More wise, tough talk from the very serious daddy party:
GOP strategist Rick Wilson dismissed the “childless single men” who support Trump’s presidential bid.
“The fact of the matter is, most of them are childless single men who masturbate to anime.”
Instead of masturbating to American-made internet porn like real patriots!
JCJ
Wow. I guess we know what he does in his spare time.
Eric U.
this is funny. I sent that story to a friend and prefaced it with the observation that we should have established a safe word before election season. I find republican stupidity to be highly entertaining, sometimes it gets him depressed. Which is probably the more normal response, since they are doing a pretty good job of destroying our country.
BGinCHI
At least Tipper Gore didn’t know anything about music.
Immanentize
What about Rich Lowry and starbursts? Forget anime, Palin has long been the primary motivator for the masturbaters in that crowd.
Shell
God, its a little early for that mental image…
Punchy
I think “anime” was mistranslated and, given the age of the GOP base, what he meant was slappin’ it to pics of Anna Mae
dmsilev
I guess we should be grateful it’s not Hentai.
(Wikipedia link, but still NSFW)
jon
So aside from the white supremacists, Latinophobes who still haven’t forgiven Those People for blowing up the Maine, all the people who want to work in an American iPhone dungeon/manufacturing plant, Eastern European women who want to be Mrs Trump IV, dummies who think they might end up with an autographed hamburger shot of Sarah Palin if they show up at the Forty Minutes Hate rally, and the people who just want a Very Strong Leader for the New America, who are the people who want to see a President Trump?
Germy
So he’s going for the Japanese SalaryMan vote?
dmsilev
@jon:
Writers for late-night comedy shows.
Shell
Seems like the Weather newsies are still being a bit cagey about this weekends snowstorm. Not its likelihood but on how much we’re gonna get.
Germy
@dmsilev: Wow! The “Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife (1814)” should be a campaign poster.
El Caganer
Dammit, I knew there was something left off today’s to-do list.
“4. Masturbate to anime.”
There. Fixed.
Oatler.
The commentariat at Reason Magazine seem oddly familiar with erotic anime, but then so do the clientele at a comics convention.
Botsplainer
Never considered fapping to anime. Seems odd.
Bubblegum Tate
…but really, it’s about ethics in gaming journalism.
BGinCHI
@Oatler.: I think you have a significant overlap there.
Throw in 20-somethings with ironic beards.
Mike in NC
I caught Wilson on TV last night and he seemed to know exactly what he was talking about. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
dmsilev
@Germy: Favorite sentence in that article: “In the late 1980s, eroge began to stagnate under high prices and the majority of games containing uninteresting plots and mindless sex.[27]”.
Germy
@dmsilev: as eroge goes, so goes the nation.
SFAW
@El Caganer:
Since when did you become a Trump supporter?
terraformer
I suppose he didn’t consider how his statement might impact support from the masturbating to Anime demographic.
BGinCHI
@terraformer: In that sense, “hearts & minds” is really too limited for an effective psyops.
Culture of Truth
That’s an awfully specific criticism.
Mai.naem.mobile
This country has gone crazy. Completely nuts. No other country in the world would take Trump as a serious candidate. Not the Italians,not the North Koreans, not Argentina, not Swaziland.
BGinCHI
@Mai.naem.mobile: Cloud Cuckoo Land?
MattF
Surprisingly enough, this is on-topic.
Bobby Thomson
Talk about your microtrends.
You can have your soccer moms. Trump has the fapping MRAs.
Gin & Tonic
@Mai.naem.mobile: Italy?
Paul in KY
If Trump can get them to stoop whacking off & vote for him, he’ll take those votes.
Hillary would take them too.
Paul in KY
@Gin & Tonic: Agree. Think he fit right in, in Italy.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
OT: Would it be irresponsible to speculate that she had to go home and raise bail money? From a Trump embed
NorthLeft12
My wife asks me why I am so interested in American politics……being a Canadian and all. I will stop and think for about five minutes and something absolutely crazy [like the above story] comes out. Pure gold.
