The post about how the Democratic hate-mongering campaign against President Trump has stopped him from continuing the century old tradition of POTUS symbolically signalling the beginning of the baseball season with a ceremonial first pitch inspired another Comment of the Day from Steve-O-in NJ, on the related topic of jerks.
Part of his commentary below evokes TV comics, who, as he notes, have become entirely one-party, partisan shills, and if that leaves humor in the dust, so be it.
Last night, reacting to news that Ivanka Trump would be an unpaid but official advisor to her father, Daily Show host Trevor Noah played a clip of an old interview with Ivanka by Leslie Stahl, in which the First Daughter answered a question about whether she would be active in the administration, saying,
“Um no, I’m going to be a daughter.”
“And a liar!” quipped Noah. HAHAHAHAHA! Isn’t that funny? HAHAHAHAHA! He’s a vile, unfunny, dumb partisan hack. What she said wasn’t a promise, and it wasn’t a pledge. Even if it was uttered by Ivanka under oath, it couldn’t be called a lie, or even hypocrisy, unless there is reason to believe that she said this knowing it wouldn’t be true. Proof, please, Mr, Noah, you asshole.
That’s what she thought was the case then; now conditions have changed, and she decided to do something else. If a woman, say, Ivanka Trump, said on TV, “I’m going to marry Trevor Noah,” and then, having seen what a miserable jerk he is on TV, decided not to marry him, would that mean she was lying when she said she would? Do these relentless leftist hit-comics —Bee, Oliver, Maher, Colbert, Kimmel, et al, or the right-oriented…wait, there are no right-oriented comics—have any integrity at all? Decency? Or a dictionary? The people who find Noah’s attack on Ivanka hilarious are the same people who were glad she was harassed on an airplane, and who organized a boycott of her products. You know. Jerks.
Mega Jerk Noah then detoured into news that former South Korea President Park Geun-hye would be jailed for corruption. “Wow, a president impeached, removed from office and thrown in jail. Imagine that,” said Noah, “No, no, seriously, let’s all close our eyes and imagine that.”
I have Facebook friends who issue bile like this every day. It is simply, clearly, hate-mongering, citizens wishing ill on their nation’s leader, making two party government impossible, and fanning the flames of social unrest while proclaiming their own bias and ignorance. They want to jail the President of the United States because he beat their corrupt, incompetent candidate. Stalin would be so proud.
These are friends of mine, but their conduct is detestable and loathsome.
But I digress. Here is Steve-O-in NJ’s Comment of the Day on the post, President Trump Will Not Throw Out The First Ball Of The Baseball Season:
Someone compared me to Mr. Hyde or a werewolf, so I have to make sure I’ve taken my potion before I respond. Unfortunately, the jerks win a lot more than a lot of us would like to admit, as every kid who took the long way home to avoid the class bully, every girl who didn’t attend dances because she was marginalized by the queen bees, and three quarters of people who quit jobs (75% of resignations are due to not getting along with one’s immediate supervisor) can testify to. In the past the grown-up culture of this country had moved past jerkiness, now it thrives on it.
Part of it is the ease with which now anyone can say anything about anyone and have it cross cyberspace in the blink of an eye. Not only that, but now anyone with a couple of apps or Photoshop (if you spring for it) can easily make anyone look bad or create an image that can’t be unseen (I just got Photoshop, and a friend who serves me in the same role as Jiminy Cricket warned me to use it wisely and NOT to combine my photographic and rhetorical skills to cook up tasty, quickly digestible morsels of hate, bias, or disdain) . However, just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.
Another part of it is the mainstreaming of jerkiness. Late-night comics and mainstream comics used to do some political humor, political humor has been around since the beginning of this country, but usually it didn’t take the form of all-attack all-the-time the way it has lately. Heck, in the wake of 9/11 Saturday Night Live actually portrayed Donald Rumsfeld as being more patient than he needed to be with wacky media types. Now every late-night comic, more than a few mainstream news anchors, and a whole network (MSNBC) do nothing but attack, attack, attack, and their audiences cheer them on. They cheer them on because civility is disappearing everywhere else in life. You just have to scroll through your social media feed to see a half-dozen videos of someone acting like a jerk to someone going viral. Why should anyone swallow their pride and keep the peace when he can curse someone out or get physical and get his 15 minutes of fame? Meantime kids with cameras on their cell phones show even worse judgment.
