"Everything is as it should be."

                                                                                  - Benjamin Purcell Morris

 

 

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The Coronavirus Pandemic is Bad, but the Epidemic of Incessant Celebrity Attention Seeking is Much, Much Worse

Estimated reading Time: 3 minutes 33 seconds

A bevy of house bound celebrities have turned a global calamity into a stage 5 narcissism outbreak, where they compulsively spew their mindless thoughts and feelings upon the rest of us.

Coronavirus is a terrible malady that is killing people and the economy, but it isn’t the most pernicious pandemic afflicting the globe right now. No, the most diabolical disease currently in circulation is the dreaded Celebrivirus.

The onset of the Celebrivirus starts with a steady stream of verbal diarrhea gushing forth from empty-headed, self-absorbed, attention-starved celebrities, which is quickly followed by convulsive puking and rage headaches from the rest of us.

The most recent outbreak of Celebrivirus began with a plethora of Covid-19 related videos from a cavalcade of self-aggrandizing stars.

For instance, the consistently empty-headed Matthew McConaghey thought now was a good time to espouse his incoherent optimism regarding coronavirus.

The Typhoid Mary of Celebrivirus, Madonna, that aging taut-faced tart, rose from the grave that is her moribund career so that the she could, in the nude of course, benevolently inform us that Covid-19 has, in fact, made us all equal.

The perpetually petulant Serena Williams publicly lamented that she was “stressed” over the coronavirus. Poor Serena doesn’t have to worry about losing her job, or being evicted, no she’s stressed because she is safely tucked away in her mansion with her husband, daughter and her gobs of money.

Serena explained, “I don't hang out with anyone, and when I say anyone I mean my daughter. She coughed, I got angry and gave her a side-eye. I gave her that 'angry Serena' and then I got sad.”

Shock of shocks that Serena’s number one priority is the well-being of Serena, and not the health of her toddler daughter. Serena has a boatload of tennis championships, but it seems like the title that will forever elude her is Mother of the Year.

The Celebrivirus that forced McConaghey, Madonna and Serena to compulsively share their idiocy, has also mutated into song version.

Self-adoring U2 front man Bono caught the Celebrivirus bug and decided to share with humanity an original song he conjured related to Covid-19. Yikes…this song is pretentious EVEN FOR BONO, the Crown Prince of Pretension. Note to aging restless rockstars recording shelter-in-place mediocrity: At least make it remotely decent before you drown us in pompous indulgence*.

The most egregious of all the Celebrivirus videos came from Gal Gadot of Wonder Woman fame, who recruited a bunch of her patronizing and condescending celebrity friends like Kristen Wiig, Jamie Dornan, Mark Ruffalo, Amy Adams, Sarah Silverman, James Marsden, Natalie Portman, Sia, Labrinth, Pedro Pascal, Zoe Kravitz and Will Ferrell, who looked like he had just ingested his body weight in cocaine, to sing a truly nauseating version of John Lennon’s iconic kumbaya knock-off “Imagine”.

On the best of days “Imagine” is a cringe-worthy number, but in the hands of these smug and self-satisfied jackasses it rockets into the stratosphere of saccharine dreadfulness.

If John Lennon were alive to see this cloying, celebrity fueled monstrosity he would beat Mark David Chapman to the punch and shoot himself in front of the Dakota Building just to end his own mortification and misery.

The fact that these filthy rich stars, not a single one of which is not a multi-millionaire, chose to un-ironically sing the lyric, “Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can, no need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man”, when there are millions of people potentially facing evictions from their apartments, foreclosures on their homes, losing their jobs and life savings, not to mention the fear of getting sick and dying, is a staggering testament to their delusional fantasism and fatuousness.

Yes Wonder Woman and friends, people can imagine life with no possessions because most of them live a life with few or no possessions…especially now since the ranks of the unemployed are swelling from the coronavirus depression.

It is easy for these inane imbeciles to sing about a world of no greed or hunger because they are rich and nourished. I wonder if they hum “Imagine” to themselves as they drive past the filthy hordes living in cardboard boxes on the street?

It would have been less offensive if Gal and her cornucopia of celebrity clowns started a band named The Marie Antoinette’s then wrote and performed their new song titled “Let Them Eat Cake”.

