Donald Trump

The More You Know, The More You Lose Your Goddamn Mind (Part 1)

So this picture has been making the rounds.  Donald Trump gets off a plane, there’s a stiff breeze, his tie flips upwards, and we see that he’s got scotch tape on it.

On first glance, it just seems like an improvised patch on a wardrobe malfunction – that is, until you look closer and see that he’s taped the short end of his tie because he tied it wrong.

And this is a regular thing with him.

Now, this is a guy who went to private schools with dress codes, who went right into a business career thanks to a “small loan of a million dollars.”  This is a guy who’s been wearing ties most days for his entire life.  And he still doesn’t know how to tie one.

Okay okay maybe he has people (read: wives) for that… and with that realization, a little movie plays in my head of Melania in the morning, pulling a half-buttoned shirt over his head while a pants-less Donald struggles and whines, “but I DON’T WANNA president today!”*

I know – that’s all speculation (except for the bit where Melania Trump lathers up her son every night, hey read the footnotes).  But what’s worse?  A “populist” president-elect who’s had people dressing him his entire life, or a president-elect who’s lived on this planet for seven decades, went to all the best schools, had all the opportunities anyone would ever want, and still doesn’t how to dress himself?

I dunno, maybe I’m splitting hairs.  I mean in the sense that they’re both equally horrible.

Anyway, there’s one other piece of Trump news I wanna cover.  (No, it’s not his SNL tantrum, but the thought of a president who’s that oblivious to irony is troubling.)  (And no, it’s not the diplomatic phone calls where he ass-kissed dictators and started a Twitter war with China.  I already wrote some speculation on that.**) Buzzfeed recently analyzed our celebutard-elect’s newslink tweets and found that, unsurprisingly… he’s consuming and regurgitating bullshit.

Oh but wait there’s more!

“What we know of Trump’s relationship to the modern internet suggests the president-elect rarely browses it himself. Trump campaign press secretary Hope Hicks told GQ he relies largely on Google News printouts from staffers and sparingly reads his own email. And a 2007 deposition suggests that Trump doesn’t use a computer or carry a smartphone during the daytime hours, and often dictates daytime tweets to his assistants.”

So not only is the celebutard-elect living in a disinformation bubble of his own making… he couldn’t even fact-check a story if he wanted to.

Here, let me show you the face you’re making right now:

first-world-2

Anyway.

I remember this conversation I had with my friend Christopher back in the summer of ‘04.  The GOP had just held their convention in NYC, capitalizing on 9/11 while at the same time showing its contempt for the victims.***  But both of us agreed – the despicable rhetoric was probably successful.  Unless the Democrats had a fairy godmother who was going to turn John Kerry into a real boy, Dubya was probably gonna win it (for real this time).

Looking down the barrel of four more years of This Bullshit, we fell silent.  Then Christopher said:

“I think we need to get our asses kicked.”

He wasn’t suggesting we start a fight club, he was talking about America.  Namely, that maybe humanity would be better off if America was taken down a few pegs.  I mean, we didn’t know if it would take the form of an intervention, where the nations of the world would sit America down and take turns telling it how its addiction to fossil fuels and the military-industrial complex has hurt them personally… or if it would take the form of an economic / ecological collapse that would require the rest of the world to step in because America was hobbled.  (We were hoping for something like the former.)  And then the rest of world would get to the business of actually addressing climate change, economic and social inequity and institutional ignorance.

We didn’t talk much about a third scenario – where we’d just kick our own ass.

I’m gonna assume if you’re reading this, you’re not offended when I say Trump’s had many instances of Islamophobia, xenophobia, misogyny, and racism.****  But let’s just put that aside for a second.  After the racism, who are we left with?  Apparently, we’re left with a self-absorbed ninny who believes everything he reads on the internet and doesn’t know how to dress himself.

Matt Taibbi once wrote (I’m paraphrasing), if not for George W. Bush’s accident of birth, the highest position he’d ever hold is manager of a strip club.  If not for Donald Trump’s accident of birth? He’d be cleaning toilets at that strip club.  And he’d probably get fired for incompetence.

I’m having a hard time imagining an America that will hold its status in the world when we’ve put such a complete and utter nincompoop in charge.  Our only hope may be that the Republicans recognize that – and just go through Mike Pence for any real decisions.

