3 ms·

Alec Baldwin was pretty good, no? I always found Trump-satire a little bit symbiotic. He thrives on non-boring politics, satire only normalizes his actions - i

by mhh__ 5y ago

Alec Baldwin was pretty good, no? I always found Trump-satire a little bit symbiotic. He thrives on non-boring politics, satire only normalizes his actions - i.e. mocking war hero's, regardless of what you make of the war they fought in, is just inhuman and satire only serves to form a grotesque hyperreality which we saw explode at the beginning of this year with all this nonsense over the election.

WalterBright 5y ago
Was he? I didn't watch all his Trump skits, but the ones I did were not memorable. Trump should be a gold mine for parody, but SNL muffed it. Jay Leno was always good and skewering both sides. He never took it seriously, and his targets usually found them funny, too. Perhaps Baldwin's jokes fell flat because they sounded more like a "let's all pile on him because we hate him" form of bullying rather than funny.
- mhh__ 5y ago
  FWIW I think that says more about SNL than Trump, just seems a bit crap really from my admittedly non-nostalgic European-elitist perspective. If you've heard of the private eye, they had some very well observed pieces on trump e.g. Trump likes it when people call him an orange racist because it plays to his base, call him a poor businessman and a fraud and he's not so happy. P.S. on the subject of trump, Michael Lewis's book "The fifth risk" is very good. It's a good insight into the man, his team, and basically everything you shouldn't do in their shoes. My favourite piece of trivia from the above book is that Trump never fires anyone personally. The whole "Yuh fired"-schtick from the TV show is just pantomime. He was also apparently unable to understand that money raised in his name to fund a transition team wasn't his own personally, which didn't exactly surprise me but should shatter any illusion of rationality.

3 ms·

Alec Baldwin was pretty good, no? I always found Trump-satire a little bit symbiotic. He thrives on non-boring politics, satire only normalizes his actions - i

by mhh__ 5y ago

WalterBright 5y ago
Was he? I didn't watch all his Trump skits, but the ones I did were not memorable. Trump should be a gold mine for parody, but SNL muffed it. Jay Leno was always good and skewering both sides. He never took it seriously, and his targets usually found them funny, too. Perhaps Baldwin's jokes fell flat because they sounded more like a "let's all pile on him because we hate him" form of bullying rather than funny.
- mhh__ 5y ago
  FWIW I think that says more about SNL than Trump, just seems a bit crap really from my admittedly non-nostalgic European-elitist perspective. If you've heard of the private eye, they had some very well observed pieces on trump e.g. Trump likes it when people call him an orange racist because it plays to his base, call him a poor businessman and a fraud and he's not so happy. P.S. on the subject of trump, Michael Lewis's book "The fifth risk" is very good. It's a good insight into the man, his team, and basically everything you shouldn't do in their shoes. My favourite piece of trivia from the above book is that Trump never fires anyone personally. The whole "Yuh fired"-schtick from the TV show is just pantomime. He was also apparently unable to understand that money raised in his name to fund a transition team wasn't his own personally, which didn't exactly surprise me but should shatter any illusion of rationality.