Showing posts with label language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label language. Show all posts

Thursday, May 24, 2018

Commentariat Central/Open Thread

Sorry not sorry for the dearth of new posts. Springtime warmth has finally arrived here in my corner of the elitist Northeast, and snnshine and birds and flowers beckon like an irresistible magnet away from the dank confines of my depressively cluttered little computer alcove.

The only writing I've done this whole week is respond to Charles Blow's latest column in the New York Times, which takes issue with Donald Trump's sloppy, vague and unaccountable, but still paradoxically effective, language skills. Since analysis of media-political language is my game, I joined the fray and wrote a comment: 

Trump is the Pontius Pilate of presidents.

"Things" may or may not passive-aggressively happen. Stay tuned, because this is the highest rated cliffhanger of a reality show that, to use his words, "the world has ever seen."

"People" are saying, because his regime is defined as the pulpy pages of a checkout gossip mag.

I just read that a judge has ruled Trump can no longer ban people from his Twitter account. I also read that his staff largely ghost-writes his tweets, deliberately misspelling words and using CAPs and too many !!!!s so as to make him a Deplorable in good standing, a very stable genius whose base, he perceives, is slightly less intellekchul than he is. And the media gobble it all up., as he merely pretends to despise them.


And the feeling is utterly mutual. Michelle Wolf was right when she told the D.C. press that "you guys love Trump." And well they should: the ratings and revenues of the consolidated corporate media are through the roof. #Resistance, Inc. is a very lucrative franchise, for professional Trumpers and anti-Trumpers alike.

The only losers are the bottom 90% of the US population, not to mention close to 100% of the world's population.

Trump might lie like the day-glo orange rug on the top of his head, but whenever he brays "Winning!!!!" he is very sadly speaking Mammon's honest truth.

He's been the poster boy of our two-tiered justice system for all 70-odd years of his existence. Poor people go to jail. Trump pays a fine and signs an NDA.