I'd love to hear a lecture demonstrating — with lots of quotes — Mark Twain's hatred of bullies. I have a Kindle copy of "The Complete Works of Mark Twain" (only 99¢ at Amazon!), so I can easily do my own search, though it's hard to do a search for the word "bully," since many of the occurrences are in things like "Bully for the lion!" — shouted by "young ruffians" during a tour of the Coliseum in "Innocents Abroad" — an archaic usage.
But how can you delve into Twain and his times when you've got Trump... and your "shame" for showing up in what was once an arts paradise and is now the humbled plaything of that garish clod who is remaking everything in his own horribly orange image?
1. The headline refers to a Western movie where "high noon" is the time for a shooting duel. To say "Who Will Stand Up to Trump at High Noon?" is to generate an image of shooting Trump. Even if Trump had not been shot (and targeted by a second assassination attempt), it is wrong to say something that either is or can be mistaken for an invitation to shoot the President!
2. Under the headline is a photograph from the movie "Shane," and Maureen Dowd discusses the movie "Shane," which she saw when she was quite young. She never mentions "High Noon." I guess Westerns are interchangeable to NYT headline writers.
3. "High Noon" had a villain and a hero and so did "Shane." Good guys and bad guys. Binary.
4. I remember when Democrats loved to talk about how nuanced they were in their sophisticated thinking,
"... because they have the context to decide whether an individual piece of content is hateful or not, for example. Which means that if we don’t have agreement from our moderators and our communities that these are the rules that we’re all going to abide by, then a community that’s not willing to work with us has no place on Reddit. And I think that became abundantly clear with The_Donald over the years, and even the past few months.... The mission of Reddit is to bring community and belonging to everybody in the world. And we’ve long had this debate on Reddit and internally, weighing the trade-offs between speech and safety. There’s certain speech — for example, harassment and hate — that prevents other people from speaking. And if we have individuals and communities on Reddit that are preventing other people from using Reddit the way we intend, then that means they’re working directly against our mission.... When we started Reddit 15 years ago, we didn’t ban things. And it was easy, as it is for many young people, to make statements like that* because, one, I had more rigid political beliefs and, two, I lacked perspective and real-world experience. Over the years, we’ve been increasingly confronted with difficult decisions, and we have to weigh these trade-offs. And so here we are, believing that free speech and free expression are really important, and that’s one of the things that makes Reddit special, but at the same time, seeing that allowing everything is working against our mission."
* In 2018, Huffman — refusing to ban the subreddit The_Donald — said "There are arguments on both sides, but ultimately, my view is that their anger comes from feeling like they don’t have a voice, so it won’t solve anything if I take away their voice."
Kaplan, we're told, "teaches writing at Antioch University, Los Angeles, and is the author of 'Black Talk, Blue Thoughts, and Walking the Color Line' and 'I Heart Obama.'" She's a "contributing opinion writer" at the NYT and her columns are listed under the heading "Blackness and identity" (e.g., "I’m 57. Am I Grown Up?/I’m childless, still trekking the path to self-realization, and always the first one on the dance floor").
Back to the new column. I'd just recently been thinking that Trump has not given much material to the people who want to portray him as a racist, but Kaplan has him continually "emanating" racism. Whatever it is she's picking up, it's manifesting itself in her own hostility toward white people.
Despite the fact that I’ve written provocatively (so I’m told) about racial matters for years, this hostility is new — and I’m increasingly unafraid to express it.
I do think Trump is making people feel more freely expressive. I've thought that for a long time. Now, here's a college teacher openly stating that she feels race-based hostility (not hiding it from anyone, including her white students who are entitled to equal treatment).
Like all people of color, I’ve been on the receiving end of racial microaggressions for as long as I can remember, but being the perpetrator of this sort of macroaggression is a new and alarming phenomenon. It’s unsettling mostly because it is addictive, like a drug that unlocks a kind of emotional freedom I’ve never been allowed to explore before....
In this Trump age of gross unreason, meeting incivility with civility has felt small to me, and futile.... I want true equality, 2020 style — the right to claim and fully express my own well-earned piece of the American id....
