GASLIT NATION WITH ANDREA CHALUPA AND SARAH KENDZIOR
This week Gaslit Nation gives in-depth context to the ongoing shitshow of the Senate impeachment hearings. We discuss what’s behind the media blitz of Giuliani goon Lev Parnas and the incriminating texts indicating the Trump crew was planning an attack on former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. We then analyze the GOP for what it is – an appendage of a transnational crime syndicate – and detail the institutional failures that allowed it to get there.
This week Gaslit Nation takes a look at two dynasties – the Trump Crime Family’s attempt to build a dynastic kleptocracy in the White House, and Meghan and Harry’s flight to Canadian freedom. Yes, like a dystopian US Weekly, Gaslit Nation takes on Megxit (we’re in favor!) and the issues surrounding it: racism and colonialism, the mendacity of the UK tabloid press, Prince Andrew the Pedophile, and the decades-long connections of the royal family to the transnational crime syndicate propping up Trump.
The morning after Ricky Gervais let loose on his celebrity audience at the Golden Globes was bound to be a stormy one on social media—not to mention the DM’s of Apple, Amazon, and Hollywood Foreign Press executives. Predictably, many chatterers accused the comic of spreading right-wing talking points, of being just plain unfunny, and, for good measure, of transphobia. To my mind, the most striking response came from the Los Angeles Times’s television critic, Lorraine Ali, in a charge repeated by the New York Times: “Forget the escapist magic of Hollywood,” Ali wrote. “Nihilism was the name of the game.”
Talk about missing the point. Gervais was doing something comics have done through the ages: reminding us that the glamorous emperors might be naked, and the loudest singers in church the most corrupt. “Apple roared into the TV game with The Morning Show, a superb drama about the importance of dignity and doing the right thing, made by a company that runs sweatshops in China,” he said in one particularly spit-out-your-coffee zinger.
Gervais’s politics are not easy to pigeonhole. He hates Trump, disdains climate-change deniers, and ridicules religion, calling himself a “godless ape” in his Twitter bio. Clearly, he has no love for corporate America. But he also finds elite identity politics and celebrity self-regard absurd. His heterodoxy means he is bound to offend some of his audience whenever he steps on stage. And so he did on Sunday night: “No one cares about movies anymore,” he riffed in his opening monologue to the assembled notables. “You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world. Most of you’ve spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg.
”Finding this funny—and millions of us did—requires thinking your average Hollywood bigshot is no more knowledgeable or interesting on the great issues of our time than my great aunt Gladys, even though they genuinely think they are. It also requires believing that Hollywood machers have considerable power and money, which means that their opinions, unlike my great aunt’s, have the potential to matter. Like all self-inflated hypocrites, they need debunking.Let’s admit that punching up, Gervais-style, usually comes with a whiff of envy. That’s especially true when it comes to Hollywood’s powerful, who have the added advantage of beauty, world fame, and wealth. Celebrities are to us as Olympian gods were to the ancients; the public wants to pore over details about their clothes, Los Angeles mansions, Aspen chalets, Cabo vacays, love affairs, yoga teachers, facialists, and plastic surgeons. We normal folks can only press our noses against the glass of dazzling parties like the Golden Globes—the name itself carries mythical undertones—with flowers flown in from Ecuador and Italy and a 100 percent plant-based meal, knowing that we will never be allowed in. It’s not fair.
