Political Theatre category archive

He will cause us to smart no more.

He will be sorely missed by somebody or other I forget who.

Afterthought:

The news story at the link refers to Trump as a “populist.” The writers clearly do not grok the difference between “populist” and “rabble-rouser.”

Chris Christie augments his stimulus package for the New Jersey legal industry.

A computer forensics firm retained on behalf of Gov. Christie’s office after the George Washington Bridge lane closure scandal has billed the state $2.3 million, according to invoices released Friday evening.

(snip)

The costs are separate from the $8 million billed to taxpayers as of last year by Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, the law firm retained by the governor’s office to conduct an internal investigation and respond to subpoenas after the bridge scandal in January 2014.

At least, it sounds like paradise to me.

Austria’s governing coalition parties have cancelled a parliamentary session planned for next week because they say they have “nothing to discuss”.

An announcement on the Austrian parliament’s website says that a session which 183 members of parliament planned to attend on Thursday has now been cancelled.

In a long and thoughtful article in The Guardian, Adam Haslett posits that, despite their superficial gentility, the Bushes helped pave the way for Trump. He argues that the difference between them is simple:

Trump doesn’t have henchmen; he is his own henchman.

The Bush campaign and its patronage network would have us believe that a divisive, foul-mouthed conman is duping the media into ignoring the one sober candidate who is ready to lead the United States in troubled times. Jeb’s father is said to be confounded by the “rude” Mr Trump, while his mother cut a remarkably tone-deaf ad, in which, bedizened with pearls, she raises her slender nose at those who talk about “how popular they are, or how great they are”, as if no member of her clan has ever engaged in the unseemly business of self-promotion.

But the Bushes have long been aristocrats with knives in their pockets. In politics since the 1950s and in the White House for 16 of the last 28 years, this dynastic family embodies more than any other the transformation of the Republican Party from a coalition of northeastern social liberals and economic elites to one of southern, religious conservatives and free-market extremists.

(snip)

The names of the Bush family’s henchmen – South Carolina native Lee Atwater and his protégée Karl Rove – are well known, as are most of their exploits.

The article is worth your while.

Contemporary political media, always valuing the horse race, false equivalences, and theatre over facts and issues, has been repeatedly conflating Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, trying to say that Trump is to the right as Sanders is to the left. If you are one of my two or three regular readers, you’ve no doubt seen this.

Regardless of your opinion of Sanders as a politician and potential nominee, I think one must concede that that’s like conflating Luciano Pavorotti and Tiny Tim because both of them had fans.

Pap and Thom take a look at the two candidates and the coverage.

In view of this, I just had to ask.

Writing at The Roanoke Times, Robert A. Strong, the Wilson Professor of Politics at Washington and Lee University, thinks the Reality TV nominating process could use some work.

Donald Trump is not really an anomaly. If you build a circus, you shouldn’t be surprised when a clown comes along and steals the show.

Follow the link to see his reasoning.

I guess it’s true.

Florida must indeed be like a different country.

BadTux has a theory.

TPM.

I know it’s yesterday’s news, but this is just too poetic to pass up.

In the Guardian, Jonathan Freedland ponders the appeal of Donald Trump and concludes that Trump is not so much a leader as he is a mirror.

And thus the tragedy of Trump is that he actually is not a power-mad dictator hellbent on the acquisition of authority to dominate the downtrodden and the different to suit his own cruel vision of the world. He has no vision or imagination, no master plan. The reason he seems to be making up policy as he goes along is because that’s what he’s doing; he’s simply telling gleefully ill-informed people like himself what they want to hear.

Trump has been the dirty mirror of the American mind for decades; his whole enterprise on NBC built up to the act of telling people more famous, wealthy and attractive than the viewer that they’re fired, and if he looked like a goblin while doing it, so much the better.

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*With apologies to Agatha Christie.