TUESDAY, AUGUST 19, 2025
Could the villain really be him? The fury had to go somewhere today. When the sitting president awoke, the fury and rage went here:
Trump Wakes Up to Trash ‘STUPID AND UGLY WINDMILLS’ for ‘KILLING’ New Jersey
That's the headline on the Mediaite report. To read the actual Truth Social post, you can just click here.
That's where the fury went first. Last night, on the Gutfeld! show, Greg Gutfeld started with one of his typical jokes about the way Taylor Swift is really just a 6. Soon, he was offering a sally about the alleged effect on crime of the president's takeover of the D.C. police.
In our view, the comment came from within a peculiar, unexplained soul:
GUTFELD (8/18/25): It's gotten so quiet on the streets that you can hear Rashida Tlaib's mustache growing.
[LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE]
Pathetically, LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE! At any rate, President Trump is full of fury and anger, and so is this "cable news" star.
For the record, "Tayler Swift is just a 6" is a standard theme for this aging moral pervert. So too with the physical insults—fat as a cow; not sexually attractive; too many facelifts—he aims at every (liberal, progressive, Democratic) woman who swims into his ken.
Night after night after night after night, we remain amazed by his unrecognizable conduct. We're even more amazed by the fact that his nightly behavior has been thoroughly normalized—has been completely accepted—by our tribunes here in Blue America, by the people we now call "The Best."
It's a very depressing time to glance about the society. That disordered fellow's moral squalor has been thoroughly normalized. So is President Trump's constant massacre of anything known to be an actual fact.
Unfortunately, the normalization performed by us Blues is as bad as the peculiar conduct displayed by (so many of) them Reds. We offer that as a prelude to a recent column by Matt Bai.
The column appeared in the Washington Post. Headline included, it started off like this:
Our institutions aren’t failing. We are.
There’s a lot of talk now about failing institutions. Every time President Donald Trump pushes the boundaries of his power—this month alone, he commanded Texas to create more Republican congressional seats and staged a hostile takeover of D.C.—his critics ask: Will no one stand in his way? Where are the pillars of democracy when we need them?
I’ve raised these questions myself, yet lately I’m coming around to another way of thinking. Maybe the most culpable institution in our national breakdown isn’t any branch of government or industry—but rather the American people.
We’re the ones expressly charged with holding a rogue president accountable, and we’re failing spectacularly.
We the people are "failing spectacularly," Bai has decided to tell us. From there, he proceeds to slice the lunch meat remarkably thin, eventually serving this:
I’m not talking about the large segment of voters who disdain Trump, or the celebrity-loving Trumpists who would make him Pharaoh if they could. I’m talking mainly about the centrist and conservative voters who wince at what Trump does and wish he were a better person—but for whom tax cuts and anti-woke policies seem worth the trade-off. These are the voters who got Trump elected, and these are the voters who enable him still, more than any judge or congressman.
It isn't all Trump voters, just some—and it certainly isn't Us! So says the incoherent diagnostician of modern-day moral greatness.
There's no great gain likely to come from an attempt to say who is really at fault. To Bai, we'd be inclined to offer this:
Mother-frumper, heal thyself!
Mofo, heal thyself—it's an ancient bromide! In this instance, we're aiming it at "the knights of the keyboard" (Ted Williams) who simply aren't willing to come to terms with the president's apparent mental disorder, or with the moral and intellectual squalor of astonishing people like Gutfeld and his pals at the Fox News Channel.
The homunculus keeps telling us that Swift is really a 6! The desire of men of his type to subjugate women goes all the way back to the dawn of the West—all the way back to the opening verses of the Iliad, to cite one famous example.
(Everyone in the Achaean camp is aversion of Jeffrey Epstein.)
The impulse is deeply bred in the bone. A first cousin to this impulse lies at the heart of a great deal of the religious zeal which helps propel the current revolution. Greg Gutfeld suffers from the misfortune of having this poison and this consummate dumbness within.
He works his woman hatred night after night. As he does, the much finer people—the people like Bai—know they must look away.
Also this: Gutfeld's undisguised misogyny is never mentioned at Mediaite.
The misogyny is wholly undisguised—but even then, it can't be mentioned! It's the ancient cable news "problem that has no name!"
""Tayler Swift is just a 6" is a standard theme" Somerby says.
ReplyDeleteFor the record, her name is spelled Taylor not Tayler. There is no excuse for getting famous people's names wrong. It shows disrespect, just as much as when Gutfeld pretends it is his right to rate women on their attractiveness. Once is a typo. Repeatedly is a slur. For Somerby, such mistakes may indicate he is spending too much time at conservative websites where misspelling is deliberate and ubiquitous. So Newsom becomes Newscum or Newsome. Somerby needs to work harder at getting this right because it conveys political attitude to get someone's name wrong, to the point where it undermines his liberal pose to call Taylor (a Democrat) Tayler (someone else).
