If you missed the previous newsletter, you can read it here. Less talk about Trump’s hair, more about his harms
It has been more than a decade since Donald Trump began his ascent to the presidency and his assault on democracy, and still we’re talking about his hair. Jimmy Kimmel teased him about it the other week, observing that Trump’s once-golden locks were suddenly less Midas, more mink. Was the new hue some camouflage for his senescence? “It’s like he’s aging in reverse,” Kimmel quipped. “He’s our own little Benjamin Glutton.” I also recently tripped across references, in mainstream news organizations, to Trump’s “cankles” and to how much (according to one journalist) he looked like a hunk of deep-fried junk food with appendages. It’s salty stuff. And we’ve indulged in much too much of it. I say that not out of any concern for the president’s feelings — I’m not convinced he has those. Nor do I fret that such put-downs run afoul of decency and dignity. The bulk of our political discourse does. A jab about flab barely rates. But ridiculing Trump’s appearance has never been more spectacularly beside the point. Sure, Trump’s tonsorial adventures and aggressive makeup perfectly reflect his emphasis on artifice. But they’re piffle in the context of the damage he’s inflicting on our alliances, our environment, our social safety net, our legal processes, our watchdog organizations, our research institutions, our cultural treasures. He’s more cosmic menace than cosmetic mystery. We’ve long parsed our presidents’ and would-be presidents’ distinctive physical traits. How could we not? These politicians thrust themselves into our daily and even hourly lives, demanding to be seen; their looks color voters’ responses to them. To this day, when historians and political analysts talk about the 1960 presidential contest between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy, they quickly bring up the rivals’ first televised debate. And they mention how disastrous Nixon’s sweatiness and five-o-clock shadow were. I recall spirited discussions about whether Ronald Reagan dyed his hair. I recall a patrol of Bill Clinton’s weight that recorded his jogging and his indulgences in fast food. I recall a sustained inquiry into the geometry of George W. Bush’s thin lips — or, rather, into what he was doing with them. Smiling? Or smirking? But no modern president before Trump received the kind of head-to-toe appraisal that he routinely gets. None invited it the way he has. His forebears didn’t fuss so obviously with their hair and makeup, in the service of such striking results. And they didn’t openly and volubly judge everyone around them in superficial terms. Trump goes so far as to mention how much someone looks the part — “central casting” is a favorite phrase of his — in explaining the person’s elevation to a key role. And he viciously insults other people’s faces and bodies in a manner that arguably excuses any denigration of his. Women get the worst of it, but men aren’t spared, not even his aides and allies. During his first term in the White House, he referred to his daughter Ivanka and Mike Pompeo, his secretary of state, as “Beauty and the Beast.” Earlier this month, at that titanically vainglorious convention of his, he urged voters to support Ken Paxton, the Republican nominee in Texas’ closely fought Senate race, even though “he may not dress right” and “may not be the best-looking guy I’ve ever seen.” And as I mentioned earlier, Trump’s conspicuously strenuous efforts to varnish himself aren’t a side note. They’re an expression of values, and they exemplify his belief that truth is negotiable and that the packaging matters more than the product. But let’s be honest: That’s not the only reason they’re studied and savaged. I was after easy fun, cheeky prose and a sorely needed catharsis when I wrote a column titled “The Citrusy Mystery of Trump’s Hair,” the tinge of which, I noted, “has been compared to a tangerine, a nectarine and a grapefruit, though I could make an equally strong case for a lemon. He basically has a whole Whole Foods citrus section atop his head.” That was in 2016, before Trump first entered the White House. There’s no longer room for such frivolity and mockery, which can make a Trump critic’s disdain for him seem spiteful and indiscriminate when it’s really a necessary and righteous response to his incompetence, unscrupulousness and outright cruelty, all amply proven by his time in the presidency. He’s brazenly using the office to enrich himself, his family and his friends. He’s scheming to determine who votes in the midterm elections and to skew the results in his party’s favor. He’s turning Washington into an architectural ode to his own hallucinated greatness. He’s laboring to neuter the news media and evade accountability. He’s alienating America’s friends, coddling our foes, eroding our standing in the world. And he’s doing much more for his fellow plutocrats than for the economically struggling Americans he pledged to help. So I don’t care about how foolish he does or doesn’t look as he tries to deny the ravages of age. I care about how foolish he has made the rest of us look — and how profoundly he’s ravaging our country. Forward this newsletter to friends … … and they can sign up for themselves here. It’s published every Monday. For the Love of Sentences
