Trump had a busy day yesterday, but let's focus on the showmanship in the signing of all those orders. First, on a little red-carpeted stage in the Capitol One Arena, he is literally The Man in the Arena (as Theodore Roosevelt put it):
He's got the people surrounding him, watching him sign papers at a tiny table, and they're fully engaged in the show he's putting on, as if it's a big boxing match going on there in that little square in the center of the arena. Whoever thought of dramatizing order-signing like that and getting a rowdy crowd to cheer as if it's a sport?
Later, in the Oval Office, he signed more orders, this time in front of the press elite, and when they ventured questions, he answered — calmly, chattily, seriously, and easily. Joe Biden couldn't even answer one question from the press or get to the end of a single sentence without stumbling, and here's Trump, signing orders — take that, Paris Agreement — and holding a press conference at the same time... and showing no strain, even at the end of a long day of events, and with the Inaugural Ball yet to come:
Is it dangerous — reprehensible? — this showmanship in the exercise of power? Those who hate him and who hate the substance of those orders will, I presume, denounce the theatricality. It's cruel! But he's out there in the open, letting the people see him do his work, using the power he asked them to give him, and doing what he said he would do. What a contrast to Biden who campaigned hidden away in 2020 and who occupied the position of President without ever letting us see that — if! — he was the one doing the work.
After 4 years of The Man in the Basement, we have, once again, The Man in the Arena.
ADDED: Here's how Biden looked, signing his first executive orders — yay, Paris Agreement! — in the Oval Office in 2021. Scroll to 2:30 to hear — muffled behind masks — the first questions from the press. Biden answers one question as we hear aides hustling the reporters out of the room:
"... on his books and radio show, before rising in the political world. Now, his state party is the leading beneficiary of these fundraisers, raising more than $7 million since August, part of the $58.7 million it’s reportedly brought in over the past two years. David Mandel, former 'Veep' showrunner and 'Seinfeld' writer, says of the virtual format: 'I give credit to Ben Wikler for really weaponizing it.' Americans don’t particularly want to be politically lectured to by Hollywood, Mandel says. 'But they do like it when Hollywood people do what they’re really good at, and that’s to entertain,' he says. 'We entertained the fans and that’s what we weaponized.'"
"... willing to spend the money and actually do a little bit of work.
There’s no reason to think that it won’t happen in the future, and West has shown the path. Without lifting a finger to campaign or formulating a single discernible policy, he will receive tens of thousands of votes in November. If, in 2024, Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson or Oprah Winfrey or even Kanye’s wife, Kim Kardashian, decides to mount a bid for the White House, there is a road map. With a little bit of foresight and the same investment of over $10 million that West has made in his campaign, there’s no obstacle to getting on the ballot in a majority of the states. And if the candidate decides to actually campaign, articulate some basic policy goals, and maybe even raise some money, then that person could become a political force to be reckoned with. After all, unlike more obscure third-party candidates, there is no need to build name ID or desperately solicit media attention.... This all may seem far-fetched, but this type of celebrity politics has already taken root across the globe and simply represents a natural extension of what has already happened in the U.S. with Trump and the lines between political allegiance and stan culture growing increasingly blurry. These trends will only accelerate and, for all his megalomaniacal pretensions, Yeezus may just be the John the Baptist of this new age in politics, a prophet who heralds the coming of a celebrity candidate who could actually blow up American politics."
I've seen that proposal a thousand times, and here we are again, this time with Jennifer Weiner in the NYT. But it's quite another matter to figure out who would be the royal family.
I'm not interested in reviewing the pro-royalty argument. You know what it is. I'm only interested in the question of how — if we were to restructure America with a royal family akin to Britain's — we would pick the actual hereditary family.
I can't find the old post, but I believe I once blogged about who would be king/queen of the U.S.A. now if George Washington had become king. Wherever that post is, I'm sure it included this video:
My archive search did turn up this video about George Washington (which I just watched twice)(warning: some questionable factual assertions):
Anyway, here's how Jennifer Weiner addresses the question who'd be king/queen of America:
We could keep it simple and give the gig to Miss America, who’s already been chosen and already has a tiara. Or we could have a televised reality contest (a roy-ality contest — see what I did there?) to elect our king and queen. We could recruit the glittering couples we think would be best suited for the job of representing America on the world stage (Beyoncé and Jay-Z! Jennifer Lopez and A-Rod! George and Amal Clooney! Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman! Ina Garten and Jeffrey!)...
Oh! She's utterly giving up the hereditary angle. No, you have to commit. You have to believe in royal blood. No elections. That would debase. You've got to have magic.
