Political Theatre category archive
If One Standard Is Good, Two Must Be Better 0
Leonard Pitts, Jr., notes the disparate treatment. A snippet:
The black guy fails to wear a lapel pin and endures months of questions about whether he belongs. The white guy canoodles with Russia, insults the intelligence community, undermines the judiciary and makes a Gold Star widow cry, dismissing her husband’s sacrifice as, apparently, just one of those things.
Do please follow the link.
No There There 0
Via Job’s Anger.
Afterthought:
Donald Trump has succeeded in one thing: He has exposed the dirty underbelly of the Benighted States of America.
Junta Hijinks 0
Dick Polman explains. A snippet:
More at the link.
Phony Patriots 0
Warning: Language.
The Spice Is Right 0
One thing I cannot understand is the “pumpkin spice” fad. Go to your local grocery store and browse the spice rack–I defy you to find “pumpkin spice” with a McCormacks label and, on the off chance that you do, you will find that it has a list of ingredients that have nothing whatsoever to do with large orange gourds.
Indeed, I have long held that anyone who has eaten a well-prepared sweet potato pie will not waste time on pumpkins again.
Frank Bruni tries to understand “pumpkin spice” and finds a metaphor. A snippet:
It’s invention run amok, marketing gone mad, the odoriferous emblem of commercialism without compunction or bounds. It’s the transformation of an illusion — there isn’t any spice called pumpkin, nor any pumpkin this spicy — into a reality.
Oh, hell, let’s just go there: It’s Donald Trump. I don’t mean the color of his hair, though pumpkin spice is as good a description of it as any. I mean that pumpkin spice became special by shamelessly insisting that it was and ruthlessly creeping into every corner of the culture that was docile, dippy or lazy enough to accommodate it.
Heard ‘Round the World . . . 0
.. . . and Noz is listening.
Trumpling Weinstein 0
At the Boston Review, Bonnie Honig sees both similarities and differences between Donald Trump and Harvey Weinstein. The similarities she perceives are not surprising, but the differences are chilling.
Here’s a bit:
(snip)
. . . Trump has changed the rules of the game. Trump would never offer to get treatment to save his job. He would never ask for a second chance. If you are emailing your friends asking for support, if you say you will seek treatment, if you are hoping for another chance, you are already—in Trump’s grade school terms—a loser: reality’s victim, not its maker. The game is over.
Follow the link for the rest; it is quite worth your consideration.
The Gettysburg Depress 0
Werner Herzog’s Bear imagines a Trumpled Gettysburg Address.
Russian Impulses 0
Josh Marshall takes a long and thoughtful look at the Russian cyber-disinformation campaign to exacerbate American cultural and political divisions and defeat Hilary Clinton. Here’s a striking bit:
How Stuff Works, the Right-Wing Noise Machine Dept. 0
In the midst of a larger article about Trump’s fumbled fulminations about expressing condolences to the families of the four soldiers who fell in Niger, Paul Waldman describes the wingnut propaganda process. You can follow the link for the complete article, but here’s the crucial bit:
(Open tag fixed. Darned computers expect you to splet stuf rite.)
