Ex-President [Expletive Deleted]

 

From September 15, 1973...

Mike Stivic:
Watergate. Watergate. Watergate. Watergate. Watergate. Watergate. Watergate. Watergate. Watergate. Watergate!
Archie Bunker:
Don't say that no more, GODDAMN IT!
Edith Bunker:
You shouldn't swear like that.
Mike Stivic:
You shouldn't swear like that, Arch.
Edith Bunker:
Ever since this Watergate thing, it's GD this and GD that.
Archie Bunker:
That ain't swearing, Edith, GD. The first word there is God. How can that be a swear word? The most popular word in the Bible. The second word, that's damn, that's a perfectly good word, you hear that all the time, like they dammed the river to keep it from flooding, see? And even in the Bible you read where some guy is damned for cheating or stealing or having "insex" in the family. And who damned him? Who else? God. God damned him. Edith, beautiful words right out of the Holy Book. Don't show your ignorance!

The setting of linguistic standards for broadcast radio and television is a very fluid matter, and it runs in both directions - toward and away from absolute freedom of speech. In my high-school years, All in the Family pushed a lot of limits, using slang descriptions of ethnic groups and sexual orientations in the early 1970s that would be taboo on the air or in polite company in 2020. Their broadcast use of  the relatively mild expletive "Goddamn It!" also expanded freedom of televised speech in 1973, and even appended Archie's defense of the everyday expression of disapproval or exasperation. Slightly earlier, its use on the radio with the Grateful Dead's 1970 "Uncle John's Band" also broke broadcast barriers ("God damn well I declare | have you seen the like? | their walls are built of cannon balls | their motto is 'don't tread on me'" [a prophecy of the Tea Party?]) Now, however, because every mention of the words "God" and "damn" in combination will invoke the knee-jerk wrath of self-proclaimed guardians of American Fundamentalist Christianism, the networks have turned into cowards. As quoted in this NPR article "Bleeping Out Words" from 2009, the Standards & Practices department of All in the Family's old network CBS replied via email: "No gd on cbs." NBC also told NPR "As a general rule, we would not permit 'GD' to be used on our air. We would bleep one or the other...usually the first word." All of this network cowardice, despite the fact that the FCC does not consider "God damn" or its variants to be legally profane.

This is all to show that definitions of profanity change, so there is no reason that the "T-word" -- the family name of the person who is currently squatting in the White House for 70 more days -- should be heard on America's airwaves anymore. It can easily become the eighth word to join the Seven Words You Can't Say on TV, and I can stop using it here on my blog even though it's been used in almost every single post since 2015. Standards can change. The euphemisms You-Know-Who, or Mango Mussolini, or Adolf Twitler, or Cheeto Jesus, or Orange Julius Caesar, or Cadet Bone Spurs, or Putin's Puppet, or Putin's Puppy, or Short-Fingered Vulgarian, or Sore Loserman, or Diaper Don, or The Whiner In Chief, or Bunker Boy, or Trumpelthinskin, or The Groper In Chief, or The Dick Tater, or The ImPOTUS, or Tangerine Trash-Can Fire, or Lame Duck à l'Orange, or... , can all be used in place of the T-word without losing any meaning, or causing any confusion about the subject of one's sentence.

A quote worth remembering from the Notorious RBG

 It's worth remembering this quote from the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg captured on my television screen on July 12, 2016.

"I can't imagine what the country would be with Donald Trump as our president." - Ruth Bader Ginsburg #NotoriousRBG pic.twitter.com/UfufNQCf06

— True Blue Liberal - #BidenHarris2020 (@TrueBlueLiberal) July 12, 2016

She tempered these statements about the Republican nominee for President soon after they became public, but that didn't make them any less true. None of us -- in our worst prognostications -- could have imagined what the country would become with Donald Trump as our president.

Trump Steaks! They're INNNNSANE!

After stumbling on this commercial for Trump Steaks, something became immediately obvious,...

...the real-estate con man from Queens (who also failed with Trump Steaks, Trump "University," Trump Foundation, Trump Taj Mahal, Trump Soho, Trump Airlines, the Trump "Administration," etc., etc.) missed an opportunity to be the next pitchman for another New York institution, Crazy Eddie's appliance stores.



Rather than becoming an on-screen television personality where he played a "successful billionaire" and a president, maybe Donald Trump would have finally found his true niche in selling televisions instead.

The Finest White Whine: The Mission Statement of Donald J. Trump

"I am the most fabulous whiner. I do whine because I want to win, and I'm not happy about not winning, and I am a whiner, and I'm a whiner and I keep whining and whining until I win." -- Donald J. Trump on CNN, August 11, 2015 

And just in case you think that this quote is just "Fake News" from CNN, there is video of this ultimate #FineWhiteWhine from the current resident of the White House:



This video also shows how the supremely-unqualified Trump was coddled and given free airtime by CNN and the rest of the news-hungry media in the summer of 2015.

