By David Futrelle
Early in the Trump administration, amateur and professional White House watchers noticed something rather striking about the assorted photo ops that the new President and his handlers liked to stage for the press: they all seemed to feature gaggles of smug white dudes, with the occasional white woman added to the mix to provide a little bit of gender if not racial diversity.
While some considered this a public relations blunder, probably because the staff at the White House was so amateur it didn’t even realize how off-putting the optics of these all-white photo ops were to most Americans, others wondered if the Trumpies were doing it on purpose — offering a not-so-subtle wink to Trump’s racist fans, an assurance that, yes, white dudes were once again firmly in the saddle in the White House.
I think it’s pretty clear the cynics were right here. If you have any doubt, look at this official White House video of the recent Congressional Picnic held on the South Lawn of the White House. It’s possibly the whitest thing I’ve ever seen.
Seriously, I’ve watched this video five times and I’ve only spotted two people of color amidst the vast sea of white people on the South Lawn — a secret service agent and what appears to be a staffer involved in setting up the event.
And guess what? Trump’s most racist fans are receiving the message being sent here loud and clear. In a blog post yesterday (archived here), pickup artist turned white supremacist propagandist James “Heartiste” Weidmann hailed what he called “Trump’s Love Letter To Heritage America,” Heartiste’s pet term for what he sees as the golden age before the civil rights movement and the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965.
After posting the video above, Weidmann notes that the sheer overwhelming whiteness of the video is clearly “intentional” on Trump’s part.
Trump knows what he’s doing, and he knows the sides in this battle for the soul of America. His promos, visuals, and speeches are an extended play love letter to Heritage America. To White America, before it became a Dirt World Depot. If you doubt Trump’s loyalty to the cause, dispel your doubt. His heart is in it. He fights for you.
Weidmann’s fans were even more enthusiastic in their praise.
“Not a single bulldyke, Skype or nog in sight,” wrote someone called LeShitlourde, using two favorite alt-right slurs for Jews and blacks. “My America right there. Thanks DJT.”
“[T]his is not just a love letter,” added plumpjack, “it’s a declaration of WAR.”
Hackett To Bits offered his own love letter to white “civilization.”
Message to the mud peoples of the world and their enablers: this is what ordered, civilized existence looks like, you should eat your hearts out.
Not everyone was so enthusiastic about the all-white optics. While conceding that (at least to a racist like him), “the video is beautiful. A breath of fresh air after 8 years of thug entertainers and muzzie dinners at the white house,” Alea Iacta Est worried that mere videos won’t be enough to stop
the primary trend. I’m doing my best. Voting and making white babeez, but my neighborhood pool is no fun any more. Its always being closed because noglets barf in it, and I look like the foreigner now. I don’t want white picnics on the south lawn. I want my country back.
Too bad for you, then, that “your country” is no more than a racist fantasy. America has never been as white as that picnic on the White House lawn.
Which brings us to the giant irony to Trump’s “love letter to White America” — the jazz music on the soundtrack. While the band featured in the video looks to be all or almost all-white, jazz music is, obviously, anything but. Originating in black America, jazz is an amalgam of African traditions and American innovation, and the most celebrated and influential Jazz musicians have of course almost always been black.
While the anodyne jazz featured on the White House video soundtrack may give racists warm fuzzies, here’s some jazz and jazz funk that will more likely give them heart attacks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWD6dYcD9DM
@Mish:
Right? I wish I were a fly on the wall when he ordered that cover forgery. I’m pretty sure that whoever he told to make that thing up must have glimpsed their brains that day.
@bina: hey now, mistreating a saguaro is illegal.
Accordng to the NY Daily News, the charcoal used at the picnic was made in Mexico. So, not a 100% white affair.
(Mexican charcoal heats more evenly, making it a perfect choice for burning the Constitution.)
Well, maybe stop wearing MAGA speedos to the pool?
I hope he spends the entire summer sweltering resentfully at home while the “noglets” have the time of their lives splashing and swimming. Bigotry should hurt.
Speaking of music that black people did first, here’s the original Hound Dog:
Whoa whoa hold on…banjos were originally made from gourds? Interesting. Learn something new.
As for the video in question, the whole time I was watching it, I was expecting a segue into a Black Hole Sun-esque version complete with distorted faces and forked tongues, because that would have just been the icing on an already odd picnic cake. It’s surreal that this is actually put out as a thing, and not as a satire or the start to a horror movie or something.
Am I the only one creeped out by it? The over-the-top saccharine appeal to fictional Leave-it-to-Beaverland? I mean, the lack of representation is completely wrong and worrisome all by itself, and maybe that’s all I’m picking up on, but it really seems sinister in its forced white cheerfulness.
Oh yeah, this is what I was talking about, let’s see if it’ll embed. Bah, nope okay link is fine then.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mbBbFH9fAg
Now I’m trying to remember the movie where the faked up magazine cover was a plot point. Surely there was one?
ETA: OMG, I just watched some of that picnic video. The “wooden frame” to stand in so the White House is in the background of your “picnic photo” shot is hilarious.
@Mistyful
Yeah had the same vibes from Get Out from those pics. I get really, really uncomfortable at the idea of being someone in that crowd. Like can you imagine, you’re stuck there and you’re not exactly sure why. And then you accidentally cause someone to spill their drink on their clothes, and then everyone goes silent and immediately all stare at you? Just unsettling.
