An open thread to discuss Trump’s big rally/coronavirus giveaway in Tulsa. And whatever else you want to discuss.
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@Moggie:
If the Biden people don’t start using that video absolutely everywhere, they’re not doing their job right.
And yeah, he’s probably going to lash out. The question is if it’s just going to be words or something more dangerous, and if it’s words, how badly it might backfire.
And then there’s his niece’s book coming up. That’s a shitstorm I’m stocking up on popcorn for. She’s an intelligent leftwing woman, so he’s already going to be terrified of her, and she’s family, so it’s the worst sort of betrayal, while also making it harder to attack her. This should be fun.
@Redsilkphoenix:
Strange how this keeps happening to conservative campaigns, isn’t it? It seems like at every election there are stories about this or that conservative politician using an artist’s music without obtaining the rights. It’s almost as if conservatives think the law should only apply to other people.
And almost as if they don’t check whether their favorite artists actually agree with them or not.
I admit that last night’s rally is about the only time I’ve ever approved of Trump’s use of “You can’t always get what you want” as closing music.
My favorite Trump music selection was when he played “It’s the End of the World as We Know It” by REM. IIRC they weren’t too pleased either.
@ moggie
Chances are the use of the song was technically legal. Publishing companies do all sorts of licensing deals that allow the use of music from artists on their books; usually under some sort of general non exclusive licence.
Venues often have their own licences that they pay a fee for, then that money is distributed amongst copyright holders. It’s how you can listen to records in discos.
Artists do though have moral rights. One of those is the right not to have their work used for something that disparages the work or they find offensive.
Unfortunately, whilst the US is a signatory to the Berne Convention that deals with this art of thing, the US never fully incorporated the moral rights clauses. The Visual Artists Rights Act does provide for moral rights; but as the name suggests it’s only applicable to art you can see; not music.
So in the US it is very hard for musicians to enforce moral rights.
ETA: more here for anyone interested:
http://futureofmusic.org/blog/2016/05/10/moral-rights-musicians-primer
I’m not entirely sure why Trump’s ability to drink water one handed or walk down ramps is relevant. He’s a racist, misogynist arsehole whether he can do those things or not. I don’t get why people focused on that sort of thing and made jokes about it; lots of disabled people struggle with those things and the collateral damage from the jokes must have been painful. Hell, I struggle to hold a glass if I’m stressed/tired/overstimulated. I poured half a mug of tea down myself last night, twice. I regularly fall up stairs, struggle with escalators and slip on ramps. My balance is terrible. It’s not nice knowing that people will poke fun at something I, and many other disabled people, can’t help, when it’s demonstrated by someone they dislike. Trump need criticising for his inane self-aggrandisement, ignorance, selfishness, racism, misogyny, his sex crimes and criminal behaviour, and any other terrible personality trait and choice he makes, but not the signs of age or disability. Why did Stephen Colbert (?) think that was a good idea in the first place? Being disabled isn’t a personality flaw or a choice. Being a racist twit is.
On the other hand, if the tango tyrant wants to waste time showing off how easily he drinks from a glass and yell about walking up/down ramps, he can. That way he’s got less time for spewing racist nonsense and issuing threats. He just makes himself ridiculous. Point and laugh at his fragile ego.
Not saying that any of you are pointing and laughing at his possible disabilities, just slightly miffed that it comes up as a thing that is acceptable to laugh at, like his weight and possible micro penis. Not being a US-ian I don’t really have a clear idea of what the atmosphere re disability is like, but I get some more definition to my ‘cloud’ of understanding from the way people have behaved w.r.t. Trump and from the way some of the disabled people I follow on Twitter have been treat when they’ve brought up ‘hey, can we not use disability as a punchline’. The US is not (currently) on my list of places to visit in the world. I get the feeling I would be very uncomfortable.
@Nanny Oggs Bosom
I agree re: the splash damage on disabled people. The situation on disability is not very good in the US, a lot of ableism (mostly from the right, but a lot on the left as well).
