Shaming Steve Martin or Why Trump Won

In his tribute to his friend Carrie Fisher, Steve Martin dares to call her beautiful and SJWs of the world unite in their outrage. This demented political correctness police is part of the reason why Trump has won.

Carrie Fisher was most recently promoting her book and I saw her on Colbert, with a slightly brain damaged dog that kept licking the air even after she had left. She made some sexual revelations, defending to Colbert’s simulated outrage by claiming that she’d rather reveal it now, when she still looks “passable” then when she’s in her 90s. She also said, a while back, that her mother was the “queen of golden showers” and she was very open about her drug use. Her mother followed her in death only days later.

So what was Steve Martin’s tweet (now deleted)?

When I was a young man, Carrie Fisher was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen. She turned out to be witty and bright as well

That’s it. What he said is that he first noticed her beauty, and then he was mesmerized by her wit and intelligence. A skillfully wonderful use of the few characters Twitter allows.

And then, a bunch of people had no real connection to or understanding of Carrie Fisher, (i.e., not at Steve Martin’s level) started sharing their opinion about his tweet.

Here’s a sample of Internet idiocy, courtesy of Cavan Sleczkowski.

New York Magazine noted that Martin’s tweet focused on her physicality, rather than her talents or her impact. According to Us Weekly, one user on Twitter replied: “I think she apprised to be something higher than just being pretty. How do you want to be remembered?”

The actor ultimately deleted the tweet following the backlash. 

Remember Carrie Fisher for her talent, her feminism, her commentary on mental health — not for the way she looked https://t.co/R3eZqy6Ooh

— New York Magazine (@NYMag) December 28, 2016

While some thought criticism of Martin was unjustified, others said Fisher ― a staunch feminist who spoke out against the objectification of women throughout her career ― wouldn’t have paid any mind to the “whiny dudes” getting mad over the clap-backs. 

I think Carrie Fisher would have enjoyed laughing at the whiny dudes getting mad about @landsbaumshell‘s good take. https://t.co/oLox5trwjO

— Madison M. K. (@4evrmalone) December 28, 2016

A rep for Martin was not immediately available for further comment. (hufpo-smdel)

Firstly, HuffPo is quoting with “she apprised to be”?!? You meant “aspired”, dipshit. Kudos to Huff Po for not correcting it, you really care about your readers.

Youth&BeautyR/NOT ACCOMPLISHMENTS,theyre theTEMPORARY happy/BiProducts/of Time&/or DNA/Dont Hold yourBreath4either/ifUmust holdAir/takeGarys

— Carrie Fisher (@carrieffisher) December 30, 2015

While she may have talked the talk about sexism and ageism, her friend would know better what compliments meant to her and how she wanted to be remembered. Appearance is important for everyone (more important than it needs to be, if you ask me), and especially for aging actors. It’s one thing to try to manage expectations and keep them low so you can beat them and another to believe all that BS of it “not mattering”.

I’m sorry to say, that even without the glaring misquote, FoxNews coverage was far better than HuffPo.

Cinnabon also faced criticism for a tweet they sent out saying, "RIP Carrie Fisher, you'll always have the best buns in the galaxy." They deleted their tweet.

#cinnabon pic.twitter.com/m0TERwWW2g

— Michael O'Brien (@Converge241) December 27, 2016

Fox News (and DailyMail) managed to at least include a number of tweets in support of Steve Martin, leaving me with the feeling that there is still hope in this galaxy.

Let us now turn to Noam Chomsky’s explanation for Donald Trump’s win (hint: it’s neoliberalism, stupid).