The column features a single anecdote. Kaplan takes her dog to the vet, and, after she checks in, the receptionist tells her "Go sit down" in a tone of voice that sounds "flat" (and she'd just spoken to a white pet owner with "cheer and empathy"). Kaplan openly expresses anger at the receptionist. Later, Kaplan apologizes, and the woman looks away "with a kind of wince."
I don’t know if it was because I’d been a jerk, or because I’m black, or because I was more of a jerk in her eyes for being black. I walked off deeply unsatisfied for not having an answer.
If she really were getting energy from Trump, she would not worry about whether she's being a jerk.
And I doubt that Trump takes umbrage with receptionists and other service workers. He tends to go big when criticizing people who have power. He may seem to be "freewheeling" and to simply spout angry insults, but that is not what he is doing. If you take him as an example and just burst out angrily at random people who set you off, you will and should walk away "deeply unsatisfied."
"I hate Trump but why is it OK to fat shame anyone?"/"I am the most ardent human being against Trump, however, as a former very obese person as a young kid, this just isn’t necessary... Attack his policy, his demeanor, his callous nature, the fact that he is empty inside... Please stop."
ADDED: Trump is an extremely successful, dominating person, and yet somehow his enemies make me feel that he's a bullied outsider in need of a friend. Stop making the President of the United States into the underdog, you fools! If anyone wonders why I seem to take Trump's side here, it's because you idiots make me feel sorry for him.
"... whenever she saw someone eating lunch alone, she would invite them to join her friends at their table. She knew that by saying 'sit with us,' she protected other children from becoming untouchable. 'Each time, the person’s face would light up, and the look of relief would wash over [it],' she says. 'Some of those people have become some of my closest friends.' Natalie was willing to give up her social capital, but she discovered that when a person has friends, spending social capital by befriending those without it lifts people up without bringing anyone down. If 'sit with us' became the ethos in middle school, bullying would be a thing of the past."
I'm sharing this story for what it ostensibly is but also because I had the weird twinge of a thought: Isn't this kind of how Trump became President?
ADDED: Another solution to the schoolkid's horror of sitting alone in the lunchroom: Hiding in the bathroom.
And here's a Reddit discussion of the problem where the top-rated answer is: "I used to bring a book with me or my sketchbook. After a while, I didn't even care if others would stare at me since I was preoccupied with something." Another solution there is: "look for the nerdy table. I used to sit at a table with a couple of nerdy friends and we always accepted anyone that walked up. We all had some form of social anxiety. Some of the guys barely talked and that was alright by us."
ALSO: I've created a new tag, "Trump and bullying," and I'm going back and adding it to old posts. There are, of course, many old posts that discuss the portrayal of Trump as a bully, but I've found at least one that matches the insight above. In a May 2017 post — "3 Civil War historians react to Trump's Andrew Jackson comments line by line" — I quoted a historian who said that "Historians have come to a consensus that slavery is the reason" for the Civil War. I said:
Experts rely on this word ["consensus"] so much these days. It makes me suspect that they intimidate and discipline each other into toeing a party line. Why don't these experts perform their expertise for the people when they are invited to speak in a general forum like the BBC? It's especially bad when you add moral opprobrium. Here, the message was, the experts all agree, so you should just adopt our conclusion, because it's what we say. But on top of that there's this dire warning: And if you don't accept our consensus, you're going to look like a racist. One of the reasons Trump won was because he offered the common people liberation from that kind of bullying from the elite.
Wow. He really is doubling down and apparently not worried about the recent accusation that his statements about journalists are going to lead to violence against journalists.
As a metaphor, there's a bit of a fakeness muddle. Fakeness 1: CNN is — in the Trump rhetoric — fake news. Fakeness 2: that kind of wrestling is fake. So Trump has himself fake-fighting fake news. Might be kind of like writing a sentence with a double negative.
Anyway, a President showing us video of himself physically brutalizing the news media... that's something we've never seen, and if the question is whether that's presidential, we know Trump's answer is it's modern-day presidential.
What happens to Twitter after it shows itself looking plainly political? There's always another social media platform. It wasn't that long ago when Twitter didn't exist. There's nothing that special about Twitter other than that it has a lot of users. They could have them today and lose them tomorrow. Trump has 33 million followers. Anywhere he goes, he will be followed, leveraging Twitter's competition.