The last part of it is the intense political polarization in this country. I’ve talked about this a bunch of times, but the short version of it is that the line between the two political parties has been widening into a crack, then a chasm, and finally a canyon since the end of the Cold War. Now we’re reaching the point where it’s going to become a Biblical great gulf that no one can cross. We’re also reaching the point where political disagreement has become dislike, then despising, and now finally hatred. Neither side is completely blameless. Both parties have overreached, then retaliated, obstructed, and attacked. Bipartisanship is dead, and I think Gorsuch will, willingly or not, be the man who buries it. Once it’s buried, the next thing to go will be comity. Once that’s buried the ability to work together is next, and then the government will grind to a halt until one party or the other gets a supermajority.
What’s more, no official will be able to appear where the other party holds sway, or even appear at all, without getting slimed. It’s too bad, because there are some important historical anniversaries coming up in the next few years, including in two months, when we will have the centennial of the US entering WWI. Next November we will have the centennial of the victory in WWI, and, by all rights, the President should be standing on the battlefield in Flanders or Picardy with the President of France and British and Belgian royalty, to give a rousing speech honoring the fallen and reminding the world a century later what it was all about. It should be a speech fit to stand next to Reagan’s speech on the 40th anniversary of D-Day. At least he should deliver one from the Capitol before the assembled military, including some in uniform of the time, and at the very least he should deliver one from the Oval Office. At this point I’m willing to bet he does none of the above. He won’t be able to go to Europe because the local security services won’t be able to guarantee his safety, and he won’t deliver one here because it’s just going to be one more chance for the opposition to throw mud. Pathetic, and disrespectful to our history and traditions. Then again, history and tradition mean nothing to the left unless they are their history and traditions.
Ethics Alarms 
There is Dennis Miller on the right, Jack. One of my guilty pleasures.
Thanks for the photo of Trump. He sure looks as if he knows how to throw a baseball. And enjoys doing so.
How could the left make jokes about President Trump’s hands being too small to pitch properly after this?: http://alltherightsnark.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Obama-Throw_lightbox.jpg
Great job Steve-O-in NJ inspiring some critical thinking!
Steve-O-in NJ wrote, “…the short version of it is that the line between the two political parties has been widening into a crack, then a chasm, and finally a canyon since the end of the Cold War. Now we’re reaching the point where it’s going to become a Biblical great gulf that no one can cross.”
I’m whipping out this old quote again; There are no chasm walls created so distant by ideologies that can’t be bridged by the solid foundation of underlying human commonalities that support those ideologies.
Steve-O-in NJ wrote, “We’re also reaching the point where political disagreement has become dislike, then despising, and now finally hatred. Neither side is completely blameless. Both parties have overreached, then retaliated, obstructed, and attacked. Bipartisanship is dead…”
I agree; however, again…
There are no chasm walls created so distant by ideologies that can’t eventually be bridged by the solid foundation of underlying human commonalities that support those ideologies.
I have hopes for the very eventual distant future; however, for the not so distant future, I think there is trouble on the horizon.
It is amazing.
People are still complaining about so-called Russian “interference” in the election.
It is a huge Nothingburger.
Why do you think Michael Flynn has asked for immunity?
Easy: in this kind of environment, when one party is looking for scalps, ways to embarrass the President, and the whole investigation is an excuse to make accusations, he would be a fool not to demand immunity. And any lawyer who didn’t so advise him would be guilty of malpractice.
Nothing burger is a term we’re encouraged not to use here.
Thank you.
Thank you, Jack. Zoltar, I’d like to hold out some hope, but we’ll see.
Steve, nearly all your essays are COTD worthy. Very articulate and thorough. You remind me of a guy at another big firm in town when I was a pup. His nickname was “Dial-a-Memo.” Keep it up.
Dennis Prager was right in 2010, and again earlier this year, when he said we were in the middle of a civil war – our country’s second.
Ann Coulter is slated to speak at UC-Berkeley later this spring. Mark my words, we will see another round of riots from the far left, just as was seen with Milo, just as we saw at Middlebury when Charles Murray tried to speak (and a left-of-center professor suffered a concussion while escorting him). I would be horrified but not surprised if she were to be harmed.
At University of Illinois, an “Affirmative Action Bake Sale” was disrupted, and a plate of cookies was stolen and thrown to the ground. Thankfully, nobody got punched, but opponents were
The fact is, the Left is desperate to take the Supreme Court because that is the only way many of their policy preferences got enacted. The people of 31 states voted, and said they didn’t want same-sex marriage. In some cases, by very wide margins. The Left used SCOTUS to impose it on those people anyway.