There are many factors but there are some that are pretty common, certainly for the United States and Europe from which I have just returned, incidentally. One factor that is common and which is very significant is the Neo Liberal programme that was instituted globally, roughly around 35 years ago, around 1980 or a little before and picking up afterwards. These are programmes that were designed in such a way that they marginalize and cast aside a considerable majority of the population. So in the United States if you take a look at say the Trump voters, they are not the poorest people. They have homes, they have jobs, and they have small businesses. They may not have the jobs they like but they are not starving and are not living on US$ 2 a day. These are people who have been stuck for 30 years. Their history and their own image of life and history and the country is- that they have worked hard all their lives, they have done all the right things. They have families, they go to Church and they have done everything right just as their parents did. They’ve been moving forward, which they expected to continue: that their children would be better off than they are, but it hasn’t happened. It stopped. As if they are in a line, in which they were moving forward and it stopped. Ahead of them in the line are people who have just shot up into the stratosphere: that is Neo Liberalism. It concentrates wealth in tiny sectors. They don’t mind that, because part of the American mythology is that you work hard and you get rewards. It is not what happens but that fits the picture, the mythology. The people behind them are the ones they resent. This is not untypical; scapegoating. Blame your problems on those who are even worse off than you. And their conception is that the Federal Government is their enemy, which works for the people behind them. That the Federal Government gives Food Stamps to people who don’t want to work, that it gives welfare payments to women who drive in rich cars to welfare offices. (These are) images that Ronald Reagan concocted. Their thinking is that, ‘the Federal Government is helping to put them in line ahead of me, but nobody is working for me’. That picture is all over the West. A large part of it was behind the Brexit vote, in the United States they would blame Mexican immigrants, or Afro Americans, in the UK they would blame the Polish immigrants, in France the North Africans and in Austria the Syrian immigrants. The choice of target depends on the society, but the phenomenon is pretty similar. The general nature is pretty similar. There are streaks of racism, xenophobia, sexism, and opposition to gay rights and all sorts of things. And they coalesce when economic and social policies have been designed in such a way which essentially ignores these people and their concerns and doesn’t work for them -- and seems to them to work against them. (dml-chomsky)

Noam Chomsky talks about those left behind by neoliberalism.

Here’s a summary of his points.

1. neoliberalism is worldwide phenomenon, introduced in the 80s and accelerated in the 90s
2. people who “followed the script” of the “American dream” (work hard, mind your own business, get rewarded) progressed at first, then stagnated, while the rich went immensely richer
3. to cover their asses, the elites resorted to scapegoating: it’s the minorities fault! which was dutifully swallowed by the brainwashed masses

In an environment of decreasing opportunities, scapegoating makes a lot of sense. Politically correct policies that run contrary to common sense and to what people perceive as being their reality can only punish the political candidate espousing them, even when that candidate’s opponent is a conman who has a very tenuous relationship with logical consistency and thinking in general.

Women care a lot about their appearance and seem to invest far more time and resources in it than man. Granted, that may be changing, but we see that in societies that give women even more freedom, women tend to use it in the direction of further emphasizing gender role differences (i.e., patriarchy) rather than equality. This is especially true of aging actresses, whose agents often stop calling and who find themselves forgotten by directors. Undoubtedly, Carrie Fisher felt that herself. An actor himself, Steve Martin knew (much like any sentient being) that appearances matter and oftentimes, despite what people might profess publicly, complimenting one’s appearance is the way to their heart.

This is particularly true when we’re young and we’re driven by our atavistic instincts far more than our (often non-existent) wisdom. To claim that any of Carrie Fisher young fans had been infatuated with her by anything other than her looks – she was an actress, FFS! – is to insult your reader’s intelligence. Steve Martin was attacked by people using political correctness as a device to gather publicity and piggy-back on a tragic event.

And that is why Donald Trump won: people saw his declarations about his daughter liberating. In contrast to Hilary Clinton, always saying what’s right, he appeared authentic (yes, Heidegger be praised) and it no longer mattered that he self-contradicted and was generally almost as incoherent as Rob Ford on crack. Every politically correct idiocy creates a desire for authenticity that is so deep and unfulfilled that any imbecile with a loudspeaker is apt to quench it and walk away with the plebs’ votes.

Elsewhere, we learn that it may have been racism, after all, while Oliver Stone explains why it wasn’t the Russians (fb-osru).

Sources / More info: dm-smshamed, hufpo-smdel, fb-osru, dml-chomsky, fxn-smdel

Cracanelus, pc, political correctness, feminism, sexism, steve martin, carrie fisher, patriarchy (Tags)