But isn't it funny that Weiner pictures an election, homes in on entertainment couples — all heterosexual, by the way (tsk tsk) — and doesn't think to offer up the most obvious entertainment couple: Donald and Melania Trump? Well, Donald is already President, and the point is to separate the head-of-state functions, but he'll have served his term(s) by the time the election for king/queen happens. And once you recognize that, you ought to see that the final nominees for the position could be Donald and Melania — or should it be Ivanka and Jared? — against Barack and Michelle. I'd watch those debates.
Barack and Michelle would win, of course, if for no other reason that that they're far more successful at getting top-level entertainers to perform in the White House (yes, under, Weiner's plan, the king and queen live in the White House, and the boring President of the United States is relocated "to more modest digs").
"And it feels like this question, which we keep referring to, of authenticity: Trump achieves that on an order of magnitude beyond what anyone else is currently doing on the other side," says Michael Barbaro in today's "The Daily Podcast" at the NYT.
The guest on the podcast is Astead W. Herndon, one of the authors of the article. He responds to Barbaro's prompt:
"We know that each of the candidates is trying to introduce themselves to the public and to stand out from what is a crowded Democratic field and music is one of the ways they try to tell that story. When I think about the scene at Trump rallies, before the speakers begin, when the crowd is doing the 'YMCA,' the Wave, and the dancing, I think that there's actual political value in that energy. And whoever wins on the Democratic side will have to motivate their base in a way that matches or exceeds that level of energy. And it has to be done in a way that seems authentic to who that person is and that is not going to be an easy task."
They have to do it and they will not be able to do it.
Listen to the whole podcast. It's fascinating to hear Barbaro and Herndon puzzle over the strange mix that is Trump's playlist. Why is "Memory" from "Cats" there?! Does Trump listen to "Cats"?! What's with all the Queen? Maybe it's not that Trump listens to Queen, but that the entire mix of the music embodies something of America that the crowd feels as it dances and sings for hours before the speakers even begin. Maybe it's not the lyrics at all. Barbaro and Herndon don't stop to observe that "Cats" and Queen are totally British, not American at all. They also don't say mention the "surprisingly gay swagger" in Trump's music mix — which was the aspect of the "What Do Rally Playlists Say" article that I chose to blog about.
What's really clear — as you can see in my little transcription and will feel much more if you listen to the podcast — is that Trump's use of music is tremendously effective. It's an "order of magnitude beyond" what the Democratic candidates are doing. The Democratic candidates are trying to say who they are and tell their own story. Joe Biden is the average Joe. Kamala Harris is black. Kirsten Gillibrand is a feminist. They're at the level of introduction and standing out from the others. Obviously, Trump doesn't need to do that. We've known who he is for decades. But it's not just that. Trump isn't saying this is my music. Trump has a big crowd of people who have assembled and who are making a "whole scene" out of themselves that goes on and on long before he steps onto the stage. None of the Democrats are doing anything like that.
ADDED: It's funny — Trump haters are always saying that Trump makes everything all about him. But Barbaro and Herndon are perceiving that Trump rallies are about the people... the people who love Trump. And maybe they love Trump because he creates a space in which they can love themselves. That's why the slogan is "Make America Great Again" (or "Keep America Great").
(Meanwhile, the Democratic Party idea seems to be "America = racism.")
IN THE COMMENTS: rehajm said, "Trump does this to people":
Are the people doing it to themselves? Green Day didn't make the people sing like that in Hyde Park.
Rehajm adds, "The clown car of Democrats are Joni Mitchell at Atlantic City scolding the audience for not paying attention." Here's my recent post about Atlantic City and Joni. You may remember that. You probably don't remember that back in 2004, when John Kerry lost me, the thing that bothered me the most was when he snapped at a guy and said "You're not listening," and then in 2008, Barack Obama said almost the exact same thing — "The people who say [I am shifting to the center] apparently haven’t been listening to me."
COLBERT: What really matters to Donald Trump is ratings. You've got to have the big numbers. And I certainly hope we achieve that tonight. Unfortunately, at this point, we have no way of knowing how big our audience is. I mean, is there anyone who could say how big the audience is. Sean, do you know?
(Spicer glides out with a podium, Melissa McCarthy-style.)
SPICER: This will be the largest audience to witness an Emmys, period — both in person and around the world.
COLBERT: Wow. That really soothes my fragile ego. I could understand why you'd want one of these guys around. Melissa McCarthy, everybody, give it up!