As for the censors like Ellison, why do they not worry about how they will be seen? Why don't they worry about the demands for equal treatment? Ellison said: "I personally think that Twitter should treat him like any other social media harasser and snatch his account." Turn that around. If Trump's account is snatched, then everyone else whose account was equally "bullying" toward anybody would have to get their account snatched. That would be a lot of snatches.
In last night's post about Trump's tweeting, the commenter rcocean wrote that he was "surprised Althouse isn't pulling out her 'Civility Bullshit' tag." I see the point. This is squarely within what I use that tag to mean, which is that calls for civility are always bullshit. That is, I have observed again and again that when somebody issues what purports to be a lofty call to civility, they're bullshitting. They don't really mean it. They just want someone who's not on their side to disarm, tone it down, and recede into boring innocuousness. If their side were coming on strong, scoring hits, they'd be exulting and proud of their effective rhetoric.
The comedian broke down in tears as she detailed the torrent of abuse she has been receiving online, and the constant death threats which she described as detailed and specific....
[She] said that her career was likely over now as a result of this incident, and that President Trump had 'broke' her, moments after she declared: 'There's a bunch of old white guys trying to silence me!'...
It was also confirmed at the press conference that the Secret Service is investigating Griffin over the image, with the median saying: 'Yeah I might get arrested today. I don't care.'
1. "[Jackson] was a swashbuckler... They love Andrew Jackson in Tennessee." This statement seems trivial, but it elicits ready contempt for Trump from the historians.
2. "He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart." No one even has a guess about what might support "big heart." They go into no detail about what "heart" is and seem to assume it's love and empathy. But it can also mean spirit, will, or courage.*
3. "I mean, had Andrew Jackson been a little later, you wouldn't have had the Civil War." None of the historians goes anywhere with the idea that the war could have been avoided. It's the "wrong premise." Nor do any of them give any regard to the idea that the right person could have done better, and Blight calls it "plain nonsense" to think that "the right man with the right strength... can change the course of history." These answers strike me as doctrinaire and incurious.
4. "He was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War. He said: 'There's no reason for this.'" The historians regard this as a stupid blunder. We don't need historians to tell us that Jackson died more than a decade before the war began, but I'm disappointed (though not surprised) that they don't go into details about what events in Jackson's era could have been seen by a person at the time as a build up toward war. If we're going to listen to historians, why don't they put on more of a show of doing history?
5. "People don't realise, you know, the Civil War - if you think about it, why? People don't ask that question, but why was there a Civil War?" Giesberg says the inquiry is over: "Historians have come to a consensus** that slavery is the reason." Don't be a Civil War denier. Giesberg connects Trump's puzzling over history with his "tone-deaf[ness] about contemporary racial issues." Although the historians all seem to resist the idea that we don't talk about the question anymore, they actually don't talk about it. They say "slavery," but they won't say one word about why there was no solution to the problem of slavery other than war. Doesn't that prove Trump's point?
_______________________
* That's the more masculine idea of "heart," calling to mind this masculine-as-you-can-get-while-still-being-in-a-Broadway-musical song:
** Experts rely on this word so much these days. It makes me suspect that they intimidate and discipline each other into toeing a party line. Why don't these experts perform their expertise for the people when they are invited to speak in a general forum like the BBC? It's especially bad when you add moral opprobrium. Here, the message was, the experts all agree, so you should just adopt our conclusion, because it's what we say. But on top of that there's this dire warning: And if you don't accept our consensus, you're going to look like a racist. One of the reasons Trump won was because he offered the common people liberation from that kind of bullying from the elite.
The Washington Post reports on the harassment that has befallen a former Georgetown professor, Asra Q. Nomani, who wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post — "I’m a Muslim, a woman and an immigrant. I voted for Trump."
On Thursday, Nomani filed a formal complaint with the university, alleging discrimination and harassment after comments made by Christine Fair, an associate professor in Georgetown’s School for Foreign Service....
“I’ve written you off as a human being,” Fair wrote in one message detailed in the complaint. “Your vote helped normalize Nazis in D.C. What don’t you understand, you clueless dolt?” Fair wrote, later adding: “YOU publicly voted for a sex assailant.” She went on to say that Nomani “pimped herself out to all media outlets because she was a ‘Muslim woman who voted for Trump.’ ”
Fair called Nomani’s appeal to her employer a “very dangerous trend.” She said Nomani, a former professor at Georgetown, has no standing at the university to complain.
