I mentioned yesterday that the media were still having difficulties explaining what happened on November 8th to their aghast and distraught readers. But it's getting ever more difficult to make a living arguing that Trump is Hitler: after all, every melting snowflake in every collegiate safe space can tell you that. So how about Trump is British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn?
Trump And Corbyn Have More In Common Than You Think
On the other hand:
Liberace And Donald Trump Have A Lot In Common
Does that mean Liberace and Jeremy Corbyn have a lot in common? Hard to see. Corbyn is notorious for the candelabra-topped bejeweled piano on which he tinkles "We'll keep the Red Flag flying here", whereas Liberace was regularly slumped on the floor in train corridors while traveling to assignations with fetching young men.
But wait. Maybe Trump isn't Labourace or Jeremy Candelabryn. Maybe he's a millennial pick-up artist as delineated by Neil Strauss in his investigation into the "seduction community":
On the other other other hand, Trump is Jean-Marie Le Pen:
Donald Trump has no champions in France — even those encouraged by his success routinely describe his performance in the US Republican primary as uncouth, and 75 per cent of the French electorate (according to, yes, another opinion poll) 'dislike' him. Trump is sometimes described as 'the modern Jean-Marie Le Pen' by voters who loathed Marine Le Pen's sulphurous father but might well vote for her.
Does that mean Jeremy Corbyn is Jean-Marie Le Pen? Aside from the anti-Semitism, obviously.
At any rate, Trump is Jean-Marie Le Pick-Up, LePenerace, Jeremy Campyn, and a fascist socialist pianist pick-up artist. And all that's just from the current issue of The Spectator. As Walt Whitman famously wrote of Trump:
I am yuuuuuuuge, I contain multitudes.
It turns out Trump contains everybody.
~If the media have no idea who actually won the election, they're reluctant to give up on who should have won. Newsweek has just launched a bold move to increase its circulation in Opposite Land and Bizarro Universe by publishing some of the post-election commentary the greatest J-school minds of their generation had pre-written and ready to go up until election night went south for them circa 9.30pm Eastern. But why let reality intrude? Trump won? Sez who?
Lots of outlets prepared for the opposite outcome. And so, thanks to Trump's unexpected electoral victory, there is now a massive, unprecedented content graveyard of articles celebrating or analyzing Hillary Clinton's would-be historic victory... Most of that content won't be read by anyone. But here is a small sampling. This collection is a tiny glimpse of what the internet would have looked like on November 9 if Clinton beat Trump, as so many pundits forecast.
I suppose this is like those "And here's one I made earlier" moments in cooking shows. Except that in this case the soufflé failed to rise - and, indeed, went down quicker than Monica. Still, given how obviously traumatized are the legions of saps who believed America's laughingstock media, I'm in favor of Newsweek keeping up this alternate-universe Hillary Presidency as a form of liberal therapy for the next four years - or whenever they cease publication, which seems likely to come sooner. Much sooner.
When you think about it, "content graveyard" is an ingenious phrase, simultaneously encompassing both American journalism's future and its indestructible complacency.
~While we're on the subject, are you worried about all this "fake news" that's out there? President Obama is:
Well, the most important thing that I'm focused on is how we create a common set of facts. That sounds kind of abstract. Another way of saying it is, how do we create a common story about where we are. The biggest challenge that I think we have right now in terms of this divide is that the country receives information from completely different sources. And it's getting worse. The whole movement away from curated journalism to Facebook pages, in which an article on climate change by a Nobel Prize-winning scientist looks pretty much as credible as an article written by a guy in his underwear in a basement.
Hmm. "A guy in his underwear in a basement"? I wonder who he has in mind there. As it happens, real Nobel Laureates are mostly relaxed about climate change (more on that in my book "A Disgrace To The Profession"). It's the self-conferred Nobel Fauxreates who are queenily hysterical about it.
But that's not the most obvious irony about the President's observation. It's more basic than that. Obama's bemoaning the rise of "fake news" to, of all people, Rolling Stone's Jann Wenner - the proprietor of a "curated journalism" publication that less than a month ago was hit with three million bucks in damages for inventing a fake rape perpetrated by a fake rapist for whom there is no proof of actual corporeal existence. So Jann Wenner's minions set to work to - oh, what's the phrase? - "create a common set of facts" about him.
In that sense, Trump and Haven Monahan have, as The Spectator would say, a lot in common. The media "created a common story" about him so appealing to their delusions that it became entirely irrelevant whether or not a real, actual Donald Trump exists - which, to judge from Newsweek's Fantasy Island presidency, he doesn't.
~Re my paean to Jerry Maguire, not every reader was similarly charmed:
"You had me at hello."
You lost me at Tom Cruise.
Angelica M Sharp
Manor, Texas
Oh, dear. Better steer clear of my new Spectator column arguing that "Trump and Tom Cruise have a lot in common". He had me at "Only Rosie O'Donnell".
~No sooner do I cite my cat album's mountain of five-star reviews at Amazon than another one shows up. This one is from Annette, who is easily pleased:
Five Stars
I love Mark Steyn and anything he writes or sings
Thanks, Annette. Alone on this planet, Trump and my cat album have absolutely nothing in common, because in the latter case the pussy grabs you. If you're looking for a stocking-stuffer sure to please the cat-fancier in your family, Feline Groovy: Songs for Swingin' Cats is available on CD - and, if you can't wait for the mailman, it can be yours in seconds via digital download from Amazon or iTunes.
