As Trump continued to be a terrible human being, the elite sphere burned with rage against comedian Michelle Wolf for her hilarious and honest performance at the White House Correspondents’ dinner. Before getting into the discussion, I must note that I am biased in favor of Wolf because we were both college track athletes. This bias does, however, have clear limits: Bill Cosby also ran track, but I certainly will not defend him.
One reasonable criticism of Wolf is that the dinner is supposed to be friendly and the roasting at a low heat. As such, it could be argued that Wolf violated the expectations, much as Stephen Colbert did when he roasted George Bush. Fox News, which routinely defends behavior on the right that is offensive and horrible, attacked Wolf for being offensive and horrible. One reply is to point out the hypocrisy of Fox News in this matter, while being careful to not say that they are in error because they are hypocrites—to avoid committing the “you, too” fallacy in which hypocrisy by the person making a claim is fallaciously taken as disproving a claim. It would also be a fallacy to defend Wolf by arguing that what she did was acceptable because Trump behaves far worse—this would be a mere red herring (an attempt to distract attention from the original issue to an irrelevant issue).
A sensible reply to the general criticism is that the agreement should specify a gentle roast, otherwise a comedian is free to do as they wish. As Aristotle noted, comedy is a species of the ugly and so one should always expect things to get ugly when comedy gets rolling.
A second sensible reply is that the fault lies in part with those who selected Wolf. A cursory review of Wolf’s comedy makes it clear who she is and what she does—so her performance should not have come as a surprise. To use an analogy from superhero movies, if you call up Deadpool to deal with villains, you should not be shocked when he kills them all. That is what he does. If you do not want a body count, you light up the bat signal.
There was also criticism from both the left and right regarding what they saw as Wolf’s attacks on White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders’ appearance. In one joke, Wolf said that Sanders burns facts to make “the perfect smoky eye.” In another joke, Wolf compared Sanders to Aunt Lydia from the Handmaid’s Tale. This criticism gets its bite from two main foundations. First, there is often a focus on the appearance of women while substantive matters are ignored. For example, the press often focuses on how female politicians are dressed or their looks rather than focusing on their stances on the issues. This, obviously enough, attempts to reduce women to their appearance. Second, attacks on women tend to focus on insulting their appearance. For example, Hilary Clinton was often bashed for her pantsuits. This also attempts to reduce women to their appearance. Since Wolf purports to be a feminist, attacking her for attacking a fellow woman about her appearance would be an extra deep cut. Fortunately for Wolf, there is an easy and obvious reply to this attack –and one she has made herself.
While the eye remark does reference Sanders’ eyes, Wolf praises her for these perfect smoky eyes—the cutting edge of the joke is that Sanders burns the facts to get the ash for her makeup. This is not an attack on her appearance, but an attack on the fact that Sanders lies in the service of the liar Trump. Likewise, for the Aunt Lydia remark—Wolf’s point is not that Sanders is unattractive, but that Sanders is the mouthpiece for Trump. If Wolf wanted to simply take a crack at Sanders’ appearance, selecting Aunt Lydia does not make much sense. There is also the fact that Wolf included Pence in the Handmaid’s Tale theme—and she was obviously not taking a shot at Pence’s looks. It is, however, not surprising that critics would err in interpreting Wolf’s remarks.
In some cases, the “error” is no doubt intentional: Wolf is being attacked for allegedly attacking the appearance of a fellow woman by people who have not shown very much concern about women until now. This approach does have a double appeal: it allows the dishonest critic to mask themselves behind the honest outrage of others and it allows them to create outrage against Wolf among those on the left.
In other cases, those on the left and feminists, the attack is honest but in error. That is, they are probably not feigning their outrage in this specific matter of appearance. Interestingly, the mistake being made is to assume that a criticism of a woman must be about her appearance rather than substantive in nature. This blindness to substantive matters of criticism in favor of appearance is analogous to the blindness of focusing on a woman’s appearance and ignoring the substantive matters. Both are errors, although they are made by different sorts of people. While a delicate snowflake might take deep offense at being criticized and some might erroneous believe that Sanders is a font of facts, it is evident that Wolf’s target is not skin deep. Instead, she engaged in a moral critique of Sanders’ character and this is a matter of substance and not appearance.
I remember that Obama got a rodeo clown fired for wearing an Obama mask.
I don’t recall that Obama ordered that he be fired, but who knows the true workings of the deep state?
The reason, at least the main one given, was:
“The Missouri State Fair, in a statement emailed to NBC News over the weekend, called the performance disrespectful and said: “We strive to be a family friendly event and regret that Saturday’s rodeo badly missed the mark.”
Naturally, the same sort of reasoning could be applied to Wolf: the dinner is supposed to be blandly amusing and family friendly rather than cutting comedy. But, to keep the analogy going, if the rodeo hired “Obama Clown”, then they should not be surprised when Obama clown mocks Obama. Likewise, when they hired Wolf, they should not be surprised when she does what she does as a comedian.
I’m fine with Obama being mocked; as others have pointed out people have often donned Nixon or Reagan masks for comedy. But, with Obama, there was the added complication of race. Mocking Obama is fine; using that as cover for engaging in racism is not. Likewise, mocking Sanders is fine. Using that as a cover for sexism would not be fine. Fortunately, Wolf did not engage in sexism, she went after Sanders for straight up lying.
Fair enough. As the one nominally aggrieved, Obama could have stopped him from losing his job, but didn’t.
I suppose he could have intervened and spoke out against the firing; that would have been a very forgiving thing to do. But, one might point out, why be nice to someone who is terrible to you?
“…she went after Sanders for straight up lying.
No, she didn’t. She called her a liar. There’s a difference. She offered no argument to support her premise, she offered no examples, she did not call out a specific lie or group of lies – she engaged in name-calling. You, as a philosopher, one who is educated in the fields of forensics and rhetoric, should know the difference.
