My late wife might say of this post, “If you like Ann Althouse so much, why don’t you marry her?” (Ann-like tangent: my favorite use of that line was when Homer Simpson was in a TV debate with Rev. Lovejoy over gay marriage, and after the Springfield cleric cited the Bible, Homer retorted, “If you like the Bible so much, why don’t you marry it? Here, I’ll do it for you…”)
Ann is the all-time Ethics Alarms leader in “Ethics Quotes” of the month and week; she’s also been an Ethics Dunce here several times. I even suspended her from any mention in my posts after a particularly miserable performance. Her fascinating EA dosser is here.
I know I just posted about Ann’s recent four slam-bang post run, but her defenestration of Anti-Trump New Yorker hack Susan B. Glasser was masterful, and I bow down in awe and wonder. When the ex-University of Wisconsin law professor is on her game, nobody is better, and attention must be paid.
Glasser issued “It’s Time to Talk About Donald Trump’s Logorrhea/How many polite ways are there to ask whether the President of the United States is losing it?” , jumping on the “Let’s try the 25th Amendment!” Trump removal plan a Golden Oldie among the many that the Axis was pushing in his first term. That any journalist who sat idly by refusing to point out that Joe Biden’s brain was falling out of his ears in chunks has the gall now to make such a claim about Trump (literally all of my Trump-Deranged Facebook Friends keep returning to it) is disqualifying, but Ann doesn’t even need that low-hanging fruit to show us how Glasser cheated to please the Atlantic’s biased readers.
Glasser appealed to the authority of writer Thomas Mann, of all people, to find Trump demented, writing in part,
[I]n rambling on so much, Trump reveals just about everything one could ever want to know about him—his lack of discipline, his ignorance, his vanity, insecurity, and crudeness, and a mean streak that knows no limits. “It is remarkable how a man cannot summarize his thoughts in even the most general sort of way without betraying himself completely,” Thomas Mann wrote a century ago, in his novel “The Magic Mountain,” set in a sanitarium perched above the Swiss mountain town of Davos, where Trump spent the better part of this week proving to the stunned attendees of the annual World Economic Forum the continuing relevance of Mann’s observation….
[W]hen Trump reached the fulsome self-praise section of his speech, he explained that he was such an incredible peacemaker that he had even managed to end wars in places where he had not known they were happening. Imagine admitting this about yourself. Another quote from “The Magic Mountain” sprang to mind: “I know I am talking nonsense, but I’d rather go rambling on. . . .”
Ann begins her defenestration by declaring that she is “prepared for this” because she actually has read “The Magic Mountain” ( I also admire her for that: I gave up half-way through) and she goes on to prove that Glasser almost certainly hasn’t read “The Magic Mountain,” but was just cribbing:
“It’s not as though Glasser drew upon deep literary experience to come up with material from “The Magic Mountain.” It’s the famous book set in the location where Trump spoke [at Davos, Switzerland]. To quote it is like quoting your last fortune cookie or scrap of litter right at your feet. What does Glasser really know of “The Magic Mountain”? She’s got 2 quotes, and if you go to Goodreads, you’ll find both quotes within the top 6 quotes from the book. They are #5 and #6.”
Oooh! That’s gonna leave a mark. Althouse also points out that using Mann, who is famous (or infamous) for his gratuitous verbosity, as a critic of the President’s eccentric (annoying?) rambling style, is ironic to say the least. “Why isn’t Trump terse and to the point? Why isn’t Thomas Mann!!!?,” she writes.
Bingo.
Althouse also writes, defending Trump, “It’s not rambling. It’s the weave. There’s no acknowledgement that Trump himself has explained what he is doing. He calls it the weave. He’s in control of it. You just don’t like the elaborate tangles of verbiage.”
Later, amidst the deservedly positive comments from Ann’s readers, she adds, “I think those who are annoyed at Trump’s weave are appropriately rankling at his giant power move — controlling their time, requiring their silent endurance. But that doesn’t mean he’s got dementia! I’m objecting to characterizing him as mentally deficient, having a disability. That characterization allows them to feel superior, rather than subordinated. I can see why they prefer to think of it that way.”
That’s another astute observation applicable to Trump Derangement. What his haters really resent that he is effective more often than not. How dare he?
[Note: WordPress isn’t letting me break the page again. Sorry for the inconvenience.]
Ethics Alarms 
My high school English teacher was a big Mann fan. I’ve read almost all his oeuvre. (Both my parents were tubercular in the 1920s. If you want to read a lot of words, I’d strongly recommend reading “Recapturing Lost Time.” I think Proust leaves Mann and even Joyce, in the dust.) I’ve never known what to make of Mann or his work. He seems to have been a very sketchy human being despite being lionized as a monumental writer. If I’m not mistaken, he had a crush on one of his sons and acted upon it. I’m pretty sure Death in Venice was largely autobiographical rather than an indictment of pre-World War Two Europe. I’ve never been able to locate the moral compass in his books, if there is one.
