Tag: Stephen Colbert

 

In the wake of Melaniagate, the undeniable plagiarism that will live in Copycat Infamy, comes extra scrutiny of every word of every subsequent speech given in Cleveland.  The next night, Donald Trump Jr (Uday), speaking before his twin brother Eric (Qusay) and his sister Ivanka (Evita), was falsely accused of the same crime for this moment from his highly-praised performance… and if it’s a Trump, it’s a peformance.  Believe me:

Donald Trump Jr.: “Our schools used to be an elevator to the middle class. Now they’re stalled on the ground floor. They’re like Soviet-era department stories that are run for the benefit of the clerks and not the customers.”

The American Conservative: “What should be an elevator to the upper class is stalled on the ground floor. Part of the fault for this may be laid at the feet of the system’s entrenched interests: the teachers’ unions and the higher-education professoriate. Our schools and universities are like the old Soviet department stores whose mission was to serve the interests of the sales clerks and not the customers.”

The original source was F.H. Buckley, a law professor at George Mason University who writes for the American Conservative, and wrote a piece called Trump vs. the New Class: The Donald is a liberal—just like Ronald Reagan was. Buckley helped write Eric’s speech, so you can’t plagiarize your own words.  I actually like this important line from that piece better: In a troubled economy, Obama told voters that he had their back. Romney came across as the boss about to hand you the pink slip. And Obama won.

One could hardly not notice that Donald Trump, who made his mark on tv by fake-firing people, seemed incapable of taking immediate action like his fake take-charge persona would indicate. You mean he didn’t demand to get to the bottom of who was responsible for feeding his wife those cribbed words from the dreaded Michelle Obama and firing said person.  You mean tv isn’t real life?  Or Trump is all hair and no cattle?  Oh I, know… he didn’t want to upset the Swiss watch-precision of his campaign by canning someone in the middle of the convention which might push the pushing out of Roger Ailes of Fox News from the headlines.  Yea, that’s it!  He’ll get to it later.

But I forgot to get to the point, which is the actual content of the non-plagiarized one-liner… the analogy that just.. plain… stinks… and makes no objective sense.

Our schools and universities are like the old Soviet department stores whose mission was to serve the interests of the sales clerks and not the customers.

Are United States public school teachers part of some wealthy elite intent on self-preservation only, with no regard whatsoever for students?  It’s that bad?  It’s universal? Now he needs to make America smart again.  I realize part of rightwing dogma is the complete dissolution of the public schools, to be replaced by delightfully competitive (with each other) private schools or charter schools (unaccountable public schools) and the magic of the free market will make your kid motivated and smart… Carl Icahn for Education Secretary, too. But I looked hard and couldn’t find any evidence that clerks who toiled in the old GUM department store in the Moscow were anymore oblivious to the needs of the customer than the average person making $9.50 an hour in today’s Walmart in Tulsa.  My recollection of the Soviet days is that you really, really needed to be a member of the Communist Party to be part of the elite.  Were the clerks members of the Party?  I have no idea. Are teachers, who may or may not be in a union in the United States equivalent in some way? Who knows? Who cares? Trumpiness is the new world coined by Stephen Colbert, superseding Truthiness.  Via QZ.com:

Colbert reprised his “the word” segment to coin a new term to describe what drives Trump supporters: “Trumpiness.” The term plays off another term Colbert invented during the second Bush administration, “truthiness,” (video) which means “believing in something that feels true, even if it isn’t supported by fact.” Whereas truthiness has to feel true, however, Trumpiness does not, he said, citing a Washington Post story that shows some Trump fans don’t even believe his pledges to build a wall. The comedian ended the bit by summing up what fuels the Trump machine: The candidate is “an emotional megaphone for voters full of rage at a government that achieves nothing…And if you don’t share their feeling that you don’t recognize your country anymore,” Colbert added, “trust me, if Trump wins, you will.”