“Name calling is abusive or insulting language referring to a person or group, a verbal abuse. This phenomenon is studied by a variety of academic disciplines from anthropology, to child psychology, to politics. It is also studied by rhetoricians, and a variety of other disciplines that study propaganda techniques and their causes and effects. The technique is most frequently employed within political discourse and school systems, in an attempt to negatively impact their opponent.”
If she were talking about Obama, and said for example, “My ex-husband is a doctor, and I couldn’t even hold on to him!” that might have been funny, and it would definitely be “going after him for straight-up lying” because it references a specific issue. Yes, yes, we can argue about whether it was a lie or whether he knew beforehand or whether it just didn’t work out the way he planned – but it’s not name-calling. If she had just said, “Obama is a liar”, as she did with Sanders, that’s a talking point, and at the very bottom of Graham’s hierarchy.
You are right that she did not footnote her comic routine. On the one hand, you could argue that the comic is not engaged in documenting their claims and hence the criticism lacks merit. On the other hand, it seems unreasonable to expect a comic to engage in an argumentative essay on stage-arguments can be comedic, but comedy does not require argumentation. But, they can still be subject to review in terms of the truth of their claims. Wolf was quite right about how Sanders has dealt with facts. So, she said true things in her comedy.
You do raise an interesting point about whether or not comedians should be held to the same rigorous standards of argumentation, documentation and evidence as academics and journalists. I’d say that comedy does not require this, but that they should still be held accountable for making false claims.
I’m not sure you understand. My criticism was of you, not her. She does not have to footnote her routine, she can do or say whatever she wants,regardless of whether or not there is any truth to her claims – and she certainly did. She called him a liar, a misogynist, a xenophobe – and plenty of other things. Some thought that was funny, others did not -but it was a comedy routine. As a professional comedian, all she needs to worry about is the laughter – or in the case of this dinner, the lack of it.
What it was not was “calling him out as a liar”. You can offer up as much evidence as you want – but that’s YOU footnoting her routine, not her. If you choose to believe her that’s your prerogative; many feel the same way.
But she is not “Calling him out”. She is calling him names.
I think that the only standards comedians should be held to is whether or not they are funny. Period. They can lie, stretch the truth, make stuff up, and/or talk only about what they think and feel. If they are funny, if they reach their audience, that’s all they need do. I don’t think comedians should be held to any kind of rigorous standards of anything other than whether or not they make me laugh.
But YOU need to be held to the rigorous standards. For you, as an academic, a philosopher, a logician, an educator, to say that she is doing anything other than name calling is going against everything one would expect from you as a professional, and on a blog called “A Philosopher’s Blog”. I would not be so strident in my criticism if your blog were just called “Trump Sucks”.
More documentation of Trump’s lies, if that is what you seek:
http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/
Michael,
Documentation of Trump’s lies is not what any of us seek. We are doing your job for you – in other words, trying to parse through arguments and determine which are valid and which are not. In this case, it has nothing to do with whether or not Trump is a liar – it has to do with your acceptance of Wolf’s comment as a reasonable and logical true statement. You denied that she was making a remark about Sanders’ appearance, and you denied that she was calling her names – instead, you said that she was speaking in service of the truth. You were equating “He is a liar” with “Here are some examples of his lies”. One is at the lowest level of personal attack, the other is the start to a logically constructed argument.
Nor do we need more examples of Trump “being a terrible person”. This one is almost laughable, except that it comes from a professional philosopher.
You didn’t say “Trump is a terrible person”. You said, “Here’s yet another example of Trump being a terrible person”.
When it was pointed out that your example was false, fabricated, and inflammatory – anything but logical – you countered with,
“Yeah, well, that doesn’t mean he’s not a terrible person!”
That’s the kind of logic I expect from my teenage niece.
The reason that this is so irritating is that it’s the way Americans think – it’s flawed logic, driven by emotion – a foregone conclusion supported by whatever inflammatory or tribal agreement easily at hand. The worst part about it is that it’s what has been described as “drive-by” commentary – little digs thrown into a conversation that aren’t part of the main topic, just to continue to hammer away at a point in hopes it won’t be argued.
You, as a professional philosopher, really ought to be above that kind of thing. If you are going to say “Here’s an example of Trump being a terrible person”, it is incumbent upon you to do just a tad more research to ensure that what you are showing isn’t just some dishonest drivel heavily edited by some biased reporter.
Just as Wolf’s comments had nothing to do with whether or not Trump is actually a liar, my argument has nothing to do with whether or not Trump is a terrible person. That’s a completely separate conversation.
I dunno. To me, the White House White House Correspondents’ and all the hubbub about such things seems clear evidence that either I’m insane, or the political, journalist and intellectual elites are insane.
It seems to me the strangest thing, rooms full of highly intelligent, well educated, well informed people sitting around sipping drinks, cracking jokes, making fun of each other in ways tasteful and not, and then filling the airwaves with chit chat chatter about who said what about who for the next week while…
The work of the last 500 years and next 500 years too could be erased at any moment without warning.
There’s a scene in All That Jazz, my favorite movie about death, where the lead character is in a hospital bed having just been told he’s going to have another heat attack if he doesn’t change his way of living, and his broadway dancer pals show up with booze and tunes and they have a big party in the hospital room. A few scenes later the doctor’s dire prediction prove true, and the movie ends with the lead character in a body bag.
Ok, broadway dancers partying right up until the end, I can get that. They’re artists, being nutty and not playing by the rules is their job.
But there’s something simply bizarre about the nation’s leading journalist doing the same thing with the nation’s leading politicians while the fate of civilization hangs in the balance, an ever present existential threat to the lives of billions which it’s apparently inappropriate to mention.