Totally agree that needing one hand or two to drink water is irrelevant. And that people mocking him over his ability to walk on a ramp or drink water easily is ableist.
I do find it fascinating how his fan base is fawning all over him today for drinking a glass of water with one hand though. Fascism is very intertwined with toxic masculinity and fascists really value machoness. However, Trump, being older, not fit, and not physically strong doesn’t fit the fash macho ideal. So now, they MAGAts have to pretend like drinking a glass of water with one hand is some incredible feat of badassary.
It’s just so bizarre to see.
I think the reasoning behind a lot of the mockery (insofar as anyone has reasoned about it) is that he’s brought it on himself by all his macho posturing — basically, what WWTH is talking about. It’s like the classic “Haha, have you ever noticed how almost none of the top Nazis were the Aryan ideal???” There’s also the awareness that Trump is really, really thin-skinned, and so it’s easy to set him off. It may not have been classy for Colbert to bring it up, but how can you not be gleeful at seeing how far it got under his skin? A humorist makes a bit of fun of him, and he spends ages having a tantrum about it to his supporters? I honestly kind of hope Colbert makes a list of all Trump rallies when more are announced and tries to see how often he can set him off.
More broadly, there is a certain amount of public interest in the question of whether a political leader is up to the job, health-wise — hence the yearly medical checkups presidents have to have, and how here in Canada people were a bit dismayed when Jack Layton died just a few months after the 2011 election, having campaigned without revealing just how serious his cancer was. Obviously, that can quickly turn into ableism, but the issue of Trump’s health isn’t completely off-topic. Though of course, it’s hardly the major reason to get rid of him, it would just be a useful excuse.
It’ll be really spooky if his deteriorating health results in his stepping down (or being 25th Amendmented) on July 3. Not only is that the day before Independence Day, it’s also exactly 1260 days after his inauguration …
As a disabled American, yeah, I agree it’s problematic as hell. Yes, the idea is to mock Trump’s vanity and machismo by pointing out the gulf between his claims and his demonstrated ability. But as with pointing out the blatant lies about his height and weight, it is VERY easy to cross over from mocking Trump lying about his physical flaws to mocking the flaws themselves.
I think people make fun of Trump showing signs of dementia more because of his “strongman” persona, and because of his attacks on Biden and Clinton, than because they want to make fun of disability. I can appreciate that jokes have splash damage, but I think it is also fair to worry whether the person at the head of the US military is suffering from a progressive neurological disease that can affect thinking.
@Allandrel
I also notice that frequently it becomes less about Trump and more about generally mocking disability. There are so many legitimate ways to criticize Trump, even legitimate ways to mock his machismo (his hyper fragile ego, anyone?), but instead of going for those people take cheap shots that have splash damage.
@Moogue
He’s not dangerous because of a mental illness, he’s dangerous because he’s a misogynistic homophobic racist piece of shit. Too many people try to pin this on mental illness, but being an asshole is not a mental illness.
True, but thus far he’s been dissuaded from, for instance, using nuclear weapons against the Middle East, and if he has dementia his advisors may find it more and more difficult to continue to dissuade him. People with dementia sometimes experience severe personality shifts for the worse, and his personality was already pretty much shit. It’s relevant to the national interest to know.
A lockdown baby boom wouldn’t surprise me. Apparently there was one during the Quebec/Ontario Ice Storm of 1998 (when ice caused a lot of power outages and dangerous road conditions, so many schools/businesses were closed for a week or two). What else can you do when the power’s out and you can’t go anywhere?
…Well, I was 9, so I mostly played Monopoly and whined about how tired I was of Monopoly. 🙂
@Naglfar
Who’s talking about mental illness? Dementia is a progressive neurological disorder that destroys the brain and directly results in death, not a mental illness. The prognosis is quite different.
Am I saying that someone with dementia can’t be a good president? No, as long as a base level of functioning is present, someone with dementia could be a great president. Am I saying that dementia has something to do with whether or not someone is a good person? No, dementia actually often brings out what kind of person someone is, rather than turning a kind person into an asshole. (Depending on the kind of dementia).
