DaButt
Tuesday 10th January 2017 1:53pm
14,722 posts
Quote: keewik @ 10th January 2017, 12:14 AM
Surely Trump must be the biggest and nastiest shit in the universe.
I've never been a Meryll Steep fan but she's got it right this time.
She's a great actress and probably a decent human being, but in my opinion she got it exactly wrong. She's just another wealthy Hollywood elitist who is spitting sour grapes because her candidate lost an election. Yes, Hillary Clinton was her candidate, and she spoke at the Democrats' convention and countless other times in her favor. Now there will be no more personal invitations to the White House and she's so mad that she had to whine about it on television.
She could have made a more dignified statement by wearing a Hillary campaign button and simply saying "thank you" before walking off the stage. Or she could have been a real humanitarian and asked people from both sides of the aisle to come together as human beings and Americans, but she chose the same route of demonization that permeated the election: anyone who voted for Trump is a racist, homophobic, xenophobic misogynist. All the Kumbaya togetherness of her speech ignores the scorn and contempt that her candidate and party held for half of the nation's citizens, and the faux outrage over Trump's tweets conveniently forgets what wicked things were said about him before and after the election.
Do you guys have access to Anthony Bourdain's various shows in the UK? He does sort of a traveling food show, eating with the common folk in exotic locations. His personality really grates on me and he's quite the vocal Trump hater, but he said something in a recent interview which is worth listening to, especially if you're a Democrat who wants their party to win elections in the future:
The utter contempt with which privileged Eastern liberals such as myself discuss red-state, gun-country, working-class America as ridiculous and morons and rubes is largely responsible for the upswell of rage and contempt and desire to pull down the temple that we're seeing now.
I've spent a lot of time in gun-country, God-fearing America. There are a hell of a lot of nice people out there, who are doing what everyone else in this world is trying to do: the best they can to get by, and take care of themselves and the people they love. When we deny them their basic humanity and legitimacy of their views, however different they may be than ours, when we mock them at every turn, and treat them with contempt, we do no one any good. Nothing nauseates me more than preaching to the converted. The self-congratulatory tone of the privileged left--just repeating and repeating and repeating the outrages of the opposition--this does not win hearts and minds. It doesn't change anyone's opinions. It only solidifies them, and makes things worse for all of us. We should be breaking bread with each other, and finding common ground whenever possible. I fear that is not at all what we've done.
http://reason.com/archives/2016/12/29/anthony-bourdain