We are sailing ever faster down the river towards the waterfall, and there is no captain on the ship.
“there’s something simply bizarre about the nation’s leading journalist doing the same thing with the nation’s leading politicians …
One might make the case that we’re better off with them in a room cracking jokes, which would keep them from actually making things worse.
There is an idea put forth by Eric Singer, a finance professional and mutual fund manager, called “The Congressional Effect”, which states that there is a correlation to the performance and/or volatility of the overall stock market indices and the days that Congress is in session. Stocks in aggregate perform better when Congress is not in session, and volatility increases when they are.
Your post suggests that when politicians and journalists are actually doing their jobs, they will do them well and they will do good – but I would challenge that. I think it’s quite possible, and highly likely, that when they’re not yukking it up with their pals at dinner they are doing more harm than good.
Why not both? 🙂
On the one hand, the dinner makes some sense: politicians and press taking a while off to joke a bit about each other; perhaps to remind everyone that they all have their roles and they are all people. On the other hand, it does seem to be a very closed mutual admiration society, etc.
Michael,
This is embarrassing. Really. I’m not really sure where to start.
“While Donald Trump continued to be a terrible human being”
This is a great example of someone (you) living in a post-truth world, responding to an emotional, rather than logical or statistical argument. I am not sure if you were actually sucked in by the Huffington Post’s anti-Trump spin, or if you, like Aaron Rupar, secretly know the truth and are just hoping that those who read this post will read only the headlines and watch the cleverly edited video – but either way, it’s just patently false. What makes it so embarrassing (and I am embarrassed for you) is how transparent it is, and how easy it is to find the truth. How easy? One single Google click.
Honestly, this is the most egregious distortion of the facts I’ve seen yet. Rupar makes the claim that Trump asks if there are any Hispanics in the room, and receives boos for this comment. He then says, “Satisfied that the room was lacking in Hispanics, he then launched into a tirade repeating his demand for a border wall”. In his article, he suggests that Trump was checking to see if the coast was clear.
I guess that’s one way to look at it. Another way is to click around a little bit to find the full, unedited speech – which was clearly written by speechwriters and delivered in multiple venues – in Florida and Michigan and other places in the country. Practically word for word. Even the part about asking if there are any Hispanics in the room. Clearly, after seeing the various iterations of this speech a pattern emerges – and that pattern is that Trump is trying to make something that has been written for him sound spontaneous. That is the most you can draw from that comment.
The real context is that this was not the cautious lead-in to see if the coast was clear so he could make his case for the border wall, but the punctuation to the entire previous section, the transcript of which is this:
“…since election day, three million new jobs. For Hispanics – any Hispanics in the room? No idea … For Hispanics, we have the lowest level ever recorded. In other words, you have more employment now. Think of it – the lowest level unemployment rates. For African Americans, the lowest level ever recorded, and I’m really proud of that”.
If you are doing even the most basic, lowest form of critical thinking and you hear that Trump is “seeing if the coast is clear” before talking about a border wall, isn’t there just the tiniest bit of doubt in your mind that this may not be entirely true? I would think that for even the most die-hard anti-Trump person, this would seem preposterous – but there you are. Beyond that, of course, his shout-out to Kanye West is described as “bizarre” – but within the context of talking about African American unemployment rates, it seems perfectly reasonable to cite an African American who supports him, especially since well over 90% don’t.
I think that liberals really need to take stock of their talking points and their relentless attacks on Trump and then take a few minutes to read “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” (no reference to other current events intended). When you make a big deal out of something as patently absurd as the above, and spin it as ridiculously as Rupar did, people start to mistrust everything you say – so that when you come out with genuine, well-thought out and valid criticism, you will be met with cynical disbelief. “Oh, that’s just more shit on the pile!”. Much better to temper your arguments and hit hard where it will mean something. Or perhaps I put too much faith in the American public.
As for Wolf, well, what I saw was a string of ad-hominem remarks that lay somewhere between outright name-calling to jjust the crude parroting of left-wing talking points. “Calling her out on lies” is a real stretch. Calling someone out in a lie requires that you point out the lie, counter it with truth, and then make your accusation. She simply called Sarah a liar. At least some of her other jokes referenced specific incidents, and gave a little context – but this was nothing more than an epithet in support of talking points – for which I’m sure she expected a better ovation than the cricket-chorus she received. Her mistake was that although she knows the majority of the press believes what she is saying, they don’t want to admit it – so they can’t really applaud comments like that.
And I have to tell you, this is quite relevant to what’s been going on in my life in recent weeks – as part of this committee I’ve been serving on, we have had a substantial number of discussions, read a staggering amount of literature, and listened to presentations by researchers on the topic of gender bias, and within that context, Wolf’s comments are way, way over the top in that area. To her credit, they are no worse than anything else she said throughout her entire presentation – and as an edgy comedian she can get away with it – but to characterize her comments on Sander’s looks as being perfectly innocent in the service of calling her names is patently obvious.
So to be clear, I have no problem with it. To compare her to Aunt Lydia I think is funny. To say that she burns facts to get the perfect look for her eye makeup I think is funny. But to say that it isn’t sexist, and to say that simply calling her a liar is the equivalent of calling out her lies is no different than the spin put on Trump’s comments. It’s taking something out of context, putting a talking point spin on it, and trying to make a case that she’s a spot-on political commentator.
As for the inappropriateness of her comments overall, and the “what did you expect?” remark, well, I do think that someone here did screw up. Her presentation was biting and mean spirited, and clearly not what the press dinner was looking for. I know this not because of all the pundits and bloggers weighing in, but by watching the entire excruciating 20 minutes myself. What was most striking to me was how frequently Wolf would deliver what she considered to be a real zinger, pause for the laughter, and be met with silence or, at best, nervous laughter.
