Jason Harvestdancer
Contributor
Donald, You Ignorant Slut
Donald does have an odd effect on journalists.
Some interesting questions follow later about who they think is the voter instead of who actually is the voter. Do journalists go out and look up anything anymore?
Here's something Democrats might want to remember - you're more likely to defeat him if you find out why people support him instead of decide why people support him.
EW YORK—All over America IKEA futons are groaning with the restless insomnia of journalists—tossing, turning, cursing the impotence of their melatonin capsules—burdened with the future of the Republic. Long nights of torment, and then . . .
Morning resolve! Before they’ve even microwaved their second Jimmy Dean Sausage Sandwich, they know that this will be the day of reckoning. They will fire up the Kia Sedona and take the long way to work, giving them more time to think about the epic 1,500 words that will make the difference between chaos and civilization.
Yes, they tell their wives, It’s time for my “Donald Trump is a Dickwad” column.
Let me make it clear here that I’m not talking about lesbian-rights vegans who organize fair-trade coffee boycotts at Maxwell House and agitate for medical marijuana in The Nation. Nor am I thinking of tweed-jacketed professors of sociology at Montana State submitting articles to the Journal of Spanish-American Diacritical Marks. Think-tank analysts at the Institute for Pan-Arab Non-Alignment are most certainly churning out white papers on why Donald Trump is a dangerous threat to the Maghreb treaty on fish hatcheries, but I’m not discussing them either. I’m not talking about intellectuals or activists or experts.
No. I’m talking about the guy who enrolled at McNeese State in the nineties and fell into deep reverence for Professor Rusty Naugahyde, the legendary teacher whose Newswriting 312 workshop was almost as inspirational as Lou “The News Is Sacred” Grant on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Our starry-eyed undergraduate buys a safari jacket, takes an oath of objectivity and resolves never to be a member of a political party. After that it takes years of struggle to become the lead Metro columnist at the Lotus Tree, Kansas, Daily Arapaho, days spent chronicling the brutal fights over county bond issues needed to repair the Lost Frenchman Bridge. But now that he’s a 32nd-degree Mason and chairman of the Little League committee on maintenance and parking, he knows that it’s his responsibility, and his privilege, to tell the people of Lotus Tree that Donald Trump is a narcissistic disagreeable soulless callous rude arrogant authoritarian vicious egotistical vulgar braggart and megalomaniac, possibly a lunatic, definitely a psychopath, perhaps a fascist.
Donald does have an odd effect on journalists.
But let’s cut to the chase and look at what I’m calling the Big Eight. Of all the words used by the press to describe Donald Trump, the million-hit wonders are these:
bully 1.4 million
self-obsessed 2.5 million
vicious 9.1 million
rude 13.3 million
cruel 13.3 million
liar 16.2 million
angry 19.3 million
And the winner—drum roll, please:
idiot 20.5 million
Notice that five of the eight are internal attributes, only one can be fact-checked, and the most popular epithet of them all is the last refuge of sputtering incoherent rage. It’s reminiscent of the old Saturday Night Live routine, with Dan Aykroyd responding to anything Jane Curtin said with, “Jane, you ignorant slut.”
Ladies and gentlemen, most unjournalistic.
Some interesting questions follow later about who they think is the voter instead of who actually is the voter. Do journalists go out and look up anything anymore?
Here's something Democrats might want to remember - you're more likely to defeat him if you find out why people support him instead of decide why people support him.