Yeah, I know.  He’s no prize.  But being that he’s likely gonna to be the go-to guy of the Executive branch, maybe we ought to do our homework on him.

That’s next.

 

 

*Is it any wonder Melania’s staying in New York?  Well that, and she wants the familiar surroundings of home for Barron while she spreads her lotion all over him.  (No seriously.  That’s a real thing I’m talking about.) Anyway, it was soon after the “Trump getting dressed” movie played in my brain when I landed on my Freaky Friday theory.  I mean, look at that kid’s face!  That is the exact expression of a seventy-year old man who knows he’s going to hell and suddenly got a reset button on his life, but also realized he had to go through puberty again, with the icing on the cake being that his wife – now his mother – KEEPS SPREADING HER SELF-NAMED LOTION ALL OVER HIM.

Fuck you, I’m NOT reading into it.  THAT’S THE FACE YOU WOULD MAKE.

 

**

 

*** You know, New Yorkers.  Those multi-cultural, secular humanist gay liberals the Republicans love to demonize.  And I mean, that’s not even getting into the bit where they’ve routinely withheld healthcare to the first responders and construction workers who got sick inhaling the Twin Towers.  And here’s the face you make thinking about that:

officerage

 

****And if you ARE offended, well… let me put it this way: when Trump holds those rallies, he’s not bringing out America’s best.  He’s not bringing out you.  He’s bringing out people with lots of problems.  And they’re bringing those problems with them.  He’s bringing out Klansmen, he’s bringing out Nazis.  They’re racists.  And some, I assume, are good people.  Okay?  We good, snowflake?

Are You Fucking Kidding Me? Post-Election 2016.

Ya know, I wasn’t sure what to write next – and then I remembered that we just made a Reality TV character President.

This makes about as much sense as making a cartoon billionaire President.

No really.  Think about it, those of you who voted for anyone else:  would you be more or less worried about the future of this country (and the world) if half the electorate voted for Scrooge McDuck?

Personally, I’m on the fence.

So I’m inspired to try out a new feature called…

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

…where I discuss the general zeitgeist and maybe some current events that make me go are you fucking kidding me?

I think this may have some legs in the coming weeks / months / years.  First up:

“It’s gonna be okay / Calm down / Give him a chance”

“Oh, give President-Elect McDuck a chance,” you say.  “Once the inauguration rolls around, he’ll put on some pants.”

Really?  Based on what evidence, white dude (it’s always a white dude)?*  You think a candidate who’s been an utter, juvenile asshole his entire life is suddenly gonna transform not only into a grownup, but into a grownup who can run the most powerful country on Earth?

Listen, white dude who didn’t vote for him: non-white dudes (and dudettes) right now have very real reasons to be afraid. We need to learn to shut the fuck up.

As for you, white dude who voted for him?  Fuck you.

I’ll tell you where that instinct to “comfort” people on the election result comes from – your ruined conscience.

This Is Not Normal.  If you went to the polls on Election Day and filled in the box that you knew read “racist with A.D.D.,” you need to live with that.  You want to make up for it?  Try and help the people who’re gonna get stepped on thanks to your abysmal decision-making skills.**

Do better.

“I know what the Democrats did wrong, it’s…”

Oh really, Monday-morning QB? 

Now excuse me while I do some holier-than-thou finger-waggling, but it seems like the left is doing a lot of holier-than-thou finger-waggling at the left for doing too much holier-than-thou finger-waggling at the right.

Cut it out, okay?  A White Supremacist is going to become the White House’s Chief Strategist.

We don’t have time for this.

Speaking of which:

Stephen Bannon – Chief Strategist Of The White (Supremacy) House

But “give him a chance.”

Guess what:  that was his chance.

Really.  Seriously.  How many chances does this guy deserve?  Isn’t that his one?

Celebrity

I’ve been watching The Crown.  It’s got John Lithgow in a fat suit and the Eleventh (Twelfth?) Doctor, so hey I’m on board.

It got me thinking of that time a bunch of paparazzi ran down Prince William’s mom.  Aside from her title, she was most famous for two things: having her husband put his dick somewhere else, and keeping children from exploding.