One does not need to pay any attention to Glasser nor to Althouse. One only need read (or, if you can stand it, listen to) Trump’s speech to see yet again that he is not fit to be the president of the United States. Mixing up Iceland and Greenland is just part of the weave, not indicative of anything serious. Heck, Hegseth and his ‘War’ Department can shift their plans rapidly from one island to another in no time at all. And, who among us hasn’t gotten off track a bit when talking about a country we intend to invade or don’t intend to invade, or whatever.
Denigrating our NATO allies and belittling their sacrifice when they came to our aid in Afghanistan after 9/11, well, that is something serious, especially coming from a draft-dodger, and it is not a part of any weave. But, defend him if you like. After all, he is great at ending wars and doing other stuff.
Well, a bit of an update. Karoline Leavitt (routinely referred to here as a paid liar, but I think we can trust her on this one) cleared that up for us. She said, in effect, Trump can’t read, stating that what he spoke was not what was in his written remarks.
No, what Leavitt did was lie, as she is paid to do, denying that Trump said Iceland when he means Greenland. Leavitt tweeted , “No he didn’t…His written remarks referred to Greenland as a ‘piece of ice’ because that’s what it is. You’re the only one mixing anything up here.” Leavitt technically was denying that Trump really meant Iceland, not that he didn’t SAY Iceland, but stated this deceitfully, because that’s her job. It has nothing to do with “reading”: Trump often, indeed, not enough, treats his scripted remarks as suggestions only.
We really have to discuss the “57 States” phenomenon again? I can read, but in one presentation, as I have pointed out, I mixed up Aaron Burr with actor Raymond Burr. I’ve done it since then in private conversations. I can spell too, sort of, but I frequently type “thier” when I mean “their.” For many years, I mixed up Katherine Hepburn with Audrey Hepburn, knowing well the difference but doing it anyway inadvertently.
It’s no mystery why Trump keeps making this mistake: Iceland is green and Greenland is almost all ice. He’s got the two names “filed” together. If one has any good will regarding someone with that “speako” tendency, you shrug it off. If you’re looking for cheap ways to denigrate someone, and you are, then you make a big deal out of it.
In 1980, President Jimmy Carter, while accepting his nomination, combined the name of former Vice President Hubert Horatio Humphrey with fictional British naval officer Horatio Hornblower. I bet he had done it before. Nobody wrote critiques about it.
I hate that crap, both as a double standard and as any standard at all.
Thanks, Johnny. You said it much better than I ever could have.
As I read it, you just slide by the topic of the post to indulge in more Trump-bashing on general principles. Althouse’s criticism of Glasser was not a partisan attack or even pro Trump.
Althouse’s supposed ‘defenestration’ would have had more value had she gone beyond her critique of Glasser’s reference to “The Magic Mountain”, a book Althouse said she read 50 years ago. Glasser’s reference may have been inappropriate, but, then, one man’s word salad is another man’s (self proclaimed) weave.
Trump described the weave this way: “I’ll talk about, like, nine different things, and they all come back brilliantly together.” Althouse defends that variety of rambling, saying, “You don’t want to follow the complex feats of language that require you to keep track of numerous threads to visualize the luminous tapestry.” (I know, sounds like Trump told her to write that, but, he would have said ‘beautiful ‘ instead of ‘luminous’.) That all misses the point that speaking and writing should be to express, not to cause head-scratching about what is meant, and very few of us would want to spend nearly 90 minutes on that.
Althouse ignored a number of other points Glasser made — Trump’s insult of the Danes, his tying tariffs to what he considered a personal slight, his slur in referring to Somalis, his obviously false claim that everyone wants to be on his ‘Board of Peace’, and more.
To focus on one aspect of Glasser’s critique of Trump and ignore many others could be taken to mean Althouse had no disagreement with those points, hardly a defenestration.
Ann was calling out the signature significance of a critic appealing to the authority of literature that the critic obviously hadn’t read, and the absurdity of using a famously verbose and convoluted writer to critique a politician for being verbose and convoluted.
Those points you seem to think are important aren’t (So he insulted the Danes…so what? Somalia is a “shithole” nation with a shithole culture. Trump should be more diplomatic about it, but he’s not. He didn’t “tie the tariffs to a slight,” he mentioned the perceived slight while imposing tariffs he was going to use as a bargaining chip anyway; and the “everybody” hyperbole is the kind of fake lie that the Washington Post includes in its phony “lie database.” Althouse didn’t comment on those because the Thomas Mann cheat was sufficient to justify ignoring the whole essay as a biased hit job, which it was. Althouse picked on what she finds indefensible, chose well, and proved her case. Grade:A.