Day: May 12, 2023
Americans Don’t Think ‘Wokeness’ Is a Big Deal
41%
A new Yahoo News/YouGov poll finds that fewer consider “wokeness” (41%) a “big problem” in America today than any other option provided, including inflation (74%), breaching the debt ceiling (58%) and border security (58%). Racism (50%) also outranks wokeness, as do new abortion restrictions (46%) and book banning in schools (47%) — issues on which President Biden plans to focus his reelection bid.
CNN’s Trump Town Hall Drew Only 3.1 Million Viewers
3.1 million
“At a time when CNN has been struggling to turn around viewership decline, the [Trump town hall] telecast proved to be a ratings disappointment, with Nielsen reporting just 3.1 million viewers overall. That was a big boost over CNN’s typical 8 p.m. telecast, but a smaller audience than CNN’s town hall with President Biden last summer (3.7 million) and six previous Trump town halls carried by Fox News — calling into question both CNN and Trump’s drawing power,” the Washington Post reports.
‘TrumpGPT’ Sounds More Like Donald Trump than Trump Does
“Let me tell you, there’s nobody who loves this country more than me, believe me. January 6 was a historic day, a day where millions of Americans came to Washington, D.C. to peacefully protest the rigged election. I did nothing wrong, and I have nothing to regret. The real regret is that the election was stolen from the American people, and that the corrupt politicians and fake news media refuse to acknowledge it.”
— ChatGPT, summoning the voice of ex-president Donald Trump and 2024 GOP frontrunner responding to “some of the exact questions he was asked during his shambolic CNN town hall on Wednesday night,” according to the Daily Beast.
The GOP Is the Party of ‘F**k You’
David Rothkopf has an excellent — if expletive-laden (but that’s the point) — opinion piece in the Daily Beast wherein he explains how the Grand Old Party became the party of “fuck you.” how it went from being a true political party with a philosophy to being “a nihilistic, corrupt, fake populist scam.”
The Republican Party has become the party of “Fuck you.” “Fuck you” is the motivation of its alienated voters. It is its legislative strategy. It is its views toward the laws and Constitution of the United States. It is its reaction to morality and values. It is its foreign policy mantra with our allies. “Fuck you” is even its message to the historians of the future.
Sadly, we live in an age in which the political discourse of the United States results in every idea floated by Democrats, independents, and even the elusive “reasonable Republicans,” in which every constructive thought floated about the direction our country should take, or how we should behave, or why the law matters is met by a chorus of Republican leaders with their signature “Fuck you.”
As a New Jerseyite, I worry they will discredit the term so much that we will have to find another way to express ourselves. My concern is due to the fact that the MAGA-ized GOP has only gotten more outrageous… which is to say more committed to the politics of outrage, to obliterating norms of decency, as the signature activities to which they devote themselves.
They do it because their base is angry. They do it because it drives social media wild. They do it because they have no ideas and their leaders are profoundly immoral, disgusting people.
As a denizen of New Jersey, Rothkopf knows what of he speaks.
