Entitlement

It was meant as a joke, just a comedy skit meant to poke some fun. But often life, as the tired cliche goes, imitates art.

In June that in the first act of this three-part play Melania Trump was set to move into the White House from her the $64 million apartment she shared with her populist everyman husband. Steven Colbert pounced with a prescient skit with Laura Benanti.

Imitating Mrs. Trump's accent and perceived sexuality, the singer/actress glumly stated "Oh, I couldn't be happier- see? These are my happy eyes. It was so lonely in New York, doing whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. I called it my 'prison of freedom.'"





The second act took place when in early August the President told his golf buddies that compared to his golf club in Bedminster, NJ "that White House is a real dump." The third act has taken place now that Mr. and Mrs. Trump have

met with the wife of an imprisoned Venezuelan opposition leader in February and tried to sympathize with her husband's plight by comparing life in the White House to that inside a Venezuelan prison, The Washington Post reported on Friday.

Lilian Tintori, who is married to the Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, was at the White House to discuss human rights in Venezuela

President Trump’s decision to suddenly announce a major change in U.S. policy toward Venezuela in February began with an unexpected Oval Office meeting with Lilian Tintori, wife of the country’s most prominent political prisoner.

At the White House to meet Vice President Pence and press the administration to do more about human rights in her home country, Tintori was whisked in to see Trump, who seemed unfamiliar with her story but praised her past as a reality television star in Venezuela’s version of “Survivor.”

Later, as Tintori made her case during the 40-minute meeting, first lady Melania Trump, who was also in the room, said she sympathized with the conditions Tintori’s husband, Leopoldo ­López, faced in jail back in Caracas because the White House often felt as confining as a prison, according to two people familiar with the meeting, a point on which the president agreed.

Finally, as the meeting ended, the president suggested a group photo, including Pence and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a Tintori ally who was at the White House for a scheduled dinner with the president. After a couple of attempts — Trump didn’t like the first photo because he was smiling — the president was pleased enough with the final version, which showed him scowling and giving a thumbs-up sign under a portrait of Andrew Jackson. He promptly posted the photo on Twitter.

First Lady spokesperson Stephanie Grisham claimed "Mrs. Trump only offered words of encouragement and strength,” reminding us yet again (as with Spicer, Sanders, and others) that the less a spokesperson knows, the harder it is to accuse her of lying.

It is tempting, Colbert and Benanti found, to sympathize with Melania Trump because she has to live with Donald Trump.  Nonetheless, she is more alike her husband than different from him, with the sense of entitlement pervading this couple as it has with few others.





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There will be an (R) After The Name

It was not especially funny and it wasn't very accurate, but Stephen Colbert was on to something when last night he said "Despite his long odds, Bernie just got a reminder that he's a serious contender in this race because Donald Trump gave him a nickname." Colbert then played a short clip of Trump remarking on Fox and Friends "I call him 'Crazy Bernie' because he's not very good."

Colbert went on to remark “I just hope that Bernie Sanders does not take this nickname lightly" because "these nicknames have destroyed all of Trump’s opponents. ‘Low Energy Jeb’ — gone. ‘Little Marco’ — vaya con dios. ‘Lyin’ Ted’ — see you, wouldn’t wanna be you.”







But Donald Trump didn't give him this nickname. Rush Limbaugh has been using the phrase for months, in this rant thrice not including his complaint (honestly, this was a complaint) that the mainstream media has been "treating Bernie as the crazy little lovable uncle in the rocking chair up the attic."

Of course,  both Limbaugh's frequent references to "crazy Bernie" and Trump's use of the term owe much to the inability or unwillingness of either to engage Sanders on the issues. They just might find that the American people are not so offended by Social Security, food inspections, free public education, and access to roadways.

But adoption of the term by rock-ribbed Republican Limbaugh and its appropriation by the party's presumptive presidential nominee point to something more significant.  As Steve M. pointed out, Politico has reported that the Trump

campaign last month contacted at least two prominent conservative economists -- Larry Kudlow, the CNBC television host, and Stephen Moore of the Heritage Foundation and a longtime Wall Street Journal writer -- to spearhead an effort to update the package....