These oblivious buffoons are so in the thrall of the Celebrivirus they actually thought their syrupy crooning from the security of their golden-gated castles would ingratiate them to the masses rather than inflame hatred.

When I watched these various vacuous and vapid Celebrivirus videos, I didn’t have the insipid “Imagine” playing in my mind. No, my soundtrack was Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android” with its wishful lyric, “when I am king, you will be first against the wall, with your opinion which is of no consequence at all”. 

On the bright side, at least the Celebrivirus is bringing ordinary people together out of common animosity toward these despised narcissistic nitwits. I know hate is supposed to be bad, but I think in this case it is healthy and helps to keep our collective immune system robust.

As for a cure for the dreaded Celebrivirus, scientists have found only one…and that is for celebrities to simply keep their moronic mouths shut. In other words…there is no cure.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

*This quote courtesy of my good friend…and an even better poet - The Irishman.

©2020

What's Eating Gilbert Grape? Trump, That's What!

Estimated Reading Time : 5 minutes 14 seconds

“HEY, BILLY BOY, BEEN READING THE PAPERS?” – WHITEY BULGER, BLACK MASS

 Johnny Depp has had an extraordinary acting career, but in recent years he’s been in the news for all the wrong reasons, marriage problems, financial woes, bad on-set behavior and even sneaking pets into Australia. Depp kept this current streak of bad decisions alive last Thursday when, while introducing a screening of his 2004 film The Libertine to an audience at the Glastonbury Arts Festival, Depp embraced violent language when speaking of President Trump.

Depp’s screed began when he asked the crowd, “Can you bring Trump here?”

When Depp was met with jeers and boos, he replied, “You misunderstand completely. When was the last time an actor assassinated a president? I want to clarify: I’m not an actor. I lie for a living. However, it’s been awhile, and maybe it’s time.”

Depp concluded by saying, “By the way, this is going to be in the press and it is going to be horrible. It’s just a question; I’m not insinuating anything.”

 “I AM NOT COMPLETE.” – EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, FROM EDWARD SCISSORHANDS

Depp’s diatribe is another in a long line of inappropriate remarks and actions by celebrities in regards to President Trump. There was Madonna’s “blow up the White House” remarks at the Women’s March in January, then the Snoop Dogg’s Ronald Klump video where the rapper jokingly shoots a clown-faced Trump character, and most recently Kathy Griffin’s infamous Trump beheading photo shoot. 

The thing that makes Depp’s comments even more thoughtless than those of his fellow celebrities is that they occurred less than two weeks after a left-wing lunatic, James Hodgkinson, literally tried to assassinate Republican congressmen while they practiced on a Virginia baseball field. Representative Steve Scalise is still hospitalized recovering from serious injuries as a result of the shooting.

“ME? I’M DISHONEST, A DISHONEST MAN YOU CAN ALWAYS TRUST TO BE DISHONEST. HONESTLY. IT’S THE HONEST ONES YOU WANT TO WATCH OUT FOR.” – JACK SPARROW, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN

The reaction to Depp’s screed was predictable, Trump’s family attacked the actor and White House spokesman Sean Spicer seethed.

Depp quickly apologized saying, “I apologize for the bad joke I attempted last night in poor taste about President Trump. It did not come out as intended, and I intended no malice. I was only trying to amuse, not to harm anyone.”

“WHY IS THE RUM ALWAYS GONE?” – JACK SPARROW, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN

In court filings, it was claimed Depp spends $30,000 a month on wine, which gives us a clue as to what fueled his ill-fated Trump joke. For this reason alone I think Depp’s apology is sincere.

“THE PROBLEM IS NOT THE PROBLEM. THE PROBLEM IS YOUR ATITUDE ABOUT THE PROBLEM.” – JACK SPARROW, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN

What interested me about this situation was not Depp’s empty-headed remarks, but from where they were born. Depp, Madonna, Snoop Dogg and Kathy Griffin are artists that have been very successful by intuiting what audiences want and giving it to them. I think Depp sensed the violent animus that pulsates through our political discourse and embraced its darker instincts in order to satiate his desperate desire for love and acceptance from his audience.

