First of all, Happy 59th Birthday to President Barack Obama.
What better way to celebrate than with one of the greatest cultural events in White House history from the first spring of the Obama presidency. On May 12, 2009, 'An Evening of Poetry, Music, and the Spoken Word' gave us a sneak peak at a song from a proposed hip-hop album that would become the Broadway classic 'Hamilton' six years later.
Will we ever have a White House that has such cultural highlights again?
Who, for example, visited the current president for a photo op (there are no musical or poetry performances there since 2017) during his first spring in the office?
Pick your favorite Hamilton-inspired Hanukkah production, "Hasmonean" from The Maccabeats or "A Hamilton Chanukah" (introduced by President Obama) from Six13.
On Saturday night, at the Ronald Reagan Building in the heart of the District of Columbia, this meeting of alt-right Trump supporters from the National Policy Institute took place, making it clear that alt=neo and right=Nazi, even lapsing into German and Sieg Heil salutes in case that formula wasn't previously apparent.
The duty of President-Elect Donald Trump would seem to be obvious -- offer a clear, complete, specific, and immediate repudiation of these supporters, but I guess we shouldn't be surprised that he had more important things on his mind during this weekend of his busy transition period.
On Saturday and Sunday mornings, the most important thing for @realDonaldTrump to tweet about was the fact that the Vice-President-Elect had been booed by some of the audience at Hamilton on Friday night and the cast had given a short post-show speech. The man who famously never apologizes predictably whined for an apology in three consecutive tweets over two days.
After venting about the need for precious snowflake VP Elects to have safe and special spaces, you would think he would have time to give one half-assed short Twitter rebuttal of his neo-Nazi fanboys, but he was distracted by another cultural atrocity on Saturday night, Saturday Night Live.
There's nothing surprising about Donald Trump's thin skin, but there is so much wrong with this SNL tweet: 1) Republicans are supposed to be as opposed to the equal time Fairness Doctrine as they are to Safe Spaces; 2) Equal Time is not really a consideration once the election is over; and 3) Donald Trump was literally THE HOST of Saturday Night Live on November 7, 2015. We have a President Elect who has no understanding of, or respect for, the First Amendment.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ UPDATE 11/22 at 8am:
The stubby little Twitter fingers of @realDonaldTrump still haven't addressed the Nazis speaking in his name, but he did roll off the wrong side of the bed early this morning and took three more shots at the nation's one essential newspaper, The New York Times.
According to the results of free non-scientific online tests, TBL found that he was "Existentialist", "Communist", and "A Grammar God," i.e., if he were a short wall-eyed Frenchman rather than a 6'3" blond American, he would be constantly mistaken for Jean-Paul Sartre!