Kudlow and Moore are well known voices in conservative economic circles. They are two of the founders, with economist and former Ronald Reagan adviser Art Laffer and former GOP presidential candidate Steve Forbes, of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, established last year to advance for conservative economic policies.

Kudlow is the intellectual forefather of supply-side economics, in which revenues climb as taxes decline, which has proven (graph below from here) as utterly absurd as it sounds.  Not your grandfather's- or anyone's- populists, he and Moore

also said they would recommend letting corporations use “immediate expensing of equipment” for tax purposes to spur investment and economic growth. This has become a top priority for many Republicans, though it wasn’t in Trump’s original plan.

It wasn't in Trump's plan as long as he was running as the anti-establishment alternative to Republicans tied to the establishment. Now faced with the critical task of mending fences with movement conservatives, the billionaire may recognize there is no better way to the heart of the GOP establishment than through a plan to reduce taxes on the wealthy and blow up the deficit (graph above from zFacts; its data from Bush 43 OMB).  He already has borrowed Rush Limbaugh's nickname for Bernie Sanders, and his transformation into a true-blue conservative while maintaining the bombast, belligerence and bravado of a faux populist may have only just begun.

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Nothing New Under The Sun With Stephen Colbert

Scott Timberg, a "staff writer for Salon, focusing on culture," is utterly baffled that Donald Trump could be interviewed by Stephen Colbert (video below) and not be "demolished."He shouldn't be.

Trump "has a nice sense of humor about himself" and "has become bulletproof," laments Timberg, who realizes the candidate

made this clear last night when he called in to “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” This should have allowed Colbert – one of the nation’s finest political satirists and the sharpest interviewer on late night – to skewer Trump hard. He set the bit up looking like he’d get the best of Trump, with an orange Trump wig on his bat phone.

Colbert is an excellent political satirist, which he demonstrates each night on The Late Show- as he did on "The Colbert Report"- when he does his stand-up (or, rather, his sit-down).  However, as an interviewer, he is poor, and not unintentionally.  On Comedy Central, Colbert did interviews strictly for laughs while presenting a facade of gravitas. Now on CBS, he plays the interviews mostly for laughs. As on "The Colbert Report,", he does "set the bit up" in such a way that he can be expected to skewer the interviewee, but backs off before he has a chance to offend his subject.  the commercial success which comes with ratings is key.

Timberg notes: “'I’ve got a suggestion,'” Colbert offers. 'Why don’t you have a swear jar? Every time you say a bad word, you put a billion dollars in it.” The crowd goes wild. Trump sheepishly agrees. “I’m gonna do that, I like that.' But he’s not defeated. He seems, oddly, like a good sport.'" That shouldn't be surprising, given that every guest on TCR learned what each one on The Late Show is learning: one needs only to be "a good sport" when interviewed by Stephen Colbert to look good.

Timberg acknowledges

When the two discuss politics, Trump mentions that he would, if he were president, push for a new Supreme Court justice to replace Antonin Scalia even if it was an election year — and then contradicts himself by saying that President Obama should wait for the next president to do it. (Colbert doesn’t call him on it the fact that this makes no sense, either.) Alright, sounds good!

Of course he didn't call the guest on a contradiction, though occasionally he will do so. However, Donald Trump may (although won't) become the next President. Additionally, he has a habit of condemning or viciously ridiculing people he doesn't like.  John Ellis Bush still is looking for his manhood and Megyn Kelly still is searching for her self-respect- or would be if she had any to find.

The Salonist adds

The audience had its laugh and Colbert got some good lines across. But the strange thing is that Trump won the exchange. He was mocked, laughed at, and booed by the audience. “You’re not making any friends here, Donald,” Colbert said as the crowd groaned. He may not have convinced the liberals and progressives gathered in the studio. But for a lot of people watching on television, this came across as just riffing. For them, this was just fun. For Trump it certainly seemed to be.