@ troubelle
You probably know that that’s it’s original meaning. It’s from Gulliver’s Travels. The Yahoos are the degenerate humans in the land of the Houynhnms (those stuck up horses).
Ooglyboggles: When I find myself in a crowd THAT white they start to creep me out, and I am white. You just know evil is afoot…
Would this song be considered offensive now? At the time it was groundbreaking. Interestingly, BoyZone covered it back in the nineties, to very little fanfare, so I guess, no.
Saguarrrrrooooooo!
Feeling about 300 at the moment 🙂
Got a new receptionist recently (you’d like her, covered in tats, and hair colour changes every three days). She was just telling me about how she’s been upgraded on something called Twitch, so now she can make a bit of extra cash inbetween answering the phone etc. I was trying to be all ‘down with the kids’ dropping stuff I’ve heard about here. I thought I could bluff by saying “Yeah, not really into Steam though” when our sixty year old office manager pipes up “Ooh, I love Steam”.
FFS, I feel like I should be outside with a stick and a hoop or something.
@ Alan;
I understand…. I unnnderrrrrstaaaaannnnddddd!!!
@lkeke35
This. This. This.
There is no such thing as “White” culture, because….we are all different. There is American culture, there is German culture, etc. But we are not some large homogeneous ethnicity.
It always makes me angry when the like of people like Richard Spencer are being interviewed and he says “well you know us whites have a long tradition” and no one pushes back on this idea of whiteness as a ethnic identity. Or like when he says “You can’t be proud of your white heritage anymore.” Cause you can – You have a strong affinity for your Polish heritage (like I do), good for you. The minute it becomes just about the color of your skin, it gets…well racist.
@Dan Hoan
Going further, it’s not like Europe’s ethnicities haven’t spent most of their history emphasizing how different (and superior) they are from each other as a justification for war and conquest. Celts, Teutons, Slavs, Mediterranean, etc. Most of the differences that they fought and died over were BS made-up differences too (*cough*Yugoslavia*cough*), because humans are stupid that way. Heck, people were and are much more passionate about regional differences within what is now one nation-state and what used to be a loose connection of similar ethno-linguistic groups than they ever were about their skin colour.
Griping about “wite culture” isn’t just nonsensical, it actually serves to erase the heritage of many so-called “white” ethnicities.
News: Time asks Trump to remove fake magazine covers from resorts.
Does NOT make up for them making Trump “Man of the Year”, but at least it’s a start.
I started a different comment, but got the notion to check YT to see what videos were posted for previous years. It’s interesting; this year’s video seems to be the first of its kind, a sort of propaganda piece.
There was no such thing on YT (that I could find searching “Congressional picnic (blank) year”) during Bush’s tenure.
There were two for Obama; 2010 which was just his speech with a sea of mostly white heads in the audience and 2012 which was the same but cropped more closely on the POTUS and FLOTUS and not showing the audience at all.
edited to close parens
@Kivutar
Oh that is an excellent point that I didn’t even think about. For years European countries have fought over their superiority and in no way find their cultures to be homogeneous. In fact, a majority of those ideas came over and were practiced here in the United States until the 1950s when everyone who was white was alright.
And, like others have pointed out, a large collection of ethnicities that today are found under the umbrella of whiteness were not thought that in the past (a majority of my ethnic make-up actually). The Irish, Polish, heck most of Eastern Europe was not considered to be white.
So that’s why, when these people spout this kind of crap, it drives me bonkers. These people claim to have a great love for their ‘culture’ but can’t spend 3 minutes doing some actual reading on the history of this country and the world. And we let them spew this crap in the media, with little blow back
(Let me clarify this – A lot of the media does point out that their ideas are racist, but when they get to talk to these people, they never ask them the pointed questions about race and whiteness that is needed to truly skewer and poke holes in their fantasy history. No one follows up and say “Hm, actually that doesn’t make any sense because…” They let them spew this crap, and barely give them any push back)
According to Urban Dictionary, “Skype” was being used as a slur for Jewish women in 2009. In 2007, it was being used as a verb that means “to cheat out of money” like “swindle” (which can also have antisemitic connotations).
Many forum administrators use bots that automatically send posts to moderation if they contain well-known slurs. Bigots can get around that by inventing new slurs (or intentionally dehumanizing code-names for people like “Literally Who”), using obscure slurs, or using a common word or name as a slur.
Ugh. Me, too.
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
“Heritage America”? #NotMyHeritage
These are clearly the sort of people who would call the (un)Civil War the “War of Northern Aggression”.
The Nazis loved “white culture” so much that they dropped bombs on a lot of it.
@Nentuaby
And I’m asian, so my “get the fuck out of here” sense is ringing hard.
As a person of European descent, I have an understanding of where my ancestors came from. Whether it was the Lowland Scots or Irish side of the tree, being ‘white’ didn’t get them much consideration from the Sassenachs. I sometimes think that knowing my actual ancestry helped armor me against the bogus ‘racial pride’ that these deracinated whiners cling to so tenaciously. Well, that and my parents raising me to not be a flaking napstitch.
Used to tell friends at university that I was mixed – Irish and Scots-Irish. If you know the history, that’s an unlikely combination – but I’ve lived my entire life at the pointy end of the bell curve.
Relevant, and ecapsulates exactly how I feel:
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_59519811e4b0f078efd98440?ncid=engmodushpmg00000004
(H/T to my dear buddy Boink x 5 ????)