What we have in this article from the Aussie magazine Crikey, which I critique below, is a hate-on-Trump diatribe, disguised as thinly-stretched humour, that I only realised was humour because it was in Crikey's "Humour" section.
In the end it's Trump Derangement Syndrome at its apogee, while trying -- with spotty success -- to pass off as humorous, as "tolerant", even if "snottily" so.
It was sent to me by an Occasional Reader.
At first it seemed to me like a rather sanctimoniously self-righteous piece, written by an outright wanker. But then I reminds meself: "tut, tut, no ad hominem Forse”, so better not go there.
Instead, I'll just have a go at the content. Eschewing the ad hom.
Though it styles as "humour", it's really a paeon of self-pity, self-pity for the Trump win, self-pity for how much it hurts this poor man. This poor man who is now -- valiantly, we are asked to assume -- trying to show his "tolerance" of all the poor, of the pathetic, of the ignorant proles who voted for Trump.
So, let's go.
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Here is Shaun Micallef, in "A snottily superior plea for tolerance".
His essay is indented, my comments in purple.
Wow! I completely misread the room on that one. Mind you, in my defence, I wasn’t actually in the room. Frankly, the room was too far away for me to even listen at the door and I only had news clips and reports to go off.
The room was America, and I was in Australia, safe and secure and a little smug about the whole thing. I was convinced, given the gaffes and the gaslighting and the general level of Grand Guignol on display, that there was no way on God’s green earth he was going to win. But then I thought that too in 2016 and was proved resoundingly wrong.
OK. Well, here's the thing with this. I'm here in Hong Kong, yet I was able to plug in and have a pretty good idea of what was happening in the US, and the US election, just by following various newsites and YT channels that are everywhere available.
I got a pretty good feel of where the minority votes were headed, by following the Black and POC channels like the ones I mentioned here. And also to have an idea of how young voters were trending Trump, by following Charlie Kirk, here. Micallef's claim that he couldn't know what was happening in American because he was in Australia is laughable, or else he's willingly ignorant. It doesn't wash, Shaun!
Why the hell did I trust those clearly biased instincts again? Was it because I’d convinced myself he’d frayed his base since then and things would be even more perilous for him than in 2020?
You'd convinced yourself because you lived in that leftist bubble in Australia, no doubt anchored by our dear trusted ABC. If yo're in that bubble those "instincts" are what you believe, because you're trained to belive them. You might switch over to CNN or BBC from time to time, but they'll just tell you the same as does the ABC. And so it goes.
You'll never, ever, ever watch Fox. Because it's "biased', don't you know. And you say that without ever watching it. You don't need to deny this. I know plenty of folk who've told me the same. "How can you watch Fox, it's so biased??". I ask "Do you ever watch it?". "No, of course not!" they answer. There's your answer to how you trusted those "clearly biased instincts". It was your own choice, even if you weren't aware it was a choice.
After all, he was a well-known quantity now: a fulminating blowhard with neither dignity nor shame; a cry-baby idiot who knew nothing worthwhile about anything, least of all his limitations; a pompous, inarticulate, opportunistic, grifting windbag; a liar, a cheat, a moral and, on a number of occasions, actual bankrupt; a felon several times over; a fire-and-Fred Flintstone carnival-barking Florida real estate salesman playing to, it turns out, not so much the lowest but the largest common denominators of aspiration and greed.
What is "fulminating"? A: "very angry; expressing strong and angry criticism", from the Cambridge Dictionary. Very well, I'll grant that he was often angry. Angry at the open border; at the rise in crime; at the rampant inflation. Lots of things to be angry about. But let's not forget the anger of his critics, calling him everything up to and including "literally Hitler". Literally!
What is a "blowhard"? A: "a person who likes to talk about how important they are", from the Cambridge Dictionary. Again, I'll give you that, Shaun. He certainly does like to talk about how wonderful he is. By now, though, those of us who've recognised that he did good in his first term, and would do better in his second than would the Kamala-Obama ticket, we've just come to accept it. It's part of the furniture. It's what goes with the package. You'd rather have less of it, but what the hell.
"... with neither dignity nor shame": well he certainly has to have a very thick skin, to handle all the shit that comes his way. All the bogus court cases, all the vitriol, all the hate. If he didn't have such a thick skin, he'd not survive. I know I wouldn't. But that comes with a certain amount of admitting no shame.
"... a cry-baby idiot...". This is sheer nonsense. We need only recall what he did when he was shot, with a bullet passing by and through his ear. He stood up and called out "Fight, fight, fight". There are many -- including Mark Zuckerberg -- who say that that's what did it for them. That that's what made them recognise he is a real leader and that hes genuinely courageous.