The political scene up here is incredibly boring compared to you guys. Although truth be told, when you are talking about responsible governance, boring is generally pretty good.
RaflW
As opposed to, say, Rich Lowry-types who masturbate to Sarah Palin’s America re-runs.
hueyplong
ANIME FAPPER LIBEL
Joel
@Mai.naem.mobile: I think you overrate Berlusconi and Shinawatra.
Karen
I love anime and I’m really aggravated that it’s now connected to Trump.
I wonder how many of those masturbaters to anime are actually masturbating to “yaoi” (boy’s love.)
PIGL
@Karen: All of them, Karen. All of them. Except the yiffing furries, of course. Republicans: they’ll sink that low.
Brachiator
Wow. Talk about a weird insult out of left field.
I just hope this nimrod never notices all those Finn/Po Dameron shippers who are Bernie supporters.
I kid. I kid. Wilson’s comment is, for now, the stupidest comment I have read about the presidential campaign. In a year of insanity, he has set the bar. Will anyone be able to top it?
And I can’t wait to see if the Sunday shows mention this at all.
Damn. Republicans are some crazy muhfuckers.
the Conster
The only thing missing from the Trump campaign is Rob Ford in a bathrobe. Make it happen, Donald!
MomSense
Nope, did not want this imagery. I have a pre-teen who watches anime. Nope. Nope. Nope. Do not want.
Need kitten and puppy videos stat.
Roger Moore
I’ve seen enough hentai to know where this thread is going.
the Conster
Actually, I got in a back and forth on Twitter with “Women for Trump” trying to tease out what it was that they thought Trump would actually do for them, so they’re not all male, but all of his supporters are seriously delusional. As it turns out, that 27% magic number means that slightly more than 1 out of 4 people are certifiably insane.
lowercase steve
It warms my heart to see team Clinton and team Sanders put aside their differences and savagely mock the true enemy.
AWJ
FWIW Wilson’s comment isn’t entirely coming out of left field; he’s talking about the 4chan “alt-right” crowd, with whom he has a bit of a history of mutual trolling on Twitter. Jeet Heer of The New Republic has engaged with the same people on occasion (to whose benefit I am unable to fathom)
Roger Moore
@NorthLeft12:
“I’m worried that our next door neighbor, the most powerful country in the world, is about to be taken over by juggalos” isn’t a good enough answer for her?
Just Some Fuckhead
I think Trump’s support cuts across a large swath of demographics, shallowly. I call his base the Dumbs.
Chris
Four years ago: “Yeah but Nate Silver’s a homo.”
Today: “Yeah but Trump voters are masturbators.”
The party establishment is in profoundly deep shit, for reasons that have everything to do with themselves. They’re more disconnected than any of the loonies in their base.
Robert M.
@Brachiator:
If the last quarter of 2015 is a reliable guide, the answer is yes, and probably by the end of the week.
catclub
@hueyplong: Band name.
Lurking Canadian
The best thing about all this is that I now, finally, know the one lyric of that song that I could never parse. “Anime babes” “Sailor Moon”! Of course!
Peale
I actually might support Trump supporters if I found out they watched anime, but then I realized that they are probably the reason why it gets dubbed for US release rather than subtitled.
jl
He’s overthinking it.
And he sounds just as callous as Trump and Trumpists, just uses more conventional language to express himself.
catclub
@Joel: I have previously written that Berlusconi has/had more staying power because he actually owned a large fraction of the media in Italy – and so could not lose it – in contrast to Trump.
So far, Trump has not lost any media support/coverage, which is his daily bread.