Anti-Trump sentiment has reached a crescendo in liberal circles resulting in the onset of a sort of madness. This anti-Trump fever brings with it an ever-escalating level of fury and is reinforced by a cosmological feedback loop that is vigilantly patrolled by the like-minded. Depp is symbolic of most liberals in that he has surrounded himself with those who think exactly as he does. He also limits his information intake only to things with which he already agrees. Any contradictory information is down the memory hole, and any who dare question the suffocating group think are exiled out of the bubble. I have experienced this strident thought policing first hand out here in Hollywood.

This means that Depp’s tirade is less a statement on the actor’s personal character and more an indictment of the rage and moral depravity that permeates our collective political culture.

“CLOSE YOUR EYES AND PRETEND IT’S ALL A BAD DREAM. THAT’S HOW I GET BY.” – JACK SPARROW, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN

Anti-Trump fever has made Democrats desert any moral or ethical grounding and jettison their compassion. This fever forces liberals to be blind to the humanity of their opponents.  This dehumanization believes that, “not only are Trump supporters wrong, they are evil”.

When you dehumanize your opponent, violent language becomes acceptable, and violence unavoidable.  James Hodgkinson is a glaring example of this, but so were the mindless mobs that rioted at Berkeley against Milo Yiannopoulis, at Middlebury College against Charles Murray, and the masked fool who punched Richard Spencer on inauguration weekend.

The reaction to these violent acts reveals the rot at the soul of our politics. After alt-right leader Spencer was punched, the internet, along with some mainstream media outlets, erupted in joy over the punching of a nazi”. While Republican Steve Scalise was still lying in his hospital bed with serious injuries, MSNBC host Joy Reid attacked him over his political beliefs. Nebraska Democrat, Phil Montag, was recorded saying he was “glad” Scalise was shot because the congressman is trying to take healthcare away from people. Fellow Nebraska Democrat Chelsey Gentry-Tipton thought it was “funny” that Republican congressman were crying over the shooting of Scalise and she didn’t feel sorry for them because of their pro-gun political views.  I can assure you, these heartless and thoughtless opinions are not confined to MSNBC and Nebraska, I hear them consistently in Los Angeles from angry Democrats too.

Just last week, Tony Foreman, an alt-right Trump supporter was stabbed nine times in Santa Monica by two men hours after a pro-Trump rally. While it is unclear whether this attack was politically motivated, right wing media have not been shy in declaring this to be another violent attack by anti-Trump forces. When viewed in the context of recent liberal behavior, it is difficult to mount an effective counter argument to that claim.

Let’s not kid ourselves, Democrats are not dancing alone to the music ofblind hate, Republicans are just as bad. A recent Pew survey revealed that 45% of Republicans hate Democrats and 41% of Democrats hate Republicans. Hate, like hypocrisy, cuts across party lines.

In May, conservative pundit Charles Sykes wrote a very insightful piece in the New York Times where he lamented the fact that conservatism is no longer a place of ideas but instead nothing more than anti-anti-Trumpism. Sykes point was that the most important thing in the eyes of conservatives is to infuriate anti-Trump liberals. I think Sykes is correct about the vacuity of conservatives, and the same principle-abandoning dynamic is true of liberals as well. This sort of blind partisan hate is going to devour us all, and engulf us in a conflagration that will destroy America.

“I WANNA BE A GOOD PERSON.” – GILBERT GRAPE, WHAT'S EATING GILBERT GRAPE?

So how to stop this downward spiral? For the moment I will direct my answer to my fellow Hollywood leftists among whom I live. Regardless of how awful you think conservatives are, liberals need to bottle the acid, stop unfriending people and start engaging them. Stop being so mindlessly emotional and start being strategic and thoughtful. Sharpen the sword of your arguments in the fire of debate, do not permit them to grow flaccid and whither in the safe confines of the left wing bubble.

“ALL MY LIFE I’VE TRIED TO BE THE GOOD GUY, THE GUY IN THE WHITE HAT. AND FOR WHAT? FOR NOTHING. I’M NOT BECOMING LIKE THEM; I AM THEM.”  - DONNIE BRASCO FROM DONNIE BRASCO

I am not a Trump supporter at all, but I know this, if you think he is a boor, then stop resisting him with boorishness. If you think Trump lacks decency, then stop resisting him with indecency. If you think Trump is a bully, then stop resisting him with threats and violence.