But considering that there’s no way to tell how fast or how slow someone with dementia will deteriorate, I think it is a fair worry that a president with dementia could become either a danger or a puppet due to confusion before they leave or are removed from office.
Does this mean that people should arm chair diagnose and make jokes with splash damage? No. Does this mean that we should actually start requiring a comprehensive neurological exam of all would be presidents rather than relying on a brief physical exam and conjecture? Yeah.
…Sorry if my last post came out of context! I thought the comment just before was about a lockdown baby boom, but I guess I was reading the 2nd page, not the 3rd.
About mocking Trump, I also don’t like people going after his physical weaknesses or making fun of him for possibly having dementia. If he does have some kind of dementia, that could be a concern, but not a reason for mockery, IMO.
@Cyborgette re The Origins of Totalitarianism: I’ve forgotten a lot in the 8 years since I read it, but Arendt’s understated style gave me chills at times. I remember at one point she was speculating if the U.S.’s racism against Black Americans would make it turn into something like Nazi Germany – and this was said in a restrained way, in a footnote. Luckily that didn’t happen – if you can put a “luckily” after 200+ years of chattel slavery and continued lynchings and other violence.
…On an unrelated and lighter note, I turned 32 yesterday! And not 256. (I told my mother “Hey, I’m 2 to the power of 8” and then realized I’d gotten my exponents wrong.) 🙂
@ DaliLlama;
YES!
ALL OF THAT!
@Moogue
I am aware of what dementia is, but I also think it’s possible to both recognize that it could be a public concern without simultaneously armchair diagnosing him. I’m sorry if I was unclear in my prior comments.
@Epitome
This.
And happy birthday!
@Alan
Nah, there’s special licensing rules for use of music in political campaigns; the venue license explicitly exclude campaign events, the campaign needs to license it separately.
@Weird Eddie
Thanks
@Naglfar
Right.
To be clear myself, I don’t support arm-chair diagnosing anyone either, or for making fun of people’s disabilities. People speculate when they see signs because Trump has never received a test that would catch early neurological disease that we know of. It’s maybe not the greatest thing to do, but I understand it. Same actually goes for Biden.
Don’t make fun of him because he’s fat or old, make fun of him because he’s a soulless, vicious, stupid, arrogant man-child… and because MagaCon turned out about as well as DashCon did ?
What I take from the video of Trump struggling with basic tasks is that he may be hiding not being able to govern. Since I don’t trust the official health report, him looking senile is problematic because senility problem really don’t stop at needing help for daily tasks.
And while technically ageist, I would say it should be important to stop using 70+ year men for the highest positions (valable in a lot of country mind you). Age can impair judgement, and it’s hard to check if they do the effort of staying in touch with younger society. That’s true for Biden and Bernie too, even if Bernie don’t quite give the same vibe of being too old for the job.
As a voter, I don’t feel entitled to my candidate’s private health record. I also don’t generally support specific armchair diagnoses.
However, if a candidate is very elderly, I’d consider their five year “survival” prospect differently than for a relatively young person. Same if they have apparent symptoms of some degenerative disease, or if their public record shows an apparent lack of physical stamina.
I would not necessarily consider a (publicly known) mental illness or a weird personality or a physical disability to be a problem. One key question is, is it a relatively permanent trait of this person? Or is it something that wasn’t present in recent past, and thus implicitly might get worse in the near future? Is the candidate acting secretive about some health issue that’s apparently difficult to hide?
Then there’s the question, does it really matter? Is this office literally in charge of everything? Who would be the candidate’s designated survivor? How is the succession expected to work out in practice? If the office holder does turn into a vegetable but doesn’t actually die, would they be likely used as a puppet?
@ dali
Cheers for that.
Ascap do a ‘political campaign’ license. That gives access to all songs in their catalogue unless the artist has specifically withdrawn it.
https://www.ascap.com/~/media/files/pdf/advocacy-legislation/political_campaign.pdf
Currently “I won’t back down” is in there; but presumably Tom Petty’s estate will be remedying that.
https://www.ascap.com/repertory#ace/work/390463828