Discussion: Trump Will Ditch The WHCA Dinner Again Because It's 'Boring' And 'Negative'

Well, sure, that’s what the term “hate-watching” is about. Even MSNBC has to give people what they want. Some people want Rachel’s deep dives, and I’m glad. Others just want that delicious little frisson of horror at the disgrace du jour.

4 Likes

Hate watching, didn’t know it had a name. In other words, confirming our fear and loathing.

But on Rachel. She’s spoken several times about the Nixon admin giving its Watergate tapes to the deaf but very supportive Senator Stennis to listen to and report on what they revealed. This was in the context of Barr interpreting the Muller report for anybody who wanted to know what it said.

4 Likes

in sesotho, southern sotho language in southern Africa, there is a word that is used to describe white people, I’ll probably spell it wrong, lehoa, the translation of which as I recall is essentially “invisible” people, as I think white was used to describe the albino population (which was substantial in Lesotho)

tRUmp’s skin is so thin that lehoa would be a really good term to describe him IMO, as you can see right through his skin

5 Likes

He says he likes “positive things” instead.

Has he been to any of his rallies?

5 Likes

I want to thank whoever you are for your incredible leadership and say that your accomplishments here in whatever it is we’re doing have been truly the most that anyone in whatever your role is has ever accomplished.

Seriously good work on the books, though if you could go back (wait, forward?) in time and stop “The Impossible Dream” from ever having been written I’d be grateful.

3 Likes

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go
To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star
This is my quest, to follow that star
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far
To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march
Into hell for a heavenly cause
And I know if I’ll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will lay peaceful and calm
When I’m laid to my rest
And the world will be better for this
That one man scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To fight the unbeatable foe
To reach the unreachable star

2 Likes

You misspelled MAGA.

Good god, man, have some humanity!

1 Like

You’re just torturing me, right?

1 Like
1 Like

funny I genuinely misread that as “To be willing to disco that honor and justice may live”

Okay it’s been jolly good fun and we’ve all had a good laugh but I’ll be going back now to the land of good or at least not horrifically bad taste and you know the current millennium.

2 Likes

Poor poor thin skinned baby …
Aww…
(sound of littletiny violin playing"Nearer My God to Thee" in the distance).

1 Like

So the guy who - any chance he gets - will bluster and ramble for 1.5 - 2 hours full of self-promotion, self-pity, self-aggrievement, and self-aggrandizement calls other speakers boring. He puts the “bore” into boredom.

5 Likes

Trump also says his team has yet to settle on a rally location, but assures “it’ll be a big one.”

Moscow?

2 Likes

And look what it led to. No good at all.

1 Like

To be fair, I don’t think this is accurate. I remember reading long, long ago a review in the back of the Economist about a conference that had as its topic “humour”. The theme being explored (in both the conference and the writeup) was the “shock of recognition” and its role in the humour response. Now, this is probably an idea with an entire subsection of the Academy, its own vocabulary, etc but it was a new concept to me and one that really resonated.

To flesh it out a bit, the theory is that the mind builds up frameworks in which to interpret what’s going on in cognition, the “shock of recognition” is when you suddenly realize that the framework is wrong. Puns are an obvious example of this, you use a word that suddenly has a new context and you see the two frameworks collide - a “shock of recognition”. You can also see this in shaggy dog stories (those that go on, and on, and on and suddenly you have a punchline that shatters the framework).

Now, this is all well and good, but my theory about why conservatives don’t really grok humour is that they don’t really like change or seeing things in a different light (this is basically the axiomatic definition of what makes someone a conservative), so they really dislike experiencing the shock that is a punchline. They can set things up and, say, drop an insult but they can’t really use a story to take you to a “different place” without violating their core principles, what they want is a punchline that reinforces their core beliefs.

This doesn’t mean that a conservative can’t be smart, or lay out very,very, very complex arguments that can actually make sense, they just can’t handle change and humour is again, axiomatically about suddenly confronting change.

So, you want creativity, humour, new ways of seeing things? go left. You want order, structure, continuous process improvement? go right. You want a punchline? Go over there, this one is for the snacks…

6 Likes

A disturbing amount of conservative humor seems to rely on aggression and (especially) domination. No surprise it’s not really funny.

Great post, thanks!

8 Likes