If you cannot change someone’s mind with your ideas, you certainly won’t be able to do it with your fists. If anti-Trump liberals don’t want to listen to me, maybe they should listen to Gandhi, who once said, “Conquer the heart of the enemy with truth and love, not violence.”

“YOU FIND A GLIMMER OF HAPPINESS IN THIS WORLD, THERE’S ALWAYS SOMEONE WHO WANTS TO DESTROY IT.” – J.M. BARRIE, FINDING NEVERLAND

I hope the resistance to Trump heeds Gandhi’s sage advice even if it is only for strategic reasons and not out of benevolent goodwill, but I fear that the anti-Trump fever, along with its conservative counter part the anti-anti-Trump strain, is too far along, and that we are in for a long, hot and violent summer.

Meanwhile, don’t blame poor Johnny Depp for his desperate attempt to gain acceptance with his audience by attacking Trump. Instead, we should blame ourselves, who not only permit this kind of hateful discourse among allies with our silence, but encourage it.

This article was originally published on Monday, June 26, 2017 at RT.

©2017

Trump - Griffin Scandal Underscores American Celebrity-Obsessed Culture

Estimated Reading Time : 5 minutes 38 seconds

Last week, comic and attention-whore Kathy Griffin posted a photo on social media of her holding the bloody, decapitated head of President Trump. The ensuing outrage was not the least bit surprising and was exactly what everyone involved craved.

When I first heard of the uproar over Kathy Griffin’s infamous Trump photo, I hesitated even reading the story because I didn’t want to feed Ms. Griffin’s ravenous hunger for fame. But Hollywood is my beat, so I reluctantly dove into the story.

My first impression upon seeing the controversial photo was to be startled by the grotesque face with vacant eyes staring back at me, I then realized that vile and surgically contorted mug was Ms. Griffin’s and that she was holding a cheap replica of Donald Trump’s head, severed and bloody.

Kathy Griffin, for those that are lucky enough to not have heard of her, is a talentless hack of a comedienne. A sad desperation seeps through her every pore, proof of which is her myriad of plastic surgeries and her aspiration to be a D-list celebrity. While Griffin is devoid of any and all talent, she is not entirely without skill, her lone proficiency being the ability to tirelessly and shamelessly promote herself.

Griffin’s “career” is littered with one self-serving stunt after another. She’s been banned from the television shows The View, Today and Late Night with David Letterman for her crude and obnoxious behavior. After this Trump photo controversy, she can now add CNN’s New Years Eve special, which she co-hosted with Anderson Cooper, as among the growing number of shows where she is no longer welcome.

Reading up on the Griffin story left me irritated, frustrated and fatigued. Once again some dopey celebrity was giving aid and comfort to Trump, a man I abhor, by diverting attention away from his catastrophic administration, and instead focusing it on their mind-numbing idiocy.

As Napoleon once said, “Never interfere with your enemy when he is making a mistake”, Hollywood liberals would be wise to stop ignoring Mr. Bonerpart’s sage advice.

Whether it be Madonna at the Women’s March, or Snoop Dogg and his Klump video, or Stephen Colbert and his “holster” joke, or Ms. Griffin and her ISIS-inspired photo shoot, the left-wing out here on the left coast keeps giving Trump a welcome distraction from his floundering presidency. With the President embroiled in a series of crippling investigations, leaks and a stalled agenda, now would be a great time for the liberal opposition to keep their mouths shut and let Trump get on with his self-immolation. But no, the temptation of attention is too great for those who endlessly thirst for it.

Which brings me to my central point, Kathy Griffin despises Donald Trump, but she is exactly like Donald Trump. Both Griffin and Trump have made a name for themselves by doing anything and everything to make a name for themselves.

They are both reality television stars, Griffin on My Life on the D-List and Trump on The Apprentice. Both of them require fame and attention like the rest of us do oxygen, and they both will do just about anything for it. Griffin once had a pap smear by a pool on her television show, and performed simulated oral sex on Anderson Cooper in Times Square. Trump has a long history with WWE professional wrestling, appeared fully clothed in a pornographic film, and has attached his name to everything from a scam university to steaks. Both of them have shown an astonishing ability to debase themselves and a remarkable shamelessness in their pursuit of fame.

