"Please stop it with voting for Trump. It was funny for a little while."

"But the guy is Hitler. And by that I mean that we are being Germany in the 30s. Do you think they saw the shit coming? Hitler was just some hilarious and refreshing dude with a weird comb over who would say anything at all. And I’m not advocating for Hillary or Bernie. I like them both but frankly I wish the next president was a conservative only because we had Obama for eight years and we need balance. And not because I particularly enjoy the conservative agenda. I just think the government should reflect the people. And we are about 40 percent conservative and 40 percent liberal. When I was growing up and when I was a younger man, liberals and conservatives were friends with differences. They weren’t enemies. And it always made sense that everyone gets a president they like for a while and then hates the president for a while. But it only works if the conservatives put up a good candidate. A good smart conservative to face the liberal candidate so they can have a good argument and the country can decide which way to go this time. Trump is not that. He’s an insane bigot. He is dangerous.... Please pick someone else. Like John Kasich. I mean that guy seems okay. I don’t like any of them myself but if you’re that kind of voter please go for a guy like that. It feels like between him and either democrat we’d have a decent choice. It feels like a healthier choice. We shouldn’t have to vote for someone because they’re not a shocking cunt billionaire liar..... I get that all these people sound like bullshit soft criminal opportunists. The whole game feels rigged and it’s not going anywhere but down anymore. I feel that way sometimes. And that voting for Trump is a way of saying 'fuck it. Fuck them all'. I really get it. It’s a version of national Suicide. Or it’s like a big hit off of a crack pipe. Somehow we can’t help it. Or we know that if we vote for Trump our phones will be a reliable source of dopamine for the next four years. I mean I can’t wait to read about Trump every day. It’s a rush. But you have to know this is not healthy..... I know I’m not qualified or particularly educated and I’m not right instead of you. I’m an idiot and I’m sure a bunch of you are very annoyed by this. Fucking celebrity with an opinion. I swear this isn’t really a political opinion. You don’t want to know my political opinions. (And I know that I’m only bringing myself trouble with this shit.) Trump has nothing to do with politics or ideology. He has to do with himself. And really I don’t mean to insult anyone. Except Trump. I mean to insult him very much. And really I’m not saying he’s evil or a monster. In fact I don’t think Hitler was. The problem with saying that guys like that are monsters is that we don’t see them coming when they turn out to be human, which they all are. Everyone is...."

Wrote Louis C.K. in March 2016.

I looked it up because, since we've been talking about him a lot lately, I wanted to get a sense of his politics. I'm trying to process the current spate of sex stories without reference to the politics of the particular person who's coming under fire. It's easy to assume anyone in show business is a political liberal, but I think a lot of that is completely shallow, people saying what it's to their advantage to say. The passage above is actually extremely well-written and full of twists and turns and ideas that I loved getting the chance to read. Don't turn off just because you hate the Trump-is-Hitler meme. He does something different with that.

#NotMySuperBowl.

A trending hashtag.

Examples:

I refuse to accept the results of the AFC and NFC championship games.Tomorrow I'll be protesting, looting, and rioting. #NotMySuperBowl

But the Packers won the popular vote #NotMySuperBowl

We demand Tom Brady release his football air pressure statements. #NotMySuperBowl

Who wants to be Trump's nemesis? Al Franken!

I'm reading this at The Hill:

The progressive Minnesota Democrat was the breakout star during a packed week of [confirmation] hearings.... Franken, who was elected in 2008, has largely kept his head down in the upper chamber, focusing on legislative duties and representing his constituents.

Because he couldn't step/stomp on Obama, Franken was caged. The comedian — who came from TV to become a politician — suddenly has a President — who came from TV to become a politician — whom he can attack. What fabulous liberation!

And I'm pretty sure that Trump would be delighted to have Franken as his nemesis. We'll see who's the better comedian-politician.

“It’s very clear now that he is trying to raise his profile and position himself as a leading critic of Donald Trump,” said Jim Manley, a former aide to former Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) who was active in Franken’s recount in 2008. “After watching him skillfully interrogate some of the Trump nominees in recent days, he’s clearly angling to mix it up much more so than he has in the past.”

Here's an example of Franken's newly unleashed prowess:

At former Texas Gov. Rick Perry's hearing to be Energy secretary, Perry referred to an earlier meeting with Franken by saying that he “hope[s] you are as fun on the dais as you were on your couch.”