I think that Phil Tanney has it right – I think that a dinner like this with jokes and humor is fine, it’s a nice celebration or evening out, it’s what we in America do – but to obsess over it and put so much time and energy in to accusing this or that or he said this and meant that is pretty stupid, but that’s politics.
And I know I will get some pushback from WTP along the lines of “What did you expect?” or “You are laboring under the delusion that you will change his mind …” but I’m not, really. Expectations are wrapped up in some kind of melange of hope and cynicism – and my embarrassment for you is wrapped up in the “hope” part. You have a PhD. You are a professor of logic and critical thinking. You are supposed to be smarter than this.
I’m not asking you to support Trump. I certainly don’t, at least not in the American Jingoist tradition, but I support truth and, where truth cannot be determined, I support at least a critical analysis of not only the events but of the comments and opinions surrounding those events. As a fellow academic, this is what I expect of you – if only to try to lend some credence to our oft-maligned profession. Sadly, your post falls well short in all of that, and is just another pitchfork in the anti-Trump mob who will say or support any statement or opinion, regardless of its veracity, as long as the bottom line is “Trump Sucks”.
I continue to hold out hope that you make posts like this only to be controversial, to get your students (us) to think about them and argue against us – sacrificing yourself in the service of true pedagogy – but that hope is not burning so bright right now.
No pushback from me on this. It’s spot on. Especially as to this being an embarrassment, of being embarrassed for him. I’ve felt that way about so many of these posts for years now. They are so often cringe worthy. The only thing that surprises me is that similar to the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect, tomorrow or next week or so, you will take those future posts at face value, as if no credibility has been lost. I’ve compared these posts in the past to gay porn. I just can’t look at them anymore.
The empathic embarrassment is visceral. Though I do enjoy discussions of the general topics with yourself, TJ, Coffee Time, Magus (somebody turn on the Bat Signal), etc. so I eagerly await y’alls takes on them.
“You are laboring under the delusion that you will change his mind …”
Well, I reserve the right to be wrong. It’s how I learn. If I offend, it is not intentional, just the best way I have found to ferret out truths. It doesn’t work in most contexts (see my previous comments about Facebook), but it works (for me) in question begging and similar environments such as this.
Well, my take is: why are we talking about this? And when I say “we”, I don’t mean us few here, but the wider society.
I have started to check Fox’s and CNN’s home pages every day to get a sense of what the tone of the news is in the US. How can it be possible that every day on both of these I see a story about somebody I’ve never heard of “slamming” someone else I’ve never heard of on Twitter? Wolf was mean at a dinner, under the cover of comedy. Why is this news?
Sorry, I’m out on this one.
Good point. I had never heard of this woman either – but I was not aware of the amount of coverage it was getting until reading about it on this post. Maybe it’s selective listening.
When you characterize it as “Wolf was mean at a dinner, under the cover of comedy”, you are absolutely right – it’s irrelevant, it’s not newsworthy, it’s a waste of time.
But there’s a larger issue for me, which is why I’m talking about it. Our outrage has become so selective that Political Correctness is being used as a weapon, and that certain words, concepts and attitudes are OK for some to use and not OK for others. While a minor player in all of this and ultimately inconsequential herself, Wolf is a good example of this growing power struggle.
Her comments about Sanders’ appearance are just fine in a comedy routine; edginess is the bread and butter of comics of her ilk. To make these comments in at an official dinner might raise an eyebrow, but in the context of her overall criticism of Trump and Republicans as being sexist, male dominated, misogynistic and disrespectful of women and their accomplishments they are curious indeed. One has to wonder why it’s OK for her to criticize Sanders’ appearance, while clearly siding with the PC side of America, those who stand in defense of women, who demand that women be judged on accomplishment and intellect, who say that comments on appearance reveal gender-bias and sexism. Some call it a double standard, others call it hypocrisy – but I think it is deeper than that.
For pundits, journalists, and bloggers to spin this as “Not what she intended”, while referring to outright name-calling as some sort of truth that this was in service of, is going beyond mere double-standard or hypocrisy and headed toward a re-definition of truth and acceptability based on who is speaking. And not “who” as in “that person”, but “who” as in “what race, gender, or political party?” She can say these things because she’s a woman, but if she weren’t, it’s very thin ice indeed. There is also the fact that she is a liberal – so attacks on conservative women and their appearance are fair game while similar attacks on their liberal counterparts are not. I think we all remember how conservative comments on Janet Reno’s appearance were regarded – though on SNL it was just fine.
“So what?” we might say. Well, just to see where this all might lead take a look at the so called “N” word. This has become perhaps the most powerful word in the English language; the mere reference to it has cost people their careers – and even the use of words that even sound like it can be costly.
In 1999, David Howard, an aide to Anthony Williams, the mayor of Washington, DC, used the word “niggardly” in reference to a budget. The word means “stingy”, and has a completely different usage, etymology, history, and definition, with no common or uncommon slang reference to anything other than what it actually means. Nonetheless, Howard was forced to resign because of the offense, based on complete verbal and lexical ignorance. Even Julian Bond, the chairman of the NAACP thought this was ignorant and deplorable, and suggested that the Mayor provide dictionaries to all his staff.
And yet, in this post-truth world, the emotions of the mob prevailed, and logic and understanding gave way. Today, the real “N” word is allowed and embraced among African Americans, and as such, has become dangerously weaponized.
But allowances are made for the right people – imagine if John McCain had said of Barack Obama,
“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy, I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”
That comment is absolutely fraught with racist overtones. I wonder how Clarence Thomas felt about that? Or Andrew Young? And why should being articulate and bright be a storybook if it refers to an African American? And yet, Biden not only got a bye for it, he was elected vice-president. Others would have lost their jobs.
