….a tsunami of sycophancy, an orgy of obsequiousness, an avalanche of adulation and a titanic triumph of toadyism!
Not since Thatcher in her pomp has the world experienced such fawning, simpering, wheedling and flattering. Not since Hans Christian Anderson’s Danish King got duped into buying a suit of magic clothes has there been such a gaggle of uncritical Yes-men and Yes-women. And not since the golden days of Toad of Toad Hall has the world seen such an outburst of rampant toadyism.
I am of course referring to the Republican National Convention and the way in which all the delegates are competing to come up with the most potent, adoring superlatives to describe their beloved candidate.
Read about in the Guardian and you won’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“Much of his convention speech resembled the freewheeling stump speeches Trump has become known for. He pledged “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country” while reciting falsehoods about who was coming into the United States. Claiming that countries were emptying asylums to send people to the US, Trump veered into a bizarre segue about Hannibal Lecter, the cannibal villain from the film Silence of the Lambs.
“Has anyone seen Silence of the Lambs, the late great Hannibal Lecter, he’d love to have you for dinner,” Trump says.”
The world has gone mad. So please cheer me up by putting Trump into perspective by telling us about any other historical and fictional characters who have inspired a similar frenzy of mindless sycophancy.
Is there no small, quiet voice of reason at the RNC who sees things as they are?
“The king is in the all together……”
Danny Kaye and Mark Heap should cheer us up!
From the 1952 musical Hans Christian Andersson
From the Big Train
Mentioning a whole load of political leaders from the 1930s isn’t going to cheer you up, Kais. Nor is listing the cult leaders of the 60s and 70s. Trump will come undone, but not before his dementia has advanced much further. The sad truth of it is, he’s a very effective snake oil salesman- proved by the many right wingers who tried to gain control of the GOP after January 6th and failed. Only he can lie in that stream-of- consciousness way and appeal to middle Americans the way he does. The biggest worry for me is how much dismantling of the political system he’ll do before he goes, aided by the Conservative Partnership Institute.
You’ve really hit the nail on the head there @TrypF : “Only he can lie in that stream-of- consciousness way.” Like an snake oil salesman, Trump knows how to entertain his audience and has the skills of a gifted stand up comedian.
I’m sure that reference to Hannibal Lecter went own a treat with his fans. Which other Republican politician would dare to reference popular culture in that way?
But as regards the 1930s, there are thigs t cheer us up.
When all the world was in thrall was in thrall to Hitler and Mussolini, Chaplin made The Great Dictator and dared to poke fun at Europe’s dictators..
The final speech is powerful stuff.
Trump may be on a roll right now after the assassination attempt. But if Joe Biden will only step aside, perhaps he will then be faced by political opponents and other public figures who deflate that bluster and reveal him for the shyster he is.
One has to have hope.
He’s been tossing that Hannibal Lecter non sequitur into his speeches for a while now. It’s difficult to see why he’s so proud of it. Unless it’s a kind of “safe word” he uses to communicate from the stage.
“He’s saying Lecter is a wonderful man. Have the turkey baster ready in case he needs a top up” – that sort of thing..
Thanks Sewer. You’re right, I googled a litle. Variety pointe out that Donald has an unhealthy obsession with Hannibal.
https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/donald-trump-hannibal-lecter-fascination-1236077926/
“So it’s no wonder, maybe, that the parts of “The Silence of the Lambs” Trump remembers are Hannibal’s antics, and his one big, funny quote. And it’s unsurprising, too, that he thinks of the character as a relatable avatar for the way crime works in the real world. Hannibal Lecter is a supervillain — cunning beyond belief, with appetites beyond what we’d consider human and a unique way with words. He’s the perfect imagined adversary for a presidential candidate who sees himself as unusually clever (rather than, after everything seemed to break his way toward the end of the 2016 cycle, lucky) and unusually well-spoken (rather than just finding a good phrase now and then in an incredibly long-winded nomination acceptance speech). In Lecter, Trump has found a villain whose outsized monstrosity matches Trump’s own perceived heroism, his own ability to fight back against any villain — whether real or part of our collective imagination.”
And the New Yorker adds more detail to this most peculiar obsession.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trump-hannibal-lecter-rnc-speech.html
“Donald Trump has fully collapsed the line between real life and Saturday Night Live sketch. On Thursday night, he performed his “late great Hannibal Lecter” bit during his record-length acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention.
Minutes after praising the illegal immigration chart that he credits with saving his life during last weekend’s assassination attempt, Trump went off on another tangent that was not in his prepared remarks.
“You know, the press is always on me because I say this,” Trump began. “Has anyone seen Silence of the Lambs? The late great Hannibal Lecter. He’d love to have you for dinner. That’s insane asylums, they’re emptying out their insane asylums.”
