Political Theatre category archive

Shaun Mullen, in a lengthy post, cites ways in which he believes Hillary Clinton contributed to her own loss. I’m excerpting perhaps the most perjorative portion of his post, which in its entirely is rather balanced, because I want to disagree with it.

History will show that Clinton’s propensity for self-inflicted wounds, as well as some very bad luck, was gasoline that helped fuel the fire that The Times story so compellingly recounts. These wounds included a penchant for secrecy that was driven, most certainly in part, by her right-wing tormenters that nevertheless resulted in her questionable use of a private email server and squirrely email practices, shadowy family foundation activities and enormous paydays making private speeches to Wall Street fat cats while publicly decrying their profligacy.

And while I’m piling on, what did Clinton stand for? Why was she running for president? Beyond “because it’s my turn,” I still have not been able to suss out a plausible answer, and neither could the staffers calling the shots in a presidential campaign so atrociously run that it resembled a Kafka-esque comedy minus the laughs unless you consider the consequence — a Trump presidency — to be funny.

I found it quite clear what Hillary Clinton stood for: moderation, sanity, and continued progress on the economy and human rights. So she is not an ideologue; generally, ideologues do not fare well in American national elections, whether the ideologue is, just to pick two, George Wallace or Bernie Sanders. (As for Donald Trump, though he sounds like an ideologue to please his base, his actions indicate that, if he idealizes anything, it’s TV ratings; he is a hollow man, a blowhard who says whatever he thinks his audience of the moment wants to hear.)

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Badtux goes to the movies.

Werner Herzog’s Bear suggests that Trumpery is all about the spectacle. A snippet:

Trump is described as a real estate developer, but he is in reality a television personality. His ability to manipulate the levers of television was his huge tactical advantage. . . .

Trump’s obsession with spectacle continues. He still attacks “fake news” even in interviews with the AP and other mainstream news outlets that give him a platform. In his most recent interview he has infamously gloated about how his ratings on cable news were the highest since 9/11. He has defended Sean Spicer’s ineptitude by citing his “ratings” as well. He dropped the much-promoted “Mother Of All Bombs” in a military operation that was more spectacle that war. He has called the entire Senate to come be briefed by him in what is likely a photo-op rather than a national security summit.

Trump is a medicine show, and persons bought enough snake oil to blow up the world.

Via Raw Story.

Via Job’s Anger.

Special snowflakes.

Reg Henry tells of his friend Bob, who, due to his admiration of Donald Trump’s “America First,” has adopted a policy of “Bob First.” He reports that it’s not working out well.

A snippet:

Since Bob instituted the policy of putting himself first, he no longer feels obligated to fulfill the “honey do” list that is a married man’s burden. He won’t pick up the dry cleaning for his wife, take out the trash or sweep the sidewalk.

If she has her sister over for dinner, he doesn’t wait for anybody else to be served but grabs the food first and starts eating first, as his policy dictates. He threatens to start charging her rent to live in the house.

His friends are not happy either. He always grabs the prime spot on the couch when they watch a football game on TV — and he eats all the potato chips and won’t fetch anyone a beer. When he plays golf, Bob always hits the ball first and to heck with the etiquette. Bob follows a policy which is all about Bob.

Josh Marshall muses about Bill O’Reilly’s last ditch strategy to keep his job at Fox News: to claim that he was the victim of an insidious liberal conspiracy, when, in fact, the campaign to get him fired was overt and public. Indeed, as Marshall points out, maximum publicity was its strategy. A snippet (emphasis added):

In many ways, there’s a much, much more important story going forward about the fact that the people deciding O’Reilly’s fate had known for many years about his behavior and happily tolerated it. But why would O’Reilly think that this email (alleging the conspiracy–ed.) amounted to anything? I would submit that in this final moment, O’Reilly was duped by the ‘war on christmas,’ liberal media bias dumbshit victimology racket he had been selling on his show for two decades: comically melodramatic, victim-preening nonsense aimed at whipping up feelings of resentment and rage. In other words, he was deluded in these final moments of his cable TV existence by his own racket! His goose had long been cooked. But this was his final undoing.

In the wake of Bill O’Reilly’s departure from Fox News, Ben Boychuck of the Sacramento Bee reflects on his choice to eschew television news. A snippet:

About 10 years ago, I stopped watching cable and network news regularly. Fifteen years before that, I heard a lecture by Ray Bradbury, the late, great novelist and author of “The Martian Chronicles” and “Fahrenheit 451.” I don’t remember what the lecture was about, but one digression stuck with me:

“Never, ever watch television news,” Bradbury said. “Especially local news. You’ll think the world is coming to an end.”

I can’t remember the last time I watched television news (except for looking at pictures during a snowstorm0. Life is too short.

Via C&L.