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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Open Thread: Short-Fingered Vulgarians Have Feelings, Too

Open Thread: Short-Fingered Vulgarians Have Feelings, Too

by Anne Laurie|  February 18, 201410:46 pm| 44 Comments

This post is in: Excellent Links, Open Threads, Assholes, Clown Shoes

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Sunday, I linked to McKay Coppins’ Buzzfeed report on “the man who will not be king“. The piece was getting attention all over the centrist-to-left blogsphere, but apparently The Donald didn’t get the news until the work week. Dave Weigel has the shorter (probably all a sensible person needs) of the ensuing hissyfit(s):

A normal politician, or a politician with a reasonably developed sense of decorum, might have shrugged off a story like McKay Coppins’ “36 Hours on the Fake Campaign Trail With Donald Trump.” Sure, Coppins’ piece makes Trump look like a buffoon who yearns to be taken seriously by people he doesn’t have on the payroll. It also humanizes the guy, quoting his jokes, quoting his compliments and asides…

Trump, a wealthy person who’s covered himself in ignorance and humiliation every time he’s ventured into politics, is clearly unhappy about Coppins’ article. Because he has no tact, he’s shown this by firing an aide, Sam Nunberg, who encouraged Trump to sit for the profile, and by retweeting Coppins’ critics. It’s all quite pathetic, but increasingly hilarious—Trump, as usual, is running to sycophants in the hopes that they’ll lie for him. And in the past day, it’s become an unnecessary lesson in the problems of conservative journalism….

Much more detail at the link, including quotes from such journamalistic luminarias as Politico, American Spectator, and Dead Breitbart’s surviving minions.
************
Apart from pointing and mocking, what’s on the agenda for the remnants of the evening?

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Reader Interactions

44Comments

  1. 1.

    Corner Stone

    February 18, 2014 at 10:52 pm

    pointing and mocking

  2. 2.

    ruemara

    February 18, 2014 at 10:52 pm

    Attempting to pressure my social network to, you know, network. Been on LinkedIn for 3 years. I have 40 contacts, mostly people I’ve worked with or for, only 3 have ever recommended me for work. I, however, am a reliable reference. I got 5 more months to land something. It would be so nice if the people who have profited from my work said a few nice words about it so I look a little bit less of a ‘net loser. I am correct, no? That it looks quite odd if you don’t have much in the way of recommends from your contacts?

  3. 3.

    Ian

    February 18, 2014 at 10:54 pm

    Do you think he is paying people to find Obama’s secret Kenyan birth certificate? That would be an awesome job if it paid well. No real work, and your grifting the Trump.

  4. 4.

    Garbo

    February 18, 2014 at 10:55 pm

    Reminds me of the 2012? nerd prom when Obama made fun of him to his face and he had to sit there and take it. Good times.

  5. 5.

    Shakezula

    February 18, 2014 at 10:58 pm

    Some say the excesses and abuses of the 1% will trigger La Revolution; I think the insistence on being taken seriously will eventually get them bundled into tumbrils.

    Take our homes, turn our water into poison, shorten our lives. But don’t fucking whine.

    I dozed off in a chair earlier and made myself work out before I crawled in bed.
    Adulthood.
    Wheee.

  6. 6.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    February 18, 2014 at 10:58 pm

    I find it astonishing that Trump doesn’t seem to realize that the number of people laughing at him is greater by magnitudes than the people who admire him (and apparently there are some)

    The closest I came to not-despising Willard was when all the Disney dwarves he was striving mightily to beat in the GOP primary were trooping to NYC for a photo op with “Mr Trump”, Willard insisted their meeting be off camera, and he seemed to have the dignity to be embarrassed by the whole affair. Then Trump became a Birther and Willard couldn’t get enough of him.

  7. 7.

    Garbo

    February 18, 2014 at 10:58 pm

    @ruemara: Since LinkedIn added the new feature where people recommend you for specific skills vs. the old essay style, I find fewer people take the time. You probably do need to ask outright. I’ve always felt it should be reciprocal, professional back-scratching-wise.

  8. 8.

    Omnes Omnibus

    February 18, 2014 at 11:01 pm

    @Ian:

    Do you think he is paying people to find Obama’s secret Kenyan birth certificate? That would be an awesome job if it paid well. No real work, and your grifting the Trump.

    “Mr. Trump, I have a lead that the elusive birth certificate is hidden in Switzerland. I am going to need to put a new pair of Volkls on my expenses.”

    “It’s been moved to Whistler, BC. I’m on it, sir.”

  9. 9.

    Corner Stone

    February 18, 2014 at 11:02 pm

    Greg Abbott. Are you fucking kidding me?

  10. 10.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    February 18, 2014 at 11:03 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: Bill it to NBC. My expense account is huge. It’s the greatest expense account they’ve ever given anyone. And write “Trump” on the skis. If anyone asks, they’re Trump Skis. They’re gonna be huge.

  11. 11.

    ranchandsyrup

    February 18, 2014 at 11:07 pm

    Ear wormed me: Cherub — Doses and Mimosas.

