Everybody’s talking about black metrosexual Abe Lincoln, but what is a “trimmer” anyway?
“The metrosexual black Abe Lincoln has emerged as a hyper-partisan, hyper-liberal, elitist politician with more than a bit of the trimmer in him.”
I like this picture.
Frankensteinbeck
I’m with Buzzfeed. I want to vote for Black Metrosexual Abe Lincoln even more now. I think this will replace Black Jimmy Carter.
EDIT – Black Metrosexual Abe Lincoln is BEST Jimmy Carter.
taylormattd
From Jezebel
patrick II
Being racist homophobes, I get why republicans consider “black” and “metrosexual” to be insulting, but “Abraham Lincoln” ? I will grant that he set the slaves free, a mistake republicans seem to be trying to correct, but Abe was the essential founder of their party. I would think they would go with the black FDR.
Punchy
Who’s the contemporary John Booth? Nugent? And what does Sully think of black Lincolns?
JGabriel
DougJ @ Top:
I have no clue, but Wikipedia suggests that Trimmer might be a reference to either:
A) George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax, who apparently waas “a person who modifies a policy, position, or opinion especially out of expediency”
or
B) A Coal Trimmer, which may have some racial subtext.
Could be both, with Savile as the defensive ubertext to the coal trimmer subtext.
I think we can all agree that the Savile definition would constitute yet another fine example of GOP projection.
Or, it could be something else entirely.
.
NotMax
The most heinous insult they can devise to hurl at Obama is that he’s a Republican?
Pot, meet kettle.
ant
thread soundtrack needed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewrHj_RRk0Y
Omnes Omnibus
Trimmer is brit slang for a hypocrite – someone who trims his sails to accommodate the prevailing wind.
Dork
@Punchy: He likes their 3rd row of seats and 6-disc changer.
taylormattd
If we are talking about Metrosexuals, I would assume a “trimmer” is referring to, erm, manscaping type things.
J.W. Hamner
No socks? Foot fungus is not very metrosexual.
Ash Can
@Omnes Omnibus:
First they’re going to go after Obama’s church (again) and now this? How do these people manage to feed and dress themselves?
gbear
@Punchy:
He seems more like an Audi kind of guy to me.
Omnes Omnibus
@J.W. Hamner: Tres prep. One never wore socks when one was in school. Snowdrifts be damned. I still avoid them when possible.
NotMax
As for trimmer, guessing they are using it in the somewhat outmoded nautical sense?
trimmer: “one who changes opinions, actions, etc. to suit circumstances,” 1682, from trim (v.) in a nautical sense of “distribute the load of a ship so she floats on an even keel” (1580), hence, “to adjust the balance of sails or yards with reference to the wind’s direction” (1624). Source
As opposed to the much, much raunchier urban slang term.
And the Lincoln reference, I suppose, also includes the implication that Ms. Obama is as round-the-twist as Mary Todd Lincoln.
Hill Dweller
As Blow points out in the article, Romney is the meterosexual in this race. They dye job alone is enough to qualify. Once you add in the absurd amount of bronzer and ridiculous jeans, it becomes overkill.
freelancer
@ant:
Damn. I was hoping that was gonna be “Marching Through Georgia“.
peach flavored shampoo
How in hell is a black metrosexual supposed to be boogda-boogda-boogda kenyan nigra scary? Sounds exactly like the smooth, fashionable, moderate nigra I wanna vote for. Dumbasses.
Nellcote
from the column:
“Obama may have a “bit of the trimmer in him,” modifying positions for expediency, but Romney is riddled with the trait.”
Omnes Omnibus
@Ash Can: Why are you asking me?
Narcissus
Trimmer is someone you can find on craigslist and adam4adam who will expertly shave your copious back fuzz
Suffern ACE
Hmmm. You know, beyond the horrid bens chili bowl mustard no ketchup on my hamburger diplomatic travesty, have we ever caught the president being vaguely metrosexual? Grooming wise? Yeah, I guess he’s dying his hair. But so does Romney and so did st. Ronald. Wasnt there a Clinton Barbergate, where they let go the whitehous barber and then some urban legend that they closed an airport so some hairdresser could cut his hair while Air Force One was on the runway?
peach flavored shampoo
@NotMax: after reading that link, Im convinced Urban Dictionary is a joke. An adult wiki for teenagers willing to put made up “definitions” on any phrase. Still funny as shit tho
NotMax
Anyone else notice how Romney conveniently whipped out a photo of his grandchild sporting a mohawk-like ‘do just the other day (achieved with, of all things, Elmer’s glue – yuck) — a little too obviously touting the message that, of course, he has no problem with outre hairstyles, so nyah-nyah-nyah, he’s rubber, you’re glue, press corps.
