Showing posts with label Sinclair Lewis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sinclair Lewis. Show all posts

August 6, 2024

Why is Trump suddenly calling Kamala "Kamabla"?

I had to look it up and found "Donald Trump Launches Two New Nicknames for Kamala Harris in 24 Hours" (Newsweek).
In a string of Monday evening posts on Truth Social, Trump intentionally misspelled the vice president's first name as "Kamabla" after a series of posts earlier in the day calling her "Kamala Crash" and accusing her of bringing about the "Great Depression of 2024."... Trump used the "Kamabla" nickname in a variety of contexts across four posts on Monday, first in relation to food prices, writing: "food is now at an all time high because of Kamabla/Biden INCOMPETENCE."He then used it in the context of debate scheduling "Kamabla Harris is afraid to Debate me on FoxNews," before using it too attack her record: "Kamabla is the WORST V.P." He also used it in a description of what he said were Harris' views on policing and fracking: "Kamabla has stated, over and over again, that she wants to DEFUND THE POLICE AND, WITHOUT QUESTION, BAN FRACKING. "NO MORE FOSSIL FUEL."
I still don't get it why he's saying "Kamabla." Is he being silly/nonsensical?

I asked Meade and he had an immediate guess that sounded good to me: "Kama-blah, like blah blah blah." If that's right, it's a reference to her much-mocked speech patterns.

Trump tries out different nicknames for people. I doubt if this one will last. He has a trial and error approach to nicknames. This one did get Newsweek to repeat a whole series of Truth Social mutterings (and yellings). So it's at least that successful. As for "Kamala Crash," that won't last if the stock market picks up, so I hope it fails.

ADDED: "Blah" can also mean boring and bland. Did you know that "blah" was a noun before it was an adjective? First recorded in 1918, it meant "Meaningless, insincere, or pretentious talk or writing; nonsense, bunkum." I'm quoting the OED, which has these historical examples:

January 19, 2022

"I believe that nothing living can avoid the political today. The refusal is also politics; one thereby advances the politics of the evil cause."

Wrote Thomas Mann (to Hermann Hesse) in 1945, quoted in "Thomas Mann’s Brush with Darkness/How the German novelist’s tormented conservative manifesto led to his later modernist masterpieces" (The New Yorker). 

The author of the article, Alex Ross, continues:

If artists lose themselves in fantasies of independence, they become the tool of malefactors, who prefer to keep art apart from politics so that the work of oppression can continue undisturbed. So Mann wrote in an afterword to a 1937 book about the Spanish Civil War, adding that the poet who forswears politics is a “spiritually lost man.”... 
[During] the time that the novelist spent at [Princeton U]niversity between 1938 and 1941... Mann called for “social self-discipline under the ideal of freedom”—a political philosophy that doubles as a personal one. He also said, “Let me tell you the whole truth: if ever Fascism should come to America, it will come in the name of ‘freedom.’ ”

That's a great quote — "if ever Fascism should come to America, it will come in the name of 'freedom'" — and I googled it to see if today's anti-freedom leftists had used it against conservatives. 

Looking for Mann, I got Ronald Reagan: "If fascism ever comes to America, it will come in the name of liberalism." 

But it would be a mistake to think Reagan nicked it from Mann and that Mann was the originator of the "if fascism comes to America" clause. In the 1935 Sinclair Lewis book, “It Can’t Happen Here,” there's: “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying the cross.” 

You get the picture. There's a lot of If fascism ever comes to America, it will look like my opponents.

The "conservative manifesto" referred to in the New Yorker article title is "Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man." That book was recently reissued — here — and Ross is displeased by the new introduction, which he says "trivializes" Mann, putting him at "the level of an op-ed columnist":

October 8, 2012

"A man like me, he gives me the icy mitt, and then he goes to the other extreme and slops all over some old dame..."

Wrote Sinclair Lewis at Kindle Locations 3099-3100 in "Elmer Gantry," which I downloaded yesterday, after David Axelrod, on "Face the Nation," said that poor Obama "was confronted with this kind of Gantry-esque performance" from Romney.

Skimming the book, I happened to see "the icy mitt," and thought it was funny — Sinclair Lewis's humorous reference to a perfunctory handshake (put in the mouth of his Gantry character).
Elmer disposed of Cecil Aylston: "To hell with him! There's a fellow we'll get rid of! A man like me, he gives me the icy mitt, and then he goes to the other extreme and slops all over some old dame that's probably saved already, that you, by golly, couldn't unsave with a carload of gin! That'll do you, my young friend!..." 
Yeah, I know: Doesn't sound the least bit like Romney. But, as I say, it amused me to run across The Icy Mitt. And that piqued my curiosity. Did "mitt" appear elsewhere in the book? This is the careless, intuitive way I have of looking for bloggable material. But Kindle, come on! I do a search for "mitt" in the Kindle app, and I get 74 matches, because Kindle won't look for "mitt" as a separate word, only as a set of 4 letters, so I get every "admitted," "permitted," "omitted, and "committee." It's sometimes interesting to discover the way a word is present within a word. It can give you ideas for jokes in the "putting the X in Y" form — putting the mitt in omitted — but it really undermines the value of having searchable text.
Elmer stopped pumping, glared, rubbed his mittened hands on his thighs, and spoke steadily:

"I've been waiting for this! I'm impulsive  — sure; I make bad mistakes — every red-blooded man does. But what about you? I don't know how far you've gone with your hellish doubts, but I've been listening to the hedging way you answer questions in Sunday School, and I know you're beginning to wabble. Pretty soon you'll be an out-and-out liberal. God! Plotting to weaken the Christian religion, to steal away from weak groping souls their only hope of salvation! The worst murderer that ever lived isn't a criminal like you!" 
Kindle Locations 2449-2460.

October 7, 2012

Axelrod says Obama "was confronted with this kind of Gantry-esque performance" from Romney.

On "Face the Nation," talking about last week's debate. Bob Schieffer was all: "What did you just say?" And Axelrod repeats: "Gantry-esque." Shieffer seeks to clarify: "Elmer as in Elmer Gantry the fictional evangelist?" And Axelrod goes: "Elmer Gantry. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thanks for clarifying."

What madness! What dream world is Axelrod living in? "Elmer Gantry" is a novel from 1927. It was made into a film in 1960 — half a century ago. I'm 61 years old and the movie pre-dates my movie-going days. Normal Americans are supposed to be conversant with this character? I mean, I know it's a fictional character who was played by Burt Lancaster in the movie that had something to do with religion, but I have to look it up in Wikipedia to try to see what Axelrod was driving at:
The novel tells the story of a young, narcissistic, womanizing college athlete who abandons his early ambition to become a lawyer. The legal profession does not suit the unethical Gantry, who then becomes a notorious and cynical alcoholic. Gantry is mistakenly ordained as a Baptist minister, briefly acts as a "New Thought" evangelist, and eventually becomes a Methodist minister. He acts as manager for Sharon Falconer, an itinerant evangelist. Gantry becomes her lover....
Sounds more like Obama than Mitt Romney.  New Thought, eh? That made me buy the book, downloaded in Kindle:
... a vicious satire of preachers and those they fool. Gantry has no redeeming features but is seen by the gullible public as a man who speaks the truth about God. Of course he could just as easily have been a lawyer or a politician and the heart of Lewis’s satire is how easily people believe what they want to believe.
That really does sound like Obama. Interesting that the character is fixed in the Mind of Axelrod! Wish I could trace that thought-path back to its origin.