BY ED SIKOV | “Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart — you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, okay, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world — it’s true! — but when you’re a conservative Republican they try — oh, do they do a number — that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune — you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged — but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me — it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right — who would have thought?), but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners — now it used to be three, now it’s four — but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years — but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.”We begin this week’s Media Circus with a Golden Oldie: a transcript of Rump’s remarks (if you can even call them that) at a campaign event in Sun City, South Carolina, covered on C-SPAN, in July 2016:
No further comment is necessary — or even possible. Thanks to the Daily Kos for this gem.
PERSPECTIVE: Media Circus
Okay, I confess: I watch too much TV. I can’t possibly miss “This Is Us,” “Victoria,” NBC 4 New York news at 4 p.m., 5 p.m., and 6 p.m., “Nightly News with Lester Holt,” the three Chicagos (“Fire,” “Med,” and “PD”), “Late Night with Stephen Colbert,” and the only one I feel ever so slightly guilty about, “Dateline NBC,” which, countermanding the network’s exhortation, I must watch alone because my husband won’t be in the same room with it. As a result, I see lots of commercials. Two fairly recent ones caught my attention: one for couples’ getaways at Pocano Mountain Resorts and one for New York State’s Department of Health. In the Pocanos ad, various couples are seen relaxing in bubble baths and hot tubs. There’s the good-looking straight white couple, there’s the glamorous straight black couple, and oh my god there’s two gorgeous lesbians smooching in the foam! Cool! And hot!
In the second, a group of people extol the virtues of the New York State of Health program, including Ethan, a cute trans guy who can afford his transition specifically because of the Obamacare coverage afforded by the New York State of Health. He looks directly at the camera and says, “I’m happy and healthy!” Good on you, Ethan! And also on New York State, which clearly values inclusion, at least in its commercials.
On the website gizmodo.com, I found this amusing item by Matt Novak: “The leader of the Russian republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, was recently hit with US sanctions over human rights abuses such as his government’s torture and ‘purge’ of gay men. But there’s one thing about the sanctions that seems to particularly bother Kadyrov: Losing his Instagram account.
“‘The closure of his Instagram account is a matter of Kadyrov’s image, of his prestige,’ Oleg Orlov, the founder of a Russian human rights organization called Memorial, told The Guardian. ‘When he feels offended, nothing else is important to him—whoever gets in his way must be destroyed.’
“Kadyrov’s Instagram account acquired over three million followers and became an incredibly important propaganda tool for the autocrat before it was pulled down.”
But how is he going to follow the British diver and hunka hunka burnin’ love Tom Daley without an Instagram account?
“Regardless of where you stand on LGBT issues, everyone agrees human beings should be protected from violence and unjust discrimination, including when they subjectively identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or otherwise. But international coercion from the United States on LGBT issues can only lead to more violence and unjust discrimination.” This is Stefano Gennarini spewing — excuse me, writing — in The Federalist. Everyone except for the government and half the population of Chechnya, he means.
The title of Gennarini’s article says it all: “How Their Refusal to Tolerate Dissent is Creating a Global Backlash Against LGBT People.”
Why do people continue to throw us off of roofs and out of windows? Of course it’s our fault.
“Sadly, extreme LGBT ideologues do not accept reality,” Gennarini spits. “As the Masterpiece Cakeshop Supreme Court case shows, their goal, domestically and globally, is to impose social acceptance of homosexuality and transgenderism even on those unwilling to celebrate it. Inevitably, they are running into some roadblocks.”
No. I for one couldn’t give a rat’s ass whether some baker “accepts” me, let alone “celebrates” me. I do care about public accommodation laws that are supposed to prevent me from being refused service at a public establishment. If that baker ever refused service to Stefano Gennarini, we’d hear him screaming from the other side of the planet.