In that order.

And then, geez The UK just lost its fucking mind for a bit there, even turning on the Queen and saying she wasn’t mourning properly. Sure, royalty is its own thing but…

…damn.

That was a real big sign that something might be broken in all of us.  I don’t know if we listened then. I don’t think enough of us stood up when we heard Elton John yankovicking himself at her funeral and declared, “THIS IS NOT NORMAL!”

(They kicked me out of that record store, it’s a Victoria’s Secret now.
Anyway.)

I grew up in New York City.  When I was a kid, Donald Trump’s most laudable goal was bringing all New Yorkers together in universal loathing.

He was the guy who bought casinos like he was playing blackjack with daddy’s money and didn’t know how to stop saying “hit me.”  He was a walking reminder of how much the eighties sucked.  He was the Platonic Ideal of a millionaire dick. He was the one guy who made you feel a little bit better, because at least you weren’t as bad as him.

And that ridiculous goddamn hair.

Then along came The Apprentice.

[Insert rant about reality TV by someone who doesn’t watch it – well that’s not really true I like the one with the crabbers]

…but really, it’s a symptom.

Like many people, I wish I didn’t know who Kim Kardashian was. I feel like my world is just, incrementally, a little worse for knowing she exists. And yet at some point, a thought occurred that she actually pays someone to Photoshop her nude selfies. And I couldn’t get the thought out of my head.

How much does that person get paid? Do they do other stuff, or do they just wait for Kim to point her phone at herself? OMG, are they the same person who taught her how to tweet? They have much to answer for.

(Hey, remember when the President Elect made her go sell a fragrance?
Hey, remember how that was the President-Elect’s last job?)

It’s a disease, and we’re all infected.  You can see it in your feed, in the checkout line, on the ad crawl.  Breakups and hot messes.  Drunken rants and mugshots.  Upskirted limos, duckfaced selfies and fappenings.

And tweets.

That Andy Warhol prediction is looking more like he fucked us with a curse.

There’s a need in us to both elevate and destroy, and we’ve been feeding that need.  We’ve been gorging on it.  We have pop stars getting stalked by photographers 24-7 just to document it when the pressure makes them snap.  We tweet things to an actor we’d never say to anyone’s face just because they said something we didn’t like.

And Trump is the giant, orange expression of the disease.  He can be your surrogate bully or your easy target. You can make him out to be a genius businessman with his finger on the Fix My Life button, or the infant Nazi with his finger on the End-The-World button.  And he loves it.  Because there’s no aptitude test to celebrity.  No resume needed.  No common humanity even – hell, that can be drawback.

Trump is the logical outcome when people, on average, spend more time contemplating some actor’s marriage than our nation’s… anything. 

And so this is what we are.  A nation led by President Celebutard.

Good luck, everybody.  I think we’re all gonna need it.

And finally…

2016, are you fucking kidding me?
In no particular order:
David Bowie, Prince, Leonard Cohen, Maurice White, Mose Allison, Paul Kantner, Keith Emerson, Merle Haggard, Phife Dawg, Dan Hicks, Toots Thielemans, George Martin, George Gaynes, George Kennedy, Garry Marshall, Michael Cimino, Peter Schaffer, Harper Lee, Elie Wiesel, Steve Dillon, Gwen Ifill, John McLaughlin, Anton Yelchin, Steven Hill, Gene Wilder, Kenny Baker, Michu Meszaros, Eric Bauersfeld, Garry Shandling, Bert Kwouk, Sagan Lewis, Patty Duke, David Huddleston, William Schallert, Robin Williams, Ken Howard, Alan Rickman, Dan Haggerty, Doris Roberts, Pat Harrington Jr, Miss Cleo, Muhammad Ali, Joe Garagiola, Gordie Howe, Jose Fernandez, and Abe fucking Vigoda***

 *Yes, I know President Obama said it as well but he’s a better man that I am / the exception that makes the rule / what else can he say?  “Well that’s it, America.  We had a good run, but it’s over.  Start stocking up on potable water and ammunition.  Also, GET FUCKED.”  I mean it mighta been appropriate, but it wouldn’ta been Presidential.  I have a feeling we’re ALL gonna miss him.