Quoth B. Bunny: “What a maroon.”
Omnes Omnibus
@Suffern ACE: Dyeing his hair? Please. He is going gray as hell.
Warren Terra
I’m not sure it’s quite so extremely pejorative as Omnes suggests (“hypocrite”), but Trimmer is definitely British political (or I suppose Office Political or the like) slang for one who seems always to be going with the flow, rather than bravely holding their course.
RandyH
Abe needs a messenger bag and a bluetooth earpiece. Maybe some square glasses too.
Odie Hugh Manatee
OT: I’m still rubbernecking the train wreck that Erick has caused at Redstate and this nut I picked is a gem:
Something tells me that he isn’t voting for Obama this fall.
Back to the train wreck!
Anoniminous
@freelancer:
Uncle Billy for the WIN!
Ash Can
@Omnes Omnibus: It’s amazing. First, they’re opening Romney up to scrutiny about his Mormon religion by going after Obama’s religion. Then, they want to accuse Obama of changing his positions for the sake of political expediency? They really want to go there?
I’m half expecting them to start accusing Obama of owning too many cars or making extravagant renovations on his old Hyde Park home. Go on, guys, there are plenty more land mines for you to jump up and down on.
Suffern ACE
@Warren Terra: So attacking the elitist usurper with yachting terms? That’ll get the set at the marina hoping mad at him.
Suffern ACE
@Ash Can: Rroooove!!!!!
Omnes Omnibus
@Warren Terra: Trimmer is also the name of the adaptable former hairdresser who rises through society in Waugh’s Sword of Honour trilogy. He represents modernity and all that is crap about it as opposed to Guy Crouchback, the protagonist, who from from a declining aristocratic, Catholic family and is proper and decent at all costs.
feebog
I am mystified by what Republicans are trying to say here. Obama is like a cool version of the founder of our party? At least an argument could be made that Republicans have completely reputiated their legacy.
NotMax
Apologies if this double-posts. First time disappeared into the ether.
Anyone else notice how Romney, just the other day, conveniently whipped out a photo of a grandchild sporting a mohawk-like ‘do (done with Elmer’s glue — yuck) — a little too obviously implying that he is A-OK with outre hairstyles.
So nyah-nyah-nyah — he’s rubber, you’re glue, press crops.
Quoth B. Bunny: “What a maroon!”
PeakVT
@Suffern ACE: Heh. I was just going to say that Rove proved that accusing your enemy of your own faults works (at least for Republicans).
Next up: Romney accuses Obama of destroying jobs while he was a community organizer.
burnspbesq
@Punchy:
“And what does Sully think of black Lincolns?”
The best way to get to JFK from Midtown?
Omnes Omnibus
@burnspbesq: No S-Class Benz available?
Spaghetti Lee
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Concerned about the size of gummint, nothing more to see here.
I, too, am failing to see what ooga-booga connotations black metro Abe is supposed to bring up. Everyone but the most subterranean racists in the country thinks that comparing a politician to Lincoln is, you know, a compliment. But if we’re going with that, I christen Mittens Romney a whiter, stiffer Urkel.
burnspbesq
@Omnes Omnibus:
Too much $$$ to put on an expense report.
burnspbesq
Hyper-partisan?
About damn time.
Omnes Omnibus
@burnspbesq: Fair ’nuff. I’ve never had the opportunity to do the S-Class, but, honestly, Towncars are a good way to get to the airport.
Apikoros
@JGabriel:
I would definitely vote for A. A trimmer to my mind is one who trims his sails to go with the prevailing wind, rather than tacking to sail upwind.
Martin
I’m pretty sure a black metrosexual Abe Lincoln would hunt north korean lesbian vampires.
You’d think the GOP would absolutely worship that guy.
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@burnspbesq:
That was funny.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: You moonlight as a slash fic author, don’t you?
NotMax
Talk about an awkward encounter, coming up at end of the month.
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: Nah. I am curious about how the movie will turn out though.
David Koch
I didn’t know Shaft was metrosexual
http://laviesucree.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/barack-obama-reading.jpg
Yutsano
@Omnes Omnibus: my mom wanted one for a spell. Needless to say Dad quashed the notion. But they’re about to go car shopping here soon, and she wants a diesel of some sort. We may have to discuss Audis.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: That reminds me… What with Mothers’ Day and tending to my minions at work, I didn’t get to Dark Shadows yet. Any opinions out there? Be advised that I tend to believe that any movie with both Helena Bonham Carter and Eva Green is worth watching.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yutsano: Saab will resurrect itself, I swear to god.