“I am most concerned about the increasing appeal to employers to silence the criticism of citizens made in their private capacity as citizens,” [Fair] wrote in an email to The Washington Post. “Because most of us need our jobs, as few of us are financially independent, this is the most pernicious form of bullying of critics.”
Who's the bully here? The bully may be the one who's crying "bully."
“I am writing to share with you that, as a result of my column, Prof. Fair has directed hateful, vulgar and disrespectful messages to me, including the allegations that I am: a ‘fraud'; ‘fame-mongering clown show'; and a ‘bevkuf,’ or ‘idiot,’ in my native Urdu, who has ‘pimped herself out,’ ” Nomani wrote in a Dec. 2 email included in the complaint to Bruce Hoffman, director of Georgetown’s Center for Security Studies. “This last allegation amounts to ‘slut-shaming.’ ”...
“She has no right to decry criticism . . . even criticism that is in language that offends her fragile sensibilities,” Fair wrote in a Facebook post. “ ‘F–k off’ and ‘go to hell’ and ‘pimping yourself out’ for media coverage offended her . . . but not ‘I can grab their p—–s’ or the various misogynist, racist, xeonophobic [sic] race-baiting bulls–t espoused by her candidate of choice.” Fair concluded: “So again, Ms. Nomani, ‘F–K YOU. GO TO HELL.’ ”
Well, Fair has gone pretty far, but I side with her free speech rights and interests. Nomani had her say and Fair reacted to it, with vivid speech. Fair could be fancily articulate, but sometimes what you have to say really is "Fuck you. Go to hell." Form is part of the expression, as Justice Harlan fancily articulated in Cohen v. California (the "Fuck the Draft" case)(and, yes, I know Georgetown is a private institution):
To many, the immediate consequence of [freedom of speech] may often appear to be only verbal tumult, discord, and even offensive utterance. These are, however, within established limits, in truth necessary side effects of the broader enduring values which the process of open debate permits us to achieve. That the air may at times seem filled with verbal cacophony is, in this sense not a sign of weakness but of strength. We cannot lose sight of the fact that, in what otherwise might seem a trifling and annoying instance of individual distasteful abuse of a privilege, these fundamental societal values are truly implicated. That is why "[w]holly neutral futilities . . . come under the protection of free speech as fully as do Keats' poems or Donne's sermons," Winters v. New York, 333 U. S. 507, 333 U. S. 528 (1948) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting), and why, "so long as the means are peaceful, the communication need not meet standards of acceptability," Organization for a Better Austin v. Keefe, 402 U. S. 415, 402 U. S. 419 (1971).
And let me just focus on Nomani's charge that Fair committed "slut-shaming" when she said that Nomani "pimped [her]self out." That's Nomani engaging in some vivid, hostile speech, leveraging the liberal meme "slut-shaming." Is the metaphorical use of "pimped yourself out" really so bad? Writing for personal gain is often analogized to sexual prostitution, and we know that calling someone a whore for selling out his or her intellectual work product is not sexual. It's no more sexual than "fuck you" to express anger. It's no more literal than "Go to hell." It's just coarse, hyperbolic speech.
Maybe you remember back during the 2008 presidential primaries, when a reporter — MSNBC's David Shuster — got in trouble, for saying "Doesn't it seem as if Chelsea is sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?"
After Shuster made the remark on "Tucker," Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines contacted him and said the reference was offensive. Shuster e-mailed back that he was referring to the fact that Chelsea Clinton is making calls to convention superdelegates but refusing to talk to the press. After Shuster continued to defend himself, Phil Griffin, MSNBC's top executive, called Reines yesterday to apologize.
[Clinton campaign communications director Howard] Wolfson noted that MSNBC's Chris Matthews expressed regret last month for suggesting that Hillary Clinton's political success can be traced to sympathy stemming from her husband's affair with Monica Lewinsky. "At some point you have to question whether there is a pattern at this particular network," Wolfson said.
That was back when Tucker Carlson was on MSNBC and it was possible to argue that MSNBC had a plan to use sexism to thwart Hillary Clinton. Times change.
