Monday, January 16, 2017
Monday, January 09, 2017
Donald Trump: Meryl Streep and the accidental existentialist
Darling Meryl Streep needs no support from Madame as Donald Trump brands her "over-rated" for calling him a bullying cunt (in effect). How can a mere clairvoyante medium top all those articulate movie, TV and theatre awards that she's truffled away over the decades? - there are so many that Wikipedia has a separate entry on them. I'd be jealous except I can't act jealous. You just can't be jealous of genius. You tend only to envy the first-raters; the merely very, very good. Genius is beyond our grasp so we tend to be big about being small.
Trump is so grotesque, such a liar, deceiver and fool, that it is beyond my modest gifts to send him up or even mock and revile him in any effective way. Alec Baldwin gave it his best try - but his target out-did the send-up all the way. Trump is his own circular, self-creating satire, a fake whose absurdities depend on the paradox of his authenticity of self-manufacturing: he truly believes every word that passes his mauve lips as each day he resets his man-cave coordinates, for the best back alley ahead. He is utterly committed to the moment and the fact of his being beyond role, status or anything extraneous to the self-Trump. This is why he pays no account to his word, to what he said the minute before, to reality - except functionally to navigate from A to B - or even to his new role fast approaching, that of US President. He is an accidental existentialist. In his world there is no good and bad; both are relative terms that are moulded into matters of pleasure and pain by other people's flattery or insult (of the Trump-self). And good or bad things are just as likely to happen now as never or tomorrow, and with no consequence that cannot be seen off with a resetting of the Trump man-cave coordinates - and/or with an expensive lawyer.
This by far makes Trump the most fascinating US commander-in-chief ever. A philosopher-president with no philosophy at all. Before you stands 6ft 2ins of opportunist impulse arising from the selfish sentience that once dreamt of playing US President. There's no God or Devil to defer to, not even a non-God/Lucifer: he may be atheist or he may be a cod evangelical - which interest must be served in this moment for 'belief'? What anchors him in this or that moment of reality is not conscience or even any concept of good or bad but the visceral, sensation-hungry ballast dangling between his legs. These bestow a sense of power, entitlement; of timelessness (for they enable procreation of the self, among other things) as well as giving him something to think about when the mind wanders from business, politics or pussy. Bollocks, c'est moi. He talks bollocks, thinks bollocks, acts bollocks. So full of bollocks is he that we already start to forget what he said yesterday or this morning or ten years ago. In a few moments, the Streep tantrum will be forgotten by just about all. For that too was bollocks.
I suspect I shall have much more to say about Trump.It is of course an irony that this accidental, amoral existentialist most probably has opened the White House door to the pious Christer-evangelical by his side. Such an outcome would be in keeping with the low comedy to which we are witness Stateside. I'd laugh but I've just been diagnosed a hernia.
Trump is so grotesque, such a liar, deceiver and fool, that it is beyond my modest gifts to send him up or even mock and revile him in any effective way. Alec Baldwin gave it his best try - but his target out-did the send-up all the way. Trump is his own circular, self-creating satire, a fake whose absurdities depend on the paradox of his authenticity of self-manufacturing: he truly believes every word that passes his mauve lips as each day he resets his man-cave coordinates, for the best back alley ahead. He is utterly committed to the moment and the fact of his being beyond role, status or anything extraneous to the self-Trump. This is why he pays no account to his word, to what he said the minute before, to reality - except functionally to navigate from A to B - or even to his new role fast approaching, that of US President. He is an accidental existentialist. In his world there is no good and bad; both are relative terms that are moulded into matters of pleasure and pain by other people's flattery or insult (of the Trump-self). And good or bad things are just as likely to happen now as never or tomorrow, and with no consequence that cannot be seen off with a resetting of the Trump man-cave coordinates - and/or with an expensive lawyer.