The hearing room erupted in laughter, and Franken asked Perry to rephrase. “Please. Please. Oh my lord,” Franken said. Once the laughter subsided, Franken pressed Trump’s Energy secretary nominee about his opinion on climate change. 

Rick Perry was the funnier comedian there, unless you think he doesn't notice his own double entendre. If you think he doesn't, you're assuming that the other side is dumb, an easy target. I think Texas politicians can rope you in with that. Watch out, Minnesotans.

Trump flaunts disrespect for American freedom of speech.

Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag - if they do, there must be consequences - perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 29, 2016

What focused him on this unnecessary-to-the-transition topic?

I guess it's the flag-burning that's accompanied some of the post-election protesting:

On Veterans Day, just a couple days after Election day, a group of about 150 [Hampshire College] students burned an American flag in the middle of campus during the dark of the night. “I don’t think anyone here was angry about it (flag burning),” says junior environmental studies major Aaron Rollins. “Emotions were running high after the election and people weren’t happy. We don’t support anything about Donald Trump.”

And:

Students at American University in Washington, D.C., torched American flags in protest of Donald Trump’s win in Tuesday’s presidential election.

If Trump's enthusiasm for punishing flag-burning arises out of vengeance toward his political antagonists, it only makes it worse.

Flag-burning and freedom of expression were one of Justice Scalia's favorite subjects. He joined the majority opinion in Texas v. Johnson, which said there is a free-speech right to burn the flag as symbolic expression, and he loved — in his public performances — to say things like:

“If it were up to me, I would put in jail every sandal-wearing, scruffy-bearded weirdo who burns the American flag. But I am not king.”

Donald Trump also is not king. And I'd like to see better evidence that he knows the scope of the job the people have given him, which is to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, including the First Amendment.

AND: I see the way this — like that "millions of people who voted illegally" tweet — may be simply a trick to bait his antagonists and amuse his fans. It's just junk, a distraction, and it's funny the way we jump at what should be nothing. Does he think the presidency is his plaything, some kind of joke? To ask that is to be distracted, but from what? Perhaps from how serious he really is.

4 Pinocchios to Trump's claim that millions voted illegally (and without them, he'd have won the popular vote too).

WaPo's Glenn Kessler tries to find some evidence to look at and finds none.

It seems to me that it's Donald Trump's responsibility to point to the evidence, otherwise he simply sounds like an agent of chaos. Why would he want to do that, right when his interest should be in appealing to our desire for resolution, peace, and a smooth transition? He shouldn't be weird! I know he won the presidency by resisting advice that he behave in a way conventional people perceive as normal, but he's not running for the presidency anymore. If he acts as though he thinks he is, he's helping his piddling adversaries. Why?!

Kessler seems to guess that Trump picked up the accusation from "purveyors of false facts as Infowars.com."

Back when Trump was trailing in the polls and was threatening to dispute the election results because the system was “rigged,” we’ve previously given Trump four Pinocchios for making a number of bogus claims about alleged voter fraud.

Among other things, he falsely asserted that illegal immigrants were tipping the results in elections, based on a misinterpretation of disputed data. Even the researcher who produced the data said Trump was taking his findings out of context: “Our results suggest that almost all elections in the U.S. are not determined by non-citizen participation, with occasional and very rare potential exceptions.”

Kessler doesn't really know what Trump knows. How can you know he's lying until he reveals his sources of information? Kessler is jumping the gun. And I'm not very satisfied by a quote from a researcher who admits that he thinks some U.S. elections are determined by non-citizen participation!

ADDED: Could Trump have been joking? It kind of makes sense as a joke, but I'm only arriving at this idea the morning after I read the tweet, so... not much of a joke. Maybe Trump will shout "November Fools!" later today.

Speaking of great Christmas ads with a Trump tie-in....

There's this (an ad for a British department store)...



... which became this....

"We all laughed when my sister said it was Apple’s way of welcoming Trump to 'their' village."

Writes JSD in the comments to my post asking you what you did for Thanksgiving and referring to this Apple commercial that aired during football games yesterday:



Watching the commercial with JSD's sister's idea in mind, I couldn't laugh, because you'd have to see the commercial first and then hear the punchline. With the order reversed, I had more of the experience of sweet poignancy that the ad's designers originally intended, but with a new deeper level. The monster is Trump.

