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?
Corner Stone
pointing and mocking
ruemara
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?
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.
Garbo
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.
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.
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.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
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.
Garbo
@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.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ian:
“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.”
Corner Stone
Greg Abbott. Are you fucking kidding me?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@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.
ranchandsyrup
Ear wormed me: Cherub — Doses and Mimosas.
Eta: so many hipster club kids in video.
Violet
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:
Love it. Wish we had Mark Twain today.
Omnes Omnibus
Also, there will always be a warm spot in my heart for Spy magazine for the phrase “short-fingered vulgarian.”
Garbo
@Violet:
I dare say we did: Molly Ivins.
GregB
@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.
Violet
@Garbo: She’s sorely missed. But who do we have now?
Omnes Omnibus
What is on top of Johnny Weirs’s head?
Garbo
@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
Bill E Pilgrim
@Shakezula:
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”.
Garbo
@Violet: I think Colbert comes closest, in speaking uncomfortable truth to power.
Omnes Omnibus
@Garbo: Cool.
Jay C
I especially liked this bit from the Slate link: (dumping on McKay Coppins for his “hit piece” on The Donald):
Reset the irony meters: someone who goes by the name of “Bianka Pop” is grousing about “unprofessional” Behavior?
@Violet:
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….
Cassidy
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.
NotMax
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.
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus
Ooh, ooh, Mr. Kotter, can it be multiple choice?
(d) All of the above
Garbo
@Omnes Omnibus: Once had the pleasure of seeing an ex-boyfriend royally smacked down in the Spy Magazine letters section. They were ruthless.
Violet
@Garbo: I think you’re right. Colbert is a treasure.
Felonius Monk
As usual The Donald proves it is time to take out the GARBAGE.
GregB
@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”.
Suffern ACE
@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.
Mike in NC
@ruemara: Nobody still uses LinkedIn.
Jebediah, RBG
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.
ruemara
@Mike in NC: oh, shush.
helping hand
This seems to be the talk of the day, don’t think I saw it mentioned here:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/02/i-crashed-a-wall-street-secret-society.html
Calouste
@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.
Warren Terra
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.
something fabulous
@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!
something fabulous
… see, this is why I mainly lurk! Late-night thread-killah.
qwerty42
Rebecca Schoenkopf at Wonkette on the Boyle-at-Breitbart article.
slippytoad
@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.
slippytoad
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.
Sondra
It’s sad really. I thought the piece was pretty mild.
fledermaus
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
g
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.