This by far makes Trump the most fascinating US commander-in-chief ever. A philosopher-president with no philosophy at all. Before you stands 6ft 2ins of opportunist impulse arising from the selfish sentience that once dreamt of playing US President. There's no God or Devil to defer to, not even a non-God/Lucifer: he may be atheist or he may be a cod evangelical - which interest must be served in this moment for 'belief'? What anchors him in this or that moment of reality is not conscience or even any concept of good or bad but the visceral, sensation-hungry ballast dangling between his legs. These bestow a sense of power, entitlement; of timelessness (for they enable procreation of the self, among other things) as well as giving him something to think about when the mind wanders from business, politics or pussy. Bollocks, c'est moi. He talks bollocks, thinks bollocks, acts bollocks. So full of bollocks is he that we already start to forget what he said yesterday or this morning or ten years ago. In a few moments, the Streep tantrum will be forgotten by just about all. For that too was bollocks.
I suspect I shall have much more to say about Trump.It is of course an irony that this accidental, amoral existentialist most probably has opened the White House door to the pious Christer-evangelical by his side. Such an outcome would be in keeping with the low comedy to which we are witness Stateside. I'd laugh but I've just been diagnosed a hernia.
Sunday, January 08, 2017
The Queen and the new Holocaust book
Much excitement today. The Queen has emerged from her Kleenex snot-igloo to attend church at Sandringham. The poor poppet. I don't catch colds any more by the simple policy of declining parties, especially around Yuletide and New Year. People only invite you to parties to give you their colds. They disguise the symptoms with Sudafed (other brands available). I know these things.
My point of course is that HM has demonstrated that she is still alive. A rumour was put out recently that she had passed away on account of her sneezing. Twitter got all excited while the rest of us slept. Suddenly a conspiracy was afoot. You can see how Holocaust deniers gain traction with their absurd claims and questions. Just say something and before long a moron will believe you as a symptom of her/his/its self-diagnosed illness-career.
Thinking of the Holocaust, may I draw your attention to a new book out next week. It's called Final Solution: The Fate of the Jews 1939-1949 by David Cesarani. It makes "extensive use of previously untapped resources such as diaries and letters from within the ghettos and camps (many of them in Polish or Yiddish and therefore previously largely inaccessible to Anglo-American scholars) and by adopting a rigorously Judeocentric approach the whole narrative of the march to genocide."
It appals me that Google has only lately started to act against anti-Semitic sites that peddle Holocaust denial, amending its algorithms so that neo-Nazi trash do not top the search. What's wrong with these bedroom-bound beards that run Google? Do they have some self-diagnosed illness-career we should know about?
My point of course is that HM has demonstrated that she is still alive. A rumour was put out recently that she had passed away on account of her sneezing. Twitter got all excited while the rest of us slept. Suddenly a conspiracy was afoot. You can see how Holocaust deniers gain traction with their absurd claims and questions. Just say something and before long a moron will believe you as a symptom of her/his/its self-diagnosed illness-career.
Thinking of the Holocaust, may I draw your attention to a new book out next week. It's called Final Solution: The Fate of the Jews 1939-1949 by David Cesarani. It makes "extensive use of previously untapped resources such as diaries and letters from within the ghettos and camps (many of them in Polish or Yiddish and therefore previously largely inaccessible to Anglo-American scholars) and by adopting a rigorously Judeocentric approach the whole narrative of the march to genocide."
It appals me that Google has only lately started to act against anti-Semitic sites that peddle Holocaust denial, amending its algorithms so that neo-Nazi trash do not top the search. What's wrong with these bedroom-bound beards that run Google? Do they have some self-diagnosed illness-career we should know about?
Saturday, January 07, 2017
Esther Rantzen and anonymous internet swine
Madame was most distressed to learn that Dame Esther Rantzen is the victim of false, disgraceful allegations. From memory I can't quite recall what these may be but the eating of raw rhubarb was not among them. Something to do with turning children into fine dining recipes courtesy of Masterchef. This is the problem with sharing expertise with the sofa-bound sedated - a little knowledge in the wrong brains too easily leads many astray. Just ask Dr Google!
But let not my forgetfulness, doubtless brought on by living too close to a main road, distract us from the fact that Dame Esther has suffered grievously.
Her abuser, it emerges, is an anonymous website poster, unwittingly aided by the monstrous Google and its scheming algorithms. It has long been my view that people who veil their identity to launch malicious cyber attacks are plainly not entirely to be trusted with a sharp axe - a point the Dame herself makes, kind of. You can just imagine some lonely, pathetic male person posing as someone else (a notable woman, say) in order to vent his spleen or advertise his psychopathy. Dignitas would be too gentle a fate for such a person.