And here's where I realize I need to use my "civility bullshit" tag. Calls for civility are always bullshit. That's what I always say. It's particularly interesting when — as in the case of Nomani v. Fair — both sides are purveying civility bullshit.
The right remedy, as ever, is more speech. That goes for women too. Stop running to the paternal authority for help. Return fire as a free and fully empowered human being. You don't like her speech? Show me that your speech is better. Don't try to get the other person fired.
You know, Nomani purports to be for Trump. How about asking: What would Trump do? When hit with verbal criticism, he hits back with words. He's shown us how to verbally joust and not crumple. Take a cue.
Here's video of Shuster making the "pimped out" remark and then apologizing in case anybody took it literally:
ADDED: I'm just now looking back at what I wrote at the time about the Shuster remark. I like looking back 9 years and seeing how consistent I've been:
Really, how bad is it to say "pimped out"? Is it "nappy-headed hos" bad? Did anyone think Shuster was literally calling Chelsea a whore or even making any reference to her womanly virtue? "Pimped out" is a common colloquialism these days. According to the Urban Dictionary, which gives a good read on how young people use words, the connotations having to do with exaggerated fashion and style predominate.
Even if the clear associations with prostitution remain, we often make figurative references to prostitution in speech, and the cause of feminism is not served by requiring special limitations when we're talking about women. We ought to be able to call a female publicity hound a "media whore."
I've never watched "Tucker," the show Shuster was guest-hosting when he made the supposedly offensive remark, but if the conversation there is casual and slang is the norm, then saying "pimped out" about Chelsea should be taken in stride. Otherwise it looks as though NBC caved to the Clintons.
ADDED: Ugh! Here's Shuster groveling...
Ha! I've got exactly the same video embedded.
"All Americans should be proud of Chelsea Clinton"? Why? Because, sublimely privileged, she went to work for a hedge fund? And, generally, why should anyone be "proud of" someone else's children? Plus, Chelsea isn't a kid anymore! I think saying "All Americans should be proud of Chelsea Clinton" is offensive. Please fire David Shuster.
pimp 1607, perhaps from M.Fr. pimper "to dress elegantly" (16c.), prp. of pimpant "alluring in dress, seductive." Weekley suggests M.Fr. pimpreneau, defined in Cotgrave (1611) as "a knave, rascall, varlet, scoundrell." The word also means "informer, stool pigeon" in Australia and New Zealand and in S.Africa, where by early 1960s it existed in Swahili form impimpsi. The verb is attested from 1636. Pimpmobile first recorded 1973.
It may surprise everyone but I actually wasn't bothered by [what Shuster said]. The phrase is ubiquitous, I use it all the time and although it is a loaded term my initial impression was that in the wake of all the truly awful sexist stuff that's come down the pipeline from MSNBC over the course of this campaign, much of which I have personally railed about, this just didn't fall into that category. At first I thought it might be because I know Shuster and don't think he has the women's issues that many on MSNBC seem to have, and maybe that was affecting my assessment of the situation. But I wrote a post recently about Ben Affleck appearing at a press conference for the SEIU in Boston, and shortly after it went live someone involved in helping me put together the story sent me an email wondering what the hell I was thinking linking to a headline that said something on the order of "Boston Mayor Pimps For Healthcare Workers." I wasn't sure what they were upset about either at the time, but after a moment I realized that the term probably didn't strike others as being as inert as it did me so I changed the link. I understand that this situation is different, we're talking about a young woman and Hillary Clinton has been on the receiving end of a lot of really misogynistic and disrespectful shit from MSNBC and that on the heels of that, a comment which overtly compared her daughter to a prostitute probably did not sit too well. Still, if you asked me, I'd say that while I certainly understand that others might feel differently, for me this was a minor infraction.
And if anyone thinks my comment here is partisan, remember that I just defended Randi Rhodes (and I've been arguing the free speech side of nearly every dispute over the 4-year life of this blog).
We're told — by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Jason Stein — that Chelsea "gave examples" of this "Trump effect" bullying that she attributed to what she called "an almost daily diet of hate speech" coming from Trump.
I could have walked down the street and joined what Stein calls "a young crowd of supporters... at the upscale Overture Center for the Arts." But I chose not to. I'm just a little lazy at night. And the World Series was on. And frankly, I don't like seeing famous people. It feels creepy. Like that waiter playing the role of waiter that we were just talking about.