I've lost the patience to go over the rest of this dreary paragraph. It's nothing but ad hominem. Nothing but hysterical hate on Trump, which reflects worse on Micallef than on the man he attacks. I mean. Look at ti! Look at the vitriol. Oozing oleaginous Trump Derangement.
For most who voted, these rank deficiencies simply did not exist — or didn’t matter. Or they weren’t deficiencies at all but admirable qualities that instilled confidence and devotion. Any way you cut it, I was as wrong as wrong could be and his boosters had been right to have been so confident of victory. Even Senator Deej Babet had been vindicated. Ye Gods.
I will never trust my instincts again, nor be so dismissive of people I previously considered fools and simpletons. After all, maybe it was Iwho was both fool and simpleton. I’m not saying I’m wrong about what I think and believe, or that I’ll betray my principles any time soon. What I’m saying is I’m in the minority. In a battle that is often binary and about barracking rather than holding anyone to account, perhaps we shouldn’t be so intolerant of someone wanting to express a contrary point of view. It may well be wrong-headed, but no-one appreciates being laughed off and sniggered at!
Of course, I’m a so-called comedian and don’t tend to take any of what’s happening in the world all that seriously. Politics, especially. But some folk aren’t in the mood for jokes about things they believe in, particularly when they’re at the expense of something or someone they’ve imbued with a pulsating messianic glow and are convinced will deliver them from the evils of the deep state and whatever else it is preventing them from being rich and beautiful like the stars on TV.
"Of course, I’m a so-called comedian...”.
Of course. “one of the world’s unfunniest”:
In real life, though, I shouldn’t be as snotty as that. Nor should I be condescending about their simple, home-spun and uneducated ways. They can’t help being ignorant, and who am I to say they are and whose fault it is they can’t see it. Same with willful stupidity. I need to get my head out of the clouds (or very likely, my arse), get down off my nose-bleedingly high horse, and fall down the steps of my ivory tower so I can rub shoulders with the great unwashed and largely unvaccinated hoi polloi (I’ve probably been wrong about Ivermectin too).
Extraordinary. What arrogance. What entitlement. What elitism!. We are all “home-spun and uneducated”?? The likes of Elon Musk, David Sacks, Chamath, Tulsi Gabbard, Byron Donald... the list goes on. I’m breathless at the ignorance Micallef shows here.
People are people and deserve respect no matter how easily duped they are by ruthless demagogues. History will bear me out here. Look at Cleon of Athens. Yes, he was a big, fat idiot, but he was very popular and the people voted him in as ruler. Why? Because he appealed to their venal desires and bigotry, demonised out-groups and promised to put to death all the adult males in the capital city of Lesbos.
These references would obviously mean nothing to the morons invested in the myth of MAGA — or at least that’s what my own rampant prejudice tells me. I have been an armchair centrist for far too long. Going forward (God, I hate that expression), I vow to listen with an open heart to those with whom I assume I have next to nothing in common.
For at the end of the day and through the glass darkly and into the long goodnight, we have in common our shared humanity. None of us are immune to human frailty and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to nor are we beyond redemption and the warm embrace of forgiveness to the bosom of those to whom we would formerly not have given the time of day, lest they strike us to the ground and very probably steal our watch.
"... nor are we beyond... [et seq]"
Isn't this such a horrible thought! Such an uncharitable thought. That you, Shaun, will embrace -- oh, you big man, you! -- those plebs, those rubes, those deplorables -- you will enshroud them in your "warm embrace of forgiveness", for they need to be forgiven, these simpletons, but then you shove the knife in, to the hilt, don't you: these same people that you've just been "forgiving" would, you believe, in any other time, strike you down and steal your watch. That's a truly rotten, lousy, nasty, thought.
And now we have the final para, a poem, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, which doesn't seem to fit in the contex, but by this stage Micallef is all, like, "what the hell, better throw in a bit of arcane poetry to finish off". And here he is, finished off. There in the twilight cold and grey,
Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay,
And from the sky, serene and far,
A voice fell like a falling star,
Excelsior!
Shaun Micallef
CONTRIBUTOR @SHAUNMICALLEF
Shaun Micallef is a TV writer, producer, performer and former host of the award-winning Mad as Hell on the ABC. He has a new book out called Slivers, Shards & Skerricks (Affirm Press).
And that's it dear reader. My critique of Shaun Micallef's evanescent piece in Crikey. Come today; gone tomorrow. As is this critique.
Save for this thought. That in the poem above, Excelsior, Trump would have been inspired more by others of its lines:
"Oh stay," the maiden said, "and rest
Thy weary head upon this breast! "