How to keep your Trump Anxiety Disorder from becoming Trump Derangement Syndrome

Not only is Trump Anxiety Disorder (TAD) an actual diagnosis from actual therapists, but it's hard to trust anyone who isn't suffering from it; if you don't have at least a touch of TAD, you're not paying attention. Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) may be more of a pejorative diagnosis from Donald Trump's supporters at Fox News and Donald Trump himself, but it's also a real danger. While recognizing the real danger of Trump and Trumpism to the nation and the world, we shouldn't let it dominate our lives. A serious case of TDS would make it hard to appreciate all the non-Trump areas of our world; I can imagine a TDS sufferer getting so bad that doctors would prescribe a radical treatment of pulling all the electronic links and asking him or her to take a retreat to a world of nature hikes and vinyl records and books that were printed before 2016. During Vietnam and Watergate, I was very politically active, going to marches and writing letters to the editor -- maybe a little obsessed at times -- but there was no 24-hour news on television (there was no 24-hour television, period), so I got a natural break from Nixon to read books or listen to records or play guitar. There was literally no news available between the time the TV networks played the national anthem and signed off at midnight until the local newspaper arrived on your doorstep the next morning.

I was recently laid off. For the first time in forty years, I don't have a workplace to go to every day. I was worried about the temptation of daytime cable news and its ability to turn my TAD into a case of incurable TDS (I've seen those people on Twitter who tweet fanatically about every "Morning Joe" guest), so I've taken a few steps. I've lived completely without television for years before, but I didn't take that drastic step this time. I was able (after too much time on the phone with Time Warner Spectrum) to reduce the number of available channels to the lowest number, basically the New York over-the-air channels (if I lived in a place where I could get TV over the air) and C-Span and some shopping channels. No Netflix. No Amazon. No Hulu. No HBO. No ESPN(s). No Fox News (not that I watched anyway). No MSNBC (sorry, Rachel). No CNN. No panels of  "experts" trying to attract eyeballs 24/7/365 with manufactured political conflict. No Corey Lewandowski or Alan Dershowitz or Rudy Giuliani or Kellyanne Conway popping up unexpectedly on my television to cause an outbreak of TDS inflammation. It's not as good as the days when there were only three stations, but I have it close to the point where there's never anything on worth watching. Like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I want to get to the point where I'm only tempted to watch PBS NewsHour and nothing else.

In addition to the steps I've taken with my TV, I'm also trying to cut down my time on Twitter, where  reactions to insane @realDonaldTrump tweets seem to hijack all conversations. I don't follow his account, but somehow I never miss a tweet of his as everyone on the left spreads his words. If you are following him on any social media platform, please stop; he assumes all followers (even the obviously fake accounts from Saint Petersburg troll farms) are supporters. You'll hear what he has to say anyway; you can't avoid it.

All that being said about steps to avoid TDS, let's not forget who made up the term. In an article in Salon by Chauncey DeVega two weeks before the inauguration, "You have been warned: 'Trump Derangement Syndrome' will be a cudgel used to silence his critics," the danger was explained succinctly:

The right-wing propagandists who will deploy "Trump Derangement Syndrome" against their enemies have one ultimate goal: to normalize the danger to American democracy represented by Trump and his supporters.

But still, I worry:

Is it an early warning sign of Trump Derangement Syndrome if you see the hashtag "#PumpkinSpice" trending and immediately get an image of the pumpkin-headed @realDonaldTrump as the sixth Spice Girl?

— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) August 28, 2018

This could be the most effective healthcare speech in the current Trumpcare 2.0 debate

Normally I'm not a fan of the American television and celebrity culture that has given us our current resident of the White House, but maybe that culture is also the best weapon to help bring him down too, or at least help neutralize his power to take away health insurance from those who finally gained it under President Obama.



Although if I ever watched late night television, it might be hard to decide between Kimmel and Colbert.

The Quotation of the Day -- and Slang Vocabulary Enrichment -- comes from John Waters

Maybe you knew before today, but until I read this in The Guardian, I had no idea what a 'Hair-Hopper' was.

When John Waters says that he has never watched a reality television show, Rebecca Nicholson asks him if he has really never seen The Apprentice, the show that brought Donald Trump to national prominence among America's couch-potato demographic.

 He answers:

“Never. No! I hated him before. I hate a hopper. A hair-hopper is someone who pretends they’re rich, who really wasn’t brought up very wealthy but now tries to brag that they’re rich, and they spend too much time on their hair.”

Mary Tyler Moore, December 29, 1936 - January 25, 2017

I loved you on The Mary Tyler Moore Show in the 1970s, but I fell in love with you as Laura Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show in the 1960s.

Question: How does a semi-literate TV addict spell 'unprecedented'?

Before the tweet was deleted and the spelling was corrected.

First of all, the major dictionaries of the English language should overrule their earlier selections in order to make "unpresidented" the word of the year for 2016.

Second, it seems there are only four possible explanations for this tweet from Donald Trump.

1. He has never read books or articles that contain five-syllable words.
2. He does know how to spell 'unprecedented,' and this was a purely Freudian slip of a man worried about how the electoral college will render its final verdict on Monday, possibly 'unpresidenting' him.
3. Vicious left-wing Twitter employees are trying to make him look stupider than he is.
4. The drugs he takes to keep him up tweeting at 4:30 in the morning are not without side effects.