If the original intent of the ad had anything to do with using a monster because of Trump — who has been called a monster — it must have been with the idea that Trump would lose, and the alienated losers would need reintegration into Hillary Clinton's America. In that vision, the little girl who screws in the green light represents the young women of America who symbolize the future and show the monster the way to join the group. Stronger together.

By the way, I saw a chalking on campus a few days ago. Should have photographed it, but I memorized it: "Safe together/Strong together/Resist together." I'm not 100% sure that "Strong" was the right word or that the first 2 lines were in that order, but "Resist together" was definitely the punchline. I thought that was funny. After Hillary and her supporters lectured us for so long about how we needed to be together to be strong, she loses the election and oneness loses its luster.

"Resist together" is the perfect oxymoron for the occasion.

This NYT article — "How Conservative Sites Turn Celebrity Despair on Its Head" — seems as though it might be fun for Trump's non-haters.

This is by Amanda Hess. It's a promising topic. But let's dig into it. Here's the set-up:

While the angry tweets, therapeutic Instagram testimonials and fiery speeches may comfort their fans, these left-leaning celebrities are also inadvertently energizing the opposition. 

Energizing. There's that word. It came up in that big NYT interview with Donald Trump. The executive editor of the NYT, Dean Baquet, asserted that Trump had "energized" the people who attended that "alt-right convention in Washington this weekend" and asked Trump if he feels that he's "said things that energized them in particular." Trump accepted the word and simply said "I don’t want to energize the group.... and if they are energized I want to look into it and find out why."

But I'm thinking "energize" is a word that's having its day as an expression that works to create a sense that one person is responsible for what someone else does. A said X and B did Y. You couldn't say A caused Y, but you might say A energized B. It's vague, but it might feel incisive. And it's a way to tangle A up in demands to denounce B or explain why A didn't lead to Y. I'm going to keep my eye on this word. It might lull people into believing things are more connected and people are less autonomous than they really are.

Now, back to Amanda Hess, who took care to put "inadvertently" before her "energizing." The celebs are trying to reach people who, they assume, feel the way they do. But others can see it too, and they expose themselves to mockery. Rich, privileged folks can look pretty silly making a spectacle of their despair over the results of an election.

Conservative news outlets — most notably Breitbart News Network, the right-wing populist enclave — are perfecting the art of sapping Democratic stars’ name recognition and repurposing their words and actions into pro-Trump material....

And it's not just Breitbart, it's also "nimble, often nameless online aggregators who quickly churn through popular culture and throw the most evocative stories to their readers, often without much commentary." Well, yeah, I know how that works. That's what much of the best of blogging does. But I say very short commentary can be great. Twitter is a testament to the fun of bouncing off of some news story.

Hess seems most interested in Breitbart (presumably because Breitbart connects to Steve Bannon and that gets us to Trump). Hess calls attention to a Breitbart piece — which seized upon a Dunham Instagram — "'Grieving' Lena Dunham Seeks Answers in Arizona Wilderness After Trump Win."

Hess endeavors to make this ridicule of Dunham seem ominous. Considering Bannon's closeness to Trump, "calling attention to Ms. Dunham’s Jewish faith feels like a bone thrown to the site’s white nationalist readers." Okay, let's go to the Breitbart article and see that bone in person:

In a separate post on Wednesday, Dunham said she had spent days “grieving” over the “loss of our country and the woman who inspired us,” comparing her experience to that of the “shivah,” a Jewish mourning ritual.

The NYT article doesn't give a link to the Breitbart article. I got that for you myself. I think it's a safe bet that the vast majority of NYT readers assumed that Breitbart gratuitously inserted a reminder that that Dunham is Jewish, but the article doesn't even say Dunham is Jewish. It just quotes an Instagram of hers describing her grieving over the election in terms of a Jewish ritual. You don't even have to be Jewish to decide to talk about 7 days as a good period of mourning after which you "emerge from darkness" and "create light." Making fun of Dunham's treating an election loss like a death in the family is pretty far from anti-Semitism, but see how it's close enough to energize an accusation of energizing?

Another Breitbart piece highlighted in Hess's article is “‘Depressed’ Robert De Niro: Trump Election Makes Me ‘Feel Like I Did After 9/11.’” Lefty celebrities are serving up darkly hilarious bilge that doesn't even need rewriting to be funny. If I'd noticed that one, I'd have just used the quote and identified the author. It wouldn't have needed any commentary at all. Just showing it to you would have been enough to carry the message that I thought it was terrible and terribly funny.