This Griffin-Trump photo story is a perfect microcosm of all that is currently wrong with our celebrity obsessed culture and politics. You could have easily foretold the way this entire episode would play out from start to finish.

Kathy Griffin quickly apologized when the uproar over her photo became deafening, and then Trump jumped at the chance to play the victim. Both he and Melania made statements bemoaning how their 11 year-old son, Baron, was horrified by the photo.

Not to be outdone in the race for the crown of victimhood, on Friday Griffin held a tearful and defiant press conference with her press-hound lawyer Lisa Bloom, claiming that Trump and his family were bullying her and that she had received death threats. This script is as predictable as an episode of Real Housewives, but not nearly as dignified.

The reality is that both Griffin and Trump want this story to go on for as long as it possibly can because they both benefit from it. Trump gets a distraction from his disastrous presidency and bad press, and Griffin gets people talking about her, which is her lifeblood.

As I kept reading about this story and seeing the photo attached to each article, one of my favorite paintings, David with the Head of Goliath (c. 1610) by Italian Baroque master Caravaggio, came to mind. The reason I thought of Caravaggio’s painting is that in his work David holds aloft the decapitated head of the slain Goliath, much like Griffin holds the bloody head of Trump in her now infamous photo. Caravaggio painted multiple versions of this same event over his lifetime, but the one that has always moved me was the one currently hanging in the Galleria Borghese in Rome. I love this panting so much I actually made a pilgrimage to Rome a few years ago with the express purpose of seeing it. Witnessing the painting in person did not disappoint, as Caravaggio’s supreme talent and transcendent work resonated deep in my soul. What makes this painting so fascinating, besides the masterful skill required for its creation, is the subtext of the story it reveals.

In the painting, Goliath’s lifeless face is also that of the artist, Caravaggio at the time of creating this masterpiece. It is also said that the face of David in the painting is that of a young Caravaggio. And unlike Caravaggio’s other renderings of this scene (the one on display in Vienna for instance), in the Borghese version, David is not triumphant, or proud of his conquest of Goliath, rather he looks down at the giant’s lifeless head with “an expression of sadness and compassion”. Caravaggio’s David with the Head of Goliath is not only a depiction of the story of David’s victory over Goliath, but of Caravaggio’s own struggle against his inner demons.

In relation to the current scandal du jour, it would have been much more interesting if Kathy Griffin and photographer Tyler Shields had the artistic vision and courage to eschew the usual attempt at trying to muster shock and garner attention, and instead recognized that Griffin and Trump are both symptoms of the same disease, celebrity, that ravages America, and let that fact be reflected in their work.

For instance, if Kathy Griffin had been photographed dressed as young David, with a sword in her right hand and her left her breast exposed (in order to mimic the painting and supply the titillation both she and Shields crave) while wearing a Trump wig, as she looks down with “an expression of sadness and compassion” at Trump’s decapitated head in her outstretched hand, then Griffin and Shields would be saying something both artistically and politically worthwhile. The symbolism of the eternally vapid Griffin mournfully understanding that Trump, the Goliath of vacuity, is just a larger version of herself, might awake America from its collective cultural and political madness.

That is what great art does and why it is so vital, it reveals a larger truth that resonates both personally and collectively for its audience. Instead, Griffin and Shields went the cheap and vacuous route in their photo shoot searching for the instant gratification of agitation and satiating their adolescent emotional needs rather than the more difficult, but ultimately rewarding, work of telling an artistic truth.

What makes Caravaggio’s painting so exquisite is that it is a work of artistic introspection that tells an uncomfortable truth about both its creator and all of humanity, while the Griffin and Shields photo is one of shallow projection meant to allow the artist to continue to lie to themselves.

Griffin and Shields lack of self-awareness does tell a wider story about narcissism run amok in America, but unintentionally, and that worthy revelation is only born out of the artists own unconsciousness and not out of any artistic vision or insight.

What our emaciated culture and politics truly need right now is a lot more Caravaggio, and a lot less Kathy Griffin. Sadly, as we spiral deeper into a new Dark Age fueled by our insipid celebrity obsession, there are no signs of a cultural and political Renaissance on the horizon. We are stuck with the culture, and the politicians that we have dutifully earned and so rightly deserve. Kathy Griffin and Donald Trump are living proof of that.

This article was previously published on Saturday June 3, 2017 at RT.