A right wing site might well intentionally replace Newsom with Newscum. But it would be pointless to intentionally replace Taylor with Tayler, so your comment has to do with nothing purposeful and is therefore itself pointless.
DeleteThe other semi-famous people named Tayler are men, and sometimes men with gender issues get off on misgendering women. But Taylor Swift is herself so famous that Somerby must have seen her name spelled correctly dozens of times, repeatedly. When a name becomes common, it takes effort to spell it incorrectly. That makes the mistake appear more intentional and less accidental. And then there is the lack of desire to get it right. When you aren't sure if you've spelled a name correctly, you look it up. Somerby didn't do that. That itself is a form of disrespect, perhaps as bad as calling her a "6". Only Somerby knows if it was purposeful, but it looks purposeful to me. Whether it is pointless to disrespect people this way is a different matter.
DeleteIt seems hard for Somerby to argue that Gutfeld is being misogynist when he can't even spell such a famous woman's name right.
"Everyone in the Achean camp is a version of Jeffrey Epstein."
ReplyDeleteThis is peak TDH. Our Host will never offer a more concise summary of... whatever this is.
Exactly, is it a typo or word play?
DeleteHistorically, it is likely untrue. Many ancient cultures treated women with greater respect than today.
An interesting book is Femina by Janina Ramirez, who shows that the participation of women during the Middle Ages was greater than during Victorian times when much of the oppressive treatment of women became worse with the rise of patriarchy and misogyny.
Somerby doesn't understand what misogyny is. He is willing to throw the word around freely at Gutfeld, perhaps to taint the word itself, since he has never objected to mistreatment of women in other contexts (such as Trump's treatment of Stormy Daniels).
Somerby refers to what happened in the Iliad as "sexual politics" without understand how that term is used either, and without understanding the social organization of the time of Troy or of the time of Homer, which was hundreds of years later.
Somerby says: "The desire of men of his type to subjugate women goes all the way back to the dawn of the West..." also saying the bad behavior is "bred in the bone" as if it were inborn, genetic, innate to our species. None of that is true. It is what men who mistreat women say to themselves to excuse their own actions and beliefs. Somerby too.
I don't know why Somerby hates Gutfeld more than other Republicans he might single out, but he clearly hates him nearly as much as he hated Rachel Maddow. Some here have suggest his motive is professional jealousy. I do not believe Somerby has suddenly become a feminist. Not when he repeats the slur against Swift multiple times in his own essay. (People of our age thought Janice Joplin was a 10 because of her singing.)
It could be that Somerby means that all of the Acheans are being accused of sexual misbehavior because they are the equivalent of red America in his analogy. It could be that Somerby literally means that young girls were fair game in Ancient Troy among the Acheans in the Iliad because these age-limits are modern inventions, which is a common pedophile attempt to normalize abuse of teen girls. He could also be suggesting that Epstein is no big deal because look what those Greeks did in the Iliad! I think even those among the Acheans would say "Not all men," because look at Odysseus (who Somerby never talks about). He refused to participate in the "sexual politics" (as Somerby calls rape and murder of women) and was the hero of Homer's other book, The Odyssey.
Somerby ignores that Jeffrey Epstein was a monster not because he sexually abused young girls but because he sold them to other men and profitted financially, using his friend Maxwell to recruit and train those otherwise innocent girls. I don't recall that the Iliad was about sex trafficking, but I could be wrong, since I haven't read it in Greek or read most of it at all. Manly posturing and battles don't appeal to me much. Nor does cage fighting or the other ways today's Republicans show each other they are real men.
Note, QiB has changed the original Somerby mention from aversion (which is an actual word with a meaning) to a version (which makes an assumption about Somerby's intention and is two actual words with different meanings than aversion).
DeleteWhen you leave an error in a quote, you add the notation [sic]. So it should have been quoted as "aversion [sic]" and not normalized as "a version" which is not what Somerby said at all.
DeleteYour aversion to a version is sick.
DeleteHow does Somerby know what we are normalizing when he doesn't read his comments and thus doesn't know what our complaints are?
ReplyDeleteI read the actual Democratic media and know that there have been non-stop complaints about all kinds of behavior that Somerby claims is being normalized. It isn't.
ReplyDelete"We the people are "failing spectacularly," Bai has decided to tell us."
He-he. Nice, very nice. More hysterical idiot-Democrat squealing, please.
Some head-against-the-wall hitting and some hear-pulling would be even nicer. Do it, idiot-Democrats! I know you can.