    Eta: so many hipster club kids in video.

  12. 12.

    Violet

    February 18, 2014 at 11:12 pm

    Speaking of rich people getting press and being taken seriously simply because they’re rich, I heard a bit of the “Here and Now” show on NPR today while in the car. They were interviewing someone about Mark Twain’s autobiography, which he apparently wrote but insisted be held for publication until 100 years after his death, which was 2010. Here’s the part that kind of made my jaw drop:

    ALMOND: Oh yeah absolutely. Let me read a passage that’s about John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who was the son of John D. Rockefeller, the richest man in America and also a sort of part-time religious commentator. Twain writes: Young Rockefeller, who is perhaps 35 years old, is a plain, simple, earnest, sincere, honest, well-meaning, commonplace person, destitute of originality or any suggestion of it.

    And if you were traveling upon his mental merit instead of upon his father’s money, his explanations of the Bible would fall silent and not be heard of by the public, but his father ranks as the richest man in the world, and this makes his son’s theological gymnastics interesting and important. The world believes that the elder Rockefeller is worth a billion dollars. He pays taxes on two and a half million.

    Wow, not only is he suggesting that John D. Rockefeller, Jr., is a daddy’s boy who doesn’t have a lot upstairs but also speaking incredibly bluntly about the plutocrats of that age. How would that square in today’s political world?

    Love it. Wish we had Mark Twain today.

  13. 13.

    Omnes Omnibus

    February 18, 2014 at 11:15 pm

    Also, there will always be a warm spot in my heart for Spy magazine for the phrase “short-fingered vulgarian.”

  14. 14.

    Garbo

    February 18, 2014 at 11:17 pm

    @Violet:

    Wish we had a Mark Twain today.

    I dare say we did: Molly Ivins.

  15. 15.

    GregB

    February 18, 2014 at 11:17 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I used to eagerly gobble up every issue of Spy the same way I did National Lampoon.

    The closest thing to those now is The Onion.

  16. 16.

    Violet

    February 18, 2014 at 11:19 pm

    @Garbo: She’s sorely missed. But who do we have now?

  17. 17.

    Omnes Omnibus

    February 18, 2014 at 11:20 pm

    What is on top of Johnny Weirs’s head?

  18. 18.

    Garbo

    February 18, 2014 at 11:22 pm

    @GregB: In case you didn’t see, a full archive of Spy issues is available in Google Books:

    http://books.google.com/books/about/Spy.html?id=AXKlThqFFT0C

  19. 19.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    February 18, 2014 at 11:23 pm

    @Shakezula:

    Some say the excesses and abuses of the 1% will trigger La Revolution; I think the insistence on being taken seriously will eventually get them bundled into tumbrils.

    My prediction is pretty much the same as in the last panel here. Not the first sentence, but the part starting with “Nah, just kidding”.

  20. 20.

    Garbo

    February 18, 2014 at 11:23 pm

    @Violet: I think Colbert comes closest, in speaking uncomfortable truth to power.

  21. 21.

    Omnes Omnibus

    February 18, 2014 at 11:25 pm

    @Garbo: Cool.

  22. 22.

    Jay C

    February 18, 2014 at 11:27 pm

    I especially liked this bit from the Slate link: (dumping on McKay Coppins for his “hit piece” on The Donald):

    “I don’t know how to say it — he was looking at me like I was yummy,” recalled Bianka Pop, a hostess at Trump’s Florida resort, almost a month later. She was one of a number of people, including Trump, who said Coppins behaved unprofessionally there.

    Reset the irony meters: someone who goes by the name of “Bianka Pop” is grousing about “unprofessional” Behavior?

    @Violet:

    Love it. Wish we had Mark Twain today.

    Seriously (or SRSLY): he’d get a billion hits a day on his blog, and be a fabulously popular regular on every late-nite talk show around….

  23. 23.

    Cassidy

    February 18, 2014 at 11:29 pm

    I just finished episode two of True Detective. I don’t think they’re going supernatural horror; that’s too obvious. I think John Connolly is more likely.

  24. 24.

    NotMax

    February 18, 2014 at 11:30 pm

    Much prefer to remember the good Trump’s father did in providing affordable housing rather than paying a nanosecond of time or a nanojoule of energy on the wretched excess and carnival barker chicanery of the wastrel son.

  25. 25.

    NotMax

    February 18, 2014 at 11:34 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus

    Ooh, ooh, Mr. Kotter, can it be multiple choice?

    (d) All of the above

  26. 26.

    Garbo

    February 18, 2014 at 11:35 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: Once had the pleasure of seeing an ex-boyfriend royally smacked down in the Spy Magazine letters section. They were ruthless.

  27. 27.

    Violet

    February 18, 2014 at 11:36 pm

    @Garbo: I think you’re right. Colbert is a treasure.

  28. 28.

    Felonius Monk

    February 18, 2014 at 11:41 pm

    As usual The Donald proves it is time to take out the GARBAGE.

  29. 29.