**So instead of saying stupid “comforting” bullshit that makes your receptionist feel even worse, how about you shut the fuck up and donate to the following:
The Southern Poverty Law Center
Planned Parenthood
The American Civil Liberties Union
Human Rights Watch
Doctors Without Borders
And if you already do, donate more, until it hurts.  You have A RECEPTIONIST, you can cover it.

***That list is not complete, I kept it to deaths that meant a little something to me.  But if you don’t recognize a name, plug it into Google and you may be surprised to know that we lost R2-D2, Admiral Ackbar, Alf, Cato, Schneider and The Big Lebowski. 
And yes, I know we lost Phyllis Schlafly, Antonin Scalia, Nancy Reagan and Glenn Frey too.  No, it doesn’t make me feel any better.

In Defense Of Donald Trump #4: He Kicked The Rock

Just one more day folks…

In all seriousness, I’m hoping for Donald to get crushed tomorrow.  I don’t want him going around the country suing each state’s election board for the next few months.  I want his loss to happen early on Tuesday night, and I want it to be undisputable. Then I’m hoping the same people who took away Donald’s Twitter privileges (Ivanka) will hand him a concession speech and make him say it to the cameras.*

Anyway. After the votes are counted, as this alcoholic hallucination of a campaign comes to a close, let’s thank Donald Trump for some things:

Let’s thank Donald for Ben Carson’s transformation from Magic Realism Candidate into the “Donald’s not a racist, he has a black friend” pundit.** So long, Ben Carson. You stopped being funny in March.

Let’s thank Donald for Rudy Giuliani’s horrifyingly comic transformation from New York’s Mean Stepdad to Dollar-Store Nosferatu. So long Rudy, you sentient colony of racist internet memes. You will not be missed.

Let’s thank Donald for Newt Gingrich’s transformation into – no wait, Newt’s always been the putty-faced chew-toy of Cerberus. Never mind.

Let’s thank Donald for being such a colossally awful candidate that he’s (probably) gonna make the First Woman President possible.

Lastly – let’s thank Donald for Kicking The Rock.

I’m talking about The Rock that all the anti-Semites and white supremacists and violent misogynists and Bible-thumping homophobes have been hiding under.  Donald gave that rock a good swift kick and sent them all scuttling out into the sunlight, open to our collective scorn.

On November 9th, that’s where our work begins, friends. With them.

See, these sacks of whining hate-speech think they’ve been legitimized. The roughest beast to ever slouch towards D.C. has given them a rally-point. And with that rally-point, they expect a place in the national discussion. Hell, there’s even article after article saying how we should empathize with them.***

And you know, my inner teenager does empathize. He sees the charm in Donald as a useful tool – a blunt instrument to bash apart a corrupt system. Of course, my inner teenager is totally a Berniebro, while my adult self says, “NO. On the other side is Halfwit Mussolini, now is not the time.”

The people with legitimate gripes about a corrupt system? They deserve our attention. The people who are lifelong Republicans living in red states who cannot conceive of voting for a Democrat? They deserve our attention. We should be opening up a dialogue with reasonable people with differences of opinion who (believe it or not) aren’t racist but voted for Donald anyway.

Yes, I know the argument: voting for the candidate with the racist views makes you a racist.  I’m not saying it’s meritless. I’m saying that “getting woke” is often a multi-step process. It was for me. There are plenty of redeemable Donald voters out there (I hope). But the irredeemable racists are gonna have to be dealt with. And I recommend scorn and humiliation.

Let’s shame them back into their holes, friends. I call upon all of you to troll these assholes.

Every clownish spooge-rag on Twitter going on about SJW’s and Men’s Rights needs to get called a limp-dicked fuck-trumpet.

Every dimwitted flag-humper denigrating Muslims on Facebook needs to be called a bigoted shit-nugget.

And every inbred chinless toerag calling himself superior to every other race and creed anywhere needs to be outted as a Nazi-loving scrotum-sack masquerading as a person everywhere.

Troll swiftly and righteously, my friends.

For America.

* Here’s a horrifying thought for you: the stability of our democracy may depend upon Ivanka Trump.  You’re welcome.

** No, Omarosa and Katrina Pierson don’t count as Donald’s black friends, they’re women. Donald isn’t friends with women. Or anyone, really.  But especially not women.

