The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #161496 Message #3838641
Posted By: Jim Carroll
13-Feb-17 - 09:29 AM
Thread Name: BS: Barthes: explanation of Trump's appeal
Subject: RE: BS: Barthes: explanation of Trump's appeal
Interesting piece of insight from The Irish Times's American correspondent this morning
Jim Carroll
TRUMP HAS ALREADY MADE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN BY INSPIRING HIS OPPOSITION
Listen up, haters. The brief reign of Donald the First has been completely head-spinningly nuts so far. But let's stay calm and look for the silver lining, or in this case, the garishly gold lining. Trump has indeed already made some of America Great Again. Just not the aspects he intended. He has breathed new zest into a wide range of things: feminism, liberalism, student activism, newspapers, cable news, protesters, bartenders, shrinks, Twitter, the American Civil Liberties Union, Saturday Night Live, town halls, George Orwell, Margaret Atwood, Hannah Arendt, TV presenter Stephen Colbert, and the separation of powers among them.
As Trump blusters about repealing Obamacare, many Americans have come to appreciate the benefits of the law more. Lena Dunham credited the "soul-crushing pain and devastation and hopelessness" of Trump with helping her get a svelte new figure. Trump may even have pierced the millennial malaise, as we see more millennials showing interest in running for office.
Every time our daft new president tweets about the "failing" New York Times, our digital subscriptions and stock price jump, driven by readers eager for help negotiating the disorienting Trumpeana Oceana Upside Down dimension rife with gaslighting, trolling, leaking, lying and conflicts.
Similarly, whenever Trump rants about Alec Baldwin's portrayal of him and tweets that Saturday Night Live is "not funny," "always a complete hit job" and "really bad television!," the show's ratings go up. They are now at a 20-year high. Trump was roundly mocked for turning his Supreme Court announcement into an episode of The Bache-lor, but it must be said that the president has more talent for devising cliffhangers than anyone since Charles Dickens.
Unbelievably schtocky
Administration officials told The Times that the White House even got Judge Thomas Hardiman, the runner-up to Neil Gorsuch, to play along and help make the final rose ceremony suspenseful by feinting a drive toward Washington. It was unbelievably schlocky, and yet the end result was a national civics lesson, with a whopping 33 mil¬lion-plus people tuning in.
Ordinarily staid senate hearings for cabinet choices are now destination TV. As Trump puts forth people who want to plant Acme dynamite in the agencies they will head and as Republicans at the federal and state levels push their conservative agenda, Americans have a refreshed vigour for debating what's at stake for the environment, education, civil rights and health insurance - and a new taste for passionate, cacophonous town halls.
Trump has made facts great again. By distorting reality so relentlessly, he has put every¬one on alert for alternative facts. "With great assurity," as Trump likes to say, the president has also made White House press briefings relevant again by raising the stakes. The 'Time's Michael Grynbaum calls Sean Spicer's live briefings "daytime television's new big hit" - outdrawing soap operas such as General Hospital and The Bold and the Beautiful.
As he alarms and exhausts, the Short-Fingered Vulgarian deserves this credit at least: We're all on our toes now. The pink pussyhats are at the barricades, on the watch for any curtailment of women's rights and any mansplaining by older white Southern men.
Misery of staffers
The president loves his pat-and-yank handshakes and hugs and blown kisses with m ale VIPs. "I grabbed him and hugged him because that's the way we feel," he said of greeting Japan's prime minister. But The Times's Maggie Haberman reports that the White House radiates with the misery of staffers.
The riled-up art scene has taken to trolling the Troller in Chief. The Museum of Modern Art dropped its customary detachment on politics to protest Trump's ban on refugees from seven predomi¬nantly Muslim countries by replacing artwork on display by Cézanne, Picasso and Matisse with contemporary works from Iran, Iraq and Sudan.
The Public Theater an¬nounced it would open Shake¬speare in the Park in May with Julius Caesar, a play about a populist seeking absolute power. The play, the theatre said, has "never felt more contemporary".
Still, the main way that Trump is proving that America is great is that the affronted and angered are rising up to take him on. Institutions designed to check a president's power and expose his scandals, from the courts to the comics to the press - are all at Defcon 5 a state of military alertness - except for the Republican Congress, which seems to be deaf.