Anyway, speaking of bullying, I should link to Scott Adams's post yesterday calling the Democrats"The Bully Party":
If you have a Trump sign in your lawn, they will steal it.
If you have a Trump bumper sticker, they will deface your car.
[I]f you speak of Trump at work you could get fired.
On social media, almost every message I get from a Clinton supporter is a bullying type of message. They insult. They try to shame. They label. And obviously they threaten my livelihood.
We know from Project Veritas that Clinton supporters tried to incite violence at Trump rallies. The media downplays it.
We also know Clinton’s side hired paid trolls to bully online. You don’t hear much about that....
Joe Biden said he wanted to take Trump behind the bleachers and beat him up. No one on Clinton’s side disavowed that call to violence because, I assume, they consider it justified hyperbole.
Team Clinton has succeeded in perpetuating one of the greatest evils I have seen in my lifetime. Her side has branded Trump supporters (40%+ of voters) as Nazis, sexists, homophobes, racists, and a few other fighting words. Their argument is built on confirmation bias and persuasion....
One way to bully is to call the other person the bully. Chelsea could be said to be part of that activity.
And as far as that "almost daily diet of hate speech" Chelsea spoke of — where does it come from? Does it come from Trump or does it come from Trump's opponents who are paraphrasing him? I think most of the noise comes from the paraphrasers, and the question is whether they are: 1. Interpreting Trump accurately and getting us to see dog-whistling for what it really is, or 2. Distorting what Trump says into something it's not that they want you to think it is.
Whatever the paraphrasers are doing, they are relying on 2 important beliefs: 1. Listeners hate the idea that the paraphrasers are making so clear, and 2. The hard-core daily beating rained down on Trump will never turn him into a sympathetic character.
That first belief might not be true or not true enough. At some point, on some level, listeners might feel, instead of aversion to Trump, fears and needs that send them into Trump's arms. And that second belief is dangerous: These ham-handed attacks are so crude and exaggerated that they exceed the crudeness usually attributed to Trump. We're told to hate crude brutality by people who look increasingly crude and brutal.
Here's some very heavy-handed rhetoric — ironically against another man's heavy-handed rhetoric — that shouldn't be imposed on the captive audience of a graduating class and the guests who want to celebrate them, but I can see that he thinks it's such an emergency that the normal rules do not apply — which, again ironically, is why Donald Trump must think he's got to talk the way he does.
So before you do anything with your well-earned degree, you must do everything you can to defeat the retrograde forces that have invaded our democratic process, divided our house, to fight against, no matter your political persuasion, the dictatorial tendencies of the candidate with zero experience in the much maligned but subtle art of governance; who is against lots of things, but doesn’t seem to be for anything, offering only bombastic and contradictory promises, and terrifying Orwellian statements; a person who easily lies, creating an environment where the truth doesn’t seem to matter; who has never demonstrated any interest in anyone or anything but himself and his own enrichment; who insults veterans, threatens a free press, mocks the handicapped, denigrates women, immigrants and all Muslims; a man who took more than a day to remember to disavow a supporter who advocates white supremacy and the Ku Klux Klan; an infantile, bullying man who, depending on his mood, is willing to discard old and established alliances, treaties and long-standing relationships. I feel genuine sorrow for the understandably scared and—they feel—powerless people who have flocked to his campaign in the mistaken belief that--as often happens on TV--a wand can be waved and every complicated problem can be solved with the simplest of solutions. They can’t. It is a political Ponzi scheme. And asking this man to assume the highest office in the land would be like asking a newly minted car driver to fly a 747.
As a student of history, I recognize this type. He emerges everywhere and in all eras. We see nurtured in his campaign an incipient Proto-fascism, a nativist anti-immigrant Know Nothing-ism, a disrespect for the judiciary, the prospect of women losing authority over their own bodies, African Americans again asked to go to the back of the line, voter suppression gleefully promoted, jingoistic saber rattling, a total lack of historical awareness, a political paranoia that, predictably, points fingers, always making the other wrong. These are all virulent strains that have at times infected us in the past. But they now loom in front of us again--all happening at once. We know from our history books that these are the diseases of ancient and now fallen empires. The sense of commonwealth, of shared sacrifice, of trust, so much a part of American life, is eroding fast, spurred along and amplified by an amoral Internet that permits a lie to circle the globe three times before the truth can get started.