©2017

Greg Gianforte, Punching Nazis, and the Absence of Moral Authority

Estimated Reading Time : 5 minutes 14 Seconds

On Wednesday night of this past week, the night before the Montana special election for a vacant congressional seat, republican candidate Greg Gianforte body slammed and repeatedly punched Ben Jacobs, a reporter for The Guardian newspaper. The story of Gianforte's attack spread quickly and was accompanied by Jacob's audio recording and eyewitness accounts of other media members who witnessed the event.

Upon reading accounts of the incident and hearing the audiotape, my first reaction was at odds with those that were relaying the story to me on the television…I thought this would insure Gianforte's victory, not impede it. Our current political culture is so toxic and distorted that it makes Gianforte's assault into an act of decisive courage, not one of unsettling violent impetuosity.

You get the government you deserve, and the people of Montana deserve Greg Gianforte. But Montana is not alone in their preference for the unhinged bully. The biggest example of this is, of course, Donald Trump, who huffed, puffed and bullied his way into the White House.

The media quickly came to the defense of their compatriot Jacobs and rightly condemned Gianforte. Shouts of fascism and the perils of the war on the press were hot talking points surrounding the Gianforte assault. Much blame was placed at the door of republicans in general and Trump in particular. What struck me though was a complete lack of self-reflection regarding the acceptance of violent speech and outright violence on the part of liberals and the resistance movement that have heightened our already strained and sweltering political climate. 

The most famous case of violence from the left occurred on inauguration weekend when a masked man infamously sucker punched alt-right firebrand Richard Spencer as he stood on a D.C. street corner conducting an impromptu interview. Much hilarity ensued on the internet when people created gif's and memes of the video of Spencer being punched. The mainstream media did not condemn the violence, they laughed right along with liberals and other resistance fighters. The New York Times wrote a piece asking if it was ok to punch a Nazi. The answer was basically…always. 

Nazis are so evil that not only CAN you punch them, you SHOULD, or so the theory goes at the moment. Nothing is out of bounds when taking on fascists, as the antifa (anti-fascists) will tell you. And we have seen this play out across the country this past year.

There were the riots at the University of California at Berkeley when protesters tried, and succeeded, in stopping right wing glamour boy provocateur Milo Yiannoppolis from giving a speech. The same occurred at Middlebury College in Vermont when Charles Murray, of the Bell Curve fame, was invited to speak at the school. Murray and a professor were physically assaulted and driven off of campus by protestors in a violent and chaotic scene. 

The election was filled with much violence as well, from Trump supporters assaulting protestors to anti-Trump protestors assaulting Trump supporters. The clashes that erupted in Chicago at a Trump rally between pro-and anti-Trump forces, echoed of the insanity of the '68 democratic convention. 

I have written numerous articles since the election about the perils of violent speech emanating from the left. Madonna's remarks at the Women's March and Snoop Dogg's anti-Trump video were just two such instances of the left embracing the dangerous language of the aggressor. Add to that the knowing nods of approval from the mainstream media over the Richard Spencer assault and liberals are left stripped of any moral authority whatsoever in regards to this issue. Their shock and horror at Gianforte's repulsive behavior rings hollow and hypocritical. 

When liberals excuse and exalt themselves for literally "fighting" Nazis, they set themselves up for defeat. Liberals will end up losing the argument and the fight, if it ever comes to that. Liberals will be blamed by voters for any appearance of lawlessness and chaos when riots break out, but the right will not be blamed for organized counter attacks, as we witnessed in the clashes at Bekreley last month. Martin Luther King understood this strategy well, and through the use of patient non-violence he turned public opinion in his favor when images of calm, peaceful protestors being beaten by a vicious and chaotic police force revealed who the lawless really were in the civil rights struggle.

And just as a practical, strategic matter, God forbid it ever comes to this, but liberals have positioned themselves as devoutly anti-gun, and their opponents in any potential civil war battle that could be shaping up are not unarmed, in fact, they are armed to the teeth. So liberals will end up being the fools who show up to a gun fight with nothing but their fists and righteous indignation, a surefire recipe for slaughter. That won't end well for liberals in the long term, and neither will trying to match the right bully for bully and assault for assault in the short term. 