Somewhere in America, Dan Quayle is laughing.

You can express your opinion in this Twitter poll:

What is your explanation for @realDonaldTrump's spelling of #unpresidented
(details about choices available here: https://t.co/qILRf23yQd) :

— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) December 17, 2016

If you don't want Donald Trump to attack you, just say the magic words, "Hail Trump!"

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.

The only books Trump cares about are the books he can cook.

"Hillary’s called me a 'xenophobe' a few times. How many people even know what the word means? Same with 'nativist'."-Donald J. Trump, June 2016

The Republican National Convention is beginning in Cleveland today. There are so many things to wonder about in the strange rise of Donald J. Trump's joke candidacy, but this quotation from a couple of weeks ago sums him up for me today. Has the United States ever had a major-party candidate who is as relentlessly and proudly anti-intellectual as he is? He could turn to his dictionary to look up 'xenophobe' and 'nativist,' but he's not a big fan of books. And who needs books when you can learn everything you need from "watching the shows"?

"...Patty's only seen the sights a girl can see from Brooklyn Heights..."

After hearing the news about Patty Duke passing away today at the age of 69, here's the song I'll have stuck in my head for the rest of the day; it should be stuck in yours too.



Meet Cathy, who's lived most everywhere,
From Zanzibar to Barclay Square.
But Patty's only seen the sights
A girl can see from Brooklyn Heights — What a crazy pair!

But they're cousins,
Identical cousins all the way.
One pair of matching bookends,
Different as night and day.
Where Cathy adores a minuet,
The Ballet Russes, and crêpes suzette,
Our Patty loves to rock and roll,
A hot dog makes her lose control — What a wild duet!
Still, they're cousins,
Identical cousins and you'll find,
They laugh alike, they walk alike,
At times they even talk alike —
You can lose your mind,
When cousins are two of a kind.
(Sid Ramin / Bob Wells)

The Trumpism of the Day

The quote of the day from the improbable GOP frontrunner came during an interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program yesterday. When asked to name his foreign policy advisors, Trump answered:

“I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things."

Hearing that, one can't help but wonder where that very good brain gets its data. Unfortunately, I think we already know. As with the people who support him, he admitted on CNN back on August 19th that he learns much of what he knows about the world from watching TV (which, until his highly-publicized romantic breakup with Megyn Kelly, meant an almost exclusive diet of Fox News' paranoid world view):

Finding this screen grab from last summer made me realize that we can all learn a lot from watching television; Mr. Trump seems to have gained some weight on the campaign trail. Hasn't he learned yet that all seasoned politicians are experienced bulimics who vomit out their endless trail of obligatory campaign meals and required ethnic snacks?

~~~~~~~~~~~~
Update at 3:30pm EDT
The foreign-policy-expert/candidate now also gets bonus bogus information from unverified internet postings as well as his television!

via GIPHY

Climate Change circa 1958

Maybe if President Trump or President Cruz succeed in taking the nation back to their dream decade of the 1950s, we can rediscover this film about human-induced global warming produced by Frank Capra for "The Bell Telephone Hour" in 1958:

Syd Barrett would have been turning 70 today.

Here's one of Syd's hits (though Syd himself, perhaps appropriately, doesn't appear in the film):


As I was watching this early Pink Floyd video of 'See Emily Play,' I couldn't help thinking that it looked as if this must have had some influence on the creators of the Teletubbies. A very quick search of YouTube then revealed this:

Tinky Winky needs to start studying the choreography more carefully.

"J'ai dit que je préfère les fleurs"

I think one can watch and appreciate this follow-up to last week's best viral video even if one does not speak a word of French:

ça va mieux

If nothing else, watch at the 2'30" mark...

Un week-end avec les Parisiens - Le Petit Journal du 16/11

AND NOW THE FULL SHOW AVAILABLE WITH SUBTITLES!!
Simply click the CC button for English subtitles.

Paris Attacks November 2015 - Le Petit Journal... by CANALPLUS

For Those Of Us Who Don't Live In Iowa Or New Hampshire...

...here is the first Bernie Sanders television advertisment:

Donald J. Trump's Lesson in Elementary Logic

If you have been unlucky enough to have watched American television over the last two weeks, it will have become immediately obvious that only one of the 22 major-party candidates is deserving of any air time:

Trump learns a lot watching TV and Trump is the only thing on TV, ergo Trump learns a lot watching Trump. pic.twitter.com/xQK6Vl0M7M

— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) August 26, 2015

What a loss the loss of Jon Stewart's nightly voice is going to be...

On Tuesday night Jon was shoot-milk-out-your-nose-because-you're-laughing-so-explosively funny when Fuckface von Clownstick joined the Presidential race, but on Thursday night he gave us this, the most succinct and truthful statement about the Charleston racial terrorism of the night before, and our predictable and insufficient response to it.

The Daily Show
Daily Show Full Episodes,  More Daily Show Videos,  Comedy Central Full Episodes

I'm going to miss him and I no longer even get Comedy Central on my television; I just watch (and share) these clips.