We no longer have the luxury of neutrality or “balance,” or even of bemused disdain. Many of our media institutions have largely failed to expose this charlatan, torn between a nagging responsibility to good journalism and the big ratings a media circus always delivers. In fact, they have given him the abundant airtime he so desperately craves, so much so that it has actually worn down our natural human revulsion to this kind of behavior. Hey, he’s rich; he must be doing something right. He is not. Edward R. Murrow would have exposed this naked emperor months ago. He is an insult to our history. Do not be deceived by his momentary “good behavior.” It is only a spoiled, misbehaving child hoping somehow to still have dessert.
(How much evidence of tech savvy is it that somebody can photoshop a hat on an anime character?)
ADDED: The name Elspeth Reeve is familiar. In May 2015, I had a post titled "Masculinity is hard," about something she wrote in TNR called "No Campaigns for Manly Men." I paraphrased her position as: "without the broad, loud-mouthed, bullying Chris Christie in the presidential race, we have no 'manly men.'" That was, of course, pre-Trump.
I said, just now, in a discussion with Meade about the 4 GOP candidates. We'd been talking about the way Kasich stoops over and affects a cute expression, which I guessed was put on to compensate for what he is concerned might come off as a blustering, bullying style, the very style that Trump affects, in what is, in Trump, compensating for a fear of seeming too weak or small.
"Those two are compensating in different directions," I said.
That caused Meade to say that unlike Trump and Kasich, Rubio and Cruz really are the men they appear to be. There's not a different man inside, putting up a phony surface.
Wow. Rubio and Cruz? They really are like that, outside and inside, phony from surface to core? That's much more disturbing than the two who are — if they are — really something more recognizably human on the inside and who have created a public persona that hides but also suggests the feelings that skewed the direction of the compensation.
Did anything else happen at the debate last night? We bailed out of the live broadcast somewhere around halfway through. I'm glancing at the reports this morning. I'm seeing that Christie accomplished a "beatdown of Marco Rubio" (Salon) and Christie "rattled" Rubio (Yahoo Politics and Washington Free Beacon and that Rubio "chokes" (Politico) and "Malfunctions" (Buzzfeed), so I figured I'd flip it and say Christie bullied Rubio. It's just my way of protesting the tiresomely dramatic headlines. Who did what to whom? Any schlonging?
I've got the debate recorded, and I could start watching where I left off, but now here's the transcript, which is so much faster (even as it seems not to matter). The one thing I want to look up is what they said about drafting women — drafting women into combat. I never thought this idea would even be acceptable let alone popular or even — has it come to this? — what you think you're supposed to think. (And this is an idea I delve into on an annual basis, because Conlaw2 must cover the Supreme Court case that said it's not a violation of the Equal Protection Clause to require men but not women to register for the draft.)
I'm going to start a new post to talk about what they said about the draft.
"That's all of his donors and special interests out there," Trump said of the people booing him. "That's what it is. And by the way, let me just tell you: We needed tickets. You can't get them. You know who has the tickets? … Donors, special interests, the people that are putting up the money. That's who it is.... The reason they're not loving me is I don't want their money. I'm going to do the right thing for the American public"....
"Yes, huge swaths of political correctness amount to cultural-Marxist codswallop and other forms of leftist bullying. But some of it — just some — does have to do with figuring out how to show people respect. And that is exactly what good manners are all about: showing respect. And as someone who sincerely believes William F. Buckley was the most well-mannered man I’ve ever met, I’d hate to see conservatives defenestrate good manners in their indulgence of populist hysteria."
Jonah Goldberg, of the famously Trump-hating National Review, says that right after denouncing Trump's "I refuse to call Megyn Kelly a bimbo, because that would not be politically correct. Instead I will only call her a lightweight reporter!" Goldberg insults Trump — "almost Caligulan narcissism" — and uses the word "idiots" to refer to anybody who thinks Trump refrained from calling Kelly a bimbo.