Chris
@jon:
My reaction was in the opposite direction: exactly how many more people are “GOP strategists” going to decide they can do without? They wrote off black people and most Latinos years ago, okay, fine, I suppose it made some sense especially in the seventies and eighties when the white vote was big enough that it didn’t matter so much. But they keep pushing the limits. No nonwhite people at all, including what used to be “their” demographics (Chinese-Americans, Vietnamese-Americans, Muslims). No young people. Etc. Now the strategists are at the point where they actually think they can just handwave away Trump voters, i.e. the goddamn Republican base?
Knowing when to write off certain demographics is probably smart politics, but this isn’t that anymore – it’s become just a self-justification for not reaching out to anyone they don’t want to.
Ken
So what are the qualifications for becoming a “GOP strategist”, other than being thirteen?
Frankensteinbeck
I assumed he was talking about MRAs, who have a peculiar tendency to use anime girl icons as their online avatars.
But he’s a Republican, so odds are he’s not anti-misogyny. He’s just an asshole shitting on anyone who doesn’t conform to toxic masculinity standards.
Germy
@Chris:
Well, if they combine that with more and more voter restriction laws…
Chris
@Germy:
Yeah, that’s only going to take them so far.
Eric U.
@Peale: I would much rather read subtitles than listen to an overdubbed soundtrack. I’m guessing there is over-acting in the Japanese soundtrack, but I don’t understand it, so it helps. There are a lot of overdubbed French movies, which totally ruins the whole experience
BruceFromOhio
That is a very specific demographic sector. Do the pollsters know about this? And has there been any economic study done of the CSMWMTA sector to ascertain revenue and tax burdens to help explain the level of candidate support?
I’d pay for the cross-tabs against the SJW-MRA-Gamer demo’s. There’s a revolution stirring, and it sure as heck won’t be televised. Too icky!
@Bubblegum Tate: Exactly! The cross-over here is just begging for an HLN special.
Brachiator
@Chris:
What should be scaring the GOP Establishment is the notion that Trump might steal from the existing GOP base and add new supporters.
From a recent story:
And I don’t think it is ever smart politics to write off certain demographics. This is not the same thing as a strategic (and often cynical) move to sacrifice some demographics because it will gain you significantly more voters elsewhere.
Brachiator
@Chris: Crap. Got moderated. Let’s try the Revised Standard Version of my comment:
What should be scaring the GOP Establishment is the notion that Trump might steal from the existing GOP base and add new supporters.
From a recent news story:
Brachiator
@Eric U.:
Sometimes it’s just a question of which bad experience you will settle for. I recall a particularly bad Hong Kong film in which the overdubbed dialog seemed to have been written by someone who was more familiar with Australian English and slang than American English, while the subtitles were done by someone trying to do a poor literal translation from Cantonese to English that was as stiff as the English in an instruction manual.
feebog
@BruceFromOhio:
I see what you did there.
Matt McIrvin
Trump, with his emphasis on xenophobia and generalized authoritarian bluster instead of extensive God-talk and complaints about government regulations, is actually more like the extreme-right political candidates in European countries than he is a typical American conservative. If Trumpism becomes the new ideology of the Republicans, it’ll be a move toward more widespread international norms.
sukabi
What is it with the GOP? Are they all emotional cripples stuck some where around the age of 12?
Failgunner was yabberin the other day about New York values included men’s masturbation boths.
Frankensteinbeck
@Eric U.:
Japanese voice acting is an industry you go to school for and get careful training. As a result, there are a specific set of voices used by most voice actors/actresses for most characters, and only a few get something recognizably unique. Thus the ‘Oh ho ho ho ho’ villainess laugh that always sounds the same, for example. They’re taught that.
Belafon
@MomSense: Do you watch them with your kid?
catclub
@sukabi: I just read about those in a new Neal Stephenson book.
Roger Moore
@Peale:
It’s elitists like you who give Democrats a bad name! Dubs forever!
Actually, I’m an elitist, subtitle watcher, too.
Brachiator
t@Matt McIrvin:
Yep. On point. The leaders of the UK Independence Party must be gnashing their teeth over Trump’s popularity with a hard core of GOP voters.