ReplyDeleteHey Bob, do you know that they are renaming your favorite good, decent cable network to "BS NOW"?
Are you excited? A fresh start!
It’s not my fault. David is the villain here.
ReplyDelete"The homunculus keeps telling us..."
ReplyDeleteHe is referring to Gutfeld, using an insult that he stopped using the last time I complained about it years back, but has now resumed. I suppose that means he only stopped using it here but has continued in his daily life.
homunculus definition: (1) a very small human or humanoid creature, (2) a supposed microscopic but fully formed human being from which a fetus was formerly believed to develop (obsolete, historical).
Somerby is maligning Gutfeld with a reference to his height, calling him short. This is an example of bullying and body shaming. There is nothing Gutfeld can do about his height and there is no reason anyone should be mocked for something they cannot change. It is akin to disability shaming. It is wrong to do this to people, just as when Trump calls women ugly or Gutfeld calls Swift a 6. Somerby says we Dems are normalizing Gutfeld's behavior but then he goes ahead and does it himself by calling him short (using an obscure word that others may be unfamiliar with). This is ugly on Somerby's part and does not advance his argument at all. There is nothing ironic or cute about it. Perhaps Somerby is chuckling to himself and feeling sly about today's essay. If so, he is a double asshole.
There is misogyny all over the manosphere, on all of the bro podcasts, on Joe Rogan's show. It is built into the right wing tradwife movement and patriarchy is inherent to evangelical Christian theology and part of both the White Supremacist and Christian Nationalist movements. There are no feminists on the right and none on Trump's staff or in his cabinet or among his surrogates. Kristi Noem and Pam Bondi are not feminists despite working full time and shooting dogs. To call out misogyny is to call out one of the foundations of conservatism these days.
ReplyDeleteCalling out Gutfeld's misogyny would cause right wingers to look at Somerby as if he were peculiar, not right in his head, because of course Taylor Swift is a whore and spawn of the devil and deserves whatever Gutfeld says about her. Rosie too, Whoopi too, all of those heathen Democrats who worship Satan. When men are the main core of Trump's base, of course Republicans are going to appeal to their bred in the bone right to dominion over women at home and elsewhere, because that is how you flatter men and gain their votes.
Somerby might as well ask why no journalists are pointing out how much Trump loves money. Republicans would think they were crazy and look at each other in wonderment, then say "doesn't everyone love money?" They consider that a virtue. That's how the right regards Gutfeld's misogyny. Doesn't everyone believe men should judge women and require them to look their best even at home? Gutfeld is just saying what women should know already, that they exist for men's pleasure, at men's sufferance, and should aim all of their efforts at being what men want them to be, because God intended it that way. Amen."
That Somerby doesn't understand this suggests there is something wrong with Somerby. Maybe he's the one snoring in the woods. Not to mention that no one, especially not women, needs Mediaite to tell us about misogyny, but it is not just on the right. Somerby needs to worry about his own sins before attacking Gutfeld on his, manifest as they are.
Ultimately, when misogyny is so wholly undisguised, does it need to be pointed out -- we can all see it ourselves, but the problem is that not all men think it is a bad thing. Some think it is bred in the bone, for women's own good, inescapable and interwoven in our culture, part of men's inheritance, their right and their duty toward women and children. Will pointing it out address any of those beliefs? I don't think so.
"So is President Trump's constant massacre of anything known to be an actual fact."
ReplyDeleteThere goes Bob, distracting us from Epstein by pointing out how stupid Trump is as a way to get us to support Trump.
Isn't that how the argument goes?
Is it working on you?
DeleteThis is called a straw man Hector.
DeleteActually no, tha's not a 'straw man'. What you wanted to say was 'red herring'.
DeleteYour theory about the argument is a straw man. Trump's massacre of facts is a red herring.
Delete"The misogyny is wholly undisguised—but even then, it can't be mentioned! It's the ancient cable news "problem that has no name!"
ReplyDeleteSome of us consider what Epstein did to be a crime without a name, given the way the right is avoiding releasing those files. The longer this goes on, protecting the men and ignoring the pleas of the victims, the more we suspect that complicity goes beyond protecting Trump but involves a lot more men.
How is it that Somerby can complain because no one calls out Gutfeld for his anti-woman jokes, but he will not mention or call out Trump and the DOJ for protecting child rapists in the Republican party, and other friends of Epstein, who committed crimes as part of his sex-trafficking ring of rich and prominent men.
There is a cynicism, soul-rot, at the heart of those men who are ignoring what Epstein did in order to protect their cronies, or the rich and famous, who callously harmed young girls because they couldn't control their urges and have no empathy for women or girls as people.