Are we headed in the same direction with other PC issues? Is it simply not OK anymore for anyone of any gender or political stripe to make any kind of comment about a woman’s appearance? Or is it OK for women to comment on each other’s appearance, and accuse men of sexism and gender bias when they do, too? And is it OK for women to comment on say, Trump’s hairstyle? Will this, or other sensitive areas of language and attitude rise to the same nuclear effect of that racial epithet? (Gives a kind of new meaning to “N-test”, doesn’t it?)
So that’s the issue. It’s way beyond mere hypocrisy – no one cares about that. Michael has brought this up in previous posts – how we forgive members of our own “tribe” while feigning outrage at others for the same offense. We hope we don’t get called out on it – but even when we do, to be called “hypocrite” is a small price to pay for the power it gains us.
“I can say this, and it is seen as honest and true, but if you say it, you will lose your job”.
And BTW, I should have noted your excellent catch on the link for “terrible human being”. As you say. Trump asked whether there are any Hispanics in the room in the context of saying that the US has achieved the lowest Hispanic unemployment rate during his presidency. That makes him a terrible human being?
Mike must have seen saw a tweet, or a report of a tweet, from one of his tribe, and didn’t feel any responsibility to check it out himself before promulgating it. If we had Internet Driving licences, I’d hand out a 3-month suspenion for that.
You should not the reaction of the crowd when Trump asks his question. Given his past remarks about Hispanics, it is evident when Trump asks the question it is rather like a comedian who asks if there are Xs in the room before going after Xs.
But, let us suppose that Trump was sincerely asking if Hispanics were present and merely wanted to say that their employment is down. Does this make Trump non-terrible? In the speech that followed, Trump brought up his usual untruth about illegal Hispanic voters: ““All of these people pouring across are gonna vote Democrat,” he claimed, even though studies have shown undocumented people very rarely vote for anyone, Democrats or otherwise (except in the few municipalities where their votes are specifically allowed in local elections).” And so on. I’d say clinging to lies and racism makes a person terrible.
The speech was written. It was rehearsed. It was carefully vetted, and included the Hispanic question, which he practiced. When he gave the same speech in Florida, he asked if there were any Hispanics in the room and it was met with loud cheers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3wCgXm6sHI
It’s not a racist comment, it’s talking to his audience. He might as well have said, “Coal production is up 20% in the last six months … are there any coal miners in the room?”
But I know this falls on deaf ears. There is nothing that will sway you from believing that Trump is a terrible person – and he very may well be. But so was Clinton. So was Nixon. So was Roosevelt. But that doesn’t mean that you can spin every word that comes out of his mouth as racist drivel – in this case it simply wasn’t. It was self-congratulatory, and spoken at pro-Trump rallies.
To twist this otherwise just exposes your own version of “post-Truth”.
Nor am I claiming that Trump is not a terrible person, or that he is a great president, or that this has anything to do with him at all. It’s about you, and it’s about truth. Not the words that come out of Trump’s mouth or Sanders’ mouth or anyone else’s, but of you and your bizarre, illogical, hate-filled spin that blinds you to any sort of real critical analysis of a speech.
For a philosopher, logician, rhetorician, and critical thinker, I think that’s really, really shameful.
Again, you should be posting this kind of stuff on a differently-named blog.
Precisely.
OK, if we’re going to get into this I first want to note that I would not use the phrase “terrible person”, for at least two reasons:
1. It has no clear definition and is therefore likely to be confusing. I am no fan of Trump, but I would not call him a “terrible person”. I would not call Mao, Hitler, or Pol Pot “terrible people” either. They were among those who did the most evil in the history of the world, but in my perception the phrase “terrible person” doesn’t intuitively fit them. If I used it at all, it would be about someone who was vicious and mean in their personal life, who were hated by the people close to them.You obviously see different connotations in “terrible person”. That’s a reason not to use it with the assumption that it will be widely understood the same way you see it.
2. It is simple vulgar abuse, a bit light on the vulgarity. It signals to anyone who viscerally hates Trump that you are piling on, while signalling to everyone else that they should stop reading immediately if they want reasoned content. If you have specific objections to Trump’s behaviour – and it’s not hard to find many – use those, instead of an ambiguous smear.
You should not the reaction of the crowd when Trump asks his question. Given his past remarks about Hispanics, it is evident when Trump asks the question it is rather like a comedian who asks if there are Xs in the room before going after Xs.
No, that is not what it’s like. It’s at 42 minutes, and I’ve now listened to it 5 times. He asks whether there are Hispanics, doesn’t get the big cheer he wants, segues into Kanye West to pump up the enthusiasm again, then finishes his point about having achieved lowest Hispanic unemployment buoyed by those cheers.
Anyway, you didn’t link to the speech as your evidence that Trump is a “terrible person”. You linked to a HuffPo article that misstated the facts:
After taking credit for Hispanic unemployment numbers dropping, the president said this:
“Any Hispanics in the room?” Trump asked to relative silence. “Naw, not so many? That’s OK.”
No, that is wrong. He didn’t ask whether there were Hispanics in the room AFTER taking credit for the drop in unemployment, He asked AS A LEAD-UP to it. It’s remarkable how that small lie changes the sense of the text.
I would contend that while “terrible person” is vague, we do have a decent grasp of what it means-especially when we are given a specific context. Being terrible admits of degrees, so while Trump is terrible to a moderate degree (adultery, lying, etc.) he is obviously not terrible to the degree of Stalin.
For the sake of moving on, I’m willing to let the Hispanic remarks go and say that I will not use them as evidence for his being terrible. However, that leaves in place all the other evidence. To us an analogy, one witness in a trial might turn out to be not as good as the prosecutor hoped, but if there are hundreds of other really good witnesses and stacks of good evidence, then that one witness does not matter.
