Don't You Know Who I Am?

I'm not sure what possessed me, but I'm taking it as a sign that I was feeling so strong mentally and emotionally, I knew I could manage some unedited Donald Trump content directly against my eyeballs and earholes. There hasn't been a direct ruling that I'm aware of as far as the surgeon general goes, but I think everyone can agree too much exposure can be detrimental to a person's health, inducing anxiety, stress, vertigo, shortness of breath, an inexplicable impermeability to things that are both obvious and true and, probably, some kind of eczema. I assume it has to be a rash of some kind that necessitates him having to use that much bronzer.

Out of everything that's been available basically nonstop since about 1982 that I've mostly successfully avoided, I was compelled for some reason to watch his interview with three journalists in front of an audience at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago this week.

I guess the first and most obvious thing to say about it is: don't do this. Don't be me. Whatever you hear about the man in short snippets or glean from headlines you skim in your news aggregator of choice, that's more than enough. Sure, in a normal setting, small bites can lead to a skewed or disingenuous picture of a person (especially a political candidate), but this is not a normal setting. This is exactly who you think it is saying exactly what you'd expect him to say in exactly the tone you imagine to exactly the wrong audience. This isn't Ross Perot getting loose with a "you people" to an NAACP gathering in 1992. The coverage since has very decidedly not been "oh, what a gaffe, this might cost Trump..." Sometimes the scandal is just the person.

For those reasons, I can say as I watched it (kind of in the background as I was working. You can't look directly at it, like an eclipse. Otherwise you end up looking like an asshole), none of it was particularly surprising nor interesting. Trump speaking to women, who are journalists and who are also black. Who couldn't imagine him coming out defensive, hostile, affronted and scolding? Did he completely avoid answering any questions directly and then "a lot of people are saying..." his way to a bunch of things that are provably false? Stop it, you know he did. And did he do it all with a tone of wounded victimhood and condescension, in that groveling, sniveling sad-boy style that only he can manage, with a posture of domination but a voice and content that can only sound like begging? Goddammit, you know he did.

There's only one thing true about Donald Trump and that is that he is mystified--genuinely, I think--that not everyone absolutely loves him. Any hint that that isn't the case, which is only correctly shown by deference (evinced in every one of his 100% false stories that include the line "...and this big strong man looked at me, tears in his eyes, and he said 'Sir...'"), and he hastily constructs himself up into the brittlest tower, composed of ice cubes, pretzel sticks and processed cheese, which immediately begins a slow, inevitable collapse into a soggy, gross puddle of an indescribable color somewhere between chartreuse, mauve and pumpkin.

It was unacceptable then for Rachel Scott of ABC News to open up with an actual journalistic question about positions he's taken publicly. After that, it was just a bad person behaving badly and saying stupid things he thinks are smart. Again, this is not really news. This is the software working as designed. You could do anything, up to and including a recent near-death experience, and the programming would not/could not be patched, upgraded or overwritten. It would be like asking your garbage disposal to do your taxes. The person fucking up is the person with the expectation.

He talked down to women directly in front of him. He fumbled easy layup answers if they weren't sufficiently about him. He presented unasked-for a series of premises based in racist thought that he could later double down on. It's been interesting to see the political press forge the experience into headlines, which are both accurate to the content and as dog-bites-man mundane as news gets. Dude sucks. All of this is more noise en route to a future where we maybe never have to hear from him again. A hundred days is a long time, but it doesn't currently feel as long as it used to.

Check back in a week, though.