And that’s exactly why Hollywood royalty should stay humble and respect their place in the cultural ecosystem. They are not politicians or Middle East scholars or historians or even ordinary people with an ordinary set of beliefs. They have uncommon power as a result of skills or gifts for which they have been celebrated and handsomely rewarded. They have every right—some might say, every obligation—to spread those rewards to the less fortunate: to fight the fires in Australia and help earthquake victims in Haiti and orphans in Darfur. But to use their position to lecture us about issues that they in all likelihood know about only from what they’ve heard on a friend’s podcast while running on the treadmill is something close to an abuse of power.As if to illustrate Gervais’s point, several actresses took the stage to spread their wisdom to their captive audience of more than 18 million. Patricia Arquette descended into an incoherent rant: “In the history books we will see a country on the brink of war. The United States of America, a President tweeting out a threat of 52 bombs including cultural sites. Young people risking their lives traveling across the world. People not knowing if bombs are going to drop on their kids heads and the continent of Australia on fire. I beg of us all to give them a better world. For our kids and their kids, we have to vote in 2020 and we have to get—beg and plead for everyone we know to vote in 2020.”Michelle Williams, a talented actress, decided that her gift endowed her with the perception to speak for America’s nearly 160 million women. Referring to the need to protect abortion rights, she urged women to vote in their “own self-interest.” “It’s what men have been doing for years, which is why the world looks so much like them.” Reese Witherspoon tweeted to her compatriot: “Thank you for being a champion of women, you are an inspiration!” Note to Reese and Michelle: you are “championing” barely a half of American women. The rest are ambivalent or in firm disagreement with you. In politicized times like these, there’s an in
Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich) appeared on Fox News’ a day after Donald Trump mocked her late husband during a reelection rally in the congresswoman’s home state (photo courtesy Fox News)
Rick Wilson on Trump’s Cruelty
We probably didn’t share a single issue. We used to occasionally scrap on Twitter in good fun. For a guy in his 80s when he hit Twitter, he was damn good at it, and that was for a reason. He’d been to the big show. He’d seen it all. For a guy in his 80s when he hit Twitter, he was damn good at it, and that was for a reason. He’d been to the big show. He’d seen it all.
I know that people I admired and admire thought the world of him personally. Republicans. Democrats.
In my long life in politics, I’ve always loved sitting down with anyone who knows the real, lived history of our time. I regret I never got to do that with John. I bet he had some hella stories.
Both parties to live too in the now and believe nothing existed before today.
What Trump’s attack betrayed, in case you missed the four obvious points of it, was as follows.
A. For Trump, the cruelty IS the message. He knew Debbie’s wounds were fresh, her pain real. He’s a sadist of the worst order; one who exploits the pain of the grieving.
B. He always projects. Trump knew in MI Dingell is still a beloved figure, and respected. Trump knows he’ll never have that. He’ll be a figure of fun, a term of insult, a sad clown womp womp laugh track.
He knows he’s more likely to be “looking up” from Hell.
C. His boundless, ravenous ego is a singularity of need, an insatiable maw demanding abject loyalty when he shows even the most minimal courtesy. Everything is transactional and disproportionate. Nothing is ever enough. It’s always “What have you done for me lately?” and FYPM.
D. Trump exists only in Trump nation, the agitprop bubble of his media lackeys and enablers.
He plays only to the mob, the unwashed and furious masses of a cohort educated only in their grievances and the imagined slights of their betters.
I wish to the gods there was one goddamn elected Republican in the world to call out his b.s.
Just. One.
But Profiles in Cowardice is the order of the day, and it is a party not only without stalwarts but one where the collaborators with evil see themselves are heroes.
So endeth.
Source: The Twitter account of Rick Wilson. HOBBLEDEHOY apologies to Mr. Wilson, as this was originally written as a multi-part tweet, and not a proper news piece, with all the limitations of Twitter. Mr. Wilson describes himself as “Apostate GOP Media Guy, writer, NYT #1 best-selling author of ETTD. “Digital assassin.”
(CNN) President Donald Trump attacked Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell and her late husband, Rep. John Dingell, during a rally on Wednesday, implying the former congressman was “looking up” from hell.”Debbie Dingell, that’s a real beauty,” Trump said of the congresswoman, noting he was watching her on television during impeachment proceedings.Trump said that he gave the family the “A-plus treatment” after John Dingell died, and that the congresswoman, who now holds his seat in the House, told Trump during an emotional call following John Dingell’s funeral that her husband would have been “thrilled” by the respect shown for him during his funeral and “he’s looking down” on the ceremonies.”Maybe he’s looking up,” Trump said, drawing some moans and groans from those in Battle Creek, Michigan, about two hours away from Debbie Dingell’s district. “Maybe, but let’s assume he’s looking down.”
