WTF: August 13, 2020
AG Hedley LeBarr & President Donald Harrumph
In a masterpiece of verbal economy necessitated by a severely truncated vocabulary, Donald Trump squeezed racism, misogyny, the “money honey” (ew), a misspelling, and his 1950s/Mad Men worldview into one compact tweet.
“The ‘suburban housewife’ will be voting for me. They want safety & are thrilled that I ended the long running program where low income housing would invade their neighborhood. Biden would reinstall it, in a bigger form, with Corey (sic) Booker in charge!”
A couple of things: No. Doubtful as he doesn’t so much work but tweets that he’s working. Cool. And please put Cory Booker in charge of everything.
Why did he go after Booker specifically here? I have a theory. He’s Black. That’s mostly it, but also his Hollywood girlfriend is moving in. Don is longing for simpler days when his “exploits” as explained by “John Barron” were regularly featured in the NY Post’s legendary gossip column, Page Six.
So this made me think of a movie, a buddy comedy of days past, cheerfully skewering American racism, that I hear will be remade as an animated feature with… Samurai cats? Well that’s… interesting. But Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles starring Cleavon Little in his only major Hollywood role was a comedy with a message. It’s far from perfect, but the bottom line: the racists are the villians. Trump’s tweet reminded me of this scene:
In an example of the universe’s sense of humor and juxtapositional cognitive dissonance, the clip, for me, was preceded by an ad in which Gwyneth Paltrow, the whitest woman on earth, extols the virtues of Goop facewash on her skin. As a friend of mine, who liked to scramble sayings would say, I am not shitting your pants.
But the thing about our uniquely humorless President is that not only is his notion of the world tethered to a Mad Men reality where the only people with power are or should be white men, he would likely see Blazing Saddles as a serious movie and would love a jacket that says “PRES” on back. He also probably wouldn’t laugh at the campfire scene and it’s not because he’s too sophisticated, but that even fart jokes fly above his fussy tartar-colored coif.
No Title
Reminded me of Mel Brooks in Blazing Saddles pic.twitter.com/6EmQK8SsYl
AVClub: Blazing Saddles punched up—knocking out horses and a racist America in one swing
If you’re going to watch Blazing Saddles in 2019, your cringe muscles are going to get a workout. The film’s characters spray racial slurs all over the place. There are long, protracted, honestly funny-as-hell jokes built entirely around racial slurs. There are rape jokes, too. One of the film’s most celebrated scenes, Madeline Kahn’s seduction of Cleavon Little, is pretty much an extended running joke about German accents and dick sizes. (That scene’s final punchline was the one joke that Brooks was nervous enough to cut from the film: “I hate to disappoint you, ma’am, but you’re sucking on my arm.”)
Mel Brooks was understandably apprehensive about cramming his movie so full of racial slurs. But Richard Pryor, one of the film’s five co-writers, reassured him that it was okay, since the bad guys were the ones saying all the vile shit. (Brooks wanted Pryor to play the lead in the movie, but Warner Bros. didn’t think Pryor would be dependable enough to show up for work every day.) Pryor was right. Blazing Saddles is, in effect, a knowingly absurd comedy about how dumb racism is. A rapacious rich guy wants to run all the people out of a small town because the land’s about to be worth a lot of money, so he sends in a Black sheriff, knowing that the town’s residents will be too blinded by their own racism to look after their self-interests. Really, Blazing Saddles has as much to say about American capitalism as The Godfather does.
The saddest part of all of this is that Blazing Saddles was made in 1974 to hold a funhouse mirror up to American racism and looking in that mirror today, it kind of just feels like the same show, just different hats.
So I will leave you with this… a scene from the White House today with AG Hedley LeBarr and Donald Harrumph.
The Sideshow
No Title
Donaled, your racism is showing.-Cory https://t.co/jrHIoqJ8A2
Rosario Dawson headed to Newark as Cory Booker confirms ‘significant other’ is moving in
Newark can say hello to a new neighbor: Rosario Dawson. Dawson is moving to be with her boyfriend, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, after nearly two years of dating. The couple confirmed their relationship in 2019, during Booker’s presidential campaign.
No Title
The “suburban housewife” when Cory Booker “invades” their neighborhood pic.twitter.com/5FcQxsgpJK
The amazing story of Donald Trump’s old spokesman, John Barron – who was actually Donald Trump himself
Update: The Post’s Marc Fisher and Will Hobson are out with a fuller look at Trump’s use of both Barron and another false name — John Miller — while posing as his own spokesman. The story is fascinating and worth a look.
Newsweek would like to bring back birtherism with this “opinion” piece. Is this what we call published, barely concealed racism these days? Was Donnie’s mommy a citizen when he was born? Were more than 2/3 of his wives when his children were?
Some questions for Kamala Harris about eligibility | Opinion
The fact that Senator Kamala Harris has just been named the vice presidential running mate for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has some questioning her eligibility for the position. The 12th Amendment provides that “no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.”
