It is perfectly obvious that Donald Trump is spectacularly unqualified to occupy the Oval Office. And roughly no one would be surprised to find there is serious proof that he is in fact a serial predator. And it ought to be beyond dispute that he is the poster boy for all that is wrong with the popular culture. As Nobelist Bob Dylan said, you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
But can we please ease up on the sanctimony for just a minute?
Consider: Here we have Michelle Obama denouncing Trump because “[Trump…] has said things about women that are so shocking, so demeaning that I simply will not repeat anything here today.” Really? Well that’s very interesting because Michelle and Barack Obama are fans and friends of Jay Z and Beyonce, who have been guests of the Obama’s on multiple occasions.
So here are some of the lyrics that their friend Beyonce sings:
“Now my mascara running, red lipstick smudged
Yeah, he’s so horny he wants to fuck
He popped all my buttons and he ripped my blouse
He Monica Lewinsky-ed all on my gown
Oh Daddy, Daddy, he didn’t bring the towel
Oh baby, baby, we better slow it down.”
If that’s not enough, there is the rapper Rick Ross who was invited to the White House with other rappers to discuss the President’s “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative. Mr. Ross has an impressive rap sheet that in addition to a gun arrest includes indictments for kidnapping and assault. In fact when he showed up at the White House to proffer his policy advice he was wearing an ankle bracelet.
Anyway, in the lyric department Ross makes Beyonce seem comparatively tame. Among other things, the unprintable lyrics to his song “U.O.E.N.O”, an ode to misogyny, celebrate an incident of date rape. The lyrics are feely available on the web at this link.
There are lots of other examples, but they are not worth dwelling on. Suffice it to say that the hypocrisy has become suffocating. One the one hand the Evangelicals backing Trump have suddenly decided that, come to think of it, character isn’t so important after all. And then there is Christian Conservative Mike Pence. Way back on September 23rd Pence thought character mattered. In a speech at the Living World Bible Church he referenced the Clinton scandals of the 1990s and went on to say “Character matters to the presidency and Donald Trump will bring the highest level of integrity to the highest office in the land. You can count on it.”
Well that was then.
On the other hand Michelle Obama is shocked—just shocked—that Donald Trump could talk the way their friends and guests do. Shaken to the core, as she put it. And when, it is reasonable to wonder, did Hillary Clinton become such a girl scout. Driven by blind ambition she enabled her husband’s serial predations for decades, in the White House and out. Not to mention the lies that are too numerous to count on the e-mail scandal. Or the slush fund that is the Clinton Foundation.
And then we have the press. The other day important news about the Clintons, John Podesta and other senior campaign staff came out as a result of a Wikileaks data dump. It received a total of 57 seconds of network coverage by ABC, CBS and NBC. On the same day the networks provided 23 minutes of coverage for the 4 women who accused Trump of assaulting them. More details about the coverage are available in a story published by “The Hill”.
As Mercutio said: “A plague on both your houses.”
JFB