*** Okay not really. With the rare exception, most articles about “understanding Trump fans” draw the line at the racists.

(Infodump: I channeled my Scottish ancestry to come up with some of these insults. I’m listing them below – and adding new ones – for easy reference. Please feel free to copy and paste where applicable.)

  • sentient colony of racist internet memes
  • putty-faced chew-toy of Cerberus
  • sack of whining hate-speech
  • halfwit Mussolini
  • clownish spooge-rag
  • limp-dicked fuck-trumpet
  • dimwitted flag-humper
  • bigoted shit-nugget
  • inbred chinless toerag
  • Nazi-loving scrotum-sack masquerading as a person
  • human dung-beetle rolling idiot conspiracies about
  • gob-smackingly ignorant cockwrench
  • addle-pated Breitbart catamite
  • sub-deplorable frogfucker
  • swastika-humping dundercunt
  • reality-impaired scumgoblin

 

In Defense Of Donald Trump #3: White Nights

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Yesterday, we talked about Trump’s loneliness and lack of friends.  It seemed a good segueway to the only friend he has on the world stage – everyone’s favorite murderous dictator, Vladimir Putin.

(I mean, if you have to, gun-to-your-head, pick a favorite murderous dictator. And if you’re a journalist in Russia, odds are you’ve had a gun to your head. Anyway.)

Imagine you’re Donald Trump – who, as I’ve explained earlier, has no friends:

So. You’re alone in your golden bedroom in your golden penthouse, late at night. You can’t sleep. You wonder…

Where’s Melania? Oh, I guess she’s taking care of the kid – what’s his name, Barlow? Bart? Bueller? Whatever. What to do, what to do? Have a quick fap to some statuary? Naah, not in the mood. Stomp on the floor to annoy the lady downstairs? Naaah, she’ll just tell on me to the mob guys again. Ah ha – Twitter!  That’s the ticket…

…and you pull out your phone and see politicians all over the world insulting you.

Yes, it seems that the world stage is not so keen on Donald. Prominent international pols have called Donald “an idiot,” “a vulture,” “a wazzock,” “barking mad,” “the shame of our civilization,” and my personal favorite, “The orange prince of American self-publicity.”

(That last one was from a British MP because of course it was.)

I mean, there are multiple articles that run down all the mean things that world leaders have said about you. There are just so many mean things.  There’s only so many “LOSER!” response tweets you can make in a day, you can’t possibly get to them all…

…and then along comes Vlad.

And Vlad is just nice.  He calls you “colorful” and “talented” and “brilliant.” After the drubbing you just got from the rest of the world, is it any wonder you conflate that to “GENIUS!” and start returning the favor?

Okay okay you hear he maaaybe had a couple dozen journalists killed.  He maaaybe rigged an election. Or two.  He’s maaaaybe a war criminal. But you’re willing to overlook things the media is saying about him, right? Look at the horrible, no-good things they’re saying about you.

For Donald it’s like this: you’re a kid on the playground getting bullied. Do you take it? No. Do you fight back? If you can. If you can’t, do you hitch your wagon to an even bigger bully?

YOU BET YOUR SWEET ASS YOU DO.

NEXT: He Kicked The Rock.

In Defense Of Donald Trump #2: Be Nice, He Has No Friends

Remember the time Donald had a pizza date with Sarah Palin? No really, this is a thing that happened.

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That Daily Show piece has stuck with me – not just because of Stewart’s hilarious pizza-induced rage.  I got stuck on what caused it;  Donald Trump – born and raised in Queens – eating pizza with a fork.

Donald even tried to explain why he was eating pizza with a fork, and he thought the problem was that the fork was plastic.

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If you haven’t lived in NYC, you may not know how weird this is. You don’t live in this city your entire life and never learn how to eat a slice of pizza. Now I can understand if he never ate pizza at home – Donald’s dad, Fred, raised his kids to be better than other people, so maybe he had a ban on Peasant Food or something. But he didn’t go to any pizza parties as a kid? No other parent took a ten year-old Donald and his friends out to the local pizzeria? He never won a little league game?