“You should not the reaction of the crowd when Trump asks his question. Given his past remarks about Hispanics, it is evident when Trump asks the question it is rather like a comedian who asks if there are Xs in the room before going after Xs.”
Unlike you, I looked at other sources of the speech. The reaction of the crowd in Florida, your adopted home state, was one of cheers and applause. Your opinion is, unfortunately, what comes out after passing through a filter of blind hate and prejudice. It’s what you expect from him, so you grasp at straws to make it so.
I don’t think that it’s “evident” at all. I think I said this before – the question was very, very clearly looking for support of his claim – like saying “Are there any coal miners in the room? We just opened up ten new coal mines!”
In Pennsylvania, he would have gotten cheers. In Montana, not so much – but he was delivering the speech as written. Just listen to the context.
Try to apply just a little tiny smidgen of critical thinking to this. Would a President of the United States, no matter how much you hate him, actually check the ethnicity of his audience, then go on to make racist comments? Do you think that Presidential speeches are just off-the-cuff like that, spontaneous eruptions?
A speech like this one – and actually this one, was written by a team of speechwriters who vetted every word, attempting to play to the crowd in the most positive way possible. This is evidenced by the fact that he gave the same one, practically word-for-word, in multiple venues. So even if Trump does go off script often – do you think that this is something his team of speechwriters would write?
(“psst – hey Don, here’s what you do … don’t say anything disparaging about Hispanics until you ask if there are any in the room, OK? We want to make sure that the audience agrees with our policy of bigotry and hate, and don’t want to make waves …”).
It’ s just patently absurd, but it’s what drives American thought.
I been saying this for years. Usted esta en fuego (in case there are any hispanics in the room)
If you’d like documentation for Trump’s lies, here is the list up to 2017:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/23/opinion/trumps-lies.html
The NYT? Seriously? You think the NYT is a fair source for such information? Not saying Trump hasn’t lied, nor lied a lot, but has the NYT made an equivalent effort to document the lies of the Clintons, Algore, Joe Biden, or even for the love of God William Duranty, whose Pulitzer AFAIK is still a prized possession of that very same NYT?
That is just an ad homimen unless you can provide evidence that the NYT is wrong about Trump.
This seems to be your reasoning:
1. The NYT has not made the same effort to document the lies of the left as it does the lies of Trump.
Conclusion: Therefore the NYT is in error about Trump.
But this is an obvious fallacy.
Or are you just saying this:
1. The NYT has not made the same effort to document the lies of the left as it does the lies of Trump.
Conclusion: Therefore the NYT is biased & Trump is a liar.
In which case you agree with my claim that Trump is a liar.
So, it seems you are either engaging in a fallacy or actually agreeing with me about Trump. Possibly both.
No, you’ve built yourself a nice strawman to knock down and in the process inferred things that are not my reasoning. Does that make you a liar now? In my comment I acknowledge that Trump lies. Everyone lies, princess. Especially in politics. The NYT lies itself, see W. Duranty. You lie. That’s not the point. The point is the source itself is considerably biased. The point is the selective outrage. Lies of omission.
As for “That is just an ad homimen(sic)”, this is the great cop-out of philosophers of the last decade or more. Spew innuendo and hide behind one-sided arguments and then cry ad hominem when called out on it. It’s snowflake material. Reputations matter. You’re repeated attacks on Fox News, are they not ad hominems? Your sarcastic references to “The fine folks at Fox”?
And don’t hide behind that “I said they seem to” BS. It’s a cop-out. However I will give you props for this…just try applying it to yourself and fellow travellers:
Heh….scrolling back through it occurred to me that the very title of this piece, “Crying About Wolf” is itself an ad hominem attack. Go cry ad hominem yourself. Seriously. Dude, you lie ever time you cash your paycheck. Sad.
It cannot be an ad hominem fallacy because it is not an argument but a three word title:
P1: “Crying about Wolf.”
No fallacy.
I suppose you could say that I am being mean by saying that people are crying about her. I’ll own up to that.
No Mike, you’re not “being mean”…as if…you’re projecting.
Trump is terrible by objective moral standards; that is a true claim. To think otherwise is both an error of ethics and facts. Think of the classic virtues of honesty, generosity, mercy, kindness, courage, magnanimity, and so on. He lacks them and possesses, in abundance, the vices. So, objectively terrible.
Yes, Hillary Clinton is also bad; but she is not president.
He is even terrible by his own professed standards. Trump, to get the evangelical vote, professed to hold Christian values. Yet, he breaks the commandment against lying relentlessly. He also, as far as all the evidence shows, violated the commandment against adultery. We could go beyond the 10 commandments to all the injunctions put forth by Jesus and tick off each one Trump routinely breaks.
Lord, the irony. Trump is a business man, who for better or worse has only the objective of making a profit and in the process hopefully get things done, and now a politician who for better or worse exists to advance the wealth and power of the United States of America. Mike’s philosophy, by any reasonable objective standards, fails miserably to meet even the most modest objective standards of reason or, by his repeated failure to stand up against socialist BS and its murderous record over the last 100-150 years, to “preserve humanity”. But Mike is Mike and as a socialist is a socialist. What is relatively more pathetic is that the majority of commenters here know and understand this, no matter how awkward or uncomfortable the way I say this makes them feel, yet they are far more fearful of expressing or even reluctantly acknowledging what I have just stated than they are with tolerating the leftist BS and its miserable and muderous history that Mike spews. Get your heads out of Teh Narrative.
The fact is that there are two Michael LaBossieres here. While we generally expect to find “Dr. Michael LaBossiere, Professor of Philosophy” on this site, sometimes we get “Michael LaBossiere, Liberal Citizen and Trump Hater”.
That’s all fine – but the second one tends to throw out all tenets of logic and valid argument to make his point – distancing himself from the syllogistic reasoning that defines his profession.