Trump often rambles about Hannibal Lecter during rallies to vilify immigrants. Somehow, it makes even less sense in context. The general idea is that he wants voters to picture one of the scariest movie villains of all time when they think about migrants. But the reference is wrong in just about every conceivable way. There’s no evidence that foreign countries are “emptying their mental institutions” into the U.S., as the candidate often claims. Trump seems confused about whether Hannibal Lecter is the name of the character or the actor who played him. Trump has claimed that an unspecified actor who played Lecter is a big MAGA guy, but they all hate him. Trump usually references the “late” Hannibal Lecter, but the character does not die in any of the book, TV, or film adaptations. And at the end of The Silence of the Lambs, Lecter has escaped from the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane to the Bahamas. So it’s really a story about the United States foisting its inmates on foreign countries.
It’s easily one of Trump’s most incoherent rally rants, which is really saying something, as he’s also taken to rambling about whether he’d rather die by shark or electrocution. And now it’s something that an actual presidential candidate has said onstage during a convention speech. And he appears to be winning! Silence of the Lambs has nothing on the terror of simply living in through the 2024 presidential race!””
As I can find nothing funny about anything connected with Trump’s pivotal role in America’s decline into fascism, here’s a Python sketch. “You majesty is like a stream of bat’s piss,” indeed.
Any fans of Amazon Prime Show – The Boys?
While superhero things aren’t normally my thing, this is a biting satire whose skewering of 21st-Century cultural tropes is almost as over-the-top as its lashings of ultra-violence
The show’s key figure, Homelander, also bears more than a passing resemblance to a current Presidential candidate…
“Then if anyone at all is to have the privilege of lying, the rulers of the State should be the persons” Plato would have been a fan.
I’ll just add Vlad Dracul and the story of the Turkish emissaries their turbans and nails.
I read that people are attending with bandaged ears. Talk about full kit wankers.
Has Liz Truss done that yet? I fear it is possible.
Would that she had bandaged her whole self, thus unable to issue inanities.
Now there’s an idea, Cheshire! Liz trussed up like a Turkey and fully bandaged a la Tutenkamun!
I’ll bet Farage is wearing a whacking great bandage over his lughole today. That man puts the t into toady!!
On the subject of toadying, the speech you need to see is former Fox News talking head Tucker Carlson’s. His deification/fuhrerfication of DT extends to calling him the “real leader of the country” with no need for an election to make it so, having been protected from assassination directly by god..
What a vile man!
When he’s not toadying to Trump, he’s toadying to Putin!
Damn right fortuneeight! Those full kit wankers need a First Aid Kit!
Those ear bandages are a trend that is sweeping the planet as Donfans the world over are bandaging their lugholes in support of Bid Orange. The
whole world has gone Van Gogh a Go Go!
And then there’s photo taken just after the shots …
It’s Gericault’s 1818 Raft of the Medusa Revisited!
https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2024/07/17/from-van-gogh-to-the-raft-of-the-medusa-this-photograph-of-trump-exists-within-a-rich-art-history
A very gifted photographer in exactly the right place at the very right time.
Just a lucky coincidence!
At least when they’re wearing ear bandages, you can spot them at a distance and take evasive action.
You’d be foolish to lend them your ear at the best of times.
Nowadays you’re unlikely to ever get it back
Wisewords Jaygee! Ear ear!!
This is a very good skewering of JD Vance. What must it be like to live your life with no principles whatsoever?
Excellent clip @Guiri.
He’s excellent. Very witty.
A worthy adversary for Big Orange!
Stupendous piece of writing by Andrew O’Hagan in the London Review of Books..Taking snake oil salesmanship into the era of stadium rock.
”
“Eventually, like a dark knight returning – or a dark night everlasting – Trump appeared on the screen from the bowels of the building. Like a prize wrestler, he was followed by lights and camera into the arena, buoyed, guarded, pimped by his attendants, the music blaring and his face a rictus of childish defiance. It was his first public appearance since the shooting, and hilarity arrived, as it always will, in the shape of a Lilliputian white pillow fastened to the side of Trump’s head, over the injured ear. Swift himself might have enjoyed the drama over the Distressed Lobe.”
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n15/andrew-o-hagan/the-hard-zone?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20240722early&utm_content=20240722early+CID_f98fdefda5bde3996b05f51e2d1731c6&utm_source=LRB%20email&utm_term=Andrew%20OHagan%20at%20the%20Republican%20National%20Convention
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n15/andrew-o-hagan/the-hard-zone?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20240722early&utm_content=20240722early+CID_f98fdefda5bde3996b05f51e2d1731c6&utm_source=LRB%20email&utm_term=Andrew%20OHagan%20at%20the%20Republican%20National%20Convention
Keep The Lobe, Ditch The Donald is my new slogan to live by.
Probably not coupled with “Right a bit.. Right a bit..”
What on earth was an aged, washed-out wrestler doing there at a major, party convention?
I can’t remember the Tories of Labour inviting the likes of Big Daddy or Daddy Haystacks to give a pep talk at their conventions.
The moment when Hulk rips off his shirt and starts blustering and bellowing like a giant walrus, it all descends to the level of panto, or more accurately a travelling carney.
I am surprised there were no tightrope walkers, fire-eaters or dancing elephants..
Only one large, motor-mouthed clown who also functioned as a ringmaster.
Something wicked this was comes …..