The WaPo headline calls the cameo "yucky," and the column-writer, Aaron Blake is not grossed out because Spicey played along despite contempt for him and for the President he once served, but because:
... Spicer yukking it up over one of his most demonstrably false statements from the White House lectern strongly suggests this is just what spokesmen are supposed to do. The president asked him to do it, so it must be okay. Damn the truth.
Blake thinks this comedy "normalize[s]" the lying/bullshit/puffery of press secretaries.
[L]aughing at flouting the truth... serves notice to other spokesmen that they needn't worry about being credible.
Blake belongs to the that's-not-funny school of comedy appreciation. I'm surprised at his reaction. I thought Spicer got conned into participating in political satire that hurts him and the politicians with whom he's allied himself. I think America deserves better political satire and that it was a bad idea to load the Emmys show with political satire — especially partisan political satire (why alienate half your potential audience?). But I think comedy, done well, is powerful, important speech. The Spicer bit was criticism of the dishonesty of the White House press secretary. It didn't slough it off or "normalize" it. If the bullshit is normal, there's no joke in Spicer's line.
Now, I can see that Blake could have said that just allowing Spicer into the Emmys party sends the message that he's not completely toxic. And perhaps that's the sad-sack reason Spicer did the show, like the high school kid who's pleased to get an invitation to popular kid's party...
If you just want to know what pregnant-with-twins Beyoncé wore, go to Tom and Lorenzo:
They’ll be talking about her empowering, dazzling, beautifying, defiantly fecund performance for years – and rightly so.... This is not the kind of sentiment that tends to win over many Bey fans, but we’re never not going to roll our eyes a little at any pop star or celebrity who elevates herself to godhood. We’ll credit her for having true artistic and cultural reasons for doing this, though. It’s not solely about her ego.... This costume is stunning precisely because it directly references goddess figures and mythical tropes about them. It’s not about Beyonce commenting on the iconography; it’s about her becoming the iconography....
ADDED: I'd like to see a Venn diagram of people who adore Beyoncé's theatrical display of egoism and people who are appalled by Trump's theatrical display of egoism.
"If you wanna protest, protest the DNC, protest Hillary, protest whatever. But what you’re protesting here is an elected president. I think the protest is aiding this divisiveness, social media is aiding this, celebrity culture, the worst, is aiding it.... It is all about image and how people are swayed by surfaces and Trump disgusts people.... They see this big orange lump, angry, big puffy face and it really is quite a different step from the celebrity hep-cat, glamour of Obama.... People love celebrities, I love celebrities, I’m obsessed with celebrities, I’ve written books about celebrities, so I love that celebrity culture exists. But when celebrities become these kind of strident, political advisers, wagging their finger, really people don’t buy it. I do think there has been an overreaction to what’s going on. But that’s just endemic in the culture. It did not help Hillary Clinton at all having this mountain of celebrities on her side. Rejection, rejection."
Said Bret Easton Ellis. I'm totally with him on this. Exactly right. I'd say it myself, except the part about having written books about celebrities. But I have been blogging about celebrities for 13 years. I've been watching these characters as they interface with politics. They're just awful. Of course, BEE — great initials — is himself a celebrity and he's doing politics so... whatever. I love celebrities, I’m obsessed with celebrities....
I'm reading the comments on yesterday's post "This blog is 13 years old today" just after shutting off the TV — after 2 minutes — with the thought I don't have to do this. Not that I ever had to do it. It wasn't my job to monitor the Sunday morning shows.
The quote is from WA-mom. And thanks to all who commented on my bloggiversary post — and on all posts, which (I assure you) are written because I have genuinely found something interesting. I'm not under assignment to do any of this. It's not like the way I had to submit myself to the task of reading, say, Martin v. Hunter's Lessee, when it was my job to teach Conlaw1.
Why have I watched the Sunday shows? It's a one-day-a-week variation from the usual approach to looking around for something to talk about. Often I do sit through 3 or even 4 or 5 of them. This morning, I couldn't get started even on the first one.
What's blocking me isn't that I just retired and I'm living in a new way. It's that — or so it seemed from the first 2 minutes — the shows are grinding through all the complaints about Donald Trump. I feel I've heard them, I've had my fill of the grousing, and I think a new President deserves his moment of elevated pomp followed by a fair chance to show he can do something beneficial for the country. I've never seen anything like this kind of hostility and opposition thrown in front of a new President.
I think Trump has figured out how to thrive on hostility and opposition, and I know it causes me to root for him. It's my instinct to pull for the underdog, even as I recognize the absurdity of seeing the most powerful man in the world as the underdog. But that's what the Trump haters have done. Congratulations, you nitwits. Now, could you sing me a song about your triumph?