Warren Terra
@Omnes Omnibus:
I haven’t read Evelyn Waugh (I basically read Nonfiction and Genre Fiction, but not Serious Fiction), and I’d not be shocked to hear he’s all sorts of wonderful. But damn he seems to have a special appeal for the worst sorts of snobs – Tory Catholics, and ersatz-Tory Catholics like Tony Blair. The sort of people who sneer at their inferiors in Latin.
CW in LA
@NotMax: We can always fantasize that the prez will make use of the occasion to arrest Shrub and rendition him to The Hague. Sigh…
Omnes Omnibus
@Warren Terra: Oh, he’s appalling in a lot of ways, but his early works were damned funny whilst being appalling. Later, he was simply appalling.
catclub
I read the article and thought it said that: In 2008 Obama sold _HIMSELF_ as a black Lincoln with the cool of a metrosexual thrown in. Obama has made lots of references to Illinois as the home of Lincoln — and him too.
The whole point of the Rev Wright tie-in was to show that Obama is REALLY an angry black man. It may make no sense, but that is what rich white men believe. They also believe he is hyper-liberal.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: Oh, where is Trollhattan when I need support?
Chris
@Spaghetti Lee:
Yeah, it’s always surprised me the extent to which Lincoln is revered as the country’s greatest president. Even though I like the guy a lot myself. Between the big chunk of this country that still clings to a Confederate “heritage” which is pretty much by definition the antithesis of Lincoln, and all the extreme measures (e.g. suspending habeas corpus) that he had to take during the war, I would’ve thought the man was much more controversial.
srv
urbandic say
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@catclub:
I was watching Romney’s unbelievably hypocritical lament that Obama is so far to the left of Bill Clinton. You think the Dems will learn to point out, should any of them be invited to talk on Sunday, that the core of Obama’s fiscal program– repeal of the top tier Bush tax cuts– is to the right of Clinton, and thus Romney’s a lying hump, again? I wish this were a rhetorical question, but they’ll probably ask Ed Rendell, Joe Lieberman, Alice Rivlin and Mark Penn
srv
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Obama’s biggest mistake was not calling ACA “Nixoncare” and the stimulus “Reagan sized”
Yutsano
@Omnes Omnibus: Still in Sverige, last I checked. Nice little town too.
Also too: Saab did not make a diesel, at least not one in the US last I checked.
Jennifer
Any time the topic of gay Abe Lincoln comes up, I have to recycle my joke about “that’s why he was known as the Tailsplitter.”
Omnes Omnibus
@Yutsano: Made diesels. Never sent them to the US. Met a guy at a Save Saab Rally in the Chicago area (we all met up at Ikea; the ex made the Chicago papers – fucking photogenic people) who had a gray market diesel he brought in from Canuckistan.
Corner Stone
@srv: I, for one, enjoyed reading The Assassin’s Gate. But I kept my balls out of George Packer’s mouth, just to be safe.
Steeplejack
@Warren Terra:
You can’t (always) blame an author for who likes him.
All the Tories go swoony over Sword of Honor, but don’t care so much for his satires, which hold up pretty well. Scoop, for example, is still relevant in the age of Murdoch.
Suffern ACE
@efgoldman: He’s greying in a controlled fashion and somedays his hair is less grey. But I guess that could be older photos getting attached to new stories.
Anyway, I saw on yahoo that the trending story today was that Michelle was drawing up divorce papers in 2000 as reported in Eric Klein’s book. The article I read ended with “this is not the first time the first couple has been rumored to be getting a divorce”.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack: Like I said earlier, Waugh’s early books, the satires are funny. He is still an appalling snob, but Basil Seal is a brilliant character. His post-conversion to Catholicism stuff gets becomes heavier on the snobbery and lighter on the satire. It is amazing that he is famous for Brideshead Revisited when Scoop, Put Out More Flags, and Decline and Fall exist.
AA+ Bonds
@srv:
agreed
valdemar
Has anyone ‘vetted’ Lincoln, using the objective criteria of the right-wing blogosphere? Indeed, how about ‘vetting’ Reagan, Eisenhower, and George Washington?
Suffern ACE
@valdemar: I’ve always been suspicious of that “taught himself to write using charcoal on a shovel” nonsense. Where are the transcripts?!
Omnes Omnibus
@valdemar: One understands that Reagan’s last wife (Nancy) was previously famous for giving the best blow jobs in Hollywood.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
Agreed. I like Waugh a lot (used to have a complete set of his books) and can abide the later stuff because he is such a good writer. He can encapsulate whole scenes in a phrase, e.g., “on the veranda of a hospitable ranch, where the ice and the dice clicked” (Brideshead Revisited).
For some reason this is reminding me that I have been thinking about rereading Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet. Hmm, wonder if available for the Nook?
. . . Bummer, no. Nor for the Kindle.
I will withhold my rant on how I want to see backlist stuff available for e-readers now!