Nonetheless I was fascinated to learn that though Google unforgivably declined to remove the offending website or the grossly offensive items on Dame E - which might lead a post-That's Life millennial to think that Dame Esther was up there with the late Myra - it did delete a copycat entry on a Blogger site. This does not surprise me. Google has long treated Blogger as the equivalent of a holiday camp where everyone must smile and stroke their pussies and post tiresome items about their boring day. Nice cosy crap from cradle to grave. All in the name of responsible blogging.
Btw, Dame Esther had no idea what Blogger was, writing of it as if an obscure Inuit cultural artefact. What world does this woman live in I wonder. Easy access to the Mail editor has made her soft. But I wish her well in naming and shaming the filthy swine who uses a cyber mask so horribly. Exposure!
But let not my forgetfulness, doubtless brought on by living too close to a main road, distract us from the fact that Dame Esther has suffered grievously.
Her abuser, it emerges, is an anonymous website poster, unwittingly aided by the monstrous Google and its scheming algorithms. It has long been my view that people who veil their identity to launch malicious cyber attacks are plainly not entirely to be trusted with a sharp axe - a point the Dame herself makes, kind of. You can just imagine some lonely, pathetic male person posing as someone else (a notable woman, say) in order to vent his spleen or advertise his psychopathy. Dignitas would be too gentle a fate for such a person.
Nonetheless I was fascinated to learn that though Google unforgivably declined to remove the offending website or the grossly offensive items on Dame E - which might lead a post-That's Life millennial to think that Dame Esther was up there with the late Myra - it did delete a copycat entry on a Blogger site. This does not surprise me. Google has long treated Blogger as the equivalent of a holiday camp where everyone must smile and stroke their pussies and post tiresome items about their boring day. Nice cosy crap from cradle to grave. All in the name of responsible blogging.
Btw, Dame Esther had no idea what Blogger was, writing of it as if an obscure Inuit cultural artefact. What world does this woman live in I wonder. Easy access to the Mail editor has made her soft. But I wish her well in naming and shaming the filthy swine who uses a cyber mask so horribly. Exposure!
Trump to meet Graydon Carter? Oh my....
The US President-Elect tells his growing Twitter mob that American Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour paid him a visit at his indebted Trump Tower suite in the last few hours, inviting him to meet fellow Conde Nast editors. He said he would graciously do so "this AM". This is a canny move on the part of CN's artistic director who really should now be called Dame Anna. Dame Anna (to repeat myself - do please keep up, Donald) herself backed Hillary and Obama before her - and then there's the problem of Graydon Carter, the Vanity Fair editor. His dislike of "short-fingered" Trump is one of the wonders of journalism in its mainstream, imperilled current form. Why, only this morning, my new copy of Vanity Fair arrived in the post, and scarcely a good word may be found in its silky pages on the topic of Trump and his clan. Oh my! Just read Graydon's very rude editor's letter. But perhaps he's being post-ironic, confecting a rage that disguises a love of celebrity and success. And when Trump turns up, Graydon will throw out a welcoming hand in an attempt to latch onto those elusive short fingers, hoping not to crush the titchy digital petals in his mighty manly paw, assuming he doesn't miss them altogether.
Graydon's campaign against Trump did smack of playground big cockism, in its focus on size. In photos, Trump's hands look 'normal' to me and not appreciably smaller in scale to the rest of his over-sized, big-burgery booming self. My suspicion is that Graydon may take the day off when Trump pops in - I mean it would look most odd if the two men were photographed all bromantic after the anti-Trump propaganda unleashed by Carter's pen and commissioning. One has to think about credibility even in these times of post-truth and post-irony and hacked email posts.
I do hope that Graydon is not about to disappoint Madame.
Graydon's campaign against Trump did smack of playground big cockism, in its focus on size. In photos, Trump's hands look 'normal' to me and not appreciably smaller in scale to the rest of his over-sized, big-burgery booming self. My suspicion is that Graydon may take the day off when Trump pops in - I mean it would look most odd if the two men were photographed all bromantic after the anti-Trump propaganda unleashed by Carter's pen and commissioning. One has to think about credibility even in these times of post-truth and post-irony and hacked email posts.
I do hope that Graydon is not about to disappoint Madame.
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