C.V. Danes
What’s wrong with masturbating to Anime?
PurpleGirl
@Eric U.: According to my Norwegian penpal, the Norwegians subtitled American and English television shows instead of dubbing them. It was cheaper than dubbing them and had the added bonus of letting people hear English. It especially helped school children who were learning English in school.
ETA: This was back in the 1970s and I don’t know if they still subtitle the television shows. He said it did help a lot of people to learn English.
Belafon
There’s not a bit of difference between subtitles and dubbing, as both are attempts to translate a foreign language to English. I like the dubs a bit more because you can get yelling and other inflections you couldn’t get in subtitles.
What’s really fun is watching a movie, having both on. In Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, for instance, the subtitles and English translations are different in some scenes.
Linnaeus
“Childless single man”. There’s some coding, right there.
Germy
@Linnaeus: Right up there with “childless, single woman” as an attempt at shaming.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
A true elitist would learn the language of a foreign film.
This reminds me of some middle aged faux-elitists sitting behind me at an art house cinema. Before the film started, one person noted to his companion that he only watched French foreign films, and only those which had been reviewed favorably in The New Yorker. He also spoke about how often he had traveled to France, but it became clear that this relatively affluent would be sophisticate did not speak French and knew practically nothing about French culture.
trollhattan
@Linnaeus:
Immediately cuts out anybody who uses “My baby’s mama” in day-to-day conversation.
The Republicans are way, way off the playbook and frankly aren’t very good writers with what they’ve done so far on this appendix. Rewrite, please.
mclaren
Trying to think of any anime anyone could possibly masturbate to…
…Coming up blank here. Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?
mclaren
@Roger Moore:
Too late. That happened on 20 January, 1981.
As Robin Williams put it:
Capri
@Chris:
They came for the single, childless men who masturbate to anime and I said nothing, for I was not a single, childless man who mastrubates to anime….
Citizen_X
@Brachiator: Yeah, too bad the GOP has spent the last several years coming up with barriers to voting that predominantly exclude the poor, the blue-collar, the old, the less-educated…that might bite them come Election Day.
JCJ
@Roger Moore:
Idunno, I might prefer Shaggy and Violent J take over instead of Trump or Cruz.
Brachiator
@Citizen_X:
Many of these barriers are easily overcome.
Gravenstone
@Gin & Tonic: Today’s essay, Is Donald Trump worse than Silvio Berlusconi?
NorthLeft12
@Roger Moore: Yes, the fact that you are going collectively crazy is a variation of my other reason……that being…..there are far too many Canadians who think our country should be more like the US….especially like the vision that RWNJs have of your country. That frankly scares the hell out of me.
PaulW
As an anime aficionado (get your minds out of the gutter, it’s mostly Cowboy Bebop and FLCL), I NEVER root for Trump.
(glances about)
(breaks out blu-ray copy of Sekirei)
I’m still not voting for Trump.
Seanly
I look forward to Frequent Anime Masturbators (..ers?) replacing Soccer Moms, Security Moms, NASCAR Dads, etc, etc as the mainstream media official “obscure demographic subset of annoying white middle class douchebags to hype on for this election cycle even though it’s just a tiny part of the electorate”.
I don’t think my 82 year old FIL has ever seen anime much less masturbated to it so not all Trump supporters fit the demographic. My FIL doesn’t vote and is probably just trolling us coz he likes to be a contrarian to my wife.
eyelessgame
This is one of those bizarrely misdirected slurs that leave me wondering what the guy is on.
I mean, if he’d said this about Rand Paul’s fans, he’d have somewhat of a point..,
David *Born in the USA* Koch
Asian porn takes away good paying jobs from Americans.
Brachiator
@David *Born in the USA* Koch:
Anime porn takes away good paying jobs from human beings.
How much does a toon earn from sex work?
Paul in KY
@Brachiator: About 45 quatloos per week.