CSotD: Tweets from the Offal Oriface
Skip to comments
I don't have a lot to share in the way of editorial responses to yesterday's ghastly display of tasteless piggishness on the part of our president, but here are two approaches we can discuss.
Marlette simply expresses the disgust decent people feel over Trump's outrageous lack of self-discipline and self-respect, and it's hard not to share that feeling.
Sometimes, when you see hostile, childish vulgarity on social media, you have to wonder what that person is like in real life.
Are they equally combative and ignorant? If so, do they have any friends, or do their employers fight a constant battle to keep them bottled up where they'll do the least harm to staff morale? Are they loners in their off-hours?
Or are they frustrated non-entities, like Milton in "Office Space," constantly taken advantage of and unable to assert themselves effectively, unleashing all that impotent rage on-line?
It's an interesting question when the person under discussion is nearly invisible, but it becomes problematic when the person is unavoidable, whether at the office or at family gatherings.
How do you balance compassion for their sad lives with your own need for sane surroundings?
It's even more problematic when the person is representing your country in the community of nations, which brings us to Bagley's take: Trump can be a buffoon on his own time, in his own space, but, as President, his outrageous behavior soils the office to which we elected him and, thereby, our international standing.
This piece, by Belgian cartoonist Luc Descheemaeker, is a brilliantly conceived piece, since it never mentions Trump and yet puts his thin, flowing plume where we cannot mistake it.
The wider world has the choice of horror or amusement, but I don't know what we can do about it.
One thing that sets our system apart from most is that we can't just have a vote of no confidence.
Unfortunately, we also can't impeach him for being a damn fool or an embarrassment, nor is he crazy in the 25th Amendment sense of the term.
We're most likely stuck with him for four years.
Meanwhile, the GOP seems happy to make hay with their majority, no matter who or what is sitting in the Oval Office.
Thus Trump poses a genuine challenge to cartoonists:
It's nearly impossible to come up with new ways to depict his lack of dignity, his blatant dishonesty and his disgusting attitude towards women, towards the office of the president and towards the ethical standards all previous presidents have maintained.
But you have to keep pointing it out, hoping to convince yet more people to climb off the fence and join those who refuse to accept this ongoing insult to national pride.
And while it's tough to face the challenge of repeatedly doing so with any fresh originality, yesterday's outrageous display demonstrates the urgency.
Each day, it seems, we find that the pig can wallow even deeper in the mire, that this is not yet the worst that is to come.
Decency and love of country mean you can't let it go.
Ann Telnaes points out that he is, meantime, enriching himself through his office, in defiance of precedence, however a court might interpret the emoluments clause.
Impeachable? In a perfect world, perhaps. But would it even come up in that perfect world?
His claim that he is going to return the profits to the Treasury is laughable. Has no-one here seen how "profits" are calculated by someone who has to surrender part of them?
Ask people who are supposed to own a part of a Hollywood movie, or who are supposed to receive royalties from books or music.
Or, for that matter, ask anyone who has ever partnered with Donald J. Trump on a project that didn't pan out.
And, even before the accountants begin finding creative ways to deduct alleged expenses from the indisputable income, let's discuss how you distinguish money directly attributable to his being president from money attributed to the fame his presidency brings, as well as money that floats in accompanied by a wink-wink-nudge-nudge from friends of interested governments.
Meanwhile, it's interesting — in a horrifying way — to watch his defenders scramble for toe-holds.
Sarah Huckaby Sanders primly announces that he's simply striking back at the abuse he's taken, which she doesn't specify, conveniently ignoring the fact that all presidents get criticized but only one has consistently responded like a spoiled eight-year-old.
She told the press corps that she doesn't hold him up as a role model to her children because their only role model is God.
She might consider fulfilling that role herself.
As for the True Believers in cartooning circles, they seem at the moment to be focused on CNN's retraction of a story, which, as noted yesterday, could readily be seen as an example of ethical standards but, instead, they are twisting into an admission of lying.
Ahem.
Let me just say that it is not unknown for artists to be hired after doing caricatures at the county fair by an editor who doesn't mind that they have no grounding in politics or journalism.
I say that as someone who had a very pleasant neighbor who did lovely caricatures and was hired by the local paper where he set new standards for ignorant, hostile, cringe-worthy but well-drawn partisan hackery.
And who did it from a little office in the back of the newsroom such that his colleagues might as well have been making shoes for all that he absorbed of their efforts and learned of how journalism, news-gathering and editing actually work.
These fringe-dwellers not only misinterpret CNN's retraction and assume it means the story was factually wrong — which it doesn't — but even misrepresent which story it was that CNN retracted.
Whether they do so from ignorance or dishonesty really doesn't matter.
Ignorance and dishonesty being, at the moment, in the driver's seat.
(Some have updated this, but there's really no need. Phil nailed it for all time, alas.)
Comments 2
Comments are closed.