behind Scaramucci’s favorite word" — that the word was "binary," I thought it must be that Scaramucci is using it to destablize a question. Some interviewer tries to pin him down, and he distances himself from the question by calling it "binary." Actually, the issue is complex and multifaceted. And then he can explain why and work his way toward something he is willing to say.
But, no. Scaramucci uses the word like this:
“Tomorrow I’m going to have a staff meeting,” he said on the CBS program Face the Nation. “And it’s going to be a very binary thing.…If they want to stay on the staff, they’re going to stop leaking.” A few seconds later, he said, “But if you’re going to keep leaking, I’m going to fire everybody. It’s just very binary.”
He's not using the word to inject complexity. He's the one imposing the clarity. Either you're with us or you're against us.
I associate the word with the left because, as Columbia Journalism Review puts it:
[R]ecently, “binary” has been applied to gender, with the traditional view being that biological sex is binary, only male or female. Many people, though, identify themselves as “nonbinary,” meaning they don’t think of themselves as either male or female, or as only male or female, and the concept of the “gender binary” is often questioned.
Searching this blog's archive, I'm seeing the word used in various things I've quoted. For example, in March 2015, I quoted a Slate writer who said:
Dividing the world into males and female is such a big part of the culture that it can seem impossible, and perhaps even aggravating, to try to think outside those categories. This is not only a problem for squares stuck in a binary way of thinking — many of the terms associated with genderqueerness end up referring back to masculinity or femininity in some way, which is a bit tricky if the ideal is to move beyond the gender binary entirely.
But just a couple weeks ago, "binary" came up in the context of good and evil. I quoted the Wikipedia entry for "Goofus and Gallant":
Philosopher Theodore Sider used the characters [Goofus and Gallant] in an argument against the notion of a binary Heaven or Hell conception of the afterlife. Sider conceived of Goofus and Gallant as near-equals, with Gallant only marginally better than Goofus, in arguing that sending the former to Heaven and the latter to Hell is antithetical to God's justice.
So the word has been used, I observe, to disparage those who see things simplistically in black and white. Sophisticated people are not stuck in a binary way of thinking.
And now, here comes Scaramucci. He may have put some sophisticated thought into what he's doing, but as he delivers the message, he's out-and-proud binary. Very binary.
***
Scaramucci used "very" with "binary" both times in that quote at the top of the post. If you're the kind of usage stickler who frowns at "very unique," you should see the problem with "very binary." You shouldn't say "very unique," because "unique" already means only one. There's no way to be more one than some other one. The same goes for "binary." It means exactly two. Just as there's no way to be more one than one, there's no way to be more two than two.
But I see the argument on the other side. When we speak of people who have a binary way of thinking, we mean that they have a tendency to think in terms of opposites that seem clearly distinct to them. The strength of the tendency can vary. Scaramucci would like us to think that he is a binary thinker of the most intense sort. I'm the kind of person who imagines that he probably has nonbinary reasons for wanting us to think that's how he operates. There's some 3-dimensional chess in there, won't you agree?
2 freeze frames I took watching "State of the Union" this morning:
Here's the whole thing. It was very lively. Scaramucci is very much like Trump, so I was picturing Trump watching this and loving it:
Scaramucci is there to fight for the President. That's plain to see. And Jake Tapper was there to fight too.
Here's the transcript. I made a note to tell you about 3 things, which are in no way the most important things:
1. Asked whether the President believes he has the power to pardon himself, Scaramucci said he didn't know, but he's talked to Jay Sekulow, who's a scholar, and he "took constitutional law from Larry Tribe." And then he spoke directly to Professor Tribe: "And if professor Tribe is listening, I know he doesn't like the president, but I did get an A-minus in your course."
2. Scaramucci was asked whether he was going to be appearing in more press briefings, he said "Sarah Huckabee" is the press secretary. And he kept jabbering...
