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The Tan Suit Discourse Is Back!

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | December 17, 2020 |

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | December 17, 2020 |


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For four years, Donald Trump wreaked absolute havoc on the country, kicking off the news cycle virtually every morning with a series of tweets designed to create chaos. He said there were good people on both sides. He called Kim Jong Un “little rocket man,” and brought us to the brink of war. He used the military to disperse a crowd of protesters so he could hold up a Bible in front of a church. He fired practically his entire cabinet two or three times over. He was impeached, for God’s sake, and he led — and continues to lead — a response to the Coronavirus pandemic so poor that upwards of half a million people will probably have died by the time Trump leaves office.

There were stretches — sometimes long ones — where it felt like every single day was a four-alarm fire. He instigated violence at his rallies; his rhetoric led to a massive rise in hate crimes; a man tried to blow up CNN headquarters and mail bombs to a number of Democratic leaders because of Trump. A terrorist group in Michigan, inspired by Trump, planned to abduct the governor and behead her. The man stripped kids from their parents and put them in cages. It was insane, and we’re likely going to be suffering from PTSD from it for years.

None of us will ever be able to appropriately express to our grandkids the everyday sense of fear and concern we’ve experienced over the last four years. They hopefully will not understand why waking up in the morning and checking the news could in and of itself feel so dispiriting. There was just a pall of misery hanging over the entire country, a dark cloud that felt like it would never go away.

In fact, part of me thought that whoever replaced Trump in the White House might get something of a free pass for a while. Trump broke so many norms and instilled so much fear that surely — surely — the media would not obsess over the trivialities of the next administration.

Folks: I was wrong. Trump ain’t even gone yet, and we’re right back where we were 4 years ago.

Seriously, if you do a swing around conservative media, the sh*t that they’re obsessing over — beyond Hunter Biden, who is their primary fixation, again — is incredible. After the sh*t that Donald Trump said about Jeff Sessions — his own attorney general — Brietbart is gonna take issue with this.

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In fact, incoming White House deputy chief of staff Jen O’Malley Dillon seems to be in their crosshairs for some reason:

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That came after Maggie Haberman spoke complimentarily of the same Glamour profile for noting how well O’Malley Dillon balanced work and family.

Elsewhere, while Donald Trump refused to release his grades from a college his father got him in (but only after he paid someone else to take the SATs for him), Tucker Carlson is attacking Dr. Jill Biden’s doctoral thesis.

“Doctor Jill needs reading glasses. Either that, or she’s borderline illiterate. There are typos everywhere, including in the first paragraph of the introduction. Doctor Jill can’t write. She can’t really think either. Parts of the dissertation seem to be written in a foreign language, using English words. They’re essentially pure nonsense, like Pig Latin, or dogs barking. The whole thing is just incredibly embarrassing — and not simply to poor, illiterate Jill Biden, but to the college that considered this crap scholarship — in fact, to our entire system of higher education, to the country itself. Jill Biden’s PhD dissertation is our national shame.”

Has Tucker Carlson ever read a single Trump tweet? The man bragged because he could pass a test for dementia. He cannot spell f**king “counsel” to save his life.

Likewise, the Post is taking issue with Joe Biden for misspeaking and calling Chasten Buttigieg “Kirsten” before quickly correcting himself. “And by the way, Jill and I have always enjoyed seeing Pete and Kirsten — Chasten, I should say — together on the trail,” Joe said. “Chasten has become a close friend of Jill’s and mine.”

That was an embarrassing slip of the tongue. The thing about Trump, however, is that he wouldn’t have owned up to the mistake. He would have called Chasten “Kirsten” and insisted so forcefully that his name was Kirsten that Chasten would have to change his name to avoid being called a “loser” on Twitter and have Trump sic his entire following on him.

Republicans were also furious that media called Buttigieg the first openly gay cabinet member when Ric Grenell served in the Trump cabinet.

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Grenell was actually an interim cabinet member who served for only three months and was never Senate confirmed, but whatever, that’s not even the point. THE POINT IS we’re back in 2016 making mountains out of molehills, and while that is unfortunate, it is better than being crushed by the mountain every day. The tan suit discourse is, obviously, exhausting, but on the other hand, it says something when the best that the Republicans got is criticizing Dr. Biden’s DOCTORAL THESIS. If they want to spend the next four years tearing apart the graduate school efforts of the Biden administration, I’m OK with that.