By the way, celebrities, "I Will Survive" is not "by Gloria Gaynor." The song was written by Freddie Perren and Dino Fekaris. The big hit version was sung by Gloria Gaynor, but when it's you singing it, you're not singing a song by Gloria Gaynor. But I appreciate your underscoring how embarrassingly stupid you are. That helps the rest of us "survive" — by ignoring everything you have to say.
The rapper repeatedly used the n-word and dropped the f-bomb as he performed “F—WithMeYouKnowIGotIt” and his hit “Dirt off Your Shoulder” song at a Cleveland rally.
"You're tuned into the motherf----- greatest," a voice said as Jay Z appeared onstage.
“If you feelin’ like a pimp n----, go and brush your shoulders off,” Jay Z rapped. “Ladies is pimps too, go and brush your shoulders off. N----- is crazy baby, don’t forget that boy told you. Get that dirt off your shoulders."
Jay Z also performed the song "Jigga My N----," in which he boasted that he was "Jay-Z, motherf-------!"
I'd say this is why artists should maintain their separation from politics, but Jay Z chooses to be involved and Hillary's campaign chooses to use him as a tool to access a segment of the population that seems to be hard for her to reach.
At the link, there's video of Jay Z's performance, with the words uncensored. I'd like to see that video spliced into this much-played Hillary Clinton ad:
Use the same children, the same innocent, sweet faces, watching Jay Z and ending with Hillary's solemn intonation: "Our children and grandchildren will look back at this time -- at the choices we are about to make, the goals we will strive for, the principles we will live by -- and we need to make sure that they can be proud of us."
IN THE COMMENTS: AReasonableMan said "Artists get a lot of leeway in how they express themselves that is not open to most other professions." And I say:
Yes, but the criticism is of Clinton. Should she be attaching these words to herself? I think an edgy artist ought to stay separate, but I don't know that Jay Z cares about being a rebellious social critic. The words he uses have been the norm in his genre for decades, so his using them says nothing. I'd have to read more about him to know if he's talking about anything that I'd have to disapprove of.
So that made me go over to Rap Genius and read the lyrics to "Dirt off Your Shoulder." An annotator explains: "Brushing dirt off your shoulder is just a 'pimp' gesture, it shows that yeah, you got knocked down, but you don’t care." So, I get it. It's the same message as the corny old song "Pick Yourself Up" — "Nothing's impossible, I have found/For when my chin is on the ground/I pick myself up/Dust myself off/And start all over again." Same idea. Here, listen to Nat King Cole. You want to say, no, it's not the same as "Pick Yourself Up" because Jay Z is talking about being a drug dealer? Well, then check this out:
"[Jay-Z] used every word in the book last night... He used language last night that was so bad and then Hillary said, 'I did not like Donald Trump's lewd language.' My lewd language. I tell you what, I've never said what he said in my life. But that shows you the phoniness of politics and the phoniness of the whole system."
"But whichever way I look at my childhood, it all revolves around politics and Stalin’s terror," wrote the great ballerina Maya Plisetskaya, who has died at the age of 89.
Her father was shot to death in 1938 in Stalin’s purges. (Ms. Plisetskaya learned the date of his death only in 1989.) Her mother was arrested and sent to a labor camp with her infant son, then exiled to Kazakhstan....
Ms. Plisetskaya was... restricted by the Bolshoi’s rigid Soviet guidelines on choreography, which viewed the very movement of dance through the prism of ideology, yet she was able to infuse stultified, literal movements with much deeper meaning....
“I danced all of classical ballet and dreamed of something new,” she said. “In my time, it was impossible.”
I'd like to hear more specifically how ballet movements could be thought to contain political ideology. I once met a woman in Madison who had learned a difficult craft that produced a type of ordinary object — a lovely version of something quite utilitarian. She expressed anguish in not yet having found a way to make these objects political. I said I thought that loading politics into art tended to make bad art. I dreamed of interesting conversations in Madison. Many years later, I started this blog.
ADDED: I don't like tag proliferation, so I'm using my "merging politics and showbiz" for this. It seems wrong to call ballet "showbiz," but think about it. Why is it wrong? It isn't!
Ah, but I remember I also have an "art and politics" tag. I remember that tag as I think of the conversation with the Madison artisan. Why did those crafted objects prompt me to think "art" when ballet did not? Because I thought of art school.
“It stems from the fact that people don’t want to feel they have a ‘use by’ date for their career in Washington.... People want to have long careers, vibrant careers, and this is an intersection of appearance and performance.”...