So when you make a post like “Trump is terrible by objective moral standards; that is a true claim”, well, no matter how you slice it, that’s an opinion based on your own interpretation of “objective moral standards”.
More to the point, though, it’s off topic This discussion, at least the one I’m arguing, is about your link to a falsified document in support of a completely different claim. The claim in question was “While Trump Continued To Be A Terrible Person”, and the document was merely a heavily edited opinion piece that, on closer examination, was anything BUT an example of your premise.
Michael the Philosopher would never let that fly – in fact, I would expect him to use that article in a classroom as a springboard for a lesson on critical thinking, and how to not let yourself be sucked in just because you agree with the conclusion.
But Michael the Trump Hater just pivots – rather than acknowledging that the piece was falsified and heavily slanted, changes the question. Further, you pointed to another slanted opinion piece in the NY Times disguised as a valid argument for Trump’s lies.
You are certainly entitled to your opinion, and many people agree with you – even me, to a certain extent. But I am not willing to let my passion, whether based in love or hate, interfere with my ability to think clearly and make my own determinations about what is true, or what conclusion has been arrived at via logical process and careful separation of truth from fiction, or real news from tribalism.
“Hey, we just had a beautiful, warm week with sun every day and temperatures in the high 80’s. Very unusual for this time of year. See? We’re right about Global Warming! It even says so in this post on Facebook”
“Wait – pretty much all scientists and climatologists agree that short-term weather trends in any given area prove nothing, and are of no relevance in the study of Global Warming. Further, the author of the post on Facebook has no credentials whatsoever, and his post bears no connection to his inflammatory headline”
“Yeah, well, Global Warming still exists, and we’re still right about it!”
And now it’s alright, it’s okay, and you may look the other way. But we can try to understand the New York Times’ effect on man…
http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2018/05/09/new-york-times-slams-awol-pompeo-then-learns-was-rescuing-americans.html
Of course this is from the Fine Folks at Fox who said the New York Times did not immediately respond to a request for comment…so…you know…
It’s really quite sad.
So much of the news regarding Trump is about what a horrible person he is, a liar, an adulterer, coarse, misogynist, and on and on and on.
I’ve been thinking about this recently, and I do believe that Trump is the guy America loves to hate – which, to a certain extent, I really have no problem with.
However, I also believe that Trump gets far more personal attacks in the news and on social media and blogs than any other president; I’m not sure what causes this phenomenon but I guess that makes it easy for people to fall into the trap of thinking he’s the worst ever. There’s a difference between actually being as bad as all that, or just having only the bad stuff reported.
I grew up in the 1960’s and 1970’s, and was at the prime of my liberal self-righteousness when Nixon resigned. I was later very surprised to learn about Nixon’s place in history beyond Watergate – his political resume shows a very busy man who did quite a number of very good things. He had his failures also – all able to be considered and analyzed within the context of history. But rank and file Americans – even those who were not alive then, remember Watergate and Vietnam at best, and think of him only as a scowling angry liar.
I was equally surprised to learn about JFK’s endless stream of sexual conquests before and during his presidency – about Marilyn Monroe and about the way he treated Mimi Alford, his affair with Judith Exner and the dozens of other nameless women he bedded. Kinda makes me wonder what all the fuss is about Stormy Daniels. I imagine that a JFK in today’s world, with all the infidelity and misogyny, the lies about painkillers and about Vietnam, the family heritage of wealth gained through prohibition bootlegging and the consorting with Mafia chieftains, coupled with all the “Tax-Cuts-For-The-Rich” would not even get elected, let alone survive.
I’m not sure there was ever a president in American history whose deliberate lies about big, important issues could top those of Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War. The Pentagon Papers exposed a long program of deceit that began with Eisenhower and continued through the presidency of Nixon – but when Trump says things like “This is the biggest crowd in history!” or “I’ve been on the cover of Time Magazine 14 or 15 times” those statements are elevated to the status of huge lies without any historical perspective.
I’m not saying that because Kennedy had a lot of women or Johnson lied that it’s OK for Trump, nor do I necessarily excuse Trump’s behavior – but in comparison he’s probably on a par with those guys at best. But not if you listen to NPR. History remembers the Cuban Missile Crisis as a huge success for Kennedy – but when it was going on he got much criticism for risking nuclear war with Russia.
It does seem as though the Supreme Court decision about freedom of the press, as right and constitutional and refreshing as it was back in 1971, has led to a bizarre mix of abuse on the part of the press and complacency or laziness on the part of the public – as though ever since the Post led the charge in bringing down Nixon, every journalist is now hoping to be the next Pullitzer Prize winning writer who brings down the next one. I’m all for freedom of the press, don’t get me wrong – but in many cases they just seem like single-minded rabid dogs with no perspective.
It will be interesting to see how things pan out with Kim Jong Un. I think what’s going on with North Korea is about as historic as it gets. It’s a very tenuous, dangerous situation, but so far there seems to be a lot of progress. Again, though, to read about it in the Times or on HuffPost or NPR we are led to believe that the most important part of this story is that Mike Pompeo mistakenly referred to him as “Chairman Un”, and wasn’t able to make it to the big Iran Nuclear Deal Announcement.
I will repeat what was said to me in 1998 or so – when I was critical of Clinton’s affair with Lewinsky and others – “It doesn’t matter if the President is a complete scumbag. We didn’t elect someone to set a moral example for us. The economy is doing great, my 401K is doing great, we’re making money – I’m not complaining and neither should you!”
I have learned to form my opinions on issues, not people. I am of the belief that most of them in power are closet liars, bigots, adulterers, and criminals – and if any one of them appears to be “clean” it’s only because they haven’t gotten caught yet.
So let the Times be the Times, and Fox be Fox. I can’t control them or what they report, and I can’t control what people read and believe. I won’t say that it doesn’t bother me because it does – but all I can do is try to stay as informed as I can be.