This is a time in history when "strength", or at least the appearance of strength, draws instinctual support from many voters. The right went for their own type of strongman in Trump in the last election, a way for his voters to attempt to quell their fears and anxieties.  Trump's appearance of strength is a mirage, he is a hollow, cowardly man. This is why the left must counter this type of vacuous "strength" with a genuine spiritual strength. This is not the "strength" of a man like Trump (or Duterte or Erdogan), but rather the strength of men like Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Ceasar Chavez, Thomas Merton and Thich Nhat Hanh. The moral and ethical strength of these men should be the guideposts for the resistance movement. These men did not fall for the trappings of myopia and the easy path of the punch, they played the long game, and maintained their righteousness throughout without ever letting it turn into righteous violence. 

Look, I know all too well the temptation and appeal of a little bit of the old ultra-violence. Punching people, especially those who you think deserve it, feels really, really good….in the moment. But it rarely, if ever, feels good in the long run, and it is even more rare for it to be effective.  

The problem with believing it is ok to punch Nazis, is that your opponent can and will appropriate that mindset and make it their own. And as we have seen many times, who we label a Nazi is in the eye of the beholder. Bush was Hitler, Obama was Hitler, Hillary was Hitler, Trump is Hitler. If punching Nazis is now within the norm, your enemies will simply label you a Nazi either before of after they punch you. Gianforte thought he was righteous in hitting Jacobs, the masked man who hit Richard Spencer thought he was righteous, the old coot who punched a protestor at a Trump rally thought he was righteous…we all think we are righteous and our opponent is evil, so we give ourselves permission to do all sorts of unthinkable things.

The moral of this story is that punching Nazis is fun, unless you are the Nazi. And the truth is, as our political culture spirals ever faster and further down into delusion and madness, we have all become Nazis, and I fear we have the government and politics we so richly deserve.

©2017

Express Yourself? Madonna Don't Preach!

Estimated Reading Time : 4 minutes 11 seconds

 

At the Women’s March on Washington this past Saturday, Madonna tried to cut President Trump down to size with an impassioned speech, but she ended up helping her opponents and hurting her cause.  

Let me say right up front that I am not one of those people who thinks celebrities should never talk about politics. I feel that all Americans, celebrities included, should share their thoughts as they see fit. Of course, I also believe that people, celebrities most especially due to the size of their audience, should be held to account for what they say. Which brings us to Madonna and the Women’s March on Washington inauguration weekend.

 At the anti-Trump/pro-woman event this past weekend, Madonna gave a profanity-laced speech where she said, in part, “Yes, I am angry. Yes, I am outraged. Yes, I’ve thought about blowing up the White House”.  No doubt the Secret Service are drawing straws right now to see who gets stuck with the miserable assignment of interviewing the erstwhile Material Girl. While most people will chalk up Madonna’s statement as just a bit of emotionalist nonsense, the Secret Service, sadly for them, don’t have that luxury.

While the 58 year-old, former pop-princess isn’t entirely culturally irrelevant, she can certainly see irrelevance from her backyard. Madonna’s artistic insignificance aside, her diatribe at the rally this past weekend will no doubt bring her some much-desired attention, but it will also most certainly undermine the anti-Trump cause for which she alleges to be speaking.  

Problem number one with Madonna’s speech is that you cannot decry what you consider to be Donald Trump’s outrageous statements by making outrageous statements of your own. Doing so only serves to highlight your own hypocrisy and diminish and normalize what you believe to be Trump’s inappropriateness. In addition, violent speech, whether it comes from Madonna or Trump or anyone else, simply cannot be permitted to stand unchallenged in the public square. Violent speech eventually can lead to violent action. This was on display at a Trump rally in North Carolina during the campaign where a protestor was sucker-punched by a Trump supporter after candidate Trump had talked of getting tough with unwanted agitators. Conversely, this past weekend, alt-right leader Richard Spencer got punched in the face in broad daylight by a masked man while giving an interview on a street corner in Washington D.C. Regardless of what you may think of the protestor at the Trump rally or of Richard Spencer, there can be no tolerance for violence towards people because of their political beliefs. If you can’t convince people of your argument with your words, you certainly won’t convince them with your fists.