KS in MA
@Yutsano: Aw, stop, you’re making me sad! (still mourning my last Saab)
Bago
@Omnes Omnibus: That’s my roommate.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bago: These things happen. This helps.
Anne Laurie
Doug, are you sure you grew up in an Irish-American family? Or are you just shining us on? “Trimmer” as an insult — someone whose opinions were for sale to the highest bidder — was very much in use in the parish where I grew up. George V. Higgins also used in regularly in his books (especially, IIRC, Patriot Games).
Though I doubt that President Obama would mind being called a trimmer, in this sense, any more than the original Marquess of Halifax mentioned above. He’s been pretty forthright about proposing incremental legislation he thought could be passed, rather than the large-scale utopian visions so many progressives wanted. Our president deftly uses “evolution” instead of the “bully pulpit”:
The black metrosexual Abe Lincoln is bullshit, but calling President Obama a “trimmer” is arguable. And that’s why Mitt Romney is not a trimmer — Willard is neither deft nor deliberate in his yawing between positions. A proper trimmer handles his canvas to bring his boat safe into harbor despite contrary winds; one with Romney’s touch endangers every other boat in the area as he swings wildly, and usually ends up having to be fished out of the water from the hull of his overturned craft. May it be so in November, she said piously.
RadioOne
isn’t the term “metrosexual” pretty much an insipid decade old media trope to belittle the next-gen yuppies? Also, I can’t wait to see how the working class reacts to how Obama has “more than a bit of trimmer in him.” I assume it has something to do with regatta in New England.
Anne Laurie
@Omnes Omnibus:
Off topic, sorta, but I read Kitty Kelley’s infamous Nancy Reagan bio when it came out, just because I hated Reagan that much. Interesting thing, to me, was that Kelley pretty clearly indicated she thought Nancy’s famous stepfather, The Man Who Got Reagan Into Politics, was a predatory pedophile — it seemed, in that pre-internet era, that a lot of the negative reviews were desperate to decry this particular “vicious slander” without being able to (or allowed to) actually mention what they were decrying. The best-blow-jobs-in-Hollywood meme was really chilling in that context — but it also made sense of the “famously supportive” Reagan marriage at a time when we members of the Immoral Minority were still trying to understand the pathology behind the rising politico-Christianist wave.
J R
@Yutsano:
VW Passat comes in Diesel, and there’s at least one Mercedes I think an M-class SUV with what they call BlueTec which is there newest brand of diesel.
Barney
So I think we’ve shown that ‘trimmer’ is the complete opposite of ‘hyper-partisan, hyper-liberal’. Thus showing that, once again, Republicans haven’t a clue what they’re talking about.
xian
@Omnes Omnibus: bingo. i think it comes from Dante’s Inferno. of course the bona fide trimmer in the picture is Mitt.
xian
@feebog: i thought the context was that they were going to accuse Obama of preseting himself as a BMAL.
different-church-lady
At this point I’m pretty sure these people are just screwing with our heads.
El Cid
Would there also be, like, a Latino semi-casual Robert E. Lee?
honus
@J R: VW Golf diesel has the GTI suspension and runs like a scalded dog. Also has a useable back seat. For a more sedate diesel, the Jetta wagon has a lot of room and still gets 40mpg.
hoi polloi
@gbear: Sully’s first thought would be that black Lincoln must have a lower IQ than white Lincoln.
Also, too, more black lincolns born in Amerikkka this year than white lincolns.
Joseph Nobles
@El Cid: Sounds enough like Marco Rubio to me.
Davis X. Machina
He’s been called a trimmer from the very beginning.
R-Jud
@El Cid: South Asian hipster Jefferson Davis.
El Cid
@R-Jud: A Burmese Sex-and-The-City Susan B. Anthony.
Citizen_X
@El Cid: A Jewish Goth Tom Paine.
Omnes Omnibus
@Citizen_X:
Well, that’s David Brooks, now isn’t it?
Citizen_X
@Omnes Omnibus: Now you’ve insulted Jews, Goths and Tom Paine.
Omnes Omnibus
@Citizen_X: Bill Kristol would have been better?
JGabriel
@Apikoros:
Yep, as Omnes Omnibus, and others have noted, “a person who modifies a policy, position, or opinion especially out of expediency” seems to be the intended meaning of trimmer here.
.
Billy Rae Valentine
@Davis X. Machina:
thanks for that link. it was fascinating to see how blog-frequenting liberals in 2006 viewed Obama.
it shows how people have no predictive ability whatsoever. all of them talking so confidently about his chances and goals. “maybe he’s angling for a VP slot”. haha.
but they had his centrist intentions guessed correctly. i assume those same people feel vindicated. he did, however, rack up accomplishments and experience.
AHH onna Droid
@R-Jud: Nikki Haley?