Misogyny is a big word with a lot of meaning, a literature on how men dominate in our society and have built a system to protect their power and institutions from having to include women. It is a form of slavery against women, as surely as racist slavery enriched wealthy white slaveholders. But women are people too. Jim Crow style rules to enslave and control women are part of history too. Somerby thinks this is just about Gutfeld saying something mean about Taylor Swift (who is herself rich and has power in society, enough to sway votes to Biden and Democrats) but it is also about pointing to silly name-calling (Tayler is ugly) instead of talking about the real elephant in the room -- the Epstein files.
Epstein was not a misogynist. He was a criminal. The men who participated in his sex ring were criminals too. They need to be brought to justice and put in jail, not ignored and sheltered by people like Somerby who think the Iliad justifies misogyny because it is an old book (written by men). What Epstein did wasn't misogyny. It was rape. The silence that condones what he did is what Somerby should be talking about, but he isn't. If he cares about what happens to women, why not? We all suspect we know the answer to that question.
Meanwhile, when Somerby pretends to care about misogyny, he is actually gloating. He doesn't want to talk about it, knows nothing about it, dislikes women himself, and is only using the word as a linguistic club to beat Gutfeld with. It is Somerby's idea of irony. And it shows what an asshole Somerby is.
"what Somerby should be talking about"
DeleteGee, that sounds like a great job you have, deciding what people should be talking about.
Somerby raised the issue of what the media should be discussing but isn't. Great job he has, I guess you would say.
DeleteWe are commenting on Somerby's priorities. I think that is fair game, given that he himself expressed them today.
DeleteHeather Cox Richardson said:
ReplyDelete"At today’s meetings, Trump repeated Russian talking points, complained about how poorly he is treated, said he had ended six wars, insisted that voting in the U.S. is full of fraud, and suggested he would cancel the 2028 elections. By the late afternoon, the president was unable to recognize President Stubb, who was sitting directly across the table from him. “President Stubb of Finland,” Trump said. Looking around, Trump continued: “And he’s uh, he’s somebody that, where are we here? Huh? Where? Where?” Stubb said, “I’m right here.” Trump focused on him and answered: “Oh. You look better than I’ve ever seen you look.”
This evening, CNN senior White House correspondent Kristen Holmes reported that Trump paused his negotiation with European leaders to call Vladimir Putin. Her source said that European leaders were not present for the conversation. Ivan Nechepurenko of the New York Times reported that the call was forty minutes long."
It is unclear why Trump and his people do not seem worried about the American people thinking that Trump is a traitor, when it is so obvious that Putin is controlling him actions as president.
I think this is something the press does not talk about often enough. On the right, Republican politicians have allied with Russia and do not consider Putin our enemy, but that ignores our historical alliances with Europe and the way in which Russia has meddled in our recent elections and is using Trump to gain their own political advantages, including in Ukraine but elsewhere as well. The press should be asking right-wing politicians about their too-cozy relationship with Putin, about Trump's failure to stand up to Putin, Trump's lack of support for our traditiona allies, and the personal gain to Trump of having Russia as a partner to himself (if not to the USA).
Somerby might ask why journalists have normalized this relationship with Putin and why no one talks about Trump using the word "treason".
"At today’s meetings, Trump repeated Russian talking points, complained about how poorly he is treated, said he had ended six wars, insisted that voting in the U.S. is full of fraud, and suggested he would cancel the 2028 elections. By the late afternoon, the president was unable to recognize President Stubb, who was sitting directly across the table from him. “President Stubb of Finland,” Trump said. Looking around, Trump continued: “And he’s uh, he’s somebody that, where are we here? Huh? Where? Where?” Stubb said, “I’m right here.” Trump focused on him and answered: “Oh. You look better than I’ve ever seen you look.”
DeleteOr, as Dickhead in Cal would say, Trump was being "grandiose",
In that same vein, here's Trump this morning on Fox & Friends:
Delete“It’s not a war that should have been started. You don’t do that. You don’t take on a nation that’s ten times your size.”
Get that? Ukraine started the war. Just another lie that’s been rattling around this old fool’s head for so long he may even believe it.
https://www.foxnews.com/video/6377075188112
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Donald J. Trump “totally freaked out” on Tuesday when he discovered that the Nobel Peace Prize form includes a question as to whether the applicant has ever used his nation’s military against his own citizens.
ReplyDeleteBlasting the Nobel committee for including the question, Trump reportedly hurled a bottle of ketchup against a wall of the Oval Office, narrowly missing Stephen Miller’s head.
Trump ultimately checked the “YES” box in answer to the question, but argued that the Nobel application was treating him “very unfairly.”
“I’ve grabbed hundreds of people off the street and they’ve never been seen or heard from again,” he said. “If that’s not creating peace, then I don’t know what peace is.”