Speaking of failing to convince people of your arguments, who, exactly, was Madonna trying to sway with her diatribe? Like Meryl Streep’s recent speech at the Golden Globes, Madonna’s tirade was not meant to persuade anyone, only to preach to the already converted.  Madonna and Meryl both gave their immediate audiences what they wanted, and got the cheers they expected, the problem though is that while their speeches were directed towards those who agree with them inside the Hollywood bubble, ‘regular’ people in flyover country heard them as well.  Among those flyover folks are the swing voters democrats need to convince if they want to stop Trump and get back into power. I am willing to bet those 80,000 or so working class white voters, or as I call them “Springsteen voters”, who voted Obama twice and put Trump over the top in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin in 2016, were less enamored with Madonna’s screed than the true-blue liberals cheering her at the Women’s March.

 President Trump tweeted his response to the protests. “Watched protests yesterday but was under the impression we just had an election! Why didn’t these people vote? Celebs hurt cause badly.” I am not a Trump voter or supporter, truth is I dislike him “bigly”. That said, he is spot-on about that last part, “Celebs hurt cause badly”. Trump knows his target audience extremely well, and he is well aware that Americans in the Heartland, chief among them the “Springsteen Voters”, are tired of being preached to and looked down upon by liberal coastal elites, so anytime a celebrity or the media attacks him, Trump gets considerably stronger and his opposition gets weaker.

 While Madonna’s rant may have felt good to her personally and momentarily excited her cohorts in the democratic base, it was terribly counter-productive in terms of a strategic resistance to Trump. Madonna and Meryl Streep are both so deeply entrenched in their own epistemic echo chamber that they are unable to grasp how their harangues are heard by the great, unwashed masses in Middle America. To swing-voting ‘regular’ Americans, these anti-Trump speeches are not heard as heartfelt emotional rebuttals against President Trump, rather they are heard as the self-serving tantrums of spoiled entertainers.

 If celebrities want to truly help their cause and hurt Trump, they need to stop thinking and acting emotionally and start thinking and acting strategically. Instead of urgently reacting to everything Trump says, they should methodically and rationally respond to what Trump does. They should be all the things they claim Donald Trump is not, they should be measured, calm and thoughtful. Before they utter a single word, they should think about how those pivotal Springsteen voters in the Rust Belt will hear the message they are trying to convey. Those swing voters can be convinced, and democrats have swayed them before, so instead of calling them racists or idiots or misogynists because they voted Trump, liberals should lick their wounds and then set out to methodically persuade them back to their point of view using logic and reason and not emotion.

 One final point, here is a piece of anecdotal evidence I will share with you. On the day after the Women’s March, I had a discussion with my neighbor here in Los Angeles. She is a woman in her late thirties originally from Pennsylvania (everyone who lives here is from somewhere else). When the subject of the Woman’s March came up she told me that “all of her female friends” had gone to the march. I was really surprised and impressed to hear this and it made me think the rally and resistance to Trump had a deep base and were very wide spread. I then rattled off a list of names of her friends from Pennsylvania, asking if they went to the march.

“Did Lisa go?”

 “No.”

 “Did Jenny go?”

 “No.”

 “Did Karen go?”

 “No. None of my friends from Pennsylvania went, only my friends from LA.”

 “Oh,” I said, the bigger picture becoming more clear, “but what did your Pennsylvania friends say about the march on Facebook?”

 My friend paused a moment and then replied, “They didn’t really comment on it at all.”

 This conversation is one of the reasons why I believe that Madonna and other celebrities fail so miserably when they carelessly attack Trump. Madonna and Meryl Streep’s fellow travelers in the liberal big cities will cheer their every word, but the “Springsteen voters” who can make the electoral difference in Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, will either tune out, be turned off to the liberal cause or be turned on to Trump at the sound of celebrity political pontification, even when it comes from their idol Bruce Springsteen.

 I am sure Madonna felt invigorated giving her speech surrounded by adoring fans this past Saturday, but she won’t feel so great when she has to give another speech to the same group of down-trodden liberals after Trump’s inauguration in January of 2021. If these celebrities really care about the anti-Trump cause, they would be most wise to think long and hard before assailing him so recklessly. Everyone has the right to speak, but strategically it is sometimes best to keep your mouth shut. As the old saying goes, “better to remain quiet and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt”.

Previously published on January 24, 2017 at RT.

©2017