Just as Kanye West and Taylor Swift manipulate their public presences, alliances and feuds, Trump appears to know exactly what he’s doing, too. He’s spinning us all – even Colbert.

There is nothing strange about Trump winning the exchange. Nor is there anything unusual about spinning the extraordinarily smart Colbert. It's the way he wants it, and it occurs continually. It's the way he rolls and it's commercially successful. His synchophantic audience eats it up while clueless it is being played.

Concluding, Timberg remarks

What’s dangerous is that Trump can get in and out of an interview with someone as sharp as Colbert without being demolished. Colbert fans came out of this thinking their guy won, but Trump fans have every reason to think the same thing.

It’s not quite charm, but something more unusual, and more pernicious. If he’s elected, could Trump become the real Teflon president? Let’s hope we don’t find out.

What's really dangerous is that the more consistently right-wing Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio also "could get in and out of an interview with someone as sharp as Colbert without being demolished." Smile a lot; laugh a little; be charming throughout, the sort of thing jsut begging to be pulled off by shallow Marco.  It's not a complicated formula and it works every time with Colbert. And it will keep working as long as media members like Scott Timberg don't recognize their idol's own formula.















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A Made Man

"The inaugural issue of The Weekly Standard, the conservative magazine launched in 1995," writes The Atlantic's David Frum, "depicted then–Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich swinging into action, a submachine gun blazing in his left hand, under the headline 'Permanent Offense.'"

And now the GOP, the much-preferred party of the Weekly Standard (and still somewhat of David Frum) has Donald Trump on its hands.

Oh, it's not because of The Weekly Standard or Newt Gingrich, though each has played a part.  It has been a long time in the making, as described in July by author and professor of history Heather Cox Richardson.

It started, she implied, with Barry Goldwater but intensified with Richard Nixon, whose media advisor explained the psychological underpinning of the strategy when he once wrote

Voters are basically lazy. Reason requires a high degree of discipline, of concentration; impression is easier. Reason pushes the viewer back, it assaults him, it demands that he agree or disagree; impression can envelop him, invite him in, without making an intellectual demand…. When we argue with him, we… seek to engage his intellect…. The emotions are more easily roused, closer to the surface, more malleable….

But the major blow to appealing to reason and fact probably was struck by the administration of President Ronald(6) Wilson(6) Reagan(6) when

To avoid niggling fact-checkers, in 1987, President Reagan’s FCC abandoned the Fairness Doctrine, a decision that meant that public broadcasters were no longer required to provide their audience with opposing viewpoints. Within a year, talk radio had taken off, with hosts like Rush Limbaugh hammering home the vision of a nation gone to ruin, awaiting redemption from the latest Movement Conservative candidate. In 1992, Limbaugh began to broadcast a television show, produced by Roger Ailes, to take the story to viewers. By 1994, the show was carried by 225 television stations.Two years later, Ailes would become the CEO of a new media channel, Fox News, which used the same formula—albeit updated—that Ailes had used to package Nixon’s story almost 30 years before.

Richardson reminds us of the senior adviser to Bush 43, who dismissed the "reality-based community" because "that’s not the way the world really works anymore…. When we act, we create our own reality…. We’re history’s actors… and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

It is a "disregard for fact in favor of narrative," Richardson notes, which "appears  to have become so accepted in the Republican Party that it is now openly driving Republican presidential candidates."

The only thing missing in the professor's analysis is that one word which encapsulates the Republican approach and conservative mindse. Oddly, that comes from an economist, Paul Krugman, who the other day commented

The subtext was that real leaders don’t waste time on hard thinking, that listening to experts is a sign of weakness, that attitude is all you need. And while Mr. Bush’s debacles in Iraq and New Orleans eventually ended America’s faith in his personal gut, the elevation of attitude over analysis only tightened its grip on his party, an evolution highlighted when John McCain, who once upon a time had a reputation for policy independence, chose the eminently unqualified Sarah Palin as his running mate.

If attitude is one of the traits of Donald Trump- along with bravado,  dishonesty, misogyny, a simplistic view of minorities- it neatly encapsulated the style of McCain's running mate, and still does.  Addressing the delegates and guests in St. Paul, Palin asserted "I love those hockey moms. You know, they say the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick.'

