No one in Trump campaign expected Melania to get caught

By Dan Brooks in 2016 Election 0 Comment
Classy

Classy

It would be unfair to ask Melania Trump to write her own speech for the Republican convention. As the third wife of a billionaire 25 years her senior, she was not selected for her oratory skills. And can you imagine what it would be like to start in a Slovenian village and go on to marry the loudest asshole in America? Between Sevnica and Cleveland, she probably did some things she did not at first enjoy. My point is that Melania is through working, and we should leave her to peacefully wait out this last year of her husband’s life. In the meantime, hire a ghostwriter. Newt Gingrich would do it for lunch, I bet, and you could get somebody really good for money. This brings us to the question of whom the Trump campaign got—because, as you’ve no doubt heard, a portion of Melania’s speech sounded just like Michelle Obama’s speech from 2008.

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Trump almost never forgets 9/11

By Dan Brooks in Republican Candidates 3 Comments
Donald Trump reports for jury duty in August 2015. Photo by Andrew Burton

Donald Trump reports for jury duty in August 2015. Photo by Andrew Burton

It’s callow to laugh at Donald Trump for misspeaking, especially when he says so much risible shit on purpose. But there’s something pleasing about this flub:

I think what I want to do is I want to talk just for a second. I wrote this out, and it’s very close to my heart because I was down there. And I watched our police and our firemen down on 7/11, down at the World Trade Center, right after it came down. And I saw the greatest people I’ve ever seen in action. I saw the greatest people I’ve ever seen including the construction workers, including every person down there. That’s what New York values is about.

As Rudy Giuliani will tell you, New York values are about running for president of September 11. Trump almost does that competently here. He declares police and fire fighters the bravest people on earth, and then expands that superlative to everyone in his field of vision. He makes heroes of us all. He almost never forgets. But then he says that thing about 7/11 and the whole edifice comes crashing down. Questions:

  1. Is this the first time America laughed at 9/11?
  2. Is this the first time Trump admitted to writing down a speech?

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Lindsey Graham is free now

By Dan Brooks in Rhetoric, Uncategorized 0 Comment
Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC)

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC)

Lindsey Graham ran for president this year, and it didn’t go great. He ended up one of a dozen candidates knocked out by a celebrity clown and the most hated man in the Senate, and here lies American democracy in 2016. It’s a situation that invites frank assessment—something from which senators refrain on an almost professional basis. But as Miracle Mike Sebba recently pointed out to me, Graham seems to have embraced honesty. Here he is publicly reversing his position on Apple vs. FBI. Here he is declining the opportunity to pledge his support to the eventual nominee. And here he is at the Washington Press Club dinner, complaining that his party has gone “batshit crazy.” Together, these brushstrokes paint a much more likable Senator Graham. Maybe that’s because he more closely agrees with my politics now. But maybe it’s because he’s finally speaking candidly.

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The tomatoes in the word salad of Palin’s Trump endorsement speech

By Dan Brooks in Republican Candidates 2 Comments
Sarah Palin endorses Donald Trump in Ames, Iowa.

Sarah Palin endorses Donald Trump in Ames, Iowa.

Do not read it aloud or you will summon her, but the full text of Sarah Palin’s endorsement speech for Donald Trump is here. Props to Smick for the link. Palin’s style has always worked better in speech than it does in print. More than one journalist has complained that the hardest part of transcribing her is knowing where to put the periods. She hews to a verbless, pastiche style reminiscent of Allen Ginsberg, if Ginsberg worked primarily in cliché. What is most striking about Palin’s speech from last night is the way it swings from phrase to ready phrase—in it to win it, drill baby drill, failed agenda, lead from behind, we the people and, now, make America great again—much as Tarzan swings from vine to vine. She’s just hollering in the spaces between. Still, certain themes emerge. Video after the jump.

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This man who believes money is speech also has Tourette’s

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media 0 Comment
A Maine lobster and a possibly different Dan Backer

A Maine lobster and possibly different Dan Backer

Dan Backer is an activist for campaign finance reform who won McCutcheon v. FEC, the Supreme Court case that lifted aggregate limits on individual contributions to political campaigns. “Money in politics is great,” he told Marin Cogan of New York Magazine. “Restraints on political communication are fundamentally about protecting the status quo, and also about preventing people from having every bit of information they want to consume.”

Backer also has Tourette’s Syndrome. Showing remarkable restraint, Cogan puts this information in paragraph ten:

[Backer has] also helped organize the Stop Pelosi PAC and Stop R.E.I.D. PAC, and helps run the Conservative Action Fund, a tea-party group funded by Shaun McCutcheon. He is rarely the public face of these groups; Backer has Tourette’s syndrome, which causes facial tics and other TV-unfriendly gestures, like the tendency to gesture at you with both middle fingers as he’s speaking.

That’s a rich image. We often think of the claim that money can be speech as inherently disingenuous: you’d only believe that if someone paid you. The image of Backer delivering the Stockton heybuddy along with his argument must have been enormously tempting as a lead. Kudos to Cogan for not doing that, and for presenting Backer as someone who genuinely believes in his cause. I sure do disagree with him, though.