CSotD: Flaming Dumpster Causes Massive Train Wreck
Skip to comments
Dr. MacLeod offers the best cartoon take on yesterday’s appearance by Donald Trump at the annual convention of the National Association of Black Journalists, which has been called both a “Dumpster fire” and a “train wreck” by the press as well as on social media.
Oliver Darcy has a nice wrap-up of the coverage at Reliable Sources, while Poynter’s Kerwin Speight tells what it was like to be in the room. If you missed it and want a sample, Aaron Ruper has a video compilation here, while masochists and sadists can watch the entire thing on C-SPAN’s website.
Ruper’s highlights are about 11 minutes long, while the entire event was only 35 minutes long, which gives you a sense of how little of it wasn’t entirely jaw-dropping.
The less astonishing parts were still pretty bad, and while I make no pretense of liking the fellow, even his fans have got to have their heads in their hands this morning.
Clay Jones summarizes things with a good call-and-response cartoon: Harris reacted to Trump’s ducking out of debating her with that remark, while the strangest part of the NABJ appearance was his weird take on Harris’s racial identity:
I have known her a long time, indirectly, not directly very much, and she was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I did not know she was Black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. Is she Indian or is she Black?
He ignored the interviewer who pointed out that Harris is a graduate of Howard and belonged to a Black sorority there, and seemingly ignored the groans from his audience of Black journalists, who didn’t need Politifact’s live fact-checking to know they were being lied to.
Kerwin Speight reports that there was an announcement before the event, asking everyone to behave professionally. I’ve been retired for a couple of years but I still have to remind myself that it’s okay for me now to applaud at events. There’s “no cheering in the press box” but I’m not in the press box anymore.
None of my sources and contacts were ever mistaken about my feelings, but they respected my keeping them out of my coverage, at least until I left the newsroom and began writing a weekly column. I don’t know how many people in the NABJ audience were columnists, but, it being an in-house gathering, nobody was ethically required to sit on their hands, and they didn’t.
Coming into a gathering of Black people you know are completely up-to-date on the news and on your own history and lying to their faces on the topic of race is, at best, an example of the kind of prideful arrogance that ancient Greeks wrote tragedies about and, at worst, a sign that maybe the wrong fading intellect dropped out of the race.
What’s really interesting in the coverage is the divide between people who felt the NABJ shouldn’t have given a noted racist a platform and people who felt it was valuable to let him spew his views before the public.
Having someone there on stage to challenge his lies and bigotry made this very different than uncritically broadcasting one of his rallies.
Speaking of how the press should cover candidates, Lisa Benson (Counterpoint) is upset that the media has been paying attention to Kamala Harris and accuses them of aiding the Democrats in boosting her image.
Surely she must remember a Republican candidate who feasted on free airtime in 2016 and 2020 from a press who found his antics, if not entirely newsworthy, certainly extremely clickworthy.
For that matter, it would be interesting to compare how many of her appearances, and how many of his, are getting live coverage, and which networks are spending how much time on each candidate.
Not to mention which networks have rules against cheering in the press box and which ones consider that a normal part of coverage.
Or, as they might spell it, “covfeferage.”
Juxtaposition of a Growing Sense of Futility
There’s no explanation for Ramirez’s insult except desperation. There’s nothing to back up the assertion and Venn Diagram cartoons, after all, are a dime a dozen.
Kelley, meanwhile, seems to think Hillary Clinton is still in the game. On the other hand, he’s smart to attack the “weird” thing, which has not only caught on but has substantial sting: It’s not vulgar, and it’s not necessary to pin down exactly what you mean.
If the shoe fits, your audience will slip it into place.
There’s an old thing about how, if someone had snuck up behind Hitler at one of his speeches and yanked down his pants, World War II would have been averted. But they’d have found another Hitler to take his place, because that’s what they wanted.
Still, authoritarians hate being mocked, and laughing at them is effective. Not only does “weird” get under their skin, but funny stuff can be a tonic to keep the faithful motivated.
Here’s an example, a quick response paraphrasing yesterday’s racist attack.
Thing is, it’s Trump’s own fault for not using Man Tan, reviewed here by a fellow who apparently shares Trump’s self-reported stature of 6’3″, 215 lbs.
Man Tan doesn’t turn you orange like Orangu Tan.
Juxtaposition of Serious Cartoon Work
Project 2025 hasn’t tested well with the public and so, despite it having been written largely by his former staff and despite him and his VP candidate on record as approving of it, Trump has suddenly remembered that he doesn’t agree with it at all.
Ohman points out that he still seems to agree with Germany’s 1933 policy proposals, while Anderson offers a laugh at the futility of trying to escape from what he has already been linked to.
The impact of a second Trump presidency doesn’t hinge on his embracing Project 2025 as long as he enacts its basic proposals. That’s not funny.
But we’ve only got two choices, as William Hazlitt suggested:
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.
Comments 6
Comments are closed.