And Hess knows that:

The real ideological action is undertaken by the audience, whose members read between the lines of these culture pieces and then scribble in the margins. 

Scribble in the margins. That's you, dear commenters. So, say what you will. I'm energizing you. And believe me, I have been attacked repeatedly — even by some of my own colleagues — for the things you say in the forum I've created.

"Poll: Trump's popularity soars after election."

Reports Politico.

Forty-six percent of voters now have a very favorable or somewhat favorable opinion of the president-elect. Twelve percent have a somewhat unfavorable opinion and 34 percent have a very unfavorable opinion of him.... Trump’s favorability has grown 9 points, 37 percent to 46 percent, compared to a Morning Consult poll right before the election -- while his unfavorability has dropped 15 points, from 61 percent to 46 percent.

Why do you think this happened? It might be that the accomplishment and glory of getting elected cast a bright glow on the man and made a lot of people think he looks pretty good. It might be that people process election results and move past the conflict of the campaign and that the common natural impulse is toward serenity and hope for the future. And it might be that the hostility and over-dramatic acting-out by Trump haters backfired, driving people right into the plush, beefy arms of President Trump.

IN THE COMMENTS: The first commenter, reacting to the last sentence of the post, asks "Hmm, why would it do that?" I answer:

You have to ask why because you don't understand the counterproductive phenomenon you are part of. If you understood why, you might do something else. But go ahead, keep doing what is not working and wondering what the hell just happened. It's part of what I'm finding so funny in post-election American life.

And tim in vermont says:

My wife voted against him, but all of this nonsense is making her rethink it and she is actually defending him. She rolls her eyes now when she gets off the phone with some of her friends.

Strong woman, weak man.

Is that a theme? I mean, other than on this blog this morning....

What to wear after the election.

A clothes company that (with reason) considers me one of its best customers sends this:



Is that how they think we're feeling? Graphically, the photo is excellent. Riveting, really. But come on, the posture and the fashion seem to say no, nothing, I want nothing.

ADDED: The brand is Theory. Here's my description, from 2007, of discovering this brand:

Yesterday, my sister and I were traipsing through the Village and Soho. She wanted earrings and mementos. I balked at going into one store that had big sales signs in the window and -- I took one step up toward the doorway -- looked completely chaotic inside. I'd linger in the place next door until she was done with the chaos. The place that suited me was called Theory. I prefer Theory to chaos. She rummaged through the chaotic sale store and bought nothing. Not meaning to buy anything, I found two ideal black sweaters at Theory. I resist chaos but am a pushover for a rational pullover and a Cartesian cardigan.

AND: Isn't the man in the photograph wearing what Hillary wore during the election season? A long angled-out coat and black don't-even-look-at-my-legs pants. The woman in the photograph is wearing the light color on the bottom, forming a strong upward-pointing triangle over her crotch, a reversal of the downward-pointing triangle of female genitalia.

"The Bubble. It's Brooklyn. With a bubble on it."

Glad to see "Saturday Night Live" figured out how to do at least some humor in the election aftermath.

By the way, did you know that Buckminster Fuller actually — not just humorously — proposed a bubble to enclose part of NYC?



Looks like Trump Tower is just inside Bucky's bubble.

"December 1, we'll probably start climbing out from the smoking ruin and say, 'anybody else alive around here?'"

"It'll be like The Walking Dead, right? We're going to try to come up with bands of people and walk across the country, and just not get ourselves killed or eaten, and hook up with people we think are not insane or horrible or in some way murderous. That's exactly what it's going to be like."

Post-election anxiety about putting the ruined party back together.

Imagined, pre-election, by a Republican.

I'm listening to the podcast of the episode of "This American Life" that aired on October 28th. The quote above is an answer to the question framed by host Ira Glass: "This is the big question for all these guys — what's their party going to be after November 8? What's it going to stand for?"  All these guys were "center-right" Republicans — "basically Reagan Republicans," guys with "old school conservative ideals." The guy answering the question is Rob Long of the podcast "Ricochet."

It's funny listening to the show now, because without saying as much, it's obviously premised on the assumption that Donald Trump is going to lose. I know "funny" isn't the word many people would use to describe the period of American life that began on Election Day night, and I'm sorry if I'm a bad person for finding it very funny. It's not that I'm happy with Trump. I wasn't a Trump supporter, but I couldn't stand Hillary either. I'm just experiencing a lot of the aftermath of the election as very funny. Like, why did we just spend the weekend talking about "Hamilton"?