I think Sarah does a great job. She's an incredibly warm person. She's incredibly authentic. And what I told Sarah on Friday, you get the big office. I will take the small communications office. You deserve the big office because you're taking the hits from the press. And bring the press into the office. Let's soften up our relationship with the press. They're tough on us. But let's be tough on them. I have no problem with. And my job, as I see it, Jake, is that these people work with me, and I'm there to serve them. If you think about the American military, the leaders eat last. If you think about the American military, the leaders' job is to serve the people that are working alongside of them. And so, me, for Sarah Huckabee, I want to do everything I can to make her better at that podium. I think she is phenomenal there now. But like every athlete that is training for the Olympics, every day, we have got to make ourselves incrementally better. The only thing I ask Sarah -- Sarah, if you're watching, I loved the hair and makeup person that we had on Friday. So, I would like to continue to use the hair and makeup person.
I couldn't believe he ended that by talking about hair and makeup! She's a woman, so, you know, she's an incredibly warm person and we can get her fixed up to look the way women need to look. Tapper swooped in to change the tone with:
"All right, Anthony, you can always swing by CNN. We have hair and makeup here, if you ever need it. Thanks."
Reading the transcript, I see that Scaramucci could have been referring to his own need for hair and makeup. He said "I loved the hair and makeup person that we had on Friday. So, I would like to continue to use the hair and makeup person." So maybe it was not another weird Trump-related comment by a male about a female. Maybe Scaramucci is looking out for his own appearance and liked that person they had on Friday, the one who stuck big, thick fake eyelashes on Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
3. You see in that "jabbering" quote above, Scaramucci said: "Like every athlete that is training for the Olympics, every day, we have got to make ourselves incrementally better." That reminded me of something he'd said earlier. This was in response to a question about Trump's NYT interview, in which he, as Tapper put it, "attacked the attorney general, the deputy attorney general, the special counsel, the former FBI director, the acting FBI director." Scaramucci used the athletics metaphor, and Trump is the coach:
Listen, I don't want to be a career guidance counselor for those people that [Trump is] talking about. But let me give some advice to those people on your show. That's the president. The president likes speaking from the heart. He likes telling what he likes and he dislikes. He's the type of coach that I worked very well with in high school football. It's OK with me if the president doesn't like certain things that I'm doing. We're all on the same team. I would prefer that direct and immediate feedback, as opposed to anything else. What I don't like about Washington, if we say one syllable or one sentence, or this guy said something bad about me, then, all of a sudden, they have to be my mortal enemy. I don't think that's how it works in American business. I can sit across the table from somebody that worked with me and my company that I founded and say, here are five things I don't like about what you're doing, and we have to fix it. And, by the way, tomorrow, I'm going to be having a meeting with the communications staff and say, hey, I don't like these leaks. And so we're going to stop the leaks. And, if we don't stop the leaks, I'm going to stop you. It's just really that simple.
Okay. So from the business world... what I would say about that and from my experience with the president, the president's a pretty wear-his-heart-on-the-sleeve sort of a guy. If people are very, very thin skinned, I think it's going to be super tough to work for this president. The president has said things to me in a tough, and honest, direct way. I think he's a very good athletic coach, if you will. And so what I would recommend to all of my-my colleagues in Washington and know the president very well, if he's saying stuff about you that you don't like, call him up. Go see him. Go get in the Oval Office or the study.
4. One more thing Scaramucci said on "Face the Nation": Tweeting about everything is "the crystal essence of the president." The crystal essence!
5. One more from "Face the Nation": "What I know about President Trump is... he's got very, very good karma."
The column is "The Mooch and the Mogul" (that is, Anthony Scaramucci — the "Wall Street hedge fund guy and cable TV diva" turned White House communications director and Donald Trump). "The Mogul and the Mooch is a tender love story with dramatic implications for the imploding White House."
"Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, resigned on Friday morning, telling President Trump he vehemently disagreed with the appointment of the New York financier Anthony Scaramucci as communications director," the NYT reports.
Scaramucci, who is a frequent TV surrogate for Trump, is liked by the president. Trump "thinks he is really good at making the case for him," one of these people said. "He loves him on TV."
Here's how he looks on TV (from a month ago), in case you want to check out what Trump loves:
UPDATE: Scaramucci is the new communications director. The new press secretary is Sarah Huckabee Sanders (WaPo).
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