When it comes to abortion, the Left is moving to silence dissent from its positions there, too. The fact that few, if any, on the Left outside of Kevin Drum are calling out California Attorney General Xavier Becerra for filing 15 felony charges against the Center for Medical Progress over investigative journalism, is signature significance.
I hope we only come to the brink of civil war to bring sanity on all sides, but I fear the situation may be too far gone.
The CMP broke the law, IM. Why do you think investigative journalists who commit felonies should not be charged for those felonies?
The recordings were made in a public space where no expectation of privacy exists – the people being recorded made no attempt to prevent the wait staff from hearing what was being said etc, so they were not trying to keep the conversation private.
To any disinterested observer, there is no felony here. It is interesting that AG Becerra has received campaign contributions from Planned Parenthood, but saw no reason to recuse himself from this case.
Rules about this sort of thing only apply to Republicans, I guess.
So, why no prosecution of animal rights activists who used similar tactics?
It simply goes to the fact that the animal rights activists are not hated by a major donor to Becerra and his predecessor, Kamala Harris. CMP, though, has crossed Planned Parenthood. For that, progressives vow, they must be made to pay.
Actually I think that the French, British, and Belgiums would appreciate Trump coming to Belleau Wood to make a speech commentating the end of WW1. He could show up with some Marine and Army Generals along with some folks whose ancestors fought in France to end the war. Surely some of Pershing’s or Eddie Richenbacher’s great grandchildren would be willing to make the trip.
Believe me, in the best of all worlds he WOULD be there, together with Secretary Mattis, the SACEUR and his staff, the Commandant or Vice Commandant and his staff, a number of invited guests including those you mention (say 100 descendants of WWI vets, chosen by lottery), plus a full band and honor guard from the Seventh Army. There would be a special service in the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Amiens (not the same as the one in Paris). He would go to the American cemetery at the Meuse-Argonne, where the most American fallen of that conflict lie. He would give a speech both deep and rousing paying tribute to the fallen and promising never to break faith with why they were there, though his might be only one of several. And when it was all over, he would lay a wreath of red and white roses there in honor of the fallen, next to the UK poppies (red only, if you please) and the French cornflowers, before watching the parade recess. But I’m willing to be you dollars to doughnuts none of this will happen, not least because he would be met with boos and threats everywhere he went.
Maybe some of the French Foreign Legion could be around to stop some of the nonsense. Incidentally, there is a excellent series on the Great War on YouTube which will cover America’s entry into the war in the upcoming weeks. I don’t think Trump should intimidated by a some leftists lunatics and backing down on showing up in France.
Jack:
That’s what she thought was the case then; now conditions have changed, and she decided to do something else.
I find this naive, Jack.
It’s possible that your interpretation is true. It’s also possible she was lying. In a situation like this, comedians aren’t obligated to lean toward any possibility either than the one that will get the biggest laugh.
They want to jail the President of the United States because he beat their corrupt, incompetent candidate. Stalin would be so proud.
Is wishing for someone to receive karmic payback always a “tit for tat” rationalization?
Donald Trump spent the last few months of his campaign saying he wanted Hillary Clinton to be jailed. He encouraged chants of “Lock her up!” at campaign rallies.
I don’t want Trump to be jailed, because I think it would be bad for our country, but I don’t begrudge people who do, and I have to admit it would be poetic justice.
Lying is becoming a very flexible word.
How is “she’s lying” a laugh line? Come on.
This was the line:
“Um no, I’m going to be a daughter.”
“And a liar!” quipped Noah.
I think that answers your question.
It’s a political attack, not a joke. People who hate the Trumps will laugh, just as they’d laugh if he threw a brick at her head.
I don’t understand the distinction you’re making between political attacks and jokes. All of Noah’s jokes are political. That’s the nature of the show. What makes this one any different?
He doesn’t make jokes half the time. It’s just partisan bashing. There’s no wit, nothing clever. How is calling someone a liar a joke?
Humor, I suppose, is in the ear of the listener to some degree. I love puns that a lot of people find groan-worthy, for example. Most of us also get some kind of satisfaction out of seeing someone get the comeuppance we think they deserve or get hit with a harsh insult or attack. Who among us didn’t lick a finger and make a sizzling sound or sneer “that’s gonna leave a mark” back in middle school and grade school when someone we didn’t like was the target of a cruel insult? Noah’s audience and people like Chris are just middle schoolers in bigger bodies who see those who don’t agree with them politically as the clique they hate and Trump as the ultimate kid they loathe, so of course they think it’s funny when someone hurls an insult at him.