None of Alster’s patients is trying to look 25 or even 35. They just want to appear sharp, sophisticated, at the top of their game. “We get a lot of people who are looking over their shoulder at the next generation,” says Alster. “They do not want to be identified as being old.”
“In the ’60s and ’70s, there was plenty of music for peaceful revolutions,” Marley said. “Where are these songs now? Who is writing them? From Occupy Wall Street to revolution in Egypt, I wonder where the music is.”...
And as for the music these days:
“I use the analogy of circus with music,” he said. “You have clowns, tightrope walkers, the man that puts his head in the lion’s mouth. But now the circus is all clowns trying to keep us laughing. The tightrope walker is still in the back, but no one’s watching him. People just want entertainment. There’s more to music than entertainment.”
Funny to think of the music without politics as a circus that's all clowns. I tend to think of politics as the clowns. If music came into our politics, it would bring more gravity, not more foolery. That's what I think. I keep seeing commentary saying the Occupy [Your City] movement needs its Bob Dylan, but if you think he would entertain and encourage you — ease you and cool you and cease the pain — you don't know your Bob Dylan. To point out the obvious:
You never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns
When they all come down and did tricks for you
You never understood that it ain’t no good
You shouldn’t let other people get your kicks for you
[W]hy do we need a surgeon general in the first place? After all, can anyone name our current (acting) surgeon general?
In reality, the surgeon general is little more than the “national nanny,” hectoring us to stop smoking, lose weight, exercise more, and never ever go out without a condom. I’ve been flipping through my copy of the Constitution, and I can’t find the authorization for the federal government to take taxpayers’ money to establish an office to tell us how we should live our lives.
"And it gobbles you up because the tendency is for people to want to see you perform and say what they want to hear, as opposed to you trying to stay in touch with, you know, that deepest part of you, that kernel of truth inside."
Dowd aptly quips:
Doesn’t he see that when you express this skepticism on Oprah it is not skepticism at all?
It almost seems unfair to quote that quote. Maybe the things said inside the Oprah confessional should not be repeated outside of it. Can you even parse that quote into something that makes sense?
Politics blended with celebrity... gobbles you up?
What was he thinking? Now I'm speaking to a lot of women, so a cooking metaphor seems good.Politics blended with celebrity... mmm... yummy. But then he loses focus on the possibility of a metaphor -- food shouldn't be gobbling you up -- as he goes for the gooshy emotion. He's getting gobbled up! Yikes! It's all those people who want you to be want they want, when you're trying to stay in touch with ... with what? ... yourself, presumably. But let's Oprahfy it... that deepest part of you, that kernel of truth inside.
Any intelligent person serving up those words -- here, have a kernel! -- has got to be thinking oh, what garbage, but this is the sort of thing you're supposed to say here, to prove there really is something to you, some core of authenticity. There's a big, roiling phony world of people trying to ruin the real you, and what you've got to do is steady yourself and go deep inside, because, of course, there's a kernel in there. Mmm... yum. Phony authenticity. My favorite.
We've heard various accounts over the years about celebrities--the Dixie Chicks, Linda Ronstadt--using their concerts to make political pitches, sometimes in a quite nasty form that leaves a segment of the audience feeling betrayed or annoyed by a person they'd chosen to see because they love their art. They didn't pay to attend a political rally and they don't even want to be at a political rally or at that political rally. I don't remember ever going to a concert where that happened to me. I do remember feeling indescribably outraged when I attended--along with 20,000 other people--the campus memorial for the September 11th victims three days after 9/11 only to find speaker after speaker turning the occasion into a peace rally.
I went to the Dave Matthews Band concert at Alpine Valley last night, and I knew Dave had recently signed up for the "Vote For Change" concert tour and was capable of saying things like:
A vote for change is a vote for a stronger, safer, healthier America .... A vote for Bush is a vote for a divided, unstable, paranoid America. It is our duty to this beautiful land to let our voices be heard. That's the reason for the tour. That's why I'm doing it.
But the Alpine Valley folks had not bought tickets for a political tour concert. I was prepared to hear some unappealing politicking from the stage, so I was quite impressed that the only political content occurred when Dave came on stage to introduce the band (Gusher) that played before his band. Dave just said:
There will be a break after they play and before we come out and play, so if you have to take a leak, when you go up to take a leak, you can also register to vote. If you really have to go bad, then first take a leak, and then register to vote. But if it's just a twinge, you can register to vote first.
And vote for whoever you want. Vote for whoever you want. And if you don't know who to vote for, vote for who I want. You know who I want. But vote for whoever you want.
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