    GregB

    February 18, 2014 at 11:44 pm

    @Violet:

    I remember one piece talking about Arnold Schwarzenegger saying he was getting “plo jobs” from some woman. “It’s not cheating its just plo jobs”.

  30. 30.

    Suffern ACE

    February 18, 2014 at 11:48 pm

    @Corner Stone: I think you’re going to miss the relative liberal calm of the good hair era, much like you ended up missing the W’s progressive thaw.

  31. 31.

    Mike in NC

    February 19, 2014 at 12:05 am

    @ruemara: Nobody still uses LinkedIn.

  32. 32.

    Jebediah, RBG

    February 19, 2014 at 12:46 am

    my dvr was just showing me Craig Ferguson and Gary Oldman dancing with a fake horse.
    I may have just witnessed the peak of Western civilization.

  33. 33.

    ruemara

    February 19, 2014 at 12:50 am

    @Mike in NC: oh, shush.

  34. 34.

    helping hand

    February 19, 2014 at 1:02 am

    This seems to be the talk of the day, don’t think I saw it mentioned here:

    The first and most obvious conclusion was that the upper ranks of finance are composed of people who have completely divorced themselves from reality. No self-aware and socially conscious Wall Street executive would have agreed to be part of a group whose tacit mission is to make light of the financial sector’s foibles. Not when those foibles had resulted in real harm to millions of people in the form of foreclosures, wrecked 401(k)s, and a devastating unemployment crisis.

    The second thing I realized was that Kappa Beta Phi was, in large part, a fear-based organization. Here were executives who had strong ideas about politics, society, and the work of their colleagues, but who would never have the courage to voice those opinions in a public setting. Their cowardice had reduced them to sniping at their perceived enemies in the form of satirical songs and sketches, among only those people who had been handpicked to share their view of the world. And the idea of a reporter making those views public had caused them to throw a mass temper tantrum.

    http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/02/i-crashed-a-wall-street-secret-society.html

  35. 35.

    Calouste

    February 19, 2014 at 2:04 am

    @Violet:
    What, you want someone who is writing critiques now of the upper class that will only be published 100 years after their death? For all Twain’s achievements, he wasn’t speaking truth to power there because it would only be made public when the power was as dead as himself.

  36. 36.

    Warren Terra

    February 19, 2014 at 3:26 am

    I feel so badly for the poor fellow Trump fired, the sharply dressed yes-man who in his previous career was an opposition-research hatchet man for conservative politicians. I mean, my heart just bleeds for the scum sucker.

    ETA has anyone ever met anyone who worked on the spell check for iOS? Did they take the opportunity to beat the miscreant mercilessly? What a P.O.S.

  37. 37.

    something fabulous

    February 19, 2014 at 3:38 am

    @ruemara: Hiya! Hope you got home safely?
    You don’t need a million of them, no, but I found that adding a few recent ones helped, as did joining a few of the professional association-type groups on there (if you haven’t already)– makes some more common connections come up, among other things. Felt a bit awkward to ask, but everyone ultimately said yes. Helps I think to prime the pump: lay out why you are doing this freshening up to give it some urgency, remind them about a specific project or time that went well, to give them a place to start from. Also, start using the contacts suggestion thingy– you should know more than 40 folks, I imagine!

  38. 38.

    something fabulous

    February 19, 2014 at 4:02 am

    … see, this is why I mainly lurk! Late-night thread-killah.

  39. 39.

    qwerty42

    February 19, 2014 at 6:55 am

    Rebecca Schoenkopf at Wonkette on the Boyle-at-Breitbart article.

  40. 40.

    slippytoad

    February 19, 2014 at 8:29 am

    @ruemara:

    I have been either the hiring manager, or the consultant on the interview, for something like the last I’d say 40 interviews done for my team. We have NEVER looked at someone’s LinkedIn recommendations. I think that site is cute, but it is probably the most totally useless social network of all time. It’s not social, and nobody actually bothers looking around it. I also do not think any of my recruiting calls have come as a result of my linkedin. So don’t worry.

  41. 41.

    slippytoad

    February 19, 2014 at 8:34 am

    Gawd, I just had to scroll down that buzzfeed article to find that close-out-of-focus pic of him captioned “Who knows what’s in the deepest part of my mind?” And I could only think . . . nobody has EVER come back from there.

  42. 42.

    Sondra

    February 19, 2014 at 10:56 am

    It’s sad really. I thought the piece was pretty mild.

  43. 43.

    fledermaus

    February 19, 2014 at 11:08 am

    A fun hobby I developed is seeing who in the DC press corp/Villager circuit still took Trump seriously, like it was the 1980s and he was still sane.

    There is something about DC that it is like 20 years behind the rest of the country. Jay Leno is still hip and business cliches like “game changer” are hot new buzzwords

  44. 44.

    g

    February 19, 2014 at 12:05 pm

    I read the piece and then later read the reaction on Wonkette. What I found hilarious was that someone from Breitbart was slagging on the supposed quality and status of a reporter who writes for Buzzfeed.

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