Then there’s Donald as an adult: he never attended any kind of impromptu event where someone bought a bunch of pies? Not a single painting party? Never helped anyone move? Okay, okay, Donald coulda just paid for some movers, but if you’re just gonna do that, then you might as well buy some pies when the job’s done.

(Infodump: That’s an NYC rule – If You Help Someone Move, There Will Be Pizza.)

I mean, I understand why he wouldn’t buy pizzas for his coke-fueled orgies, at least. Pizza doesn’t strike me as a good orgy food. Having a belly full of cheese doesn’t really put one “in the mood.”

But still.

The only conclusion I can come up with is that Donald has never had any friends.

This is a man who’s lived on this earth for almost seventy years and has never had a single friend. Sure, he’s had wives, children, loyal employees, underage models, but never any friends.

If you think about it like that, his campaign starts to make sense.  Of course he’s playing to the crowd. Of course he’s repeating racist rhetoric that makes his fans go nuts. This is a man who’s gone from zero friends to an arena full of them.  Put yourself in his shoes. If you lived your life with no friends and were suddenly given thousands of friends at a time, wouldn’t you say anything to hold on to them?

Be honest now.

NEXT: Well, that kinda puts his feelings on Vladimir Putin in perspective, doesn’t it?

In Defense of Donald Trump #1

Okay. Let’s all admit that we’ve all gotten a bit… well, nasty this political season.

I’m guilty of it. I mean, you can wander over to my Facebook feed and see that I might have called Donald Trump “an orange alien with the brain of a chimp” (I’m paraphrasing). But with this new blog, I’m trying to do better. In this last week leading up to the election, I’m gonna try to inject some positivity into the internet by defending the man I’ve hitherto attacked.

And what better place to start than…

MOCKING A DISABLED REPORTER

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Boy, you can really get lost in the weeds on this one.  I found a lot of videos of those fifteen seconds where Donald goes “I don’t KNOW, I don’t REMEMBER!” and flops his arms around.

(Infodump: He was imitating Serge Kovaleski, a journalist with arthrogryposis, who had the nerve to not immediately recall an article he wrote fifteen years ago.)

Thing is – if you care to look, you can also find a lot of videos refuting the mainstream media narrative with clips of Donald fluttering his hands around while mocking abled people, too. Here’s just one example:

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So was Donald mocking Kovaelski’s disability, his memory, or both? Honestly – an argument can be made either way. Your conclusion probably has more to do with your perceptions from before you saw the video – like if you are disabled and someone’s mocked in you in precisely that way.

But hey, we’re trying to defend Donald Trump.  So – let’s just say that his arm-fluttering is less than conclusive and his contempt is usually reserved for the media in general (and Muslims and Mexicans and women and Obama), not disabled people.

But let’s not stop there. We should look into Donald’s motivations – why he mocked Kovaleski in the first place.

Okay. Remember when Donald claimed that thousands of Arab Muslims were celebrating in New Jersey on 9/11? He even said he saw it on national TV. Soon afterwards, Donald showed up on This Week, where George Stephanopolous reached up (way, way up) and gave that claim a factual smackdown.

(Infodump: George Stephanopolous is short.)

That celebration never happened. There’s no TV footage of it. There was footage of a small group of Palestinians celebrating in East Jerusalem during 9/11, and at the time, a lot of people mistook that footage as taking place in New Jersey.

(Those Palestinians. So testy. It’s like US munitions keep blowing up their homes or something.)

Anyway. It’s gotta hurt when someone who’s eight inches shorter than you says you’re fulla shit.  Is it any wonder that Trump went looking for reporting that said New Jersey Muslims were celebrating on 9/11?  Sure, all he could find was a 15 year-old story that some Muslims in New Jersey were arrested for allegedly celebrating the attacks, but you take what you can get. At that point, you confront the reporter and he says, “[wtf Donald do you know how many articles I’ve written since then you expect me to know the details of a 15 year-old one] I don’t know, I don’t remember.”

BOOM, you have your “ah-ha!” moment and that’s the sort of thing you really want to share with your friends.

Or a few hundred supporters, if you don’t have friends.

So give the man a break. He’s only doing what you would do if a Greek midget called you on your shit.

And if you had no friends.

NEXT:  Come On, He Has No Friends