Wednesday, January 09, 2019

My response to a Trump tweet


I slapped together this little diorama in response to a stupid STUPID tweet that actual American president one Donald J Trump made some time ago (yes I know, one of sooooooooooo many).  For context, here's the tweet I'm talking about:



DUMB!

Although I do agree with Trump's point about the news.  Way too much of it is a parade of pseudo activists telling us they're journalists and reading their purposefully skewed interpretation of the news through the filter of a most undemocratic ideology.  It's like this with news organizations in America and all over the world.  Ideally, the news should just be objective facts such as:

This just in: Trump did a thing


Then that can be followed by a separate opinion piece given in such a way that it is obvious to even a 4 year old that this is a separate opinion piece.

"In my opinion, that thing Trump did was stupid"


That's how the news media should be.  Really, we shouldn't even know a news anchor's political point of view.  That sort of thing should remain a cryptic mystery that we never need to solve.
Of course, the biggest problem with Trump's lashing out at the news media is that he only seems to pick on CNN when they do it.  Yes, CNN is disgusting in it's deliberate partisan spin.  However, so are all the other news outlets.  Fox and InfoWars put their own ideological spin on news events as well, but Trump thinks those news orgs are 'just fine'.  That shows right there that Trump is not at all concerned about news being accurate or factual.  Some who have worked with him have said that he demands loyalty from everyone he encounters, and this behaviour of his certainly proves that.

But that's not the most egregious part of Trump's tweet. It's the stuff he said about Saturday Night Live that I want to talk about here. As you can see in the graphic of his tweet above, I already gave a bit of a response to him.  Now I'd like to elaborate on that point some more in this blog post.

The show Saturday Night Live, as many fans of the show can tell you, has always been about political satire and it's most frequent target has always been the US president.  The most notable examples are:



Chevy Chase as Gerald Ford



Dana Carvey as George Bush Sr



Will Ferrell as George Bush Jr



And Jay Pharaoh as Barack Obama. I'm not sure how much press Jay got from playing Obama exactly.  I just think he did a very excellent job with his portrayal so I added him here.

The 1st Amendment of the US Constitution gives Saturday Night Live more than enough leeway to portray a sitting president, or any public figure, any way they want.  They have no obligation to be accurate or even fair.  They only have to be funny and thereby entertain an audience.  Everyone knows they not a credible source of information.  Is there a samurai warrior running various businesses in New York?  Did alien Coneheads really land on Earth in order to observe our lifestyles?  Did a cable access show hosted by a teenager named Wayne Campbell actually manage to get the band Aerosmith to show up and perform in his parent's basement?  Did Patrick Swayze really learn all of his Chippendale dance moves from Chris Farley?  Of course, it doesn't matter if any of those things can be true or not because it's just fun to watch them be acted out by skilled performers.
The guy in charge, Lorne Michaels, as well as anyone who may take over his position in the future, can run the show any way they want as long as they have good ratings and thus continue to be an asset for NBC. That being said, I certainly hope that NBC executives have absolute zero control over how the show is run.  The writers and cast really should have at least 95% control of the show's content.  If I don't want some anonymous jag off in a suit at NBC to have sway on what SNL can do then I certainly don't want the high office of the president dictating their contents either.
So, I say this to Mr. Trump. If you don't care for what SNL is doing now be it their portrayal of you or any other news related sketches they've done, just simply don't watch the show.  They have every right to do what they're doing and are under no obligation to regard your feelings at all.  Back off from them and get back to work.

I know it's unprofessional to explain jokes I've made, but sadly I'm thinking I might have to do that right now.  Any big fan of Saturday Night Live probably knows already what particular sketch I'm referring to with that "Trump Maquette" up at the top.  However, for those of you unfamiliar, such as an millennial or Gen Z person who's young enough to think that Bobby Moynihan is part of the original cast, I'll just spill it here.  That thing I made is a reference to Mr. Bill



Mr. Bill was a little plasticine figure that would always get tortured by his "friend" Mr. Hands.  It was and is hilarious.  So, for the benefit of everyone, I've embedded an episode of Mr Bill below.  Enjoy.  And, Mr. Trump, try to gain some perspective, OK.

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