This phenomenon has been interesting. A dozen or so years ago, spitballing/Walter Mittying with friends about the ridiculousness of the media and how they go on these search and destroy missions with conservatives whilst trying to keep as much of a blind eye as they can with the likes of Clintons and Edwards and Kennedys and such, and I had this idea….Having not much in the way of skeletons myself, though we all have a few, and knowing that any minor indiscretion in life would be seized upon by the media, my thought was…and this would take far more planning and coordination than I would care to do myself…to plant as many salacious rumors about illegitimate kids (easier to control in these days of DNA testing) and affairs and financial misconduct such to keep the media running around with its hair on fire, snipe hunting. Which not only would keep them away from exposing or amplifying my minor peccadillos, but in the end expose them for the pearl-clutching harpies and otherwise scoundrels that they are.
Sometimes I wonder if Trump came to this conclusion as well. I never really cared for him myself. What I find interesting is that the few people whom I know who either admired him (back when they thought he was a solid Democrat) or watched his show and enjoyed watching him fire other elitist-wannabes are now hard anti-Trumpers.
Another thing about being the kind of guy he is is that by being the kind of person who talks plainly, even when he’s lying (or supposed to be lying), he’s somewhat indifferent to the blowback. I really believe that the only kind of person who could accomplish this degree of push back against the insane level of political correctness we’ve reached in this country (and more broadly the West in general) would have to be someone who has a knack for pissing people off one way or the other. He raised issues during the primaries, some stupid yes, that no one else (out of what 16 or more GOP candidates?) was willing to credibly address. Sure they’d play lip service to immigration, but no one was adamantly, forcefully, believably speaking in such a way that you could believe they would do anything about it. Now I don’t care if you are pro-immigration (which I moderately am) or anti-immigration, you had to admire the forthrightness of his arguments.
Bah…could say more, and say the above more eloquently (no really I could…seriously) but gotta get back to work.
Sorry for all the posts, but there is so much to this that is so offensive in so many ways that I have to make another comment.
If you listen to the text of Trump’s speech, it is of note that he is making some very important points:
He talked about strong boders (remember that funding for the wall initiated during the Obama administration
Increased funding for a depleted military
Deportation of MS-13 Gang Members
Sanctuary Cities
“How have you done with the tax cuts, by the way?”
The stock market is up almost 35% since the election
Renegotiation of Trade Deals
Unemployment overall
Unemployment among African Americans and Hispanics
Progress in diplomatic talks with North Korea, progress in the de-nuclearization of N. Korea
allowances for “guest workers”
Trend toward rising wages as a result of tax cuts
Of course, this was a political rally aimed at supporters, and like pretty much all political rallies the cream rises to the top, numbers might be exaggerated, but others might be understated. Trump has a policy and a vision, and he’s following through with it whether you agree with it or not. Is he right about his claims? Is he wrong? Can we debate these issues without just saying “he’s a liar” and being done with it?
Of course, plenty of people call him a liar, plenty of people credit the economic successes, the unemployment rates, the stock market to a continuation of Obama’s policies that have nothing to do with Trump – but the point is that this speech was almost an hour and a half long and full of meaty policy facts, juicy statistics, and claims that are just ripe for picking apart and debating. Important issues – as I’m sure Phil Tanney would agree.
And yet, what is our takeaway? A one liner … “Trump continued to be a terrible human being”. Why? Where did that come from? Inaccurate and downright dishonest twisting of words and the application of a huge amount of spin on the part of the Huffington Post and Trump detractors.
Forget about the economy, forget about international trade, forget about diplomatic conversations with the most dangerous country in this century, forget about border security. None of that has anything to do with anything.. Let’s make the case instead that Trump is a racist xenophobe. That’s what is really important right now.
Sickening, really.
I wonder if the Dems realize they are setting a precedent for how the next Dem president will be treated.
I don’t think you understand how the game that is being played is played.
It’s very possible. What am I missing?
You’re playing inside baseball, thinking about who is coming up in the batting order, lefty batter vs righty pitcher, pinch hitter considerations, outfield shifts, off-speed pitchers vs. throwing heat, etc. etc. etc. and they’re playing Calvin Ball. Ya feel me?
I would think so; but people tend to discount the future.
Trump is still terrible; that is consistent with all the points you made about the economy and such.
When I drove through Gettysburg today, which is only 15 miles from my home, I was again reminded of what happens when politicians in Washington can no longer compromise and make government work.
Yes, because you can meet half way on whether or nit all men are created equal. No, wait…they did that with the Three Fifths Compromise. That worked out just fine. For a while…
“Physical and social differences between North and South did not in themselves necessarily imply an irrepressible conflict. They did not mean that civil war had been decreed from the beginning by Fate. It came when problems arising from rapid growth and expansion got into such shape that they could not be solved by discussion, tolerance, and compromise… How this happened is not entirely clear. We only know that sectional rivalry in the nation turned into a struggle between…‘civilizations,’ between progress and backwardness, between right and wrong. Men ceased to reason, to tolerate, to accept compromise. Good men then had no choice but to kill and be killed.” (Avery Craven, “The Coming of the Civil War” (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942, 1957, 1966; 1967) p. 1-2)
A historian is just a failed journalist who is just a failed novelist who is just a failed lawyer who is just a life failure. I exaggerate, of course. The root problem of the Civil War was slavery and the BS of southern white supremacy. Hell, the south wasn’t even supreme in the context of white folk of the pre-20th century. For good reason the FF kicked the problem of slavery down the road because they had, as far as they were concerned, bigger problems to address. The inalienable rights of black slaves were being denied, which made a mockery of the fundamental philosophical foundations on which this country was established. Ultimately, there was no compromise except the freedom of those people.