Republicans were delirious with delight. The mainstream media swooned. Centrists found someone they just knew they could believe in.

No surprise there. We had experienced the same thing five-and-a-half years earlier when, as Media Matters characterized it years later

On May 1, 2003, President Bush landed on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln aboard an S-3B Viking jet, emerged from the aircraft in full flight gear, and proceeded to "press[] flesh," as The Washington Post put it, as he shook hands and hugged crew members in front of the cameras. Later that day, Bush delivered a nationally televised speech from the deck of the Abraham Lincoln in which he declared that "[m]ajor combat operations in Iraq have ended," all the while standing under a banner reading: "Mission Accomplished." Despite lingering questions over the continued violence in Iraq, the failure to locate weapons of mass destruction, and the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein, as well as evidence that Bush may have shirked his responsibilities in the Texas Air National Guard (TANG) during the Vietnam War, the print and televised media fawned over Bush's "grand entrance" and the image of Bush as the "jet pilot" and the "Fighter Dog."

It's how they've built the modern Republican Party, as Krugman and others- especially Richardson- have pointed out.  The monster they've created is different in style, but little different in content, from the rest of them. So criticize Donald Trump for all manner of things, including his (extremely tenuous) connection to David Duke (e.g., here, here, and here).  Or alternately ridicule, and apologize to, Trump, in the manner of Stephen Colbert (video below). However, as Colbert and others should realize, Donald Trump didn't drop out of the sky; the Republican Party is the test tube from which he has emerged, the gutter he has crawled out from.
















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Colbert's Folly

After watching Stephen Colbert's interview of Vice-President Joe Biden on CBS' Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Steve M. believes it likely

Biden won't run. Maybe that's a good thing. But I'll be sorry if we never get to see him debate the GOP nominee, who, I'm more and more convinced, will be Trump. Biden can seriously talk policy, but I wonder if the quantity of blarney he tosses into the mix, and especially the quality of sentiment, could be the magic bullet against Trump. Watch the Colbert interview -- when Biden talks about his son, you can hear a pin drop. I don't think Trump's bombast would be a match for that.

A person could not watch the Biden interview and come away without a much greater regard for the late Beau Biden, and a greater regard for his father, Joe. That's the way the brilliant,  experienced talk-show host planned it.

Assuming he does not announce for the Democratic presidential nomination, win the nomination, and win the general election, Joe Biden will be an afterthought and Stephen Colbert will still be stealing millions from CBS (not that there's anything wrong with that).

Admittedly, he may take a different tack to other politicians.   Colbert may like the former Delaware Senator so much that he intentionally conducted the puff interview to end all puff interviews, attempting to cast the grieving man in the best possible light.  Hopefully, Colbert's future interviews with individual any person who might become leader of the Free World will be worthy of the office in which he or she is interested.

In this one, however, Colbert's most piercing remark (at 8:12 of video below) was "I love how you say so many times 'my mom had an expression.'"  After Biden obliged with one of those homespun sayings, Colbert continued

And you know, there's one other person who said that and that's Thomas Jefferson and this is why I think people want you to run for President... and sir, I just want to say that I think your experience and your example of suffering and service, um, is something that will be sorely missed in the race. It's not that there aren't good people on both sides running but I think we'd all be very happy if you did run and if you don't, I know that your service to the country is something that we all should salute.

This was an unusual situation, interviewing a public official who has recently lost a son, but the man might become the 45th President of the United States.  Joe Biden is entitled to tell his story. But Steven Colbert should not be applauded for passing off the segment as anything other than an effort to promote the vice-president's potential candidacy.

Such fawning might not be unique in late-night talk shows, but it's something unexpected in someone portrayed as so clever and intelligent with a biting wit and willingness to go where no one else goes.   Colbert is as clever, and even more intelligent, as claimed. As for the rest, if last night's interview (and the initial show) are any indication, he's going to be just another late-night hack focused on fame and fortune.














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