Meanwhile, here's a video on political correctness that Trump put up 2 days ago. It's amusingly short because we. don't. have. time:
ADDED: For reference, here's William F. Buckley's "now, listen, you queer" outburst:
IN THE COMMENTS: rhhardin said: "Bimbo is correct. She dresses up for TV and does a soap opera serious newsbabe act for the women in the audience."
It's a good question: If the woman dolls up like mad, with extremely heavy makeup — and Kelly came to the debate in absurdly thick fake eyelashes — if she uses that to advance her career, are we supposed to maintain respectful silence, because respect must be paid to women?
Last March, I had a post about someone (Mark Belling) calling female reporters "bimbos" and getting criticized for it. My response at the time was:
When I hear "bimbo," I think of "bimbo eruptions," a term coined by Governor Bill Clinton's chief of staff Betsey Ross Wright:
As deputy chair of the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign, Wright established the rapid response system that was responsible for defending Clinton's record in Arkansas and promptly answering all personal attacks on the candidate. During the 1992 campaign, Wright coined the term "bimbo eruptions" to describe rumors alleging extramarital affairs by Clinton.
And that makes me want to stop and think about whether Trump was playing at the genius level when he floated the term "bimbo" in the Kelly context. Not only did he have his (somewhat ludicrous) out — that he said he wouldn't call Kelly a bimbo — but he also meant to get people talking about the word bimbo — what does it mean? how bad is it? when can it be used? — because he anticipated — several moves ahead in this chess game — that people would arrive at the most notable use of "bimbo" in American politics, "bimbo eruptions," and it's Hillary Clinton who will get hurt the most.
"Great style and substance. We looked at this one and talked about it for 15 minutes," I said last May, about this:
And here's something else I had last May, "Masculinity is hard," about an Elspeth Reeve TNR piece called "No Campaigns for Manly Men," which took the position, as I put it, that "without the broad, loud-mouthed, bullying Chris Christie in the presidential race, we have no 'manly men.'"
You might want to challenge that characterization of Christie, but that's the way Reeve presents him as she sets up her argument that the real men are gone.
Who’s the manly man’s man of the right? It’s not a politician like Ted Cruz, who exudes “televangelist” more than “cowboy.” It’s not a pundit like Glenn Beck, who cries over the Constitution and sells premium dad jeans. Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Bobby Jindal—they’re all kind of cute, and certainly non-threatening. Jeb Bush is selling himself as the Smart Bush.
It was so pre-Trump back then.
Actually, Trump is mentioned in the Elspeth Reeve article. She consults the linguist Geoff Nunburg and he found it "hard to think of manly
men," so he switched the subject to assholes:
Assholes do very well on the right in particular. I wrote a book about assholes,
I feel like an expert on the subject. And they do very well on the
right. I mean there was a period in which Donald Trump was leading the
Republican polls. And it isn’t as if there is anybody in America who doesn’t think Donald Trump’s an asshole. But he’s like, our asshole.
Our asshole. It's not exactly a campaign slogan, but think about it.
Did you notice this little encounter between Brock and Trump's spokeswoman Katrina Pierson. Pierson was there — on CNN — to explain a couple of Trump tweets that tell Hillary to "be careful" about accusing him of degrading women. Pierson speaks first and praises Donald Trump for his willingness to take on Bill Clinton. Brock changes the subject to Trump's psyche:
He says: "What kind of a man insults, threatens, and degrades women — not just Hillary, Megyn Kelly, Fiorina? I'll tell what kind of a man that is. That is somebody who is frightened, who is insecure, and is a wuss, who has to act like a bully to make him feel like he's a big man."
What kind of a man calls another man's masculinity into question and uses the word "wuss"?! Listen to that audio. Brock takes a bullying tone as he calls Trump a bully. Why would he do that? Does it make him feel like a man?
Here's the article at The Hill — "Trump campaign: Hillary bullied women to hide Bill's 'sexist secrets'" — which doesn't mention the "wuss" epithet. The emphasis there is on Pierson's remarks: “But Hillary Clinton has some nerve to talk about the war on women and the bigotry toward women when she has a serious problem in her husband.” And: “What’s interesting about this, this notion of being bullied is, I mean, I can think of quite a few women that have been bullied by Hillary Clinton to hide her husband’s misogynist, sexist secrets,” Pierson said.
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