In The New Yorker, David Owen took a delicious swipe at many Americans’ acquisitiveness and hoarding: “Recently, it occurred to me that the ideal place to open a self-storage facility might be in the middle of one of those industrial parks, surrounded by fulfillment centers. That way, when you bought something from Amazon, it could be delivered directly to your storage unit, bypassing your cluttered home and sparing you the embarrassment of not remembering what you’d ordered the day before.” (Thanks to Yvonne Kirk of North Coventry, Pa., for nominating this.) In The Irish Times, Ed Power remarked that the Dublin folk musician John Francis Flynn’s voice “has the quality of an ominous wind creaking through the branches during an ill-advised walk in the woods at 2 a.m.” (Lynn Hughes, Quakertown, Pa.) In his newsletter, Ron Charles reviewed Emily St. John Mandel’s new novel: “Shifting perspectives and narrators, darting back and forth across time, nesting stories within stories, ‘Exit Party’ sometimes feels dazzling and sometimes feels like it was composed by a squirrel with a Ph.D.” It also chillingly imagines “the vicious safety of a total surveillance state.” (Jessica N. Lange, Beavercreek, Ohio) In The Times, Sam Corbin recognized an enduring dispute over the sound that the Road Runner cartoon character makes: “With the recent release of the film ‘Coyote vs. Acme,' the subject is being relitigated in the public arena, causing rifts even among actors in the film. John Cena says it’s ‘beep, beep,’ Lana Condor says it’s ‘meep, meep,’ and never the twain shall meet, meet.” (Laurence Paul, Sarasota, Fla.) Also in The Times, Robin Givhan noted that the 1970s television sensation “Charlie’s Angels” belonged to an era when popular culture was less fragmented: “It was a cultural touchstone. Now there are touch pebbles.” (Kathy Lazar, Broadview Heights, Ohio) Nicole C. Foster explained a purpose for continuing to grieve her father’s death a quarter- century ago: ”My grief, after all, is where I store my memories of him.” (Mary Burks, Grayslake, Ill.) David Gibson maintained that a growing number of religious conservatives are factoring treatment of the needy into their political assessments: “They are looking for effective public policy, not just effusive public piety.” (Mary Nellenback, Auburn, N.Y., and Tom Wyman, Carmel, Ind., among others) And Oren Cass marveled at the velocity of the rebellion against artificial intelligence: “The popular uprising against data centers has emerged so suddenly that politicians stumble over their own pitchforks racing to the front of the crowd.” (Glen Grabenstetter, Crofton, Md., and Beth Croucher, Golden, Colo., among others) In The Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan chuckled over the euphemisms used by A.I. evangelists: “The phrase ‘pacing the frontier’ is so clever as to be close to demonic. It implies control and mastery of speed. It also turns the leaders of the A.I. companies into Lewis and Clark in coonskin caps with parchment maps, bravely surveying our country that it might understand its true size.” (Michael Smith, Georgetown, Ky.) In The Washington Post, Daniella Greenbaum Davis spoke up for Claude and its kin, which ferret out information we might not otherwise find: “Much of the debate concerning A.I. today is about scale and mortal threat, about destroying jobs and flooding social media with slop. It’s easy to forget that large language models, like all tools, are a thing human ingenuity has built to finish what human hands cannot. The forklift was created because a person’s back can lift only so much.” (Mark Weinberg, Wilmington, Del.) Also in The Post, Dominic Pino recognized that hiking is hardly some low-cost, low-tech, carbon-light return to simpler pleasures: “Nowadays, countless Americans get in their personal cars to drive to the airport to fly across the country to rent another car to drive partway up a mountain to go for a walk. Only in a rich, industrialized society can people afford to do that.” (Cheryl Mandala, Phoenix) And Monica Hesse analyzed the upset over a lascivious ad in which the actress Sydney Sweeney, unclothed, hawks a betting app that’s “just sports,” not politics or such: “She is not making an ad about ‘just sports’ any more than a naked woman rolling around on a tarp covered in marinara is making a cooking show.” (Steve Kistler, Columbia, S.C., and Cheye-Anne Salyards, Pittsburgh, among others) To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here and include your name and place of residence. What I’m Reading, Watching, Doing and Excited For
Retire These Words!
As already established in this newsletter, I’m not shy with metaphors when it comes to President Trump. But I’ve never thought of likening him to a laser. A laser is steady. Trump is wobbly. A laser is contained. Trump is unrestrained. A laser has purpose. Trump is pompous. And yet, according to various White House aides at various times, he’s “laser-focused” on this, that or the other, a phase they’ve used just often enough that it’s laser slander at this point. If I were an intense beam of cutting light, I’d sue. But while the wedding of Trump and “laser-focused” is especially irksome, it’s hardly the only indictment of the phrase, which has become so commonplace it’s meaningless, so familiar it’s banal. It has certainly earned a place in the glossary of political-writing clichés that I’ve been compiling in this section of the newsletter over the years, in part as an apology for having used them. At the start of the casual project, in this edition of the newsletter, I lobbied for the retirement of “inflection point,” “under the bus,” “herding cats” and more. In one of several subsequent installments, my targets included “dumpster fire” and “clown car.” Today I add not only “laser-focused” but also “the quiet part out loud,” which was sharply expressive until it become dully reflexive. It’s one of those phrases that fell victim to its own aptness. When I now see or hear it, I want to plead out loud that it go quiet. And can it please take “Schrodinger’s” as a modifier with it? Schrodinger’s cat, of course, is a thought experiment meant to show how “the logic of quantum mechanics breaks down when applied to everyday objects,” as this charming cartoon distillation of it explains. Schrodinger’s cat is metaphorically suspended in a state of irresolution — figuratively alive and dead at once — and over recent years, I’ve increasingly seen scribes use “Schrodinger’s” as a term to describe an undefined, contradictory situation or person, such as a politician. That’s silly. Physics and politics are intellectual leagues apart. Our current president is laser-focused on demonstrating that. “Retire These Words!” is an occasional feature about overused, oddly used, erroneously used or just plain annoying locutions. The previous installment, about the ubiquity of “toxic” as a modifier, appeared in this newsletter. Read past editions of the newsletter here. If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up |
